Rivers sometimes flowed a few feet below girders of bridges; often the glint of water was deep in a ravine haunted by a rainbow of birds. Antelope roamed freely in herds, some as large as horses, others as dainty as the deer that grazed Britain’s parklands. Vere occasionally spotted solitary members of a species as small as a hare, that leapt with agility along the rocky sides of a ravine. Once, he thought he saw a leopard moving between trees near water, but in the dappled shade he could not be sure. The great distances populated by wildlife undisturbed by man, and the deep, deep blue of the sky which overhung them, gave Vere immense pleasure. He sensed that the veld might match the haunting lure of the desert, and acknowledged that this was what he had been seeking since leaving Knightshill. Felicity Harmesworth’s provocative remark no longer troubled him. Vere Ashleigh was at peace with himself.
For several hours Vere remained on the platform. Officers sometimes joined him to smoke a cigar and exchange a few words, but they mostly saw their surroundings in military terms and missed the overwhelming beauty of them. Vere preferred it when they left him to his solitude. He leant on the rail, listening to the slow rhythmic click of wheels passing over joints in the track as a long line of wagons was hauled by an over-burdened engine, and to the distant voices of soldiers whose helmeted heads were all he could see of them whenever the line ran around a curve. Often they were so close to the hills Vere felt he could reach out and touch them, and when they ran through narrow neks with rocky heights rearing up on each side of the track, he was awed by a sense of insignificance.
So lost was he in contemplating this land of spectacle and pure exhilarating air, it was a little while before he realized the sun was setting. In the Sudan, the horizon had been straight and an eternity away, so the burning ball of light had dropped away as if sinking into a yellow sea. Here, the sky changed from azure through turquoise, misty green, lemon, pink and carmine until the tranquil evening was pied with mauve and blood red as the sun vanished behind a distant ridge.
He took out his watch and peered at it in the half-light. Half an hour to go before they reached their destination. The troop would be glad to leave their uncomfortable trucks, pitch their tents and enjoy a meal. He realized he was hungry, too, and faced the prospect of finding accommodation for himself. Harmesworth’s help had covered only transportation. Taking the man’s advice, Vere had left the bulk of his luggage in his hotel. He had brought with him a small tent, camp bed, oil lamp and collapsible table, in addition to two sets of drab breeches and coats, as worn by local burghers, together with a wide felt hat. He was wearing the khaki clothes now and, but for the absence of badges and polished buttons, he could be an army man. In the desert he had had a batman to look after him, and an officers’ mess to provide his meals. He must now find a civilian alternative.
The train began to slow, then stopped with a series of high-pitched clangs as bumper hit bumper. Leaning out, Vere saw lights alongside the track ahead. They appeared to be at a siding or small halt. He could make out uniformed figures moving about in the dim lamplight. One rode along to the carriage where officers’ heads poked through open windows.
‘What’s the trouble?’ called one of them.
‘Sorry, sir, the track’s bin blown ‘arf a mile ahead. Nothing can’t be done ‘til morning. It’s certain to be a trap,’ replied the mounted corporal. ‘Colonel Dodds’ll send down an armoured train soon as it’s light. ‘E says you’ll ‘ave to stay where you are ‘til it’s bin repaired.’
‘Oh God, what are we expected to do about feeding ourselves meantime?’
The corporal shunned responsibility for that. ‘There’s an ‘otel, sich as it is. They might be able to do somethink, sir,’
‘A hotel, you say? Good-oh,’ exclaimed another officer. ‘They’re sure to have stabling for our horses, too.’
‘Out here, Tancott? There’s no one but peasants and blacks once one leaves the cities. What a cursed nuisance!’
The N.C.O. saluted and wisely rode off having delivered his message. Vere was thoughtful. In his baggage he had several tins of meat, some biscuits and two bottles of wine — his emergency rations. This might constitute an emergency, but he had no intention of sharing his food. Let them solve their dilemma as best they could. The situation could provide him with lively material for sketches ‘on active service in Natal’.
