The Brigandshaw Chronicles Box Set

by Peter Rimmer

  Removing a piece of board from his bunk, he propped one end under the door handle and the other he pressed down against the bunk bed nearest to the door. The door would not lock from the inside for some reason. Quickly from under the bottom bunk, he pulled out the suitcase. This time it was locked. Willie began to sweat. Using his penknife, he forced the lock and found inside the black heavy Webley service revolver. He had hoped to wait until dark. The threat to the deckhand had changed his mind. The gun was too big to hide in his pocket in daylight.

  Willie put the gun under the bedclothes in his bed and left the cabin. In his pockets were the bullets.

  Up on deck, John Perry was still staring at the first-class section of the boat. Willie followed his gaze. A pretty girl was coming out of one of the cabin. He could see she was drunk. The man with her was laughing. Willie thought it early to be drunk so soon after lunch. The rich, he told himself, had their own rules.

  The moment the man and girl were out of sight, John Perry left his post and walked towards the gangway that would take him down to the inside berth.

  Willie followed John Perry down into the ship. When Willie opened their cabin door, John Perry was on his knees rummaging in the suitcase.

  “Looking for something, my china?”

  John Perry looked up and understood. Willie was grinning at him, showing his bad teeth. Willie looked across at his own bunk, at the hump made by the gun. John Perry was fast across the small cabin.

  “I’m not a wet fish and you’re dead,” screamed John Perry, pulling the trigger repeatedly.

  As a cabin steward pushed open the door, the gun was pointed at him. The gun did not fire. Willie still had a smile on his face. Then he moved slowly and hit John Perry across the head with a board from the bunk bed.

  “Is that a gun?” screamed the steward.

  “Fuck off!” said Willie.

  Willie picked up the gun from the floor and hid it under his shirt. The steward had run out of the cabin. John Perry was trying to get up. Willie kicked him in the head and left the cabin.

  Up the stairway, he took the corridor that led him to a door on the side of the ship. The water was rushing by the ship twenty feet down below. Willie dropped the gun and the ammunition over the side.

  If anyone asked he would deny the whole thing. He had been in the army during the war. Any enquiry had a life of its own. All he wished to do was reach South Africa and go on his way.

  Feeling not a little pleased with himself, Willie went to the third-class bar. The one thing he had found out through his thirty short years was other people never solved his problems for him. The rest of the voyage he was going to sleep with a knife in his hand.

  When he went back to his room, he was drunk. John Perry was already in his bunk.

  “If that sod puts a foot out of bed, yell,” he said to the others, showing them the knife. “Sleep tight, everyone. And fuck the navy. From now on we sleep with the lights on.” By the time he began to snore, the knife had fallen from his hand.

  Willie woke in the morning with a hangover. John Perry was staring at him. There was a smirk on John Perry’s face. Willie smiled back.

  “Did someone smack your face, my china? You should be more careful. Fact is, everyone in this cabin would like to smack your face. Hard. Take that grin off your face. Little men without guns are little men. You behave for the rest of the voyage and we’ll all go our separate ways. I don’t give a fuck who you are. Where you came from. Where you’re going. None of us does. Don’t try no messing, see?”

  John Perry was still smiling at them when they left for breakfast. Over breakfast, Willie told them what he had done. As they were finishing their food, John Perry came into the third-class dining room. He was still smiling. He sat down away from them at a small table on his own where he ate meals. No one else on the ship wanted to eat with him.

  He was still staring at Willie when they got up to leave.

  Felicity Voss’s idea of Justine’s disappointment at meeting her father being tempered by a brilliant marriage to Harry Brigandshaw came to nothing at dinner time.

  They were lovers. Even an insensitive fool could have seen the change in Tina Pringle and Harry Brigandshaw, she told herself. Not just the way they slipped looks at each other. Not even the look of satisfaction in both of their faces. They were different people.

