by Peter Rimmer
"Well that clears it up," he said relieved. "Apology accepted. How bad is that back, old chap? Oh, that's a nasty gash. 'fraid you'll have a scar but all in the line of duty. I'll put that in my report to the company. So, there we are. No permit required. You will of course apply for one when you come back again. You may find it easier, old chap, instead of lugging all that stuff down to Cape Town. The rules are we give you a permit to hunt provided you sell the ivory to the company. Saves you all the trouble. You shoot the poor old elephants and we find a market for the ivory. That way everyone is happy. Better than having your brains knocked out by a savage, I'd say."
Seb had quickly noticed the man with the crooked face had not said a word but every time Seb looked in the man's direction the half-hooded eye was watching him, the look malicious. By the look of the small man he was neither a policeman nor did he look like a man who had spent his life indoors. The more Seb's glance returned to the man the more Seb was sure he was a seaman. The man's face away from the bent nose and drooping eyelid had been seared by sun and wind. He had the same looking dried-up skin as Seb's own father and when the man's horse moved its head down to eat the new green shoots at the stem of the dry grass, the man stretched out his left hand, forcing his sleeve to ride up to his elbow and show an anchor tattooed on the man's arm. For Seb the coincidence was too great. This man staring at him with his malicious intent, had been sent by his father, the man who always said he would never be gainsaid. With a sharp surge of adrenaline running to his brain Seb was certain the ivory was not the problem but the way by which the seaman had convinced the company man to bring a policeman out in his pursuit. It was also obvious to Seb that the seaman was not of the other two men’s class.
"Look, while my wife's looking after your man why don't we make camp here and boil some coffee? We have all been in the bush a long time and you can tell us what has been happening. I gather Rhodes has come into the country that much is clear but what is the news from England? What you think of my son, Mr?"
"Jack Slater."
"Sebastian Brigandshaw, Harry here is probably the only white man in your new country who speaks the local lingo."
"He speaks Zulu?" said Jack Slater surprised, falling into the ploy.
"No, Shona the language of the tribes hereabouts. Over the decades the Zulus of Mzilikazi and Lobengula only raided these people. Stole their grain and cattle. We saved that young lad over there from the assegais. The Matabele killed the rest of his family and he's been with us ever since. He looks after my son and taught him Shona…You'd better take that shirt right off and have my wife wash your wound. Tinus, come and meet some new friends of ours. We are all going to have some coffee and a bit of a chat. Mr Jack Slater meet my very best friend, Tinus Oosthuizen and the shy lady who is still up on the box is his wife, Alison. Please forgive how we look but there aren't exactly barbers on the banks of the Zambezi River. And this is my wife Emily who will now make Florence Nightingale look like a lady who had never nursed anyone in her life. Healing hands has my darling Emily. Soon, my friend, you will wish you had more than one cut, the pleasure of being looked after by Mrs Brigandshaw will be so great."
"That's the man," interrupted Jeremiah Shank pointing at Seb and taking the policeman by the right elbow. "He'd be Sebastian Brigandshaw wanted for kidnapping. You 'ave 'is picture on your wall, constable. Now arrest him." The five shillings worth of elocution lessons had left him in his excitement: even if he had lost his reward for the ivory, five hundred pounds from Captain Brigandshaw was definitely his; the journey to Africa had been well worth his while.
Seb gave the man a look up and down and then down and up and put on his best air of indignation.
"Why don't you trot off back to Fort Salisbury?" said Jack Slater to Jeremiah Shank. "Come here, lad. Is this your father?"
"Daddy, what's the man saying?"
"He wants to know if you're my son."
Shyly, Harry put his thumb in his mouth and buried his head against Seb's thigh.
"Mr Shank," said Jack Slater. "Please leave this company. One wild goose chase is enough for one day. How can this man have possibly kidnapped his own son?"
"Excuse me, madam but are you Mrs Brigandshaw?" persisted Jeremiah.
"Yes," replied Emily in all truthfulness.
