by Peter Rimmer
“You are so sweet to me,” she said, squeezing out the last of her crocodile tears. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you. Just get your man to show me my bedroom and Lily will get some nice sleep.”
“Won’t you have some food first? A drink maybe?”
“Maybe just a little whisky.”
“Bill, give us both a whisky and soda.”
“Do you call your man by his first name?” she said sharply.
“It may not be done in England. But here with the Africans all around it is different. Anyway, Bill and his wife Molly are more my friends. I don’t know what I would do without them. Mostly I work fourteen hours a day.”
“I see,” said Lily, making it quite clear she did not see at all.
Bill Hardcastle would have preferred to put rat poison in her drink than whisky. When he finally got to bed having half carried a drunk fat woman to her room he took hold of his wife’s hand.
“We just brought a big, big problem into the house.”
“I saw you arrive. Watching through the window. Who is she?”
“God knows.”
“When is she going?”
“Only when she is kicked out. Sallie owes her for something.”
“Then she’ll have to pay. You can’t get and not give. Even if the giving is rather more than you got. God works in mysterious ways. Nothing comes free. The more you ’ave, the more you pay. Now go to sleep, Bill Hardcastle. The bitch won’t get the better of your Molly. You mark my words.”
Two doors down the corridor, Lily White was drifting into sleep with a smile on her face. She was home and who would have thought it. She’d never have to lift a finger. She let out a giggling laugh and turned her face into the pillow. To hell with men keeping her. This was better.
Tina Pringle returned home to Parktown Ridge soon after Lily fell asleep. It was late, and the man she was with let her out of the car and drove off. Albert was waiting up for her.
“Do you know what time it is?” he shouted at her after he answered a knock at the front door. “And who was that?”
“It’s one o’clock and I don’t know ’is name. Butch, or something. Who cares? Give us a drink, luv.”
“You know, you’ve only just turned seventeen.”
“I had my first fuck when I was thirteen. And ’e was lovely. Stop trying to be a dad. You’s my brother. And the sooner you fuck that Sallie Barker the better for both of you. What ’appened to the whale?”
“Sallie took her home.”
“Poor Sallie… That one’s trouble.”
“She started the first business for us.”
“You sold it, didn’t you? All got paid out according. You don’t owe that fat old fart a farthing… Don’t stand there like that, Albert Pringle. Get me a drink. I’ve something to tell you. Benny Lightfoot is taking me on a safari.”
“The American?”
“Could be.”
“He’s fifty, for Christ’s sake.”
“Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain, brother Albert.”
“He slunk off when he found out I was your brother. The bloody man was swiping my drinks like he owned the place.”
“He’s rich. Very rich. And divorced. Blimey, if he kicks the bucket early on in the piece, I’ll be rich and single.”
“How do you think he’s going to marry you?”
“I ’ave my ways. Besides, he’s besotted.”
“I’m going to send you back to England.”
“Don’t be daft. Poor old Barnaby. Wouldn’t touch him with a bargepole. Benny’s rich. Barnaby’s the last of the litter and old Lord St Clair as poor as a church mouse. Bugger his title. It’s money what counts. Anyway, there’s a war on over there… You going to ’ave a drink with me, Albert darlin’?”
“You’re the bloody end.”
“I know. But it’s nice.”
“Where are you going on safari?”
“Rhodesia. That’s north of the Limpopo River.”
“I know where it is. Met a bloke on the first boat we came out on. Farms in Rhodesia. Think his father was a white hunter.”
“What’s a white hunter?”
“The same as a black hunter. But he’s got a white skin.”
“You are daft. What’s this bloke’s name? Is ’e nice? Maybe we’ll pay him a visit.”
“Harry Brigandshaw was up at Oxford with Robert St Clair.”
“Then we’re almost relations… Is ’e rich?”
“Family controls Colonial Shipping among other things. They own the ship we came out on. They are a very big shipping company.”
“Then I will pay him a visit won’t I? And about Robert’s age, you say. Is he good-looking?”