  With a shock of familiar recognition, Felicity wondered if the girl would now fall pregnant. God has strange ways of anointing his people. Momentarily it hurt her feelings which she recognised as jealousy. It made her feel old. It made her think her life was over. Which it was for all practical purposes. Apart from eating and sleeping, what had she to offer life? Or anyone else that came in contact with her life. She was on a fool’s errand going to Rhodesia. Only a fool looked to resurrect a life that was already dead. Only God could do that.

  The waiter put a small piece of fish on a large plate in front of her. She looked at the fish with a sprig of parsley. At the two small new potatoes. And wanted to cry… Then she sighed at the irony of so much sadness inside of her while she was surrounded by so much material wealth.

  For the rest of the evening, she knew she would be unable to look at Tina Pringle.

  The next day was to be the fancy dress ball. She was going as a witch with a tall black hat. Justine was to be a Vestal Virgin dressed all in white. Before the ball, the ship would visit Las Palmas in the morning, then came the Ascension Islands followed by the island of St Helena. Mentally, Felicity ticked off all the ports of call. Everything punctuated by meals. By dressing up and going into meals.

  The captain was saying something to her. She turned to him with a smile. Determined to enjoy herself. What was the point of going anywhere if she was not going to enjoy herself? Very slightly, the ship took on a roll.

  By the time coffee was being served, the ship was rolling and pitching in a slow rhythm. Justine had gone as white as a sheet. They were in for some heavy weather.

  The captain excused himself from the table.

  A howling gale hit the SS Corfe Castle in sight of Las Palmas. The fancy dress ball was cancelled. The captain made a new course to avoid the Canary Islands. Most of the passengers stayed in their cabins. Some in the clutch of seasickness even wished they were dead.

  In the eight-berth cabin, the only passenger to thrive was John Perry. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

  For a night and a day, Tina and Harry holed up in the owner’s cabin making love. By the time the wind abated, they were both satiated for the first time in their lives. No one had taken any notice of them. Neither of them suffered from seasickness. Mostly they had made love on the floor, rolling around the cabin in search of each other, later laughing till the tears poured down their faces.

  All Tina’s preconceived calculations had been thrown to the wind.

  “I never knew the meaning of carnal lust before this,” said Harry.

  “Neither did I,” said Tina. “Do you know we haven’t eaten a damn thing for nearly two days and I’m starving? Wow, am I hungry. I’d better go to my own cabin and get dressed. See you at dinner, Harry.”

  “It’ll be my pleasure… There’s just one thing before you go.”

  “Oh, all right. Just please don’t hurry.”

  When they sat down to dinner looking prim and proper the ship was back on an even keel. The captain sat down with them to dinner. Tina and Harry ate ravenously. Only once did Tina let out a giggle. In what seemed to be the first time in her life she had not given Barnaby a thought.

  15

  Sea Voyage Around Africa, October 1922

  Ten days later the SS Corfe Castle was standing off Table Bay to the west of Robben Island waiting for the dawn. The ship’s screws were turning slowly, holding her position. Harry could see the phosphorescence in the churned sea trailing back into the paling night.

  They were holding hands outside his cabin leaning over the ship’s rail. The rest of the passengers were still sleeping. The lights of Cape Tow
n were away to the east in the dark shadow of Table Mountain. Harry was waiting for the sun to rise from behind the flat table of the mountain. It was always his welcome home. To Africa. Where he belonged and which he loved and cherished with all his heart… When God’s rays rose behind the mountain at the foot of Africa he would know he was home. That Elephant Walk was just a while to the north. The animals. The smell of the bush. The great flowing rivers that swept down from the heart of Africa to the plains and the surrounding seas.

  Earlier the change in the engine had brought him awake. He had woken her gently.

  “We’re here. Cape Town. Get up. The African dawn. Homecoming is complete for me when the rays of the sun come up from behind the mountain. From the Twelve Apostles. Did I tell you I went to school in Cape Town? During the Anglo-Boer War, there were times I could not go home for holidays… Get up, Tina, or we’ll miss it.”

