by Peter Rimmer
“My favourite, too.”
“Now go on with your story, Jim, I want to hear everything about you. Just everything.”
An hour later Simon Haller left for his office. Jim had been talking all that time. About himself. For the third day in a row he found the curtained coolness of his room and lay down on his bed. He had managed to take his shoes off and his jacket before he fell into a dreamless sleep.
The next day a man with a camera found him in his room and gave him five pounds. He signed for the money.
“Usual indemnity and receipt, Mr Bowman. Now, do you mind if I take some photographs? I think it is best we go down to Cecil Square. The light is better. You do have your Military Medal so we can get a shot of it? You can hold it out to me to see when I take the photograph… You must have one hell of a story to get five quid. The editor is usually as tight as a fish’s arse.”
“I’d like to see the story before it’s printed.”
“I’m sure you would.”
“When will it come out?”
“Don’t ask me, mate. I just take the photographs.”
“Tomorrow, maybe?”
“Shouldn’t think tomorrow.”
“Tell Simon I want to see his article.”
“I’m sure you will. Come on. Got your medal? Good lad. Got another job in half an hour. Work me to the bloody bone, they do. How long you’ve been in Rhodesia?”
“Four days.”
“And you’re going to be famous. Missed the war, I did. Bloody shame I don’t think. Never catch old Solly Goldman as a hero. Not bloody likely. Moment war started I scarpered. Before the bloody toffs made us join up. Straight on the first boat. I came to Africa in ’14. First boat sailed to Cape Town. No flies on Solly Goldman, I can tell you that.”
“You a cockney?” asked Jim. He had heard the accent during the war.
“How you guess, china… China plate, mate. Got it? Cockney rhyming slang. Come on. Solly Goldman don’t ’ave all day. Even for a bloody hero.”
“You didn’t miss anything.”
“I know I didn’t.”
They both knew Jim was talking about the war.
For three days Jim bought the Rhodesia Herald and looked for his photograph. Having been given five pounds he felt confident and kept his room in Meikles Hotel. With a good breakfast and a cheap bar lunch he needed nothing else. The fact the beers he drank in the small men’s bar cost more than the cheese rolls did not figure in his reckoning. There was no sign of the article but he had their five pounds so what did it matter, he told himself. He had made back half the loan to Barnaby St Clair. He rather hoped they would come back again. Every time he thought of sex, Jim Bowman thought of Tina Pringle. Every time it happened in public he was forced to cross his legs and think of anything mundane. He now knew he had lied to Simon Haller. The best-looking girl he had seen in his life was Tina Pringle. The red fingernails. The ebony black cigarette holder and the way she held it up. The cloth she tied unsuccessfully across her chest in an attempt to make her look flat-chested under the dress that hugged her skin. He even went in to the ladies’ bar three times a day to see if they were there. Each time he was thinking of Tina Pringle and not his ten pounds.
Every day Colonel Voss presented himself with a progress report. Hamlet and Othello were doing well. King Richard the Lionheart was not doing so well. The dog had twice bitten Colonel Voss but fortunately not broken the skin.
“Rabies, dear boy. Terrible thing. Send you quite bonkers. Heard of a chap who bit his wife after he contracted rabies. She died too… We must buy the guns today. When I show that dog a gun he will understand. One more bite and he is dead, or we take him back to Sir Robert. Can’t have the leader of such a great expedition dead of a dog bite. Not even if he is a king, Richard the Lionheart.”
“Is Sir Robert really a knight?”
“Does it matter?”
It was Monday and Jim had been in Rhodesia ten days. They had bought two second-hand guns for nine and sixpence. Colonel Voss proved a champion negotiator. With the nine and sixpence came three boxes of shells for the .375 rifle and two boxes for the hammer-action twelve-bore shotgun. Neither gun displayed the name of the maker. Jim had fired both of them outside the back of the shop in Pioneer Street to make sure they worked. The charge that had led to all his yelling and the Military Medal had started with his bolt-action Lee Enfield having jammed a shell in the breech. All he had was the bayonet stuck on the end of his rifle. He did not want the same thing to happen in the bush when he was facing a lion.
