by Peter Rimmer
The men who said, through the captain, that they were Shona, had stopped singing. He could smell their cooking so he went down to the lower deck to see if they would give him some of their food. It was a lovely evening out on the lake and his heart was singing. Life sometimes was very good. She was going to have a very big bottom, which he liked.
Putting on his best smile, he was glad to be greeted with a tin plate covered in hot food. The food when he ate it with his fingers, pinching the maize meal and dipping it in the meat, was good… For some reason, everyone on board was in a good mood. Even the captain who was standing on the upper deck looking at them, with the canvas roof down, and the sun sinking into the lake. The Shona were all chatting with each other in their own language, which was a pity. He would very much like to have joined in their conversation. The conversation between old friends eating, talking and smiling with each other. Such evenings on a boat were the best a man could have in his life. In his mind, he wished them all a safe journey to the north and a safe journey home.
* * *
Ten days later, the remnant of the expedition to find Harry Brigandshaw, struck out north-east from the northern shore of Lake Tanganyika, headed for the southern shore of Lake Victoria. They were still in nominally British territory. The Arab captain was with them mounted on Ralph Madgwick’s horse. Most of the paraphernalia that had left Elephant Walk at the start of the expedition had gone on the train at Ujiji. The packhorses now carried trade goods, the animals following the riders on long leads. The sky had thundered every day for two hours before dusk. Quick, violent showers soaked them to the skin but the main rains that flooded the rivers had yet to break. So far, none of the tribesmen had appeared with tusks and horns. A few with skins, most of the skins were domestic cattle that would cost more to get to Dar es Salaam than they would fetch.
Sebastian Brigandshaw, Harry’s father had first taught Tembo how to shoot, just like he had done with Harry’s boyhood friend, Tatenda. There were four great white hunters in southern Africa at the time: Selous, Hartley, Brigandshaw and Martinus Oosthuizen, the grandfather of young Tinus who would soon be back at school in Salisbury learning how to be a white man. Tembo had heard the story many times, of how Sebastian had found Tatenda when the Matabele of King Lobengula had raided his village. The men had been killed with the stabbing swords of the Matabele impi, the cattle stolen, the young women and girls taken as slaves and the huts burned to the ground. Tatenda had been minding the cattle in the bush some distance away from the village. It had been some years before Cecil Rhodes conquered the Matabele when Sebastian found Tatenda and took him under his wing. That was before Sebastian had gone back to England to claim Emily and bring back his son to the sanctuary of Africa.
Moreover, as he had done with Tatenda, Sebastian the young man with white hair who spoke Shona like everyone in the village, taught Tembo how to shoot. To get the range. Judge the wind. Judge the height of the target, to lift or drop the bullet into the heart or head for a clean kill. To thank the ancestors for the kill. To never kill an animal without a reason.
For most of Tembo’s life, he had shot game for the pot. Now he was going after elephant for their tusks, rhinoceros for the big and small horn, like Sebastian Brigandshaw so many years ago when he was young.
* * *
For days they rode on through the open bush cutting the tusks from the elephant he shot with his .375 Winchester rifle. Always killing with the first shot.
Somewhere weeks after they left Ujiji, the rains broke and the rivers came down in a flood. They were caught between the two great lakes if Tembo had properly read the stars. They were alone in the wilderness. Not the first time in Tembo’s life. Cut off from the world. Comfortable in their isolation.
“We build huts and wait,” Tembo told the captain of the steamboat. “Be sure we all sleep under the nets. When the river in front of us goes down we will go on and find the great lake. There will still be elephant to shoot even if they don’t come down to the river to drink. By now there will be new waterholes all over the bush. The animals have dispersed far and wide. Be patient. In Africa, we always have to be patient.”
* * *
While Tembo was sitting out the main rains, Sir Henry Manderville, Harry Brigandshaw’s maternal grandfather and the father of Emily was reading a month old newspaper that he subscribed to in England. When he put down the paper to look at the rain pelting down outside his window, he was glad not to own any shares in the world’s stock markets. The price of Colonial Shipping shares were half what they had been at the peak of the market and the markets were still going down all around the world. Companies were laying off workers as people stopped buying their goods. Banks were calling in overdrafts. Bread lines were spreading across America where the financial situation was the worst in the world.
