Smiling Willie and the Tiger

by John Harris

  Like Willie’s, Fish’s and the Tiger’s and unlike Mace’s, Poll’s Christmas had been a good one. The fancy-dress dance and minstrel show Willie had suggested had brought a roaring trade and – now they could afford to pay for their own drinks – she was at last able to forgive them, and could even look benignly on the Tiger’s association with Pansy. She was so friendly, in fact, she even threw a party for them on the stoep on the Saturday night before New Year’s Eve.

  ‘Just what the girls want,’ Fish said as they prepared their toilet. ‘Pansy’ll go for this.’

  The Tiger scowled. ‘How do you know Pansy’ll go for it?’ he demanded.

  Fish paused in plying hairbrush and comb. ‘I asked her,’ he said.

  The Tiger glared. ‘You’re getting a bit bloomin’ interested in my girl, aren’t you?’ Since meeting Pansy he had become noticeably more shrill and self-assertive.

  Fish was not put off, and his eyes flared. ‘She gets a raw deal,’ he said. ‘Poor innocent kid! Working all day for Poll, never having any fun. You don’t give her any.’ He, too, was growing a little self-assertive over Pansy.

  The Tiger eyed him coldly. He had learned a lot in recent weeks – among which was the fact that Pansy wasn’t a poor innocent kid.

  ‘Maybe I don’t,’ he said. ‘But, just the same, Dolly Fish, you keep your great American mitts off her or you’ll catch pepper, see if you don’t.’

  He spent too much time getting his parting top-dead-centre, however, and when he appeared at Poll’s the hotel was packed – Boer farmers, diamond buyers, miners, speculators, a few soldiers, everything on two legs – and the others were already deployed about the stoep in a way that left little room for the Tiger except in the middle of the Brown Hen, Jericho Jessie and the Rose of Sharon. Fish was holding forth.

  ‘That Fish,’ the Tiger said, blinking furiously. ‘Strutting about like a cockerel courting a china hen. He’s flim-flammed me out of a seat next to my girl!’

  Fish was smiling at Pansy. He was bursting with confidence. ‘How about drinks all round again?’ he suggested. ‘I’ve only had a beer and two goes of Hennessy up to now.’

  He took a large watch from his pocket, adjusted it and stared at it. ‘Plenty of time,’ he said. He showed it to Pansy. ‘Twenty-seven jewels,’ he went on. ‘So silent, you can’t hear it tick.’

  He held it up for her to put her ear to and, as her eyes widened, he opened the front and back and stuck his finger through.

  ‘No goddam works,’ he yelled and they all shouted with laughter.

  ‘Sold another today,’ he announced. ‘To a jaap farmer from St Helena. Gave him the old “My name’s Adolphus C Fish” line. Sounds important and they always fall. Here’ – he offered the watch to Pansy – ‘have it as a keepsake!’

  ‘What’s the C in the middle stand for?’ Pansy asked. She was wearing green silk stockings and yellow shoes with patent leather toes the Tiger had bought her and it shrivelled the Tiger’s soul to see them next to Fish’s feet.

  ‘Nothin’,’ Fish said. ‘My pa said, “A feller’s got to have a middle letter” but they couldn’t think of nothing just then so they called me Adolphus C, intending to fix something behind that there C later.’

  ‘Adolphus’ a nice name,’ Pansy decided. ‘Genteel. Well-brought-up.’

  Fish smiled. ‘I got a ranch in Texas,’ he said. ‘You know that? I got a ranch.’

  He caught the Tiger glaring at him and, with one arm round Pansy, his fingers close to her breast, he raised his glass to the Tiger.

  ‘Well, smile, Tiger,’ Pansy urged. ‘You look like something the cat dragged in.’

  The Tiger managed a death’s-head grin. ‘I feel like something the cat dragged in,’ he said. ‘Left lying about.’

  ‘After all, Dolly’s a friend. Aren’t you, Dolly?’ Pansy jumped suddenly and gave a short startled shriek. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘You keep that hand to yourself!’

  The Tiger swallowed a whole glass of champagne without stopping to draw breath and poured himself another. ‘It’s manus deviatus,’ he said loudly. ‘It’s a disease. Prevalent among fellers like him. They can’t keep their blessed paws off other fellers’ girls.’

