The Horns of the Buffalo

by John Wilcox

  Simon took a deep breath and leaned towards the South African. ‘Mr Dunn, as I have said, I have no inside knowledge of the British Government’s attitude towards the Zulus. I do know that their militant state causes concern to the Governor and his staff in the Cape, but, as I expect you are aware, the Foreign Office and the Horse Guards back home have their hands full at the moment with the Afghans to the north-west of India and I cannot conceive that they are planning a full-scale war with the Zulus.’

  Dunn listened impassively and took a deep draught of beer, so, with a little more confidence, Simon continued. ‘You are wrong, by the way, if you believe that the army underestimates the Zulus. The same views you have just expounded about their strength were expressed to me by the Chief of Staff in Cape Town. In fact, it is the very respect in which they are held that has prompted my mission here. You see, not enough is known about them, their military capacity and their intentions. And every command must have this sort of information at its fingertips. It does not necessarily mean war. In fact, it can mean the opposite. The very efficiency of the Zulu military structure, when it is known and digested, can be a safeguard against border blunders, for instance, leading us unintentionally into war.’

  Simon suddenly became aware that his audience was more than Dunn and Jenkins. Unnoticed, the girl had sat quietly against the wall of the hut and was watching him now intently, black eyes unblinking. Presumably she could understand every word. Simon inwardly cursed himself for speaking so freely - here, in Cetswayo’s kraal, of all places! One cry could summon enough warriors to drag them away to the stake. He gulped - but he couldn’t stop now. He looked closely at Dunn. The man’s face was quite expressionless. Simon decided he had to play his main card.

  He leaned forward and sensed Jenkins’s tenseness by his side. ‘I understand what you say about your loyalty to the Zulus and their king. If I may say so, it does you credit. But . . .’ He let his voice fall away. ‘There may well come a time, Mr Dunn, when you have to decide what nationality you are.’ Simon let the point sink in, but there was no reaction from Dunn. ‘Heaven forbid that there will be hostilities. But if they do break out, I do not see how you can remain neutral. You will have to make a choice.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I suppose, in a way, we are forcing you to make that choice now. Are you British or Zulu?’

  Dunn made no reply but sat puffing his pipe, looking unblinkingly at Simon. Eventually he spoke. ‘Do you know what the King said when he called me back, just there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He said that he didn’t know what to make of you - whether you were a new kind of trader or army spies. He asked me to find out.’ Dunn threw back his head and laughed, although the tension within the hut remained unbroken. ‘So he’s forcing me to make the same decision. I’m being pressurised from both sides, dammit.’

  Suddenly the big man rose to his feet. He seemed twice as tall in the dark hut. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you one thing. I have absolutely no intention of making that decision until I have to.’

  ‘But what are you going to tell the King?’ asked Simon.

  ‘Nothing yet. In any case, he has told me to take you to my kraal because he doesn’t want you hanging about Ulundi. So we will start at sun-up tomorrow. It’s a good day’s ride. You can stay at my place as long as you like but, at least at this stage, I don’t feel inclined to feed you information. But we can talk about that later. I’ve a lot to think about.’

  Dunn moved to the door, where he paused. ‘The Governor wants me to teach you Zulu and says you have an aptitude for languages. Well, you’re going to need it, because I won’t have the time to nursemaid you with that. You’ll just have to pick it up, like I did.’

  ‘I can teach him, Father.’ The quiet tones came from the wall, where Nandi still sat, cross-legged.

  ‘We’ll see about that, too,’ said Dunn. ‘You can’t neglect your work any more than I can.’

  Simon stood and smiled at the girl. ‘Thank you. I don’t wish to be any trouble.’

  ‘We could teach you Welsh, in return,’ said Jenkins. ‘Well, at least, Mr Fonthill could.’

  Dunn led them to a vacant hut nearby and threw them two sleeping mats. ‘There’s a well just here for washing and drinking. It’s a bit brackish but you’ll soon get used to that. Don’t get talking to any of the Zulus. You’ve dressed yourselves as Afrikaaners. I don’t think you look like Afrikaaners but they might - and they don’t like Boers. While you are here you are living on a bit of a knife edge. So: take no risks.’

