by Mick Finlay
‘D’you need anything, sir?’ she asked like she was in half a temper.
‘No, Mabel. Thank you.’
Still she stood staring at the Africans, who shivered and stared back at her.
Jebb walked over, took her arm, and turned her out. He shut the door.
‘Please continue, miss.’
‘There are some men chasing us, Father,’ said Thembeka, sitting forward on the seat. ‘They want to kill us. We’d be happy sleeping anywhere you’d let us. We don’t need beds. We’d be no trouble. We can work. We’ll do anything you want.’
‘Who are these men, Miss Thembeka?’ asked the guvnor.
‘The Capaldi family, sir. D’you know them? They’re showmen. Into all sorts of illegal business. Mr Capaldi wants to exhibit us at the Aquarium here in London, then he’s got an idea to take us all round the country. Here.’ She got up and collected the Standard from the side table. ‘Look in the notices. Royal Aquarium.’
She gave it to Jebb, who opened it. His eyes travelled up and down the columns. ‘Capaldi’s Zulus,’ he read after a few moments. ‘Performances 5.30, 7.30 and 9. The only ones that have ever left their country. Two months only. First performance Sat 21 December. One shilling.’ He looked up at Thembeka. ‘Is that you?’
Thembeka nodded. ‘We don’t want to perform, but Mr Capaldi won’t listen. He’s sent two men with pistols to hunt us down and take us back.’
‘Please, sir,’ said Musa, with a scratch of his grey moustache. ‘You can help?’
‘We’ll take you to the police,’ said the guvnor. ‘You must report this to them.’
‘Mr Capaldi said he has a man in the police,’ said Thembeka. ‘He said they’ll arrest us. They’ll make us go back.’
‘I don’t think they can do that,’ answered Arrowood. ‘How is it you speak so well, if I may ask, ma’am?’
‘I was a housemaid for the Sinclairs in Johannesburg. An English family. Mistress Ann taught me from when I was six.’
As she spoke, there came a knock at the front door. Mabel must have been waiting in the hallway, as a moment later we heard the swoop of the door being opened and a few words exchanged. Seconds later three coppers burst into the parlour, each holding a truncheon afore them.
‘On your feet, you lot,’ said the sergeant to the Zulus. ‘You’ve got an appointment with the magistrate.’ He turned to Jebb. ‘Begging your pardon, Reverend. I need to take these Africans.’
‘On what charge?’ asked Jebb.
‘Contract-breaking.’ The sergeant poked Musa on the shoulder with his stick. ‘You, get up.’
‘You can’t arrest a person for contract-breaking, can you?’ asked Jebb.
‘Don’t know, sir,’ said the copper. ‘The owner of the Aquarium’s reported it, and my inspector give me the orders to bring them in. Whether I can or can’t ain’t my business.’
The four Zulus remained on the sofa. ‘We’ve done nothing wrong, sir,’ said Thembeka to the copper. ‘It’s Mr Capaldi you should be arresting, not us. He imprisoned us. He said he’d kill us if we didn’t dance.’
All of a sudden, Senzo leapt from his seat and lunged for the door. Before he’d got halfway, the other two coppers were on him, wrestling him to the floor. He tried to get up, but one of the police walloped him in the arm with his truncheon while the other shoved him to the floor again. Senzo lay there on his belly as they put wrist-irons on him, a tear in his eye, his head at a painful angle.
‘Anyone else want to try?’ asked the sergeant.
‘Sergeant, be reasonable,’ said the guvnor. ‘You can’t arrest a person for breaking a contract. It’s not legal.’
‘You’ll have to raise that with the inspector,’ said the sergeant. He looked at the other three and raised his truncheon. ‘Now, get up or you’ll taste my woody.’
The three Zulus stood.
‘We’re Christians, sir,’ said Thembeka, as the coppers put her in irons. She looked at Jebb with proud eyes. ‘We’re Christians.’
‘I’ll pray for you, madam,’ said Jebb. ‘I’m sure the magistrate will be understanding.’
We followed them through to the hall and watched as the unhappy four stepped back out into the rain and trudged in a line down the street. Just before they reached the corner, the young lad, S’bu, looked back at us standing on the path. He did a weary salute, then turned and was gone.