  Pansy thought it was a joke and Jericho Jessie nudged him boisterously.

  ‘You are a one,’ she said.

  With the drinks, the laughter was getting a little out of control.

  ‘Tiger’s a dark horse,’ Willie was saying. ‘Darker than you think.’

  ‘He’s got it where it counts.’

  ‘Not half,’ Pansy said, winking at the Brown Hen.

  ‘Enigmatic, too. Enigmatic.’

  ‘We had one,’ Jericho Jessie said. ‘But the wheel fell off.’

  ‘Perhaps the Tiger’s will, too!’

  The shriek of laughter was more than the Tiger could stand.

  It was just as the Tiger’s temper had reached the point of explosion that Mace arrived. Feeling certain, with Mrs Dalgetty’s information, that he was on the track again and that he was killing two birds with one stone, he had cantered doggedly back on his tracks from Winifred to Dreifontein, his breast full of hope. Sensing he would have a better chance in mufti, in fact, he had left off his uniform, but the second ride through Reinhart had been as hot and dusty as the first and by the time he had shuffled off his little squad underneath the inevitable patch of pepper trees, the sweat was standing out down the back of his jacket.

  Like a good soldier, however, he saw his men supplied with food and drink before heading for the only hotel the place boasted to find a meal for himself.

  ‘I’m looking for three chaps,’ he said as he waded through his meat and vegetables. ‘They’ve been selling cattle. One of ’em smiles a lot. Another’s a Canadian and the third calls himself the Tiger.’

  The landlord scratched his head. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there were three chaps like that round here.’

  ‘There were?’ Mace’s eyes had gleamed and he had sat bolt upright. ‘Where are they now?’

  The landlord shrugged. ‘They left,’ he said. ‘I heard they went back to Winifred.’

  Mace had finished his meal in silence. By this time it was tasting like ashes in his mouth, and he had stalked outside, his mouth tight, his eyes bleak and cold.

  ‘Where to, sir?’ Instant asked hopefully, thinking of Sarie Prinsloo. ‘Sinai?’

  Mace found he couldn’t face him. He looked as though he were in a trance and Instant guessed something cataclysmic had happened.

  ‘No, Sergeant.’ Mace’s teeth were gritted so tightly he found it difficult to speak. ‘Winifred.’

  The information that they were returning yet again on their tracks had not been received with joy by his men.

  ‘What the shockin’ ’ell is ’e up to?’ Wooden demanded. ‘Back and forth. Up and down. Like a ’ore’s drawers on payday.’

  ‘Shut your trap, Wooden, or I’ll slap you on a charge.’ Instant snapped. He at least had enjoyed Christmas and, with a growing confidence that came from success in his financial and amorous adventures, he was finding it much easier to keep Wooden in check these days.

  Conscious of bitter looks, Mace climbed to the saddle to begin the whole grisly ritual again. He felt martyred and bereft by this time. Inside him now there was a burning sense of mission – to capture the culprits, not for the army but for the satisfaction of Captain Hubert Mace and nothing else, and he was kept going by his growing hatred for the men who had caused it all. And Southey, he thought savagely. Southey, who had started the whole thing with his carelessness, was second only to the robbers in Mace’s list of bitter enemies.

  It was late in the day by the time they reached Winifred and, hot, sweating and bad-tempered, Mace had decided that the obvious place to look was Poll’s. He was certain he’d almost caught his quarry there once and, with New Year coming at the week-end as it did that year, he suspected that Poll’s would probably be where they were now. The conjunction of the holiday and the weekend had brought ou
t the population in multitudes and half of South Africa seemed to be about – a large proportion of them drunk. Grimly Mace placed Instant and his men near the station where he could call on them if he needed them and stalked towards Poll’s.

  There seemed to be a party going on, on the stoep, but there was no one there he knew and it was growing noisy. They were having an altercation, it seemed, and were too excited to notice him as he pushed past into the hotel.

  ‘One of these days you’ll get put in prison,’ the Tiger was saying to Fish in a low bitter voice, and everyone for several tables around was silent, shocked at his rage and enjoying the fun. ‘One of these days you’ll get put in prison, and I hope you will so everybody’ll know what a rotten swine you are.’

  Mace wasn’t interested in drunks. The hall and bar seemed to be teeming with people and by the door an old man was playing Jannie Met Die Ou Poul Bien on a concertina. A burly Boer stopped Mace.

