The Horns of the Buffalo

by John Wilcox

  Of course, she mused, South Africa was a backwater compared with Afghanistan and she had exaggerated to Cornford the importance of the border dispute. It would probably fizzle out and become just another footnote to the story of South Africa’s growth. But the posting would enable her to gain experience: of recording events as they happened, rather than interpreting them from afar. It was much more exciting - and she might even see Simon!

  She stared unseeingly out of the rain-streaked window. Not once in the talk of South Africa had she thought of him. Not even when she was boasting so grandiloquently (and rather falsely) about her contacts within the army at the Cape. Well, it would be good to see him again, if that was possible - why, he might even be useful to her in her work! Alice smiled at the thought. She had no idea of where Simon would be. There had been no further news since a rather boring and short letter had arrived from Durban. She gave a shrug. It was of no real import. She had far more important things to think about now - not least the difficult task of explaining to her parents that she had suddenly become a foreign correspondent for a newspaper. She smiled again. She could do that. It might take all her skills but, after convincing Cornford, the task of winning over her mother and father would be comparatively easy. She pressed her nose against the cold window pane and began to hum to herself.

  Chapter 10

  At roughly the time that an apprehensive but excited Alice was boarding the vessel in London Docks that would take her to Cape Town, Simon was lying disconsolately on his bed in John Dunn’s kraal. Late winter in Zululand had brought some relief from the humidity but it was boredom and a feeling of frustrated inadequacy that accounted for his discomfort now. It was four weeks since Jenkins, his arm bandaged, his hair freshly slicked back and Simon’s letter stitched into the lining of his coat, had set off with the cattle to the border. There had been no news of him since, except that the boys who had accompanied him had returned and reported that the cattle had been safely delivered to the army pens in Durban. Jenkins had disappeared without trace.

  More to the point, Simon realised sadly, he also missed Nandi. She had disappeared too, on the morning of Jenkins’s departure. After two days, Simon had casually enquired about her and Dunn had told him gruffly that she had gone up-country for a few days to stay with her mother’s relatives. It was clearly a banishment for her part in the Jenkins fracas. Dunn, too, was rarely at home and Simon’s frustration stemmed from lack of meaningful activity as much as loneliness. His horsemanship improved considerably as a result of daily rides near the farm, but they brought him no information about the King’s intentions towards the British or his possible preparations for war. All he saw were cattle, herdsmen, dongas and scrub. No warriors. No drilling impis. As a spy he was worthless! Yet he dared not ride towards the Zulu heartland, for he was useless without an interpreter. If only Nandi . . .

  As if on cue, there was a gentle knock on the door of his room. ‘Simon,’ called a soft voice.

  He sprang from his bed and opened the door. There she was, dressed in that familiar white shift, small white teeth gleaming, a wild orchid tucked into her hair, her whole manner radiating youthful happiness. ‘Nandi,’ he cried. ‘Where have you been?’

  She pulled a face of lugubrious misery. ‘I have been in disgrace because Papa said that I had caused the fight between Mr Jenkins and Nkumo. So he sent me to stay in Mama’s village in the north.’ Her eyes widened in youthful innocence. ‘But Simon. It was not my fault. I was not encouraging them, you know.’

  Simon frowned momentarily. He was quite sure that she had played the coquette on that evening. She was a flirt, there was no doubt about it - but he needed her. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’

  Nandi shook her head. ‘No thank you. Papa says I must not go into your room. I called because I thought you might like to ride and . . .’ she grinned, ‘start your lessons in the Zulu language.’

  ‘What a good idea, but what about your father? He has said precious little to me over the past few weeks and I fear that I am becoming an embarrassment to him.’

  Nandi shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so. He left early this morning for Durban; something to do with this Boundary Commission which has been meeting at Rorke’s Drift for a long time now. I asked him last night and he said that if you really wanted to learn, then I could begin teaching you.’ The smile came back, seeming to tilt her nose and illuminating her brown face. ‘So, you see, it’s all right. I have the horses saddled.’