He stepped down from the platform and sauntered beside the train to reach the lighted area. Oil lamps hung from six evenly-spaced posts forming a stopping-place too primitive to be called a station. Yet there was a water tower and a lean-to containing ample supplies of wood. A shack beside it served as an office, where a plump burgher watched the proceedings with undisguised resentment. Vere was delighted and swiftly sketched a scene showing him, and the grouped officers in discussion, with a background of disgruntled faces peering over the rim of one of the trucks. This was an aspect of war civilians knew little of. It was the human side of conflict, the side that concerned wives, mothers and sweethearts. There was no glory here, no patriotic endeavour, yet it was part of a life spent following the flag. The greater part, in fact.
It was some minutes before Vere glanced up from his pad to look around. A sign hanging free of one of its hinges told him he was at Vrymanskop. By the dying light of day he made out a row of buildings some fifty yards away, one of which had lamps in windows of both storeys. The hotel mentioned by the corporal? As the officers moved off towards it, he decided it constituted his own best hope of a meal and a bed, so he trudged back to where he had left half his luggage on a rack above his seat, and the other half beneath it.
Taking only those things he would need for the night, he returned to where troops were spilling from trucks to stretch their legs and toss coins to decide who would sleep on the train, and who on the earth beside it. They all wanted tea and something to eat. Sergeants promised to get permission to break open stores aboard which would provide a cold supper. There were grumbles and curses, arguments and accusations. It helped men make the best of things. There was worse to come.
The hotel had no name. As it was the only one in Vrymanskop Vere supposed it did not matter. A lamp over the entrance was now alight and he ducked beneath it as he entered. The scent of lavender polish pervaded a vestibule containing a chaise longue, four matching chairs and an oval table. Against faded wallpaper hung sepia portraits of stern-faced men and women in working clothes. Former owners? Ancestors? The well-worn rug on which the table stood did not do justice to the floor, which gleamed from the results of loving care, as did the furniture. The small lobby was ill lit save for one bright light above a corner reception desk. Officers were crowding around it, making it impossible for Vere to advance beyond the table. The atmosphere was unbearably close even with the door open, and he was on the point of returning to the train to break open his emergency rations when his attention was caught by an altercation.
‘Look here, you must fetch the proprietor,’ demanded an irate captain. ‘We’ll sort this out with him.’
‘I have already told you that I am the proprietor,’ said a crisp female voice.
‘Seems odd in a back-of-beyond place like this,’ the captain returned suspiciously. ‘You’d get some rough characters passing through.’
‘Rough, but genuine. They respect my word. If I tell them I have only four rooms vacant, they believe me. As I said a moment ago, the beds are very wide and well able to provide comfort for two.’
‘I’d sooner sleep on the train,’ said one in disgust. ‘I can keep an eye on my baggage there.’
‘I’ll join you, Jarvis,’ said another. ‘The idea of two to a bed!’
‘That’s quite out of the question,’ said a blond major firmly. ‘The four most senior among us will take the rooms. The rest of you will have to find what comfort you can on the train or, if you feel hardy, bivouac beside it. However, this woman says she can provide some sort of meal if we organize two sittings.’
The proprietor hidden from Vere’s view was voc
ally annoyed. ‘Please refer to me as Mrs Munroe, not as “this woman”. My other guests, rough though you may consider them to be, always address me by name. I have told you my terms, gentlemen, which are payable in advance. When we have settled that, I will send girls to your rooms with hot water.’
‘Are the beds properly aired?’ asked the captain, who clearly did not like dealing with a businesslike woman.
‘Of course,’ came the frosty reply, ‘and they are free of lice, if that was to be your next question. We might be in a remote area of Natal, but we are civilized, sir. If you find that impossible to believe, you are welcome to sleep on the bare bed frames … or on the floor. There’ll be no reduction in my terms, however.’
