Tales from the Old Karoo

by Guy Butler

  ‘My own folk are dead.’

  ‘Any brothers?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sisters?’

  ‘One. Died in childbed.’

  ‘I see.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘I did try to farm, in Bedfordshire. I couldn’t stick it for more than three months.’

  Uncle Danby nodded and said ‘Homesick?’ Charlie brought his fists down on the table so hard the empties jumped. Some heads along the bar turned round and stared.

  ‘Homesick?’ he cried. ‘To want to get home is not a sickness! They said I was dippy to be so mad about Africa. I am still mad about it. But who here – at this University, anywhere – is mad about Africa? They’re quite happy with a semi-colonial life – ersatz culture, all made in Europe or USA. They’ve got no eyes, or ears, or noses for anything here.’ They don’t even see the world all round them.’

  ‘So you like – the veld? They used to spell it veldt. They’ve dropped the t. I suppose that’s a sign of progress.’

  ‘Karoo bush. I used to smell it in my dreams, in hospital. Rain in the hot dust at midday.’

  There was a long pause. Then Danby looked up, clearly struck by a new thought.

  ‘Your name’s Charles Macleod, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right. Charles Hamish Macleod.’

  Danby leaned forward, pursed his lips like one who has come to a decision.

  ’Tell you what – This weekend I’m going to look for a lost milestone on the Old North Road. It has sharp memories for me. I was your age when I last saw it. I was driving a hundred sheep from Fish River to Green Hills. Near an old, abandoned outspan it is. Open veld for miles, a ruined cottage and a single grave – a grave that should interest you. The place is supposed to be haunted. It’s on the Fish River Rand – on Williston Heights, old Isaac Bowker’s place. Nothing ersatz on Williston Heights. You might find what you need there.’

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, think about it. If you change your mind, do come – meet me at the old outspan. I’ll be there until sunset. Take the Bedford Road, and keep on through Hell’s Poort, over Carlisle Bridge, up to the top of the Rand and …’

  Charlie heard the rest of the directions, but the always fresh replay of that night attack which had driven him beserk was starting up inside his head again. His eyes were closed, and he was bringing his fists down on the table top, slowly, silently, as if in slow motion, in order not to disturb anyone at the bar.

  Roads have adventurous histories. They can change shape, width, direction, colour, gradient, and surfacing several times in one man’s lifetime – a fact of which Uncle Danby had become acutely aware with the onset of middle age and the arrival of new provincial and national roads. The speed with which well-known roads – particularly old wagon roads – can almost disappear is quite amazing. Within a generation the veld will reclaim them. An expert eye, however, will pick out the verges. The flow of water, disturbed and dammed ever so slightly, will give the vegetation a special tell-tale character every here and there.

  Some years after Uncle Danby had driven that flock of sheep over a hundred and thirty miles through drought-stricken Karoo, the Road Boards decreed that, for a third of its remarkably direct length, the seldom-used old north road should be abandoned forever in favour of a less direct route. Instead it would go through an isolated village in need of an extra reason for its existence – and which happened to have a powerful MP at the time. So thirty miles of road that had served mobile humanity in their wagons and carts for more than a century were quietly abandoned. Farmers soon put fences across the road, and the grass took over. Here and there, like a lonely giant aloe, a milestone still stands, with its distances to and from Grahamstown and Kimberley, beautifully visible – for the uncomprehending stock and the stars to contemplate.

  Here and there, too, at ten or twelve mile intervals – a day’s journey by ox-wagon – are the ancient outspans once provided by the government, whose one essential was water for man and beast. These did not always correspond with the milestones, but at this particular spot they did.

  When Danby had taken charge of those hundred sheep after the 1918 Armistice, he had chosen the old, more direct, shorter route, and driven his flock along its length shortly before the final deproclamation came into force. Farmers and shepherds had said he’d be the last to use the old road, and wished him luck.

  So he’d had the old outspan all to himself, a young ex-airman, twenty-four, younger than Charlie Hamish Macleod. And he’d walked around the outspan and come across a grave, a single grave. The stone said: Charles Hamish MacLeod, Cape Constabulary, 21 Jan, 1881.

