by Peter Rimmer
"Maybe she should take them into Salisbury and stay at Meikles Hotel."
"Good. Put that in your wire. Then I want you to go and see Uncle Tinus and tell him not to worry."
"But Uncle Tinus is in jail."
"Make your Uncle James get you through the door. There's a reporter for the Irish Times who made a story out of Uncle Tinus. His byline says Clifford. Find him and bring him here."
"Are you in pain, father?"
"Not the kind you are thinking about. That man means more to me that any brother."
Alison and the children had gone to stay with Elize du Plessis, the wife of Magnus du Plessis, on the other side of the Franschhoek Valley, all thought of her miscarriage drowned in the horror of what was happening. The worst part had been accepting the advice of the lawyer she had employed to stop the British from hanging her husband.
"Don't even try and see him," said Mr Gotlieb of Gotlieb and Stein. "We have to make it clear the man's a Boer fighting for his country. An English wife will question his motive. Get off your farm and keep away from the press. And may I warn you this is not going to be an easy case to win."
"You think they will hang my husband?"
"Yes. As an example to the rest of the Cape Boers. The British want to stop any new fighters joining Smuts or Botha. Keep out of the way and I will do my job. But under no circumstances are you to visit the jail or appear at his trial."
"We had an argument before he left. I'd had a miscarriage and was feeling the world had come to an end. Tinus will think I've deserted him."
"I will explain. Write him a letter for me to give to him. Just don't let the newspapers take a photograph of General Oosthuizen being visited by his English wife."
"Who made him a general?"
"His own commando by a vote, confirmed by Smuts and Botha. He's a Boer general, don't you worry about that."
"Then how can they hang him?"
"Because he's also a British subject. Maybe more because the Boer army has defied the might of the British Empire for too long. Kitchener wants it over and doesn't care by what means he stops his men being killed by Boer guerrillas. And there's General Gore-Bilham. Your husband made a fool of him. Better he had shot the man dead."
"Why is the traitor lodged in a civil jail?" asked General Gore-Bilham. They were seated in the officers' mess at the Castle in Cape Town where Gore-Bilham's command was back in reserve from the front. Being the senior officer at the Castle, the rule of not talking shop in the mess did not apply to him. Having no wish to get into a discussion on the Boer general, the lower ranking officers at the table used the rule to keep their mouths shut: the large majority of the men in the room horrified by the thought of hanging an adversary captured in battle. Colonel Hickman watching from the far side of the round table wondered silently if the general would have preferred a bullet in his head rather than losing his trousers: some men had the strangest of priorities.
"And what do you say about that, Hickman?...Someone tell the mess steward to put some more logs on the fire…Well, Hickman."
"Sub judice, I'm afraid, sir."
"But the army should try the man."
No one looked at the general and James Brigandshaw sitting next to Colonel Hickman drummed his fingers on his knee under the table.
"Go and put some wood on the fire!" snapped Gore-Bilham to the mess steward who was standing behind James.
"There's someone to see Colonel Brigandshaw."
"Send him in, damn it, and put some wood on the fire. There's a black southeaster blowing outside."
"The man's more a boy I would think and asks his uncle to meet him in the office of the military police. He was trying to walk through when the MPs picked him up."
"Put some wood on the fire damn it! Brigandshaw, do you even have a nephew in these parts?"
"Yes, sir. At school here."
"In the colonies?" replied Gore-Bilham, horrified.
"Yes, sir. My brother lives in Rhodesia. May I be excused, sir?"
"I don't care what anyone does provided the steward puts wood on the fire."
"Right away, sir."
Outside in the quadrangle, James could hear the banshee of the howling wind that cut Table Bay in half. The Castle, built by the Dutch, was sheltered by Table Mountain along with a slice of the bay. No ships had entered the port or gone to sea for three days. Half way across the quadrangle it began to rain. If the presence of his nephew had not been announced in public he would have made an excuse. James knew perfectly well Sebastian was lying on his back in the military hospital. He also knew the British, prodded by Gore-Bilham, intended hanging his brother's partner very publicly and there was nothing he could do. If they had caught Smuts and de Wet the war would have been over and hanging men like Tinus Oosthuizen would no longer have been politically necessary. And he blamed Sebastian for running off in the night.
"Ah, young Harry, what a surprise," he said.
"I want permission to visit Uncle Tinus." The boy looked at him with loathing.
"Nobody looks at me like that, young man."
"Then get my real uncle out of jail."
Tinus read the letter from his wife through twice and gave it back to Gotlieb for burning. Then he smiled happily at the lawyer.
"I don't understand how you can smile," said the lawyer. "This is deadly serious and under martial law you will face a military court even if for now they have you in a civil jail."
"I've done nothing wrong and my wife loves me again. So does my son. I could have died many times in my life by a lion, elephant, or buffalo. Once even a honey badger tried to chew off my balls. Any one of those flying bullets could have taken off my head. Bullets are hard and very final if they hit you in the right spot. I'm forty-four-years old and have lived every moment of my life. They'll hang a man who's had a good life, whose wife loves him, his eldest son no longer despises him and he's rich his family will be all right when he dies."
