Ghosts of the Past

by Tony Park

  Rassie sipped his drink and set his glass down. ‘A Landespolizei officer came from Keetmanshoop two days ago, asking about a herd of cattle that had gone missing from across the border.’

  Blake threw back his whiskey in one gulp and set the glass on the bar. He didn’t care about the Landespolizei; they were barely capable German part-time coppers. Rassie refilled his glass. ‘Well, you know it wasn’t me, this time. I had a proper alibi.’

  Rassie smiled. ‘I won’t ask where you got your horses from.’

  Blake shrugged. ‘Legal and cheap. Four years on and the Cape’s still overrun with horses from the war.’

  ‘And why didn’t you go home to Australia, Eddie, along with all those other Tommy sympathisers? You never have told me.’

  Blake wiped his lips with the back of his hand. It was a good question, and one he’d given up trying to answer for himself. ‘I don’t know. This place, Africa, gets under your skin.’

  Rassie shook his head and clucked. ‘Nee, man. Thorns get under your skin, flies’ eggs, worms, bullets. This place just cooks you, braais you until you’re red on the outside and black on the inside. You’ve spent too much time in the desert, Eddie. Your brain is fried, man.’

  ‘Maybe.’ The second whiskey was working, dissipating the aches of the long ride. There would be more pain tomorrow morning, in his head, but it would be worth it.

  ‘For how long are you back, Eddie?’

  ‘A week, maybe two.’

  ‘Your palace awaits you,’ Rassie said.

  Blake laughed. He had a rough mud-brick rondavel with a grass roof behind the pub where he kept his meagre possessions. It was the closest thing to a permanent home he’d had since he’d left his tent at Sabie Bridge – he had never felt at home on the farm in the Cape. ‘Thanks. Can you get Dawie to draw me a bath?’

  Rassie winked. ‘Of course, or I could fetch you a girl?’

  Blake shook his head. ‘I think I need some sleep first, but thanks all the same. Maybe tomorrow.’

  ‘Sure. There was a new woman in town, what, four days ago?’

  ‘Come to make her fortune?’

  Rassie shook his head and poured himself another drink. ‘No, a white woman, from South West. She rode with a Nama guide.’

  ‘She was from across the border?’ Blake was mildly curious; women were scarce enough in this frontier town and this was news that could rival the relief of the siege of Mafikeng during the war.

  Rassie took a sip. ‘Didn’t tell much, but asked plenty. Wanted to know where she could buy some horses. She was also asking around about cattle; she said a herd of hers had been stolen by the Nama and her theory was that they’d been brought across the border and sold here.’

  Blake gave a half-smile. ‘I wonder where she got that idea?’

  Rassie looked heavenwards. ‘The good Lord only knows.’

  ‘Even though the Nama don’t target German women she’s either very brave or very stupid riding down here in search of a few cows and horses.’

  ‘She wasn’t German,’ Rassie said. ‘Dawie said she spoke to her servant in German, but to me she spoke English, with a strange accent. I met an American once, in Cape Town, a sailor off a ship. Could have been like that, but not as strong.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Blake said, affecting nonchalance. He tried to stop the glass from vibrating on the bar top as he set it down. ‘What’d she look like?’

  ‘Red hair. Skin would have been a lovely marble, if she hadn’t been riding so long. But she looked like she’d spent plenty of time in the sun, not like one of those homely Fräuleins the Germans ship into Swakopmund and Lüderitz to populate their little colony.’

  Blake licked his lips; his mouth was parched again all over. His heart beat faster. He took a breath to steady himself and concentrated on forming his words casually. ‘Get her name?’

  Rassie shook his head. ‘Sadly not.’

  Rassie would have tried, Blake told himself; he was too inquisitive not to. Had the woman hidden her identity deliberately? ‘Did she find her cattle?’

