by Ann Harries
There are four more wills. They concern the education of young male colonials and the establishment of a scholarship scheme whereby these young men would be sent to the University of Oxford ‘for the instilling into their minds the advantages to the colonies as well as to England of the retention of the Unity of Empire’. The successful young colonists must be moderately fond of manly field-sports like cricket or football. Under no circumstances are they to be ‘bookworms’. The proportions attained by the ideal candidate should be four-tenths scholarship, two-tenths athletics, two-tenths chivalry, manhood et cetera, two-tenths leadership. These young men will be groomed at Oxford in order to rule the earth. My father expresses surprise by whistling through his teeth.
The footsteps, light as a gazelle’s, have not faded into the corridor as I thought they would, but patter purposefully towards the room in which I stand. I withdraw the final bundle, glance at its contents (which are brief but unambiguous), close the safe door, replace Colesburg Kopje, and move over to the bay window just as the door opens and electric light floods the room.
Enter Dr Jameson, chortling. My father’s ghost flees.
Dr Jim does not at first appear to notice me. He bounds into the room, like a young secretary, and heads straight for the Colossus’ bed. Still chuckling, he scrabbles for a minute among the bottles of pills and phials of medicine – I begin to wonder if the Colossus has suffered some form of heart attack which the Doctor can arrest with medication – but it is a book he finally snatches from the bedside paraphernalia. He turns over pages rapidly, finds what he is looking for, laughs aloud, and snaps the book shut. ‘Good evening, Wills,’ he says, without bothering to establish eye contact. ‘I’m pleased to tell you I have just won five pounds. Thanks to my friend, Conan Doyle.’
‘He has joined the party?’ I am sufficiently curious to condescend to a response, and regret it immediately.
—Oh no, old chap, Sir Arthur’s scribbling away in Southsea at this very minute, I should imagine. No, no – the company at table have been arguing about a detail from The Adventures of the Noble Bachelor.’ Dr Jim is enjoying himself, and not only at my discomfiture. ‘Do you know it?’
I shake my head: an impatient quiver, such as I give visitors to Oxford who ask me for directions.
In return, Dr Jim favours me with his brilliant triangular smile. ‘We were trying to remember the name of the hotel Holmes visits, you know, when he comes upon the bill that had been settled at one of the most select London hotels –eight shillings for a bed, eightpence for a glass of sherry, that sort of thing. Because these prices tally exactly with the ones Our Host knows, he was – is – convinced the hotel was the Burlington. He always stays there when he’s in London. Always. I felt fairly certain the name of the hotel was never mentioned in Conan Doyle’s story. I find I was right. I am now five pounds the richer!’ He withdraws his silver cigarette case from a pocket and lights a slender cigarillo. ‘I seem to remember you do not smoke?’
‘My congratulations on both scores.’
The Doctor blows out a series of impressive smoke rings, then regards me with an amused light in his eye. ‘Well now, Professor,’ he smiles, ‘this is an interesting challenge for me, is it not? I wonder if I can use the skills taught by Dr Bell and performed so miraculously by Mr Holmes. In other words, can I deduce what brings you to my friend’s bedroom? I would not be so brash as to suspect you have come here simply to steal money or precious objects, as I understand you have little interest in acquisitions. I would wager you have come here to pry: there is a prying air about you. Now what can it be that you are hoping to find?’
He is walking towards me, smoke trailing from the cigarillo clamped between his lips. I breathe in its spicy aroma, and am transported to the Senior Common Room. I feel no nostalgia, only a sudden yearning for good Madeira.
I am not afraid of the Doctor. He is not a malevolent man. He is a man of action, without guile. To look into his clear brown eyes, tainted as they are by suffering, is to see a man anxious to shorten the distance between cause and effect; in other words, a simple, impatient man. When I make contact with the moist orbs of the Colossus I feel I slither through spirals of cunning that no man, except perhaps the one before me now, can ever truly penetrate.
I am nearly a head taller than Dr Jameson. I look down at his upturned face and say quietly: ‘Evidence.’
‘Evidence.’ He repeats the word exactly as I have said it. Then frowns. ‘Evidence of what?’
I decide to be playful. ‘Evidence of Britain’s guilty conscience, what else?’
