by Peter Rimmer
There were times in Robert St Clair's life when he wished he were rich. The thought of going back to an English winter, jobless and poor, to the cold of Purbeck Manor was horrible. After sitting in the shade of the sun for month after month, the idea of a log fire burning the front of his body, while his back froze from the draught coming through under the door was appalling. If he had money he would buy himself an African farm. There was plenty of labour. There was plenty of sun, and the rain came when it was needed to grow a crop, leaving the winter six months crisp at night, warm in the day and not a drop of rain to be seen. Provided the river kept flowing, which it did, Rhodesia to Robert was paradise. There was no way he could ever again face being cooped up in the family mansion or an old English school with even gas heating. And he hated small boys asking stupid questions.
The idea of marrying Madge was not the answer as the Brigandshaw farm belonged to Harry Brigandshaw. There would always be a good home for mother, grandfather and sister but the farm would always belong to the son. Not that he had got anywhere trying to compete with a ghost whose only fault was not being where he was meant to be. He rather thought she despised him sponging off his friend but was too polite to come right out and say so. Harry seemed friendly enough. Living alone in a house with his sister was perfect. They could keep out of other people's way. Once he had overheard Madge suggest he had pawned his return ticket that was valid on any Colonial Shipping liner out of Cape Town. But that was one thing he never did. He never burnt his boats. He always had an escape route even if the destination was no longer to his liking.
Everyone thought he did not have a care in the world which is how he tried to portray himself, but under the smooth façade, he was scared. He was twenty-eight years old, with no idea what he was going to do with the rest of his life. The idea of war with Germany was his only glimmer of hope. If war broke out he would go off like all the other surplus St Clairs before him and die for a good cause. Then it would be over. Even with glory, though how getting killed was glorious, he rather thought was owed to politicians who required willing cannon fodder to take politics into their next dimension of war. He would not have to grow old. He would not have to be a burden on other people. He would be dead. And in Robert's mind, dead was dead.
Discretely he looked at his watch. Always the last half hour before six was the longest half hour of the day. He had only been pretending to read a book. He wondered what his sister was thinking as she watched the dogs. If Harry did not propose soon it would be too late. She was twenty-two in April. Girls had such a short time to secure the long years of their lives. And if they failed to find a husband there wasn't much left for them to do. He felt sorry for her. He rather thought the life of a penniless spinster was worse than a penniless bachelor. At least he could go to war. Anyway, he told himself, he had done his best. You could only bait the hook. The fish had to come up and swallow the worm.
"Feel like a drink, old chap?" he heard Harry calling.
"Splendid idea."
He jumped up, the unread book falling on the grass. It was six o'clock at last.
"Drinking time, sis. Are you coming?"
"Why not." And almost under her breath so only her Robert would hear, "There's nothing else to do."
Now a little irritated, Robert walked across to Harry's veranda where the servants were slotting the fly screens into place. An animal, some way over in the bush made a horrible noise which he ignored. His sister shuddered.
"What's that?" she asked.
"I have absolutely no idea," said Robert.
"A lion," said Madge. "There he goes again."
This time, Robert shuddered. He did not like the idea of lions out on the loose. He really needed his drink.