"They won't be. If they find you guilty of treason all your property will be forfeited to the Crown."
Sir Henry Manderville looked at the handwritten message on the telegraph form and understood. Together with his daughter and grandchildren he left the farm on the banks of the Mazoe River. Maybe his title would have some weight in a world foolishly impressed with old titles and even if it was just possible he would give it a try. Hiding away in the Rhodesian bush could not get him far enough away from the problems of man. Or had he always been just running away from his responsibilities?
With the railway line at Fort Salisbury and the tracks traversing the former Boer republics through the arid veld of the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, it would take him just five days to reach Cape Town.
After listening to Sebastian for over an hour Billy Clifford could find nothing in the story he could use to help the Giant. Having brought the focus of attention, Billy felt guilty for the man's predicament. If he had never made Oosthuizen a celebrity, no one would have made all the fuss.
"Why is it when you're needed most you can't do a thing?" asked Sebastian.
For a moment Billy was going tell the man lying on his back in the hospital bed about his fruitless quest for Sarie Mostert. The dog-lady had vanished without a trace.
"We all have our problems," he said.
"How soon will they hang him?"
"In a couple of weeks."
Outside, the wind was rattling the hospital windows.
Captain Doyle, seated at his office desk in London wondered why bad news always came together like a flight of devils from a cloudless sky. He put the telegraph form on the table upside down and for a moment forgot the repulsive little man seated across his table.
"Not bad news," said Jeremiah Shank in his half-cultivated accent. His pronunciation of the word news had a strange parallel with the rope that went round a condemned man's neck. When Shank repeated the sentence Doyle felt the doom of the white-hunter and shuddered. He had known it before but now he was certain: the man on the other side
of the desk was evil. He began tapping his fingers on the table. The Indian Queen II was sailing on the tide not five hundred yards from where he was sitting in the London docks.
"I've got more shares in African Shipping than you, Doyle. Over forty percent. I want to have my say, see. Board of Directors. Chairman, I thought. You can keep on runnin' the place but I want my say."
"The consortium controls over fifty percent."
"So you've said more than once."
"I have to leave for Africa on the tide."
"I don't care whether you have a shit in your chair. I want to have my say. You see, cock, you're never paid a dividend and that ain’t right with all my money invested."
"I bought new ships. The company's worth far more."
"Then sell it and give me my money or pay a proper dividend. My solicitor says…"
"I will give you an answer in a month."
"Thirty days, cock. No problem. 'ave a nice trip. They're going to hang 'im. Bloody traitor. Just lucky I bought his share when he sold or they'd all be forfeit to the Crown. Better me as a director than the government. See you in a month, sonny boy. Its been nice sailing with you again. Lucky for you they didn't kill your fornicator partner or I'd 'ave bought his shares. All very well having lots of ships but in this world you need cash to protect yourself…Ah, that one you didn't know by the look of you. Tell you what Doyle, I know more about your company than you do. Brigandshaw's in hospital and you didn't know. Shot by the British. Makes you laugh really. All that hunting and he gets shot by his own side."
When the door to his office slammed shut, just hard enough to make the point, Captain Doyle, got up and looked out of the window. It was a beautiful English summer afternoon and more than one ship would be ready to sail on the tide. In the old days he could see the tall masts from where he stood. For the first time in his life he would be sailing into the Cape of Storms as a passenger. It was winter in the Cape, he remembered.
The traffic outside 37 Pudding Lane in Bermondsey had been a dray pulled by an old carthorse that was so old it was a miracle the flat wagon carrying the barrels of beer moved at all. Even in poverty there were public houses doing good business and once a week Ethel Shank watched the same beer cart trundle iron wheels over cobbled stones, the only sign of brief hope in the wilderness.
There had been rumours before, all verbal. When Fred the coalman drank his four pints of mild and bitter on a Friday in the Duke of Clarence he reckoned it was the only day of the week when his throat was not choked with coal-dust. Ethel had her one glass of port and lemon and Fred four pints, no more, no less. In the thirty-three years they had been married the ritual in the Duke of Clarence had been the same, the only time either of them did anything that wasn't work or sleep. They rarely spoke in the Duke of Clarence, to themselves or anyone else, though each of their neighbours received a warm smile of recognition. It was the way the community enjoyed their recreation, the luxury of sitting down doing nothing.
Vivian Clay was the only one in Pudding Lane who did not work with his hands. Most of the day he stood at a lectern in the City filling in the records of the company's claims in a leatherbound register that weighed twenty pounds. The beautiful copperplate writing of young Vivian Clay had landed him the job forty years ago and not a day had gone by without the same repetition. Apart from a small increase in his Christmas bonus his pay had stayed the same. When he retired in ten years' time, eighty percent of his wages would be paid for doing nothing, the great shining light at the end of a lifetime's toil.
The previous evening, Fred and Ethel had sat on the bench outside the Duke of Clarence, it being so warm; a long weathered table stood in front of them though Fred never rested his pint for fear of it tipping in the cracks and spilling his only pleasure. Vivian, passing on his way to the bar, dropped the day's copy of the Evening Standard on the old railway sleeper they had used for a table. The paper was folded into four so Vivian could read on the train. It was like opening a concertina: in the train there was no room for moving his elbows. For thirty years the manager of the insurance company read the morning and evening papers and when Vivian left to go home he took both papers from the waste paper basket where they had been thrown.
