by Peter Rimmer
“Do you think he believes what he says?” asked Solly Goldman.
“Oh, he believes what he says,” said Simon Haller.
“Do you believe what he says?”
“That’s a question man has been asking himself since he came out of the primal swamp and had the ability to think. I’d like to believe, Solly. You have no idea how much I would like to believe. Without faith in God, there is no point to anything. Why we also desperately want to believe in a religion.”
“But do you believe in God?”
“I don’t know, Solly. Like all the rest of us deep down in what the priests would like to call our souls, I just don’t know. Mostly when you want something really bad you don’t get it. To some, faith is easier. All they have to do is believe. We only find out the truth when we die. Whether there was any point to life at all. When we die.”
“He’s got you.”
“Oh, yes. He’s got me thinking all right.”
“Don’t you think he might be a fraud? All this to wash away the charge of murder.”
“We are all frauds, Solly. Especially newspapermen. We’ll say anything to sell a newspaper. The ‘all good’ fourth estate. I doubt it… Power. It’s all about power. All the estates of man. From the King to the priests to Parliament. Everyone is trying to control our minds and bodies. It’s the way things are and always will be. You can’t have people running around the world doing what they want. That’s anarchy. No one wants to live in a state of anarchy. Why we have a king or whatever we call the man at the top.”
“Isn’t God at the top?”
“There you go again, Solly. That question.”
“All you have to do is believe.”
Simon was shaking his head. There were tears in his eyes.
Seven hundred and twenty miles to the north, while Simon Haller was trying to find God, the Honourable Peyton Fitzgerald was well satisfied with the information gleaned on his own quarry. He had made a friend of the tall, big-bellied Zulu on the main door of Meikles Hotel where Peyton Fitzgerald had been staying for a week in room seventeen. The black man was a mine of information for ten shillings, the single note having exchanged hands the second day after Peyton Fitzgerald arrived in Salisbury.
“I’m writing a book, you see. About the big-game hunters of Africa. Have you ever heard of Sebastian Brigandshaw? He died in a hunting accident but his family live somewhere hereabouts.”
“Elephant Walk. Twenty miles from here on the Mazoe River,” said the Zulu doorman. He was holding his shield and spear, monkey tails hanging from his waist, a leopard skin slung over his broad shoulders. He looked, as he was meant to look, the picture of a Zulu warrior.
“Splendid. So you know what I’m writing about. Tell me about Elephant Walk.”
“Talk is, a man from the Belgian Congo has built a piece of ground for big, big birds to land down on. Very big birds.”
“Aeroplanes? My goodness. Do they have aeroplanes in Africa?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who lives at this Elephant Walk? What is it?”
“A farm. Very big, big farm with water going from river onto ground. Tobacco. Maize. Much cattle… Very rich.”
“And who lives there?”
“The baas is in England. Son of a hunter. Madam still there. Wife of hunter. Old man, father of wife. Daughter and children I think. People who work too. Many people.”
“Big fence around the house?”
“Not no more. During Chimurenga big fence. Old man take it down they say. You go out on Mazoe Road. You go they give you lunch. Any white man go Elephant Walk gets lunch. Black men too if they travelling around country. Black men get lunch in compound.”
“Does not the daughter have a husband?”
“He very bad man. Gone away. Beat up his black men with sjambok. His workers. Big whip. Very big man. Very nasty, they say… Excuse me, baas.”
The Zulu had majestically walked to a new car that pulled up at the entrance to the hotel and opened the back door for an important-looking passenger. Smiling with satisfaction, the man who now called himself Fitzgerald walked away.
Each time Peyton Fitzgerald left the hotel he engaged the Zulu in conversation. Had it not been for the greater excitement of Harry Brigandshaw watching, he would have hired a car, driven to Elephant Walk and killed Harry’s mother. Instead, he was waiting for the boat train from Beira to arrive at Salisbury Station. Then he was going to do the same thing as last time. Only instead of the wife, he was going to kill the mother and Harry Brigandshaw.
