Elephant Walk (The Brigandshaw Chronicles Book 2)

by Peter Rimmer

  A big blonde man with slate green eyes surveyed him from just inside the open door and quickly lost interest, turning his back.

  "Excuse me. Are you Barend Oosthuizen from Elephant Walk?"

  Involuntarily, Barend spun round and gave himself away, wondering how on earth this decrepit old man knew where he came from.

  "Were you making coffee in the swamps the day before yesterday?" asked Peregrine. His desperation to hold the man where he was focusing all his guile.

  "Probably."

  "And you shot something?"

  "Yes we did."

  "I was glad of that. Not for the animal, of course. Thought I was going crackers smelling fresh coffee coming out of the bush. Then I fell asleep and woke to gunshot and birds rising from the canopy. Then another shot which made me happy as it obviously told me I was not out of my mind after all. That I thought was rather pleasing for an old man."

  "How do you know where I come from?"

  "It was just a good guess." Trying one of his best tricks (he rather thought he had the man's individual attention), Peregrine slapped Clary with a stick and told the donkeys to 'loop'. As expected, both donkeys failed to move. Peregrine looked at Barend through small blue twinkling eyes and prepared his long stick for a second mild blow.

  "Won't you join me for coffee," said Barend, homesickness overcoming his caution.

  "Do you know Frikkie?"

  "Ah," said Barend smiling. "You would like a drink."

  "Specifically, a large whisky. And then I'll tell you where I was when last I was drunk."

  "At Elephant Walk?"

  Peregrine stayed silent.

  "You do have some money?" Peregrine asked as an afterthought.

  "Well, well, well. Fact is, I haven't been drunk a while myself. Do you know the Duck Inn well?" asked Barend.

  "Oh yes I do," said Peregrine all in one piece.

  Frikkie had been watching the whole performance, as he did not sleep well when he was sober, and drinking alone in Frikkie's mind was only for drunks. Fact was, he had not seen a customer for two days and his whisky thirst was also raging. The two donkeys, Clary and Jeff, and the wagon were recognisable, as everyone else used salted horses to pull their wagons, or in the case of big wagons with big loads they used oxen. No one used donkeys except the black men with small carts they used for collecting firewood. Frikkie licked his lips and had even made up his mind to allow Peregrine to drink on the house. The stop outside the white hunter's hut was a surprise. And a further surprise when the big man climbed up onto the box bench next to Peregrine, almost upsetting the wagon. Frikkie felt immediate panic. His only chance of a drinking companion was driving away. Using all the mental telepathy that he knew about, he willed the wagon to stop, all the time pretending he had not seen the wagon despite all the squeaking and grinding noises. It would never do for the landlord of the Duck Inn to solicit business. In agony he waited, looking the wrong way. When the squeaking and rattling stopped almost next to him he froze.

  "Morning, Frikkie," said Peregrine softly, leaning out of his wagon to within a yard of Frikkie's ear; they were both on the same level as the back of the inn was raised to keep the very limited stock of food dry in the lock-up. There were wooden steps from the room down to the open bar that looked across the start of the swamps, a view so beautiful it usually made Peregrine cry when he had drunk enough whisky.

  "Why it's Peregrine the ninth, isn't it?" he said, having turned around. Speaking in English, his accent was thick but understandable. He was an Afrikaner, who managed to overcome his dislike of the British when in pursuit of his favourite pastime, which was drinking whisky. He had been heard to say many times, 'the British can make whisky, there is room for forgiveness.' Usually, and always with Barend, he spoke Afrikaans.

  "Are you open, Frikkie?" asked Peregrine knowing exactly what was going on.

  "Well, I suppose we could be Uncle." It was a habit of Frikkie Lamprecht to call anyone a lot older than himself 'uncle'. Peregrine rather liked the habit. A drinking friend with a good respect was essential in his life.

  "This is Mr Barend Oosthuizen," he said.

  "I know."