Something is happening to the perfect symmetry of Jameson’s face. His left cheek begins to sag, as if made of hot, melting wax. The lid of his left eye inexplicably droops, while the right eye and brow now seem to be slanting upwards. His moustache is at an angle. His teeth bite into his lower lip. I am watching a face disintegrate before my very eyes, as they say.
I wait.
Now his stricken features gather themselves together as an explanation dawns. There is even a glint of admiration in his eyes as he speaks.
‘Are you some kind of agent then? I might have guessed.’
The idea is so preposterous that I give a wan smile. His face reddens.
‘Guilty conscience!’ he blurts out, then slumps on to an upright mahogany chair laced with leather thongs. ‘I could tell you a thing or two about guilty conscience!’ He is biting the nail of his left thumb. ‘And betrayal,’ he adds, his thumb still in his mouth.
I realise, from the strong waft of alcohol that is released by these movements, that he is probably very drunk. I sit in the Colossus’ great chair behind his desk, and prepare myself.
Jameson is chewing his thumb, his face haggard once again. He is a man of honour, fighting temptation. I help him.
‘It is not always possible to be consistent in friendship,’ I say, fiddling with a paper-knife.
‘You can say that again!’ Jameson mumbles. ‘One minute he’s the closest friend a man ever had, the next –’
This room has become the centre of the universe. A multitude of sounds vibrate around it: the febrile cries of insects, the hum of post-prandial discourse, and a new sound: the wind. The breeze which played among the columns of the back verandah earlier today has, even while I have been in this room, gained in momentum. Now it gusts against the window panes, whistles under the door. The pine trees sing like musical instruments. The mountain, riddled with caves, gives forth a booming sound.
But in here it is as still as the cramped confessional box inside a vast Gothic cathedral where the hurricane of human life roars and clanks, waiting to relieve itself of sin.
‘Do you know,’ says Jameson, ‘that the day I landed in Pretoria gaol he sent Joubert up to tell me to shoulder the blame for the whole fiasco.’ He looks at me with imploring eyes. ‘He was going to abandon me utterly. Only when he conceded there was no way of disguising the full extent of his own involvement did he change his tune.’ He pauses. ‘I told him I never wanted to see him again. Simple as that.’
‘But there was no rising in Johannesburg,’ I murmur. ‘No women and children for you to rescue.’
‘Judasburg, you mean!’ The anger in his voice makes him jump out of his chair. His cigarillo, now a mere stump, is still planted between his lips as he hurries across the room. He bends over the amputated elephant’s foot next to the Colossus’ bed. The foot has opened to reveal a range of monogrammed glasses and decanters. ‘Cognac?’
‘Is there Madeira?’
‘There’s anything you like.’
His hand shakes as he pours first amber and then golden liquid into the crystal glasses. He hands me the golden glass, and stands before me, holding the amber goblet. Something of the devil-may-care flits across his face as he proposes: ‘To all guilty consciences, everywhere!’ I smile and nod and sip my Madeira.
‘Cowards, the lot of them.’ He has returned to his leather-thonged chair, and lights another cigarillo. He perches half on, hal
f off the chair: I fear he may fall off its well-polished edge. For a few moments he chews at the upper joint of his thumb. Then the words pour from him, as if they have been memorised. ‘I had written evidence they would rise: my band of men was to rescue the women and children. Good God, man, their appeal for help was published in The Times, what further proof do people want?’ He drinks sharply from his glass and flings his legs out. ‘Then they go and change their minds. Two men on bicycles ride up as we approach Judasburg and say the Reform Committee’s compromised with the Boers – but they’re looking forward to having a drink with my men and myself!’ He snorts. ‘An expensive way of sharing a glass, you might say!’ He stares at his feet, his features twitching and sliding about as a range of emotions takes over. Without raising his gaze to meet mine, he murmurs: ‘Of course, there is one person to whom I feel nothing but gratitude. Without his intervention I’d most likely still be in Holloway, or hanging from some primitive Boer gallows …’ He heaves a mighty sigh and falls silent. After waiting a sufficient length of time, I enquire as to the identity of his saviour.
