Echoes from the Past (The Brigandshaw Chronicles Book 1)

by Peter Rimmer

  "Tinus, you don't really think this Kruger wants a war…Why?"

  "To keep him in power. To keep his Boers from the grip of the British. My grandfather trekked away from the British, away from the Cape and British rules and regulations. The only rules the Boer accepts are those in the Bible. A Boer, his family, his Bible and a rifle. That's freedom. Individual freedom. Democracy ties the hands of a man like that, always telling him to do the will of the majority. There are more Uitlanders, foreigners, than Boers in the Transvaal digging for gold. The right of every white man to vote will give them the power and join the Transvaal to the British, what my grandfather risked everything to get away from. Captain Doyle is right. If the British force Kruger to enfranchise the Uitlanders he will fight."

  "But he will lose in a week," said Gregory.

  "The veld is big and wide. The Boer knows every kopje and every Boer can kill buck with one shot from five hundred yards. Those British red coats with the nice white sash that crosses over the heart will make a good target. Don't laugh at the Boers, Gregory. You will regret it."

  "But you want to go to the Cape," interrupted Sebastian. "That's going back in your family history."

  "My mother was Scottish. My wife is English. I live here under British rule. Don't judge the Boers by me, Seb. Some would say I am a detribalised Boer, ruined by English influences. No Seb, you can't dissuade me. I'm selling. Having my wine farm."

  "The children will miss each other," said Emily keeping the fear of loneliness out of her voice.

  "Yes they will but soon new families will arrive in the Mazoe Valley. The rich red soil will bring them. With your dividends from African Shipping, Seb, you can buy out my share in Elephant Walk."

  "When are you leaving?" asked Sebastian sadly.

  "When these English bankers pay me my money."

  "And war with England and the Transvaal. Which side will you take?"

  "I will take no side. The war will be far away from my wine farm. Look, Emily you and the children will visit. When Barend grows bigger he will want to come to his father's old hunting grounds. We will always be related to each other, if not by blood then by memory. I can send you equipment you need. Newer strains of livestock, bigger cattle. Come, this isn't the end of our world together."

  Fran watched her husband and understood. She had given up drinking during the day having embarrassed herself in front of her friends. Instead she waited impatiently for the first drink on Tinus Oosthuizen's veranda. Gregory's back had straightened. The eyes had lost their hesitancy. For one brief moment of hope she thought his impotency would leave with his new strength. The man was a soldier who had lost his job and the thought of war had brought him alive again. In a war they would need his skills. In a war petty convention would be drowned in necessity. In a war Gregory Shaw would be a solider again, a real soldier with a uniform, a real command, a purpose for his life. She never spoke what was in his mind but they both knew; war would be good for both of them. In front of her eyes the ageing husband had become a young man again. For a moment she was even jealous.

  The one thing Henry Manderville feared most in the bush was snakes. For lions and buffalo he carried a gun with a good chance of acquitting himself. Snakes were waiting for him hidden in the grass and no amount of expert reading could convince him his footfall vibrated through the earth and sent most snakes running faster than he would have wished to run himself. High gaiters and leather trousers were his answer to the phobia and he carried a long stick with a short fork at the end for imprisoning the upper halves of snakes firmly to the ground with the idea of walking around the pole to make his escape.

  Every day he left with the rising sun, the butterfly net firmly attached to his haversack, the hoop behind his head, the handle bouncing on his bottom; a wide-brimmed hat turned down at the front kept out the yellow light of the morning sun. For all intents and purposes he had given up farming in pursuit of his new obsession. All over the rondavel were books open and shut.

  The riverside acacia was chock-full of birds and butterflies from very large fish eagles to small songsters that had no English names. The butterflies flitted from flower to flower, small ones like the cabbage whites he had known in England to creatures with long tail feathers more like kites than butterflies. All the problems of the world had left his mind to live free with nature and Henry had never known such contentment. All the wonders of the world were around him in the trees and bush, the long elephant grass, the reeds by the river, gurgling water, the hum of bees and the calling of the birds. Best of all, he told himself, there was not one sign of man, only animals watering peacefully from the river.

