by Peter Rimmer
Ten days later, Albert Pringle was walking down Adderley Street in the centre of Cape Town, wearing a small green bowler hat tilted slightly to the right. He was very chipper. Along with his new green hat, he wore a new green suit and twirled a dark cane with a silver handle. All presents from Lily White.
Having come from a family and village that supported its own, Albert had never known how people could find themselves cast off with no one to turn to.
Like so often after a debilitating war, South Africa was in a financial depression, the commerce generated by the war gone with the peace of Vereeniging. Large numbers of blacks and whites were out of jobs, and there was no welfare system in place to provide them with the basics of life. The ones that had left their parishes in England to seek a fortune were not even able to turn to their church for support. In ten days Albert had found five young and pretty girls, and moved them into the rented house in lower Strand Street, close to where the harbour joined the city. They were sleeping two to a room, and happy to have a roof over their heads, even though they knew why they were there. None of them had the fare back to Europe.
"Any business has to be honest, especially to its staff," Lily had said the day they moved into the house having told the landlord they only wanted it for a month. Lily had only managed to pry one month's rent back from the pre-paid three. "The girls, right from the start, must know what they are in for. They will have our protection, and will never have to leave the establishment if they fulfil their contracts, but however you look at it, they are whores. They will be poked by fat, old, drunk men, like many a wife, but they will be paid a king's ransom, in comparison to what lies ahead of a young woman in a strange country with no money and no support. Stress the support, Albert, but if they don't want to join us let it be. Everyone in my business has to be willing. Also, anytime they wish, they can go."
Walking on the side of the road in the sunshine, his only regret was having to let down Jack Merryweather, who had never treated him like a servant, more like a friend.
Lily had gone on when Albert voiced his worry. "The man doesn't own you any more than he owns me which he would were I his wife. We are going to give him notice. If he didn't want us he'd give us the same notice. I'm not his first or last mistress. Valets are ten a penny in London."
"But he's a good man."
"Then we'll both write that in the letters telling him so."
As Albert turned up left into Strand Street, he still felt uncomfortable deceiving Jack Merryweather. 'Can't go around letting people down,' he said to himself.
A girl with a small hat and side feather was standing at the steps of the three-storey town house. She had her back to Albert, but he knew who she was by the black ringlets that hung down by her ears. She was just standing looking up at the front door. By the time Albert walked the hundred yards up Strand Street to the steps, the girl had still not knocked on the door.
"Miss Barker," he said. "It is Sallie Barker?"
Before he could mount the steps the girl ran down into his arms, sobbing.
"I just didn't know who to turn to," she kept repeating.
One of the new girls answered the door and they went through to the small sitting room with the open fire burning softly in the grate.
"It'll be all right dearie," said the girl patting Sallie on the back.
"Being a whore is no worse than being a wife, and I know. How about a nice cup of tea?"
After tea, Sallie composed herself and told Albert the story.
For three days they had been alone in the house. No one came to visit. Only the house servants were allowed in the house and none of them could speak English. Outside the big house, the business of the wine estate went on before her eyes, the comings and goings of drays bringing empty wine barrels two at a time and going back with the new ones full. There were two white overseers who never came to the house or even glanced its way. Ernest Gilchrist's aunt had given her a small, pretty room to herself, with light blue curtains and big windows that felt as if no one had lived in it for years. Even after leaving open the big windows the room was dead and lifeless. Not even the smell of flowers or mown grass penetrated the second floor room that looked out far to the distant mountains that for Sallie had no name.
There was never the mention of the present, except for the needs of food and sleep. All the two women talked about was England, and England twenty years ago, before she was born. They were fast becoming bosom friends, Mrs Flugelhorne and Mrs Barker. Never once was there a mention of neighbours. Never once was there talk of what was to be done. Both of them, her mother and Mrs Flugelhorne, were reliving their happy childhoods, where Sallie had no part. Finally, for Sallie, there was boredom, mixed with the regret of wasting time. She wanted to be out and doing something, enjoying her life instead of being locked up in the house of strangers.
Then Mr Flugelhorne came home and at the first sight of Sallie, he literally licked his lips.
He was a man of fifty, florid from good food and wine, his body all the time trying to burst out of his clothes, his belly protruding so he could only see his feet with a mirror. The servants were plainly frightened of him, inside and outside the house. Mrs Flugelhorne was petrified of the man and stammered her introductions. To what seemed Mrs Flugelhorne's surprise and greater relief, the master of the house gave his guests a handsome welcome, and listened to every word of Mrs Barker's flattery, the few questions he asked her were pertinent and to the point. By the end of the first evening, he knew their predicament without having to be told, his eyes taking the clothes off Sallie piece by piece. Somewhere she had read the words 'lecher' and the following day, briefly alone with her mother in the garden, she had explained her fears.