  “I’m asleep.”

  “No, you are not. I just woke you… If you don’t want to be tickled to death get up and put on some clothes. Even owners can’t let their ladies stand naked at the rail.”

  “Am I your lady, Harry? What about Brett?”

  “You are sharp so early in the morning. Brett wishes to be a great actress. Whether she will be only God knows. How can you think of Brett?”

  “Or Barnaby?”

  “Tina, we are alone together. Let it be. The ghosts will find us without bringing them awake. Life has to be enjoyed at the moment. Not in the past or the future. Now is what it is all about. And now is watching the sun rise over Table Mountain with the sexiest girl in the world.”

  “Am I sexy, Harry?”

  “You have my word for it. Come on. The sun won’t wait.”

  “What are we going to do today?”

  “That’s better. Get up, lazy head.”

  Harry could see the shape of her in the light of the dawn. Pale. Ethereal. Wanton. Was landfall in Cape Town the beginning or the end? He could not remember when he had ever been so happy.

  Standing by the rail, Harry pointed. Rays of light were fingering the sky. They could make out the flat top of the mountain. As the sun rose the lights of Cape Town began to fade. The new day had begun. The throb of the engines increased. The ship headed for the port as two tugs came out to meet them.

  “Why am I so happy, Harry?”

  Secretly, Tina wondered if she was pregnant. Neither had taken precautions. It had not seemed necessary at the time.

  The moment the third-class gangplank was in place Len Merryl watched the man with the full beard disembark, glad to see the back of him.

  A group of third-class passengers were watching him go. One was waving ironically. Someone called the man waving Willie, and he turned, showing Len his face. The man was happy with something. The man with the full beard Len had found out was John Perry, a passenger from Southampton to Cape Town. Len watched him carry down onto the docks an old suitcase. There was something wrong with the lock. A piece of rope was holding the case together. The man stood on the dock for a moment looking up at the first-class section of the ship. Then he turned and waved at the group of passengers surrounding the big man one of them had just called Willie.

  “That was the bugger who pointed a gun at me,” said the man next to Len. Len did not know his name. He knew the man was crew.

  “Pointed a gun!”

  “Told the second purser. That big bloke over there said I was seeing things. That there wasn’t a gun. Hit him with a plank across the face hard and kicked him when he was on the ground.”

  “Well, he’s gone. All’s well that ends well.”

  “Two days on shore… You’re going ashore?”

  “Tonight. Me and Ben Willard. There’s a bar in Long Street. Hope she’s still there. You ever see a woman and want to see her again?”

  “All the time, mate.”

  “Her name’s Teresa.”

  “Good luck… You mind if I come? Name’s Alan. Alan Adair. The wags call me Robin Hood.”

  “Can’t think why… Better I give you the address of the bar.”

  Len gave the man the address on a piece of paper he found in his pocket. The man had found a stub of pencil too.

  “See you later,” Len said.

  “Is she that good-looking?”

  “Believe me… What a beautiful day. They say it’s spring this end of the world… Now, just look at that. See that telephone line going into the warehouse? Those birds are swallows.”

  “Even I know that.”

  “What you don’t know is they flew all the way from England.”

  “You’re just kidding.”

  “Gospel truth. My old landlady thinks of them swallows all the way to the Cape. Waits for them to come back for the summer. It’s called migration.”

  When Len looked around the man was walking away, shaking his head.

  Showing other people what he most loved was one of life’s joys for Harry Brigandshaw. At ten o’clock they went ashore. A car from Colonial Shipping was waiting on the dock. Tina was disembarking at Cape Town. She was taking the six o’clock train to Johannesburg.

  In two days Tina knew she would be back in her brother’s house not knowing what to do with the rest of her life. Like so many other things, the shipboard romance with Harry Brigandshaw had come to an end at the dock. She was standing at the top of the first-class gangplank waiting to go down. Big, black-backed gulls mocked her from the top of the bollards that lined the dock. She could see an old tower with four faces of the time, all looking different ways. All telling the world it was ten o’clock.

