by Peter Rimmer
Dawdling over coffee on the veranda of the bush timber new house he had built with the gang, he saw the old man on his horse from a long way off. Coming to see what was going on. Why they had not ridden seven miles for dinner. The wooden floor was uneven in parts but it served his purpose. If he moved his chair he could stop it rocking on three legs. Why people couldn't leave them alone he would never understand. Ungraciously, he got up from the chair when Sir Henry rode in and dismounted in front of the veranda. Barend was wearing long black trousers held up by braces. Over the braces he wore a black waistcoat with the buttons undone. His big feet were covered by thick socks and the right sock had a hole in the heel. Since returning to Elephant Walk with Peregrine the ninth he had put on weight and given up shaving. Shaggy hair, the colour of dirty sand, covered his face. Only the slate green eyes commanded attention. He was a married man. The house was his. What did it all matter? They had finally trapped and caged him. Rudely, he waited for the old man to speak first.
Alison had watched from the kitchen and her heart sank. It had all seemed so wonderful at first. The son back from the wilderness. The young love come to fruition. The farm and the money from the diamonds. Madge so happy. So happy to be pregnant.
She watched her son get up from the chair in his stockinged feet, not bothering to put on his boots which were next to him, not thinking of buttoning his waistcoat. The son she had loved was breaking her heart. He looked more like a caged animal than a man just married expecting his first child. The man was miserable, plain to see. And there was nothing in the wide world she could do about it. Only the father they had hanged so long ago could make her son the man she wanted him to be. Only Tinus could have made him happy. Instead of going out to greet their guest she began to cry. Not even her daughter was there to give her comfort. At the age of forty-eight she felt more like a hundred.
Remembering there was more to life than feeling miserable, Alison went into her bedroom to powder her nose. Even if he was Emily's father, she was still a woman. Then she heard Madge retching from the bathroom and smiled. There was a grandchild of hers on the way. Tinus's first grandchild. It made it all worthwhile. Checking in the mirror that her eyes were not puffy, and patting her hair, she took a deep breath as she prepared herself to face the morning.
Madge, hearing her grandfather's voice from where she was squatting in the bathroom, got up and washed her face. Even though her stomach was sick from the baby, her face was radiant. She even loved being sick in the mornings from the baby. She was so in love that everything around her was beautiful. If the sky had fallen on her head she would have found in the clouds exquisite joy. She was blind to anything but happiness. Keeping her stomach under the power of her will, Madge left the bedroom to join her family. All her life she had had a special place in her heart for Grandfather Manderville. She knew to him she was special. She was his only granddaughter. Father's liked to have sons. Grandfathers liked to have granddaughters. That was what he had told her when she was five years old. He probably told the boys much the same in reverse. But she loved him just the same. If only her father had not been killed by a rogue elephant her life would be perfect. She was luckier than any woman alive. They were going to call their farm New Kleinfontein after the one confiscated by the British. Barend thought it would lay a ghost to rest.
Alison had had the cook boy make a pot of tea and bring it to the veranda. Like all Rhodesian houses, the veranda ran the length of the house and was used for entertaining. She politely shook hands with Sir Henry Manderville. She made signs to Barend to put on his boots and button his waistcoat. The boy needed a good haircut and his beard trimmed. He reminded her of his father. She had seen the hole in the sock and would reprimand the wash boy for not having it darned. Maybe it was a new hole. She hoped so. She had been a servant herself those long years ago. Harry's nurse at Hastings Court, the ancestral home of the Mandervilles, bought by the Pirate, Madge's other grandfather, now long dead and buried. And here she was entertaining the current Manderville baronet whose his blood would be mixed with hers when Madge's child was born. There were so many complications in life. The cup rattled a little as she gave Sir Henry his tea. She was in awe of the man's ancestry, rather than the man. When he thanked her for the tea he looked her straight in the eyes. In someone else she would have understood the look. She would have offered the baronet a second cup of tea but she knew her hand would be shaking.
Madge, not understanding the problem, poured her grandfather the second cup. She had taken his cup and saucer to the sideboard which looked out onto the bush and the track that led to the family compound on Elephant Walk. The new house was in a hollow close to the Mazoe River where it flowed towards the distant hills. The farm was in a valley, ringed by a low range of mountains covered in msasa trees. It was the prettiest spot on the whole farm and she had chosen it herself. The bitch at Elephant Walk was with pups and soon three of them would be brought to New Kleinfontein. Her very own cat had refused to move to her new home. They had tried three times. Each time the cat had walked home the seven miles unscathed.
As she picked up the saucer with her grandfather's second cup of tea her eye was caught by a horseman galloping fast down the track from Elephant Walk. Standing and staring, with the cup and saucer still in her hand, she recognised her elder brother. She put it down the on the tray and waited. She had never seen Harry ride so fast.
"What are you staring at, darling?" asked Henry Manderville.
"Look. It's Harry. His galloping like a maniac."
Sir Henry got up quickly and stood next to his granddaughter. There was a dust trail behind the horse.
"Oh, my God," said Henry.
"What's the matter," asked Alison, joining them.
"It's George."
"No it's not, it's Harry."
"It's George."