"Please Mr Shank, please trot along," said Jack Slater losing his patience. "You've been rather a bore. This man is obviously a gentleman."
The slight chuckle from Tinus changed to a cough. Five minutes later the coffee was boiling over the small wood fire and the policeman had a bandage wrapped around his back and the smell of iodine mingled with the coffee and the wood smoke.
With the men sitting round the fire, Alison and Emily went off behind the big wagon where they held each other to suppress their giggles of relief.
An hour later the posse left them to continue the journey south in the morning.
That night the new moon smiled down on the wagons. The smell of wild sage was stronger at night and fireflies were flitting through the grass looking for their mates and Emily felt the new baby stirring in her belly.
Chapter 3: June 1891
What struck Henry Manderville most was all the people. They had caught a steamship from Cape Town to England and in their hurry to catch the first boats leaving for home they boarded a largely cargo vessel that proceeded to stop at every available port. In St Helena alone they spent three days kicking their heels. Finally, at Waterloo station there were the London crowds: hordes of people going in every one way possible all with a purpose and destination. The noise and bustle after months in the African bush was continuous: train whistles, steam engines huff-huffing, billowing sulphurous smoke, the shouts of guards echoing under the great roof of the railway station at the heart of the greatest empire on earth.
Gregory Shaw would have stayed at the Naval and Military Club if they had not blackballed him for his love affair in India and Henry Manderville, poor until he had sold his daughter, had never had the money for a London club. Gregory's family lived in Nottingham and neither of them had relatives in the capital.
"Why don't we rent a flat in Mayfair, old boy?" said Gregory as they stood in the station concourse with their luggage and nowhere to go. "I think we may be here for months and I have some plans of my own. Somewhere close to the Cape Royal. All that tramping around in Africa not spending money. Same for you, old boy. We can spend in three months what we would have spent in a year."
"Are you going up to Nottingham?"
"Probably not. My parents are rather ashamed of me. Father said he would never mention my name. Fact is were it not for grandfather’s will yours truly would be poor as a church mouse. Father would have loved to have cut me off. So there we are. Lots of lovely lolly in London waiting for the charm of Gregory Shaw."
"You mean the ladies of London."
"It has been a long time. Fact is I have a mind to find a wife. That farm on our own will be lovely, old boy. I'm thirty-seven and fancy creating a dynasty. The Shaws of Africa. Such a nice ring."
"Who on earth would go and live in the bush."
"I've no idea but I'm going to find out. Wouldn't do you any harm yourself."
"Don't be ridiculous. I'm nearly forty."
"Had a friend in the Indian army. Said there was always old cheese for old cheese. Now if Methuselah could bend down and pick up his luggage we could find a cab. We don't even have enough baggage for a porter. We should have some lunch and a bottle of wine and then I will think more clearly. I'm going to have six children. The Pirate can wait one more day for his comeuppance."
Arthur Brigandshaw wished he had never heard of Cecil John Rhodes. For a week he had not been to the office and had holed himself up in the Baker Street house that no longer belonged to him. In late October of the previous year, when the Charter Company shares had peaked he had gone again to his bank manager and with a smirk laid his Charter Company share certificate on the table and borrowed ninety percent of its stock market value
to buy more Charter shares. On the Tuesday with the new shares he did the same thing. And with greed propelling his certainty of great wealth, he followed the same procedure on the Wednesday and Thursday. On the following Monday the shares began to go the other way when the first gold rush in the new country they were calling Rhodesia proved fruitless. The telegraph had by then reached Fort Salisbury so the rumours reached London soon after the first Pioneers said they were wasting their time prospecting for gold. By Wednesday, Arthur was broke and by Friday, as the Charter shares went into freefall with everyone including Rhodes and Beit dumping shares, he owed the bank manager eighty thousand pounds he did not have. By the time Henry arrived at Waterloo station, Arthur was about to be declared a bankrupt. For eight months he and the bank manager had hoped the shares would go up again, that someone would strike gold in the land of Ophir, the legendary land of King Solomon's mines, that someone would quickly find the gold reefs that were going to make the new Witwatersrand look poor. Then the bank manager was fired and the new man tried to force The Captain to bail out his eldest son and failed.
