The Brigandshaw Chronicles Box Set

by Peter Rimmer

  “Mummy’s just being silly,” said Harry to his sister. To her mild surprise and for the first time that day, Madge failed to ask why.

  “Come; it’s time for your books young man. Go and bring them out here.”

  “Can I listen, Mummy?” asked Madge.

  “Only if you don’t say a word. Not even one why.” The tinkling laughter of the children running back into the house for the books broke her dark spell, and even the floating fly she flicked from her tea failed to break her newfound mood of confidence. Harry was right. Everything would be better when the rains broke.

  By the time the sun went down, blood-reddening the sky high into the cumulus, the four men were exhausted. They had been in the lands before the sun was fully risen, with breakfast and lunch brought to them where they worked with the six black labourers who had come looking for work and lasted more than a week. Half the black men coming out of the bush for work found the white man’s idea of working from sunup to sundown unacceptable and went back into the bush to find a place by a river where they could build a hut, find a wife, and put her out to till the ground around the anthills. There was food in the river and food in the bush and a hut to sleep in away from the wild animals which were all they needed; working six days a week in the sun was no work for a man. When they left, most of them tried to steal something for their trouble and after three years building the houses, trying to plant a crop, trying to keep the cattle alive and away from tsetse and tick, even Tinus Oosthuizen admitted to himself that this part of Africa was tougher than anything he had found before. With a wry smile, he now knew why the country that looked so green was so underpopulated, even without taking the Matabele raiding parties into account. The only thing that thrived in that part of Africa was the game and the game brought the tsetse fly and the ticks.

  The small labour force went off to find their huts by the river and the white men trudged back with the three oxen that had been pulling the ploughs through the ground that was hard as iron, every weight they could think of balanced on top of the two-furrow plough to push the discs down into the grass-tangled soil. They had managed to finish one acre of badly ploughed land all day. When they reached the houses, they were relieved to see Alison had organised the herding of their thirty head of cattle into the kraal away from the night predators that hunted from the thick bush. The ritual each day was the same. Everyone headed for Tinus Oosthuizen’s house and the long veranda along the riverside of the house, stretching the length of the corridor that linked his two rondavels. In a tall mukwa tree hung three heavy canvas bags that caught the wind. The water seeping through the tightly woven canvas evaporated with the brushing of the wind and cooled the spring water in the bags and in the bags were bottles of quinine, the tonic water they believed counteracted the bite of the mosquito and malaria. Even the Afrikaner, Tinus, enjoyed the Englishman’s way of drinking gin. After three or four stiff ones the daily slab of venison was easier to chew.

  Gregory Shaw was not certain if he preferred his wife away in Salisbury. The twenty-one-year-old flirt he had met in London had no resemblance to the twenty-four-year-old who had found nothing to her pleasure other than being the centre of attention and making everyone around her miserable. Maybe the idea he had given her of a mansion on a great estate had been a little farfetched and his descriptions of life in Africa more vivid than truthful. Maybe he had constantly compared Francesca to Sing. But whichever one way you looked at it, the woman was a bitch. There was no fool like an old fool, he told himself when it was too late. Taking the large gin and tonic with grateful hands from Sebastian Brigandshaw he took a good long swig and sighed with pleasure… There were some things that never changed.

  “Now that tastes good,” he said, and they all laughed. Gregory Shaw said the same exact thing every night just as the sun fired arrows of light at the blood-red clouds that mirrored themselves a few hundred yards down in front of them in the surface of the Mazoe River. Within five minutes it was pitch dark and the only light came from the hissing kerosene lamp on the table. From outside they heard the first roar of the lion, and the horses, out in the kraal with the cattle, whinnied with fright.

