Whitethorn

by Bryce Courtenay

  The Northern Rhodesia landscape was largely flat with an occasional range of low hills and appeared to be covered by largely equatorial forest, not quite the jungle of the Congo basin, but nevertheless tall trees with open woodland beneath them that took on all the autumnal shades of the Northern Hemisphere in midsummer: yellows, maroons, deep purples, rusts and reds. It was as if the seasons had gone haywire, autumnal colours under a blazing tropical sun.

  The train took me as far as Ndola, a sleepy town that serviced the surrounding copper mines and served as one of the outposts of the British Colonial Service. I was destined for the Roan Antelope Mine situated adjacent to the small mining town of Luanshya, about half an hour’s drive along a dusty dirt road from Ndola.

  I was met on the Ndola station by a mine official who, extending his hand, introduced himself as Ian de la Rue. De La Rue is a South African name of French Huguenot derivation and so I was surprised when he spoke with a strange and distinct twang until moments later when he introduced himself as an Australian. He announced this in a manner that suggested this single fact was perhaps the most important part of the introduction. I was to learn that this wasn’t too far off the mark.

  There were over forty Western nations represented in the mines and a great many of the men who found themselves in Central Africa had left other parts of the world in an unseemly hurry. I was to discover that truth was a very rare commodity among the men who lived in the single quarters and that a simple rule prevailed: you never asked a man anything about his past and you accepted what he was prepared to volunteer about himself. If a man talked about his past history, this invariably proved to be an elaborate fabrication told during the course of a bout of heavy drinking. In this manner, ex– German SS officers turned into Polish Jews who had survived Hitler’s concentration camps. Ian de la Rue, by telling me he was Australian, was in effect telling me I could trust him and that he had no past to hide.

  He indicated to a black porter to take my suitcase and led me to a bakkie with the insignia ‘Anglo American Mines – Roan Antelope Mine’ painted on the door of the small truck. A few minutes later we left the town and were travelling along a bumpy, rutted dirt road.

  ‘Tom, there’s a couple of things you should know that the Anglo American recruiting officers in Johannesburg probably didn’t tell you,’ Ian de la Rue began when we were finally on our way.

  ‘Ja, I’m sure you’re right, Mr De La Rue, apart from a medical and testing the speed of my reactions, they really didn’t tell me very much.’

  ‘By the way, Tom, please call me Ian, Australians are not big on formality.’

  ‘Thanks, Ian,’ I replied, thinking that he seemed like a friendly sort of guy.

  ‘Did they explain why they needed to test your reactions?’ he then asked.

  ‘Not really, I guess it seemed a sensible thing to do, after all, I was going to work underground and I imagine it’s a place where you need to keep your wits about you.’

  Ian de la Rue grinned. ‘You can say that again, brother! You’re going to be trained to be a grizzly man.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what they said.’

  ‘Did they explain what a grizzly man does?’

  ‘Not really, only that it was the first job the young guys do when they go underground.’

  He turned and glanced briefly at me before his eyes returned to the road. ‘Do you know why that is?’

  ‘Well, I guess most young guys don’t have any previous mining experience?’

  ‘Yeah, right, apart from the diamond drillers. But grizzlies are different, it’s a job where older blokes are too careful and so the ore tally suffers.’

  ‘Ore tally?’

  ‘The amount of muck you move out in a shift. Young blokes will take chances, matter of pride, they won’t leave the mouth of a stope blocked so they . . . well, take chances and get themselves injured or killed.’

  ‘You mean it’s a dangerous job?’ It was all I could think to say; the terms muck, stope, diamond drillers and even the word bloke were new to me.

  ‘We’ve got a young bloke in hospital in Ndola at the moment, two broken legs and fifteen breaks in his left shoulder and arm, as well as a broken pelvis. That’s where I was before I met your train. Another young grizzly man died last month, climbed up into the mouth of the stope and while he was up there the muck started to run, poor bastard never had a hope.’

  I looked at him. ‘Ian, what are you trying to say?’

