by Peter Rimmer
"What happened to it?" asked Jared.
"It came and went like all empires, leaving little trace. They mined gold and copper and traded it for pretty beads. Or that's all we've ever found of the transactions. A pretty coloured bead was worth more than a lump of gold."
"How very sad," she said, though Harry could not see why a coloured bead was prettier than a lump of gold. "Are you going to camp with us tonight?"
"Thank you. But on the high ground."
"You'd better give us all the tips before we do something silly… We don't have any sugar for the tea I'm afraid. Our local helpers have very sweet tooths."
"Jack and I will go after an impala. We can spit the carcass over the fire. If your blacks come back there will still be enough for everyone."
By the time Sara and Jared's blacks returned from their fruitless search for a crossing it was getting dark. The camp had been moved under a tall acacia tree, with dense thorn thicket protection on one side, and the steep bank of the river on the other. Two fires were burning with the splayed carcass of an impala rammed on a green wood spit over coals that were replenished from the second fire. The crude spit made by Harry earlier in their hunting trip was turned ten degrees every few minutes. Tembo had rubbed wild sage into the flesh of the carcass as much for the sweet smell as the taste. Two large frying pans were ready for the filleted river bream that Harry had caught on a hand line. Jack, always prepared, had stored a bottle of Cape brandy in his saddle bag. The blacks had gone off to a third fire of their own where they could talk and gossip. Harry wished he could translate their stories that went on for hours in minute detail, but without a knowledge of the blacks and their traditions, the stories would be boring to the other three. Only when the buck was cooked enough for a first carving did the black men come up for their food and stay to eat. None of them had wanted fish, waiting to gorge themselves on a surfeit of meat, the fat dripping down their black faces, shining in the light of the fire, everyone happy. For a while after the second and third carving, they all sat silently digesting their food, looking into the cooking fire, completely satisfied. Then the black men went off to their own fire to continue the same story they had all heard from the first conscious days of their lives, the familiarity giving them peace and the security they craved in their nomadic lives.
Sara had fallen asleep by the side of the fire, her head on the coat her brother had taken off and put under the side of her face.
"She doesn't want to get married," said Jared. "There's nothing really she can do. She calls this her one break in life before the responsibilities of children. I suppose we all have to do our duty in the end. Merryweather, you're nearest the pile of wood. Throw on some more but don't shower Sara with sparks."
Embarrassed by the revelations of another's private life, Jack did what he was told while Harry kept quiet.
"I also hate him," said Sara without opening her eyes.
"Thought you were asleep," said Jared.
"I was for a while… Why do we have to do our duty, big brother?"
Everyone waited for a reply.
"Because if we don't our way of life disintegrates, society falls apart, people start fighting with each other. Without everyone doing their duty the Empire would fall apart."
"Does that matter?" asked Sara, her eyes now open.
"People rely on us, Sara. Without our discipline they'd be at each other's throats. People wouldn't have food. Wouldn't have shelter. With everyone doing their duty everything is stable, everything works."
"You think it works for everyone?" asked Jack. He was thinking of the storytellers round their fire.
"No system in life works for everyone. There are some people in life for which nothing works."
"Do your parents know you are in the middle of Africa?" asked Harry.
"No. I persuaded them to let us do the grand tour of Europe. We kept on going. Through the Suez Canal. Down the east coast of Africa. Got off at Lourenço Marques and took a train to the interior. Hired those blacks in Salisbury with the help of the District Commissioner."
"I'm surprised he let you go off on your own."
"I said I was a prospector. Sometimes you have to lie to get what you want."
Jack Merryweather was asleep by the fire, the half-full bottle of brandy next to him. The blacks stopped talking and the night sounds of Africa took control. Harry fed the second fire away from the stark carcass of the impala drying out on the spit over the dying coals. Left where it was, the ants would not get their teeth into what was left of the venison.
No one, not even the blacks who had searched the river for a crossing, had seen any sign of the Great Elephant. As he went to sleep he thought he heard his father's voice telling him to leave the animal alone.
When he woke at dawn, his rage at the animal had gone. At least his father would not have to suffer the pain and indignity of old age.
The Wentworths had probably never felt hunger for a thousand years. Their father was a stockbroker. Their grandfather a country lawyer. The lawyers in the family did the wills and testaments. The stockbrokers invested the client's money. What they needed to succeed was connections, preferably family connections.
"Oh, Sara, don't be so silly," her mother had said while she sulked. "Love and kisses are so temporary. Money goes on forever. For generations. The need we feel to fall in love is only nature forcing us in the right direction. And when we have fulfilled nature's requirements, love flies out of the window, its passion spent and rightly. And thank goodness. Six children were quite enough."
"Did you never love father?"
"I respect your father and that is quite enough."
"I hate Mervyn. He's a pompous pig."
"You are a very attractive girl. To throw away the wealth of your children for a brief, fluttering heart is absurd, if not downright criminal. You are being selfish. You must think of your children."
"But I don't have any children."
"But you will. Mervyn will give you a lot of children."
"I don't even want him touching me. When he shakes hands it's like shaking hands with a dead fish, a wet dead fish. Probably cod."
