by Peter Rimmer
Soon after the end of the Anglo-Boer War, Benny went home. Nothing had changed. His mother laid an extra place for supper as if he had never been away. Two of his brothers were running the farm. His father had finally died from overwork. There were sisters-in-law and children he had never seen before all over the place. Not one of them asked what he’d been doing. The corn was ripening and both sisters-in-law were pregnant. Everyone kept their heads down and worked. On Sunday they scrubbed up and went to church, leaving the corn ripening behind them. To Benny’s amazement, the same old Reverend Green was still after their sinful ways. He too asked nothing about where Benny had been. The man had given him one queer look and probably didn’t want to know. The next day he left home without saying goodbye. A week later he doubted if any of them would have remembered his visit. Maybe they could smell the stench of sin all over him. Looking back, he just hoped they were happy. He wondered if the reverend would work out who had left the envelope on the silver tray with ten gold Krugers inside. But then God, as the reverend had so often told them, worked in mysterious ways. Soon after getting back to Johannesburg as fast as possible, he made an anonymous endowment to the church. He owed the Reverend Green that much for his good advice. If he had done the same for his mother she would have thrown the money in his face. And that was the last time he found them running through his mind.
When a man has more money than he can spend and is not a fool, he grows rich and then very rich, very quickly. He had made a will as dying intestate was a messy thing. The money was to be divided between all his living relatives, which would keep the Missouri and Kansas lawyers busy for a while, unless he married, then the money would only go to them when his wife died. Unless they had a child. He had visions of his poor relations scratching out each other’s eyes one way or another. There was nothing like adding a little greed to the pot of life. He wondered then what would come of all their sinful ways.
There was a white hunter he had picked up in a bar who said he knew how to kill an elephant. It was one of Benny’s quirks to go into strange bars and get drunk with strangers. He could say what he liked without repercussions. The mining camp that was Johannesburg suited him. The next day the man still said he could kill an elephant when he was sober. The barman had told him which flophouse to look for the man. The man had the most plummy accent Benny had ever heard in his life; the British to Benny were something of an enigma: they had as many accents as towns on their island. The ‘plummy accent’ was down on his luck and the twice-yearly remittance cheque was not due from England for another three months.
“You’re a black sheep?”
“Oh yes, old boy. Black as they come. Pater said I’d never come to any good. Trouble is, when the money comes in it gets blown rather quickly. Lots of friends. That kind of thing. When the money’s gone so are the friends. That sort of thing.”
“How long have you spent in the bush?”
“On and off? Eight or nine years. When you get in the bush you can’t spend money. No friends. That sort of thing.”
“Would you like a job?”
“No thank you. I’ve never had one.”
“Putting together a safari. I want to go to the banks of the Zambezi.”
“That’s different. That’s fun.”
“Could you get me there with a party of friends?”
“Piece of cake. Train to Salisbury. Hire a wagon or two. Horses. I still have my guns. Purdeys. Never sell ’em, however broke. You can live off a gun in the bush. When are you going?”
“Next week.”
“Oh good. What’s your name?”
“Benny Lightfoot.”
“You’re an American aren’t you?”
“Does that make any difference?”
“I suppose not. My name’s Wally Bowes-Leggatt. My father’s the Earl of Fenthurst.”
“I thought he might be… Why aren’t you in the war?”
“They wouldn’t have me. Or they would if they caught me. I’d go to jail, not the trenches. Wouldn’t mind the trenches. Can’t stand the idea of jail.”
“What happened?”
“I killed my wife. I was trying to shoot the rotter on top of her. Drunk of course, or I’d never have missed. Shot at Bisley for the old school. Damn good shot, if I have to say so myself. Father said it was the only thing I could do straight. The Mater and Pater don’t really like me; they shipped me out of the country as quickly as possible. Do you think I could slip back into England and join the army as a private?”
“You’d have to change your accent.”
“Oh! Why is that?”
