by Ann Harries
I cleared my throat. ‘We have reached the Liliaceae bed,’ I announced, and proceeded to deliver a brief lecture on the genus Lilium with its six-segmented flowers, three-chambered capsular fruits, and scaly bulbs, and to offer advice about pot culture, which I felt sure would never be put to use. At the end of my speech, Oscar clapped me on the back and beamed at me, exposing those somewhat protruding front teeth which would one day be blackened by sulphuric treatment for syphilis.
‘What a fountainhead of information you are! I shall have to recommend you to the chief gardener. Pray tell me your name.’
‘My name is Francis Wills, and I must inform you that I am a student of the Natural Sciences, at present working on the classification of rare and exotic flora, and that I have rooms in 2 pair Right in Chaplain’s.’
‘I say, that’s only a door or two away from mine!’ cried Oscar ingenuously. ‘And did you say your name was Wills? Can we by any chance be related? My name is Wills Wilde – Oscar Wills Wilde – Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde’ (by now his voice had thickened into a deliberate Irish brogue) ‘and I must ask ye if ye’re related to the great Irish playwright W.G. Wills, after whom I am named.’
‘I am his second cousin,’ replied I, and this seemed good enough reason for Oscar to sweep me to his rapturous breast and call me cousin – a kinship that would certainly not have been recognised by the Linnaean rules of nomenclature. Nevertheless, our chance mutual ownership of family name was to bind us with a loyalty as strong as any found among siblings: he is the only man who could make me laugh. And love.
Cape Town 1899
After my interview with the Colossus, some distraction was necessary.
I switched on the red light of the dark-room, closed the door, and prepared the chemical solutions for the printing process. There is something all-absorbing in this activity, perhaps because one is sealed off from the rest of the world in a delightfully claustrophobic atmosphere of dim redness and potent chemical. The dark-room is indeed a sanctuary for hermits. I placed each negative in the developing and fixing dishes, marvelling, as ever, at the gradual emergence of ghostly outlines that slowly intensified into a dense black and white representation of recognisable objects. One can think of nothing else but the removal of the print from the dish at precisely the right moment so that the result is neither too pale nor too dark, at which point one pegs it upon the line and examines the near-finished product. Most of the sugar bird prints were highly satisfactory, partly due to the sharp African sunlight which gave the images an almost three-dimensional quality. Unfortunately my attempts to capture the curious movements of the bird’s wings and tail on celluloid were less than successful: though the protea head itself was clearly etched against the backdrop of pines, the bird’s streaming tail and fluttering wings were something of a blur. Nevertheless, a creditable sequence of wet photographs now hung upon the line. In the red glow of the electric bulb I studied the fruits of my labours more closely.
The recently purchased lens of my camera had picked out the bird’s habitat in quite astounding detail. Not only was every feather of the bird and every petal of the flower reproduced down to the last particular, the pine plantation in the background was also revealed as clearly as if I had trained my lens upon the rows of trees as well as my little feathered friend. Yet even as I admired the pleasing symmetry of the plantation I became aware that in among the tree trunks hovered a human being. The powerful lens had reproduced exactly the agitated expression on the woman’s face as she leaned against a pine tree and stared into the garden, all unaware that a man was photographing her from his hide of jute. I recognised her at once as the woman on the bench: short, stout, imperious, with a troubled look in her dark eyes. Perhaps she was gazing at the happy family on the back verandah, but whatever she was doing there, she was spoiling my photograph. Fortunately it is simple to remove unwanted images: a few movements of my fingers under the light would cause the intruder to fade into the darkness of the interior forest when I redeveloped the negatives.
A quick glance at my fob-watch informed me that an hour had sped past and that it was time for my next meeting. I gathered together my equipment, hurried down the stairs (bumping my free hand against Phoenician hawks all the way) and entered the vestibule.
Great gusts of cigar smoke assailed my nostrils as I passed the open library door, and an animated male dialogue made me pause, in a sudden desire to eavesdrop. I recognised one of the voices as that which had risen from the hydrangeas the day before, no longer mellow with child-love, but sharpened with outrage. The other voice I did not know, but could guess at its owner.