Vere was amused by this attitude from men who thought nothing of sleeping rough in even the foulest weather on the march, but who were fastidious to a fault when about to occupy a bed in a hotel. Although he was resigned to spending a night beneath the stars, he remained where he was until the rest began to leave. Not only did he hope to partake of a meal during one of the sittings, he was curious to see this woman who could manage an isolated veld hotel and get the better of a group of military officers in such formidable style.
Mrs Munroe was not in the least the person Vere expected to see. Surprisingly young, she had dark, challenging eyes in a pale oval face, and the lamp above her desk highlighted titian hair drawn back to leave a halo of fine, untameable threads gleaming like rich gold. In a high-necked gown of bottle-green silk, and framed by an arch of dark wood, she presented a vision which deeply touched Vere’s senses.
Growing aware of his presence by the table, she said briskly, ‘If you hope for a bed you are too late. Your friends have grudgingly taken all I have available, and they refuse to share. You’ll want a meal, I suppose?’
Vere walked slowly towards her feeling that he had stepped into another time, another place. The sensation of having come home to somewhere he had never before visited returned in full strength.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked with a frown.
‘I am enchanted,’ he replied impulsively. ‘I step from a train filled with men heading for war and, in the heart of wilderness, I discover a living cameo.’
She studied him warily from head to foot while a nearby clock struck seven. ‘You were on the train? You’re dressed like a burgher rather than a soldier.’
‘I am with the troops, but not one of them.’
Her wariness increased. ‘I don’t understand. Who are you?’
‘Vere Ashleigh, an artist.’
‘I now understand even less. Men come to South Africa to dig for gold or diamonds, to claim land, to trade or to farm. There’s nothing here for an artist. It’s a harsh country. It should be squarely faced, not viewed through a rosy glass.’
Now that he had drawn nearer Vere saw strength of character in a face he found arresting despite its lack of real beauty. He guessed this woman faced life as squarely as she faced her country, and enchantment remained as he said, ‘I have no rosy glass, merely the ability to look beyond what others see. Those fellows came in here and found only someone to provide them with food and shelter. I discovered something entirely different.’
‘Then you were deceived,’ she told him firmly. ‘I am no artistic vision, simply an innkeeper who has to find enough food in her larders to feed thirty-six hungry men within the next two hours.’
‘Thirty-seven, if you will be good enough to accept a bemused artist along with all those brawny military fellows.’
She hesitated, apparently not too anxious to begin the task awaiting her, and Vere sensed a partial softening of her mood when she asked, ‘What can you hope to paint here on the veld?’
‘You believe there is nothing? Then you could not have noticed the sunset this evening which splashed across the sky colours that will be difficult to capture on paper or canvas. Our train passed deep ravines where iridescent birds sang sweetly to pierce the stillness, and herds of graceful antelope were silhouetted against the rich blue of the sky. You must have seen them. Add all that to stark, awesome hills and great rolling green distances, and any man who can wield a brush will be in his seventh heaven.’
She gave a faint smile. ‘You have missed your vocation, Mr Ashleigh. You possess eloquence many an aspiring actor would envy. But still I say you look at everything through a rosy glass.’
‘If I do, it will be of little help in the coming days. There is only one possible way to view battle.’
It took a moment for her to absorb that remark, then her eyes widened in disbelief. ‘You mean to paint war?’
‘You find that difficult to accept?’
‘I do, indeed,’ she said with spirit. ‘You spoke of colour and nature’s spectacle a moment ago; the glory of the sunset. You surely cannot also regard human suffering as a subject for a picture. What kind of an artist are you? What sort of man?’
Driven to vindicate himself Vere began to tell her of something he had never revealed to anyone. ‘I once went into battle alongside a man who was everything I was then attempting to be. A sense of inadequacy on my part and contempt on his kept us strangers. When the fighting ended I passed this perfect warrior transfixed by a spear through his breast. His open, sightless eyes appeared to accuse me, seemed to convey that I should rightly be in his place. I grieved for him because I had not bothered to know him well enough to write words of comfort to his family.’