  ‘Are you a policeman, Meneer?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Mace said.

  ‘Perhaps a lawyer?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  The Boer frowned. ‘You have the appearance, Meneer.’ He stared about him. He’d been drinking and his small eyes were red and murderous. ‘I look for someone,’ he said. ‘A schelm who sell my father a watch.’ He produced it and held it up. ‘Silent,’ he went on. ‘So silent you do not hear it tick.’ He opened the front and back and pushed his finger through. ‘No works,’ he explained. ‘Such verneukery. I am Albrecht Oppermann from St Helena and when I catch him, it will go bad for him, Meneer. I have his name.’

  Leaving Mace to struggle towards the bar, which was where he confidently expected to find his quarry propping up the counter, he pushed away. As he reached the stoep, not far away in front of him, the Tiger was still holding forth in jealous fury.

  ‘Talking’s all you’re good for, Dolly Fish,’ he was saying in low angry tones. ‘Telling everybody who you are. All about your ranch. I hope you get paralysed all down one side.’

  Guiltily, Pansy had drawn away from Fish, who had risen to his feet. He wasn’t sure yet who was on his side and his head was going down into his shoulders in rage as the Tiger’s words nagged at him.

  ‘All you’re good for,’ the Tiger said again. ‘Talking! That’s all – talking! If you hear someone yelling his name, you can bet your feet it’ll be you!’

  Embarrassed, aware of the certainty of trouble, the Rose of Sharon left to fetch Poll. Jericho Jessie sniggered, but the Brown Hen nudged her quickly and it died as though chopped off with an axe.

  ‘Now, Tiger,’ Willie said gently, laying a hand in his arm.

  The Tiger shrugged it off. ‘Never mind “Now, Tiger”,’ he said. He’d had a few quick drinks on his own and he was in an aggressive mood. ‘I’m ready for him and if he wants Pansy I can always give him a punch on the nose as a receipt. You see if I can’t.’ His voice rose. ‘I’m Dolly Fish,’ he yelled. ‘The Great I-Am!’ His voice rose higher, shrill and angry. ‘Adolphus C Fish is my name and I sell watches without works! So silent you can’t hear ’em tick…’

  He got no further because at that moment Albrecht Oppermann had appeared behind him and he found his arm caught as he gestured. He was swung round to face a Boer who seemed to be about eight feet high and built like a brewer’s dray, and he was just occupied in drawing back his right fist.

  In the bar, Mace saw a woman with a painted face and an egret in her hair shove her way to the counter and jabber something in Afrikaans to Poll and at the moment, somewhere outside on the stoep, women started to scream and he heard the crash of glasses.

  Poll turned to the small black boy who was employed to clear away the dirty glasses. ‘Get the police,’ she snapped.

  To Mace it seemed that a riot had started as people began to head at full speed for the door. A flying figure bumped into him and spun him round and a chair caught him behind the knees so that he fell flat on his back.

  By this time, half the male customers on the stoep were involved and most of them were setting about Oppermann. The celebrations seemed to have come to a full stop.

  Pushing off the struggling men, Pansy was staring down at the unconscious form of the Tiger among the debris of table, chairs and glasses, shocked at his stillness. Jericho Jessie shrugged.

  ‘Not much of a feller who can’t defend himself,’ she said.

  She ducked hurriedly as Pansy swung at her with her handbag. ‘I think he’s dead,’ Pansy said.

  ‘Not him, dear. But the way he’ll feel when he wakes up, he’ll wish he was.’

  Willie and Fish were fighting off the swaying crowd, but by now bottles were being flung.

  ‘I think it’s time we left,’ Willie said. Between them, they snatched the Tiger from under the stampeding feet and dragged him along the stoep towards the door.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Pansy was asking, her eyes full of tears.

  ‘More than likely,’ Willie said.

  They hurried the limp form up the stairs to her room and tossed him indifferently on to the bed. Pansy clambered on after him and cradled his head on her lap.

  ‘I think he is dead,’ she wailed.

