Elephant Walk (The Brigandshaw Chronicles Book 2)

by Peter Rimmer

  In the days since arriving in the reserve trench, they had been shelling every day and every day British shells whistled overhead searching for the German trenches. With the tangled wire and mud between them, the two sides could not get at each other's throats. It was an impasse. The Germans could not get to the coast or Paris and the Allies could not push them back into Prussia. As Jack dropped into the front-line trench for the first time he was convinced the war would go on forever.

  During the night it was bitterly cold, gripped by the black frost which froze the mud. Men stamped all night, too cold to sleep wrapped in their greatcoats. At midnight, Jack wished the soldiers on either side of him a merry Christmas. He could not see them in the dark, only hear their stamping feet on the duckboards, now frozen to the mud and grisly remains of dead men blown to pieces in an earlier hate. Disembodied voices wished him back a merry Christmas. Then the colonel walked the trench, wishing everyone a merry Christmas, giving each man a small parcel with the compliments of the King. Next to the colonel, his adjutant's sergeant carried a sack of the parcels. Inside each parcel was a tin of biscuits with the face of the king and queen on the lid.

  Since midnight, no one had heard a shot fired from the German trenches. The British guns were silent. The bitterly cold night gripped friend and foe separated by less than two hundred yards of no man's land. Very lights went up from both sides to make sure nothing was really happening. All through the night Jack stamped his feet and flapped his arms over his chest, making no impression with all the clothes he was wearing. The silence of the night was worse than the noise. A premonition of death. No one spoke. Just the occasional verification light fired high into the dark cold night, cloudless in parts, stars visible through holes in heaven. Leaning against the back wall of the trench, Jack found himself dreaming, asleep on his feet. When he woke there was daylight enough to see the soldiers on either side of him. Robert St Clair was shaking his shoulder and smiling at him, the smile just visible in the dawn.

  "Merry Christmas, Jack."

  "Same to you, Robert. Must have dozed off. Why's it so quiet still?"

  "It's Christmas. We are all Christians in this fight. Maybe God is working for both sides at the same time on Jesus's birthday."

  They both heard someone down the trench yell 'Happy Christmas, Fritz ', at the top of his voice. From the other side, a German boy shouted 'Happy Christmas, Tommy'. Then everyone was shouting back and forth, and men began to climb out of the trenches without their rifles.

  "What the hell do we do?" whispered Robert.

  "Let's have a look."

  Jack climbed up the fire-step and looked out over the dawn. Germans were climbing up over the trenches. Some had met the British soldiers in the middle and were exchanging cigarettes and food. Some of the biscuit tins went across to the German side. Someone threw out a football and it bounced on the frozen surface. Below the fire-step, Robert pulled at the bottom of Jack's greatcoat.

  "What are they doing?" he asked.

  "At the moment, some of them are playing football. If someone doesn't do something quickly, this war is over."

  "Are there any officers out there?"

  "None I can see."

  Robert got up on the fire-step to see for himself. "Both sides will shoot their men as deserters if we don't get them back in the trenches," he said.

  "What a pity."

  Down the trenches officers were shouting to their men to get back. Some, so used to orders, obeyed. They watched the football disappear into a shell hole.

  By lunchtime, the Germans and British were back to killing each other, both engaged in intensive shellfire. God had deserted them all.

  Book 4 – Battlefields of Lust and War

  Chapter 14: July 1915

  Benny Lightfoot was forty-nine years old, and at his own best guess worth half a million pounds sterling, which was more than he could ever spend in the rest of his life. Putting together the elaborate safari to the banks of the great Zambezi River had only one real purpose. The slow, delicious seduction of Tina Pringle. Pushing fifty, he found the thing that made his hormones rise to the surface was a very young, but provocative girl full of wet juice and excitement for life. Leading such a lady astray was the only thing left in his life that kept his attention. And she really was as sexy as anything he had seen in the past years of his nefarious life.

