Smiling Willie and the Tiger

by John Harris

  There were no recriminations, but two days later Willie persuaded them all to go to a photographer’s in Winifred and have their photographs taken.

  ‘What for?’ Fish demanded.

  Willie smiled and kept his own counsel and they stood in front of a painted background of palm trees and Greek columns, grouped round a pedestal that looked like a cross between a sundial and a bird bath. A phosphorus gun gave them spots before the eyes and filled their nostrils with smoke and half an hour later Willie collected three copies of three faces staring goggle-eyed from above stiff starched collars.

  Fish stared at the pictures, frowning. ‘You ain’t doing this for no love of me, I bet,’ he said.

  ‘Not really.’ Willie beamed. ‘But next time you try to lift the loot on your own we have a photograph of you to hand to the police. Two shakes and you’re in quod.’

  It seemed foolproof and there was little more to be said.

  The Tiger gave his copy to Pansy. He placed it lovingly in a metal frame with brass curlicues round the edges and stood it up on her dressing table for her admiration.

  ‘It’s a good one of you, Tiger,’ she said cheerfully, leaning back on the pillows and gazing at it over her shoulder. She stared again at the three faces, all of them apparently stricken with facial paralysis, and placed a neatly manicured finger on Fish’s handsome features.

  ‘Nice-looking feller that Dolly,’ she said.

  Seven

  Captain Mace had returned to Sinai. He was tired, irritable and depressed. His acne had broken out again and he wasn’t looking forward to Christmas. The fact that the army had had forty-seven thousand pounds of its pay stolen had been regarded in the Transvaal only as a tremendous joke. The miserable reward they had been prevailed upon to offer was derisory among Johannesburg’s vast wealth, and north of the Orange River the country was predominantly Boer, anyway, and no one was going to help the British for a measly fifty pounds and have De Wet, who was still around loose somewhere, coming down on them like the wrath of God with his sjamboks. It ought to have been bigger, Mace knew, but General Wickover was not keen on risking the wrath of Lord Kitchener, the new Commander-in-Chief, South Africa, who was well known for his carefulness with money – especially his own – and all Mace had managed to do so far was turn up a few deserters. He began to hate Southey for the trouble and humiliation he had caused him.

  Still exhausted by the train journey, he was met by Instant. It was clear he had a grievance.

  ‘It’s Wooden, sir,’ he announced. ‘He wants a transfer.’

  Mace looked up angrily, ‘We’ve already transferred him four times,’ he snapped. ‘They always transfer him back.’

  Instant sighed. ‘I wish we could get rid of him, sir. He was in trouble again while you was away.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Went after the roughrider and hit him over the ’ead with a – er – well, sir, to put it bluntly, a horse-pissy mop. The corporal had him up before Mr Glover.’

  Mace sighed. ‘Pity we can’t sell him into slavery,’ he growled. ‘Can’t you contrive to have an accident happen to him. Or’ – he looked up with heavy humour – ‘how about a charge of treason? We could have him shot then. You could be in charge of the firing party.’

  ‘And you could give him the coop de grace, sir.’ For a moment Instant’s features lit up with anticipation.

  But the humour had disappeared from Mace’s face as quickly as it had appeared. ‘Don’t be a bloody fool, Instant,’ he snapped.

  Later, with a drink in his fist, he began to go through the reports that waited on his desk for his attention. He was still convinced that the stolen pay was somewhere in the region of Chichester Junction. Why he was so certain he didn’t know, but the fact that Southey’s cart had turned up in Makuasi and the army mules near Winifred seemed a sure indication, because no one had reported the sale or hire of anything which could have taken their places. And as the pay was too heavy to be transported in any other fashion than on a cart it had to be somewhere between Chichester Junction and Winifred.

  He shuffled on his chair, his breeches damp with sweat as he scanned the laboured words of uneducated men, then, suddenly his eyes fell on something that startled him and he sat bolt upright. ‘Instant!’ he roared.

  When Instant appeared, he thrust the paper at him. ‘Who the bloody hell wrote this nonsense?’ His voice was not far from a screech.