Chapter Two
The guvnor lived in rooms behind the pudding shop on Coin Street, just down the road from Waterloo Station. There were five of them there. His sister Ettie and wife Isabel slept in the bedroom with their two babies, Mercy and Leopold. Arrowood had a mattress on the parlour floor. When I arrived at lunchtime the day after the Zulus had been arrested, Isabel was out at the apothecary. Since I’d last been there, the Christmas decorations had been put out: some holly and twigs strung up to nails on the wall, a few painted baubles hanging from the mantel, a little model of a manger with the baby Jesus on the dresser. The babies slept in their boxes on the table.
As Ettie went out back to make tea, there was a knock on the door. I opened it to find Thembeka standing in the corridor with a tall, wispy-haired gent. S’bu was behind them.
‘Miss Thembeka,’ said the guvnor, rising from his chair. A warm smile creased his great cod-fish face as he shook her hand. ‘And S’bu. I’m so very glad to see you released.’
‘Good day, sir,’ said S’bu as Ettie stepped back into the parlour to see what was up.
‘This is my sister, Ettie,’ said the guvnor.
‘Good day, miss,’ said Thembeka, proper as before. She nodded at the old white bloke she’d collected. ‘May I introduce Mr Fowler?’
‘Of the Aborigines’ Protection Society,’ said the other in a breathy voice. He was a dry, dusty fellow, hollow-cheeked and leggy. He stepped over to shake our hands. ‘The court’s lawyer asked if… if I could assist on Miss Kunene’s case. Do you know our organization?’
‘I don’t believe I do, sir,’ answered the guvnor.
‘I’ve heard of it,’ said Ettie. ‘You’re Quakers.’
‘We strive to protect the rights of native peoples against the colonizing powers,’ said Fowler. ‘South Africa is a particular interest of ours.’
‘Did they dismiss the case?’ asked the guvnor, pointing at the chairs around the table.
‘The magistrate said we hadn’t committed a crime, but he told us we ought to serve out the contract with Mr Capaldi,’ said Thembeka, sitting stiffly with her coat still buttoned and her gloves still on. The fire hadn’t yet been set that day. She looked around the room, at the portrait of the guvnor over the mantel, the books and tracts stacked on the shelves, the mattress leaning against the wall. Her eyes softened as they fell on the sleeping babies.
‘Mr Capaldi was in court,’ said Fowler, his knees creaking as he bent to fit his legs under the table. He clasped his hands in front of him, one long finger picking at the weave of Leopold’s sleeping box. He seemed unsure of himself. ‘He paid to… to bring them over from Paris, and since then he’s been covering board and lodging. He’s out of pocket. He also has to pay the Aquarium compensation if the show’s cancelled. It’s a significant amount. Christmas is their busiest time.’
‘Can you pay him off?’ the guvnor asked Thembeka.
‘We’ve nothing,’ she answered. She looked away, her lips thin and tight, and I wondered if she might be fighting back tears. S’bu stood aside her, his hand on her shoulder. He was staring at the photo portrait above the fireplace, looking from it to the guvnor.
‘That’s me, S’bu,’ said Arrowood. He thrust out his chin and put his hand on his chest just like in the picture.
S’bu smiled, nodding quick. ‘Yes, yes. Good.’ He pointed at the parrot in the picture. ‘Upholi. You? Upholi?’
‘He wants to know if you have a parrot,’ said Thembeka.
The guvnor smiled. ‘No, that was in the photographer’s studio. It was dead. Stuffed.’
Thembeka spoke to
the young lad in their own tongue.
‘Didn’t you work in Paris?’ the guvnor asked when they’d finished.
‘Yes, but we sent the money back to our family.’
‘And you signed a contract?’
‘With Mr Monteuil,’ said she. ‘He’s a French showman we met in Africa. We agreed to go to Paris to do exhibitions. But then in France Mr Monteuil turned around and said we could earn more money in London and we should sign a new contract. I wasn’t there when it was done. My cousins put their mark on it, but they can’t speak French and Musa only has a little English. They didn’t really know what they were signing, but Mr Monteuil said they had to if they wanted to get to London.’ She rubbed her nose as she spoke, watching the babies. ‘Is the child ill?’ she asked, pointing at Mercy.