So far as Sir Henry could see in his mind’s eye that no longer focused on the lashing rain, the entire system of capitalism had collapsed making Karl Marx, the father of Communist economics, a hero. Only in Russia were people still in work even if many of them stood on the assembly lines doing nothing. In Russia, the money was spread thin but it was spread over everyone provided they did not argue with Stalin and the Russian state. Greed, Sir Henry told himself, the worst instinct of man had finally made the system of private capital bankrupt.
In America, it was only a matter of time before the banks collapsed under the weight of bad loans. Even the man who had been prudent and put his money safely in the bank was going to lose everything. People were going to start fighting over food. The civilised world was going to tear itself apart and there was nothing the government appeared able to do except tell their people not to panic which made it worse according to the paper Sir Henry had just read. It was not even any good trying to sell shares. There were no buyers. Only sellers.
Houses were going on the market at ever-reduced prices. Like shares used as collateral for loans from the bank that were now being sold by the banks for any price, they were also selling the houses ordinary folk had bought with a bank mortgage they could no longer keep paying. In his many years of life, Sir Henry had never read anything like it. Even during the terrible war in France, a man’s money had not disappeared through no fault of his own. Someone was going to pay for the greed of the few. Luckily the farm was solvent, the new crops in the ground, the rains good. Elephant Walk owed nothing to anyone he told himself until he suddenly went cold all over. Harry! Harry was dead. When the courts finally declared him dead the government would come calling for a slice of the estate. Death duty.
Ignoring the rain, Sir Henry went out of his small house in the family compound to talk to his daughter. If the British government added Elephant Walk to the rest of Harry’s estate, there would be a huge bill to pay. Somewhere he had read the top rate of death duty tax was 80 per cent, a punitive tax introduced by socialism to stop the wealth of England staying in a few hands. Even though they were nearly eight thousand miles away and self-governing, Southern Rhodesia was still a British Crown Colony. The British and Rhodesian estates of his grandson Harry would be lumped together for the purposes of British death duty.
* * *
Emily Brigandshaw saw her father come out in the rain and wondered what was going on. The old man never went out in the rain. Now Keppel Howland and Ralph Madgwick had gone from the farm having safely brought back her grandson Tinus, there was no one else living in her house. Madge and the girls had their own house in the compound. The children were all in school in Salisbury only coming home at weekends. Ralph Madgwick was only due back on Elephant Walk if he made up his mind to take the job.
When she opened the door for her soaking wet father to come in, he looked as if he had seen a ghost.
“Did Harry register the farm in his name?”
“Father, you are soaking wet. What’s the matter?”
“Death duties. They can take the farm. In whose name is the farm registered in Salisbury at the deeds office?”
“Probably no
one… I’ll get a towel and make you some coffee… Seb took the farm before they had such things as deeds,” she said over her shoulder. “The land was empty of people. He had built a house in the wilderness. Only much later did we put up the fences to stop the cattle going off into the bush. The fence became our boundary I suppose.”
“So we don’t own the farm?”
“Probably not. Legally. It never seemed to matter as we never borrowed money from the bank using the farm as security. Seb never liked owing anyone anything. Never liked being obliged.”
“So we are squatters in the legal sense?”
“I suppose so. What a terrible word.”
“Did Sebastian leave a will?”
“Don’t be silly. He never thought of things like that. Why he liked living in the bush away from civilisation. No one expected an elephant to kill him so young.”
“So legally what he had, you inherited as his wife.”
“I didn’t move out of the house if that’s what you mean. You must remember? At one stage he and Tinus owned half the farm each. Sebastian bought his share when Tinus went to live in the Cape before the Boer war. In those days people didn’t write things down. They trusted each other. They were big-game hunters and farmers. Not in business to cut each other’s throats.”
