by Peter Rimmer
When Jack woke, the dawn was touching the high leaves of the trees. A black man, kneeling by the burnt down fire, was putting a pot of coffee on the coals. From everywhere, and slowly, the birds began to sing. Below the opposite riverbank three impala were drinking the water, their front feet splayed. Hunched in his sleeping bag, his arms around his knees, Jack watched the baby rhinoceros mock charge an elephant to be hustled away by its mother. The elephant ignored mother and child and went down into the river to wallow in the water, the sound of tumbling water evocative of Africa's emptiness, great size, the extent of nature. None of them spoke. All of them, black and white, listening to the sounds of Africa, part of it, content.
At eleven-thirty that morning the cable arrived in the Salisbury post office. It was to the point, all three of them having worked on it through the early morning, before Albert Pringle had gone out and sent it from the Cape Town post office. It was addressed to Jack Merryweather, Elephant Walk, Poste Restante, Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia.
The clerk in Salisbury wrote the address on a brown envelope. The cable had been translated from Morse code by a second clerk. On a separate piece of white paper which he put into the brown envelope and sealed, he wrote the message:
'Raped by cousin. Desperate for protection. My mother unwilling to believe the rape. Please help me. Sallie Barker.'
There were many people roaming the new country, looking for gold, looking for excitement, and none of them had a fixed address, many only coming into Salisbury every six months, some alone, some in pairs. All received their mail 'Poste Restante,' to be collected at the post office by themselves. A seven-tier box of pigeonholes, each claiming a letter of the alphabet was stuffed with mail awaiting collection.
The second clerk had seen the name Elephant Walk and recognised it and the fact that the farm had its own pigeonhole. For a brief moment, he was unsure whether to stuff the envelope into the separate Elephant Walk box or the Ms box. In his confusion, he pushed the brown envelope deep into the pile of Js (J for Jack), the fullest of the pigeonholes with all the English Johnstones, Johnsons, Johns and James. With his hand deep in the pile, the clerk gave it a final push where the small envelope slipped down the back through a crack and stayed lodged half in the back of the Js and half in the back of the Ns which was also stuffed full with all the Normans, Nairns, Nuttalls and Nollens.
When travellers called for their mail, the clerks stuck their hand into the box that carried the traveller's first letter of his surname. They rarely looked deep inside the long box, only feeling for stray envelopes with their hands. They then thumbed through the envelopes looking for the traveller's name. Then what was left of the pile was pushed back into the pigeonhole. Less than half of the envelopes were ever collected from the Poste Restante. Some of the letters had been thumbed through for years.
In Cape Town, Sallie Barker waited through the days while Jack rode down into the Zambezi Valley, her call for help stuck, not even thumbed through by the Clerks at Salisbury post office. For three weeks she did not go out of the house on Strand Street, convinced her mother and Mr Flugelhorne would be searching for her for different reasons, her mother to retain her place in the rich Flugelhorne household, Mr Flugelhorne to use her at his will with impunity. Twice, the thought of white, fat flesh, the smell of his foul wind, the stench of drunken breath, sent her to the bathroom to be sick. She was a prisoner of her own beauty, her own magnetic draw for men, old and young. The prize even she had thought would save them both from poverty had turned against her. Men took from women what they wanted when there was no protection.
By the end of June, when she understood clearly the reason for so many young girls being in the house, Sallie had given up all hope. People were people. They looked after themselves. The appearance of manners, love and trust was a mockery of the truth. Jack had no wish to have anything to do with her now she was out of his sight. The card had been a gesture, a way of showing himself off in a good light. He probably thought she was chasing him once again, the new plot hatched by her mother. 'Out of sight, out of mind' the old true saying. Anyway, why should he care? Why should anyone care?
Four days before the rest of the household were due to entrain for Johannesburg, Lily having gone north the day after Sallie arrived on her doorstep, Sallie turned twenty. She was not pregnant, of that, she had learned three days before with an overwhelming sense of relief. They had given her gin that first night after the tea when she had told her story. Whether gin or nature and except for the scar on her body and mind, she was free of Herr Flugelhorne.
"It's not like Mr Merryweather," Albert Pringle said. "He cares about people. Why I worry about dumping him but a man has to have his own life and opportunity only knocks once."
"Don't rationalise, Albert," said Sallie. "A few weeks ago I would have said you were wrong, loyalty is more important than personal gain. Now I know you are right. All the society, words, the things we should do to be right, even religion, are to keep us in our place, to make us do what others want us to do without being forced, for fear of society ostracising us in this life, God punishing us in the fire of hell in the next. Men have created a web to ensnare us… You go your own way, Albert. You and Lily are good people. The girls know what they are doing, the alternative far worse than this reality. Men will use us whatever we do. Maybe a good husband won't, if there is such a thing. There are many more ways of hurting a woman than raping her… I have grown up, Albert Pringle. Not in the way I expected, with my own family, my own children… Brutally. A man so rich he could do what he wanted. If you and Lily will have me, I'll come to Johannesburg. Fact is, I have no alternative. I won't whore, Albert. I'll keep the books. Do the buying. Run the house Lily has bought. That much I can find from my education. I worry all the time about my mother but I wonder if she worried so much about me. Can mothers be selfish? It's against nature. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe she will listen to me. But mostly in my short life I have found people don't hear what they don't want to hear until it's too late. Raped again by that fat slob, I will kill myself. Am I right or wrong?"