  They rode, as before, along the track that led to the shaded pool, and sat together on the mossy bank. Nandi stretched out luxuriously and put her hands behind her head. ‘Isn’t this a wonderful place?’ she said. Then she stretched out a languid hand. ‘Simon . . .’

  ‘What about my lesson, then?’

  Nandi sighed and sat upright, resting her chin on her knees and looking at Simon through her lashes mischievously. Simon thought that he had never seen anything so lovely. She had tucked a cotton scarf around her neck and its bright orange seemed to make her skin more lustrous, her teeth whiter. ‘All right, then. You are my pupil. You must listen carefully.’

  ‘No textbooks, ma’am?’

  ‘No. We don’t have a written language, Simon. Although we do in a way.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, we can communicate by colour. By sending you certain beads on a string, I can say things to you. Basic things, but you would understand - just like a letter, really. For instance, if I sent you a string of beads painted white, I would be speaking of love.’ Unusually, she betrayed just a touch of embarrassment. ‘If they were black I would be yearning and thinking of the night. Yellow means a house and a family, green is domestic bliss . . . and so on,’ she finished rather lamely.

  ‘How fascinating,’ said Simon. His eyes drifted to her cleavage, where the ends of the scarf were tucked into her shift. She was wearing nothing underneath again. Oh God! ‘What, er, what about the language, then?’ he enquired weakly.

  ‘Yes, Simon. It will not be easy for you.’ She curled her legs underneath her like a schoolgirl and her face wore that air of innocent concentration that reminded Simon of the Sunday school teachers of his youth. ‘We have no books so I will have to teach you by mouth, so to speak.’

  ‘How charming,’ murmured Simon.

  ‘What? Oh yes.’ She grinned. ‘But not by kissing, Simon. You said that there were rules about that. No, be serious and listen. The first thing is for you to learn how to make the sounds that are very different from English. For instance, we have three sorts of clicks. Look.’ She threw back her head and opened her mouth wide.

  ‘One is made like this, so.’ She made a sound like the English tut-tut, by pressing her tongue to the back of her front teeth and pulling it away sharply. Simon came closer, moved his head down and looked into the roof of her mouth.

  ‘How very fascinating,’ he breathed.

  She did it again. ‘Now try for yourself. Look, see. Now you do it.’ He tried and did quite well.

  ‘Good. Now I suppose you could call that our letter “c”. The second one is . . . let me think how I do it first.’ She frowned and clicked for a while, looking quite adorable to Simon in the soft dappled light. ‘Yes, I have it. You put your tongue to the back of the roof of the mouth and move it so that you make the sort of noise that I’ve heard Afrikaaners do to make their horses go faster. It’s another kind of click really. Listen.’ She clicked away while Simon solemnly rested his head on her lap, looking up between her breasts into her mouth. ‘Now that’s our sort of “x”. Can you do it?’

  Simon closed his eyes, pressed his nose into her stomach and clicked.

  ‘That was quite good. Now - please move your head and look. This next one is how English people spell names or words beginning with their “q”. It’s the easiest, really. Come closer and watch my mouth. You put your tongue further back on the roof of your mouth and flip it down to the bottom. It’s a deeper sort of cluck. Look.’

 
She lowered her head so that Simon could see. Before she could cluck, however, Simon’s lips were upon hers, his tongue thrusting deep into her mouth, his arms around her. For a startled split second she sat inert. Then she coiled her arms around his neck and responded ardently. This time there was no pulling back by the young Englishman: his loneliness, his boredom, his sense of frustration were all sublimated by the desire he felt. Coquette or not, he wanted her. He kissed her mouth, her eyes, her cheeks, her ears, soundlessly but with a passion he had never evinced before. He rolled on top of her and began working himself against her slim body. Gently, she pushed him away.

  ‘Simon,’ she whispered into his ear, ‘we must not make a baby. But - do you want ukuHlongonga?’

  ‘What? God knows. But yes. I’m sure I do - whatever it is.’

