by Peter Rimmer
“Someone like Sallie Barker would never want to marry and live in the bush surrounded by savages. They want culture, comfort, and tea parties three times a week with their society friends.”
“Then marry your mistress. Marry Lily White if that is her real name.”
“Oh, Harry, do you think it might not be?”
“Bloody certain if you ask me.”
He had spoken softly but not softly enough. The couple at the end of the bar got up and left.
“Why do people who listen to other people’s conversations get so upset when they hear something they don’t want to hear?” asked Harry.
“Maybe it serves them right… Steward. Would you be kind enough to make two more Pimm’s exactly the same? The last time was perfect. And I rather think the lady in the lounge chair at the pool wants something… Ah, I see the problem. She can’t get up from the canvas bed on her own. Make amends for swearing in public, Harry, and go and help the old dear… No. We’re all right. She’s made it. All the arm waving was to change her point of balance. She’s up and leaving. Her hearing must be perfect. Did you see that terrible look she gave you? You could almost hear her say ‘damn colonials’.”
Until he met Mrs Barker, the idea of marrying for money had never entered Robert St Clair’s head. Mrs Barker was obsessed with the Honourable Robert St Clair, son of Lord St Clair whose title and lands went back into medieval history, and the romance of chivalry that even Robert’s second-class degree in history had warned him was anything but chivalrous. When it came to men with power they usually behaved like thugs when anyone challenged them. Nothing really changed through history, only the weapons of destruction. But Robert was not going to destroy the images in Mrs Barker’s head. If what he had by the luck of birth was so important, maybe he could sell it to another Mrs Barker whose family was rich, very rich… The idea of teaching small boys history as it was written paled at the potential of being a rich girl’s husband.
They had come ashore and been driven in open carriages to the local hotel, the horses seeming even older than the carriages. An avenue of fluted brass poles held up a yellow awning over a worn strip of red carpet that took them through the hotel’s entrance to a lounge where overhead fans were slowly trying to stir the air. The fans were powered by three small boys with little red caps on their heads. Nowhere had Robert been able to see the name of the hotel to tell his parents where he had been.
“You want to marry a rich girl, Robert?” whispered Sallie when her mother went off to powder her nose in the cloakroom. “I don’t have a bean and neither does Mother. The truth is father went bankrupt and drowned himself in the Thames. It was so silly. I’d have loved him rich or poor. He was my father. Just don’t take any notice of Mother. She has an obsession that if I don’t marry a rich man, both of us are going to end up in the poor house.”
They waited silently for her mother to return.
Sallie knew for herself she was far too young to settle down with a husband to breed children. She wanted to have some fun before the drudgery began. Before her father’s company had got into trouble, being rich had never made her mother happy. There had to be more to life than coming to a full stop at the altar.
She noticed when her mother finally came back, that Robert St Clair ordered tea and not the best bottle of champagne in the hotel.
Having finished her cup of tea, Sallie quickly got up to take a walk through the hotel gardens. The flowers were beautiful and strong with scent. Most of them she had never seen before. The Honourable Robert St Clair had not even half risen from his seat when she had left.
When she got back her mother was sitting on her own. When the waiter presented the bill, Mrs Barker paid for the tea.
“I think we shall return to the ship, my dear,” said Mrs Barker.
“I think we should, Mother.”
“This is not going to work.”
“No, Mother.”
“You had best have a good time as this may be your last chance.”
4
May to June 1907
In the cold light of dawn, the rising sun silhouetted Table Mountain as the SS King Emperor steamed slowly into Table Bay. Most of the passengers were at the rails. The ship had anchored in the bay at midnight, Captain Hosey waiting for the dawn to dock. There was no wind and only small pockets of dark cloud. Black-backed gulls twisted and screamed in flight behind the stern where the third-class passengers craned their necks for a view of Cape Town and the houses spreading up the lower slopes of the mountain. At the bow of the ship Harry shivered, all his thoughts with his dead father. He had forgotten how cold the Cape winters could be in the dawn and had left his jacket in his cabin. To his surprise, Robert had followed him up on deck to see Cape Town for the first time.
“Sir Francis Drake called it ‘the fairest Cape in all the world’ in his journals,” said Harry. “Luckily there’s no wind. Others have called it ‘The Cape of Storms’. Our train leaves at three o’clock this afternoon. Are you packed, Robert?”
“Ready to go.”
Mrs Barker watched the shore reach out to her with a deep fear. After she had paid the second purser for their incidentals there was one hundred and ten pounds, four shillings and sixpence left in her handbag, all the money they had in the world. She would have to take a cab straight to the relations she had never met, Ernest Gilchrist’s letter of introduction being the only thing left of value. Like all small communities, the first-class passengers had found out her pecuniary situation and shunned her. No one liked a poor relation.
When the liner was halfway across the bay, the sky behind the flat mountain began to glow red. Mrs Barker shivered with fear.