The paper in front of Ethel and Fred was folded to a picture, in grainy black and white, of a man in a silk top hat.
"You always said, Eth, there had to be two Jeremiah Shanks," said Vivian Clay, "But that's 'im, I tell you. Recognised that droopy eye anywhere and the twisted nose. Ascot, I tell you. In the royal enclosure with his new wife. The paper says he 'as a son. Congratulations, you're grandparents. Hob nobs with his mentor Lord Edward Holland. Your son's a millionaire."
Ethel had not worked all morning, sitting in the parlour with the window open staring out onto the street. The coincidence was far too great and if the truth came out and was known in Pudding Lane, it would ruin Fred Shank for life. The good, solid man who had always provided for her and the kids would know she had married him on a lie, would know she had made him marry her knowing she was carrying another man's child.
"I've got a grandchild," she said out loud and then began to cry.
Francesca Shank, born Cotton, was in her element and thanked the day she had married Jeremiah Shank. Wealth, real wealth, overcame any impediment. The drooping eye, the twisted nose, the short stature, the look that made most men want to punch him in the face, were forgotten. The relatives in Godalming, her doting father, the red setters, all had been visited and even if some had sniggered when she left, she had seen their gleams of envy. Living in the country keeping up appearances with not enough money, paled against the house in Park Lane overlooking Hyde Park and the great estate in Africa where all the right people in London were clamouring for invitations to shoot big game. And best of all for Fran, her son would inherit the little man's money but not the little man's blood. Fran, above everything else in her new world of wealth, had become a snob. Knowing the best way to keep a man was to keep him on short rations, Fran made it as difficult as possible for Jeremiah Shank to have sex. Clothed and safe in public she flirted with him outrageously. In bed she went as cold as a fish. Then, when she saw his interesting waning she gave him what he wanted in spades. Happily, in London, even though he probably knew she was playing a game, he could not give her a clout. There were rules in society even Jeremiah understood. The little man, who had sailed before the mast as an ordinary seaman, who had taken elocution lessons, who was richer than most men with English country estates, wanted, above all, to be accepted by the men and women who ran high society.
Sitting at the piano on Thursday nights when open house was the order of the day, she played Bach and Chopin and smiled to herself. In the nursery her son was being tended by a nanny, the kitchen was run by the cook, the house by the butler and Fran was left to do what she had always wanted to do most, play the piano. It had taken her a big wide circle to come back home but here she was, she told herself, right in the heart of things. Only sometimes alone did she think of Gregory who had made it all possible and given her the son asleep upstairs.
Lord Edward Holland, being a younger son, had never been forced to marry to protect the family title. Edward, Teddy to his friends, was now fourteenth in line to the title of Marquis of Surrey, his brothers' sons having produced their own sons: the title, so far as Teddy was concerned, was quite safe. If he had married they would have made him move from the family estate but as a bachelor he could stay where he was until he died. Everyone liked Teddy Holland. He was good at a dinner party, drinking enough to be part of the fun but never too much. Never, ever, in his life had he told anyone what he really thought of them. Always and with premeditated charm, he told everyone what they wanted to hear about themselves. Even the generation of his nieces and nephews came to the sympathetic shoulder of 'Uncle Teddy' where anything that was said never went one step further. Unbeknown to him playing his own fiddle in life he played a vital part in the harmony of the sprawling family.
Teddy had j
ust turned fifty, an age when there was more to look back on than to look forward, a time to recognise his mortality when friends from the old days at school were dying off, a time to ask himself what it was all about, to think of God, to realise how little he really knew. Only then, in the black, dark hours in his bedroom in the old family home, surrounded by the product of twenty generations, when he could not sleep and blamed the food and drink instead of age, he began to understand the greater probability: that his only chance of immortality, his only purpose, was to have children. He could then die, but the species of well-bred Englishmen would live after him to the end of time. There was no point in guessing anymore. He had to know. For the sake of his soul, he had to know once and for all.
Ethel saw the toff step down the hansom-cab and heard him tell the driver to wait. The horse and dray had stopped outside the Duke of Clarence and old Stan Conway was unloading barrels of beer with the help of young Ben, the landlord's son. The smell of fresh horse manure was strong and comfortingly pleasant. The toff was obviously lost and was looking for directions. The man's beard was cut sharply to a point; the sideburns and the beard were almost white.
The noise of the door knocker banged through the house and Ethel left her window and walked through the passage to open the front door.
"Hello, Ethel. My name is Edward Holland. You probably don't remember me but I received a postcard some many years back reading 'Jeremiah Shank'. Is he our son?"
She stared at him, unable to reconcile the old man standing at her front door and the dashing young aristocrat in her memory who had seduced her in the gazebo on Bramley Park.
"Yes. Now, will you go away."
For the first time in his life a door was closed in his face. Stunned by the swift conclusion Teddy stood looking at the knocker. From the other side he could hear the woman crying.