"Your mother and father always know best. Just don't forget that. Life is not easy Sara. Only money makes it possible. Your father has agreed Jared may take you to the continent. Then you will come home and do as you are told. I don't have time to argue with you… When Jared comes back he will enter the family firm. He will become a stockbroker. You children can't just run around on a whim. You have to be safe. Whatever would children do without their parents? You can help me arrange the flowers for your father's dinner party tonight. Your father has to entertain his clients, remember. That's why we have this big house and all the servants. Go to the greenhouse and ask Bellamy to cut the best flowers he can find… And, Sara, please stop sulking. You will learn to respect Mervyn."
"Respect a wet codfish. I don't think so," she mumbled as she walked away.
"Sara, I heard that. Don't be rude to your mother."
She knew the reason they wanted her to marry Mervyn Braithwaite, whose fishy eyes followed her around whenever they were in the same room.
They wanted to be the family stockbroker. Braithwaite and Penny had started after the Napoleonic wars, selling cotton goods dirt cheap to the Indians, and flimsy Indian cotton goods dirt cheap to the poor in England. How it worked, Sara not quite understood. If they had each bought their own cheap cotton goods they would not have had to pay the transport half the way round the world. It was, she thought, something to do with trade and the stupidity of people who imagined others had something better. An Indian shawl in Cheapside made an English woman that bit superior to her neighbour. In Bombay it was the snobby thing to wear a cotton dress made in Birmingham, or wherever they made cheap cotton dresses, of which Sara had no idea.
It was just before Christmas and the greenhouse was warm, and full of blooming flowers oblivious of the snow on the paths just outsid
e the glass. Bellamy was nowhere to be seen, so she cut what she could find with a pair of scissors into a long low lattice-woven basket and shivered her way back to the big house despite the long cloak she had thrown over her shoulders. She hoped her father's guests, who were already in their rooms as they had come for the weekend, would appreciate spring flowers in the middle of winter. She thought there might be some parallel with the cheap cotton dresses.
Soon after, she and Jared had hatched their plan to escape to freedom, even if it was only a short period of time… And at Christmas, in a few days, Mervyn and his family were joining the Wentworths for the Yuletide festivities. It was not fair. If she knew a young strong man with dreams she would elope with him tomorrow, but as hard as she racked her brain she could never remember meeting a young strong man with dreams.
Life at Elephant Walk was very good to the Honourable Robert St Clair. The food was plentiful and very good. He had yet to see a drop of rain.
Harry's grandfather, Sir Henry Manderville, had overseen the building of a rondavel just behind his own house in the family compound for Robert to sleep in and be alone when he wanted his privacy. Made of wattle and daub to fill in the cracks of the bush timber, with a new yellow thatched roof, it was just what he wanted even if the floor was made from polished cow dung. The one window had a lovely view down to the Mazoe River past the stockade built, he was told, by Harry's father and Uncle Tinus in the first Chimurenga when the Shona had risen in rebellion against British rule.
So far as Robert was concerned, Jack and Harry could stay out in the bush hunting elephant as long as they liked, even if Madge made sure they were never in the same room alone. Whoever this Barend Oosthuizen was, apart from being the son of the late Tinus Oosthuizen, he had a strong grip on the young girl's heart and she wasn't letting him let her go. But as Robert said to himself philosophically after a particularly good meal, you can't win them all.
Taking an interest in butterflies and all things collectable that came out of the bush had won over Grandfather Manderville in a week. Robert thought the old man was a bit off his head but even that served his purpose. Being looked after by a pack of servants and fed good food was as far as Robert wanted to see into the future. To make himself useful and not quite so obvious, he took on the idea of teaching young George, eleven years old, history and English. The boy was lonely for his father and reminded Robert of young Barnaby left so often on his own at Purbeck Manor. Robert understood young George and made a point of keeping the young mind occupied with things to do.
There had always been dogs at Elephant Walk and often they were killed. The last pack of four Alsatians had made the mistake of attacking a leopard and paying for it with their lives along with the two terriers that had joined in the fight. The six-month-old lion dogs were just at the right age to be trained to do what they were told, and soon after Harry had gone off on his expedition, Robert had concentrated George's young mind on the three dogs and bitch. Training dogs was a favourite pastime of Lord St Clair and he had passed the knowledge down to all his sons.
Ten weeks after Harry had ridden out after his father's killer, Robert was down by the river with George and the dogs trying to teach the boy how to write in a way that others could understand. So far as Robert was concerned, he, Robert, was an indispensable part of the family which was how he wanted it to stay. Standing up, he and the boy watched the file of horses, packhorses, and a four-wheeled wagon pass through the gate into the stockade. The dogs took off as fast as their young legs would carry them while Robert and the boy walked up over the lawn dotted with tall msasa trees, the dogs barking all the time.
When Robert reached the back gate nearest his rondavel, where he went and left the books he had been using to teach George, he was surprised to see one of the men wearing long straight hair down past his shoulders, like a picture he had once seen of Colonel Custer's last stand. One of the horses shielded the dogs before everything came back under control.