In a rush he lifts his face, which is distorted by a smile of the deepest cynicism. ‘None less than our good Queen’s grandson, Kaiser Willie! His telegram to the old Boer congratulating him on the preservation of his independence did the trick for me all right. The idea of Germany staking a claim in the Golden City and indirectly offering military aid to the beastly Boers was too much for British pride. National shame became national outrage. Suddenly I became St George, shining armour and all, defending British honour against the Hun. I owe much to Kaiser Wilhelm!’ He leaps to his feet, clicks his heels, and lifts his glass: ‘To the Kaiser!’
I smile tolerantly. ‘There is no doubt you are regarded as a great hero in England.’
‘I don’t give a fig how I’m regarded. I’ve told you – the whole affair’s an embarrassment to me. You may find that difficult to believe – I can see you think I’m a cocky little chap, and in an honest moment I’d admit the truth of that – but to be a hero because of a Kaiser’s telegram is no hero at all, I can assure you.’ He flings himself back into his chair, crosses his legs daintily, calms down.
And puffs out his chest. ‘Yet the strange thing is, even our Boer captors treated us like heroes – challenged us to a shooting competition en route for Pretoria – the best Boer marksmen against the best British shots. The Boers won. Spent their lives shooting from horseback, you see, got a different concept of war altogether, no formal marching, uniforms, all that sort of thing. We were fighting against puffs of smoke. Nice chaps, really. Considerate. Considering …’ He swallows the remains of his Cognac. ‘We never had a chance. There’s a line of poetry could have been written for us: ‘Into the valley of death rode the six hundred.’ That was us. If you count the Coloured boys who looked after the spare horses. A regiment of six hundred against the entire Boer army! Ah, well, there it is!’ He looks into his empty glass, puzzled.
Now darker thoughts cross his mind. He has not noticed that his cigarillo has died. ‘Chamberlain himself came to see me in Holloway. Incognito. All very hush-hush. Didn’t even wear his monocle. Told me to keep my mouth well and truly shut about who knew what, and to go along with whatever came out in the Inquiry. In a bit of a funk, you might say. Tried to suggest that I had ruined his career, so I’d better make up for it by toeing the line. I could tell he both knew and didn’t know the Raid was going to happen. Left hand didn’t know what right hand was doing. We think these politicians consider everything with perfect clarity, know all the facts, remember everything that’s said to them. Absolute bunkum! They’re as muddle-headed as the rest of us!’ He grunts, and sips at his drink. ‘I was too ill to argue – gallstones, y’know – they released me early.’ He lapses into silence. The wind hurls its shoulder against the window panes. A tile flies off the roof and shatters on the ground. The insects have ceased their song.
‘And do you know, in all the months I was in Holloway, the man who calls himself my closest friend never visited me once. I languished in gaol while he stayed at the Burlington and played his games in Westminster.’ Jameson’s thumb has returned to his mouth. He gnaws at it as he continues: ‘Yet the strange thing is, I forgave him. I’d thrown my whole life away for him, what’s the point in stopping now, that’s how I thought. Greater love hath no man, and all that.’
He wrenches his hand away and stares at me full in the face. His eyes have doubled in size. He blinks away the liquid which fills them: the tears slide wetly down his cheeks into his moustache. He withdraws a handkerchief from a trouser pocket and blows his nose. ‘Sorry about the outburst, old chap,’ he snuffles, his nose still in the handkerchief. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Not like me to blubber.’
I can hear someone coming up the stairs. Jameson can as well. He gives a final trumpet into his horribly crumpled kerchief, and stuffs it into a pocket. He cannot stop talking. ‘The worst of it is that history will blame me for single-handedly precipitating an unnecessary war, right at the end of the century, at that.’ He shakes his head in astonishment. ‘I don’t want Britain to go to war, Wills. The Raid was meant to prevent war, not cause it. Simple as that.’
He stands up, walks unsteadily, but neatly, towards me. ‘Come on, old boy, hand it over.’
I am staring into the barrel of his mother-of-pearl pistol. Jameson does not apologise.
I have led a sheltered life. I live in the most sheltered spot on earth. My skin is pale and soft, almost like a woman’s.
Yet I find it exhilarating to have a gun pointed at my brains for the second time in twenty-four hours. I am not afraid. My knees do not tremble. Instead I experience a kind of joy as my smothered life, oxygenated by the prospect of death, bursts into wild blooms.