  Instant stared at the report. ‘Corporal Pattinson, sir. He’s with Mr Glover’s people at the moment.’

  ‘Get him here!’

  Seen in daylight, Corporal Pattinson was a thin-featured reservist with a long jaw, bony nose and drooping moustache. He studied the words he’d written. Before he’d left school at the age of twelve, he’d learned to quote the Bible, write properly and to add, subtract, divide and multiply. To his family in their narrow-gutted slum house in Manchester it had seemed a very extensive education.

  ‘What’s wrong with it, sir?’ he asked, puzzled.

  Mace snatched the paper back. ‘Simon Legree!’ he said. ‘Richard Plantagenet. Do you know who they are?’

  Corporal Pattinson frowned. He wasn’t sure what Mace was getting at. ‘It’s in the report, sir, I put it down. Mining engineer. Assistant.’

  ‘You bloody fool!’ Mace’s voice had become low and vicious. ‘Simon Legree’s a character in a play. Richard Plantagenet’s another. He was a king of England.’

  Pattinson frowned. ‘Well, I didn’t know that, sir, I’m sure. I learned my lessons at school but they didn’t teach me none of that.’

  ‘They’re false names, you bloody idiot! What did they look like?’

  Pattinson struggled to remember. ‘Very polite, sir. Both gentlemen. I only talked to one of ’em, sir but ’e ’ad a nice way of speaking, sir. Like an officer, sir. Big smile.’

  Mace leaned forward. This smile seemed to crop up everywhere he went. ‘Go on. What about the other?’

  ‘Young, sir. Blinked a lot. Looked nervous.’

  ‘You sure there were only two?’

  ‘Yes, sir, They said something about going to see another chap.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘About’ – Pattinson flushed – ‘about a dog, sir.’

  Mace stared at him disgustedly. He felt like weeping. ‘You bloody nitwit, Corporal,’ he said bitterly. ‘These were the chaps who robbed the paymaster. You had them right inside your stupid dirty hand. Instant!’

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ Instant said.

  He had been outside working out the details of a smart little fiddle he had started to run over forage with Boetie Prinsloo, the freight-carrier and owner of the livery stable in Diedrichs Street. Since obtaining his third stripe he had learned a great deal – chief among which was that a sergeant, if he were clever, could place himself in the way of quite a few monetary advantages. One bale of hay out of every ten, one sack of oats, was never missed by an army which was inclined to be careless in its accounting and, even if he sold it cheaply to the livery stable, since it was costing him nothing, it couldn’t help but show a profit. Into the bargain, he had noticed a girl about Prinsloo’s place, around his own age and not bad-looking for a backvelder, and he was eager to make her acquaintance. Christmas was approaching and he’d already discovered that her father was a widower and away a lot. It had changed his views on his future and he had decided it wasn’t worth his while appearing as a blazing symbol for all who cherished patriotism and military pride. He appeared sullenly in front of Mace. ‘Yessir?’

  ‘We’re going to Reinhart.’

  ‘Oh, are we, sir?’

  ‘Yes, and tell Lieutenant Glover he can remove his sentries from their posts round Chichester Junction. We shan’t be needing ’em any more. The swine aren’t there.’ Mace tapped Pattinson’s report with his fingers. ‘They’re in Reinhart.’

  Instant smiled. ‘Mr Glover’s lads’ll be pleased to hear that, sir,’ he pointed out. ‘They were getting a bit sick of guarding that war memoria
l. It was a bit dusty out there – especially lately with that new shop they’re putting up. When do we leave, sir?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  Instant’s jaw dropped. In a week’s time, he had expected. Next month. Next year. But tomorrow! He was horrified.

  ‘But tomorrow’s the day before Christmas Eve, sir,’ he said.

  Mace’s head jerked up. ‘Wars don’t usually stop for Christmas, do they?’

  ‘We aren’t doing no fighting ’ere, sir.’

  Mace gave him a sour look. ‘Sometimes, I think it’s a pity we aren’t,’ he said. ‘There’d be more honesty then and less roguery.

  ‘Yessir. Are we all going?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Even Wooden?’ Instant could just imagine what Wooden would have to say.