  Sir Henry Manderville had never been happier in his life. He enjoyed the physical work and the challenge of doing something for himself. Inheriting title and wealth removed the incentive a man needed to do more than go through a pre-arranged life in the same house with the same routine. The daughter he loved as dearly as his late wife was three yards from his chair, his grandson and granddaughter were trying hard not to go to sleep on the couch he had helped to make with his own hands, his son-in-law was holding his pregnant daughter’s hand and the moths and diverse insects were being kept away by the tightly meshed wire screen. Outside the frogs and crickets screeched louder than the London Symphony Orchestra and the cattle lowing in the kraal had calmed the horses. The world of The Captain, of money and power, was as far away as the moon. The people he loved were safe in front of him and the gin and tonic tasted better than any gin and tonic he had drunk in his ancestral home.

  Sebastian Brigandshaw was so tired it was an effort to finish his second drink and when he went to bed, he knew he would not sleep and his mind would think round in circles. He was twenty-five years old and of the men on the veranda, he was the youngest by many years. His father-in-law was happy to work all day and think no further than what he was doing, knowing someone would give him food and drink for his labour. Gregory Shaw talked about a mansion but never how the money was to be made, and if he did have all the money he said he had in England, why hadn’t he brought a team of builders from Fort Salisbury and built his house as far away as possible and kept his destructive man-eating wife away from a happily married man?

  Tinus did what every Afrikaner did that he had come across, and that was breed children, letting Africa take care of their future. Practically he was brilliant, but when it came to the mathematics of their financial survival, he left it to his young friend.

  By the time the rains came in five to six weeks, Sebastian calculated they would have thirty tilled acres to plant, to feed three and a half families and have enough over to expand. Even if every black man out of the bush wished to work forever, it would be no good as there was no food or money to give them. Over and over again his mind calculated how they were going to survive on thirty acres. He must have tensed again as Emily squeezed his hand, and that brought him back to Fran and whether he should tell Gregory what his wife was up to. Sebastian had no previous experience of women but his primal instinct told him Fran Shaw was trouble, trouble for him, trouble for Em, trouble for everyone. She was bored, and a bored woman with too much sex appeal in the middle of the bush with four men was not something any of them would know how to handle. He just hoped her affair in Fort Salisbury with Jack Slater lasted, the same Jack Slater Jeremiah Shank had wanted to arrest him for abduction back in 1891. The kerosene lamp spluttered on the carcass of a moth that had crept in under the door. Maybe four stiff gins instead of three would let him sleep. Looking at his children fast asleep on the couch, he was doubly envious. Nothing, he told himself for the umpteenth time, came easily in life.

  Their whole world had shrunk to the light of the kerosene lamp. On the fly screen a giant shadow of a moth was dying in agony and outside it was pitch black. Alison, in light on one side of her face, handed them plates of cold meat and salad, the lettuce and tomatoes from the wire cage built by Henry Manderville to keep out the buck and wild pigs. They had stopped talking while they ate and all the children were fast asleep on mattresses around their feet. The distant days of being an English servant were so far away, she found it difficult to think of herself as the same person. Tinus was the kindest, the sweetest man on earth and all she had ever wanted to do in life was look after her own children. Harry had been a darling, but he was not Barend or Tinka. When she finished her food, she put down the plate on the low table and looked again at her sleeping children, the flow of love so strong she could feel it leavin
g her body.

  Tinus Oosthuizen chewed the end of his pipe he had forgotten to light and his mind was far back in the past, the past of his people trying to cut a life for themselves in Africa. For a while, he had thought of telling Sebastian but decided the man had enough worries chewing in his mind to add one that was far more serious than anything they had faced. The ivory hunter turned farmer and husband knew the signs better than anyone else in the room. They were vulnerable.

  The administrator of Rhodesia, Dr Jameson, had taken the police force out of the country to help the Uitlanders, the foreigners in Johannesburg, overthrow the Boer republic of Paul Kruger and put the vast gold reef back in the British Empire. Rhodesia, five years after occupation, was undefended, and the settlers like themselves were scattered on farms and small mines in pockets of twos and threes. He had caught the look of the black men asking for work, the gleam of avarice, the knowing smirk of contempt. With a story to keep the wild animals away from the houses, he planned a way to turn the buildings into a stockade. Content with the solution to his problem, he lit a match on the side of his rough leather boot and brought the flame to the bowl of his pipe, sending clouds of sweet-smelling tobacco up into the flare of the lamp. Over the light of the match, he smiled at his wife, the blue eyes showing gently through the flame.