  ‘Mate, I’m trying to warn you to be fucking careful. Scare you, I suppose. We’ve lost six young blokes on grizzlies in the past two years and dozens have been injured, some so badly they’re in wheelchairs for life. This is Central Africa and the price of copper is going through the roof. A grizzly is the most efficient way to get the muck out of the stope, it’s also the most dangerous but the company doesn’t care, there’s no miners’ union and you can’t even insure your life, no insurance company will take the risk on a miner working the grizzlies.’ He was yakking on as he wrestled the steering wheel from one side to the other across the rutted road. ‘Rainy season, road’s history,’ he said, suddenly jerking the wheel to miss another deep rut. ‘Sixty per cent of grizzly men are injured in one way or another. You’re supposed to do three months on and then three months off. But we never have enough young blokes to do the change-around. Then, if you’re any good, there’s pressure from the bloody diamond drillers to keep you on.’ The bakkie hit a sudden bump and our heads nearly hit the roof of the cabin. ‘Fucking road!’ Ian exclaimed. ‘You’ll end up doing five or six months without a break, and that’s mostly where the trouble starts. Your nerves are shot, and you’re so bloody whacked you’re not thinking straight. Six months of night shift where you’re setting off a blast every few minutes is hell on your system.’

  ‘What’s your job, Mr De La Rue?’ I asked, forgetting to call him Ian and not quite knowing what to say. Was he suggesting I turn back while I still could? It seemed odd that he would be talking to me in such a manner when he was the mine’s official representative.

  He grinned. ‘Name’s Ian,’ he corrected. ‘Can’t you guess what I do?’

  ‘I know nothing about mining, Ian. I’m afraid most of the terms you’ve used don’t mean very much to me.’

  ‘I’m the mine safety officer, mate.’ He glanced at me again. ‘You’ve just received lesson one, which is don’t try to be a hero. You’re going to be trained under Gareth Jones, a Welshman, in the underground School of Mines. I can personally guarantee it will be three of the hardest bloody months of your life. You’ll have good reason to hate him by the time you’re ready to go onto a grizzly on your own, but remember his job is to see you stay alive in a very dangerous environment. The Roan Antelope Mine has the lowest grizzly injury record on the Copper Belt, and we can thank Mr Jones for that. You’ll think he’s a bastard – no, correction, he is a bastard, but his bastardry may well save your life one day.’

  I instinctively liked Ian de la Rue. I’d never met an Australian, but would later learn that he was a fairly typical representative of his corner of the British Commonwealth and, furthermore, his refreshingly direct vernacular didn’t sound in the least crude.

  Ian de la Rue drove me to my hut in the single quarters, which was close to the recreation club and at the opposite end of town to the homes of the married miners. ‘Hut’ is a correct description, my home-to-be was built as a traditional rondavel, with a small enclosed veranda attached. That is to say, a single brick room in the round with two barred windows and a steel door leading out onto the veranda, which was a simple construction made of wood and mosquito wire. Ian opened the screen door to the veranda, and then handed me the keys to the hut, and I unlocked the heavy steel door to enter the hut. The room contained a single iron-framed bed and bare mattress on which two folded blankets lay, the remaining furniture consisted of a wardrobe and a dresser, and from the ceiling hung a rotating fan. The floor was red polished cement. No thought whatsoever had been devoted to comfo
rt, and on first appearance it seemed more like a prison cell than what was to be my home for the next year. The only concession to any thought of comfort was two old wicker chairs on the veranda. Uninvited, Ian plonked himself down in one of these. I left my suitcase in the hut and joined him in the vacant wicker chair.

  ‘Just a couple o’ things you should know before I take you to the mess, Tom. Sort of rules of behaviour. Firstly, never leave your hut unlocked when you go out.’ He pointed to the door. ‘It’s not made of steel for nothing, mate. Next, don’t use the chimboose late at night. During the week you’ll be on night shift, so I’m talking mostly weekends.’

  ‘Chimboose?’