  Without any more ceremony, Peregrine climbed down from the box and walked across into the bar, leaving the donkeys in the middle of the road. Frikkie, always thoughtful, and mindful of not wishing to be interrupted when he was drinking gave them each a bucket of water. Barend, seeing no one else was going to help, relieved them of their harnesses, dropping the shaft in the middle of the road. When he went inside Peregrine was already seated at the bar filling his long pipe with tobacco. When he lit the pipe with a match from Frikkie Lamprecht it gave off a smell like old rope, which overpowered most of the old clothes smell emanating from Peregrine.

  "Let's get started," said Frikkie lining up the glasses.

  Barend, bursting with curiosity, picked up his first shot of whisky and tossed it back. No one said a word until the shot glasses were filled again.

  "Now let's get started," said Peregrine.

  "How do you know about Elephant Walk?" asked Barend, unable to contain himself.

  "Oh that comes much later," said Peregrine, his small blue eyes twinkling. "Just lucky I had a good bath yesterday in the river. Must have known I was going to be in good company. I'll make a toast: to the man who invented whisky."

  "I'll drink to that," said Frikkie.

  There were a few tables and chairs behind Barend and Peregrine. They sat at the wooden bar that Frikkie had laboriously cut from a mukwa tree, ruining three bandsaws in the process, the wood was so harsh. Polished by many elbows and washed with spilt alcohol, the surface of the bar top was a mahogany blood red. The stools were made of stout bamboo from the delta, and between the tables on the floor were scattered zebra, kudu, and leopard skins, that Frikkie washed and shook clean after every rain. Nailed to the uprights and crossbeams were many species of animals, just the heads trying to still look alive, with their tails hanging down the uprights, the bodies having probably been eaten. The view of the delta down the slope of cleared bush, over a river to primal forest, went on and on, alive with birds circling the treetops. A pair of crocodiles were taking the morning sun on a sandbank in the river close by, the eyes and guarded heads of hippo were watching from just above the surface of the river. Three warthogs were rooting halfway up the cleared bush that gave the Duck Inn a good firebreak, and circling high in the sky far, far away, the scavengers of Africa, the vultures were going round and round, lower and lower, still afraid to land and tear the last flesh from the Great Elephant.

  Barend watched them with remorse, knowing the jackals and hyenas would be waiting, hidden in the bush and long grass, waiting for the old lions, too old to make a kill themselves, to finish what was left of the bloated carcass of the old elephant. Last would come the black ants, leaving huge bones to bleach white in the African sun forever.

  After two quick shots of whisky, the drinking had become more patient, the glasses bigger and topped up with river water. The heat of the day began to rise but no one noticed. Peregrine went out to feed his donkeys from the fodder still in the wagon but they had wandered off the road, grazing quietly under the canopy of acacia trees. The wagon was still where it had been left in the middle of the road. After giving himself a good scratch all over, he went back into the bar, glad to be alive.

  Very quietly he took Barend by the arm, first smiling to Frikkie to convey the need for confidentiality. Just inside the shade from the roof, seated at a wooden table, the breeze still cooling slightly from the river, he talked to Barend about Barend's mother, his sister, his dead father. He even mentioned little Christo Oosthuizen, Barend's only brother, buried next to little James Brigandshaw in the family plot on Elephant Walk, dead so long from heatstroke. Only last did he mention Madge.

  "She's waiting for you," he said smiling sadly with his own memories. "Every day, I think. Time you went home, my boy." They sat in silence for a long tim
e… "Now. Let's go and join Frikkie. He hates drinking on his own."

  "Who are you really?" asked Barend.

  "That's my business." It was the first and only time Barend ever heard the old man being rude to anyone.

  With the knowledge that life was a lot more simple with its repetition than people understood, Peregrine sat quietly at the bar. He was still quite sure in his belief that each person had a destiny to marry only one person, that one person who could make the other content with the vagaries of life. He rather thought Madge and Barend were two of those people destined for each other. When he had lost the love of his own life as a young man, he had hoped it was only the first love experience he would have, and another person was waiting for him down the road. But he was wrong. There had been many more women in his life but none that he could look back on and say he missed. Some of them would have stayed friends but none he had loved, and being a sentimental old goat he let a tear drown into his grey-white beard, not for himself, but for two other people who could well go through their lives alone having missed their boat together.