  ‘Oh yes. Let us do it, then. Here, give me your hand. Put it here.’ She pulled up her shift and led Simon’s hand between her thighs. ‘Now . . .’ She fumbled with the buttons on his breeches. ‘There. There. That’s it. How lovely. Yes.’

  For minutes, the two lay in the glade, making gentle love under Nandi’s tuition until they both climaxed, he with a gasp and a groan, she quietly, with a sigh and then a smile. She licked her fingers sensuously and then rolled on top of him and kissed him deeply on the mouth. ‘Oh Simon,’ she murmured, and began to whisper to him in Zulu as she snuggled her cheek beneath his chin.

  Simon lay back, his hand gently running along the vertebrae he could feel through the thin cotton of her shift, his eyes staring into the tracery of leaves above him. A feeling of depression came over him. Had he seduced his host’s daughter? He was not sure whether what they had done amounted to seduction, but whatever it was, he had compromised his position. He groaned aloud and Nandi pressed closer to him, murmuring soft, guttural endearments. And what about Alice? For the first time for days he thought of her but once again could not recall the details of her face, only the whiteness of her skin - so very different from . . . He groaned again.

  Nandi sat up. ‘Simon,’ she smiled, gently patting his loins, ‘don’t worry. We have not made a baby so you will not have to marry me. I know that you would not like that.’ She looked across at him with eyes that were now sorrowful. ‘That is why I thought we should make ukuHlongonga. It is better that way, although, not, I should think, as much fun as making a baby.’

  ‘So you have never . . .?’

  ‘No. Have you?’

  Simon shook his head. ‘No. There has never been anyone.’ He frowned. No. Surely he could not count his ineffective fumblings with that whore in Sandhurst? Of course not.

  Nandi clapped her hands joyously. ‘Oh good. I am so glad, Simon. Perhaps we can make a baby together then . . .’ she tailed off and paused for a sad moment, ‘some day.’

  Simon kissed her hair. ‘Perhaps we can. Some day.’

  They rode back together in silence. Nandi, in a fit of responsibility - either feigned or real, Simon could not be sure - had wished to continue with the language lesson but he had demurred. His mind was too disturbed, and anyway, he doubted whether he could ever make headway in a language that progressed in clicks, however sweet the teacher. And she was sweet. Simon studied her as she rode a length ahead of him along a donga. She sat perfectly erect, her big toes hooked into rawhide stirrups in what he had heard was the Basutho style, her slim body rising easily with the movement of the pony. She was beautiful and desirable - but he cursed himself silently. Now, in addition to spending his time indolently when he should have been gathering information, he had compromised himself with a Zulu half-caste. What would Covington make of that? He must, he must get out of here. He must get on with his job.

  That evening, Catherine, James, Nandi and he sat down at dinner, in Dunn’s absence. There seemed to be a tension in the air and Simon wondered guiltily if Catherine and James somehow suspected what had happened that afternoon. But how could they, unless Nandi had let something slip, perhaps in a moment of gleeful pride of conquest? No, she was unlikely to do that. They munched on in silence, until Catherine turned to him.

  ‘You must forgive us, Mr Fonthill, if we seem a little gloomy tonight,’ she said. ‘But we are unhappy about what has happened at the frontier at Rorke’s Drift, to the north of here. My husband has gone to Durban, on behalf of King Cetswayo, to see if he can intercede with the British about it.’ She paused, looking for words. ‘Nandi, you explain. My English is getting worse and worse.’

  Nandi put down her knife and fork. ‘It happened a few weeks ago now. A chieftain named Sihayo, who lives on the Buffalo River near Rorke’s Drift, is a favourite of the King and visited him at his kraal. While he was there, his son discovered that Sihayo’s Great Wife, Kaqwelebana, and another wife had taken lovers. Now, Simon,’ Nandi’s eyes widened again, in that familiar earnest look, ‘adultery is a terrible crime in the Zulu nation, so Sihayo’s relatives decided that, of course, Kaqwelebana had to be killed.’

  Simon found himself nodding gravely and saying, ‘Of course.’