  2

  November 1895

  With all his bravado of ten children, no one had thought to tell her the man was impotent and a girl of twenty-four had her needs. The bloody farm made her sick. Those two self-satisfied women clucked all day around their children and had no conversation other than babies past and present, all the time looking as if something was wrong with her. And when they looked at their husbands with puppy-dog eyes, it made her sick. The only man she fancied was Seb and never once had he given a sign that he noticed her. Jack Slater was no oil painting but at least he was a man, even if he had developed a high degree of conscience after his first long burst of sexual gratification. Generally, men made her sick, they were so easy to manipulate. She had first checked up the wealth in the Shaw family and by a devious route even found out the extent of Gregory’s private income. And how was she to know the trust would cut him off if he married a Catholic? Worse still, the stupid man had only found out himself after the event when they both cursed his bigoted great-grandfather who had made all the money and written the terms of the trust. Then the great estate in Africa came to the fore, and it had sounded fun and a girl with a bad reputation and no great future took what she could get. But stuck in the bush with sanctimonious morons and a husband who couldn’t even get it up was more than Fran Cotton could take. They could call her Mrs Shaw all they liked. Until the captain from India got it up, she was still Fran Cotton. And if she heard him call out Sing once more in his sleep she would ring his bloody neck. Touching Jack Slater’s back very slowly with the tip of her right index fingernail she woke him up and, before he could think of his conscience, she had him on top. They both forgot where they were in the dark and it was a full half minute after their mutual climax before they came back to earth.

  “You’re a damn good fuck, Jack Slater,” she said.

  “And you’re Greg’s wife.”

  “You weren’t worried about that a minute ago.” And then she laughed. It made her feel happy and in control when she laughed at them.

  “You’d better go home, Fran,” he said seriously. This time she had been in Salisbury for three days.

  “I know. You are becoming a bit of a bore. A good fuck but a bore. It really is such a shame.”

  “You’re a bitch, Fran.”

  “Just after copulation, it’s rude to call the girl a bitch. But you’re right, Jack. I am a bitch and you can’t say we haven’t had some fun, you sanctimonious hypocrite. Why do people always sound so righteous and act so wrong? Funny thing is, they even convince themselves they have atoned for their sins. Probably why my ancestors became such devout Catholics. Fuck all week and pray all Sunday. What a religion!”

  “Don’t blaspheme.”

  “There you go again, Jack Slater. Up on your high horse. Someday you should try and look at yourself through my eyes and then you won’t even dare talk about God. Now, do you want another quick fuck to keep you going for another week?”

  Ten minutes after the door slammed, Jack Slater wished he had taken up her offer.

  Doctor Leander Starr Jameson, physician, confidant of Cecil John Rhodes, destroyer of Lobengula, King of the Matabele, and Administrator of Rhodesia, was not amused. The new administration office was at the top of the main street they were calling Jameson Avenue and half an hour after Fran drove her horse and buggy up Second Street on her way back to Elephant Walk, the man in charge of keeping him informed reported the liaison.

  It was so hot Jameson’s mind was boiling from oppressive heat along with his plans for invading the Transvaal. Outside his open window, a gig scuttled down the street sending dust high into a sky heavy with cumulus that every day gave the promise of bursting rain.

  And now he was forced to think of Jack Slater who was going to be left in command when he rode for Johannesburg the following day. Far away came a roll of thunder which made him get up and look out of the window over the small Jacaranda trees he had planted on both sides of the dusty street. Far away beyond the new town he was trying to build, high up between the stacks of clouds, which were pitch black underneath and fluffy white at the top, forked lightning was flashing down the side of the thousand yard-high billows towards the dry earth. It was five in the afternoon and while he was standing with his back to the room, looking quizzically at the electric storm, a servant came to his office on bare and silent feet to light the lamps. When all four were finally lit Jameson turned round to face the problem of Jack Slater’s affair with a married woman and left the storm to rumble and crackle with forked fire far away behind his back over the rooftops of scattered houses that were the beginning of his new country. He was going to bring this new country the three C’s promised by Dr Livingstone, missionary and explorer of Africa.

