by Peter Rimmer
By nine thirty that night Forty Winks was asleep with his face resting sideways on the bar counter. Teresa let him alone. He had tried to go home once already. He even managed to get on his motorcycle outside the front door of the hotel and kick-start the engine. The clutch went out, the bike moved forward up the road towards the mountain with Forty Winks leaning to his right. He had wanted to turn the bike round in the road and go home. With Teresa and some of the regulars watching, the bike had kept going round in a full circle bringing Forty back to the spot by the kerb where he had parked it in the first place. Carefully putting the bike up on its rest he had gone back into Teresa’s bar without saying a word.
There were travellers off the liner from the harbour and some of the same ship’s crew in the bar. None had taken any notice. Two of the crew said they knew Teresa from a previous trip. She had smiled in fake recognition. All the sailors remembered her when they came ashore. She was the reason the bar made a profit for the Van Riebeeck Hotel.
There had been three Van Riebeeck hotels over the years. The first it was said had fallen down, the woodwork eaten away by borer beetles. The second had burnt down. The third comprised Teresa’s bar, a dining room and ten rooms upstairs. The bar was a working men’s bar. The rooms were cheap. Teresa was coloured like some of the customers from District Six a few streets up the hill from the road outside. Mostly the customers were men. Cosmopolitan. All colours and creeds. No one cared. Like Forty Winks, most were happy drunks trying to forget their miserable lives in a haze of alcohol.
Teresa poured a fresh tot of brandy into a small glass and put the small glass close to his nose. He had been asleep long enough. Forty Winks opened his eyes and lifted his head, his hand coming up for the glass from where it had hung down the side of the bar. Teresa and the regulars smiled and said nothing.
She went across to the window that opened onto the road, passing through the group of tourists who parted to let her through. Everyone was smoking. The air was thick. Even though it was still early October, she opened the windows wide. They opened outwards from each other.
She smiled again at the customers on her way back. One was called Willie. He was a big man and drunk but happy. All of them looked down the front of her dress as she passed. It was why she wore a low-cut blouse. Five per cent of the bar profit was hers. She had once covered up her large bosom and cut the day’s profit in half. The men all drank to look at her. To receive her smile. It was better than going home to their nagging wives. Sometimes the nagging wives came into the bar. When they came she kept her smiles to herself. It was only business, which the wives would not understand. She never spoke to the wives who placed themselves between the husbands and where she served at the bar.
There were six sets of square high tables and high stools away from the bar. The man Willie and his two friends were seated nearest the open window. None of them complained at the cold fresh air sucking at the smoke, clearing the air in the room. The two who had been in her bar on a previous voyage were seated up at the bar with a third member of the same crew. The ship was the SS Corfe Castle on its maiden voyage. They had told her that when they ordered their first drink and asked if she remembered them.
“Come by St Helena?” she had asked. “Did you see the ladder up the side of the cliff? They call it Jacob’s Ladder. My last name’s Jacobs. Great-grandad came from St Helena. Grandma too. Most from St Helena is called Jacobs. Only a few related. Story has it our name comes from that ladder. You ever heard anything like that before?… You want the same again?” It was just something to say to them drinking at the bar.
Back at the bar, between the bar and the bottles on the rows of shelves, she smiled at the three men. Two of them were young. The two that could not take their eyes away. Teresa bent down for no reason other than to give them a better look. Men were so stupid when they drank. Mostly harmless. She gave them another smile as she poured them another drink. Men without women on ships were her best customers after Forty Winks. Forty was in love with her. He was older than her and spent all of his money in her bar. He said he had never been married, but she never knew with men. They all lied when it suited them.
“Why would your great-grandfather change his name to Jacobs?” the youngest one asked.
“He was a slave. From West Africa. Brought by the Royal Navy to run the harbour at St Helena.”
“But you don’t look West African.”
“Products of the Royal Navy. Not all the slaves were men. Brought to South Africa by the Royal Navy after a generation or two in St Helena. Who knows? Some Jacobs say they are Malay. Brought by the Dutch from Java. Never went near St Helena. Part of the melting pot, I say. A right good old mix… That’ll be one shilling and a penny… You never know. Most likely you and I are related.”
“We’re all related if you go back far enough,” said Len Merryl. “The whole world.”
“Now that is philosophical, Len,” said Ben Willard. “Cheers. To the world and everyone in it, God bless them… The brandy in the Cape is the best in the world. If we need, Teresa, can we get a taxi back to our ship?” Ben liked to use her name.
“Just ask me when you want one. Better than walking. You can drop Forty Winks home on your way to the docks.”
“Who’s Forty Winks?”
“The bloke that was taking his nap at the bar. Does it regular. Why we call him Forty Winks. A ten-minute nap and he’s up again right as rain… You don’t mind the window then? Why I don’t smoke myself. Even then I cough in the morning.” She was smiling at another customer as she told them.