‘And don’t start whistling like a bird, either,’ says Jameson, misreading my radiant smile. ‘Or I’ll pull the trigger.’
The footsteps have stopped outside the door. Three raps upon it remind me inexplicably of the opening bars of The Magic Flute and all the Freemasonry that permeates both that opera and this house. I say, in an undertone: ‘In my breast pocket I have the eight missing telegrams which were not produced at the Inquiry. They indisputably prove Joseph Chamberlain’s support and encouragement of your Incursion. If they are published now, the Colonial Secretary will be reviled as a blatant liar and your name will be forever cleared. More than that. If Britain’s guilty secrets are bared to the public, an Anglo-Boer war would become impossible. You would not have to live with the knowledge that your reckless ride across the border had directly caused a catastrophic war.’
Jameson slowly returns his pistol to the handkerchief in his pocket. His eyes bulge. ‘Come in!’ he calls out cheerfully.
England 1895
Mr James had died suddenly: Elspeth telephoned to my college with the news, and a few days later I made my way to Battersea to attend the funeral. Having important work in the laboratory to see to in the morning, I caught the 1 p.m. train from Oxford, and, after changing at Reading, found myself on a platform of Clapham Junction.
My thoughts were melancholy. I had loved my guardian, perhaps not quite as boys should love their fathers, but with an amused admiration. His devotion to Ruskinian ideals had increased with time: as a member of the Utopian St George’s Guild he argued for the redistribution of wealth, the establishment of smokeless zones, and an end to modern warfare, among other things. Elspeth had supported him in these endeavours, becoming ever more buxom as her interest in cookery grew (she made cakes for Ruskin’s teashop in Marylebone, which sold tea in small packets for the poorest customers): she planned to write a revolutionary vegetarian recipe book as a direct challenge to Mrs Beeton’s tome which encouraged the daily consumption of red meat and food cooked in lard. That she could not have children was her greatest regret, but this meant that both Mr James and I received from her ever more solicitous attention. I felt apprehensive of her state of mind, now that she was deprived of her invalid husb
and.
The day was exceptionally bleak. February is the most dismal month in Britain, and as I gazed out of the carriage window at the frozen fields between Oxford and Reading, I could see nothing of beauty which might lighten the gloom. It occurred to me that my guardian had died exactly twenty-five years to the day after the inaugural lecture at the Sheldonian Theatre, which he considered to have exerted such a profound influence over his life. To my shame, this had been the last time we had gone out together to a public function, for once I had gone up to Oxford to read Ornithology I had found myself increasingly absorbed, if not ingested, by the University, and thus reluctant to leave its safe environs. Because I visited their Battersea home so seldom, Mr James and Elspeth (I never could think of her as Mrs James) had made monthly visits by train to see me in my rooms, Elspeth always bringing some delicious edible item which at the same time contrived to be conducive to my health. Over the twenty-five years, as I grew more reclusive, their visits had been almost my only contact with a society that was not directly connected with my experimental work.
I say ‘almost’ as there was one other person whom I allowed into my rooms, with great joy, whenever he visited his Alma Mater. Though his life lay in London, Oscar regularly returned to his circle of friends in Oxford – more especially after his fateful meeting with Lord Alfred Douglas. (This beautiful and unmanageable creature spent four fruitless years at Magdalen.) Oscar made it his business – I will not say ‘duty’ – to spend no less than half an hour with me at some stage of his visits, crammed as they were with exotic dinner parties and social events of a demanding nature. In the safe and shadowy confines of my bachelor rooms he would collapse into my most comfortable armchair and rest. With me alone was he able to speak simply, without recourse to the glittering aphorisms that were endlessly expected of him, and in plain language, all the more moving for its lack of ornament, would he express to me the very depths of his feelings and heights of his aspirations. This was not the Oscar Wilde known to the rest of the world: the secrets of his heart which he shared with me were imparted to no other man or woman, and they will go with me to the grave. For I was his ‘cousin’, by however devious a route, and into the vessel of his cousin’s heart could he pour his pain, knowing that no word of what he said would ever escape from that fail-safe receptacle. In his presence I too was able to express the anxieties of academic life which I so assiduously hid from my colleagues, who believed I had succeeded in excising the entire range of emotions experienced by all other human beings.