The guvnor peered into the box and studied the baby for a moment. Her eyes were open, her little mittened hands clenched at her sides. A bit of dried milk was crusted at the corner of her mouth. ‘No, I don’t think so. Why?’
Thembeka’s eye twitched. ‘Is she usually so stiff, Miss Ettie?’
Ettie looked down at her child. ‘Is that a sign of something?’
‘She might be coming down with a fever.’
‘I hope not. She’s only just recovered from a cold.’
‘So they signed another contract with Mr Monteuil?’ asked the guvnor.
‘We thought so, but when we got here we discovered the men who’d brought us were Mr Capaldi’s men,’ she said, her voice tight with anger. ‘They only told us then that Mr Capaldi bought our contract from Mr Monteuil and he owns it now and we can’t leave the lodging house without his say-so. They treated us as prisoners: they wouldn’t allow us to go out, nor get the food we want. They say nobody’ll buy tickets if they see us in the street. We said we won’t put up with it and won’t perform for him. When the chance came, we escaped.’
‘There’s a law against imprisonment, Miss Thembeka.’
‘There’s a law against a lot of things.’
‘How did the police know you were in the women’s refuge?’
‘When we escaped from Mr Capaldi we hid in a church. We asked the parson for help. He told us to go to the refuge and he even paid for the cab. But when we’d gone he reported us to the police.’ She shook her head, her eyes blazing.
The guvnor sighed.
‘Yes, Mr Arrowood. Is that how holy men behave in this country? Or is it only for Africans?’
‘Mr Capaldi had already reported them missing,’ said old Fowler. ‘The police were looking out for them.’
‘Can you find a benefactor to pay off the debt, Mr Fowler?’ asked the guvnor.
‘It’s rather a lot.’
‘It won’t stop him anyway,’ said Thembeka. ‘He wants to take the exhibition all over – Wales, Scotland, Belgium. He can make a lot of money out of us. When we said we wouldn’t do the show, he said he’d pick one of us and kill them and nobody would ever know.’
‘But the police would arrest him,’ said the guvnor. ‘He knows that.’
‘He says he’ll drop the body so far out to sea it’d never be seen again. We told the police: they said no crime’s been done.’ Her words were moving quick now, her shoulders up, her hands open. ‘They’re criminals, the whole family. They’ve a freak show too, and one of them doesn’t want to be on it either. We were on the boat from France with them. They’ve shows on all over. They’ve got a travelling cat-house too. And a couple of circuses. They’ve just brought over three lions.’
‘Do you really think he’d do it, Miss Thembeka?’ asked Ettie. She’d been listening carefully, a horrified look on her long face.
‘We heard he killed somebody in Paris,’ said Thembeka, glancing up at S’bu. ‘A Frenchman who served him snails when he asked for eggs. Shot him in the face with a pistol.’
‘Surely not!’ exclaimed Fowler. ‘Not for bringing the wrong food, Miss Kunene.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Fowler sought out the guvnor’s eye and raised his brow in disbelief. Thembeka saw him.
‘We heard it was true, Mr Fowler,’ she said.
‘Why wasn’t he arrested?’ asked the guvnor.
‘I don’t know. That’s all we heard.’
‘A little protection would help assure them, Mr Arrowood,’ said Fowler. ‘Our society has a small fund to help in times of crisis. We could pay you.’
‘Do you want us to protect you, Miss Kunene?’ asked the guvnor, rising from his chair.
‘Yes, sir. But please, call me Thembeka.’
‘And you must call me William,’ said the guvnor, picking up his pipe and turning to look out the little window at the sooty wall outside. The orange cat came padding in from the scullery and walked straight toward the lady, whose eyes widened. She clutched the sides of her chair, pushing back as the cat made ready to leap. I pushed it away with my foot.
‘We charge twenty shillings a day for guarding,’ I said. ‘Plus expenses. How long for?’
Fowler looked at Thembeka. ‘Do you have tickets for the boat back to Africa?’
‘We’re not going back,’ she said, her fierce eyes still following the cat as it loped over to the guvnor and looked up at him. ‘We’re staying in England.’
‘You’re staying?’ said Fowler. ‘But why?’
‘There’s nothing for us in Natal.’
‘Then why not work for Mr Capaldi?’ demanded the old bloke, a flush coming over his long forehead.