Putting on his best smile of welcome, Robert strode across to greet them. Mrs Brigandshaw was hugged by her eldest son.
"My goodness," he said under his breath, seeing the skirt. "That's no man. That's a woman." Peeling off the dirt and dust he rather thought a good-looking woman after a bath. She had not been riding side-saddle which was unusual for a girl. Robert, with even more reason to enjoy his African stay concentrated his mind on the girl, hoping this time there would be some money. He also thought a little competition for young Madge would do her good. And do Robert some good as well.
There were dogs and horses and people all over the place. Ducks that roamed the lawns took off for the river. The old man got into the act by shaking his grandson's hand more than was necessary.
Tea was brought out onto the lawn and placed on tables under a large msasa tree. Biscuits were served, the newcomers properly introduced.
"Oh," said Robert to Sara's question. "I was up at Oxford with Harry. He was staying with us in the old place in Dorset when the call came that his father had been killed. He asked me to go with him before I start a career."
"Do you have any idea what you want to do?" she asked.
"I have so many dreams but I think I will be a writer." The idea had come out of the top of his head.
"What college were you at?"
"New College."
Hearing the name of the place where he had spent three years studying geology, Harry broke off listening to George and turned to Sara and Robert.
"Did either of you know Mervyn Braithwaite?" asked Sara.
"Fishy Braithwaite," they both said together in chorus.
"He's my fiancé," she said.
Mrs Brigandshaw, Harry's mother, seeing the debacle, smiled. "I'm sure he's very nice," she said.
"His father was very rich," said Robert, his normal flair for saying the right thing at a loss.
"I wish he wasn't," said Sara.
"But why?" said Robert with genuine astonishment.
"Because then I would not have to marry him."
The day after the hunting party returned empty-handed, Elephant Walk became almost crowded. For months, especially during the rains when the roads were often impassable, the family lived alone, going about their daily routine without a visitor.
Peregrine the ninth arrived in his old wagon and was taken away by Henry Manderville for a hot bath before he was invited to sit down even for a cup of tea. And, as usual, he smelt like a herd of buffalo. Henry had the water in the bath changed twice before he offered the old man a clean towel with which to dry himself.
The smell of paraffin drifted from the house to the lawn and Madge reading a book under a tree. She wrinkled her nose. Madge had known Peregrine the ninth all her life. She put down the book, smiling to herself. The paraffin her grandfather administered to the old man's nest of hair was meant to kill off any parasites that lived in the thick growth of white face hair and beard, or the long head hair that dropped down his back. Few in the family had any faith in the remedy. Peregrine the ninth had never, to her knowledge, been offered a bed in one of the family compound houses. The old man, older than Methuselah, retreated at night to his four-wheeled wagon that everyone thought was crawling in vermin waiting their turn to get into the old man's nest of hair.
An hour after being escorted from his wagon to the bathtub, the old man reappeared in an old shirt and an old pair of trousers that belonged to her grandfather. One of the servants was feeding the clothes the old man had arrived in into the furnace that heated a drum that fed hot water into her grandfather's bathroom. It was said that outside of the capital Salisbury, her grandfather was the only man in Rhodesia that boasted hot and cold running water plus a pull-and-let-go on the design invented by Mister Crapper. People had come from far and wide just to look at the system which started with metal windmills down at the river and ended with the water pumped up the long slope to a holding tank the size of a swimming pool. Another windmill pump pushed water up into a header tank
high behind her grandfather's house that produced the water pressure to flush the toilet and run water into the house and feed the outside boiler under which were burning the old man's clothes.
The most remarkable of remarkable things for Madge about Peregrine the ninth was the very plumb, upper-class British accent that emanated from the small, round, fleshy mouth exactly the size of a small ripe plum.
No one had ever heard the old man's last name, though many had asked, to be told one name was good enough for anyone. And no one had any idea how long the old man had been in Africa or whether he was ever going home.
Peregrine the ninth was an itinerant storyteller, a modern day minstrel without his lute, who went from lonely farm to lonely mine bringing news and the only entertainment anywhere to be found in the bush. He was fond of modern gossip mixed with the tales of years gone by, and no one ever knew how much was true and how much the old man's imagination. So far as Madge knew, it was the way the old man made his living. The two old donkeys, long immune to the bite of the tsetse fly, were the same two she always remembered. The one was Clary, and the other was Jeff, though no one was ever told which was which. How the lions hadn't eaten the lot of them had been a mystery to Madge most of her life.
Going to his wagon in his fresh shirt and trousers, barefoot as usual, he came back with the family's mail that he had picked up in Salisbury the day before. Even the post office knew enough to release the Elephant Walk mail if the old man said he was going that way.
With a flourish and a bow, he presented the small pile of tied up envelopes to Madge under her tree.
"You bloom more beautiful every time we meet."
"Thank you, Uncle Peregrine." The small blue eyes twinkled at her out of the sprouting face hair, both eyebrows going high in tangles, the only dark colour in the whole of the old man's face. At that point he gave her a kiss. Surprisingly, his breath was always sweet, his kiss light as a feather.
