Echoes from the Past (The Brigandshaw Chronicles Book 1)

by Peter Rimmer

  Then, lying back on the bed he transported his mind back into the bush and ran again with the animals.

  The Captain, Sir Archibald Brigandshaw, Baronet, sat alone at the end of the mahogany table in the dining room of Hastings Court. The polished surface shone from the energy of the servants. One place had been set on a table that seated thirty, the empty chairs and empty polished wood testimony to the greater potential. Sir Archibald, as befitted the first in what would become a line of hereditary knights of the realm, had dressed for dinner, the white starched front of his shirt studded with diamond studs, glittering each on its own from the light of the chandeliers that hung over the table on chains thirty feet long disappearing up into the dark of the vaulted ceiling. Up there, lost in the gloom, cherubs played trumpets to the heavens, dulled by age and wood smoke and last seen with certainty by human eye in the reign of Charles the First. Long before, the dining room had been the Great Hall of the first Mandervilles. Still, and also long forgotten from lack of use, the small, minstrel gallery looked down on the old man eating his supper alone, the only sound the clatter of silver on fine china. Somewhere in the vaulted wood of the ceiling were the lost notes of the minstrel lutes. Lower down, the walls draped with heavy tapestries to hide the moulds of age, the eyes of ancient Mandervilles looked with the fixed stares they had shown the long dead painters. Some, the women mostly, faintly smiling, most staring at the certainty of their deaths. All but the very new had lost their names. One so high and dark had crashed to the old flagstones three nights before, sounding a long, echo from the past and making The Captain jump from his chair with fright.

  The soup went, followed by the fish, replaced by a small, plump fowl sitting centre of a plate. The Captain chewed portions of the bird, masticating the dry breast, his mouth as dry as the chicken's bones. The swallowed food caught in his gullet and was followed by a gush of red wine from a crystal goblet, the Venetian blue of the glass delicate and beautiful in contrast to the gnarled hand of the old seaman missing its pinkie finger, frozen, lost, long, long ago, turning the Horn. After putting his knife and fork together, the fowl was taken away, the Venetian goblet filled by the second servant, the first waiting for The Captain to stand, turn to the long sideboard and carve the sirloin of beef. No one spoke a word and The Captain kept his seat, stroking what was left of the pinkie finger of his left hand. The servants waited, the only sound the soft purr of the methylated spirit lamp under the silver dish, covered by a silver dome, in which the beef awaited the carving-knife. Again the goblet was filled and still The Captain kept his seat. He was thinking. Suddenly and horribly, into the empty hall, he gave a laugh. The wine servant behind his chair took a pace back.

  The Captain, deep in his memory, was running with full canvas towards the American port of Mobile, the coxswain holding the spokes of the ship's wheel rock solid to catch the wind. They were both smiling, the hold full of English guns made in Sheffield, the Yankee navy nowhere to be seen, the cotton waiting on the wharf, the blood of youth pumping through their veins. He could still see Eddie Doyle grinning with excitement, all the crew willing the ship faster for port and safety and the bonus of their lives.

  Again he laughed, remembering.

  Slowly, far away in his mind, he rose to carve the roast beef. At sixty-five he should not have tottered. The servants, afraid of the old man's backhander had turned away. With a look of bewildered surprise, The Captain fell down on the stone floor and died as the methylated spirit gave out and the faint sound of hissing stopped.

  In the end, the butler had to bury him.

  The pain had gone from the hip to the right shoulder where the bullet had torn through the ligaments and the laudanum, given to Sebastian by the male nurse, had just begun to float his mind out of his body. Somewhere in the picture he saw his mother and smiled, the primal instinct from birth sending the feeling of safety. When his mother spoke he knew he was hallucinating on the opium.