  ‘Lavatory, shower block, there’s several known turd burglars among the German miners, they’re an evil mob and bloody dangerous when they’re pissed on schnapps. You’ll hear them singing “Deutschland über alles” and other kraut songs, and my advice is to stay well clear of the bastards at all times.’ He glanced at me and said, ‘Now a bit of town and club advice. Leave the married sheilas alone.’

  ‘Sheilas?’

  ‘Yeah, women. Fraternising with a married woman is not on. If they come on to you a bit pissed at the club, get on yer bike, quick smart. You don’t want some big South African diamond driller and his mates pissed to the gills on Cape brandy breaking down the door of your hut because he thinks you’ve fumbled his missus. The single sheilas are all mostly taken, well the good sorts anyway, but if you do get one, remember, if you get her up the duff it’s either leave town without bothering to pack or you marry her the next day. Schoolgirls are out! Even if they are over the age of sixteen, touch one of them and you’re dead meat.’ I think he must have seen the rather embarrassed look on my face because he said, ‘Mate, I told you, I’m the mine safety officer and this is as much a part of keeping you alive as going underground.’ He grinned. ‘Now, as a young healthy bloke you are probably wondering what, apart from taking yourself in hand, the alternative is? Well, it ain’t any of the above and, of course, it ain’t black velvet either, but as a South African you’d know that. Officially there’s no colour bar but that’s bullshit, the Brits are as bad as the Afrikaners when it comes to that sort of thing.’ He paused and grinned again. ‘The alternative is the plane from Brussels.’

  ‘Plane from Brussels? What do you mean?’

  ‘Every four weeks a DC-4 lands with a plane-load of sheilas from Brussels,’ Ian de la Rue explained. ‘Some are your genuine whores, the older European miners like them, no name, no pack drill, they know how to get drunk, get laid, get paid and get going. But most of them are young Belgian girls working for a dowry. Good sorts mostly, although they’re a tad worn-out by the time they get to us. You see,’ he explained further, ‘there’s more sheilas in Europe than there are blokes, I guess that’s because of the war. To get a good bloke a girl has to have something to offer, usually a house or a flat she personally owns or money in the bank. She’s also got to be respectable and from a good family. That’s a big ask in the war-torn Europe of the present. So, to cut a long story short, there’s an agency in Brussels that charters a Sabena DC-4 to Katanga province in the Belgian Congo which is an extension of this Copper Belt. The agency in Brussels takes a percentage based on every girl getting laid thirty times for the same fee by the French miners. If a girl happens to do a bit better than that she keeps the rest. Now, the “bit better than that” is obtained by giving a nice tip to the pilot to make a short hop over the border to our part of the Copper Belt, where they spend two days at each of the mines on this side. It’s fifty quid an hour and they’ll leave here with a bundle of banknotes that would choke a draught horse.’

  I laughed, shaking my head. ‘As safety officer is this also in your brief?’

  ‘Christ no, officially it’s not allowed. The British won’t tolerate such scandalous goings-on, but the mine management turns a blind eye and so do the local cops, so we make sure we keep the private airstrip graded and in good order. There’s also plenty of penicillin available at the mine hospital when one of the girls leaves a miner with a small token of her esteem.’

  ‘You mean a dose?’

  ‘I can see you’re not slow, son,’ Ian de la Rue declared. ‘The girls arrive in Katanga clean, having had a medical inspection before they leave Brussels, but by the time they get here after the miners across the border have dipped their wick, they’re second-hand goods. They’ll get another medical when they return home to Brussels, but they’ve not infrequently picked up something nasty on the way because some of the miners will pay double if they can do it without using a franger . . . er, a French letter. So if it gets too hard to contain yerself, always use a condom, mate.’