Sallie, silently standing next to her, saw the shudder go through her mother’s body and thought it the shiver of excitement.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said.
Jack watched Mrs Barker from a safe distance and pondered the cruelty of life. He knew her predicament. After Las Palmas, everyone had still been polite to the mother and daughter, but there had been no thought of intimacy. There he was, a young, educated man with a large built-up store of energy and too much money. And Mrs Barker, penniless.
Robert had largely shunned the girl soon after he had told Jack in confidence, ‘the girl hasn’t a penny’, and Jack wondered how many other people Robert had taken into his confidence. For Jack, the dark brown eyes that had reached him in the park were just another pair of dark brown eyes in a pretty face. And anyway, he was not looking for a wife, even if he did feel sorry for the girl. He hoped the relations in Cape Town would be kind to them.
Having found Harry Brigandshaw on the boat, he had decided to leave Albert Pringle in Cape Town with Lily White. He and Harry had become easy friends, neither wanting more than good company from the other. They were wealthy young men in their own rights, he suspected. Neither of them talked about money. People with money didn’t have to. Whether Harry took him hunting it didn’t matter. The man knew everyone in Rhodesia.
“Oh, there are plenty of white hunters making a living. When we get to Elephant Walk we’ll work it out from there.”
“I need to buy some guns in Cape Town.”
“I rather think Elephant Walk has the best collection of hunting guns in Africa. Not only my father’s guns but Uncle Tinus’s. His widow lives on the farm with her children. The British confiscated his farm in the Cape for going out with the Cape rebels but they do not know my father gave Aunt Alison half the value of his own shares in African Shipping, not Colonial Shipping; there’s a long story there too. Tinus had sold his own shares to buy the Cape farm, to go back to his Boer roots. Anyway, you can borrow whatever you need for your safari.”
“Do you know how they work?”
“All of them,” Harry had said soon after leaving Las Palmas.
The sun began to rise up behind the mountain as the harbour tugs took control of the SS King Emperor and began to shepherd her into the dock.
He would tell Lily White
to give Mrs Barker the address of the small Cape cottage the shipping line had found for her in central Cape Town. He would give Mrs Barker support if she needed it. Lily could wire the post office in Salisbury. It was the least he could do for Ernest Gilchrist. Of course, the girl should have married Ernest and stayed in England, but the obvious was rarely so apparent to those most involved. Lily would look after them.
Coming out of his hiding place he walked down the deck to join Harry and Robert at the rail.
“You’ll catch a cold,” he said to Harry.
“Good morning, Jack… Beautiful sight. I always get up in time to watch the ship come into Table Bay. Just forgot how cold it is in May. The first thing you need to do is go to the railway station to book a sleeper on the three o’clock. If there isn’t room you’ll have to come up later. Takes us two and a half days to get to Salisbury. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going below to put on a sweater… They do look rather forlorn.” Harry had followed Jack’s eyes to Sallie and Mrs Barker. “Is there anything we can do?”
“I’m going to give them Lily’s address in Cape Town.”
“That makes me feel happier.”
Lily White was looking forward to the rest of her life. She’d had a good trip. Not all the second-class passengers were new immigrants. Many were people who lived in the mining camp of Johannesburg, surrounded by the shafts and mine dumps of the gold mines that had survived the Boer War without being blown up by the retreating Boers. A good-looking woman like Lily, with the perfect cleavage, had found no difficulty in talking to whichever male she wished. And with Albert as a chaperone, she had not even had to pay a price for the information.
By the time Lily watched the thick ropes being thrown ashore to attach to the iron bollards that dotted Quay Four, she knew as much about Johannesburg as anyone who had not been to the Rand. She could even visualise Commissioner Street and its buildings. After careful planning on a large piece of paper, she knew how large an establishment she could afford with the money she held in Consols, accumulated from the men who had come and gone in her life. She would give Jack Merryweather two weeks to lose himself in the interior, and then she would cut loose, with or without Albert Pringle, who had received a message from his gentleman to say Albert would be staying in Cape Town. There had been no other explanation for the change of plan but people like Jack Merryweather did not have to give reasons. And one day she was going to be so rich that she would not have to reason with anyone.
Albert rounded up the luggage while the passengers milled around in a vast shed that housed the local officials, some of whom had come aboard with the pilot boat to clear everyone for landing, long before the passengers came ashore. Being a British colony, there were no formalities for British citizens. All they were waiting for was the luggage that was being lifted down the gangplanks into the shed by black porters.
Standing alone next to her trunk she was surprised to see Jack detach himself from two young men, cross to a middle-aged woman and a pretty girl with black ringlets down the side of her face and signal Lily to join them.
“Lily, this is Mrs Barker and her daughter Sallie. I have given them your new address. Should either of them need anything you are to send a telegram to this address in Rhodesia. I will be in contact with Elephant Walk every two or three weeks. Miss White is my private secretary,” he said to Mrs Barker, who gave Jack a knowing look and Lily one that said ‘private secretary my foot’.