“All the girls thought so but he didn’t take up with anyone on the boat.”
“Then he’s fussy. Good. Waiting for Tina.”
“What about Benny Lightfoot?” said Albert sarcastically.
“What about ’im? We women use men, Albert. Or they do when they look like me. Ruled by their cocks they are. Never use their brains. That was a nice drop of Scotch, Bert. Now I’m going to bed. It’s been a bloody hard day.”
“Looked like it. Night, Tina. Sleep well. Don’t let the bedbugs bite… Just keep your own head screwed on right… When did he ask you to go to Rhodesia?”
“Over dinner.”
“But he left before you.”
“Oh, Albert. You should know by now. I always end up with the one with the most money.”
“And who was Butch?”
“One of his flunkies.”
In Flanders, the shelling stopped an hour before dawn. The Pringles, Sallie Barker and Jack Merryweather’s former mistress were still asleep in their beds. Jack had changed his trousers and cleaned himself with the muddy water in the trench, vowing never again to let his bowels get the better of him. They waited fifteen minutes before the order came to stand to alert on the fire-steps of the reserve trench. Twice before Robert explained to him, Jerry had given them a break and then plastered them when they were standing out of the dugouts waiting to repel an attack. Robert had made no mention of the fouled trousers. With the rain drizzling into the mud and the light showing Jack the mangled devastation, the German attack began on the front line up ahead. Vickers machine guns, perfectly enfiladed, fired without stopping.
“Poor bloody Jerry isn’t going to see this Christmas,” said Robert. “Surely nothing can live under that crossfire.”
“Then why do they do it?”
“Some have made it personal and want their own back. Some are scared of being cowards. Some are more frightened of being shot for running away. Others want to die quickly. Most just do what they’re bloody told to do.” They stood in the line of men along the trench for another half an hour… “The German attack is faltering. The British Army won’t need us to fight today.”
“Why do you fight, Robert?” asked Jack.
“Don’t even ask such a stupid bloody question. I’m here, am I not? Isn’t that enough? What else can they want? Whenever England has gone to war the St Clairs have answered the call. Habit. Force of habit. Self-preservation. Keeping what little is mine. How would you like Fritz ordering you around in your own country? After a while you accept growing old is not all it’s cracked up to be. We’re here because someone told someone to tell the man that told you to do your duty. We’re old men in this war. The kids are easier. They do what they are doing without question. Come on. It’s over. We’ll have one tot of what’s left of your brandy and try and get some sleep. That bugle was the stand-down, if they didn’t teach you that at OCTU. The duckboards are out of the water for the moment. Most nights we sleep in the mud and water. The strangest thing of all is you get used to it. Even the noise.”
“I wonder if their souls went to heaven?”
“Whose?”
“The dead Germans. The ones just killed. Our men from the shelling.”
Without replying Robert pushed open the heavy blankets, wet and d
irty grey, that hung over the entrance to the dugout. The fact that both sides prayed to the same God was a great puzzle to him. Victory for one side was death for the other. And both sides thought God was on their side. Both sides thought they were in the right.
“I don’t know,” Robert answered at last. “At first I thought so. Now not so sure. Damn. My mug fell in the mud. Must have kicked it over when Jerry started his hate.”
Further to the northwest, on the other side of Mons, Captain Merlin St Clair, in command of B Company, Dorset Fusiliers, was inspecting the five machine guns that fell under his command. Not one had jammed in the German attack. The barrels of the guns were still too hot to touch. The only point he could see on the positive side of the slaughter, with Germans tangled in the wire and spread in the mud all the way back to the German front line, was his own preservation and that of his men, coupled with the steady rise in the value of his Vickers-Armstrong stocks that he had bought before the war and were now worth ten times what he had paid for them. If he could survive the war he would be a rich man. Merlin was a realist. Promoted to captain after three months in Flanders, he was the only one left of his intake. He thought the chances of survival were minimal. But there was always a chance. There always had to be a chance or no one would go on at anything.