  At midday when the sun was too hot to venture from the shade of the tall acacia trees, lacelike in green leaf and sharp with thorn, Henry collected water from the river and in the protection of rocks washed clean by the river in flood he made a fire and boiled water for his tea. Down by the river where a swirl of water through the rocks had given him the perfect hiding place, he collected his bottle of milk. A man without a sweet tooth he drank his sugarless tea and prepared to catch his lunch, a ritual that provided Henry with short bursts of excitement as well as long periods of hunger when the fish refused to bite. On fishless days he refused to eat in punishment and left the buttered bread in its waxed paper to be eaten the following day.

  During the heat of the day, with his back to a tree-trunk he read the books from England stashed in his haversack. When the white light of day yellowed with the sinking of the sun he foraged for his specimens and with the last rays of the sun burning the sky red he trudged home a happy man.

  Back in the compound they smiled at him, gave him a drink on the veranda as was their ritual and told him of their day. Sometimes he showed them what he had found but not always.

  Young Harry borrowed a pair of British army field glasses from Uncle Gregory and spent a long and hungry day viewing his grandfather from the sanctuary of a shaded outcrop of rocks across the river. He was fascinated by the leather pants that had been lovingly made from the skin of young bush-buck carefully cured in salt to softness. The butterfly net gave his grandfather a halo with the morning sun in his face and Harry expected his grandfather to be doing great things with so much equipment, the gun, the forked stick, the pole and net, the haversack bulging with content. By the time the light had gone from yellow to white Harry was bored but being on the other side of the river in full view, if he stood up, he could see his grandfather settled down comfortably with his back to a tree reading books. Earlier he had viewed through the glasses a close up of the triumphant capture of a butterfly that had left Harry wondering what it was all about. The secret place for keeping the milk cool was revealed, the fire curled smoke from behind a rock and for a very short while the catching of a large fish was worthwhile but spoilt when grandfather went about cooking the bream over the hidden fire instead of catching lots of them for supper. The smell of cooking fish wafted over to his hiding place and sent saliva washing down his chin. At some point he fell fast asleep and woke to search for his grandfather with the field glasses to find him staring up stock still under a tree where he stood for a long time until a bird came out and flew off down the river. Harry could see and almost hear the sigh of contentment from his grandfather. Later, when his grandfather was off into the thick bush where Harry couldn't see him anymore, he escaped back over the river and ran back to the compound where he raided the meat-safe with the small holes in the zinc to let the air flow through and was caught by his mother cutting chunks of cold meat off last night's leg of venison.

  "Where were you for lunch?" asked Emily.

  "Watching grandfather. Uncle Gregory says grandfather's gone potty. Mummy, what's potty? Is it catching butterflies and standing still for hours under trees looking up at birds? Cause if that's potty, grandfather's potty."

  "I think Uncle Gregory meant eccentric."

  "So grandfather's eccentric?"

  "Oh yes. They say a lot of Englishmen left out in Africa become e
ccentric. Even some of those who go to India."

  "I'm an Englishman. Do you think I'll become eccentric? I hope not. I don't like catching butterflies and staring into trees." Harry thought for a moment with his mouth full of meat, chewing. He swallowed. "But I wouldn't mind those bush-buck trousers."

  "I'll make you a pair," said Emily smiling.

  "Will you, mummy? Oh tops. You're the best mummy in the world."

  "No she's not," said Madge from the open door. "She'd have smacked me for stealing the meat…Mummy, what am I going to do when Barend goes away?"