  "You look absolutely awful," said Tilda Brigandshaw looking down on her son while she looked around for a doctor. "They don't look after you. Anyway; it's good you're alive as it would have been a lot of bother coming all this way and finding you dead. People always exaggerate. Even when people are meant to be dying. How many times have I heard in my life someone say, 'look at him 'es half dead.’ “Now, sit up, talk to your mother and stop grinning like a Cheshire cat. Daft, I say. Never saw a cat in Cheshire grin once in my life and I grew up in Cheshire. Same as your father and now 'es dead so they say but I'll believe that proper when I get back home. The office here say he died of a heart attack while he was having 'is supper. Anyway, you're alive which is something. And where's Emily. And all these children I've heard rumours about when I've only seen Harry?"

  "He's sedated," said the male nurse who had walked into the ward to stop the woman talking so loud. "The opium makes them conscious of their surroundings but a strong dose makes it difficult for them to join in, Lady Brigandshaw."

  "Is he dying?"

  "Without any new infection, there will just be a lot of pain while the wounds heal. The shoulder, where the bullet shattered the ligaments is the problem. My job is to keep the wound clean and even if I have to say so myself, I'm good at my job. Your son will recover fully. A famous white hunter, I'm sure he's had far worse than this in his life many times."

  "No," said Sebastian, trying to bring his mind back into body, "Is that really you, mother?"

  "You'll be quite all right now your mother's here."

  "I'm glad." Without being able to control them, his eyelids closed and Sebastian went to sleep.

  "You can sit with him as long as you like. Mothers have a healing power with their children even when they are grown men with children of their own. Talk gently. There are other patients in the ward. He'll wake in an hour or so and be able to talk."

  Eddie Doyle had gone to the Tulbagh Tavern more out of boredom than a need to get drunk. After a week he was certain there was nothing more he could do to save Tinus but he did not want to go back to England until after the trial that was scheduled for the following Wednesday. It would be all over by the end of next week and time hung heavy on a man alone and with no work to do to cover over his loneliness. The Tulbagh Tavern was inside an old stone building with a clock tower on top; the windows were small to keep out the storms that raged around the Cape in the winter; in the summer, they sat outside on wooden benches and watched the seals playing in the water between the ships. The winter fire at the base of the big chimney was cheerful and Eddie Doyle drank his beer for something better to do. The tavern was full and the smoke from many pipes blued the air. He had found a small table at the back and sat alone, the barmaid vigilant enough to bring him a second beer when he had slowly finished the first. No one had taken any notice of the old seaman from the time he had come into the bar. His ship that had brought him as a passenger from London had unloaded and gone on up the east coast to pick up a cargo of cloves at Zanzibar. The second and third drink came as he enjoyed the fire and his memories. Only intermittently did the thought of Tinus Oosthuizen hanging by his broken neck bring him back to the present. People, mostly from the ships in the harbour, came and went. Mingling with the seamen were whores of every age, shape and colour but they left the old man alone in the corner.

  When he was thinking of the past, the table next to him could shout and he did not hear but after Tinus, once again, had jerked him back to reality he became aware that two of the men were familiar and one of them was getting up and coming to his table.

  "Captain Tucker of the 'Mathilda', Captain Doyle. A long time. Mind if I sit down? Just 'cause Colonial Shipping fight tooth and nail for cargo with African Shipping, don't mean the captains can't talk. Fact is there's somethin' you should know."

  "Please. Sit down. I am here on non-shipping business."

  "Fact is, Captain Doyle, The Captain's dead. You two built the company, so to speak. Thought you might like to know. I won't sit down. Just thought you ought to know like I
said. Many times I 'eard about that trip round the Horn and never once did he not mention your name."

  "Dead, you say?"

  "Yes, he's dead. Company office 'ad a wire. Heart attack."

  When Captain Tucker turned his back small tears began to flow freely down the old, weathered face.

  Shortly after the twins, Klara and Griet, turned seven a new strain of flu rampaged through their concentration camp killing a quarter of the young children and old people. For the first time they recognised fear in the eyes of their mother. The old woman in the corner of hut twenty-two had withdrawn so far into herself she might have been dead and would have died without being spoonfed by Sarie Mostert. Sarie, never afraid for herself, worried about everyone else. When the flu struck with terrible repetition she forbade anyone in hut twenty-two to leave the small shack and stopped the British coming through the door. All the food and water she collected herself. All the water she collected from the roof herself when it rained. Every time the night-bucket was used she took it out and brought it back washed clean, day and night. The fight to make everyone in hut twenty-two survive had become personal. From her experience in the slums of Pretoria, the dog-lady knew quite well that once a disease crept into the sanctuary of their hut all the weak and all the children would probably die.