  With a nod he was gone. The two soldiers crawled into their hut and found, to their surprise, that their packs and rifles had been placed inside. Nothing seemed to have been taken. While Jenkins fetched water, Simon prepared a little biltoeng for them to eat, and as darkness descended, they settled to sleep.

  ‘Well, bach sir,’ said Jenkins, from beneath his blanket. ‘I have to tell you that I like what you said back there and the way you said it. It doesn’t matter about ridin’ a horse well, if you can talk like that. Any fool can ride a horse - though it would be nice if you could stay on if we have to gallop, look you.’

  ‘I’ll try and remember that, 352. Now shut up.’

  Chapter 7

  They rose before the sun but Dunn was saddled, loaded and waiting for them as they collected their horses. Nandi was also on horseback, as were the two Zulus, who were clearly part of Dunn’s personal bodyguard. They set off to the south-east at a pace that made Simon anxious. This time, however, the going was easier because Dunn seemed to have the knack of picking out trails that were invisible to the others. Not once did he consult a compass. Now they skirted dongas instead of crossing them and Dunn avoided rutted, well-used tracks and the dust clouds their use would have caused. Instead, he picked his way through tussocks of grass at a pace twice as fast as that managed by Simon and Jenkins on their first day in Zululand. The sun was touching the black serrations of the mountains to their right when Dunn stood in his stirrups and gestured ahead.

  ‘There’s home,’ he cried.

  They cantered through the familiar herds of cattle, taking waved greetings from the black boy tending them, and approached a long, single-storeyed thatched dwelling, looking inviting behind its veranda or stoep, fringed with bougainvillea and clematis. It could have been Kent or Sussex, except for the clusters of typically African round mud huts, also thatched, that meandered in scores behind the main building. They stretched away to a distant cattle pen, and in the other direction, what looked like sugar cane plantations marched away to the blue hills.

  As the horses reined in, a platoon of small brown children rushed from the nearby huts crying out greetings and dancing in excitement. Dunn picked up a couple and deposited great kisses on their dusty faces and ran his hands over as many of the other curly heads as he could reach. Nandi did the same. Dunn looked back at Simon with an expression of some embarrassment.

  ‘Hell, man,’ he said. ‘They always make a fuss when I get back.’

  ‘You’re a lucky man, Mr Dunn,’ replied Simon. And he meant it.

  Zulus took the horses and led them away and Nandi quietly disappeared. Dunn led the two visitors across the stoep into a large room with a polished wood floor, strewn with native mats, and walls covered with trophies: heads of antlered deer, impala, a lion and three huge buffaloes, the horns of the largest of which curled above a long, low stone fireplace. It was a lived-in, welcoming room; that of a countryman of affluence.

  ‘Catherine,’ cried Dunn loudly. ‘We have guests.’

  After a pause, Catherine Dunn came into the room. She was about a foot shorter than Dunn and so thin that he could, it seemed, have picked her up with one hand. The climate and toil of life in Zululand had treated her less well than it had her husband. Her thin hair had turned grey and was pulled back into a bun, and whatever the original colour of her skin, it now looked a sallow yellow, with brown age spots marking her hands and forearms. She was wearing a simple cotton shift and was baref
oot. But her eyes were bright blue and shone with interest as she greeted her visitors.

  ‘You are welcome, gentlemen,’ she said, echoing the nasal, clipped speech of her husband. ‘Forgive me for not wearing shoes but I was not expecting John back today. Will you take some beer?’

  ‘I don’t think so, my dear,’ said Dunn. ‘We would all like to eat and, I expect, take a bath first. So would you please see that the boilers are lit straight away.’

  He turned with a proprietorial air. ‘We have three bathrooms here,’ he said, ‘and they are all piped to individual boilers but they take a little time to heat up and for the boys to pump the water through.’

  ‘Three bathrooms!’ exclaimed Simon. ‘Now that really is luxury. I never expected to find that in Zululand.’

  Catherine Dunn looked pleased. ‘It’s not always been like this,’ she smiled. ‘But I think we can say now that we are as comfortable as anyone living in Durban.’

  ‘Ach, no,’ growled Dunn. ‘Better.’ He shouted commands in Zulu and a native, clad incongruously in what seemed like nothing but an apron, came running. ‘Benjamin here will show you to your rooms. We will serve dinner in an hour.’