  Mace looked up. ‘Even Wooden,’ he said. ‘He might desert.’

  Unfortunately as Mace discovered when he reached Reinhart, his quarry had departed some time before and had never reappeared because suddenly – unexpectedly, out of the blue – they were in the money.

  By the time they had returned from Chichester Junction, Mrs Nagel had taken the train to Cape Town, so, in lieu of their unpaid wages, they collected the property baskets and backdrops from Pouter’s Palace and, suggesting to Polly a fancy-dress dance on Christmas Eve, offered to hire out costumes for a small consideration. The backdrops Willie sold to the Dutchman from Sinai one night at Balmerinostad when he turned up with tinned goods for Poll’s kitchen – to be used as tarpaulins in his store room – and the make-up they kept for the minstrel shows which were always so popular in Poll’s billiard room.

  Then, to their joy, while they were still enjoying the proceeds an army agent appeared asking for volunteers to drive in unclaimed Boer cattle from the deserted farms around. He even had a list and notes of authority for anyone willing to help.

  ‘They’re mostly round Dreifontein way,’ he said. ‘We’ll give a pound apiece for them if they’re driven to Chichester Junction. We want to impound them until the war’s over. It shouldn’t be long now.’

  He even offered a down payment to cover expenses but when Willie discovered they could get eight pound apiece from the cold storage plant in Winifred, the long dusty ride to Chichester Junction began to seem pointless. It was good until Fish grew greedy and started collecting cattle belonging to British supporters which had never been lost.

  They did well out of the project, however, and Vechter, the Dutch storekeeper, was still at Sinai with his army rations; and to complete the picture, the Tiger, with a sudden burst of inspired industry, broke away to get himself a steady job with a short-sighted young Jew called Mendel who bought diamonds.

  It was actually legal for a change and the Tiger had been given a licence, a lop-eared grey pony which limped from a wound it had received when it was captured from the Boers, a pair of small pliers and a set of diamond scales. All he had to do was sweat from mound to mound round the district, from scattered tent to scattered tent, hut to hut, digging to digging, collecting the chips that turned up.

  Mendel was obviously so pleased with him, he wondered if he hadn’t been making a mistake not keeping one or two for himself The thought occurred to him unexpectedly and he put it aside quickly as dishonest.

  Despite Mendel’s pleasure, however, Pansy wasn’t very impressed. Hers was a difficult situation because Poll, a wave of responsibility for her coming over her like a rush of blood to the head, kept asking questions, and she felt she had to produce something in the way of prosperity to make up for the arrangement she had with the Tiger.

  ‘I know that Mendel,’ she said. ‘He’s that Jehooda who sleeps with Mrs Pruffer. You’ll not get much out of him. I never did like fellers with specs.’

  Nevertheless, she was not against the gifts the Tiger brought for her, the money, a china cockerel and a necklace of garnets Mendel let him have cheap, and they were back on champagne, even if it were only Cape champagne. Christmas turned out better than they’d any of them ever expected. The fancy-dress dance was a great success and the races on Christmas Day brought them money. Though a dust storm blinded the spectators, the bookies didn’t welsh, and with money in their pockets the New Year looked like a prosperous one after all.

  Unfortunately, just at that moment, just as 1901 was stretching ahead of them full of bright promises – suddenly, unhappily, terrifyingly – Mace turned up again.

  Eight

  For Mace, Christmas had been a dreary affair.

  The weather was hot and the ride he had made from Sinai to Reinhart, twice crossing the railway line and once being shot at by a nervous private in a blockhouse, hadn’t helped dispel the feeling that Corporal Pattinson had muffed the whole thing and they were already too late.

  They had arrived at Reinhart late in the evening and Mace had stared at the crowded streets in disgust as his horse plodded through. Reinhart had started to celebrate the festive season early and the crowd had consisted of drunken miners, farmers, sharpsters, shysters and thieves – even, he had noticed disgustedly, one or two British soldiers. They had halted in the town square, a dusty patch speckled with the thin shade of pepper trees and, while his men off-saddled and watered their mounts at the town trough, Mace jerked his jacket straight and, with Instant to give him support, began to make his enquiries. It hadn’t taken him long to establish where his quarry had been staying.

