by Peter Rimmer
“Yes, I know.”
“The Germans you hunted with?”
“They are very confident they can destroy the British Empire. Create their own. They are jealous of you. And if they can’t have it themselves, they’ll destroy what you have built, and enjoy your destruction. People don’t like other people to be richer than themselves. Or other nations. The powerful stay rich or the new lords become powerful. Your Mr Darwin. The evolution of man. Both of us are products of the fittest surviving, or we would not be sitting here looking at seven rough diamonds I have been unable to sell… Old friend, it’s time I found a bed before the rest wake up.”
“I’ll show you the way.”
“It was my house, you know.”
“There’s a spare bed in my room for George when he’s back from school. You don’t snore, do you?”
“Not that I know.”
“The bed’s made up. Hell, it’s good to see you again.”
“Madge said we were going to marry each other when she turned sixteen.”
“Maybe you should have done.”
“Would it have worked?”
“Everything works to some extent… Take a tall glass of water for your hangover. There’s a jug in my room… Stop speculating. No one knows what’s going to happen in this life which is often just as well.”
Neither of them mentioned the diamonds the next day as both were feeling sorry for themselves, swearing they would never drink alcohol again in their lives, knowing they would both break the oath when the sun went down which they did. Robert thanked Barend for the use of his house for so many months and said it was now time to go back to England and teach small boys the vagaries of history. Emily made the perfunctory effort to change his mind but when she left in the trap for Salisbury to send her cable, Robert came along to book a passage for himself and Lucinda and use the return half of their tickets. Tembo, who had been at Elephant Walk most of his life, took the reins. Behind him, the passengers were quiet all the way to the new capital of Southern Rhodesia. Emily had finally told Barend she was sending a cable to his mother and sister.
“They’ll be coming back,” she said to him.
“We all have to start again somewhere. Just please tell my mother, when she does arrive, some things I can’t explain. Or more correctly, I don’t wish to explain.”
“Harry says he understood. So did my husband. We all lost part of ourselves when your father was hanged. Just don’t please take it out on your mother, Barend. We are your friends, not your enemies.”
When her brother left in the trap, Lucinda had gone off down to the river on her own, where she had a good cry and felt better. She even saw how silly it was to wallow in self-pity. Life for her in Africa was not meant to be. She was going home. That was it. The years ahead looked long and dreary but they still had to be lived. “I should be thankful for what I have,” she told herself, wiping her eyes. She thought of her home that had been her family’s for hundreds of years; she thought of her family. For the first time in months, she was homesick. When she came through the back gate into the stockade she was smiling. Three of the Egyptian geese waddled in behind her. She could smell meat cooking over the open fire. Having missed their breakfasts, Harry and Barend were cooking chops over a fire in a large metal drum that had been cut in half and partially covered with a wire mesh. If nothing else from Africa, she told herself, she would remember that smell for the rest of her life. She waved at them and crossed to the main house to look for Madge, not wanting to catch Barend looking at her again. Robert was right. It was time they went home before truly outstaying their welcome.
Across the grass, some hundred yards from the cooking chops, in his small cottage, Henry Manderville was drinking tea with Peregrine the Ninth. The last of the tobacco seedlings had been planted out in the lands, and Peregrine had been taken to look at the hapless plants, the six-inch leaves flopped over in the sun. To his surprise, some of yesterday’s plantings were perking up at the centre. He had made all the right noises about a splendid idea and a splendid opportunity, secretly thinking the baronet was wasting his time. Under his breath he had said, ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’, and wished him luck.
“You’d better stay here,” said Henry Manderville.
“What d’you mean, old chap?”
“What I said. You can’t roam around anymore. You’re too old.”
“I’m only seventy-one.”
“That’s my point. I’ll build you a rondavel next to the potting shed with an attached bathroom. If you’re very good I’ll put in a flushing toilet. Clary and Jeff can go out to pasture.”
“I haven’t a bean.”
“Oh yes, you have.”
There was a long silence while they slurped at their tea, something they would never have done in front of the ladies.
“Do you know? How long have you known?” asked Peregrine.
“Quite a few years. Your business is your business. When your father died they must have sent investigators to every English-speaking country. You’d been gone into the bush for months. I heard about it shopping in Salisbury. They had a missing persons poster up in the post office. Did you know your father was dead?”
“Yes. I read a piece of old newspaper. Strange coincidence. Harry had the paper wrapped around his glassware to stop it breaking when we went on our wild-goose chase… Do you think I should have gone home?”
“You’re probably better out of the way. Why you should stay here. I can keep an eye on you. You might write and tell them.”
“No, Henry. I’ve done that in a way. Gave Barend a letter to post to the family solicitors when he hears I’m dead, or after two years, whichever comes first… If I’m to stay here I’d better get some money from them,” he said as an afterthought.
“Don’t be silly.”
“I’ll leave a bit to Em in my will. You can keep the second letter for the solicitors… You think those two will get married?”
“No, I don’t. But you never know… So that’s settled.”
“Thank you, Sir Henry.”