  Alison, with a basket of washing from the communal line, heard the last part of the conversation and walked on to her house. She put the basket down in her kitchen and sat thinking, far away in her thoughts. The baby was due in three weeks' time but her mind was elsewhere. Ominously, Barend and Tinka were quiet in the back of the house; Tinus had not yet come in from the lands. Rightly she told herself she should get up and start setting cutlery and crockery on the long table out on the veranda.

  A gecko was climbing up the screen that was meant to keep the flies out of the kitchen, the small sticky feet-pads allowing the lizard to defy gravity. Like the spider of Scottish legend she watched as the gecko stalked and killed the flies that were trying to get through the finely meshed screen and wondered where her life would have been if she had not climbed out of the window at Hastings Court and joined the runaways on their odyssey to Africa, to an African farm cut off from the realities of her known world. It was difficult for her to imagine the young woman who had taken the job of looking after Harry. If she had not loved little Harry so much she would not have run off in the night; if her brother had not gone to sea, if her parents had not died; if she had not become a child's nurse, a servant in all but name; if she had not let Tinus have his way before they were married. Now they were going again. Leaving Harry, Emily and the enigmatic Seb who worried about all of them, the weight of the world resting on his shoulders. Now she had two, almost three children and a husband richer than anyone she had ever known in England except The Captain. Idly, she wondered if the old pirate, as Grandfather Henry called him, ever missed his grandchildren. She doubted it. That old man had money on his brain, morning noon and night. How strange that Madge, granddaughter of the owner of Hastings Court, old, old money in an old, old house, was worrying about the grandson of a jobbing gardener and not a very good one by all reports, Alison's education coming from the board school and the lucky interest of a primary teacher.

  From being servant and mistress they had become friends far from the rigid rules of English class. There had just been the four of them in the bush with a common destiny; and then the children; then again like destiny the potty grandfather and his unhappy friend. Sadly, overwhelmed by loneliness she thought again of leaving her friends, more family than friends and she understood. There was comfort in their companionship lost as they were in the middle of the bush. They relied on each other; that was it. Their own preservation relied on each other and even Fran had found it was no place to fall out with the people she needed, no time or place to argue. Alison sighed. She would miss them all so much.

  And when she looked for the gecko it had gone.

  Chapter 3: June 1898

  By the end of June, a year after the first Chimerenga, St Mary's Mission had been rebuilt except for the church. Earthly attractions came before the house of God: the small dispensary run by Bess, the school run by Bess and Nathanial, a large kitchen and dining room, two dormitories and after long theological debate an open area with goal posts at either end. The church, when it was built, would be of great proportions as befitting Nathanial Brigandshaw's real mission to Africa, the saving of souls from the domination of eternal hell, consumed but never dying in the fire of the Devil, the eternal pit of damnation for those who did not accept the one true God and his only son, Jesus Christ. The stone church would rise above the charred remains of sacrilege, the spire visible to the heathen pagans for miles around, the Cross of Christ high and triumphant throwing its light over the darkness of Africa bringing that light to everyone who believed in the Trinity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Three great kilns were burning the bricks and the House of God when it rose from the bush would be so powerful that no mortal man would ever burn it down.

  His long black skirt touching the dry earth of Africa, Nat strode his domain with the great energy of a man doing the work of God.

  Three miles away the man that had made all this possible by paying for it was gazing down out of the window of his tower to across the Hunyani River at the throngs of horses being tended by his black grooms under the eye of Jack Jones a man listed in England as a deserter from the British army. Jeremiah Shank had recognised a soulmate in the men's bar of Meikles Hotel when the ex-corporal Jones had told him to stop the crap and to use his proper accent. As in everything Jeremiah did in his life, he turned the incident to profit. Anyway, he was too short to start an argument and the Welshman was looking at his face with the expression of a man looking forward to doing harm.