Benny had shaken his head, packed the man’s gear into his car and taken him home.
“Would you mind awfully if I had a haircut on the way to your place?”
“If it makes you more comfortable?”
“Oh, it would.”
If asked, Benny thought the man would not know how to spell the word sarcasm.
Getting away from Johannesburg and the daily newspaper with the endless list of casualties from the Western Front assuaged some of Benny Lightfoot’s guilt. In the end, America would have to go into the war. Though too old himself, he felt the looks of the British, who thought the Americans were shirking their responsibilities. It seemed in life, however you looked at it, you had to take sides.
He thought Albert Pringle was seeing his sister onto the train and then getting off. Benny’s driver had been sent back from the house in Parktown Ridge with a note from Tina saying she would meet him at the railway station in good time for the train to Bulawayo, where they were to change trains to Salisbury.
“Oh, I’ve got a ticket, Mr Lightfoot,” smiled Albert. He had not had a holiday in his life, boat trips not included, and rich old men he trusted not a bit. Especially with Tina who was as naïve as she was pretty. Unless he helped, she would end up like all sexy young girls who went through the mill. He only had to look at Lily White, who was still living with Sallie after six months, and not a pound the lighter. Tina was going to turn out differently. The last thing he had expected was a chinless wonder in a safari suit, wearing a pith hat that would have better suited David Livingstone. It took all Albert’s concentration not to laugh when he was told by Benny Lightfoot with a straight face that this was their white hunter who was going to show them the bush. The thought of Harry Brigandshaw’s address in his pocket was comforting, even if he had only met the man briefly at Cape Town railway station as Jack Merryweather’s gentleman’s gentleman. He wanted to ask the man with the two sets of leather-cased guns why he wasn’t shooting Germans. The man was no more than thirty. They briefly locked eyes and those looking across the five feet of the railway carriage were mockingly simple: ‘don’t be a hypocrite’.
“We’re going to have a nice holiday,” said Wally Bowes-Leggatt, “which is more than can be said for a lot of other people.”
The war was everywhere.
Benny, smiling to himself at the confrontation of the two Englishmen, turned his attention to Tina and the long, slow delicious seduction that lay ahead, however many brothers she brought on the journey. For Benny, the seduction of a woman started right at the beginning, when he rang the girl’s doorbell to take her out. In this case, from the moment the heavy train door clunked shut. The steam engines back and front puffed violently, slowly at first, then the train lurched and they were off, headed for the north and the African bush. Tina was just as sexually provocative as he remembered. Benny was relieved that after all the effort, his hormones were still screaming with delight. Even the brother on board just made the game a little more difficult but, he hoped, more satisfying in the end, like a handicap at a steeplechase. Benny looked first at Tina’s open cleavage and then at her large brown bedroom eyes. The point of Tina’s tongue came out and slowly went back in again.
For Benny, one of the advantages of being rich was the ability to find out the truth about anybody. A drunk who said he shot his wife, told you his name and the name of his father, had to be tell
ing a lie. Self-preservation alone would keep a sane man’s mouth shut in the case of killing his wife. He might have got away from the gallows if the rotter was really screwing his wife, but then he thought the British might just hang him by his neck. Only the French knew properly about crimes of passion. The French would have given the husband a medal and hanged the rotter. Benny always thought the French had a point.
Like all drunks in bars, Wally finally believed his story and cried real tears when he told the story of the death of Poo. From Benny’s experience, there was always some truth to the stories of drunks, they were mainly embellished to make the story last longer and sound a lot better. It was part of the bar trade, swapping stories. Part of the entertainment. Mostly, the other drunk who was meant to be listening to the story was thinking of something he could cap it with from his own life. Harmless fun, and in the morning neither of them would remember a thing… It all passed the time for a man like Wally with money, even if it was spasmodic, and nothing to do when he ran short, drunks were always good at getting free drinks if they told a good story.