Emily looked at her two children and her father on the veranda and rather thought they all drank too much in Africa. Since her husband had died she really did not care. Everyone was able to look after themselves. She was forty-two years old and withering up. Her time of usefulness had gone. The thought of marrying again had never entered her head. There had never been any other man for Emily Manderville ever since she was a child. She had decided to marry Sebastian Brigandshaw when she was ten years old. The fact she fell pregnant with Harry before she was married had everything to do with their love of each other. And if the Pirate, Captain Brigandshaw, Sebastian's father, had not banished Sebastian to the colonies! And if her father, who was up to something in his new potting shed, had not made a pact with the devil! If she had not been forced to marry the heir to the Brigandshaw fortune so Arthur's father, the Pirate, could lay his hands on the ancient estate of Hastings Court and mix his blood with old family! If! Too many ifs. Too many people wanting what they wanted with little thought for others. She and her father had never yet had it out but now it did not matter. They had talked. He had said he was sorry. But they had never had it out. Arranged marriages were common in her father's day. She looked at her older son and thought one day she should tell him the truth. They had made her marry Arthur. They had paid and received what was tantamount to blood money. But they had never been able to force her into Arthur's bed. And as Arthur had only wanted money from his father and his cheap whores, that part worked out well. She lived as mistress of Hastings Court but she never consummated the marriage. And then Seb had got back. Somehow from Africa. Put a ladder up to her bedroom window, and with the help of Alison Ford, Harry's nurse and Barend's mother, they had all run away to Africa and left their old lives behind to live in memory.
Emily poured herself a stiff gin. Even George, her youngest son, was away at boarding school. No one needed her now. And she missed Seb so much it physically hurt every time she thought of him. Which was far too often for her sanity. Maybe she thought the truth got muddled up too much as it went along. So long as Harry knew Seb was his father, the rest might best be left alone. There are some truths in life we are best not knowing, she tried to tell herself, as she procrastinated yet again from telling Harry the truth. She was only a woman. People told her she was tough living on a bush farm without a husband. But she wasn't.
One of the other dogs clanged through the screen door that automatically crashed closed behind it. The big dogs flopped on the big reed mat that covered most of the veranda floor. Madge was lighting the paraffin lamps. She half listened to her father going on about growing tobacco. Her drink was empty sooner than she thought it should have been. Then she got up to stand at the sideboard and poured herself another drink. Through the window into the dining room, she could see the houseboy laying out the cold fork supper on the dining table. Not for the first time she asked herself what she would do without her routine. On Elephant Walk, nothing changed. And nothing would. Even if they all went to war with each other in England, nothing would change in the African bush. They were too far away. Cut off from everything.
The second gin and quinine tonic tasted better than the first. Without anyone really noticing she sat down again where she had been. Harry gave her a smile which was comforting. She had children. Yes, she had her children.
Her father gave her that funny look again, and she wondered if he had been reading her mind.
Henry Manderville could read his daughter's mind with the greatest of ease. He had watched her thinking as he talked about the future of flue-cured tobacco in Africa.
He had sold the only two items left in the Manderville fortune. Over the generations, the money had shrunk to the old house and a few acres, the title and his daughter, the daughter who would have been penniless had he died like her mother at an early age. To the right buyer, the history of Hastings Court was worth more than the house itself. To the right father, a daughter-in-law with an ancient pedigree was worth more than the money with which it could be bought. He had known his daughter loved the youngest of the Brigandshaw boys but he had not known then how much. Puppy love. Kids thrown together by the loneliness of childhood. All had rationalised in his brain. Love came and went, he had told himself. Life can be lived w
ithout consuming love. Consuming love rarely lasted, except in the memory. Money! It was always money that stayed forever. Money could be passed from one generation to another and another. Mostly love died in life. It always died once both of the lovers were dead.
Why a man with money was so concerned with so-called pedigree, breeding, Henry found difficult to understand. 'What was the difference?' he asked himself. 'What is so important?' Most old families started with rape and pillage. Thugs stealing what they wanted. Forcing their will. Yet he knew the likes of Captain Brigandshaw were obsessed with titles. Obsessed with buying their way from humble roots. They wanted respect. A daughter-in-law from an old family, would, to that man's way of thinking, give his grandchildren respect. And if by political pandering the man could buy himself a hereditary title, which Captain Brigandshaw from the profits of Colonial Shipping had finally done, in three generations his family would go from ordinary seaman to titled gentry. And if their mother's family was hundreds of years old in the collective memory, no one would question their worth. The fact that everyone's family was hundreds of years old, or otherwise they themselves would not be alive, made the whole thing to Henry's mind a lot of nonsense. But there it was. He had the old house, an old title and a marriageable daughter. Brigandshaw had the money. He made a pact with the devil to protect his own descendants, though he never saw the irony of the situation till many years later. He had done his best. And he had not known his daughter was already pregnant by the young scallywag she had been, he thought, innocently playing with since she was a child.