  The boy led them along a corridor and gestured to adjoining rooms. Simon’s was spartan but made more than adequate by the tin bath set in a little annexe. Two crude clay pipes ran from it through holes punched in the mud wall, and after a few minutes, hissing hot water began to emerge from the first, filling the bath with a brownish liquid. Then clearer cold water poured from the second. In a moment, Benjamin reappeared.

  He dipped his finger into the water and looked up. ‘Is good?’ he enquired. Simon tested it. ‘Very good,’ he smiled. Benjamin’s face lit up and he was gone, presumably to perform the same service for Jenkins. Simon smiled again as he reflected that this was probably the first time that anyone had ever run a bath for the little Welshman.

  Brown or not, the water was magnificently relaxing. He stirred the surface with his toe and his thoughts dwelt on Dunn. He seemed friendly enough - and, more to the point, European enough. But was he playing a double game? How could a man as close to Cetswayo betray the King? - because that was what they were asking him to do. Simon stirred uneasily in the relaxing water. He disliked the fact that the action now lay with Dunn and that all he could do was wait. But what to do? Learn Zulu? The thought of tackling that guttural tongue, with its back-of-the-throat clicks and grunts and impenetrable vocabulary, was daunting, to say the least. Perhaps Nandi really could teach him. Luxuriantly, he let his thoughts dwell upon her. She was pretty, there was no doubt about that, and he mused about her lineage. Was she Catherine’s daughter? No, her skin was too dark for that. Her skin . . . He remembered the flash of breast in the darkness of the hut in Ulundi and the firm buttocks undulating through the low entrance. Simon felt arousal in his loins and a rude desire that he had not experienced since he had bought a weird concoction of lemonade and sherry for a tart in a pub near Sandhurst. Almost immediately, he experienced a sense of shame. He had never felt quite that way about Alice. Alice . . . He had not thought about her for weeks! He tried to conjure up her face but it refused to appear; all that he could recall was a montage of white skin and coiled fair hair. Did he love her? He sighed. How could you love someone whom you couldn’t recall? He rubbed his body savagely with a coarse sponge in admonishment.

  If the bathroom was a surprise, the dinner was a revelation. Simon had put on his best, unworn shirt and he was pleased that Jenkins had similarly changed. In fact, despite his lugubrious moustache, Jenkins looked like a cherubic, well-scrubbed schoolboy. His black hair was plastered down, he had somehow polished his riding boots and his brown face exuded bonhomie and pleasurable anticipation.

  ‘Let’s have a drink before we eat,’ said Dunn, clapping his hands.

  Catherine, now wearing a well-cut gingham dress and laced shoes, joined them around the long fireplace, as, too, did Nandi, looking quite European in a simple white dress which showed off her skin to perfection. She had tucked a white orchid into her hair and was wearing leather sandals. The party was completed by James, a tall, well-built half-caste whom Dunn introduced as his eldest son. Simon looked closely at the boy, who must have been only a year or two younger than himself. There was more of the Zulu in him than was evident in Nandi. They shared the snub nose and the dark eyes, but his skin was darker than his sister’s and his limbs had the massiveness of the native. Yet, from the affection with which he was treated by Catherine, he might have been her son.

  The ubiquitous Benjamin - this time wearing a loose-fitting white jacket and trousers, with a red sash around his midriff, and looking like a waiter at any of the white man’s clubs to be found from Cairo to Singapore - appeared carrying a tray, two bottles and six glasses.

  ‘Have some champagne,’ said Dunn gruffly and gestured to Benjamin to open and pour.

  Simon stole a glance at the bottle. ‘Good lord!’ he cried involuntarily and lapsed into an embarrassed silence.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Dunn with a grin. ‘All new visitors are surprised that I serve good champagne. This is Bollinger’65. I get it through a merchant in the Cape. Now, Mr Jenkins, I am told you’re an expert on beer. What d’yer think of this stuff, eh?’