  ‘You say I ask too many questions, Eddie.’ Rassie gave a chuckle. ‘But to answer yours, no, she didn’t, but I took the liberty of telling her I knew a man who was on his way here from the Cape who might be bringing horses and cattle. Shame for me you only brought the nags. This foreign woman might be interested.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  Rassie shrugged. ‘Maybe back across the border where she came from, or trying some of the local farms.’

  Blake took another drink with Rassie and he forced himself to stick to the small talk while all he wanted was to know more about the red-headed woman. Maybe it was just the mention of Irish whiskey that had got him thinking about Claire again and his mind had jumped to conclusions; he told himself that even in this corner of Africa there would be a reasonable number of farmers’ wives with hair that colour, even though he couldn’t think of any off the top of his head. Rassie ordered Dawie to fetch water for Blake’s bath.

  When he’d finished drinking in the bar Blake undid his saddlebags, hefted them onto his shoulder and walked to his hut. It was as palatial as a jail cell, but it was somewhere he could rest up when he was in Upington. He unbuckled his pistol belt, hung up his Broomhandle Mauser, and peeled off his dust and sweat–encrusted clothes.

  Dawie must have had word that he was on his way, for the wood-fired boiler had already produced enough hot water for him.

  Blake eased himself into the tin hip tub, savouring the stinging heat that worked its way into his tired joints and dirty pores. He scooped a double handful of water, closed his eyes and sluiced it over his hair.

  The door creaked.

  ‘Give a man some privacy, Dawie.’ Blake heard the door close again, but he knew someone was still in the room – he caught the scent of soap, and that was definitely not coming from Dawie. As he craned his head he saw her.

  Liesl dropped to her knees behind him, rested her hands on his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Hello, Blake. How are you?’

  He covered her hands with his. For the briefest of moments he had allowed himself to think that it might have been Claire coming in, that she had been searching for him and finally found him. Seeing Liesl, however, was something of a relief. If it had been Claire he would not have known which emotion would have come to the fore first. He had sought to dim her memory with half-a-dozen women in the past four years, but Liesl was by far the prettiest. ‘Fine and you? I hope no one saw you slip in.’

  ‘Dawie did, but he knows about us. He told me before you went away. He thinks you’re a good man.’

  ‘Hah. I always knew he was a poor judge of character.’

  Liesl picked up a cake of soap from the floor beside the bath and lathered a flannel. ‘You are, Blake. You help us. You brought horses this time?’

  ‘Yes. And don’t make me out to be some kind of saint, Liesl. I’ll be selling those horses to your uncle.’ Liesl was the niece of Morengo, though she kept that quiet on this side of the border.

  ‘Hmm-mm.’ She started washing his chest, reaching around him. ‘And I know from my uncle that you don’t really make any money. You take the cattle Uncle Jakob steals, sell them, and you take a percentage. The horses you give him for free.’

  ‘Where have you heard all this rubbish?’

  ‘From Uncle Jakob. He also likes you.’

  ‘Was Morengo here, in Upington?’

  Liesl took hold of his right forearm, lifted it, and scrubbed it, from fingertip to armpit. ‘Briefly, yes. He escorted some more of the women and children here, so they could get to one of the British refugee camps. He was hoping to see you.’

  ‘Why does the Black Napoleon want to see me in person?’ The Germans had put some three thousand Marks on Jakob Morengo’s head, so he was a careful man. Most of Blake’s dealings were done through Morengo’s und
erlings.

  Liesl moved her mouth closer to his ear and lowered her voice. ‘Uncle Jakob has learned the Germans are planning an attack on his base at Narudas. As well as the horses you have brought he needs more, as well as ammunition and food. He also wanted to move some of the women with small babies and the old and infirm to safety.’

  ‘Jakob’s got spies everywhere, so he’s probably right about the Germans.’

  Liesl picked up his other arm. Her movements were slower this time and she hadn’t drawn back from him. He felt her breath on the back of his neck as she washed him. Fortunately the water covered his midriff.

  ‘Yes, spies everywhere. I followed a German patrol last week, while you were away, watched them steal three horses from the Spangenberg farm.’