‘And this frontispiece photograph!’ cried Kipling. ‘Three niggers hanging from a tree with the pioneers standing around. Pretending to be an illustration to her piece of propaganda! I thought the woman had more sense!’
His companion spoke in rapid, emphatic tones. ‘The only niggers I ever saw hanged were nigger spies, I can tell you that.’
‘She calls him “death on niggers” when we all know the natives fairly worship him! I’ve seen for myself how they follow him round like dogs, longing for him just to throw them a smile or a glance. Life on niggers, more like. Jobs for niggers. And possibly, one day, civilisation for niggers.’
His companion snorted. ‘She’s one of these New Women who feel it is their duty to shriek about male domination, sexual inequality, and all that rubbish. In my book, she’s nothing more than a female hysteric who isn’t able to reproduce herself. Lost her child recently after a series of miscarriages. It’s unbalanced her mind. But you know of course the real reason for this outburst?’
‘Well?’
The unseen speaker sniggered. ‘The truth of the matter is she’s been in love with our host for the last ten years. Fancied herself as his missus, you might say. When it was clear there were to be no wedding bells, she turned nasty. Don’t know how her husband puts up with her antics.’
I caught a glimpse of my face distorted in a bronze Netherlandish spittoon probably once owned by the first Dutch gardener Jan van Riebeeck himself, and decided it was time to move. I had not long left the house and made my way down the avenue when I heard fast, firm footsteps pound after me.
‘Professor Wills, sir!’
I lowered my equipment to the ground and turned to confront the young man I recognised as the Colossus’ blond secretary who had caused my teacup to fly out of my hands the day before. He alone of the gaggle of young men constantly in attendance upon their master had not succumbed to the unfortunate after-effects of too much food and drink. The whites of his eyes were devoid of the network of red veins that bulged from those of his colleagues; the blue irises were equally clear. In a tornado of dust and gravel he skidded to a halt beside me and waved a telegram under my nose.
‘I’m very sorry to disturb you, sir, but I saw you walking down the avenue and I thought I’d catch you. I’ve brought you another message. He says he meant to ask you when you met him this morning but he forgot!’ The young man who had collided with Huxley yesterday morning now turned the full beam of his engaging smile on to me.
I glanced at the scribbled message. ‘Please dine with us tonight, Dr Jameson would like to meet you.’
‘I thought I had made it clear that I was not to attend evening meals,’ I sighed, resisting a throb of curiosity. ‘Will there be many people?’
He smiled encouragingly. ‘Only very interesting and unusual people, sir. You could even say very famous people!’
‘I have no interest in famous people,’ I muttered; then, as disappointment blanched his exuberant features, I added, by way of an excuse, ‘I’m afraid I’m a bit of a recluse, you see. I haven’t been well.’ He raised his eyebrows politely, inviting me to continue. ‘I partly agreed to come here so that I could recuperate in a healthy climate. Instead of which …’
The young man’s face lit up. His white teeth flashed within the virile growth of his moustaches. ‘Then you must go to the seaside, sir!’ he excl
aimed. ‘That is where all invalids go to convalesce. You can walk for miles around a perfectly unspoiled coast, or even swim in the waters of False Bay, which are quite warm, I assure you. Mr Kipling likes nothing more than a morning stroll along Muizenberg beach.’
The innocence of his enthusiasm amused me. ‘I should like nothing better!’ I lied, though on that beautiful autumn morning, with the sun filtering down through the crisp oak leaves and all the tropical plants tumbling in violent hues out of their display beds, the preposterous idea of swimming in an Ocean did not sound quite as alien as it might otherwise have done. ‘But unfortunately I have to prepare my birds for their release in three days’ time. Much is expected of me, I’m afraid.’
‘Perhaps you will visit the seaside after the Release. He’ – and here the young man waved his hand in the direction of the Great Granary – ‘has a cottage in Muizenberg which you could easily reach by train. It has a most magnificent outlook, right across the bay.’