Neither Robert nor Merlin had any idea they were fighting within ten miles of each other. After three months Merlin had learnt not to think of anything other than the present moment. Lighting a cigarette well below the line of the parapet, he walked on down the trench to the next gun. Even though his gunners were good, he always got behind each gun to check exactly their line of fire. If he was going to survive his piece of the war, he was not going to take any chances. In many ways, it was part of his superstition. If he sat behind every gun before and after battle they would enfilade where they were meant to, and the mechanism wouldn’t jam. The men relied on him. They were part of his superstition. They liked the comfort of the captain with his arse in the mud, sighting the guns. All of them knew it would make no difference to an incoming German shell, but it gave them something to hold onto. The fact they knew his first name was Merlin added to the men’s superstition. If the Germans killed the captain they were all dead. If Merlin the magician survived the war, they would all go home with him. The ritual to the men was as essential as food.
The East Surrey Regiment moved up the communication trenches to the front line on Christmas Eve. For Jack Merryweather, the comfort of his home in Baker Street might as well have been on the other side of the moon. Allocated to his platoon on the second day of action, he had not since spoken to Robert St Clair except in passing. Negative thoughts expressed in earshot of the men were tantamount to treason. Officers set an example. They never grumbled. They never questioned an order. They kept to themselves until they were needed. Fraternising with soldiers was the quickest way to destroy an army, or so a pompous brigadier had told them during Jack’s course at Aldershot. What it all meant in the din of battle he was not sure. All he could do was keep his platoon as comfortable as possible in appalling conditions and hope he did not shit his pants in front of them the first time he led them over the top.
In the days since arriving in the reserve trench, they had been shelling every day and every day British shells whistled overhead searching for the German trenches. With the tangled wire and mud between them, the two sides could not get at each other’s throats. It was an impasse. The Germans could not get to the coast or Paris and the Allies could not push them back into Prussia. As Jack dropped into the front-line trench for the first time he was convinced the war would go on forever.
During the night it was bitterly cold, the air gripped by the black frost which froze the mud. Men stamped all night, too cold to sleep wrapped in their greatcoats. At midnight, Jack wished the soldiers on either side of him a merry Christmas. He could not see them in the dark, only hear their stamping feet on the duckboards, now frozen to the mud and grisly remains of dead men blown to pieces in an earlier hate. Disembodied voices wished him back a merry Christmas. Then the colonel walked the trench, wishing everyone a merry Christmas, giving each man a small parcel with the compliments of the King. Next to the colonel, his adjutant’s sergeant carried a sack of the parcels. Inside each parcel was a tin of biscuits with the faces of the King and Queen on the lid.
Since midnight, no one had heard a shot fired from the German trenches. The British guns were silent. The bitterly cold night gripped friend and foe, separated by less than two hundred yards of no man’s land. Very lights went up from both sides to make sure nothing was really happening. All through the night Jack stamped his feet and flapped his arms over his chest, making no impression with all the clothes he was wearing. The silence of the night was worse than the noise. A premonition of death. No one spoke. Just the occasional flare fired high into the dark cold night, cloudless in parts, stars visible through holes in heaven. Leaning against the back wall of the trench, Jack found himself dreaming, asleep on his feet. When he woke there was daylight enough to see the soldiers on either side of him. Robert St Clair was shaking his shoulder and smiling at him, the smile just visible in the dawn.
“Merry Christmas, Jack.”
“Same to you, Robert. Must have dozed off. Why’s it so quiet still?”
“It’s Christmas. We are all Christians in this fight. Maybe God is working for both sides at the same time on Jesus’s birthday.”
They both heard someone down the trench yell ‘Happy Christmas, Fritz’, at the top of his voice. From the other side, a German boy shouted ‘Happy Christmas, Tommy’. Then everyone was shouting back and forth, and men began to climb out of the trenches without their rifles.
“What the hell do we do?” whispered Robert.