He had sent a messenger from the hotel to the offices of Colonial Shipping in Salisbury to find out the exact time of the train’s arrival, a day later than scheduled due to the ship going through bad weather.
The pleasure of waiting for Harry Brigandshaw was exquisite. The dead German pilot’s gun was safely in its case in room seventeen.
While Simon Haller was trying to find a way to interview Barend Oosthuizen alone in an exclusive for the Rhodesia Herald, the two of them both being born Rhodesians, Peyton Fitzgerald was standing in room seventeen looking down on Cecil Square dripping spittle from both sides of his mouth. His day of atonement was nigh.
The row between Tina Pringle and her brother Albert started in Parktown as the SS Corfe Castle was sailing into the port of Lourenço Marques in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique.
“You’re pregnant aren’t you, Tina? That’s it. It’s that Barnaby St Clair. I can’t have a scandal. I have a position to maintain.”
“To answer your first assumption, you are probably right. I’m late and though I am not, I feel sick in the morning. Your second assumption is wrong. The father is not Barnaby St Clair.”
“You’re a slut.”
“That’s pretty good coming from a man who ran a knocking shop.”
“It was not.”
“What were all the rooms for over the bars and restaurants? It was a whorehouse. You want a real scandal then. I’ll ask your old boss and mentor to open her mouth. Where is the esteemed Lily White these days?… Sit down and shut up, Bert. The whole bloody town knows your fortune started in a brothel. They are proud of you. Johannesburg is a mining camp. You’re part of its growth.”
“Then who’s the father? Sallie will want to hear about this.”
“Your wife knows. When I told her she became human. I’d forgotten how nice she can be.”
“Then who was it?”
“He’s alive, Bert. Or he was when I got off the boat in Cape Town.”
“What are you going to do?”
“You sound as if I’m the first woman to fall pregnant without a ring on her finger. You really can be a sanctimonious hypocrite. Sallie told me she was pregnant when she married you. It was why she married you. You were way beneath her class.”
“I’ll make him marry you.”
“There you go again, Bert.”
“Who is he? Some stoker off the ship?”
“I was travelling first class, remember. You should know as you paid for the ticket.”
“Some junior officer?”
“If you must know it was the owner of the ship.”
“Don’t be silly. The SS Corfe Castle is part of the shipping line. They have dozens of boats.”
“Exactly.”
“Blimey. It’s Harry Brigandshaw.”
“Exactly. The fighter ace and grandson of the Pirate who started much the same way you did, Bert.”
“How did he seduce you?”
“He didn’t. I seduced him.”
“Then you are a slut.”
“Bert! You’re getting boring.”
“What are you going to do, Tina?”
“I have no idea. Are you going to kick me out of your house? If you do I shall go back to mum and dad… Can you imagine Barnaby’s face when he hears? I hate him. He is so full of his own importance he doesn’t have time to even be a sanctimonious hypocrite.”
“We’ll have to find someone to marry you fast… A month i
sn’t too long. Thirty-six-week-old babies are barely considered premature.”
“You should know, brother dear.”
“Do the servants know?”
“Oh shut up, Bert. It’s me, Tina. We were born in a railway cottage. Our parents are as common as dirt and still the most wonderful people I know in the world. Thank you, Bert. You’ve made up my mind. I’m going to have my baby. I’m going back to my roots. I’m going home. Mum always wanted a grandchild to hold.”
“What d’you mean by that?”
“You’ve never been home, Bert. Never taken your kid. Your wife. You’ve got too big for your boots. Don’t you love mum and dad?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then show it.”
“They won’t take money.”
“They don’t want money. They want you and Julia. Their own blood. And Sallie. They are nothing to be ashamed of just because they don’t have an education. They are good people and that is worth more than all the money in the world.”
“When are you going back?”
“I haven’t decided yet. I want to be quite sure I’m pregnant. I’m going to wait another week and see a doctor.”
“You said you were sick in the mornings.”