The idea of so young a girl having to cough in the morning made Len Merryl look away from the bar to the open window. There was a man’s face half framed in the window. The people at the table between Len and the window were moving around. One of them was plainly drunk but happy with his friends. Len had seen the man on board the SS Corfe Castle. The man looking through the window had a full beard. It was the same man who had watched the owner’s cabin door for so long and told Len to mind his own business. Len remembered the man had threatened him. Threatened to shoot him like the rest.
“Shit!” said the steward who had joined Ben and Len from the ship. He was the same man who still had Len’s piece of paper in his pocket with the address of the bar written in pencil.
Len saw a hand come through the window holding a large black revolver. The gun fired twice. A man at the nearest table to the window staggered backwards across the floor and crashed against the bar splattering Teresa’s open bosom with blood. Everyone in the bar was looking at the man shot through the head. It was the same man Len had seen on the ship.
Len ran for the door and out into the street. By the time he reached the street, there was nobody there. There were no street lights. Len ran a few yards and came up short, not knowing what to do. His adrenaline from primal fear was pumping. He went back.
The man on the bar floor was dead. Teresa was screaming. Forty Winks was asleep again with his face on the bar, the brandy glass empty in front of him.
The man in the window had shouted as he had fired. They had all heard at the bar.
“What was he shouting?” asked Alan Adair, the man with the pencilled address in his pocket.
“‘I’m not a wet fish and you’re dead,’” said Len. “Each time he fired. He was one of our passengers. The one who pointed a gun at you in the cabin. We saw him go down the gangplank with the broken suitcase.”
“The dead man was one of our passengers,” said Ben Willard. “His name was Willie.”
“Better wait for the police,” said Len. “Then we go to the captain.”
The other passengers who had been at the table nearest the window were staring at the dead body. None of them had seen the man at the window. They were all facing the bar looking at Teresa at the time the gun came through the window.
When the police arrived, Forty Winks was still asleep at the bar.
After giving his name along with the rest, Len and the other two walke
d out into the night. There were no taxis to be had. They walked back to the ship soberer than when they had walked into the bar at five o’clock that afternoon. All Len could see in his mind’s eye was thick blood on Teresa’s chest. He knew he was going to remember Teresa for the rest of his life for the wrong reason.
The next day everyone in the third class was talking about the dead passenger. Everyone was animated, old and young alike. Everyone said they had seen Willie or knew Willie. They all felt part of the drama. More important than the day before. Not every day in a life was a fellow passenger shot through the head.
Everyone said the shooter fired at random through the window into the bar. The passenger shot dead was due to disembark in Port Elizabeth. The word of mouth had soon told everyone Willie had never been to Cape Town before. No one even gave a thought to the possibility the killer was a passenger from the ship. Everyone on board the ship was British. The British did not shoot their fellow passengers. The killer was a thug or worse. A Boer still fighting the Anglo-Boer War more than twenty years after it had come to an end.
Len expected the Cape Town police to come on board. To take a statement. He had given his full name and the name of the ship. He had told the flustered policeman he had seen what had happened. In the panic and hurry to get Willie to the hospital the policeman had taken little notice of Len.
By ten o’clock in the morning, Len asked an officer to see the captain.
“What about, son?”
“The shooting in the bar. I saw what happened.”
“Did you tell the police, lad?”
“They weren’t interested.”
“Then why should the captain be interested? The passenger died on shore. The captain only has jurisdiction on board ship under maritime law.”
“Willie McNam was a passenger. So was the shooter. He had a beard. There was a man on board acting funny who had a beard.”
“Then point him out. I can check if he went ashore.”
“The man with the beard disembarked at Cape Town.”
“Then he’s nought to do with us, son… You told the South African police you saw what happened. Everyone in that bar saw what happened. The whole ship’s talking about it. More than one saw a black revolver pushed through the window which was open. If the police had wanted your statement as well they would have come back on board. The ship sails in six hours. All crew are required on board now. You can’t go ashore.”
“Why I want to see the captain. I recognised the man at the window.”
“What was his name?”
“I don’t know. He had a full beard.”
“And he’s gone. Do you know how many people in Cape Town have full beards? Why the police took no notice. You had a shock, lad, seeing a man get killed. Everyone in the third class is in on the act. Just get on with your work.”
“Don’t you want to take my name?”
“What for? The captain has enough problems sailing the ship without taking on everyone’s problems on shore. Leave it to the police. They know what they are doing.”
“Can’t you give the police a list of passengers who disembarked at Cape Town?”
“Just because you saw a man in the dark you say was wearing a beard, you say was a passenger without a name, doesn’t give the shipping line a right to suggest a fare-paying passenger is a criminal. Even if we did know his or her name, which we don’t. Now please. Or I’ll take down your name for another reason. Which you won’t like.”
At the same time the SS Corfe Castle was sailing out of Table Bay, a clean-shaven man in a new suit with a soft-spoken British upper-class accent was booking into the Mount Nelson Hotel that had once been Lord Milner’s headquarters at the end of the Anglo-Boer War. The man who gave his name as the Honourable Peyton Fitzgerald to the clerk looked pleased with himself. When the clerk took his name and looked for the best room in the hotel, the man looked back from reception at the revolving door in the front of the hotel and the row of palm trees in the driveway outside. Anyone in the know would have said he had the faraway look of an aviator. The steady stare of a hunter. The look of a man who had been in battle.