“When the rain stops you and I are going into the deeds office in Salisbury to straighten this out. You have to register Elephant Walk in your name, Emily. Quickly.”
“I think Madge owns some of it. Through Barend. I’ll have to ask her. What on earth does it matter? No one’s going to do anything with Elephant Walk. It’s ours. It belongs to the family like the huts by the river belong to the blacks. You don’t have to write down things like that in Africa. It would be far too complicated. People have to trust each other. And Tembo has not come back. They said he and the others were going to help some Arab for a while and then come home overland. I worry about him.”
“You worry about everyone. He’s also caught by the rains. Don’t worry about Tembo. If there’s anyone who knows what he’s doing its Tembo.”
“You’re shivering. I’m going to run a hot bath. Was the fire lit under the boiler?”
“Just give me the towel. I’m old but not an invalid… So you are sure the farm is not registered in Harry’s name?”
“Pretty positive. Now stop worrying. That’s my job in the family.”
* * *
Ralph Madgwick saw his old friend off at Salisbury station. In the parlance of his childhood, it was raining cats and dogs. Never before had Ralph seen so much rain fall out of the sky. Visibility was less than twenty yards. Ever since leaving Elephant Walk the heavens had opened.
Sir Henry Manderville had lent him the car which was falling to pieces from the bad road. That way he had to go back to the farm or have someone drive the car for him. The job of a learner assistant on Elephant Walk solved his problem of where to live but not what to do. Did he want to become a tobacco farmer in the middle of nowhere on his own? With Rebecca, it would have been perfect. On his own, at the age of twenty-nine, he was not so sure.
As the two old friends shook hands for the last time, they silently wondered when they would ever see each other again. Keppel was going back to be a famous journalist having finished writing up his journal of the journey while they stayed on Elephant Walk as a guest of Harry’s mother. The rain was pouring down their faces much as it had done in the trenches eleven years before. Eerily the sight of all the rain on his friend’s face brought back the feeling of danger.
“What’s this for Keppel? Two fivers.” Keppel had put the money in Ralph’s hand.
“You may be stuck in Salisbury in this rain. The rivers will have come up. I still have some of the money given me by Glen Hamilton and Robert St Clair. That’s why I just went to the bank. That’s for helping me, Ralph. For being my friend. I don’t know. I’m just getting sentimental. Even though we did not find Harry it was a worthwhile trip being with an old friend again for three months. You look after yourself, Ralph. Take the job or come back now with me to England. You can’t just lie down and die without her. I’ve never been in love like you, so I don’t know what it feels like. You have to go through the same things to understand… Well, there goes the whistle. What’s it to be, Ralph?”
“I need time to think.”
“Sometimes too much thought is dangerous for a man’s mental health.”
“I’m not going crackers. I don’t think I am. Goodbye, old friend. Hope the journal sells for a fortune. Hope Glen’s happy even though there was nothing big to report.”
“So long.”
Keppel got into the carriage of the train that was going to take him back to Beira and a ship to England. The heavy metal door clanged shut. The train began to jerk forward and then picked up speed. Keppel was leaning out of the open window for a moment. The rain quickly took him from view.
Ralph never felt more lonely in his life. The five-pound notes of the colony of Southern Rhodesia were still in his hand. The car that belonged to the farm was waiting. He would have to stay in a hotel. Keppel was right. The rivers would be flooding over the low-level bridges that crossed the dirt road in so many places between Salisbury and Mazoe. He would never get through in the car. Tears of frustration and loneliness finally mingled with the rain as Ralph turned away from the station platform to face the rest of his life… What did a man do when there was nothing he wanted out of life? Or nothing he was allowed to have which he wanted.
Walking back to the old car, Ralph wondered if back in America Rebecca was feeling just as miserable… Probably not, he thought. Other people got on with their lives. The old bastard had most likely found her a nice Jewish boy she was happy to marry and move forward to live a good life. If not now, then later, Rebecca would forget him.