“I said I thought I was. It was in my head. When you think you are pregnant, you have morning sickness. There’s a lovely word for that which Miss Pinforth taught me. Psychosomatic. What the mind thinks the body confirms.”
“Then you are pregnant. I’ll go and see Brigandshaw. Where is he?”
“In Rhodesia by now.”
“Then we’ll go to Elephant Walk.”
“Did you like Harry, Bert?” Tina said sweetly. “When you met him that one time, I was with Benny Lightfoot. The American. You were my chaperone.”
“I didn’t expect him to do this to my sister. Men are pigs.”
“Oh, Bert. Get off that high horse of yours and pour me a drink.”
“It’s ten o’clock in the morning… Do you like Miss Pinforth’s cottage?”
“That’s better. Why don’t you go and ask Sallie to join us? Celebrate. A new life is with us.”
“Then you are pregnant?”
“Yes, Bert, I’m pregnant.”
Later that day, when Tina’s brother and sister-in-law were comfortable with her pregnancy, Philip Neville was standing in front of a large church. The building was beautiful. A beacon of Christianity on the wild shores of Africa. They were all standing together looking up in awe at the spire rising up into the powder-blue sky in the centre of Lourenço Marques.
They had come ashore to look at the sights. To taste the strange continental smell of the Portuguese colony’s capital. There was a rich, musty aroma that reminded Philip of incense and God and ancient mysteries. The size of the church reminded him how small he was in the progression of life. For a long moment, the great book he was about to write was insignificant.
He had mapped out the first three paragraphs in his mind. Word for word. Each carefully remembered to begin the triumph that would change his life and secure his income. Though once the book came out, he would no longer need his great-aunt’s money. The book was going to make him rich and famous. Once he had one bestseller to his name, his confidence would rise. All the other stories he wanted to write would come flooding into his head. He would be part of the London literary set. He would join the Garrick Club. He would allow himself to be invited to the important soirées thrown by influential old ladies with too much money and too much time on their hands who sought to patronise the writers of the day.
Harry and the rest of the crowd from the boat had walked off down the wide street and left him alone, staring with deep satisfaction into the brilliance of his future. The church right in front of him was no longer in his mind.
“Aren’t you coming, Philip?” called Justine Voss. “It’s a beautiful church but you can’t stare at it forever.”
By the time Philip was back walking by her side, the butterflies were back in Justine’s stomach, fluttering with intense excitement. It was only days now, she told herself, before she met her father for the first time.
They all walked on down the street, the men on the side nearer the cars and horse-drawn carts, protecting the women from road-splash like all good English gentlemen. The fact there had been no rain in the colony for weeks made no difference. It was the place gentlemen walked on the streets on the rare occasion a walk was necessary. The etiquette made Justine feel safe.
Mrs Voss, thinking to herself about the soon-to-be-faced confrontation with Colonel Voss, the man she was once meant to have married so long ago, had the same butterflies in the stomach, brought out not by excitement but by fear. She had no idea what she was going to say to him. What would he look like after so many years of deprivation? Would she cry or laugh or simply wish to run away when she saw the horror in her daughter’s eyes at the oh so final reality instead of the dreams?
She had started the journey. Now she would have to make it come to an end and go back to her lonely life in England with death to comfort her at the end of a useless life.
Her daughter was giggling with Philip Neville. Somehow it made her irritated.
“It will be all right,” said Harry next to her.
“Can you read minds?”
“Yours just then. Life is never as bad as we think. There’s always hope.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“No. But it’s important to think so. And sometimes we get such wonderful surprises.”