  It was on an inexplicable impulse that he had suggested a rendezvous of the two Charles Hamish Macleods, one dead, the other living. Why on earth had he done that? He had no answer. Perhaps the coincidence, of their names, across three generations, would jerk the living man out of the grip of that nasty, small stretch of time in Italy, 1944.

  And now, he, Danby, could not be there. His sister, Agnes, who kept house for him, had collapsed with a bad, second heart attack. What if the young man decided to go?

  He phoned the University. Charlie had last been seen leaving the campus on his old AJS motorbike. Danby did not like the thought of that ex-soldier with bad nerves being alone on that outspan, at dusk, stumbling across that grave, reading that inscription. Of course he’d not know the policeman’s story. That was in the keeping of old Isaac Bowker, who also had a diary which the policeman had kept.

  Danby got up, went to the phone again, to see if he could raise old Isaac on the party line.

  Charlie experienced many emotions as his old AJS motorbike ate up the miles through Hells Poort and beyond. Once or twice the too familiar longing for a sudden accident at full speed almost overcame him, but by the time he’d got to the top of the Fish River Rand, and the great plain which stretches to the Amatolas and the Winterberg opened up before him, he felt less desperate. Odd bits of sweet, old-fashioned verse came floating into his mind.

  Throw the window wider, sonny,

  Let me see the veld,

  Rolling grandly to the sunset

  Where the mountains melt;

  and

  Under the wide and starry sky

  Dig the grave, and let me lie.

  He took the turn-off, and was soon on a track almost overgrown. There were no signs of a vehicle having been on it for some time, and the tall grasses swished his knees. He liked that. The touch of living things. After a careful ten minutes of this, he came upon the outspan: a cluster of thorn trees; a little roofless ruin; a dry, broken dam; a dipping tank with stagnant water in it.

  There was no sign of Danby’s car. He switched off the bike, leaning it against what might have been the small raised stoep of the roofless ruin. Then he stretched himself across the gaping hole of the doorway, a fine figure of a young man, aged twenty-six. And the veld silence came down all around him like an avalanche, obliterating, for a blessed moment, the war, and the world.

  The sun was not far from the horizon now. Soon he would hear the hum of Danby’s approaching car. In the meantime he’d explore the site. His foot came down on a dry twig. It made a large noise as it cracked. A dapper jackhanger on the topmost twig of a thorn tree emitted modest deprecatory noises as if to remind him that the silence that accompanies the setting sun must be respected. Charlie picked up a worn horseshoe, and then half a dozen little objects of interest – a shard of blue and white china, a crushed cartridge case, verdigris green; a hasp and staple with an old-fashioned padlock still in it, bent with the blows that had opened the box it was supposed to have secured; a rusty red portion of chain that goes with a bridle bit. Where the makers of the old broken dam wall had not disturbed the ancient surface soil, he found two flaked flints: a Bushman scraper and an arrowhead, which he pocketed; and then fragments of old ostrich egg-shell beads. Bent forward, eyes to the earth, he became completely engrossed in his searc
h.

  When he straightened his back he saw, just over a fence, the beautiful black and white shape of a fine cock ostrich stalking, his small head alert, watching him. Somewhere, nearby, he knew the wary female must be lying, camouflaged among the grey karoo bushes.

  Quite mesmerised by all these things familiar from his childhood, he dropped a pebble into the old dipping tank, and peered into its green depths. The rings had no space to spread in that narrow prison of masonry. What a pity the dam was broken! He would have made a flat pebble skim across it. The rings would have been free to expand and expand across its stillness, circle upon perfect circle intersecting in the late afternoon.

  The sun was very close to the skyline when he entered the ruins of the building in whose doorway he had cut such a fine figure a few minutes before. There was nothing much to see inside – except, scratched in the plaster of one of the walls, several bars of music. On closer inspection he found he was able to detect others, above and below – as though a page of a score for an ensemble had been transferred there. The bottom line of these seemed to be instructions to a tympanist or percussion man. He found himself trying to tap out the beat.

  He did not return the way he had entered but went through the back door, which was overshadowed by an enormous mimosa tree. Suspended from a great black branch on thick old fencing wire hung the complete rim of a wagon wheel. Charlie stood transfixed. It was all too good to be true.