Barend had also got up to have a look. All four of them watched the rider and the galloping horse.
Harry came off his horse before it stopped and ran the last few yards. The horse was blown.
"Grandfather saddle up and get home," he shouted.
"Is it George?"
"Yes, it's George. There's nothing you can now do for George. Any of us. It's Peregrine. When he read the cable from the War Office he had a stroke. Please hurry. He's going to die. He knows it. He just wants to see you before he dies. He is mumbling about a letter. Do you have a letter? What letter, for God's sake? What can a letter do to help? And I've decided. I'm going over. Can't stay now. Should have gone before George. I'm going to join the Royal Flying Corps. If nothing else, I can get some revenge."
"It doesn't help," said Barend. "I know. Oh, do I know about revenge. It eats into your guts. Never stops. You have to be dead before it stops. If you were going to join the Germans I'd come with you right now. Revenge. You go and take your revenge. Enjoy it. They wouldn't even let me have that pleasure. I was going to join the uprising that Botha, the traitor, put down. They didn't even give me the chance. And now where am I?"
Chapter 16: January 1916
Fay Wheels woke screaming from the pictures in her dream. Men, some whole, some mangled, some dead, some alive, all screaming, flying up in the air of darkness and rain, flashed by explosion, not even heard above the shattering noise of exploding shells, and mud, and mountains high beyond her dreaming, screaming vision of the hell, and the baby screaming too, and banging on a door, and screaming in the dark and knowing hell.
Then she was properly awake, the baby in the cot screaming its head off, and the banging on the door, the same door in front of which they had left her mother's chest of gypsy lore, and the key pushed through the gap into the flat in Sutherland Avenue where she was screaming from her dream that stayed and stayed in her mind. The sweat of fear oozing out of every pore of her body and her hair soaking wet, the room pitch dark. And there in the heart of carnage, mangled, screaming dead, the father of the screaming child, and she was sure with all her gypsy sight he was dead, mang
led in the blood and torn off bones and floating eyes, with the smell of old carnage blown up with the new seeping deep into the poverty of her lungs. Then she retched, and her screaming stopped, and a dead man's voice was shouting at her through the door and she retched again and again.
"FAY! Fay! What's going on? Why are you screaming?"
To hide from a dead man's voice she hid under the vomit-soaked blankets, the baby quiet all of a sudden.
"Fay! It's me. Jack. I've got some leave… Did I hear a baby cry? Fay! Let me in. What's the matter? For God's sake let me in."
Outside Jack Merryweather had lost the key to his mistress's flat. He was cold, and the long overcoat down to his ankles could not keep out the east wind. There were no lights down the Paddington street for fear of a Zeppelin raid. All the windows were dark and fast asleep in the middle of the night. He was hungry and the wound in his left arm hurt more than it was meant to hurt. He would have to find a hospital when the light of day came up. In France he had told them all his wound was fine and taken up his leave, walking back down the wet cold muddy communication trenches to the reserve line, and then further back, trudging through the dark till he found the slope. Then up above ground for the first time in months, if he excluded the raids over the top into the German lines. The thought of England, Fay and their new baby taking him through the night to a backward command post where they found him transport to the coast. Even the seething lurching swells of the English Channel could not take the smile from his face. He wasn't sick, not even once. The Calais–Dover ship had docked in time for him to catch the last train up to London but the line was blocked and the train arrived late at the station, and he had walked to the flat in the cold, with the wound in his arm hurting so much he had to concentrate his mind to stop the stumbling. There had been no taxis in the middle of the night. There were not meant to be any trains.
Then he fainted on the doorstep and slid to the ground, wondering if he was about to die, the pain too great for bearing.
Fay found him on the steps the way she found her mother's iron-bound chest. Abandoned. She knew, of course, he was dead. Knew who he was without seeing his face in the dark and creeping fog. She looked at the crumpled figure on the step for a long moment. Having considered her vomit and the banging on the door for a long time in the silence, she had got up and taken a look outside. The soldier at her feet was skin and bones, the army overcoat having fallen open. The body began to stir. Her gypsy mind began to understand. This was not Jack. This was another soldier come to tell her of his death. The messenger of death.
She grabbed the man by both arms and began pulling him into the hallway of the flat. The man screamed in pain, so he wasn't dead.
"For the love of God, Fay. Be more careful. My left arm was shot right through… You smell of vomit. Are you all right! Oh, I see. The baby was sick all over you. Sorry. I fainted from the pain in my arm. I don't know what you did to it by pulling but it's better now. What a way to come home. Dragged through the door by the mother of your son… How are you Fay? Why are you crying? It's me. Jack Merryweather. If you can help me up off the floor, you can show me our son. Before I passed out I heard you screaming and then the baby cry."
"I had a terrible dream."
"We all get those. You get used to them in the end."
"The dream told me you were dead."
"Well this time your gypsy feyness was wrong, my Fay. I'm alive, on ten days' leave. Not much, true, but enough. We three are going to have a wonderful time… Now show me my son and then give me a drink. Something strong. It was cold out there and the boat was going up and down… Now, will you please stop crying?"
"I wrote you there was a child, Jack. You have a daughter."