Like his daughter, who he knew had not told Harry, she was only married to his father years after the children were born, he thought it better to keep his reasons to himself, to not bring out the story that now had a very different view. In hindsight, he rather thought, most things were easier to understand. If he had sold Hastings Court on the open market, the proceeds would not have covered the mortgage. He had done his best. Well, maybe he had been thinking of himself just a little. In the end, he smiled to himself, we all just think of ourselves a little. It's the nature of man. Then he caught his daughter's eye and looked away. There was only so much rationalisation but even that could never assuage a man's guilt.
Feeling guilty, he got up and went to the sideboard and poured himself another drink. The roar of the lion, he thought, was a little nearer.
The lion roar was two hundred yards from Barend's camp. Peregrine had hoped they would reach Elephant Walk before sundown, whisky on the veranda vivid in his mind. It was pitch dark, the light having dissipated completely in less than an hour. Only the planets could be seen in the night sky. The fire Barend was nursing, bending down on his knees, blowing the embers of leaves that were still damp, refused to burst into flame. Barend shivered. A thin lacework of cloud added to the dark. The moon would not rise for three hours. Barend's horse whinnied with fright. He could hear the donkeys pulling against their tethers to the old wagon in which the old man was sleeping. During their four-month odyssey, Peregrine had turned seventy-one. For a man of his age, he was still remarkably fit, but it wasn't right. For Barend, old men should have a place in the sun, a chair, grandchildren to look after them, memories to mull.
"Wasn't that a bloody lion?" came from the direction of the covered wagon. "Bloody thing woke me up… Can't see the fire."
"Leaves are wet."
"I'd better come and help. Always said the only way to get anything done was to do it myself… So near to a bottle of whisky and yet so far. It's dark, my word it's dark. I rather think only leopards can see at night."
"Lions can smell."
"Well, my gun's loaded. Fear not, Peregrine is nigh."
The fire caught and burst into bright flames, bringing the campsite into view. The lion roared again, further away. Twigs caught and burnt, and when Peregrine put a pile of precious dry fodder on the flames he could see the slate green colour of Barend's eyes. The donkeys had stopped pulling at their tethers and Barend went across in the new light of the fire, a big man with wide, powerful shoulders, to stroke the ears of his horse. The stallion showed him its teeth. On the other side of the wagon something small was moving in the thick bush.
He had changed his mind the day they left Maun four months earlier. A man, he told himself, could not walk back into people's lives like nothing had happened. Even without his hatred, he was not the same person who had run away from Elephant Walk more than nine years earlier. They would all be different.
He and Peregrine had come out of the swamps and gone south, Peregrine not greatly minding, rationalising there was always time in Africa to talk, to reason. Life was to be lived as pleasantly as possible for the moment. The flight of a bird. The call of frogs that started and stopped abruptly all together. A thin sickle moon in a star-studded sky. The evening echo of falling water from drinking game, the only sound in the universe. Peregrine was not in a hurry. He had the rest of his life to spend getting nowhere. For him, the only important place in time was the present moment.
They had first trekked week after week to the diamond town of Kimberley, where illicit diamond buying was punishable by life in prison. The mining people did not like anyone stealing their diamonds. Diamond buying was a closed shop. A monopoly of the De Beers Diamond Corporation. Without careful control of the supply, the prices would fall, some said to nothing. A stone was only valuable when it was rare. They spent an unsuccessful month in Kimberley looking for a buyer and then moved through to Johannesburg, certain at least the seven stones were gem quality diamonds. Selling rocks found on a far-off beach was more difficult than either of them had thought.