“You are very welcome, Lord Pembridgemoor. You see, there’s method in my madness. Over our drinks at night, you can tell me your life story. What you got up to. Why you ran away. Should keep us amused for months.”
“Her name was Patricia.”
“Good. I only ever loved one woman. Emily’s mother, who died so young. Did she die, Perry?”
“I don’t know.”
“That makes it worse in some ways. Not knowing. What might have been.”
“What was that crash last night?”
“Didn’t you pass out on the mattress?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I fell over the bloody cat… And don’t laugh.”
The next day, while the old were putting their lives into perspective, Peregrine exhausted from all his years, the young were planning a future. Harry and Barend had taken with them shotguns for protection but more as an excuse to get out of the house and talk about what was on both their minds.
“If Father had not been killed I would have used my geology degree,” said Harry, when they were alone in the bush still wet with another short shower of rain. The main rains from Mozambique had yet to break. “I had the romantic idea as a kid to go off with a pick and shovel and find my fortune in them yonder hills. Why most prospectors find nothing. You have to use science. You have to have a method. Know where you are going for a reason. As Uncle Peregrine rightly told you, a railway worker found gem diamonds at Kolmanskop in 1908, and the Germans locked up the area under tight security, having worked out the gems had come down the Orange River, probably from the Kimberley pipe exploited by Cecil Rhodes three hundred odd miles from the mouth of the Orange. We even know the diamonds are three million years old. I keep up with geology. My prof sends me papers from Oxford he thinks will interest me. Everything that’s written about Africa. So I know as much as anyone about the diamonds on the coast of German South West Africa.”
> “I found my stones hundreds of miles to the north of the Orange.”
“That’s where science comes in. We are talking millions of years to shift the stones from the Kimberley pipe. Over millions of years, the rivers change their course.”
“But not by hundreds of miles.”
“Oh yes, they do. Especially through desert where they can wander around without impediment. There may have been a tributary to the Orange taking the diamonds so far north. You found them, Barend. You know where they were. No one dropped them on purpose. And your seven stones are diamonds. When we find you a legitimate buyer you will have a small fortune. You may not even want to farm. A ‘rich life’ in one of the world capitals.”
“There won’t be that much from seven stones.”
“There will be if we find the old river bed and dig up the rest of them.”
“You want to come and help me?”
“We can’t go now. Anyway, any find belongs to the German Kaiser. Maybe this war will change things to your advantage. If the Germans go to war with the British and lose, they will lose their few colonies to the British. Or even the South Africans. Generals Botha and Smuts have not joined the other Bittereinders as reported.”
“What do you know about that? I didn’t say anything.”
“But others have. They call it a chance for revenge. Botha, the South African Prime Minister, thinks he’s better off staying in the empire. He’s probably already got his eye on those German diamonds scattered up the Skeleton Coast. Let’s wait and see what happens. You can find your way back?”
“I cut my initials in a rock.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful. Now, all we got to do is find a bloody rock.”
“I can find it again. I’m a Boer. We don’t forget a place we have been to in the bush or a rock on one of the aridest coastlines in the world. I know exactly how many miles I was north of Cape Cross, where Diogo Cão first planted the cross of Christ. I also cut the Kunene two weeks after finding the diamonds. There was a sand dune I will never forget.”
“Sand dunes can come and go in a week.”
“Then I will find my initials on the rock if I have to inspect every one on the coast for miles.”
Part 3 – Family, War and Business
1
December 1913 to January 1914
The SS King Emperor docked at Southampton three days before Christmas. Even the seagulls were quiet, blanketed by falling snow on the docks, where workers were ready for the big ship. There was black slush in high ridges between wet roads. There was no one to meet them. No band playing. No coloured streamers from ship to shore, friends and relations at either end. There was no excitement.
“I don’t care it is snowing,” said Lucinda St Clair. “I don’t care no one came to take us home.”
She was dressed in a heavy black woollen skirt and matching top that had lain in the bottom of the trunk for seven months on Elephant Walk. The hood that came out from the back was tied under her chin with a green velvet ribbon, and only eyes, nose and chin, glowing with youth and health, were visible.
“I told them not to meet us,” said Robert St Clair. “Didn’t expect them to take us seriously. Looks like the all-stations train to Wareham and then change for Corfe Castle. Hope old Pringle is there. Might have to spend the night in the waiting room. He always has a good fire. Can’t walk the seven miles from the station in this weather. Oh well, the ship’s a day late so that explains it… So… That was it, sis. The excitement is over. Reality returns. Pity. I love England but I hate its weather. There goes the passenger gangplank. Come on. We have to wait for the trunks. Good thing about leaving from a British colony is not having to go through customs. Better snag a porter as soon as we can.”
“Africa seems far away.”
“It is, Cinda. It is. Hey! Look at that. Isn’t that young Barnaby? Eight months is a long time for a growing kid… Wondered why that man was waving. Come on. Oh, now that is nice. I just hate being abandoned. Maybe they’ll buy us lunch. I’m starving.”
“You think the others are inside?”