"Probably both… Lily said you were welcome from the start. What job you do is your decision. The whole thing is rather new for all of us. Including the girls. I just don't understand Jack Merryweather… You think we should send him another cable?"
"If he doesn't want to answer the first, what's the use of a second?… Once I'm out of this town I'll feel less dirty. And I don't really want to kill myself. Somewhere out there, there's a lot of fun to be had in life… When I'm settled in Johannesburg, and far away enough from the Flugelhornes I'll write her a letter … Maybe she'll want to join me."
"You do understand we are going to be running a brothel?"
"You're right… And, yes, I do understand. Can you think of another alternative for me? Anywhere else to go?"
"Not at the moment."
"Ernest Gilchrist would have had me before all this but I don't want him. Not now. Certainly not now. Young men in London don't take too well to their wives being raped before they marry them. He'd run a mile worrying what his employer would do to him if it ever came out. And he needs his employer. Oh, no. They don't want soiled goods themselves."
"Don't hate all men."
"You won't be raped, Albert, so you'll never know. And I'm sick of being cooped up in this house. Then it's settled. The first real job in life for Sallie Barker will be working in a brothel and I suppose like everything else I'll get used to it… And the girls may need a sympathetic shoulder to cry on every now and again… Can I cry on your shoulder, Albert, when I'm lonely?"
Chapter 5: June, July and August 1907
There had been a brief electric storm during the night. The sky had rumbled ten miles away, forking streaks of lightning over the dark sky. The bush was tinder dry and no rain had fallen in the Zambezi Valley since the end of March, ten weeks before.
"The gods are angry," Harry had said to Tembo.
"One of the ancestors tur
ned over in bed."
They both spoke in the language of the Shona.
"Bush fire?"
"Maybe. We shall see."
Then they were asleep again and the night went on.
They saddled up in the pre-dawn after loading the packhorses. As soon as they could see five yards ahead, they rode out of camp without making breakfast. When the sun came up it would be burning hot in the valley, even in June.
Harry smelt the wood smoke ten minutes later when the night sky was running away from the dawn. The wind was in Harry's face, coming from the direction of the river. As hard as he and Tembo looked they could not see the glow of a bush fire. They were both puzzled and afraid. When the dawn became day, the soft breeze in their faces could turn into a hot wind that would fan a bush fire towards them faster than the horses could gallop. Bush fire. The worst fear of the hunter, when the grass was as high as the horses' withers, scorched dry of moisture by the sun.
With the rising sun pushing up bright light from the eastern earth, came the full light of a new day that showed them a single, thin spiral of white smoke rising just above the height of the river trees, only to be blown away by the wind. Everyone smiled, including Jack Merryweather. Garth, the youngest of the blacks, who had been brought by his parents to Elephant Walk when he was four years old and christened by Harry's Uncle Nathaniel, smiled a set of pearly white teeth in a face the colour of coal. Harry turned his horse slightly to head for the fire. There were people, the first strangers he had ever seen in the valley.
Riding carefully round the thorn thickets through the tall, brown elephant grass, they came upon the hundred-foot high trees that lined the bank of the river. It was three hours after the dawn. Not once had they seen a trace of the Great Elephant.
At the first sign of danger the doves in the high trees above the camp had stopped calling to each other. A pair of African fish eagles that had patiently perched on the boughs of a dead tree since early morning, flew off. The big river flowed on, the white clouds mirrored in the dark brown water. On the opposite bank, some hundred yards away, a pair of kudu broke from the cover of a thorn bush and headed away from the river, the females' big, round ears having picked up the sound of danger. A few minutes later they both heard the distinct clink of metal that only came from a ridden horse. Jared Wentworth got up from where he was writing a journal and pulled his hunting rifle out from inside the four-wheeled wagon.
"What is it?" asked his sister.
"People. The doves have stopped calling. I think I heard the clink of harness."
"No one lives here."
"Get in the wagon and lie down."
"You're frightened of your own shadow. There are no strangers."
"We are the strangers in Africa."
Slipping a bullet into the breach, Jared pulled back the single hammer to the half cock position and waited where he was, his back to the river, his ears and eyes straining for the danger. His heart, easily excited, pumped in his chest. The horsemen were riding straight at his camp. Moving the gun forward to the sound of danger, Jared slid silently onto his stomach and pulled the hammer back to full cock, the butt comfortably in his shoulder. He waited patiently, mostly hidden by the pile of wood ready for the night's fire, the barrel of the rifle pushed clear of the wood. The worst predator in the bush was man, that much he knew. He wished he had not sent all his blacks down river to look for a crossing.