  Bisected by the level horizon of the plateau, the perfect iron circle contained a blue hemisphere of sky meeting a grey hemisphere of veld: and almost in the very centre, just above the skyline, the blinding hot rivet of the sun was sinking imperceptibly.

  Discarding all his treasure trove except the horseshoe, he approached the iron rim and tapped it, very gently indeed. It made a soft humming sound.

  The male ostrich’s head turned, signalling alarm, but he continued walking unhurried to his mate. She rose, ruffled her wings, and stepped aside from the cluster of eggs in the sand. The male nestled down; his black feathers would soon blend with the coming darkness.

  Charlie tapped the rim again with the horseshoe, beating out the tune he had deciphered in the plaster. He was quite oblivious of an old man, very erect in the saddle, approaching on a pale horse at a walking pace.

  For the three odd minutes which it takes the sun’s disc to disappear, Charlie beat out the rhythm. When the last chip of fire slipped out of sight, he stopped. The humming stopped too, and the great silence returned with a crash, jerking him into normal geography and time. No Danby. Time to get going? Or what? He tossed the horseshoe aside, and started walking towards his motorcycle. On his way he came across a simple slate headstone inscribed

  Charles Hamish Macleod

  Cape Constabulary

  21 January 1881

  It rooted him to the spot. First, the setting sun in the iron rim, and now, this.

  With the sound of boots breaking twigs behind him, he pulled his eyes away from ‘his’ tombstone to see a tall, thin, craggy old man with hairy eyebrows approaching. At a distance a pale horse was tethered to the fence. With extended hand the old man asked, in a perfectly ordinary East Cape accent, ‘Charlie Macleod?’

  Charlie could do no more than nod affirmatively.

  ‘I’m Isaac Bowker – Williston Heights. Danby Long phoned. Can’t come – his sister’s taken bad.’

  Charlie turned his gaze back to the inscription on the headstone. ‘So you found it. Same names?’ said the old, dry voice.

  Charlie managed to nod again.

  ‘Odd coincidence. But they do happen, y’know.’ Then a wry chuckle: ‘The similarity had better stop with the names.’

  Charlie slowly shook his head: the man under the stone had also liked music. He managed to say, ‘Mr Long said this place is haunted.’

  Isaac Bowker replied quite matter-of-factly, as a man might who is discussing the presence on his farm of a slightly unusual bit of flora or fauna.

  ‘Certainly, but he’s been quiet recently. He’s the oddest ghost on the place. Violent death, you know, and then they tend to walk. That’s common enough, I suppose. But this one; he plays the piano too.’

  ‘In there?’ asked Charlie, pointing to the ruin.

  ‘Not only there. It might all have turned out well if they hadn’t been so damned musical. Danby says you’re a music student.’

  ‘Yes. Did you know him?’ He pointed to the grave with his foot.

  ‘Not really. My father told me all about him. And then, he left a diary.’

  Great North Road. 3rd Outspan

  1 December 1875.

  I’ve decided to keep a personal diary – on the strong recommendation of my new Officer Commanding. There’s certainly enough news for this day’s entry. I reported to his office in Grahamstown at 8.30 this morning. A real old-school martinet. ‘I am posting you to the Third Outspan on the Great North Road. Your father suggested a remote first posting, where the chances would be less of another – er – unlucky scrape. Lonely at times. Develop your inner resources. Keep a diary. Try reading these long-winded novelists – you know, Dickens, Tolstoy. I myself took up photography. I photographed almost every set of wagons that came and went.’ He pointed to some big enlargements of groups posed in front of their wagons, then put me to an easy test. ‘Perhaps’ says he, ‘you’d care to comment on pictures Three and Four?’ They really are very good photographs, and I passed with flying colours. ‘Number Three – that’s northbound: newcomers to Africa, smart adventurers from the five continents all lit up by diamond fever, hell bent to get rich quick in Kimberley. Picture Four is southbound: the same lot – sorted into rich men, poor men, beggars and thieves.’ He smiled approval, and asked me how I’d get the goodwill of my shifting and shifty outspan population. I told him I’d meet the man in charge of each wagon train on his arrival, allocate a place or places to him, meet his teams and passengers, and ask for the news. He seemed to approve.