  "The whisky and the purity of the view," he said to hide his melancholy. "And a bit of old age." He was wondering again how different his life might have been. Not the money, that had never bothered him one way or the other. The lifelong love of fellowship is what he had missed. He was also sure of one other thing in life that he had seen too many times. Bad marriages. It was better to live alone than live in a bad marriage. Yes, he was certain of that.

  Then he broke into a passable rendering of Greensleeves to change his mood.

  The stones came out of the pouch onto the blood-red bar when the sun was directly over the Duck Inn. No one else had come or gone. The faraway vultures had sunk out of sight. The crocodiles had gone into the water. Even the birds had stopped singing. Frikkie had produced a brace of cold roast guinea fowl on a large platter which they had pulled apart with their fingers. A loaf of bread was torn apart in the same way. The three of them were drunk but still coherent; no one was slurring their words, and to Peregrine's surprise, he had not once wobbled on his bar stool perch. They had all three given out variations of their lives that bore very little resemblance to the truth, happily knowing that none of them would remember what had been said. They had all enjoyed themselves immensely.

  The glittering stones in the bar bought a moment of silence.

  "What are they?" asked Barend. "You're the first to see my stones. Friends, what are they?"

  "Where'd you get 'em?" asked Frikkie, his eyes popping.

  "On the beach."

  "What beach?"

  "No, no, no, no. That's the bit I'm going to keep to myself." If he had been sober he would have left the stones in the pouch tied around his waist. "Like our wise old drinking companion here who will not even tell me who he is… What are they, friends?" One of the stones was knocked to the floor and picked up by Barend with difficulty. Peregrine had picked up the largest of the stones. He was quite sure they were diamonds but his old mind was pleasantly thinking in circles.

  "Well, I'm not sure," he lied, "they look like diamonds but who knows. Only an expert will tell you for certain. I believe at Elephant Walk there is a young man with a degree in geology from Oxford. Like is, he would know for certain."

  "What's this Elephant Walk?" asked Frikkie more interested in the stones, his mind boggling at the possible wealth in front of him.

  "You were going to Kimberley to find out. Now I know why you are asking me to go to Kimberley. Instead, I'll make you a bargain, I'm sure Clary and Jeff can walk back to Rhodesia if we take it slowly."

  "You think Harry will know for certain?"

  "They don't give degrees at Oxford for nothing, I think. I rather hope you have to know something… Did you really find them on a beach?"

  "Yes."

  "But you never found the source of the diamonds, if indeed they are diamonds. Harry's knowledge might make you rather rich… There was a rumour a few years back. 1908, I think. A railway worker found diamonds south of Lüderitz near the Orange River, the Germans proclaimed the area around Kolmanskop a no-go area. You were not in the wrong place at the right time, young Barend Oosthuizen." He gave the lad a wink.

  "It was much further north," blurted Barend.

  "That's good. Now put them back in your belt. There's probably nothing in all this. Personally, I don't think they are diamonds. But just in case they are you can carry on buying me drinks."

  In Peregrine's life, he had found it wise never to be too careful.

  Chapter 10: November 1913

  Sir Henry Manderville had sown the tiny oblong black seeds in shallow wooden boxes where they rested on waist-high wooden benches; the sun reached them through the window in the morning. After three weeks, the specially prepared soil from the Mazoe River silt, black as the seedlings, sprouted tiny feathers of green all over the place, sending Henry into raptures of excitement. There was nothing more exciting in his life than a quest. The idea of seeds collected in America and sent round the world to grow in his seed boxes without the slightest fuss or surprise, gave him pleasure out of all proportion to the achievement. The shed he had built for the experiment was always locked. Henry kept the only key. Everyone on Elephant Walk was aware of the new shed at the back of the house but no one said a word. It was not his first experiment, and not all of them had worked out as well as the pull-and-let-go , and the system of pipes and pulleys, chains and cogs that drew the water from the river to the header tank outside his bathroom with a series of windmills that gave the cistern water to flush Mister Crapper's toilet. For all he knew, the seeds could have been sterile or his cousin in Virginia had sent him some obnoxious local grass seed to keep the supply of Virginia tobacco in America.