  I couldn’t help laughing. ‘Let me see, these appear to be my options. I die working as a grizzly. Or I get beaten to a pulp by a bunch of Afrikaners for a dalliance with the inebriated wife of a diamond driller. I’m lynched for fraternising with a schoolgirl. Forced into marriage or have to leave town for getting someone pregnant. End up being ostracised by the white community for indulging in a bit of black velvet. Finally I could contract a nasty disease from a Belgian whore earning her right to a respectable future life by means of an ill-gotten dowry.’

  ‘Too right, mate! Never better said,’ he laughed. ‘Take my advice, Tom, stick to wanking, that way you’ll meet a better class of woman! And you’ll be safe.’

  I grinned, the mine safety officer was a character, alright. ‘While you’re at it, is there anything that’s nice about the place?’

  Ian de la Rue looked down at his shoes and appeared to be thinking. ‘You can play a bit of sport, they’ve got it all here: tennis, squash, rugby, cricket, and the swimming pool’s nice. There’s an Anglican church, you can join the choir or the fellowship.’ Then he looked directly at me. ‘The money. It’s the only reason we’re all here, son.’

  I extended my hand. ‘Thanks, Ian, for picking me up, and for the friendly advice.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s my job.’ He shook my hand. ‘Do you play poker, Tom?’

  ‘A bit.’ I’d learned the game from one of Pirrou’s dancer friends and quite fancied myself as a poker player going through the motions deadpan, and I was secretly thrilled when I won.

  ‘Don’t. The cardsharps, like the whores, move into town regularly, only they’ll cost you a lot more than fifty quid an hour.’ Ian de la Rue rose from his chair. ‘I’ll walk you over to the mess and sign you in, the tucker’s not too bad and if you get tired of it you can get a half-decent steak at the club.’ We turned and left the enclosed veranda when he cleared his throat. ‘Ah, the hut, mate,’ he said, pointing to the steel door, ‘you’ve left it open.’

  I locked the hut and we walked in the direction of the mess, Ian de la Rue talking all the way. ‘I’ll pick you up at seven o’clock tomorrow morning and take you to Number Seven shaft. That’s where the underground School of Mines is situated and you’ll meet Gareth Jones.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘Tom, Welsh miners have a different attitude to mine protocol, while you’re in the school always call him Mr Jones, even when you meet him in the club, after that you’re free to call him anything you like and it probably won’t be very complimentary. I can see you’re not stupid, which makes a nice change, but don’t let Jones know you’re clever, it will put you at a distinct disadvantage.’

  Ian de la Rue’s advice concerning Mr Jones was certainly timely. The underground School of Mines proved to be hell on wheels. It was pretty difficult, even with my training at The Boys Farm, to appear to be consistently stupid and it didn’t take Mr Jones long to cotton on that I was brighter than the rest of the trainees. He immediately thought I was secretly laughing at him. Nothing could have been further from the truth, I was fully committed to staying alive and coping with the manual work. The procedure in the School of Mines was to do every job that existed underground. That is, every job that an African did and every one that a white miner performed. Not only do it, but do it harder and faster and longer. Lashing was
the business of loading ore from a freshly blasted tunnel end, simply referred to as ‘lashing an end’; that is, loading solid lumps of rock blasted from the face, which is simply the surface of the rock drilled to extend the tunnel, known as a haulage. Most of the blasted rock proved too big to pick up with a shovel, and needed to be manhandled. Jones was never satisfied until you collapsed with your hands raw and bleeding. I was the smallest in a group of big Afrikaner guys, all young and strong and, dare I say it, some of them thick as a bull’s dick, as the saying goes. Mr Jones wanted me to be the first to collapse, proving perhaps that in this environment brains didn’t triumph over brawn. But in this one respect the years on The Boys Farm paid off, as except for the time at the Bishop’s College, I’d been teethed on manual labour. I knew how to use a pick and shovel and how to lift and carry, and although Jones would routinely get me on my knees and finally unable to continue, I was never the first or even the second or third of the trainee miners to collapse. It was the same drilling an end prior to blasting it. We’d have to manhandle a 60-pound jackhammer on our own, when it normally required two men to operate it, and it was backbreaking work sufficient to reduce several of us to tears.