  The Colonel said my nearest neighbours would be settler-stock people called Bowker – friendly, but no-nonsense people. He gave me my pay, and suggested I go to Grocott and Sherry and buy the longest novels they’ve got. He asked whether I had a hobby, like water-colour sketching? I told him I played the piano and the clarinet. He said he’d not heard of a musical policeman before. Well, he’s going to, now.

  Coming back from the bookshop I drifted into an auctioneer’s where a small sale was in progress. He was selling a piano. A Broadwood. The bidding was slow, led by a beautiful young woman, about 23, I’d say. Hers was the highest bid, but there was a reserve on it: four pounds. After the sale I hung around. She gave the auctioneer two pound as a deposit, saying she’d get the rest soon. The auctioneer said there’d also be delivery charges, to which she replied: ‘I’m governess at Williston Heights. A wagon will be going there sooner or later.’ So I jumped in and said: ‘Let it be sooner.’ I introduced myself as Charlie Macleod, the new constable in charge of the Third Outspan, who’d be happy to take the piano on the wagon with my clobber. The auctioneer said he couldn’t part with the piano until it was paid up in full. So I said, ‘Miss Hawthorne, you wouldn’t consider a joint ownership, would you? If I could have access to the piano for, say, two or three hours every fortnight or so, I’ll happily put in the other two pounds.’ She smiled, said ‘Done!’, and left to take morning tea with the Dean’s wife.

  The journey and delivery of the piano had its moments too. We stopped for tiffin on a ridge at a spot remarkable for some tall purpleblack boulders and an odd-shaped tree, quite unlike anything in Britain, called a gwarrieboom. While the men were making the fire, I climbed on the wagon and played the piano – Chopin. The open canopy of heaven makes a marvellous auditorium, and a wagon is a fine concert platform. My only obvious audience was a handsome pair of ostriches, and the Hottentots, who smiled and shook their heads. They’d never heard a Polish Mazurka before, but seemed to like it.

  Then we approached the homestead of Williston Heights farm, where,
after the great width and emptiness of the veld, it was good to see small detailed operations, like cutting and stacking hay, and a mason quietly building a stone wall. Here I met Mr Isaac Bowker, a tall and craggy man, with blue eyes under very hairy brows. Miss Hawthorne – Maisie – had already arrived. I delivered ‘our’ piano. He said he’d never heard of a piano owned by a joint stock company before. Maisie and I played a duet on it before I left. It needs tuning, badly.

  What a day! My first posting! My first pay! And joint owner, with a beautiful girl, of a good second-hand Broadwood pianoforte!’

  ‘Whenever there was nothing doing on this Outspan’, said Isaac Bowker, ‘he’d come over to Williston Heights, and they’d play together. At other times the Bowkers would all come up here to the Outspan. He had a real genius for organising concerts and dances. They’d spread a wagon sail on a clear piece of ground and dance on that. It’s amazing what music he could extract from the outspan people when there were a lot of wagons here – a German with a piano accordion, a Russian with a balalaika, an Italian with a fiddle, a Spaniard with a trumpet. And he’d get a black man with drums, and someone blowing the Kudu horn, and someone else hitting the wagon tyre with a horseshoe – But when Maisie was paid court to by Mr Robert Sephton he wilted a bit; but what girl in her right mind will stick to a poor musical policeman when a rich young farmer presents himself?’

  While Isaac was talking, the south easter had come up, bringing heavy grey-blue clouds, and the smell of rain. The twilight was deepening rapidly.

  ‘Better come down to the homestead. We’ll finish the story there. We’ll take the old track. I want to show you the place where I heard that piano playing like old Harry in the open night. It’s rough going – the track’s almost gone now. Here! You take the horse. I’ll lead the way on the bike.’

  And without more ado, the old man straddled the AJS. Before kicking the starter, he turned and said, ‘Old Prince knows his way in the dark.’

  It was years since Charlie had mounted a horse. He was alarmed and delighted. This ride in the twilight – storm clouds accumulating behind him, and ahead of him a seventy-plus eccentric, urging his AJS at breakneck speed along an almost invisible track – made him wonder afresh about the nature of the world he was in. Then, losing his co-ordination with the horse’s movements, he was so banged and bounced about that he had to grab the pommel. He was forced to rein in, to get his feet back into the stirrups. While doing so he felt something evil had been shaken right out of him.