  Born in Missouri, some fifty miles from the strict rules of Kansas City, he had drifted away from the family corn farm to put some excitement into his young life. Watching corn grow and ripen year after year was as exciting as going to Sunday church, even when old Reverend Green was screaming at his congregation to give up their sinful ways and go to the Lord. Looking round the episcopalian church, bare of any colour, the young Benny wondered more and more about those sinful ways. Finally, looking at the reverend's congregation, all as dry as a bone, old and young, Benny concluded the sinful ways had to be going on some place else. The people surrounding the farm had all been dredged clean, though Benny thought it unlikely there was any dirt in them in the first place. The more times the preacher brought up sinful ways, the more Benny wanted some of it. At sixteen he went looking. He could read and write. Had read the Bible cover to cover, both Testaments. His mother had said he was wild and would come to nothing. Though he wrote to her for some years, he never once received a reply. Drifting off to Australia after sampling the simple ways of large parts of California, he made his first real money from the brief flurry of gold at Ballarat. From Australia he took a boat and ox wagon to Kimberley in South Africa and a whole new set of sinful ways.

  With some capital and the experience in the forests around Ballarat, cheating good men out of gold claims in the big hole was easy. There was nothing simpler, separating a good man from his money, than by introducing him to sinful ways. By the time he moved to the goldfields of the Witwatersrand in 1885, he owed a great deal to the Reverend Green, more than the reverend could ever have imagined.

  Soon after his arrival, Doctor Jameson led the bizarre raid of Rhodesians to free Johannesburg of Boer rule, particularly that of Paul Kruger, which ended in fiasco and surrender. Benny's timing could not have been better. The British were out of favour in the Boer Republic of Transvaal, and Benny, an American, filled the gap; hadn't they both had trouble with the British? With Cecil Rhodes, who had organised the raid, keeping a low profile for fear of losing his royal charter in Rhodesia, the pickings were many for a man with capital. By the time the Anglo-Boer War came and went, Benny was a rand baron. Strangely, he had never visited the Mansion House, so he would not have recognised Albert Pringle. Benny liked seducing women, not paying for them. The chase, he found, was far more exciting than the climax, a fulfilment was brief and only sometimes satisfactory. He never stayed with anyone for very long. They were all the same when it came to the end which he found a pity. He had once said, rather drunk, that he had never been in love. That life would be a lot better if a man could fall in love once and for all and be done with it. The man he told was an employee who reminded him the next day. The man was fired.

  Soon after the end of the Anglo-Boer War, Benny went home. Nothing had changed. His mother laid an extra place for supper as if he had never been away. Two of his brothers were running the farm. His father had finally died from overwork. There were sisters-in-law and children he had never seen before all over the place. Not one of them asked what he'd been doing. The corn was ripening and both sisters-in-law were pregnant. Everyone kept their heads down and worked. On Sunday they scrubbed up and went to church, leaving the corn ripening behind them. To Benny's amazement, the same old Reverend Green was still after their sinful ways. He too asked nothing about where Benny had been. The man had given him one queer look and probably didn't want to know. The next day he left home without saying goodbye. A week later he doubted if any of them would have remembered his visit. Maybe they could smell the stench of sin all over him. Looking back, he just hoped they were happy. He wondered if
the reverend would work out who had left the envelope on the silver tray with ten gold Krugers inside. But then God, as the reverend had so often told them, worked in strange ways. Soon after getting back to Johannesburg as fast as possible, he made an anonymous endowment to the church. He owed the Reverend Green that much for his good advice. If he had done the same for his mother she would have thrown the money in his face. And that was the last time he found them running through his mind.

  When a man has more money than he can spend and is not a fool, he grows rich and then very rich, very quickly. He had made a will as dying intestate was a messy thing. The money was to be divided between all his living relatives which would keep the Missouri and Kansas lawyers busy for a while. Unless he married, then the money would only go to them when his wife died. Unless they had a child. He had visions of his poor relations scratching out each other's eyes one way or another. There was nothing like adding a little greed to the pot of life. He wondered then what would come of all their sinful ways.