When the clerk coughed and the man turned back to him, the clerk involuntarily stared at the left side of the man’s face where it was turning black and blue. The clerk quickly looked down at the register, turning the large red book round to face the man with the bruise on his face.
“Twenty-three, sir. Best room we have in the hotel. Please fill in the register, Mr Fitzgerald, and welcome to the Mount Nelson Hotel. How long will you be staying with us, sir?”
“I thought a week.”
The clerk was again staring at the left side of the man’s face. The man smiled. The clerk smiled back.
“Horse bolted. One of those newfangled cars backfired and she bolted. I was going to ride her up into the wine lands.”
“You arrived on the SS Corfe Castle?”
“Been here a while, old chap. Staying with friends. They are sailing through Suez back to England. My ship doesn’t sail for America for another week.”
“Very painful.”
“Yes, it was, very. Hurts the old pride more than the face… I’ll go to my room. No, I’ll take that small case. The porter can bring the other one. Rather thought I’d take a bath before having a drink. The room does have a bath?”
“Of course, sir. Your key, sir. Have a pleasant stay, sir. The dining room opens at seven o’clock and stays open until nine. We do have a deposit rule or we hold a passport.”
“Of course… My passport. If you so wish, the manager can ask the Standard Bank. I had money sent to them for my stay in South Africa.”
“Just rules, sir.”
“There must always be rules, my man. Where would we be without rules?”
Upstairs in room twenty-three, the man waited for the second case before locking the door from the inside. Then he opened the small case and took out a German Mauser pistol, the same type of pistol the German pilots had flown with during the war in France in case they were shot down by the British or the French. The man had taken the pistol from a well-worn leather case. The case was embossed with a set of initials. In the case was a pull-through which the man used carefully to clean the barrel of the gun. In the case in its proper place was a box of shells. The box had been opened. The box was short of two shells. Feeling the side of his face, the man looked down at the clean gun now resting in the open case with satisfaction.
At eight o’clock that morning a scruffy man with a full beard had entered a barber’s shop in Loop Street. To the barber’s surprise, the man spoke with a soft upper-class British accent. He asked for the full treatment and offered the barber a ten-shilling note before sitting down in the chair.
“Bundu-bashing. Just arrived on the train. Can you believe it, someone stole my luggage. Where can I buy a good leather case and a suit off the peg? Jolly good trip. Bagged three lions up at Kuruman. Where Moffat had his church. Where Livingstone met Moffat’s daughter. Or was it his sister? A good wash all around the face first and then cut it off. No civilised man should ever be forced to wear a beard.”
“The king wears a beard, sir.”
“Naval type.”
“And you, sir?”
“Royal Flying Corps. Shot down twenty-seven Huns.”
“You must be famous, sir.”
“Just did my duty. Honour. Duty. Country… Then you can’t go wrong.”
“Stuttafords should see you right, sir. In Adderley Street. The case and the suit of clothes.”
Ten minutes later the barber had uncovered the bruise on the man’s face.
“That looks nasty.”
“You ever been in a bar fight?”
“Twice.”
“You should see the other chap.” They both winked at each other, fellow travellers through the vagaries of life.
At ten o’clock, after telling Stuttafords to alter the length of the arms on the suit jacket and the blazer, with two new leather cases ready to be
filled with his purchases, the man now smiling to himself had walked to the foreshore. The SS Corfe Castle, way over to his right, was still in the harbour.
Early the previous night the man had put the small gun case that he had purchased the previous day from a gun shop in Strand Street in a flood drain that in bad weather took water from the mountain down to the sea without flooding the streets of Cape Town. The man retrieved the gun case that had a dead pilot’s initials engraved on the outside. The man had then walked back to Stuttafords and claimed his purchases. It was then two o’clock in the afternoon. With the gun case now inside the small leather case he had purchased at Stuttafords the man had hired a taxi to the Standard Bank. The small bank was a little further down Adderley Street. He told the man to wait. With the passport in the name of Fitzgerald that had been forged for him along with the passport for John Perry, he checked that the money he had transferred into the Fitzgerald bank account before leaving England was in the bank. The assistant bank manager gave him a South African chequebook which he put in his pocket, having identified himself with the forged passport. Only then had the waiting driver driven him to the Mount Nelson Hotel where he was going to stay before taking the train to Rhodesia.
As the taxi took him up the hill towards the hotel, he looked back over the harbour. The SS Corfe Castle was sailing out into the bay. The man smiled pleasantly at the taxi driver who was watching him in the rear-view mirror.
Five minutes later the taxi was driving slowly through the opulent entrance of the driveway that led up to the hotel.
Alone in room twenty-three in the bath, the man soaked leisurely in the hot water. His watch by the side of the bath said the time was four-thirty in the afternoon.
“People are fools,” he said to himself.