‘We won’t work for a white man who thinks he’s bought us like cattle. My cousins want us to do our own exhibitions and take the profits ourselves. Senzo thinks we can hire a manager to work for us, just as Chang and Eng did. You know about them?’
‘The Siamese twins? They became very rich, didn’t they?’
‘Is it permitted?’
‘Permitted?’ asked the guvnor. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Are Africans permitted to do this?’
‘But of course, miss. Why not?’
‘It wouldn’t be allowed in South Africa.’
‘The Society could pay for, ah… two days,’ said Fowler, writing the numbers in a notebook. ‘Perhaps Mr Capaldi will give up after that.’
The guvnor gave me the wink. We needed the money, and even if it didn’t solve their problem, it gave them a bit of space.
‘We need the payment in advance, sir,’ I said. ‘Forty shillings.’
Fowler’s eyes widened for a moment, then he composed himself. ‘Well, I think I might just have that.’
As he fished out his purse and counted the money, Ettie asked S’bu if he wanted a biscuit.
‘Biscuit?’ he answered.
She went to the scullery and came back with the tin. It was full of garibaldis. ‘Go on,’ she said, holding it out to him. He took one and had a bite.
‘Good?’ asked Ettie.
‘Good!’ he said, taking another bite. Ettie handed him two more. As he chewed, he stepped over to the mantel and examined the row of Christmas cards Ettie had put up.
‘Where are Senzo and Musa now?’ the guvnor asked Thembeka when I had Fowler’s money in my hand.
‘The Quaker Meeting House. Mr Fowler took us there.’
‘It’s on St Martin’s Lane,’ said Fowler.
‘Did anyone see you go in?’ asked the guvnor.
‘I don’t know,’ said Fowler. ‘It was the afternoon. The streets were busy.’
‘Were any of Capaldi’s men with him in the court?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Thembeka. ‘I only met two of them, Nick and English Dave. They weren’t there.’
The guvnor looked at me. ‘We’ll stop at Lewis’s on the way.’
‘You can’t come now?’ asked Thembeka.
‘We need weapons, miss,’ I said.
She turned to Fowler. ‘You can buy us weapons?’
‘I certainly cannot. We’re Quakers, Miss Kunene. The trustees would never approve.’
The guvnor took his astrakhan coat from the hook
and put it on. ‘We’ll meet you there in an hour or so,’ he said. ‘But please make sure you’re not followed.’
When they were gone, the guvnor kissed Mercy on the forehead, then little Leo. Before stepping out into the cluttered back corridor of the pudding shop, he turned to have one last look at Mercy, his brow drawn low in worry. He stared at her for a few moments, then, with a final shake of the head, he pulled shut the door.
Chapter Three
Lewis was the guvnor’s oldest friend. He ran a second-hand weapons shop on Bankside, surrounded on all sides by warehouses. A couple of navvies carrying a bundle wrapped in tarp were just leaving when we arrived. Seeing the packet of hot sausages in the guvnor’s hand, Lewis smiled.
‘A welcome sight, William,’ he said, clearing a space on the table with a swipe of his good arm. The wooden one was detached, and lay serene as the baby Jesus on a pile of fiercely stained butchers’ aprons that he’d had in there for five years at least without ever selling one. A half-smoked cigar rested above his ear; three waistcoats covered his bulk against the cold. ‘My belly’s been gurgling since eleven.’
Arrowood opened the packet and took the thickest one for himself. A gob of mustard landed onto the filthy wooden top; he rescued it with his finger and spread it back on the greasy skin. ‘We need to borrow a few pistols, Lewis,’ he said as he took a bite.
‘I might have known,’ said his friend, already chewing. Resting the knuckles of his hand on the counter, he raised himself off the chair and lumbered over to a cabinet, wiping the grease from his fingers onto his britches. There he drew a key from his waistcoat, unlocked the top drawer, and pulled out the usual two pistols. ‘Isn’t it time you bought these?’ he asked.
‘Ettie won’t have them in the house, not with the children,’ said the guvnor. I took a sausage. As I chewed it, I felt the sawdust on my tongue. The guvnor took another for himself, rubbing it in the mustard stuck to the wrapping.
‘Well, this is the last time I lend them,’ said Lewis, laying the two pistols on the counter, his hand black with gun grease and soot. He picked up the last banger. ‘Where’d you get these from?’