‘Well, we’ll see.’ I felt I could not tell this enthusiastic young person that I was booked to leave for England on the Windsor Castle the following Monday, this time up the west coast of Africa. In order to divert his mind from the seaside I changed tack.
‘May I ask you your name, young man, as you seem to know mine?’
‘James Joubert, sir,’ replied he proudly, pushing his chest out a little. ‘Directly descended from the Huguenot refugees. And I can’t speak a word of French!’
‘And now you are a secretary here?’
‘Yes, sir. He made me learn shorthand. I have been very fortunate.’
‘Well, thank you, Joubert. I must be on my way. I’ve no doubt we shall meet again.’
His grin radiated health. ‘Oh, no doubt, sir. You’ll be getting more of these telegrams, I expect!’
We bade each other farewell, the poor man colliding with the flirtatious daughter on his way back up the avenue, she fluttering all about him as he tried to stride along, clearly indifferent to her overtures. I proceeded on my way, marvelling at the picaresque turn my life had taken. It seemed that every hour of the waking day I was destined to meet complete strangers or unrelated figures from my past, one after the other, and become involved in some small adventure with them. How very different from the predictable pattern of my Oxford existence!
I could now hear the rumbling of a carriage which drew up not far from where I stood with my camera and equipment. The horses tossed their heads in the air while Alfred’s long legs unfolded from the open carriage, segment by segment. The object of our photographic session was lifted down from the back of the vehicle and Alfred murmured words of thanks and instruction to the coachman. As the carriage clattered off, he turned to greet me with a condescending smile.
‘I have exactly eighteen minutes.’
The bicycle was brand new, as far as I could tell, and of the most recent design.
Sir Alfred Milner had metamorphosed from the stiff-collared senior statesman of yesterday into a sporty gent in full cycling regalia. I suppressed a thin smile: he might just as well have appeared in a clown’s outfit or a woman’s skirt, so incongruously did his present accoutrement sit upon those long, spidery limbs. Or so it seemed at first. He was holding the bicycle close against him as if he knew not what to do with it, but suddenly extended his multi-jointed right leg and mounted the saddle with easy confidence.
Now boyish Sir Alfred Milner opened his mouth and laughed outright as he cycled round and round me, ringing the bell and waving his hat as if performing in a circus. ‘Do you cycle? Wonderful release! Everyone should try it!’
I shook my head impatiently and began to set up my tripod without comment. In a cloud of dust he skidded to a halt beside me, his heels grinding through the gravel and acting as brakes.
‘Surprised you, eh, Wills? This is my one relaxation – in England, that is.’ A shifty look gleamed in those gimlet eyes and I wondered what was coming. ‘She and I chose this together. I promised I’d ride it every day here, for the exercise. She thinks I spend too much time shut up round negotiating tables and the like.’
‘She?’ Would everyone in the Southern hemisphere feel compelled to pour out their private lives to me?
‘Mmmm.’ He began pedalling down the drive in a leisurely fashion, even humming a little tune from Patience. ‘I think here would be best.’ He had dismounted in order to position himself with the Great Granary in the far background. ‘Bit of a wedding cake, isn’t it!’ He pulled a face in the direction of the house. ‘That whitewash looks exactly like icing-sugar in this sunlight, wouldn’t you say? Still, she’d like it. I promised her I’d send her photographs of all the grand houses I went to. As well as photographs of myself upon the bicycle. She didn’t believe I’d ride it. She was right.’ He consulted his watch, hidden in a striped breast pocket. ‘Twelve minutes. Sorry about this, old chap. It’s the life I lead.’
‘Right, now, if you put your foot actually on the pedal –that’s perfect…’ And the next five minutes or so were spent with my head under a piece of black cloth while Sir Alfred Milner froze into different shapes and attitudes illustrating leisure, both on and off the saddle. In the easy atmosphere he felt inclined to chatter.