There were two books in the Johannesburg library listing the British peerage, and both quoted Walter Bowes-Leggatt as a third son of the First Earl of Fenthurst, who had fought and won an obscure colonial war for the British in China, parallel with Chinese Gordon who had subsequently perished at Khartoum, a victim of the Mahdi’s holy war. General Bowes-Leggatt had stayed away from the Sudan after the Boxer rebellion and gone into politics. According to Benny’s investigator, the general had been such a pain in the arse of the Tory party, they had made him an earl and kicked him up into the House of Lords, where he could talk hot air with impunity. The man had first been offered a barony but had turned it down. Benny thought, reading his man’s report, that the general was quite well aware of how much pain he was causing in the arse of the Tory party. No money went with the earldom, only a parliamentary vote that increased the general’s pension. There was, however, a big estate in Surrey, so the family must have had money. Finding out about Wally the black sheep after that was simple.
There was a rotter, and there was a Poo, though her real name was Prudence. Prudence was probably very much alive, though the rotter was equally likely dead in the trenches. By the time Benny made his enquiries the regular British Army had been decimated in France and Flanders. At the time Prudence ran off with the army subaltern, she had been married to Wally six months. It was a scandal and Wally was shipped out to the colonies. Reading between the lines of the press reports, Benny’s sleuth thought the subaltern was definitely dead. Annoying a powerful general in peacetime had been one thing. The man was a rotter and the army had ways of dealing with rotters. Especially in wartime. And Wally was best kept out in the colonies.
The rest of the story Benny had found out on his own, trawling the bars frequented by Wally. Wally, happy in the comfort of preparing for the big safari, easily told Benny the names of his old haunts. Even the names of some of the drunks he drank with. Two of the drunks had known Wally up north in the bush. Both separately said Wally was a braggart and a teller of tall stories, usually about himself. They said he could shoot the eye out of a leopard at one hundred yards, and that he had learned about the bush the hard way, by his mistakes. In the bush, sober, Wally was a man they both respected.
Coupled with the fact the man had no chin, drooping wet eyes like a spaniel, and had lost his wife in six months, Benny knew there would be no competition. Benny had always been careful never to introduce competition, even in his businesses. And to go into the bush without a skilled guide would have been plain stupid. Having mentally undressed Tina three times while smiling at her, Benny finally closed his eyes. He had been glad his guide was only a cuckold, not a murderer.
Having been a stray dog most of his life, Benny liked to help others in the same predicament. In his younger days, he could have done with the help himself.
Wally Bowes-Leggatt had lost his illusions many years ago. Being the son of a famous British general had taken him only so far and after that, he was meant to do it on his own. He knew better than anyone else in his life that he looked like a dog, which was why he kept his hair long, and his big floppy ears well covered. The commission in his father’s regiment when he was nineteen years old had been little more than a formality. The colonel of the regiment had served under his father. Prudence was a girl he had met on a hike in the Lake District soon after he received his commission. To his surprise, he had passed out in the top half of his officer course and his confidence must have shown. She was the second daughter of a schoolmaster with limited prospects and took to Wally from the start of the three-day walk that had been arranged by the local churchwarden. Foolish in his youth, he had not realised she was dazzled by the general’s son, not the man, even though Prudence never met his father until a month before the wedding. Prudence swept Wally off his feet and into the church in ten weeks and Wally thought himself the luckiest man in the world. With a solid, pretty wife that senior officers liked to be flattered by, there was no reason he could not make himself a good career in the army. At mess functions when the wives were invited, Prudence was always surrounded by men, and always deferred to the senior officers. Wally was happy to stand on the fringe and bask in her glory. ‘You’re a lucky chap, Bowes-Leggatt,’ was a constant refrain. If he had known she had the same effect on men as Tina Pringle, he would have kept a closer eye on his wife. He should have kept his eyes open, but at twenty, a very young twenty, he had no idea what was going on. To him, a wife who did not want to sleep with her husband after the first try or two was normal. Wally thought she must have been pregnant. Anyway, he was not a very physical man when it came to women. If Prudence had not chased him right off his feet he would have remained a bachelor, enjoying the male camaraderie of his fellow officers in one outpost of the empire after another. The army suited him. It gave him a home. A patient, meticulous man, he was good at his job, and even though he looked like a dog, the men looked up to him for himself. Like all men married to unfaithful wives, Wally was the last to hear of it. He did find Captain Craig on top of Prudence. And both were naked. Wally did have a gun in his hand and he was one of the best pistol shots in the regiment. But he did not shoot his wife as he told everyone in Africa. As he should have done. The next day he resigned his commission. The colonel cashiered Craig. Prudence went home to her schoolmaster father.
