“Roddie, what are you reading?” she asks, raising her eyebrows.
“Ah,” says Casement. “Just some French literature.”
“Anything interesting?”
“It’s a bit slow.”
“Well, then I’m not bothering you.”
“Not at all.”
Sarita can see him scanning her face. As of late, she has been alternating between ferocious vibrancy and quivering nausea. Right now, she must be pale. She takes a seat across from him and reaches for the book, which he hands to her. She turns the pages idly. “If we go to France, I’m going to have to do better with my French. I keep lapsing into Spanish and everyone thinks I’m odd.”
“Maybe you are.”
“Well, I definitely am. But how are you? How’s the ‘recuperation’?”
“If this is illness, I don’t care to get better.”
“How are you sleeping?”
“You know, it’s strange,” he says. “I could have sworn that I heard someone in the hallway last night, walking around, opening and shutting doors. Could it have been one of the children?”
“Not over there,” says Sarita. She widens her eyes dramatically. “But we do have a ghost, Sir John Hippisley the last of the Lambourn Hippisleys. He defrauded the church and townspeople of quite a bit of money and it’s rumored that he murdered a servant. But I wouldn’t worry about him. They say he’s quite remorseful. And no one’s seen him, although Ticker has been known to start growling when there’s nothing there.”
“Well, Sir John is welcome to my company, as long as he doesn’t need anything.”
She senses that Casement wants to talk but is not sure how to proceed. He’s one of those men who assume one knows all there is to know about him, and as a result she knows very little. “You are recuperating,” she says, “or perhaps your consular work has made you crave solitude?”
“Not solitude as much as this sort of company.”
He is so very polite and charming. What if she were to resist? “So where to, after you’ve tired of your friends? Is it back to Lorenço Marques?”
“I hope not. That was a ridiculous posting. The only reason I was there was that a great number of other British subjects were also there—and without good reason. I believe that the English go to Portuguese East Africa with the express intention of having problems. They go to be extorted by the local officials, or have their crates stolen, or to come down with malaria.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
“Everything. I’m the man standing at the edge of the world who says, ‘Go home before this place kills you.’ And if they’re smart, they listen.”
“And finally someone said that to you.”
“And I’m smart, so I listened, and here I am. I’m hoping my next posting is Cape Town, a lovely place—crystalline light, an arctic-splashed breeze.”
“And a war.”
“Looks like it,” says Casement.
“Herbert says you’re a spy.”
“Not very good at keeping secrets, is he?”
“He’s not, but I am. So you should be all right.” Sarita sees Casement look inwardly, disappear into his thoughts, and then resurface. “Just imagine, Roddie, you and Herbert knowing each other all these years. And you’re still friends.”
“Yes,” says Casement. “Still friends.”
“You know I’ve another child on the way.”
“I’d wondered, or maybe hoped. A house full of children is a blessing. I’m a bachelor who actually means it when I say it.”
“And I believe you, which is why I want to name the child after you. ‘Roger Casement Ward.’”
Casement is speechless.
“Herbert said that you’d want your name for your own child, but I told him that men like you didn’t marry. And he said,” she drops her voice to mimic Ward, “‘Men like me don’t marry either, and we all know how that ended up.’” Sarita laughs and holds Casement’s cautious, searching gaze.
“Thank you,” he says.
Sarita dismisses his solemn gratitude, waving it off with a flick of her hand. “I’ve always liked your name.”
“Roger?”
“No, Casement. Casement sounds noble and dignified.” She pats her waist, which is still narrow. “He’ll be Roger Casement Ward, and we’ll call him Roddie, because we miss you when you’re not around.”
“But what if it’s a girl?”
“I’m sure it’s a boy. I know it’s impolite to talk about such things at this early date, but I wanted to tell you directly rather than include it in a letter. Herbert has always thought of you as a brother.” Sarita watches her statement hit its mark. “You have been like family to all of us, and now you will be.”
VIII
Cape Town
March 1900
At the moment, it’s hard to believe there’s a war going on. Brother Tom has enlisted and is off in the Free State menacing Boers with the Irish Horse. And Casement? He’s at the Grand Hotel, in the tearoom waiting for a gin and tonic with its promise of ice. Casement’s score is light chatter and chamber music, countered only with the bleat of fishmongers’ horns as they round the corner of Adderley Street—no flash and pop of rifles, no groaning of injured men, no screaming horses. Right now, the only violence he sees, through the window, is on Strand: a young black boy is being smacked repeatedly on the side of his head by a well-fed Englishman. He hits the boy with the heel of his hand and boy’s head jerks, returns, and then is smacked again. But that is not the war, and since it is not, then perhaps it is peace.
In the corner of the tearoom an amateur quartet saws their way through some music—Boccherini?—that has great energy and little else to recommend it. One could say the same of the war. Casement’s drink arrives, startling him. “I’ll have another gin and tonic,” he tells the waiter.
“Another, sir?”
“That last one took nearly half an hour. So by the time I’m done with this, I’ll have a fresh one waiting.” Casement smiles.