‘Kipling tells me he rode round Rhodesia on a bicycle recently – or was it just Bulawayo?’ (Freeze.) ‘Interesting chap, Kipling. Got a lot of time for him.’ (Freeze.) ‘Can laugh at himself. Apparently he hired his machine from the only cycle shop in the town. The proprietor thought him such a scruffy little fellow that he demanded a guarantor.’ (Freeze.) ‘Kipling brought along none other than he from whom the Colony takes its name. Acute embarrassment on behalf of one cycle proprietor!’ (Freeze.)
‘Will you now cycle along the avenue very slowly, backwards and forwards, while I attempt to improve on my exposure technique for objects in motion?’
He began to speak again, his foot safely on the pedal. His voice was perhaps a semitone higher.
‘I’ll never understand why Oscar didn’t jump bail. He had every opportunity. There was even a steam yacht at the ready, I’m told. I was in Egypt at the time. He didn’t have to go to prison.’ Backwards and forwards Milner pedalled, back very erect, knees rising far higher than the average man’s. I followed his movements, ghost-like and upside down on each glass plate. ‘At Oxford his favourite painting was St Sebastian studded with arrows, the Reni, in Genoa. There was always the martyr element in Oscar. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. So unnecessary. I believe six hundred gentlemen crossed the Channel on the night the warrant for his arrest was issued.’
I withdrew my head from under the cloth. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I think that’s enough. Would you mind riding to the curve in the avenue and I’ll try a long-distance shot.’
‘Only too happy, dear chap. I see I have four minutes left.’
I readjusted the tripod, added a lens, buried my head in the cloth and watched Alfred Milner float off into the distance, the wrong way up. I always enjoy this moment, when the world is shaped by the boundaries I impose, and my brain is required to interpret the primitive message of the plate-glass retina. It does not take long to adjust to the inverted world of the camera, so when I observed a shape begin to extrude downwards from the near end of the pendulous avenue along which Sir Alfred cycled, I did not have to reorientate my eyes in order to recognise what I was seeing. The figure hovered upside down under one of the great oaks, her reticule clutched tightly in her hands, looking as if she might dash out at any minute and throw herself before my aerial subject and his bicycle. I withdrew my head sharply from beneath the black cloth, with the intention of frowning her away. Her feet now on the ground and her head in the air, she smiled brightly –even brazenly – at me, and vanished across the lawn, towards a cluster of palm trees.
Alfred was now on his return journey, quite unaware of the intruder. My head returned beneath the cloth. He called out to me: ‘Her name is Cecile. You could say that we have cycled many miles together. But I have had to say
goodbye. A mistress in Brixton is too dangerous for a man of my status. One has to make sacrifices for the Empire, for the greater good.’ He had reached me now. Though I had no further pictures to take I remained with my head covered. ‘She understood completely, of course. But she has been part of my life for nearly ten years. Do you have a woman tucked away somewhere, Wills?’
The question made me jump. I felt my cheeks flame. I emerged. ‘I too have dedicated my energies to my life’s work,’ I stammered. ‘I am not a man for domesticity.’
He sighed. ‘There is nothing so sweet as to have a woman’s head upon your knee, her hair all undone and flowing through your hands.’ He paused, then laughed through his nose, a habit of his I remember finding distasteful twenty-five years ago. ‘Especially if one has just dined with the Queen. Or the Duke of Marlborough. From Blenheim to Brixton. I have to say that the risk of exposure added considerable spice to the affair. Fortunately my Teutonic upbringing has trained me to know where to draw the line – unlike some of my colleagues. And unfortunately, the line has had to be drawn through Cecile’s dear heart. Nevertheless, these photographs will console her. I could not entirely abandon her.’ His moustache-fangs twitched.
‘I shall have them ready by tomorrow,’ I said briskly. There is a dark-room at my disposal, with every facility.’
The wheels of a carriage clattered towards us. ‘He has arrived half a minute early. Ah well, better that way round. Thank you, Wills. This has been a pleasant break. Will I see you tonight?’
‘I am expected.’
‘I shall naturally remunerate you for your services.’