“Let’s have a look.”
Jack climbed up the fire-step and looked out into the dawn. Germans were climbing up over the trenches. Some had met the British soldiers in the middle and were exchanging cigarettes and food. Some of the biscuit tins went across to the German side. Someone threw out a football and it bounced on the frozen surface. Below the fire-step, Robert pulled at the bottom of Jack’s greatcoat.
“What are they doing?” he asked.
“At the moment, some of them are playing football. If someone doesn’t do something quickly, this war is over.”
“Are there any officers out there?”
“None I can see.”
Robert got up on the fire-step to see for himself. “Both sides will shoot their men as deserters if we don’t get them back in the trenches,” he said.
“What a pity.”
Down the trenches officers were shouting to their men to get back. Some, so used to orders, obeyed. They watched the football disappear into a shell hole.
By lunchtime, the Germans and British were back to killing each other, both engaged in intensive shellfire. God had deserted them all.
Part 4 – Battlefields of Lust and War
1
July 1915
Benny Lightfoot was forty-nine years old and at his own best guess worth half a million pounds sterling, which was more than he could ever spend in the rest of his life. Putting together the elaborate safari to the banks of the great Zambezi River had only one real purpose: the slow, delicious seduction of Tina Pringle. Pushing fifty, he found the thing that made his hormones rise to the surface was a very young but provocative girl, full of wet juice and excitement for life. Leading such a lady astray was the only thing left in his life that kept his attention. And she really was as sexy as anything he had seen in the past years of his nefarious life.
Born in Missouri, some fifty miles from the strict rules of Kansas City, he had drifted away from the family corn farm to put some excitement into his young life. Watching corn grow and ripen year after year was as exciting as going to Sunday church, even when old Reverend Green was screaming at his congregation to give up their sinful ways and go to the Lord. Looking around the Episcopalian church, bare of any colour, the young
Benny wondered more and more about those sinful ways. Finally, looking at the reverend’s congregation, all as dry as a bone, old and young, Benny concluded the sinful ways had to be going on someplace else. The people surrounding the farm had all been dredged clean, though Benny thought it unlikely there was any dirt in them in the first place. The more times the preacher brought up sinful ways, the more Benny wanted some of it. At sixteen he went looking. He could read and write. Had read the Bible cover to cover, both Testaments. His mother had said he was wild and would come to nothing. Though he wrote to her for some years, he never once received a reply. Drifting off to Australia after sampling the simple ways of large parts of California, he made his first real money from the brief flurry of gold at Ballarat. From Australia, he took a boat and ox wagon to Kimberley in South Africa and a whole new set of sinful ways.
With some capital and the experience in the forests around Ballarat, cheating good men out of gold claims in the big hole was easy. There was nothing simpler, separating a good man from his money, than by introducing him to sinful ways. By the time he moved to the goldfields of the Witwatersrand in 1885, he owed a great deal to the Reverend Green, more than the reverend could ever have imagined.
Soon after his arrival, Doctor Jameson led the bizarre raid of Rhodesians to free Johannesburg of Boer rule, particularly that of Paul Kruger, which ended in fiasco and surrender. Benny’s timing could not have been better. The British were out of favour in the Boer Republic of Transvaal, and Benny, an American, filled the gap; hadn’t they both had trouble with the British? With Cecil Rhodes, who had organised the raid, keeping a low profile for fear of losing his royal charter in Rhodesia, the pickings were many for a man with capital. By the time the Anglo-Boer War came and went, Benny was a rand baron. Strangely, he had never visited the Mansion House, so he would not have recognised Albert Pringle. Benny liked seducing women, not paying for them. The chase, he found, was far more exciting than the climax, a fulfilment was brief and only sometimes satisfactory. He never stayed with anyone for very long. They were all the same when it came to the end, which he found a pity. He had once said, rather drunk, that he had never been in love; that life would be a lot better if a man could fall in love once and for all and be done with it. The man he told was an employee who reminded him the next day. The man was fired.