"The lad got himself in muck. Lad can get himself out of muck. Teach him a lesson. That lad's been nothing but trouble these last couple of years. Put him in jail for all I care but you ain't getting a brass farthing from me. I made my money. Worked for it. You should do the same Mr Bank Manager without bothering me. Lads of age. Nought to do with me."
"He's your son."
"And it's your money he's lost not mine. You and your bank are just as stupid as he is. Lending the lad money to gamble. Oh, I know, you thought his father would stand guarantee. Bloody likely. Now go and do your work. Now is the time to buy Charter shares when they worth near nothing. Rhodes won't let a country with his name on it go down the drain. Mark my words. Fact is you given me a good idea. Maybe you haven't wasted my time after all."
At the age of fifty-one, Tilda Brigandshaw, the mother of the four boys, looked like a little old lady. She lived mostly in her memories. The Captain had not touched her for fifteen years, Arthur never visited Hastings Court not even when Emily was having the child, Nathanial was too busy doing good in the slums of London and preparing to go out to Africa as a missionary, Captain James Brigandshaw, her third and snooty son, would cut his mother dead in the street if she found him with his army friends and Sebastian, her favourite, had been sent out of England and was now being hounded by his father and the police. Tilda had tried with Emily but she was so in awe of the daughter of a baronet that she found it difficult to communicate.
The once prettiest girl in Chester was so lonely she felt the pain every minute of the day. Even the servants, who were her own class, rebuffed any conversation that did not relate to the running of the house for fear of dismissal. The Captain had made it quite plain: his wife was to be treated as mistress of the house in the same way the Manderville women in the portraits on the walls had been treated by their servants. There were only the dogs and cats to be talked to and they never answered back.
Moving from The Oaks with its half grown trees had severed the memories of her children when they needed their mother and came to her with their pains, the cuts and bumps of childhood. At first The Oaks had seemed the answer to her dreams, the perfect setting for the prettiest girl in Chester but she was far from home, far from her mother and brothers and sisters and people who spoke the same way with the accent of the north, the accent of honest folk who worked for a living and made their own beds. She had lost her world and the one she found rejected her. The children at private schools found their way into the homes of the gentry but never their mother. She cried for the days when her husband was a rough and ready seaman and cursed his ambition to become a gentleman, something she knew he would never be however much wealth and power he accumulated. She knew with the certainty of her native stock, ancestors with hands raw from hard work, that a man or woman had to remain in their class to be happy. A carpenter was comfortable with a carpenter, they had something in common, there was no poison to despise or greed to envy. The Oaks had been the separation from her life and Hastings Court a living death, far worse than the grave, the nightmare of hell her sanctimonious parson son had railed about. But what had she done she asked herself? A faithful wife even with an unfaithful husband. Children she had tried to love despite the shame they showed their mother, their mother who had once been in service. All ashamed of her except Sebastian and he had lived his own life more with Emily than his family. And she had tried with Emily, tried ever so hard. If the sin was not so mortal, the terror of eternal fire so vivid in her mind, she would have killed herself.