“Miss White, please meet Mrs Barker and Miss Barker… Ah, there’s my man Pringle…
Pringle! Have you got everything? My trunks are to be sent straight to the railway station. The train leaves at three o’clock this afternoon. I will see you both when I come back from safari. For now, Pringle, please see Mrs Barker into a cab with her luggage. They have relations in the Cape, I think. My friends over there are going to show me Cape Town before we take the train. Lily, here is a draft on my London bank which will cover all your expenses. It is enough for three months. Don’t spend it all at once.”
For a moment, Lily thought Jack was going to give her a kiss. She looked at the draft for a thousand pounds made out to herself. With the rent she would recover by taking the cottage for only a month, Jack Merryweather would have furnished her establishment.
When everyone had gone, she turned to Albert Pringle.
“Bert, my boy. That’s the kind of looks I want you to find. Ten like that and we’ll be rich. I wonder why Jack gave them our address?… And is he going to get a surprise when he comes home from his hunting and finds himself alone! I wonder who he’ll miss more? You or me?”
“He can always find another servant.”
“And that goes for a mistress. No one is indispensable. A year from now he’ll have to search his memory to find my name. He’ll remember the tits but not my name. So are you with me, Albert Pringle?”
“For better, and probably for worse. What can a man do if he doesn’t take a chance?”
Half an hour later, Albert put the shilling in his pocket, more convinced than ever not to stay a servant for the rest of his life. The cab drove off with the two women inside, blankets wrapped around their knees and feet, the roof and side of the carriage closed against the cold.
“You understand where to go?” he had said to the cabbie, talking up to him on his high seat.
“Yes, baas.”
“You are sure?”
“Yes, baas. Constantia Manor.”
“Do you know the rest of the address?”
“Constantia Manor, baas.” The reins had been shaken over the rump of an old horse that had first defecated before starting the journey. The cabbie sneaked a smile at Albert, satisfied with his horse.
The shilling had come to him from Mrs Barker’s gloved hand without a word. The trunks that he had helped load on the back, disappeared from view around the corner of a warehouse, the iron wheels of the cab grating the iron railway lines that ran the length of Quay Four. The girl had smiled at him. She was very pretty.
Out of the docks, the horse picked up speed. The mountain was high on the right of them, the slopes rising to the foot of the steep mountain cliffs.
“Do we have enough money to go on to India?” asked Sallie.
“No, dear.”
“Should we not first stay in a hotel and send our cousins a message, asking them to call?”
“We cannot afford a hotel. Where is this driver taking us? We are now going out of the town.”
“Mr Pringle asked him twice if he knew the way.” There were butterflies in her stomach with the thought of imposing themselves on strangers even if they were cousins.
“How are we related to Mr and Mrs Flugelhorne?” she asked her mother.
“Mrs Flugelhorne is Mrs Gilchrist’s cousin.”
“But we are related to Ernest’s father.”
“Then we are all cousins by marriage. What does it matter? Ernest has written to them and I have another letter from him in my handbag! Anyway, they are English.”
“With the name Flugelhorne?”
“Then Mrs Flugelhorne is English.”
After ten more minutes the trotting horse drew them into the countryside and they could see a line of mountains, peak after peak, going away from the back of Table Mountain. Sallie watched her mother’s clenched fists resting on the blanket that covered their knees. After five more minutes, Mrs Barker spoke, still looking out of the window away from Sallie.
“We must rely on the driver. The savages can do nothing to us. This is a British colony. We must remain composed and sure of ourselves. It is the privilege of being English… Why men have to bankrupt their businesses I have no idea. Your father had no right to leave us penniless.”
“Why don’t we ask the driver if he knows where he is going?” asked Sallie.
“That would only tell him we are lost.”
“But we are.”
“But he doesn’t know that. And Sallie, sit up straight. You are rounding your shoulders. Rounded shoulders are so u
nattractive.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Half an hour later when their panic had reached its peak, they turned towards a long, oak-tree lined driveway towards two pillars that rose twenty feet in the air and supported a wrought iron sign, which Mrs Barker leaned out of the cab window to read.
“Constantia Manor,” she said with deep satisfaction as she sat back. “My dear, not only are they cousins, they are rich.”
On either side through the tall, leafless oak trees, row after row of cultivated vines ran off over fields, the lines coming to a point they were so far away, the vines leafless and perfectly pruned. There were no weeds between the rows of trellises joined by a stiff wire. A Cape Dutch house came into view, and the cabbie swung their vehicle up onto the drive that ran the length of the barn-like building, with its gabled front and many latticed windows. All around the house were flowers, and at one end, an aviary full of singing birds, some gripping the side wire with their small claws. Further along there were duck ponds and big trees, and lawns perfectly cut, dark green at the beginning of winter.
“It’s so beautiful,” said Sallie. “Look, those must be stables. Oh, Mother, I hope they like us.”