  Meanwhile the police had arrived They had not been far away. Saturday night was always fight night and, with New Year’s Eve falling the following day, they’d been expecting trouble. Called ‘zarps’ from the initial of the Afrikaans name for their organisation, the term had become one of abuse and they were eager to show what they could do. They asked no questions and weren’t even fussy who was to blame. Their job was to make arrests – perhaps a dozen or so to show they were on their toes – and they hurtled up the steps to the stoep just as Mace, his hat askew, got to his feet. As he appeared through the door to make his escape, he was the first person they saw.

  Nine

  ‘That was a rum go,’ Willie said slowly.

  ‘Same feller,’ the Tiger murmured.

  ‘Mean,’ Fish observed. ‘Didn’t like his eyes.’

  They were sitting round a circular stained table in the only bar Mimosa Grove could boast, disconsolately toying with a hand of vingt-et-un. Though they were beginning to recover a little from the disaster at Poll’s, none of them had any money now so the betting was not exactly spirited.

  New Year had not been eminently successful for Mace either. His hat was crushed and his jacket half-torn from his back and he had been frogmarched away with a hand on his collar by a mammoth Boer policeman. When he had protested, all he had got for his trouble was a clenched fist as big as a bucket hard on the top of the head. It had almost made his eyes fall out. As he had been slammed against a wall, he had clawed himself upright, indignation bursting out of him, and had stepped forward to explain, only to be promptly slammed back against the wall again.

  It had taken him until daylight the following morning to fight his way free and, livid, thirsting for vengeance, his first action had been to find Instant and head hell-for-leather for Poll’s, furiously demanding to be allowed to investigate her customers. Once again Willie and Fish had had to escape through the back door and there had been a tender if hurried parting with the repentant Pansy before the Tiger, still nursing his jaw, had slid down the corrugated-iron roof of the stoep below her window. They had disappeared into the veldt to sleep for a night or two on the stony ground before heading for Mimosa Grove. It hadn’t been hard to find horses at short notice. If one man gave a Kaffir half a crown to watch his mount, all you had to do was give him five shillings to look the other way. Though the quarrel between Fish and the Tiger had not been forgotten, there were no recriminations. It was time to close ranks against the common enemy, because Poll hadn’t hesitated to make her feelings known. ‘Next time,’ she’d said, ‘I’ll hand you over to the police myself.’

  ‘The man’s a bloomin’ Javert,’ the Tiger said wonderingly.

  ‘A bloomin’ what?’ Fish asked.

  ‘Javert. He was a policeman. I read it in a book. French he was. Chased a fel
ler all his life through for stealing a loaf.’

  ‘He’s one of them OK,’ Fish agreed. ‘You can expect anything of the Frogs.’

  ‘Spiteful, too,’ Willie said thoughtfully. ‘The way he goes on sitting in Chichester Junction just waiting for us to go back. Downright bad manners.’

  Fortunately, their exile was not too hard. They were within a half-day’s ride of Winifred and a day and a half’s ride of Chichester Junction, so, while they were far enough away to be out of Mace’s eye, they were still near enough to discover if anything had happened to the money they’d buried. Only the shortage of funds made life difficult and a tent wasn’t the most comfortable place to sleep.

  Happily it didn’t last long. Vechter, the Dutchman from Sinai who kept Poll’s dining room supplied with army titbits, informed Willie at Balmerinostad that Mace had gone to Bloemfontein, expecting them to have taken a train south, and they had moved cautiously into the streets of Mimosa Grove. Then, to their joy, they learned that Mace had at last withdrawn his pickets and was sitting in his tent again in Sinai, brooding on his next move. Tension dispersed like a cloud of steam.

  It was 26 April 1901 when they warily moved back to their old haunts. Hidden among the people of Winifred they felt a lot safer. Like Sinai and a lot of other places, Mimosa Grove consisted of a single street, a bar, a store and a few scattered houses. It was too easy to be noticed there. Winifred was big enough to hide in and was still growing. Wooden blocks had finally been laid down Nieuwoudt Street and had at last arrived outside Poll’s. The war that Lord Roberts had said was over was still on – only just, however, and judging by the increasingly confident proclamations the army posted, no one expected it to go on much longer but things were still short and money was still tight.

  ‘I suppose we couldn’t go and just dig up one bag, could we?’ the Tiger asked.

  Willie shrugged. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit,’ he said. ‘Blessed are the poor, in fact. I’ll write to my old man and tell him I’m so broke there’s nothing for it but to return to England. Ought to be good for a fiver or two.’