Her dark eyes regarded him shrewdly. ‘Because of that man you abandoned your life as a soldier and became an artist?’
He shook his head. ‘I have always been an artist, but the effect of seeing his young life terminated by a single blow on a morning when natural beauty was all around us gave me the desire to paint humanity rather than mere prettiness. My pictures for publication will show ordinary men rather than uniformed heroes posing for the best effect. The people at home deserve reality, not war seen through the rosy glass you claim I carry.’
Faint colour touched her cheeks. ‘I should not have said that.’
‘No,’ he agreed gently. ‘You obliged me to reveal a great deal more about myself than I have confessed to anyone else.’ Studying her intently as she faced him, uncertain how to counter such an admission, he then asked, ‘May I learn a little about my living cameo?’
She slowly shook her head. ‘On the veld strangers meet, then travel on as strangers still. It’s better that way.’
‘I disagree. If strangers had become friends there might not now be war in this country of yours.’
After a moment of silence she gave a half smile. ‘A philosopher as well as an artist?’
‘Am I forbidden to question my hostess … in pursuit of humanity?’ he persisted.
She glanced at the watch pinned to her dress. ‘The evening is racing past. I must prepare dinner.’
As she turned away, Vere asked swiftly, ‘After dinner, perhaps?’
Glancing back at him, she nodded. ‘Perhaps.’
*
A meal of soup, sliced cold meat, pies and great platters of sweet potatoes, followed by fruit and cheese was served in the cosy dining-room containing two long tables of sturdy rather than elegant design. Vere chose the second sitting so had only a glimpse of the several civilians staying at the hotel. They were dour, rugged men who gave no more than a nod in return to his polite greeting. His military companions, on the other hand, grew mellow and voluble during a meal that was satisfying if not what they were used to. The wines in the cellar were unfamiliar and therefore considered inferior, but Mrs Munroe refused to allow them to bring into her hotel some vintage bottles from the train. They promptly agreed to seek the wine and drink it on site to round off the evening.
During the meal Vere watched their hostess supervise the two girls who served at the tables. It was quite evident that she had been doing this work for some time, yet he had never before come across anyone in quite her style. Her voice was cultured, her features and grace suggested a genteel background. Yet there was an
undeniable assertiveness in her manner which hinted that she was used to holding her own in the world — a world vastly different from the one he knew. Convinced that she was a widow, or had assumed the title of a married woman to protect herself and maintain respectability, Vere wondered why so fascinating a woman should be living in such an isolated settlement. Surely she could do better for herself than this?
It had been no exaggeration when he had admitted to being enchanted, and not only with the cameo image she had presented. Reason told him it was absurd to feel as he did; that the haunting quality of the train journey through a hushed wilderness to arrive at dusk in a tiny hamlet housing a titian-haired woman of disturbing attraction had hazed his judgement. Meeting Mrs Munroe under ordinary circumstances — at the rector’s tea party, on the board of some charitable body, shepherding schoolchildren on an outing, or even running a discreet hotel in an English seaside resort — would surely not have had the same stunning effect upon him. Reason told him many things, but he paid no heed and continued to watch her, deriving great pleasure from doing so.
When fruit and cheese were placed on the tables by the two girls, the subject of Vere’s reverie left the dining-room. He was deeply disappointed, believing that she had reconsidered her hint that she might talk to him for a while after dinner. Soon, however, he heard music from an adjoining room and discovered another surprising facet of someone who intrigued him in a way no other woman had. As the officers departed in search of cases of wine intended to stock their Mess at Frere, he wandered to stand in the doorway to watch her playing Brahms on an upright piano. Candles in the brackets threw flickering light on the curve of her cheek and on the smooth silk of her dress, which then fell in darker folds from stool to floor. Her capable hands moved with grace over the keys to produce music Vere was more used to hearing in the elegant salons of England’s mansions. Caution fled as he silenced reason and surrendered to enchantment, remaining there until she grew aware of his presence and glanced up.
A Distant Hero Page 12