The guns had been oiled and wrapped in oilcloth before being put back in their leather cases. For another shilling he had made up the stock of ammunition to a thousand shells a gun. The war had at least taught him something… For some reason he never told Colonel Voss about Simon Haller and the article that had still not appeared in the paper. Even on the day before they harnessed up Hamlet and Othello, Jim had looked.
This time the dog jumped over the tailgate into the wagon. The tattered sun-bleached canvas had gone replaced by a new canvas roof. The horses looked no better and had the same look of great trust that shone in their big brown watery eyes. Jim stroked Hamlet’s ears very gently and whispered in his ear.
The horses trotted into Salisbury and stopped outside Meikles Hotel. The big Zulu shouted something Jim failed to understand and two porters came out with his kitbag carrying it together. The Zulu took the kitbag and shooed away the porters. Jim gave the Zulu another penny. To Jim’s surprise the girl with the fringe and glasses had left her reception desk and came outside to see them off. She neither smiled nor waved. Jim thought she was making sure he had not stolen anything. He waved just the same.
As the horses took the load forward, Jim looked back over the high box where he was sitting with Colonel Voss. He could just see over the canvas hood. The girl was smiling. She had a surprisingly pretty smile and Jim smiled back.
“May the expedition commence,” called Colonel Voss grandly to anyone who happened to be listening. Then they were on their way up Second Street having done a complete turn in the street that was wide enough to turn an ox wagon thanks to the long ago foresight of Cecil John Rhodes.
Jim Bowman had been in the country exactly two weeks.
From his vantage point looking through the window of the ladies’ bar, Solly Goldman watched the horses and the cart go up Second Street where he hoped the cart would soon turn east and head into the bush. He finished his beer and went back to the offices of the Rhodesia Herald.
“He’s gone,” he said to Simon Haller. “Now you can print.”
“Such a shame we have to embellish a story to make it sell. What we now need is for the girl to come forward and claim our reward of fame. If she does, we can turn the story into a serial. Grab the readers. Make them buy the paper to see what happens. I can see the billboards next to the newsvendors all over the world. ‘HERO FINDS HIS GIRL’.”
“Can I come with you when you interview Jenny Merryl?”
“We’ll have to think about it, Solly. So far only the Cape Times and the Rand Daily Mail have bought the story. And that’s only the start of the search for Jenny Merryl. Let’s hope young Jim stays away his allotted three months. By then the story will be so big there will be nothing he can do to stop it… Why is it people believe what they see in print?”
“You think all the stories in the Bible are true?”
“The Old Testament, cock. Remember, I’m a Jew. Nothin’ matters what it is in life. Only matters what it appears to be, my china.”
“You should have been a philosopher.”
“Every Jew is a philosopher.”
“Where’s all this going, Simon?”
“I have no idea… I’ll just go and tell the editor he can print tomorrow. Still hopping mad he paid five quid… You sure they’ve gone?”
“Absolutely bloomin’ certain.”
“Who said the truth is fiction and fiction the truth?”
“Simon Haller?”<
br />
“Even the truth needs help. No, it wasn’t me. Some Greek, probably.”
In Cape Town a week later Barnaby St Clair was looking at a picture in the Cape Times of Jim Bowman, the man from whom he had stolen ten pounds and an expensive lunch. He smiled to himself with the recollection of a job well done. Every morning in the Mount Nelson Hotel with the early morning tea came a copy of the local newspaper. Barnaby had picked up the paper with nothing else to do. The next day he was due to go on board the SS King Emperor and sail back to England. In his pocket was even less money than when he arrived at the port of Lorenzo Marques in Portuguese East Africa, from Egypt where his army career had come to an end.
Tina Pringle had stayed in Johannesburg with her brother. Barnaby was twenty-three years old, trained for nothing other than war and would be penniless when he arrived at London docks. Unless he found a way of making money, he was well and truly on the skids. Not even Granny Forrester could lend him money. She was dead. Financially, so was his father.