Moving the car through the rain slowly, Ralph drove to Meikles Hotel. There was a space to park near the entrance. The old Zulu doorman was still there in his ceremonial skins, his big shield against the wall out of the rain. Ralph gave him a thin smile of recognition, glad his tears were hidden by the rain. With ten pounds, he could stay drunk for a very long time if he took the cheapest room at the back of the hotel. Somehow, he would get the car back. Somehow, he would make up his mind… The trick now was to stop himself from thinking.
With steam coming off his bush jacket, his bush hat in his left hand and his socks pulled up, Ralph sat in the hot humidity at the bar with the punkah going round and round over his head making not the slightest difference to the heat. Miraculously the beer was cold… Halfway down the pint, Ralph began to feel better. Six beers later he was drunk, his shirt dry, his mind back wallowing in the misery of losing Rebecca. After that, he couldn’t remember a thing until he woke up in a strange bed somewhere in the hotel.
Sheepishly, Ralph went down to look for the car. The car was gone from outside the entrance.
“We moved it for you, Mr Madgwick,” said the big Zulu. “You gave me the keys. Remember? Your car’s in the garage out of the rain. You won’t get back to the farm for quite a few days. Anything you want just ask… I’m sorry you didn’t find Boss Harry. He was a good man.”
Looking blank, Ralph turned around and went back into the bar he had been in the previous night. He was in good hands. Maybe he should take the job and come into town once a month for the rest of his life to get drunk like the rest of them and make some friends.
In the bar at ten o’clock in the morning, Ralph recognised two of the men from the previous night. All three of them drank beer silently until they felt better… Then they began to talk.
* * *
The rain eased off by late afternoon. Ralph could see across Cecil Square where earlier he had not been able to see across the road. Someone had told him in the bar that Cecil Square was named after the third Marquess of Salisbury whose family surname was Cecil. The marquess had been Prime Minister of England when the pioneer column hoisted the Union Jack over Fort Salisbury when Cecil John Rhodes proc
laimed the territory British on the 15 September 1890. The man at the bar had been full of information for a newcomer who was thinking of settling in the colony. Ralph remembered most of what the man said except the man’s name. The history lesson had been somewhere before the seventh beer the previous evening or before Ralph became drunk. Looking out over a square in a City named after a dead man, Ralph wondered if it could all really last. There was so few of them. The British Empire was everywhere. Right around the globe. An island barely the size of Southern Rhodesia trying to run the world in its own image.
“What the hell,” he told the pigeon in the jacaranda tree outside his window. “I’ve lost everything. What else can I lose?” The pigeon flew off over Cecil Square.
On Elephant Walk, Ralph had seen Sir Henry Manderville was in a bind. He had told Ralph he was too old at seventy-seven to stand in the lands and supervise the growing of the tobacco crop. He could still get around enough to look at what was going on in the lands, the curing barns and the grading shed but he needed someone else to be his eyes all day long, now Jim Bowman had gone off with his family to farm on his own.
Jim had been the tobacco manager. Jenny his wife had run the clinic on the farm. Ralph was told the two came from the same village in Lancashire. That the Crown land farm they had been allocated in virgin bush by the Southern Rhodesian government was the first land either of their families had owned in their history. Jim Bowman had proved to the Rhodesian government he knew how to grow tobacco after learning to farm on Elephant Walk. His bonuses from the tobacco crops he had managed were enough to grow a first small crop and put up six curing barns. Jim Bowman was now on his way to creating a dynasty. Ralph, if he took the job of learner assistant, would begin his own chance to found a dynasty on his own without having to rely on his family in England, which as Sir Henry said with a smile, was by the sound of it the only way to go… Ralph had told him earlier about his falling out with his Uncle Wallace but not the real reason. “Couldn’t stand working in an office,” had surfaced as Ralph’s explanation… There was a roundhouse in the family compound Sir Henry called a rondavel that would be his. Peregrine the ninth and Colonel Voss had previously lived in the house whoever they were… Ralph was constantly being bombarded with the names of strange places and strange people.