When he had gone home that fateful night to his married quarters, he had taken back a fellow officer for a late drink after they had checked the regiment stores. There was no way of keeping the story quiet. The general, his father, had got him out of the country fast.
“A man who can’t keep his wife under control is not a man. Get out. Stay out. And don’t ever come back to England or darken my door. You have made a fool of me, Walter. Making a fool of yourself is your business. Making a fool of me is mine. God damn you, boy, the whole regiment is laughing at me.”
In Africa, he had felt at home. There were other Englishmen in the same predicament. Disgraced, one way or the other. He had taken to the bush and nearly got himself eaten by a lion, only killing the beast in the end with his revolver, the wounded lion right on top of him. He had fired the rifle for the head and not the heart. Quickly he had grown to respect the African bush. Any wild animal was dangerous. A honey badger the size of a dog could kill a buffalo, the animal in the bush said to be the most dangerous to man. And in town, when his cheque came in, the cheque from his mother, not his father, he had taken to drinking with drifters and telling them the story of his life. How he shot his wife. Why he was not in the war.
Why the American had taken to him he had no idea. But it suited him for the moment. His cheque was not due for another two months and he never looked a gift horse in the mouth.
“I’ve heard about you, Pringle,” he said to break the ice. The American seemed to have gone to sleep and like all women, the girl was not interested in looking at Wally Bowes-Leggatt. “Serendipity Mining and Explosives. Yo
ur shares came out when I just received a cheque from Mater. Bought a hundred shares. Had to sell them again. Doubled my money. Thanks, old boy. You must be a very clever man.”
Strangely, looking sideways at the man next to him in a new light, Albert thought he meant what he said. Instead of saying something depreciating he put out his hand.
“Thank you. We are going to be friends, Wally, isn’t it? I’m Albert. A bit soon maybe for Christian names but do you mind? I come from the lower classes.”
“Out here that doesn’t mean a thing. We’re all Englishmen.”
“Not all of us,” said Benny Lightfoot, without opening his eyes.
They reached the big river twelve days later. Benny thought he was losing his touch. More than once he had manoeuvred Tina away from the crowd and had yet to even get a hand on her bust, let alone more vital parts. What was going to be a long, slow seduction was becoming tedious.
They had spent the first night in Meikles Hotel. The next day Wally had gone off and come back with a wagon, a string of saddled horses, and six grinning black men, whose teeth shone whiter than anything Benny had seen before in his life. It was the contrast of the coal-black skins and the perfectly white teeth.
By ten o’clock they were on the road out of Salisbury heading northwest. A mile or so out of town, Benny saw a sign to the right which said Elephant Walk, and wondered what it meant. No one else commented on the sign. Their road was just a track and more than once Benny watched Wally take their position from the sun. The earth was as dry as a bone, the sky a perfect blue, with tufted white clouds, high and stationary in the sky, throwing shadow patterns on the dry brown bush, the small hills and outcrops of rocks the size of small mountains, some balanced one on the other, their cantilever weights stopping them crashing to the ground. The rich red soil sprouted grass which came up to the top of Benny’s riding boots, even as he rode high in the saddle.