"Then show me my daughter! But first, give me a kiss."
"I'm covered in my own puke. Sick from the dream."
"I don't care Fay. Probably don't smell too sweet myself. It doesn't matter. We are the ones alive in all the horror. We have a daughter. Covered in sick, to me you look quite beautiful. I'll give you a good idea. Let's take a bath together. Then we'll make love. Then I will sleep for the rest of the day. This uniform I came home in shall be burnt. My tailor can run me up a new one. The new one will look much the same in a week after I get back. But that doesn't matter. When I escort my Fay round the town I don't want those dreadful women handing me white feathers so I shall be in uniform… To the baby. To the drink. To the bath. In that order."
"I'll have to change the sheets."
"Then the sheets shall be changed."
"Does your arm really hurt that badly?"
"Not any more… And that's the last time you and I shall talk about the bloody war."
The doctor at Paddington Hospital was so old, Jack thought at one stage the man had gone to sleep peering at the wound in his arm the field hospital in Flanders had patched up to the best they could.
"Not the slightest trace of gangrene. You are a very lucky man Captain Merryweather. Straight through the flesh of the arm. You'll have a scar on both sides but nothing much more. The heat of the bullet sterilised the wound. The nurse will put on a new dressing. Keep an eye on it. Come back if you think you should."
To celebrate, Jack took Fay to dinner. He used his years of patronage to get a table at Simpson's on the Strand. She was prettier than he ever remembered. Excited to be seen in public with him for the first time.
They had gone to his house in Baker Street for clothes. Bradford, the valet, burnt the old uniform, and Jack paid a visit to his tailor in Savile Row.
For the night, he was dressed in civilian evening clothes, though his left arm was kept in a sling. He could use the hand well enough but when the arm was allowed to move around the wound hurt.
A young woman standing at the entrance to Simpson's gave him a white feather for his trouble as they got out of the taxi that had brought them from the Baker Street house. Their child had been left to an astonished Bradford to look after while they went out to dinner. It was the first time they had visited Jack's house. Jack gave the woman with the feather a sweet smile, tipped his hat and put the feather behind his right ear.
"You should be ashamed of yourself," said the woman, annoyed by the way Jack flaunted her feather, the white feather of cowardice.
"So should you," spat Fay.
The doorman, who had known Jack for twenty years, raised his voice for the first time.
"Welcome home, Captain Merryweather. Hope the wound is not too bad?"
"Thank you, Fred. Anyone in the restaurant I know?"
"The Honourable Robert St Clair. He is dining with one of his brothers."
"Didn't know any of them could afford the place."
"I believe the Honourable Merlin St Clair took a large position in Vickers-Armstrong just before war broke out."
Without looking back, Jack took the feather from behind his ear and handed it back to the young woman.
"I'm sorry," she said.
With Fay on his arm, Jack walked through the door held open by Fred into the crowded restaurant.
Robert St Clair had started with a cheese soufflé which was much to his liking. The second course, a partridge, had been hung just enough, high to the taste but not quite rotten. The red wine and port sauce over the bird were, to Robert, perfection. Where they had found the new peas and new potatoes in winter he had no idea. The menu he had been given showed no prices and Robert asked no questions. He was Merlin's guest.
"Where did they get the vegetables from at this time of year?" he asked.
"Someone's hothouse, most likely. You can get anything, even now, if you have a lot of money. Well, here's to the old Vickers machine gun."
"Please, Merlin don't bring up the war."
"Do you know that chap over there? The one with the pretty girl. He's been trying to catch your eye ever since he sat at his table."
"Of course I do. That's Jack Merryweather."
"Then why don't we join them for supp
er."
"Don't be silly. He'd be terribly embarrassed. That's his mistress. You wouldn't want to be recognised if you were dining here with Esther."
"Esther, I'm afraid, went off and married a corporal."
"Oh. I'm sorry Merlin. I hope she'll be happy."
"He's dead."
"Then she can move back into the Barbican flat."
"I'm looking for another mistress."
"I'll have the roast sirloin if you can afford it, Merlin," said Robert breaking the awkward silence.
"They say Vickers makes a machine gun every two and a half seconds, which they sell to the British government at a nice profit. The average lifespan of a machine gun is ten days. And they are strung out from coast to coast along the Western Front… Frederick has joined the army in India. They're sending him to France. Probably on the water by now. Penelope and the girl are staying behind."
"Does mother know?"
"I'm going to tell her tomorrow when we go home," said Merlin.
"What are we going to say to Lucinda?"
"Give her a hug, I'd say."
"Did you meet her fiancé?"
"No. Don't even know his name."
"Poor old Cinda," said Robert. "Terrible to end up an old maid. She should have stayed in Africa with Harry Brigandshaw. Far away from this bloody war. There are going to be a lot of old maids left by this carnage. What a waste of a life. All those years with nothing to do. No purpose. I think the fiancé was the lucky one."
"Barnaby should be all right. They've posted him to Palestine. It's a two-year posting. Granny Forrester cried when she heard. Doctor Reichwald, who now calls himself Doctor Smithers, has one son left alive. Do you remember when you had that flu? He was good, saved your life… He's coming over."