  Blake reached over and encircled her slender wrist in his right hand. He turned his head so he could look her in the eyes. ‘Do not do that again, Liesl.’

  The girl pouted. ‘I’m old enough to do my share now – nineteen. I counted the soldiers, and I got close enough to hear them talk, at their camp, and found out the name of the man who led the patrol.’

  Water sloshed over the side of the tub, wetting her long dress as he swivelled. He let go of her hand but wagged a finger at her. ‘You must stop this nonsense immediately. If the Germans catch you following them they’ll shoot you, or worse.’

  Liesl jutted out her chin. She had the look of a wilful child, but the eyes of a caracal cat and the body of a grown woman. ‘This is not just about making money, Blake. I am the niece of a kaptein and I am not going to spend my life working as a maid in a bar full of drunken farmers.’

  ‘You’re safe here, Liesl.’

  ‘Yes, safe, but a slave, just not to the Germans. Anyway, I’m not going to spy any more.’

  He exhaled and slid back lower into the tub. ‘Good.’

  ‘I’m joining Uncle Jakob’s forces. I’m going to fight and I want you to find me a nice horse.’

  Blake thumped the side of the tub. ‘I am not going to help you get yourself killed, Liesl.’

  Liesl said nothing more for a minute or two, as she re-lathered the washcloth and gently pressed him forward so she could scrub his back. When she’d finished he slumped again and closed his eyes, thinking that he had put her in her place.

  He remembered the first time he had seen her, crossing the border from German South West Africa with a score of other refugees. Her clothes were rags and her limbs skeletal. For all his bluster Rassie had a decent heart and he had taken her in as a maid. One night a drunken farmer named de Waal had grabbed her around the waist while she was picking up glasses in the bar. Blake had stood and suggested de Waal let her go. When he didn’t and, instead, ground himself against her from behind, Blake had knocked him unconscious.

  Liesl had filled out and grown enough to turn the head of more than one church-going burgher, and Blake had suggested to Rassie that she might be better put to work out of sight, cleaning the few rooms the barman kept. Blake and Liesl had become friends, and their friendship had eventually blossomed into something deeper. He had told her his story and his real name one night after drinking too much in the bar, and he’d found that sharing his burden with someone else had helped ease it. He started bringing her things – fabric, soap, a mirror, ribbon – when he made his trips up from the south with more horses. Having learned that she could read he also brought her books, which she loved more than anything else.

  ‘I’ll be sad to say goodbye to you, Blake.’

  He opened his eyes. ‘Liesl, you don’t know what war is like.’

  She stopped washing him. ‘I’ve seen my people driven off their land, chased into the desert where they starved. Some of my friends have been killed, fighting.’

  ‘Not women.’

  ‘No, the Germans kill women by working them to death, or they die of the pox in these camps people are talking about. I’m a woman, yes, but that doesn’t mean I can’t fight. I can ride and I can shoot and I can get past German patrols in a way a man can’t. I want to live in my homeland.’

  Blake sighed. He’d seen too many young people die fighting for someone else’s cause, but Liesl had been forced to leave her birthplace. In some respects, he mused, the Nama were like the Boers during the war with the British, fighting to protect their way of life, even if a far-off monarch didn’t like the way they were going about it. He felt for her, but he couldn’t bear the thought of that pretty face, that smooth skin being torn apart by bullets or shrapnel.

  ‘Maybe you don’t understand that, Blake – what it’s like to fight for your own land. Maybe you don’t like Australia. You told me you came from a place by the sea, where it rains, and where the grass is green and the cattle are fat. You told me of this place and it sounds like the Eden the pastors talk about, yet you are here, in the thirstlands. Why?’

  ‘I told you before, Liesl, I was wrongly accused of killing a man during the war against the Boers and one day I need to clear my name.’

  ‘One day.’ She shook her head. ‘Your war was over four years ago. You can go home. You can find a lawyer to plead your case.’

  ‘For that I need money, more than I’ve got. There’s still a bounty on my head – that’s why I’m here, where nobody knows me.’