“I do apologize,” says the waiter. “We had trouble with the ice.”
Casement is still, ostensibly, a consul, but as of late there have been greater problems than English nationals falling ill. He recalls that woman in Lorenço Marques who collapsed on his couch—choosing to enact her distress rather than tell him—and stayed there for an entire month. He grew accustomed to her and on occasion was the one who held the glass to her lips. And then she was gone. What was her name? It’s not as if they ever had a real conversation, although she was a sort of company. He’s considering returning to his rooms when the specter of a woman, he knows her, appears on the far side of the room: It is Miss Kingsley. He hasn’t seen her in six years, not since the MacDonalds’ party in Calabar. Casement waves at her and her face registers recognition with a shock of delight. She crosses the room in her inelegant, purposeful stride.
“Mister Casement, don’t you show up in the most ridiculous of places!”
Casement rises in greeting. “As do you, Miss Kingsley. You must join me.”
“I will,” she says, pulling the chair out. She allows him to push it in but senses that she’s doing this for his sake rather than her own.
“What’s that?” she says, looking at his drink.
“A gin and tonic. Yours is on its way.”
“Really?”
“I must have had a moment of clairvoyance.”
“Funny you should say that,” says Miss Kingsley, “because that woman over there offered to read my palm.” Across the room are two older ladies who look so similar that they must be sisters.
“And what did she find?” asks Casement.
“I didn’t let her look.”
“You don’t believe in that sort of thing?”
“On the contrary, Mister Casement, I do. And I would rather no
t know.”
He remembers that she has no use for Christianity but can’t recall exactly what she’s replaced it with. “Well, Miss Kingsley, what brings you here?”
“This ugly war.”
“I didn’t know you were a soldier.”
“I’m not.” Miss Kingsley’s right eyebrow shoots up with wry humor. “I’m a nurse.”
“I didn’t know that either.”
“It is a recent development, unless you count former experience dosing aged relatives with beef tea.”
Miss Kingsley is in Simons Town working in a hospital that caters to Boer prisoners, injured soldiers, and those women and children sickened in the camps. Casement listens, nodding ineffectively. This war demands that you forget that the Boers are anything but soldiers mobilized around territorial concerns and mining interests. The fact of their farming, their families, their religion—even their race—is an inconvenience that hums unheeded at every meeting he’s attended. Or perhaps he’s the only one who hears it.
“It is an outrage, a violation of human rights. They’re calling them ‘concentration camps,’ as if it makes it any better. But they’re women and children, picked off the fields and held as hostages. The conditions are horrific. We’re killing off the Boers with a combination of starvation and enteric fever.”
“It’s the same tactic that the Belgians use to bring in workers to collect rubber. They round up the wives and children and keep them in pens. One works to pay off the ransom.”
“How do they create a justification for that?” Miss Kingsley’s drink arrives and she takes an impressive, joyless gulp.
“Ah,” Casement exhales. He shakes his head and looks Miss Kingsley square in the face. “They don’t.” The humor takes its strain as a principle.
Miss Kingsley does not look well. She is thin and overworked. Her knuckles are cracked and despite the girlish vitality of her carriage and gesture, he sees the streaks of gray in her hair. She reaches out and puts her hand on his—a pat—and then withdraws it. Together, the two wander a narrow circuit of thought, as if they are the only people of reason alive.
“But really, Mister Casement, why are you here?”
“I have knowledge of Delgoa Bay. That was my last appointment. That’s the Orange Free State’s closest seaport.”
“Why don’t they shut it down, then? And end this war?”
“And stop the fun? Truth is it wouldn’t take that much. All you’d need to do is blow up the railroad in Komatipoort. It’s how the arms get to the interior.”
Miss Kingsley narrows her eyes dramatically. “Do you want to know a secret, Mister Casement?”
“If you’re going to tell me a secret, you should call me Roddie.”
“Roddie. I really don’t care who wins the war—I just want it to be over.”
“And who’s your money on?”
“Oh, England, of course. And call me Mary.” She pushes her chair back from the table and crosses her ankles, looking out across the room as if the truth lies in the offing. “England seems determined to empty its back alleys into this country.”
“And its colonies.” The two fall quiet. Casement was present at the British defeat in Colenso, there to hear the priest’s reedy voice declaiming in Latin over the bowed heads of those Irish soldiers—boys—falling to their knees to receive the blessing. Turned out to be Last Rites, for not a single man came back. One horse did return to camp and her eyes were wild, her flank streaked with her rider’s blood. She was hard to subdue and kept sidestepping and swinging her head until someone managed to grab the bridle. “Mary, as you know, I’m Irish.”
She gives a meaningful nod. “You know that some of the Irish are playing for the other team?”
“I’ve heard that.”
“And what side do you have your money on, Roddie?”
“England, but we’ve underestimated the Boers. The Boers like the fringes of civilization, like digging in the dry dirt and then thank their Calvinist God for his meager gifts. They know their territory, and they’re fast. They disappear from the landscape and once they’ve done that, they’re hard to shoot.” Casement shakes his head. “And we can’t trust the Germans. That’s who we’re really fighting. We don’t know what the Kaiser’s thinking, but it definitely involves a clever, long-range plan.”