  ‘They went to look for her but found that she, the other wife and their lovers had escaped across the river into Natal. Now, once a Zulu crosses the river he can become a Natal Kaffir, if he wants to, and he is not therefore under the King’s justice. It is different for wives, who, of course, belong to their husbands, but they all thought they were safe. But they were not.’ Nandi shook her head gravely. ‘Oh, no. Sihayo’s son led a party of Zulus and they crossed into Natal and found the women and their lovers. They obeyed the British law, as they understood it, and let the two men go, because they had become Natal Kaffirs. Then they took the two women back and killed them - but not before they were on Zulu soil.’

  Simon nodded. ‘I see.’

  Nandi shook her head. ‘No. There is more. A few days later two white men were seen carrying out some sort of survey on the banks of the Tugela. They crossed the river to a rock very near the Zulu bank and refused to answer the questions of some warriors who were on the Zulu shore and who wanted to know what they were doing. So the warriors surrounded the men and made them turn out their pockets. They were not harmed and they were released in under an hour.’

  Clenching her fists, Nandi now beat them gently on the table to emphasise her points. ‘Now, the British Great Governor in Cape Town, Sir Something Frere, is saying that both these happenings are aggressive acts by the King and he is claiming large compensation and even hinting that the British will go to war over this.’ She turned big eyes on Simon and he saw that they were blinking back tears. ‘Simon, these are little things - the sort of things that have happened many times in the past without anyone worrying. Now your people are turning . . . what do you say, an ant hill into a mountain?’

  Simon stifled a smile and nodded.

  ‘Yes, and they are using it as an excuse to attack our people, because they are obviously trying to push the King into war. It seems that you British want war after all, Simon.’

  She was now looking at him half accusingly, and he realised that this news must have reached her after their afternoon tryst. He also noted Nandi’s reference to ‘our people’ when talking about the Zulus. For the first time it occurred to him that she regarded herself as Zulu, not English, or even half-caste. Simon felt uneasily guilty and thought again of Lamb’s question: ‘Will he go to war if we put pressure on him to come under the flag?’ Was this the pressure, the beginning of a cat-and-mouse game with the Zulu king? Or had the decision already been made to go to war as soon as an excuse could be contrived? Either way, he felt ashamed of the politicians and generals in Cape Town, playing their imperial games.

  He coughed and asked, ‘What is Mr Dunn hoping to do in Natal?’

  Catherine answered. ‘The Governor of Natal, Sir Henry Bulwer, is a reasonable man who knows my husband. John is hoping to see him to find out what is at the bottom of all this. You see, the King cannot understand why the British seem to want war.’

  Again, Simon’s thoughts flashed back to Cape Town, to the big map on
the wall and the talk of confederation. ‘Will the King go to war against the British?’ he asked.

  Catherine Dunn looked at her stepchildren. ‘None of us know,’ she said, replacing an errant wisp of grey hair. ‘He has always been a wise ruler and not a bloodthirsty man. But it is a long time since his warriors washed their spears in a big, proper battle and probably there are many in his council who would wish him to teach the British a lesson.’

  ‘It would be difficult for you if that did happen,’ Simon murmured. In silence, the three of them nodded.

  There was little further conversation and Simon retired to his room as soon as the meal was ended. Once again he needed time to think. The moral dilemma of his dalliance with Nandi was relegated to the back of his mind as he considered what he could do to stop the impending invasion of Zululand. It was no longer a question of discovering the King’s intentions if a challenge was to be made. It sounded as though the provocation had been delivered now just as surely as if Sir Bartle Frere had slapped Cetswayo across the cheek with a glove. The time for speculation had long since passed. Now, somehow, the King had to be persuaded not to retaliate. How? Simon sat on his bed, his chin in his hand. He could think of no alternative. He must go to Ulundi and talk to the King.

  Simon rose early but found Nandi already working in an outhouse, churning milk in a large pot to make butter. She gave him a sad, sweet half-smile. Immediately, his heart went out to her. She looked so poignantly unhappy and vulnerable, her bare feet on the beaten earth, her slight body beneath the simple shift working hard at the churn. He swallowed hard. He had to concentrate on his mission.