  Civilisation to stop the tribes killing each other; Christianity and the only true God; and commerce, that would bring the tribes out of fluctuating poverty to where a man could plan his life better than one day at a time. If only the petty foibles of individuals would keep out of his way, the trivia that took up so much of his time. If the man was so obsessed by his sexual lust, why couldn’t he find a wife other than one that belonged to someone else? Captain Shaw may have left India under a cloud, but he was still a British officer and a gentleman. After thinking through the problem for nearly five minutes he was unable to find a solution. When it came to women, Dr Jameson was out of his depth. As he looked in brief despair out of the open window, a crack of lightning hit an old tree the builders had left for shade, splitting it in two, the crash of thunder booming instantly above his head. ‘If only it would rain,’ he said to himself for the umpteenth time that day.

  Fran had stopped for a pot of tea at the new Meikles Hotel and was sitting outside on the veranda that overlooked Third Street and the road back to the farm when the crack of lightning and crash of thunder frightened her out of her wits. Even the well-dressed man with the well-cut beard and silver-topped cane at the next table jumped. They both nervously laughed together at their mutual fright. The man stood up and bowed to her as if to introduce and reassure. As he did so another violent fork of lightning cut the dark sky, but this time the crash of thunder made them laugh together without the nervousness. The man was dapper and wore a diamond ring on the small finger of his left hand. He was alone, and the diamond was larger than anything Fran had seen before in her life. The flash of the big diamond was in surprising contrast to the tattoo of an anchor below the elbow of his left arm. The man had taken off his jacket in the desperate heat and was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that came to his elbows.

  “That should bring the rain,” he said in a cultured English accent that to Fran was somehow not quite right… Maybe the man was a foreig
ner, she told herself.

  “I hope so.”

  “Are you staying in town, Mrs…?”

  “Shaw. Yes. I will be. Probably. I had intended driving the buggy home.”

  “Is your home far, Mrs Shaw?”

  “Twenty miles. My husband will be worried about me, I’m sure.”

  “I’m sure. Shopping always takes longer than one thinks. The hotel will give you a room for the night and tomorrow morning we’ll make a pleasant drive into the country. Would you like me to inquire about a room? I have a little influence as Thomas Meikle kindly borrowed some of my money to build his hotel. Maybe you would join me for supper, Mrs Shaw? My name is Jeremiah Shank, at your service.”

  The dapper man had put on his jacket and bowed to Fran. Making sure the expression did not show on her face, Fran’s intuition told her the man was English, not foreign, and the accent of culture had been grafted on to an altogether different kind of vine. Which was why the man had quickly put on his jacket: the only thing he could not hide from his past was the anchor on his arm. Maybe this was what she was really looking for, she told herself, and with her best and most sensuous smile she put out her right gloved hand and accepted the invitation. If nothing else it would make that sanctimonious hypocrite Jack Slater feel jealous and Fran Shaw liked making men jealous. The little man smiling at her might have a crooked face but she was sure this one was genuinely wealthy and almost certainly a self-made man.

  The only weak link in Jeremiah Shank’s armoury was well-bred women. On his way to the bar, he had seen Fran Shaw sitting on her own and had changed course for the table just behind her back, inwardly grimacing at the idea of ordering a pot of tea. The crash of thunder had given him just the chance he was looking for. Timing had always been the key to his success, timing and waiting. Sometimes the prey was out of reach, like the two truckloads of ivory in the siding at Cape Town station, but the lack of opportunity to steal the ivory had sent him north earlier than he expected, and in Kimberley, on his way back to Rhodesia with the price of delivering Sebastian Brigandshaw to the police, he had stopped off to look at the large hole in the ground. He was curious to see how Cecil Rhodes had bought up so many claims and combined them to make one big profitable dig without the walls and squabbles in between. Barney Barnato, a Jewish cockney pugilist, had done the same thing. Barnato was rich and Rhodes was so rich he could afford to buy himself a country.