“The Kaiser’s sneaky, like Leopold.” Miss Kingsley’s disdain arranges her features, settling like a wad of tobacco in her cheek.
“When are you going to get back to the Congo?” he asks her.
“When this bloody war is over.” She takes another mouthful of gin and tonic, reducing the glass by a third. “I have friends there,” she says earnestly. “You must too.”
“Many.”
“When this war is over . . .” Her voice trails off and her eyes seem to be scanning a distant memory, or perhaps an unrealized possibility. “If we survive it.”
As if on cue, one of the women in black—the soothsayer—is making her way to their table. She stops at the perimeter, her eyes burrowing down on Casement. He can see her sister rushing to settle their account, to stop this intrusion.
“Madame,” says Casement. He rises from the table out of habit, but also since his full height offers some security. She reaches out and he, not feeling as if he has a choice, extends his hand, which she grabs. He expects her to flip it and expose the palm, but she doesn’t. She clutches his hand, her eyes tearing quickly as she looks deeply into his, a visage of profound sorrow slowly overcoming her. “You will die young,” she says. “It will be violent and tragic, on your fifty-second birthday.”
Her sister has finally reached them and, placing her hands on the woman’s shoulders, slowly turns her away. The woman seems to be held in a trance. The sister looks to Casement and says, “I am so sorry.” He has no protest because he himself has known this, somehow, in his marrow. He does not regret this intrusion because it has reduced his loneliness.
He turns to Miss Kingsley, who is looking at him calmly, and he knows, somehow, that she too will die young. He senses things, although void of detail, and therefore easily ignored. He would ask this clairvoyant more questions, but she is now on the opposite side of the room, her shoulders collapsed, still being guided by the sister, exhausted by her knowledge of the future of men without comprehension as to why these lives should be so compromised.
The Boer War, in its death throes, drags on with no clear battle lines. Casement has been sent to Brussels to talk to King Leopold as the focus of the Foreign Office is back on trade.
Casement’s charge is to urge the monarch to lift taxes on exported goods, but thus far Leopold has avoided this topic. The previous day, Casement had shown up for a meeting only to be ushered in to lunch. Present were the King’s wife Marie-Henriette, the uncomprehending Princess Clementine, and her mincing suitor, Prince Victor Napoleon of France. Conversation struggled along, with Princess Clementine asking politely about Casement’s life—childhood, youth, career—that in its telling sounded made up, even to Casement. He found the whole encounter offensive. Leopold, sensing his failure to charm, had extended a second invitation to meet.
Casement has spent the whole morning in his hotel room rehearsing lines, trying to figure out how to bring up the treatment of the natives in a casual way, without calling attention to his host’s being a murderer. He already wore his good shirt to the lunch yesterday but decides to put it back on, as the clean one is a bit yellow. This will be his last opportunity to make an impression as he doubts Leopold will be willing to meet a third time. Casement takes a moment to appreciate the fact that he has become someone who discusses the fates of nations with monarchs.
After fifteen minutes of waiting in the echoing entrance of the King’s residence, Casement is led up the long left arm of a pair of staircases, shuttled down a portrait-hung hall, and left on the wrong side of a heavy oak door. Leopold is in there,
muttering with someone. Heavy footsteps thump across carpet and, finally, the door swings open. An attendant presents Casement with an oily bow, gesturing for him to enter. This is an overheated chamber. Leopold, backed into a corner and coiled like a snake, presents Casement with narrowed eyes. Casement takes the chair opposite. He clears his throat, noting, in his peripheral vision, the candelabrum of gorgeous ebony Africans bearing the weight of candle cups in gold. He can already feel the sweat trickling down his ribs.
King Leopold has never been to the Congo and shows no interest in making the journey. But he thinks he understands everything to a degree that Casement cannot fathom, finding him distracted by an assortment of local realities. “Mister Casement, we are improving the lot of the natives by introducing them to the civilizing influences of work. I don’t have to tell you what degraded lives these people led in the past.”
Casement attempts a relaxed attitude, but the back of the chair makes it impossible. “Your Highness, with all respect, the lives of these natives—charges who are under our protection—are still degraded.”
“Well, patience. I have learned to be a patient man.”
“Your Highness, the value of one’s labor is a lesson that is best supported with compensation for one’s labor.”
“Then we are in agreement.”
How to maneuver? Usually Casement is struggling to control his temper, but right now it would seem that all his energy is being drawn away by disbelief. “If the natives felt the benefit of ownership—a stake in property—they might better care for their resources—”
“You are suggesting a tax on property.”
“Am I?”
“And was that successful in the Niger Protectorate?”
The Hut Tax was seen for what it was—a foreign power extracting money for property that had once been free—and there were riots. Casement initially supported the tax because it seemed a harbinger of modernization that would benefit everyone. “I no longer support it.”
Valiant Gentlemen Page 25