  Only when the situation was out of control did the British face the problem, and with the doctors and nurses came the press followed by an international howl of disgust.

  The highveld camp was one of the smallest. The first to get sick had been a British soldier who caught a bad cold on the boat out from England. He had gone about his duties coughing. The germ he had picked up in England was common enough in the back streets of Manchester, but had never before been seen in Africa. What was a nuisance for Private Higgenbottom was deadly for the Boers.

  By the time Billy Clifford arrived to continue his series on the concentration camps, eighty-three children and seven grown-ups had been buried in the earth next to the camp. Billy wrote back for the Irish Times, 'that the problem of life was life itself. That man in war, in his quest for dominance created misery for everyone, including children.' Later, Billy's article went on: 'From the first recorded history man has fought wars and what we so blithely call our civilisation is a sham. The fault lies in the very nature of man, the meaning of his survival, the evolution of the strong over the weak. It is to ourselves, each one of us, we must turn to give the blame as in each of us, through our ancestry, given the right call, the right reward, women pushing forward men, men singing with excitement, is the seed of war. To blame others is only the second nature of man.'

  More out of wild hope than expectation (it had been Billy Clifford's habit to check the list of Boers in the camps for one, Sarie Mostert) he asked for the list of prisoners. When the name sprang from the page in the British guardroom, his blood went cold and his hands began to shake.

  "Is this person still alive?" he pointed at the name.

  "She'll be alive," said the duty corporal. "She's the dog-lady. Shuts everyone in the hut. Only clean hut, I reckon. Lots of the others kind of give up, you see. Not nice being locked up. That Sarie made us teach her English. Before the flu we were teaching her twins English. She told us back 'ome in the slums of Pretoria they called her the dog-lady. Lots of dogs…You think this war 'll be over soon? Can’t stand the flies. And I don't like this place neither. Poor buggers all dying like that. Not right is it…What you want with Sarie?"

  "We were separated. Seven, nearly eight years ago."

  "Come on, mate! You speak this Afrikaans then?"

  "Not really."

  "How did you talk?"

  "We were in love. It didn't matter. How old are the twins?"

  "That's easy. It was their seventh birthday just before the flu."

  "If I marry her, can I take her out of the camp?"

  "Ask the colonel. You being British don't seem a problem. What about her kids?"

  "I rather think they are mine."

  The door opened and the voice he recognised so well spoke through the crack between the jamb and the door. He could just see the tip of a pink nose.

  "You no come in," she said in English. "I come out, see."

  She came out backwards to close the door and Billy caught a glance of two small people catching a glimpse of the outside world. One of the children stuck her tongue out before the door slammed shut and Sarie turned round. First she saw the corporal from the guardroom and was about to say something when she took in the man standing next to the soldier, squeaked and jumped clean off the ground into his arms, knocking Billy flat on his back where they lay hugging each other, tears mingling with tears.

  When they disentangled to look at each other, the corporal had left them and gone back to the guardroom.

  Five minutes later, Billy Clifford was introduced to his children.

  Nothing, as Billy was to find in the coming weeks and months was as simple as it seemed. The colonel, a dried-up bachelor of sixty, had not a romantic streak in his body. But even had he agreed, Billy knew it would have made no difference. Not until the war was over, and the Boer women and children were allowed to go back to what was left of their homes, would Sarie Mostert leave the old woman who sat in the corner of the hut with her eyes permanently shut.

  "If I don't spoon feed her she die. Not good way to start happy, see. She, like children, my responsible. I stay for war. Then go Ireland. Long time I look after that old lady, I want her go home to her sons. I go now it bad rest of time for us. When old lady back at Majuba farm we make family…How you like my English? Not bad, hey?"

  "I love everything about you, Sarie Mostert."