  "'ave a drink mate," said Jeremiah throwing his elocution lessons out of the window having first satisfied himself by looking round the small bar to make sure that he would not be recognised. The barman was a black man dressed up in a red fez and a white jacket whom Jeremiah knew would have no idea of the difference between French and English. When the barman failed to understand the order he gave his customer a short menu to point to where the bottle labels had been miniaturised in the margin. As Jeremiah had found since he had first come into money through working for The Captain, free drinks turned men's opinions quicker than fists or guns. "Nice to talk proper," said Jeremiah sliding the beer to his new friend. "Rumbled me mate. Jeremiah Shank at your service. Tell me my old codger, what brings you to the colonies?"

  Seven beers later Jeremiah had the story. The Welshman had hit an officer for mistreating a horse and instead of waiting to be locked up for insubordination he had thrown away his fifteen years’ seniority with the Welsh Guards and caught a train for Liverpool. For three years he had roamed around America, made friends with a gold prospector in California and followed the American to the gold fields of Monomotapa where they had found nothing and had split up the night Jeremiah found Jack Jones in the men's bar of Meikles Hotel.

  "You want to come and work for me, Taffy?"

  "Why would a good Welshman who likes horses better than men want to do that, I ask…" The man was quite drunk.

  "Cause after Cecil John Rhodes I'm the richest man in this bleedin' country."

  "Now are you man? Well that does make a difference. Fact is I'm broke."

  "I know my old cock. But I also know you know all about horses and that bit does make me interested. Pick you up in the morning outside the hotel at ten o'clock."

  "Yes guv."

  Later, in the best room in the hotel Jeremiah smiled to himself. Only at the end had he reverted to his posh accent and only at the end had the Welshman called him guv. Jeremiah Shank was really learning about the power of money.

  The investment in St Mary's Mission was as calculated as any business decision. There was nothing in Jeremiah's background to offer his peers so he decided to dazzle them with good deeds. When it came to sending out the invitations to the groundbreaking ceremony for the Reverend's church, the drawings for which together with the cost were more like a cathedral to Jeremiah, he understood why so many people in history had gone in for charity. A rather nice piece of paper had been printed with the masthead proclaiming the St Mary's Mission Foundation, while discreetly at the bottom were listed J Shank Esquire, (Chairman) and the Reverend N P J Brigandshaw. Even years later Jeremiah was unable to find out what the P and J stood for but at the time he first saw the initials he was so impressed with the Esquire after his own name that he forgot to ask, the opportunity slipping away forever.

  To ask Fran Shaw meant inviting her husband, which brought up the question of asking the younger brother he had heard r
eferred to as the black sheep when the Reverend was talking to the army captain who so consciously looked down his nose at Jeremiah Shank. In the end everyone at Elephant Walk was sent gilt invitations and Jeremiah wondered if the black sheep would remember his face and the part he played with Jack Slater and the police in trying to have Sebastian arrested with the ivory. There was always a risk in everything, Jeremiah told himself.

  The invitation to Mr and Mrs M J M Oosthuizen arrived three months after they had left for the Cape, the new baby keeping them in Rhodesia until it was old enough for travel, Alison still hoping Tinus would change his mind. Tinus, she found, like so many men had a one-track mind and all the guile in the world failed to change his direction. For Alison it was the worst parting she had ever faced in her life.

  Sir Henry's invitation was soon lost among the litter of books and specimens that infested his one-room rondavel, Harry convinced that some of the bugs were still alive.

  Sebastian looked at the invitation with surprise. It was the first social engagement to which he and Emily had ever been invited, the taint of their elopement keeping them off the government social list. The thought of meeting his second brother after they had been in the same country for so many months made him smile; nasty names and rumours were always reported back to their owners even in the African bush.

  For Fran Shaw the name in small print at the bottom under Foundation Directors rang a distinct, faint bell in her mind but failed to connect to a thunderstorm on the veranda of Meikles Hotel. Bored to distraction with her life despite Gregory having squared his shoulders at the prospect of war, she was happy to send off her reply accepting the invitation despite the fact she had not been to church for years. After all church had always been a social event as well as a communication with God.