  After two weeks of the seedlings bolting out of the ground there was no doubt. They were plants, not grass, not weeds. They were all exactly the same.

  "You'd better come and see what I've been up to," he said to Harry Brigandshaw, his grandson. The rains had yet broken properly, but the lands planted to corn were sprouting maize spikes in straight lines, row after row, land after land, the red soil rich from the meandering river that had cut out their valley. How the rich red soil had come from black silt was a mystery to Henry. He left that part to the gods to worry about.

  He let himself into the shed with the big, long key and stood back.

  "What is it?" asked Harry.

  "Tobacco. Not only tobacco, American tobacco from Virginia. Cousin George. He is farming now… I want to plant some of the seedlings in the lands."

  "And what do you do with it when it's grown?"

  "You put it in tall barns and light a fire to dry up the moisture in the leaves. I questioned that and Cousin George sent me all the plans. Takes a fortnight… You're right. The curing, as they call it, is the tricky part. We probably won't get it right the first time."

  "Who's going to buy it?"

  "The British cigarette manufacturers."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Not yet. I have to grow the damn stuff first. Humour me, Harry. Humour me. I'm old enough to be your grandfather."

  "But you are my grandfather." Harry was convinced long ago his grandfather was potty.

  "That's the point. Now, can I have an acre of ploughed land to plant in?"

  "You can have as many as you like. Tobacco. Who would have thought of it? There's tea in British India and Ceylon. Rubber in Malaya. Nowhere in the Empire are we commercially growing tobacco. But you'd better stop these damn dogs getting into your boxes. Down, my dog. Down. Fletcher you are a right royal pain in the arse. How many boys do you need?"

  "Six."

  "You can have them tomorrow morning… The rains are going to be good this year. Come on Fletcher… That damn dog's got too much energy."

  Harry walked out of the shed followed by Fletcher, the dog, and the three bitches. They were Rhodesian ridgebacks. Lion dogs. They were seven years old and had not left any of
their curiosity with their puppyhood. Madge was feeding the wild geese, Egyptian geese, with handfuls of yellow corn. The geese were too busy gobbling up the corn kernels to worry about the dogs. The dogs looked at them hopefully and wandered off. One of the cats got through a window into Sir Henry's house straightaway. The other cats lived high off the ground only coming down to earth at feeding time. The dogs never chased them when there was food in their bowls.

  "What was it?" asked Madge.

  "Tobacco seedlings. Cousin George, the Canadian lumberjack, is now an American farmer in Virginia. Where the seed came from. Funny thing is, it might work. A lightweight high-value crop we can send to England at a profit. I saw a picture once. On a pouch of pipe tobacco. They compress the dried leaves into square bales and cover them with hessian… He's as happy as a 'sandboy'."

  "I heard that," came from his grandfather in the shed.

  The dogs had begun chasing each other in and around the flowerbeds, in and around the msasa trees within the stockade that protected the houses.

  Robert St Clair was sitting in a deckchair under one of the trees. His sister Lucinda was sitting next to him watching the dogs.

  The St Clairs had been on the farm seven months and Harry wondered if they had cashed in the return half of their tickets back to England. But maybe it was his own fault. For months he rather hoped he would fall in love with Lucinda. His mother hoped so too. Robert hoped so. Probably his grandfather as well. But as hard as he tried, Harry could not find anything other than friendship for Lucinda, which Madge told him was a perfect shame. And at least Robert had stopped following Madge around… There was also no doubt the brother and sister were good company. And Elephant Walk was far from the nearest crowd. The farm was self-supporting in food. And who was Harry to deny an old friend a few drinks at sundowner time? It was the highlight of everyone's day.