They had been following the river for ten days and had still not found a way. With the valley empty of man there were no makoris (dugout canoes made from a single tree trunk), no boats at all. Jared had wondered if anyone had ever lived in the valley permanently. There had been no trace of man, only the myriad feet of animals.
Whoever it was had stopped. Jared could see the outline of horsemen through the dry, leafless thorn thicket that guarded the way to the river trees. A herd of buffalo could hide themselves in a thorn thicket if they stood still.
"Can you see anyone?" asked Jack Merryweather.
"Not a soul. To the left through the trees I think is a wagon… Anyone there?" Harry waited a moment before repeating his question in Shona. The horses were difficult to control having long smelt the water of the river.
Jared carefully let the hammer of his rifle back to safety and stood up from behind his pile of wood.
"Who are you?" he called.
"Hunters. What are you doing here?"
"Looking for a way to cross the river."
Four men, two white and two black, rode through the trees to the top of the riverbank and looked down on him where they had made camp on the lower slope.
"Don't you have a guide?" asked Harry seeing where they were camped.
"Blacks. Four of them but we can't talk to each other."
"They let you camp down a riverbank! You get a hippo cow on the wrong side of its calf and you'll be dead. Hippo can't run uphill. Always camp at the top, high as you can."
"I'll remember that."
"Where are they?"
Jared looked puzzled for a moment. "The blacks? Sent them down river to look for a crossing. Presume that's what they're doing… You say the hippopotamus are dangerous?"
"Very. My name's Harry Brigandshaw. My friend Jack Merryweather from England, Tembo and Garth. We're all from Elephant Walk. Now tell me, what on earth are you doing out here on your own mister?"
"Wentworth. Jared Wentworth. London."
"He's not alone," said Jack.
From the wagon, a girl crawled out from undercover, swung her legs round over the tailboard and dropped to the dry earth. There were elephant droppings either side of her. Long brown hair hung to her waist, and when she moved from the shadow of the covered wagon, the sun shone on her hair and picked out the seams of red. Her cheek bones were one long smooth curve to her ears. Her nose was peeling from the sun. Her legs were long and finished with a small pair of boots above a brown skirt that came down to her ankles. She was smiling at a very good private joke while her eyes moved from Jack to Harry to Jack as she walked up the slope towards them. Tembo and Garth received some of the smile. When she reached Harry, she put up her hand.
"Hello, I'm Sara Wentworth, Jared's sister. I'm also from London."
Harry dismounted and let the reins fall loose. "Watch the horses while they water," he said in Shona to Garth and Tembo. "Watch for crocodiles and don't let them drink too much."
"You must be out of your mind," he said turning back to Sara.
"Probably. What you don't fear you don't worry about. Can I make you some tea? We always keep a pot of water half in the previous night's fire."
"So you do make a fire at night."
"Oh, yes. It gets cold don't you think?"
"But to keep away the animals."
"That as well. We have been in Africa for three months. Really, quite old African hands by now. You do drink tea, don't you?"
"How did you get into the Zambezi Valley?"
"We wanted to see the river," said Jared. "Livingstone's river but we can't get across."
"How long do you intend wandering around Africa?" said Harry sarcastically.
"As long as we dare," said Jared.
"Are you running away from something?" asked Jack who could not take his eyes off the girl.
"Oh, yes," she said. "Aren't we all. What are you running away from Mr Merryweather? What a lovely surname. Far better than Wentworth."
"Boredom."
"Oh, dear oh dear, that is a sin. One life and you are bored already. My grandfather says he is bored but only because he can't do anything any more. You should be ashamed of yourself at your age… And what are you running away from Mr Brigandshaw? I'm very good at remembering names by the way. Some people are good at tennis, I'm good at names."
Tembo and Garth had let the horses drink briefly from the river before unloading the packhorses and dropping the heavy saddles to the dry earth. Harry could smell the mud churned up by the horses. The girl irritat
ed him and he didn't know why. He made himself watch the horses to give himself more time to remove the rush of irritation that saturated his mind. If Londoners wished to leave their bones by the big river, who was he to stop them. She was young, younger than her brother. Probably twenty-two, Harry thought, the brother two years older… Then he understood and smiled at the truth. They were intruders in the bush he thought was his and Tembo's and Garth's. Finding strangers in the Zambezi Valley, his valley, had made him jealous. She was still looking at him for a reply. Her expression had softened when she saw his smile.
"We are hunting a big elephant. Have you seen the spoor? They say it's almost twice the size of a normal footpad. It's wounded and dangerous and it killed my father."
"I'm sorry. I'll make the tea. Our blacks may have seen something when they come back. Ten days we've been looking for a way to cross the river. If there was this enormous footprint of an elephant they never got excited… Do you think Dr Livingstone came this way in his travels?"
"Probably not. We are too far east. The Victoria Falls are four hundred miles from here if we followed the river. We are almost in Portuguese territory. The Portuguese have been in these parts of Africa since Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama. Over two hundred years. They traded this far inland from ports they dotted down the shores of the Indian Ocean. This was then the Kingdom of Monomotapa."