He had last been in England in 1914 having aborted his second year at Royal Military College, to go straight to war. Since arriving in Africa he had lived on his wits for over a year and knew it was time to get out. Albert Pringle, whose family had been vassals of the St Clairs for centuries, had called him a sponger and that was the last straw. Not only was the man as common as dirt, he had once been a gentleman’s gentleman, a common valet to Jack Merryweather before making a fortune that Barnaby heard started with a whorehouse. Now the man was a member of the Rand Club and effected an upper-class accent. Tina had at least got the accent and manners right but not her brother Albert. The man would have been an embarrassment in London. And there he was with all his money in Johannesburg looking down his nose at the Honourable Barnaby St Clair just because he did not have any money. It was a disgrace. The man could at least have put him on the payroll and given him a salary to fit his position as an English gentleman. Which had been Barnaby’s whole idea of coming to Africa in the first place. He was going to use his childhood friendship with Tina, a friendship of young children where rank did not matter, to find himself an easy billet commensurate with his title. The letters they wrote to each other during the war, Tina’s mostly illiterate until Miss Pinforth had taken to giving her an education, were nostalgic for the innocence of their youth. Men alone in war conjure pictures of women. Men wrote things in letters they would never say to a girl’s face. The idea of marrying Tina Pringle had never entered his mind. She came from the lower classes. That was that. A fling, an affair and later on maybe, he might have made her his mistress. Never a wife. Mingling the St Clair and Pringle blood was laughable.
Over the years of intermittent letter writing he read of the rise and rise of Albert Pringle, rand baron. From owning a small gold mine to making boat-loads of ammunition for the Allied war effort. By living with the man in his Parktown home, Barnaby had thought he was doing him a favour. Adding some tone to the place. Giving him a name to drop in the Rand Club. In the end he had had to come right out and ask Albert Pringle for a directorship of Serendipity Mining and Explosives Company. To Barnaby’s horror, which quickly turned to rage, the man had laughed in his face.
“My dear chap. What do you know about business? Every one of my co-directors, not the least my wife and partner in business as well as life, give something valuable in return to the company. You have to earn a directorship in Johannesburg. Not just be given one. Start at the bottom. I could maybe find you something as a clerk but you’d then be on your own. Company clerks, however senior, don’t live with the two major shareholders of the company. Goodness I’d have thought you of all people would understand such a position. Even if you did marry Tina.”
“Whoever said anything about marrying Tina?”
“You are a guest in my house, Barnaby. You have been here nine months. I suggest you go and look for something to do with your life.”
“I’ll go to Rhodesia. The British Africa company are offering Crown land farms, company farms, to British officers.”
“Now that does sound like a good idea. You always did like the country.”
“I’m sure Tina will come with me.”
“You just said you did not wish to marry my sister.”
“We don’t have to be married to travel together.”
“I wish you luck. I will speak to my sister.”
“She is over twenty-one.”
“If she goes with you, Barnaby, there will be none of my money going with her.”
“We are not incapable.”
“I never said you were. Merely illiterate in the art of business.”
“One day I’ll show you Albert Pringle.”
“I sincerely hope you do.”
When Barnaby put down the Cape Times after reading Simon Haller’s exaggerated account of Jim Bowman’s war record he could still hear the sarcasm in Albert Pringle’s voice.
Barnaby had lasted three whole days on his return to Johannesburg from Rhodesia.
“You’re a sponger, St Clair. You want money but you don’t want to work. You have to work with your hands or your head to create wealth. Clever talk and sleight of hand don’t count for work. You borrow money, I hear, without the intention of ever returning the loan. That is stealing. Throughout my life I have always had respect for your family. I still do. For you I have none. This time my sister will not be joining you on your next journey. Here is a single ticket to England. On the train. Two nights at the Mount Nelson. First-class inner cabin on the SS King Emperor. An old but splendid ship. I sailed out third class when I came to Africa as a manservant.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Bad pennies always do have a habit of turning up again… Please give my regards to Lord St Clair and your mother. If you should take the time out to see my parents give them my love. They were both very fond of you when you were a small boy.”