16
Elephant Walk, November 1922
At Elephant Walk the dogs had sensed there was something going on. The two dogs were chasing the bitch around the msasa trees, trampling the round flower beds that marked the trees among the well-kept lawn. They were Rhodesian ridgeback dogs trained to track lions. Emily Brigandshaw, Harry Brigandshaw’s mother, screamed at the dogs to get out of her flowers as the red and yellow cannas flew apart with the charge of the dogs in full cry. Then the bitch turned in her tracks around a tree trunk and came out charging the dogs. The dogs turned tail, yelping with excitement. The ginger cat asleep on the windowsill of the kitchen in front of Emily stayed fast asleep with his eyes wide open. The Egyptian geese, long tame around the sprawling homestead of what was now five houses, had taken off honking loudly for the safety of the nearby Mazoe River when the dogs first raced out onto the lawn.
The fifth small house had been built under the supervision of Sir Henry Manderville, Harry’s maternal grandfather, to give Jim Bowman the privacy of his own home. There was the main house now lived in by Emily and her daughter Madge, the wife of Barend Oosthuizen. With them in a permanent state of excitement lived the three children. Paula was going on seven, Tinus junior going on six and Doris going on five. They had all been born a year apart in the month of February during the three good years of Madge’s marriage to Barend. The dilapidated old house once lived in by Alison and Tinus Oosthuizen was empty. All day long, until they fell asleep from exhaustion, the children yelled at each other to see who could make the most noise. They were wild, untamed, without a modicum of education.
Sir Henry, their great-grandfather, had learnt to stuff cotton wool in his ears when he wanted some peace. He claimed he could hear the children from two miles away when he went out collecting his butterflies, many of which had ended up in the British Natural History Museum in London, all in perfectly handmade wooden boxes with glass tops and the names of the butterflies in English, Latin and the local Shona language. Sir Henry’s only claim to fame was in the wooden boxes that were now sent to England in large straw-filled wooden crates once a year on the same day in January.
The fourth home in the family compound, which had been built for Peregrine the Ninth in 1915, during the war in France, was now occupied by a rebellious Colonel Voss. Othello and Hamlet, the horses that had transported Jim Bowman and Colonel Voss to the Valley of the Horses, had been retired to a large field close to the Brigandshaw family compound. The big wa
gon with the canvas top was stored in a new shed built by Jim Bowman with the help of the same two African builders who had come to Elephant Walk to build Tinus’s house. Despite all the scrubbing, haircuts, beard cuts and new clothes, Colonel Voss still looked like a man who had lived outside most of his life: a homeless vagabond who now hated living in his new house where he had been ever since Jim Bowman collected him from the canvas-topped wagon outside the dilapidated home of the man Jim only knew as Sir Robert. King Richard the Lionheart had refused to change his home, the dog preferring to stay with Sir Robert in his run-down yard outside the Rhodesian capital of Salisbury. The colonel had not wanted to go on one of his bush trips as suggested by Harry Brigandshaw but was coerced into coming to Elephant Walk by Jim Bowman.
For many weeks, Colonel Voss had been in a deep sulk. He had been told so many stories in his long life and told so many himself that he believed none of them to be true. The very idea of Felicity travelling all the way to Africa after so many years seemed absurd. As for a well-brought-up English girl like Justine finding out her reprobate father was alive, let alone wishing to see him, sent him into fits of uncontrollable laughter. It was all a set-up like the rest of his life. It was clear to Colonel Voss that young Jim Bowman had got himself a proper job and felt sorry for him. Felt it his duty to dig him out of a perfectly comfortable billet with his old friend Robert to be subjected to hot baths and haircuts and regular food.
It had all happened in a matter of weeks. First, they had put him in a vehicle that did not require a horse to make a journey. Then they had bought him a wardrobe of new clothes, burning everything else except his new boots. They had subjected him to a barber and a bath in one of the back rooms at Meikles Hotel Jim Bowman had rented for a day. Then driven him to Elephant Walk and his new home that had once belonged to his old friend Peregrine the Ninth before the old boy died. He was sure Peregrine was turning in his grave. He only wished he was doing the same. He had lived too long. The very thought of all that past catching up with him was appalling. He had made up his mind to sulk for the rest of his life or until they took him back to live in his wagon in Sir Robert’s yard where he was perfectly comfortable and quite content.