  Jenkins studiously sniffed the bouquet (Simon could smell nothing), took a sip, rolled it around his tongue and nodded appreciatively. ‘It’s travelled very well, Mr Dunn,’ he said. ‘There are them that say that good bottles can’t cross the Equator. But it all depends upon how they’re packed into the ’old of the ship, look you. If they’re right at the bottom, see, right near the keel, so as they don’t swing and sway so much, and lain horizontally so that the champagne don’t move in the bottle with the pitch of the ship,’ he sniffed, ‘then they don’t get agitated much and they’re far enough down to get away from the ’eat and be cooled by the ocean itself, see.’ He looked round and, seeing that he had everyone’s attention, went on with confidence. ‘That means that they ’ave the minimum of disturbance on the journey and, again, if they’re laid down properly in a cellar or somewhere when they arrive, they can recover their equil . . . equilaborom, so to speak, before bein’ served.’

  He held up his flute glass. ‘An’ another thing. It’s good to drink from a proper glass, which keeps the bubbles in - not one of these wide-open things that lets all the fizz out, so to speak.’ He took another appreciative sip. ‘There’s people who think that keepin’ good wine is about ’avin’ it cool all the time. Now it’s true that ’eat doesn’t do a bottle any good at all, but it’s more important to keep the temperature as even an’ unchangin’ as possible.’ He held up the glass. ‘I can see that you keep your bottles laid on their sides, like, undisturbed an’ probably in a cellar.’

  ‘I do indeed, Mr Jenkins,’ said Dunn warmly. ‘And it’s rewarding to have good wine properly appreciated. Here, have some more.’ And he took the bottle from the tray and filled Jenkins’s glass to the brim.

  Simon looked on incredulously as Jenkins carefully wiped his moustache and half drained the glass. What sort of man was this who could hardly read but could survive the Glasshouse of Aldershot, ride like a Hussar and discourse knowledgeably on the problems of shipping and laying down champagne? He smiled and nodded courteously as Jenkins raised his glass in approval.

  The large dining room had more pretension than the drawing room. Candles set in silver candelabra reflected in the dark red mahogany of the table, which had been elaborately laid. A cream Sèvres dinner service was set inch-perfectly at each place and two wine glasses and a brandy goblet stood as sentinels by each soup spoon. The chair backs were elegantly shaped and cut as fine as filigree and the seats were of crimson velvet. Dark paintings, mainly of animals and still life, hung on the walls, and a huge, seemingly French gold-framed mirror dominated the fireplace. Simon felt that they could have been dining at the Queen’s new castle at Balmoral.

  General conversation at the table was perfunctory, not least b
ecause the food was so good: a fish from the coast that tasted like sole, followed by roast pig cased in golden crackling. The wine, of course, was superb - an 1865 claret had been carefully decanted. Simon noticed with a twinge of annoyance that Jenkins was spending most of his time talking quietly to Nandi, who was seated at his side. He turned to Dunn.

  ‘You told me earlier, Mr Dunn, that the Zulus hated the Boers. Why is that?’

  Dunn put down his knife. ‘It would take too long to go into all the details from the past. But when the Dutchmen left the Cape and went on their Great Trek to get away from the British, they set off northwards and easily put down the Basuto and Matabele they met on the way. Most of them settled in what is now called the Orange Free State and then the Transvaal. But some of them peeled off to the south-east and took their wagons through the Drakensbergs - know where they are?’ Simon nodded. ‘They came up against the Zulus for the first time. Old Dingane, the King at the time, tricked the leader of the Boers and sixty of his followers and impaled the lot. Then he wiped out the women and children waiting in the wagons and, because the British in the south had somehow got involved, turned on the little settlement of Durban - it was called Port Natal then - and burned that.’

  Other pockets of conversation around the table had died away and everyone now listened to the big bearded man.

  ‘I remember that well, although I was only five. For a week Dingane’s impis torched the town. They killed my grandfather on the beach but my father was somehow able to get my mother, my three younger sisters and me on to a little schooner in the harbour and we got away. We had come to settle there, you see, so it wasn’t a very good welcome. But we all came back.’

  He smiled and mopped up gravy with a crust of bread. ‘The Boers came back as well and they defeated Dingane at Blood River, where they laagered their wagons and held off twelve thousand Zulus, killing three thousand of them. Then the territory sort of swayed back and forth between the Boers and the Brits over the years - not least because the Afrikaaners may be damned good fighters but they can’t organise brooms in a broom cupboard. It has, of course, ended up with your lot.’ He looked up. ‘Am I boring everyone?’