  "If you love so much, maybe all stay Africa and you become big, big writer. What you want, hey. I remember. Everything."

  The British were to be his judge and executioner. The two brigadiers had made no eye contact with Tinus standing in front of his chair looking at his persecutors. The soldiers standing guard at the doors to the room in the Castle looked puny in comparison to the giant of a man mocking the three officers seated at the judgement table. He wore a waistcoat made from the skin of an elephant to remind him of the years of freedom hunting alone in the bush. They had made him take off the leather hat made from the skin of the same bull elephant. It sat alone on the single chair that was all that was left to him in a world once teeming in game. For long seconds before the trial began the trial that he knew would find him guilty, Tinus stared into the cold, smug eyes of General Gore-Bilham seated between the brigadiers. Both of them were remembering the debagging of the general. Tinus smiled and tipped his head. Had the hat been where it should have been he would have raised it to his judge and executioner.

  The lawyer Alison had found began to ingratiate himself to the military court and Tinus sat himself down. Comfortably, he crossed his legs and let his mind wander. He had found many times in his life when there was nothing he could do to save a situation it was best to do nothing and allow the inevitable to take its course. If the new King of England or his representative chose to stay his execution, so be it. He was what he was. Had done what he did.

  It was all very efficient and very quick. He was a rebel. He had committed treason. He was to hang by his neck in the morning and there was the end of it. They had all come, his friends, the people who had made up his life, for better or for worse, some happy, some sad, some parts remembered with joy and mostly the bad parts lost with the passage of time. It was the mosaic of his life. Alison would forget the pain in the end. Barend would forget the pain and remember his pride. Tinka would marry and have her own children and tell them the story of their grandfather. Christo would never know his father and live through his life with an empty hole that would always echo in his mind.

  They had brought Sebastian on a stretcher and the two had silently shaken hands before all the words began to spill. Neither could speak so the silence had been better for both of them. The young lad he had shown the bush would recover and live to go home to w
here they had all been happy. The animals would still be there. The fish eagles would still call from the sides of the river. The rain would come. Crops, new crops would grow. Life would be the same without him. He was mostly significant to himself; he the centre of the universe.

  Captain Doyle had come, the first man to buy his ivory, the man who had given him the money to buy Kleinfontein that was forfeit to the Crown.

  The old, bumbling aristocrat, Sir Henry Manderville had come and tried his best. The kids had been right. Potty. Pleasantly potty. But in all of it he suspected the flush toilet still worked on Elephant Walk. He smiled to the memory.

  And silently, throughout the court, the Afrikaners had come, the Boers who had stayed in the Cape, the wives of the Boers who were still fighting with Smuts and de Wet. And when he turned right at the end and waved at them many were crying.

  They let him see his wife, as was his due; they gave him a good meal, as was his due. But in the morning at the first light of the new day they dropped the trapdoor from beneath his feet and hung him by the neck.

  Outside the main gate of the Castle, where Sebastian had stayed all night, they heard the bell of death toll three times.

  "I think it is time for all of us to go home to Rhodesia," said Sebastian. Inside the hired coach, they had covered him in blankets to keep out the Cape winter. Only the wound in his shoulder ached. There had been no rain all night. Harry, who had not been at the trial had stayed with his father. The rules had been made by Tinus. None of the children at the trial. No one to see him die.

  "Will Aunty Alison come back?" asked Harry.

  "Not now. They will in the end. We are their only family. There's no one else."

  "Will they have any money?"

  "Yes, Captain Doyle has decided to sell African Shipping to Jeremiah Shank. Half our share will go to Alison. He's coming to visit Elephant Walk. Even stay. Strange thing of it all, he's taken my father's death badly. When men make friends it’s a strange thing. I hope you'll be lucky yourself, Harry. Now, help this cripple to sit up a little and you can drive us home. But first take the nosebags from the horses. There's nothing more any of us can do for Tinus except keep his memory tight in our minds. This will not go down as one of the great days of the British Empire. I hope, son, you never have to fight a war. Oh, and your grandmother is coming with us. She always hated Hastings Court."