“Merlin would never stand on a cold dockside when he could sit around the fire. He’ll be in the waiting room. All we need now are the trunks and the hand luggage. He really has grown. Didn’t recognise my own brother.”
“Seems like a foot taller.”
“Can a boy grow that much in a year?… Look, there’s Mother standing in the doorway to the big warehouse. This is going to be the best Christmas ever. Do you remember which trunk we packed the presents?”
“There’s Father!”
“You’re right. There’s Father… You know, I sometimes expect one of his prize pigs to be here as well.”
“You’re silly! Oh, I’m so excited… And there’s Granny Forrester. They must have brought all the horses and the big old coach that was grandfather’s pride and joy. Oh, isn’t this all exciting? The best bit about going away is coming home.”
By the time they reached Purbeck Manor, the temperature had dropped six degrees and the fields were covered in a thick blanket of snow. The sturdy stone walls on either side of the lane were piled two feet high with it. The light was going. Inside the old coach, with the arms of St Clair emblazoned on both sides, it was warm from the bodies of the family pressed together. Twice Merlin had swapped with the old coachman who drove the four horses, Jug Ears, named by Barnaby when a small boy, the lead horse on the right. Wet from melted snow, the man was crammed into the coach and covered in a thick blanket to get his blood circulating again. As a boy, the coachman had been Lord St Clair’s constant companion, fishing the river and hunting the fields for hare and rabbits. Lord St Clair had each time given him a nip of brandy from his silver hip flask.
“Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey,” the coachman had said both times.
“Well, yes.”
“Them old cannons were no good in a freeze. Cannonballs dropped right through the barrel. Them was good days in navy.”
Granny Forrester thought it quite unnecessary to satirize the brass monkey’s balls, balls that had nothing to do with primates. Old Potts would have had a retort and she smiled to herself at his memory. She missed him… She felt the iron wheels crush the gravel driveway through the snow and knew she was home. She wondered why Lucinda and Robert had been so quiet after the first excitement was over. They all had things to think about, things the others did not know about. Only she would be thinking of Potts. She’d get it out of them, all this Africa, in the days to come, a glad change from constantly thinking back on her past. She counted up to seven on her way to ten before her son-in-law said, as he always said when coming home, ‘well, here we are’. As if there was anywhere else in the world. Barnaby helped her out of the coach, for which she was grateful. Climbing around without a thought was long past in her life.
Robert had been first off the coach on the side away from the house.
“It’s so wonderful to be home… Ah, there’s old James… Familiar faces. Come on, everyone. Out you get. I’m starving.”
“There’s been a sheep on the spit since lunchtime,” said his mother.
“I didn’t have lunch. Never mind. A good plate of roast mutton will suffice. It’s going to be a white Christmas. When did Dorset last have a white Christmas?… Come on, everybody.”
“How d’you find the cold?” asked Merlin.
“I don’t know. I can’t feel a thing. I’ll thaw myself out in front of the fire. Thanks for meeting us, Merlin. What time did you leave this morning?”
“With the first crow of the cock. It was still pitch dark. We all need a stiff drink… Barnaby, come and help us rub down the horses. This time you are let off the hook, Robert. I rather think I would have liked it here years ago when there were plenty of servants.”
“You drove the team well.”
“It’s fun, up high alone on the box in the snow. I have missed that chance. There are always compensations, according to Granny Forrester.”
&
nbsp; The rest of them filed through the small door to the left in the massive Gothic front door, the whole of which was rarely opened, the central point of the arch rising twenty feet above their heads. Inside it was all gloom. None of the gaslights was aflame. Robert wondered if the family finances had sunk to a new low. Even last year they would have stopped for lunch on the way from Southampton. They must be all near to fainting from hunger having left the Manor before breakfast. The entrance hall was damp and cold, and James, another old servant too old to find a paying job, was just visible in the gloom. The hall, with high ceilings and the stone walls, hand cut centuries before, was cold and damp to the touch. Following his mother and father, Robert went through the doorway to the left of the hall into the big sitting room.
The warmth of the fires at either end of the long room enfolded Robert and Lucinda in the warm history of their family. Lucinda gave a small cry of pleasure. The log fires in the huge grates were banked high and the leaping flames bathed the room in a warm yellow glow. All the heavy curtains had been drawn and the drinks trolley near one of the fires was aglow with twinkling crystal glasses. In the centre of the room, with its back to the long inside wall, there was something neither Lucinda nor Robert had seen before; a dark shape that tapered up to the ceiling.
“Before we have a drink to welcome you home,” said Lord St Clair positioning himself between Robert and what looked to Lucinda like an old tree, “we are going to sing a Christmas carol. The old house is as quiet as a mouse and I wanted us to sing ‘Silent Night’, even if it was first sung in German.”
To Lucinda, the old tree, if it was a tree, had an inner life of its own, as if something was trying to shine. It was pitch dark in the middle away from the fires that burnt at each end of the long room. Holding hands, the family stood just inside the closed door and sang. Even Granny Forrester felt tears falling down her face.