  There was a white hunter he had picked up in a bar who said he knew how to kill an elephant. It was one of Benny's quirks to go into strange bars and get drunk with strangers. He could say what he liked without repercussions. The mining camp that was Johannesburg suited him. The next day the man still said he could kill an elephant when he was sober. The barman had told him which flophouse to look for the man. The man had the most plummy accent Benny had ever heard in his life; the British to Benny were something of an enigma: they had as many accents as towns on their island. The 'plummy accent' was down on his luck and the twice yearly remittance cheque was not due from England for another three months.

  "You're a black sheep?"

  "Oh yes, old boy. Black as they come. Pater said I'd never come to any good. Trouble is, when the money comes in it gets blown rather quickly. Lots of friends. That kind of thing. When the money's gone so are the friends. That sort of thing."

  "How long have you spent in the bush?"

  "On and off? Eight or nine years. When you get in the bush you can't spend money. No friends. That sort of thing."

  "Would you like a job?"

  "No thank you. I've never had one."

  "Putting together a safari. I want to go to the banks of the Zambezi."

  "That's different. That's fun."

  "Could you get me there with a party of friends?"

  "Piece of cake. Train to Salisbury. Hire a wagon or two. Horses. I still have my guns. Purdeys. Never sell 'em, however broke. You can live off a gun in the bush. When are you going?"

  "Next week."

  "Oh good. What's your name?"

  "Benny Lightfoot."

  "You're an American aren't you?"

  "Does that make any difference?"

  "I suppose not. My name's Wally Bowes-Leggatt. My father's the Earl of Fenthurst."

  "I thought he might be… Why aren't you in the war?"

  "They wouldn't have me. Or they would if they caught me. I'd go to jail, not the trenches. Wouldn't mind the trenches. Can't stand the idea of jail."

  "What happened?"

  "I killed my wife. I was trying to shoot the rotter on top of her. Drink of course, or I'd never have missed. Shot at Bisley for the old school. Damn good shot, if I have to say so myself. Father said it was the only thing I could do straight. The Mater and Pater don't really like me; they shipped me out of the country as quickly as possible. Do you think I could slip back into England and join the army as a private?"

  "You'd have to change your accent."

  "Oh! Why is that?"

  Benny had shaken his head, packed the man's gear into his car and taken him home.

  "Would you mind awfully if I had a haircut on the way to your place?"

  "If it makes you more comfortable?"

  "Oh, it would."

  If asked, Benny thought the man would not know how to spell the word sarcasm.

  Getting away from Johannesburg and the daily newspaper with the endless list of casualties from the Western Front assuaged some of Benny Lightfoot's guilt. In the end, America would have to go into the war. Though too old himself, he felt the looks of the British, who thought the Americans were shirking their responsibilities. It seemed in life, however you look at it, you had to take sides.

  He thought Albert Pringle was seeing his sister onto the train and then getting off. Benny's driver had been sent back from the house in Parktown Ridge with a note from Tina saying she would meet him at the railway station in good time for the train to Bulawayo, where they were to change trains to Salisbury.

  "Oh, I've got a ticket, Mr Lightfoot," smiled Albert. He had not had a holiday in his life, boat trips not included and rich old men he trusted not a bit. Especially with Tina who was as naïve as she was pretty. Unless he helped, she would end up like all sexy young girls who went through the mill. He only had to look at Lily White, who was still living with Sallie after six months, and not a pound the lighter. Tina was going to turn out differently. The last thing he had expected was a chinless wonder in a safari suit, wearing a pith hat that would have better suited David Livingstone. It took all Albert's concentration not to laugh when he was told by Benny Lightfoot with a straight face that this was their white hunter who was going to show them the bush. The thought of Harry Brigandshaw's address in his pocket was comforting, even if he had only met the man briefly at Cape Town railway station as Jack Merryweather's gentleman's gentleman. He wanted to ask the man with the two sets of leather cased guns why he wasn't shooting Germans. The man was no more than thirty. They briefly locked eyes and those looking across the five feet of the railway carriage were mockingly simple: 'don't be a hypocrite.'