“Where is Tina?”
“She has gone down to Natal with my wife. Sallie and I keep a house on the coast.”
“You are a bastard.”
“No. No I’m not. I was born in wedlock. As shall happen to Tina’s children.”
“And you never even fought in the war. You made your money from war. I even hear from whores further back.”
“All that is true. I even thought of going back and joining up to be killed like my brothers. Instead I made munitions to fight the war. None of that changes anything. Now, if you’ll be so kind, Bill Hardcastle will drive you and your luggage to the railway station. Your train leaves in three hours. You will have to wait on the platform. Have a good voyage… Now one more thing. Please tell your brother Robert both Sallie and I enjoyed Keeper of the Legend. It’s a great legend, Barnaby. The St Clair legend. Don’t you be any part of destroying it.”
“I wish I had died in the war.”
“But you didn’t. Do something with your life. It may be an old cliché but it is still the only one we ever get on this earth.”
Sitting in the bay window of his room in the Mount Nelson Hotel, Barnaby looked again at the picture of Jim Bowman in the newspaper and began to cry, not sure if he was crying for Tina, himself or his lost honour.
Half an hour later when he had stopped feeling sorry for himself he thought of Merlin. There was always his brother Merlin who had bought shares in Vickers Armstrong at the start of the war with borrowed money and sold them before the war ended. Merlin was the man to go to. They had been friends before the war. Brothers and friends.
By the time he walked up the gangplank of the SS King Emperor he was feeling like his old self. The cabin did not have a porthole, but it was in first class. He would tell them he booked too late. His clothes were good and his title would appear in the passenger list. Albert Pringle had been too well trained by Jack Merryweather. He would have automatically given the shipping line his title. He briefly wondered if any rich widows were sailing back to England. Maybe even he could make money out of the war. There was Albert Pringle’s ammunition for the
big guns. And the machine guns of Vickers Armstrong that had made Merlin his fortune. To his surprise he caught a picture of Tina Pringle in his mind’s eye and almost lost his footing on the wooden gangplank. The idea of someone else touching her body made his stomach boil and his mouth go dry. Barnaby St Clair was jealous. Violently jealous.
The boat sailed out of Cape Town harbour towards a storm. In the lee of Table Mountain everything was quiet in the harbour though the line of the ‘southeaster’ ripping the sea was clearly visible from the deck of the SS King Emperor. A violent storm in the Cape at the end of August was quite normal but not the wind coming from the south-east. The captain’s welcoming cocktail party had been cancelled and Barnaby had wondered why they had not stayed in port. There was a sprinkling of old dowagers on board who could easily break a limb if they fell.
The boat sailed to the east of Robben Island. The captain was apologetic over the loudspeaker saying storms around the Cape were normal for the time of year and that once they were past Walvis Bay, they would be sailing into spring.
Barnaby’s first meal in the dining room was lonely. They had seated him at the captain’s table. His rank had appeared in full in the passenger list, Captain the Honourable Barnaby St Clair. It always happened which he liked. He and the captain of the ship were the only two sitting down to dinner. An Indian army colonel on his way home from leave had tried his luck and had gone quickly. Barnaby had never been seasick and thanked his luck. They were seated at opposite ends of the white cloth table from which almost everything had been removed. The flower vases splendidly full of the first Namaqualand daisies were somehow attached to the table and leaned precariously with the roll and pitch of the ship. The lurching steward served them a Malay curry. Barnaby’s plate moved on the tablecloth with the lurch of the boat. With all the concentration on the food in front of them there was no chance of a conversation.
When Barnaby first sat down, the captain gave him a hearty smile and introduced himself. It was part of the captain’s job to be polite to the passengers. After the captain with a full beard learnt his name, the smile left his face. The captain gave a nod and got on with his food. Barnaby felt his stomach sink. He had hoped he had left his indiscretions back in Africa. Albert Pringle was a bigger bastard than he thought, passing word to the ship’s purser. After the curry, having been warned by the steward against first trying to eat the soup, Barnaby settled for a bowl of trifle.