  The porters had taken her cases on shore. Customs and immigration had come on board soon after the ship docked to process the passengers, so she was now free to go. There was only the trip to see the wildflowers still in her life… But shared with the Voss family who were to be Harry’s guests on his farm in Rhodesia.

  Silently Tina damned the Voss family as she followed an officer down the gangplank right down onto the docks. The dockside was hard and ugly… A breeze had come up and made her hold on to her hat with one hand.

  They all sat in the back of the large chauffeur-driven car. Harry was not even holding her hand. They drove for what seemed like hours in silence, everyone looking out of the window for something to see. There were flowers everywhere across the fields. Daisies. She was ending her affair surrounded by daisies. White daisies most of them. There were always white flowers at funerals. She had gone to her grandfather’s funeral.

  At the picnic lunch with the daisies, they talked trivia. No one seemed to notice her tension. Even Harry. Tina wanted to give Justine a good slap across the face, always talking about the father she had never met. Was her life forever to be just bits and pieces?

  They drove back a different way. It all looked the same to Tina… It had just been an affair. A shipboard romance.

  Harry spent half an hour in the office. He said another car had taken her luggage to the train. They were all behaving the way they had behaved with each other when they first went on board the boat… Did nothing in her life ever stay together?

  The Voss family were taken back to the ship. Harry came out. He was flustered. Other things on his mind. She had been sat in reception to wait for him.

  “One of the packing cases was dropped. I don’t even know which part of the aeroplane. How the hell can they do something like that? Incompetent. Bloody incompetent.”

  “What are you talking about, Harry? You haven’t said anything to me all day.”

  “The Handley Page. An adaptation with long-range tanks. They’re going to put it together in Cape Town. Take them months. Then I’m coming down to fly it to Elephant Walk. Pierre Le Jeune is helping Jim Bowman to build an airstrip on the farm. During the latter part of the war, Handley Page built bombers for the air force. This one will take six passengers instead of bombs… Why the hell did they drop it? Tina, you’ll have to see yourself off at the station. If I don’t watch everything myself, this is what happens.”
r />   “Do you fly the plane via Johannesburg?” said Tina sweetly.

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “We can see each other again.”

  “Of course we’re going to see each other again. Just at the moment, I’m busy. You said you have to see your brother. Go and see him. You may not want to stay… Damn that crane driver. Why couldn’t he have looked at what he was doing? I try to do the right thing by everybody and end up in a mess.”

  “Are you going to do the right thing by me?”

  “What does that mean?… Yes, course. But it’s not my decision.”

  “Then whose is it?”

  “Barnaby. He’ll know about us by the next mail. Someone will write and tell him. People like to tell tales. It’s one of the problems of being well known. There were three or four couples on board who know Barnaby. What do you think he will do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t you believe it, Tina. That man gets jealous. He thinks he owns you.”

  “Well, he doesn’t… Go and sort out your aeroplane, Harry. I can look after myself. I’ve just been a fool. With Barnaby, I’m always a fool. Now you… Go on. Push off. You’ve more important things to do in your life than see me onto a train.”

  “I’m sorry, Tina.”

  “So am I.”

  Harry gave her a quick kiss and went back into the inner office. Tina hoped he would come out again.

  An hour later the driver took her to the railway station where she boarded the train for Kimberley and Johannesburg. Her luggage was already in her compartment. Somebody had put it there. There was no one else in her carriage. When the train puffed its way belligerently out of the station, she was softly crying to herself.

  “I’m twenty-five next month,” she told the end of the platform as it slid away. “My life is over.” She was wondering if Barnaby had even given her a thought since she left England. She hoped someone had dropped the rest of the damned aeroplane into the sea. Harry had not even said goodbye to her.