  "We're going to have a nice holiday," said Wally Bowes-Leggatt, "which is more than can be said for a lot of other people."

  The war was everywhere.

  Benny, smiling to himself at the confrontation of two Englishmen, turned his attentions to Tina and the long, slow delicious seduction that lay ahead, however many brothers she brought on the journey. For Benny, the seduction of a woman started right at the beginning, when he rang the girl's doorbell to take her out. In this case, from the moment the heavy train door clunked shut, the steam engine back and front puffed violently, slowly at first, the train lurched and they were off, headed for the north, and the African bush. Tina was just as sexually provocative as he remembered. Benny was relieved that after all the effort his hormones were still screaming with delight. Even the brother on board just made the game a little more difficult but, he hoped, more satisfying in the end, like a handicap at a steeplechase. Benny looked first at Tina's open cleavage and then at her large brown, bedroom eyes. The point of Tina's tongue came out and slowly went back in again.

  For Benny, one of the advantages of being rich was the ability to find out the truth about anybody. A drunk who said he shot his wife, told you his name and the name of his father, had to be telling a lie. Self-preservation alone would keep a sane man's mouth shut in the case of killing his wife. He might have got away from the gallows if the rotter was really screwing his wife, but then he thought the British might just hang him by his neck. Only the French knew properly about crimes of passion. The French would have given the husband a medal and hanged the rotter. Benny always thought the French had a point.

  Like all drunks in bars, Wally finally believed his story and cried real tears when he told the story of the death of Poo. From Benny's experience, there was always some truth to the stories of drunks, they were mainly embellished to make the story last longer and sound a lot better. It was part of the bar trade, swapping stories. Part of the entertainment. Mostly, the other drunk who was meant to be listening to the story was thinking of something he could cap it with from his own life. Harmless fun, and in the morning neither of them would remember a thing… It all passed the time for a man like Wally with money, even if it was spasmodic, and nothing to do when he ran short, drunks were always good at getting free drinks if they told a good
story.

  There were two books in the Johannesburg library listing the British peerage, and both quoted Walter Bowes-Leggatt as a third son of the First Earl of Fenthurst, who had fought and won an obscure colonial war for the British in China, parallel with Chinese Gordon who had subsequently perished at Khartoum, a victim of the Mahdi's holy war. General Bowes-Leggatt had stayed away from the Sudan after the Boxer rebellion and gone into politics. According to Benny's investigator, the general had been such a pain in the arse of the Tory party, they had made him an earl and kicked him up into the House of Lords, where he could talk hot air with impunity. The man had first been offered a barony but had turned it down. Benny thought, reading his man's report, that the general was quite well aware of how much pain he was causing in the arse of the Tory party. No money went with the earldom, only a parliamentary vote that increased the general's pension. There was, however, a big estate in Surrey, so the family must have had money. Finding out about Wally the black sheep after that was simple.

  There was a rotter, and there was a Poo, though her real name was Prudence. Prudence was probably very much alive, though the rotter was equally likely dead in the trenches. By the time Benny made his enquiries the regular British Army had been decimated in France and Flanders. At the time Prudence ran off with the army subaltern she had been married to Wally six months. It was a scandal and Wally was shipped out to the colonies. Reading between the lines of the press reports, Benny's sleuth thought the subaltern was definitely dead. Annoying a powerful general in peacetime had been one thing. The man was a rotter and the army had ways of dealing with rotters. Especially in wartime. And Wally was best kept out in the colonies.