They had begun so well, Tilda Brennan as she was then, and the young, ordinary seaman, Archibald. She even thought they were both in love and had looked forward to a family like her own, ordinary, hard-working people who laughed a lot and loved each other, father loving mother without any fooling or sad surprise, older siblings helping the younger, the boys admiring the pretty girls that were their sisters, the sisters admiring the boys for being liked by everyone and all of them telling each other the truth. Granny Brennan and her stories of Grandpa Brennan who had fought Napoleon, Granny Jones, the one from Wales who told her stories of hills and vales and all together in the one same street, all supporting each other. And Archibald, who now made her call him The Captain, with his dreams she also dreamed along. The first two voyages, one to America and one to India. Waiting for him, knowing he saved every penny of his wages for their life together. Waiting for months on end, never sure if he was safe on the great wide ocean of the world. Then they had married and only after his third voyage, when he came back as coxswain, did she hear them call him 'big mouth' and should have known. A few months of happiness and then it was gone. Slowly, imperceptibly slowly her life grew into pain. And then the American Civil War and Archibald running guns to the Confederacy and bringing shiploads of cotton back to Liverpool and they were rich: all that had been good in her simple life of family fell to dust. By '66 they had moved south, away from people who knew who he was. She had miscarried the girls and Sebastian had been born at The Oaks but there was no family like there had been in Chester and the boys were sent to boarding schools and Chester was a 'million' miles away and no one visited, neither her family from the north who were snubbed by Archibald nor the gentry around Epsom Downs who called them nouveau riche, people in trade, common. Even the children kept their school friends away from The Oaks for fear of them hearing their mother's accent, for fear of what she might say, for fear of being ridiculed at school as different from the rest. The whole family was in fear of someone finding out, not even realising that everyone had found out a long time before. Emily had come to The Oaks. Emily had not cared. And Tilda Brigandshaw had tried so hard with Emily and failed.
The splendour and history of Hastings Court was lost on her. The sweeping lawns and tall box hedges cut in perfect trim, green peacocks growing from the top looking blindly at the ornamental carps swimming round and round the lily ponds each as useless as the other. The old house roofed and renovated, tall ceilinged and cold as charity. Servants everywhere. Nowhere for privacy. Eating at a table so long it was ridiculous and mostly alone, the cold clatter of porcelain banged too often by her cutlery bringing a look of disgust from the butler. And when The Captain entertained his clients she felt a stranger in a house that would never be her own. And she had once been the prettiest girl in Chester.
The arbour beside the ornamental lake was her secret spot. The June afternoon was hot and languid, the birds quiet in the heat. Dragonflies were busy over the water flashing brightly coloured wings. Bees searched for food among the honeysuckle that wrapped the arbour. Somewhere far behind her two of the new gardeners were arguing with each other: why was it people so often argued she asked herself: she left their words alone as background to the summer's day. She would have wished to fling off her clothes and rush into the lake up to her neck and let the cool water balm the aches of mind and body. All alone she giggled at the thought, a
scandal to beat all scandal: sadly somewhere back in history there were no rules or inhibitions and people were part of nature, able to run naked through the woods and into the water to swim with the frogs: Tilda sighed at the thought of so much happiness lost.
For a few brief, sweet moments she slept and dreamt of swimming in the lake. She woke to the clatter of horse and carriage and the inevitable intrusion. There was never any peace at Hastings Court. With dread she heard her husband shout for the servants and wondered how long she could stay by the lake. The noise grew from behind her, from the direction of the house and a cock pheasant rushed out of the bushes and ran along the shore. Even the bird disliked the noise of man. By the time the pheasant reached a more distant sanctuary there was a real commotion coming from the house. To Tilda by the lake it sounded like a second carriage in a hurry. Men were shouting at each other.
Henry Mandeville was out of the carriage before it properly stopped. There was a carriage already in the driveway and Henry recognised his quarry.
"I want a word with you," he shouted to The Captain who was arguing with a young man red in the face.
"What do you want?" answered The Captain without turning round the arrogance of ownership making him rude.
"You know damn well what I want. How can you have your own son arrested for a capital offence?"
The Captain slowly turned round and recognised the previous owner of Hastings Court. A sweet smile of success turned his annoyance to pleasure. "What did you say?"
"The arrest of Sebastian is bloody outrageous," said Henry.
"You mean they've caught him? Where?"
"In Cape Town. Some man you sent out followed him down from Rhodesia and when he reached the jurisdiction of the Cape Colony he had Sebastian arrested."
"Well I'll be blowed. Shank was worth his money after all…They are sending my grandson back to England. Good. Will have a new nurse ready for him…Arthur, you go into the house and I'll deal with you later."