  ‘Except me. I know you’re not Edward Prestwich. Don’t try and stop me leaving to join my uncle, Blake.’

  He heard the implied threat in her voice, that she might blackmail him to get him to help her ride off to her death. He saw the determination in those eyes, which had set like amber – golden and beautiful but hard at the same time. In all the months since that drunken night in the bar he hadn’t regretted sharing his real identity with her. Until now.

  ‘I think you’re not just here for money, Blake.’ She stood and he saw how the fabric wet with bath suds clung to her young body. He remembered her skin, as slick and sweet and golden as honey.

  Her father had been a German, a kindly man who had died when he’d fallen from his horse at Keetmanshoop in South West Africa, and Liesl had overcome the jibes of her relatives about her parentage and earned the respect and patronage of her important uncle through her actions. Morengo might love his niece, but he was also canny enough to know that he could use her, if not as a spy then in some other role where she could help his insurrection.

  ‘My father would not have supported what is happening in my country now. He would have fought, even against his own people. He believed in justice, and that the Nama should have their share of the good land. I think you’re here because you want to help us.’

  ‘I’m here to make enough money to get out of this bloody desert, clear my name, then buy a boat and sail away to some place where it rains.’

  She shrugged. ‘If you say so.’

  Blake stood, water cascading onto the floor, and stepped out of the tub. He went to her, dripping. He wondered if he should get a towel, but Liesl just stood there, looking him in the eye. She was young, but she was stubborn.

  Like Claire.

  However, it was Liesl who came to him and put her arms around him. She stood on her toes to kiss him and now her dress moulded itself to his body. Liesl took a step back, reached for the hem and pulled the sodden garment over her head. Now she was the same as him, bare, wet, in need of someone.

  Blake took her to the bed and fell upon her, taking her, with the reverence of a worshipper and the single-minded surety of a bird of prey. She scratched at his back, her nails a match for her feline eyes. He had to hold the bedhead with one hand to stop it banging on the wall – he didn’t want Dawie or Rassie’s face appearing at the window.

  Liesl clung to him and they rolled so that she was on top. Blake looked up at her, his hands almost encircling her waist as she brushed the hair back from her face and grinned down at him. He raised his fingers to her mouth as she began to moan, but she repaid his attempt to keep her quiet by bit
ing him. The flash of pain sent a jolt to his mid-section and they collided together. Claire had done the same thing when they made love, he reflected afterwards.

  When they were done they lay still in the afternoon heat, side by side. Blake, weary from days in the saddle, fell asleep, and when he woke an hour later, Liesl was gone. He drifted back into a deep, dreamless slumber.

  A knock on his door woke him. He got up, pulled on his long underwear and hooked one suspender over his shoulder. He picked up his Broomhandle Mauser and opened the door a crack. It was Dawie, and outside the sky was turning pink.

  ‘Mr Edward,’ Dawie said, ‘Liesl sent me. She says you must come to the river, by the punt.’

  Blake rubbed his eyes. He always felt bad when he woke after being on the booze in the afternoon – it was better to keep drinking. ‘Did she now.’

  ‘Very urgent, sir. She says her uncle will be there.’

  ‘Righto.’ That meant business, not more of the girl’s foolish idealism. Liesl had not let on that Morengo was still in town – she was playing a child’s game of espionage that he feared would end in tragedy. Blake finished dressing, went out and decided to walk to the meeting point.

  Upington’s dusty main street was empty. Behind him a few farmers were already drunk enough to be singing in the hotel. Blake had put on his coat; the one thing he’d learned about deserts was that they were as cold as a banker’s heart at night. Though he was right-handed he wore the Mauser on his left hip in a reversed holster. He kept his hand on the pistol grip under his coat, ready to draw. Liesl wasn’t the only spy in this dorpie; the Germans paid former Boer guerrillas for information on rebels from German South West Africa moving back and forth across the border. There was no shortage of men desperate enough to try to collect the bounty on Morengo’s head.