Barend had been away from the gold mining town since his fight in the Mansion House. All his old acquaintances had moved on. Everyone was new, expectant, waiting to get rich in a hurry, or waiting with dull eyes to go away. Only a very few grew rich. He had walked into the Mansion House but with no money they had turned him away. New, meaner-looking people were running the whorehouse and he was glad not to have any money. They turned him away at the door. Inside it was empty of customers where he could see into the cheap bar. The girls looked worn out and uninterested. The band he could hear would have sent him to sleep. Going back anywhere was a failure. Nothing was ever the same. Sadder than he knew why, he had found Peregrine and the wagon with his horse, and though it was night they had gone out of town, moving slowly forward throughout the night. When the dawn came they were safe in the bush and had made camp.
"Why are we going north?" Barend had asked Peregrine.
"You're going home."
"I don't have a home."
"Oh yes you do. She's waiting for you. Now, humour an old man. It's a long time since I drank Brigandshaw whisky. Hopefully, Harry will have forgiven me for leading him a dance in pursuit of Lobengula's gold. Which by the way, I don't think exists; money gets spent if it's left lying around. We had a nice time looking. There was no trace of his boyhood black friend, Tatenda. No one had heard of him for years. An old witch gave me the evil eye. I think she knew. Even Harry's fluent Shona couldn't get it out of her. The old hag gave me the shivers. Bloody ventriloquist. Could throw her voice up into the trees. The villagers were petrified of her… I need a good bottle of whisky to drink."
"It'll take a month or more."
"So what? Young man, do you have a better idea? If it doesn't work you can go on your way. You won't look back and not know. Face life, don't run away."
"I'll go north on one condition. You tell me why you ran away. Why you ran away from your family and hid in the African bush. I'll go to Elephant Walk only if you tell me who you are. After so many months you owe me that much."
"If I tell you a very long story. And there are rivers to cross and this is the rainy season, early but here. We may spend days waiting for the river to go down so we can cross over. It may take us many weeks… I want you to be the custodian of a letter I have written to my family. I have lived a long time. At my age death can strike quickly and I'm no
t talking about the lions. All those bits inside us that keep us going year after year. Only one has to pack up. Poor old Clary and Jeff. They worry me most. No one else will look after them. Maybe they will carry me to Valhalla but I don't think so. But my family should know about my death. You see, this wreck of an old man with not a penny in his pocket for all these many years, is Peregrine Alexander Cholmondeley Kenrick, Ninth Earl of Pembridgemoor. Our greatest estate became my property in trust when my father died. Luck was, I saw his death in the paper, a piece of old newspaper young Harry Brigandshaw had used to wrap his crystal glasses. The trust will have taken care of everything, that much I knew when I read the notice, in 1907 I think it was. I had then been away over forty years, so it was far too late for me… Her name was Patricia. A very ordinary name. She was Irish. She was, I still tell myself, the other half of myself. Maybe she was or maybe she wasn't as I was never allowed to find out. She was the first girl I ever knew, the only one who could look through my eyes into my being, that individual, us, without which the universe does not exist. Maybe it was an illusion. Maybe she was built by my mind as a lifelong companion. Maybe I am a romantic old fool and now it doesn't matter except for you. If I can do one last thing in my life, it is to bring you back to your Madge, to find out. To not have a demon, a lonely demon to rule you the rest of your life. Looking back I can see my life was pointless. I did nothing with it. Not even one child. Not a painting. Not a book. Not one poem. I did nothing with my gift of life and that was wrong. Don't you, Barend Oosthuizen, make the same mistake. You have been like a son to me these many weeks. My first companion since leaving America. I don't want you to lose your life. So bear with an old man and take this letter to post when you hear I'm dead. Let an old man go and find what I hope will not be my last bottle of whisky… Now, that's enough about me. I've always found it boring talking about myself."
"What happened to her?"