  A small crowd was following him about by this time. The appearance of a British officer, in full service khaki and draped like a Christmas tree with revolver, binoculars and map case, and backed by a sergeant armed to the teeth with rifle and bayonet, had been the cause of some surprise and speculation. Every time they halted a small committee assembled on the kerb to debate the reason, standing in a half-circle round them as if acknowledging someone’s private grief and trying not to intrude.

  The owner of the shabby little house where Fish, Willie and the Tiger had shared a room had been only too anxious to be of assistance. She was an English widow and eager to help the British cause.

  ‘They went back to Winifred,’ she said.

  Mace saw Instant staring at him indignantly because they had just passed through Winifred and he had climbed bitterly on his horse and, with Instant and his men behind him, had trotted back to Winifred, reflecting sourly that he seemed to cover a great deal of unnecessary ground. As they had stopped to water their horses again at the trough in Steyn Street he wandered across to Pouter’s Palace, less to have a look at the dusty playbills still posted up outside than to avoid Instant’s cold eye.

  As he studied them, however, a chord was struck. Simon Legree! Richard Plantaganet! Choking with excitement, he scanned the cast list. But there was nothing there even remotely suggesting Dolly Poser, Smiling Willie or the Tiger. Encouraged, however, he had dug out Pouter from the bar next door where he was obviously bent on celebrating Christmas early. He was more than willing to direct Mace to Mrs Dalgetty’s Superior Boarding House.

  Unhappily Mrs Dalgetty had closed down for the holiday and gone to stay with her sister in Balmerinostad, and, seeing Instant and Wooden listening intently to the conversation, Mace hadn’t had the nerve to head away from home again, and they had trotted disconsolately back to Sinai over the railway lines and past the blockhouse where the same private shot at them again.

  They each celebrated the birth of Christ in their own way. Wooden did the only thing he knew, begging, borrowing and stealing until he could drink himself to stupefaction. Instant, to his delight, had found Prinsloo’s daughter, Sarie, more than responsive and ended up by being invited for Christmas dinner. Later, with Prinsloo fast asleep after a more than generous helping of Cape brandy and with Instant’s heart thumping with a dull romantic ache, she offered to show him the stables. It was already dark and the horses didn’t bother them much.

  Mace ate a frigid, lonely meal at the hotel, because Lieutenant Glover had got himself an invitation to the mess of a regiment of Lancers newly arrived near Chichester Juncti
on, to which Mace might well have gone, too, but for the fact that he had been in Reinhart when the invitations were handed around. With the gloomy dedication of a Torquemada he ate his Christmas dinner in silence, unable to forget that time was passing and that his quarry might at that moment have got wind of him.

  On 26 December he was up early and ready for off, but the Lancers and an engineer company at Venter’s Road were complaining that they had had deserters and a British farmer had appeared, loudly indignant because he’d discovered that a bunch of heifers he’d lost had been driven off by the herders of a British agent collecting strayed Boer cattle.

  The business of the deserters took two whole days. He found the Lancers’ man drunk in a bar in Brandewyn and the engineers’ man in a rather unpleasant condition at the bottom of a well at Power Hamlet. The inhabitants had been complaining of the water for some time. The following morning, in a dark fury at the continued interruption to his plans, he rode to Mimosa Grove to see the British agent about the missing cattle.

  ‘I’ve never seen the bloody men I hired from that day to this,’ the agent said.

  On the 28th he was at last free to ride to Winifred once more. Wooden’s curses were enough to make a coster’s ears grow hot and, when a neglected bridle strap caused him to halt the troop on the way for half an hour, Mace hadn’t the spirit even to curse him.

  At Winifred, Mrs Dalgetty had returned, but once again he drew a blank. His spirits lifted as he learned that three men answering to the descriptions he brought had indeed been staying there, but they sunk again immediately at the landlady’s next words.

  ‘They left,’ she said. ‘I heard they went to Dreifontein.’

  ‘Dreifontein?’ Mace said in a thick voice. ‘The other side of Reinhart?’

  ‘That’s it. They said something about rounding up some cattle for the army.’