"Don't be silly, Sallie. You young girls imagine these things. He's a gentleman, a rich gentleman, and old enough to be your father."
"And a lecher; watch the way he looks at me. Mother, I want to go."
"We can't go Sallie. This is our opportunity. To find so much wealth in the family when we are so poor. Now, Sallie, don't be silly."
"The way he looks at my bosom says he knows that we are poor as church mice."
"How can he? You are looking a gift horse in the mouth."
"I'm looking at a dirty old man and I certainly have no wish to look in his mouth."
"Sallie! Now you behave yourself. It's difficult enough as it is. He hasn't done anything has he?"
"No, mother," she had said wearily. Arguing was obviously pointless.
"Then don't be ungrateful."
There was no key to the small room with the blue curtains even if Sallie had wished to lock the door. She avoided the master of the house as best she could finding a bench among some trees on the far side of the duck pond. Once she heard the white overseer and his white assistant talking to each other. They were speaking in English. The one man spoke with a Worcester accent, the other she rather thought was German. The conversation was brief. She would have liked to know which one of them was English but they were hidden by the trees and shrubbery. When she walked out to catch a glimpse they were gone. Twice Mr Flugelhorne ordered a horse and trap from his stables and was driven into Cape Town. One night he did not come home. Her mother and Mrs Flugelhorne chatted in their element whenever the master was out of the house. Mrs Flugelhorne spoke nothing but trivia and Sallie doubted if the woman had a brain in her head.
Mr Flugelhorne came home drunk late the following afternoon and didn't even bother to hide the way he leered at Sallie. Passing a message through the house servant, she excused herself from supper on the grounds of not feeling well, most of the conversation with the servant conducted in sign language. In the end, when the maid gave a big smile, Sallie was not sure what message would be delivered to Mrs Flugelhorne. Her mother, even though she saw the man was drunk, had not even furrowed her brow.
Sallie leaned the back of the only chair under the door knob and tried to go to sleep. She had shut the window, even though ther
e was no way a drunk, a fat drunk, could climb up the outside trellis work into her bedroom. She had never felt more alone or vulnerable in her life. She tried praying to God and finally fell asleep.
When Sallie woke the moon was shining full into her room, the chair was no longer up against the door knob but lying on the carpet on its back on top of a sheet of plywood that had not been in the room when she went to sleep.
The man was fatter and even more repulsive with his clothes off, and sickly white in the light of the moon, his bald head glowing with its reflection. There was something over her face. She felt the bedclothes being ripped off from on top of her body as her mind drifted. She had felt the nightdress being pulled over her head. The hand that cupped her firm, hard breast was ice-cold. Her legs were forced apart, crushed by the weight of the man on top of her. Mr Flugelhorne farted before entering her, tearing parts of her flesh with the hard rod he thrust into her body. The chloroform had been enough to stop her fight but not enough to stop his pleasure. When she screamed he laughed at her and went about his business with greater pleasure.
In the morning the bed sheets were covered in blood and Sallie could still smell the man. The piece of plywood that had pushed back the legs of the chair was gone.
She had waited in her bedroom all morning, waiting to speak to her mother. There was no sign of the master of the house who had raped her. When seeing her mother in the garden next to the aviary she flew out of the house to hysterically tell Mrs Barker what had happened. Her cold mother refused to believe her and dismissed her hysterics. Sobbing, Sallie returned to her room.
Packing everything she owned into a small suitcase, she had watched and waited, trying all the time to ignore the dull, aching pain between her legs. When the white overseer went to the stables she let herself out of her room and she ran down the wide flight of stairs and out of the house through the sun room.
She told the overseer that Mr Flugelhorne had told her to take the trap into Cape Town. The man leered as if he understood one way or the other and put the small leather suitcase in the trap. In the Dutch she did not understand, the overseer told the driver something. Then she was in the trap and going down the driveway between the oaks and through the pillars onto the main road. She was relieved when the driver took the road back the way they had come out from Cape Town harbour ten days before.
At that moment she was completely alone in the world. Halfway there she found the card in her purse with Jack Merryweather's name and address in Cape Town. In case the driver reported back to her mother, she got off in the middle of town and stood on the kerb with her small suitcase until the trap was out of sight.
Then she had picked up the case and walked slowly to the house in Strand Street. People were very kind when she asked for directions.
At the time Sallie was telling her story in the Strand Street house next to the small wood fire crackling in the grate, Jack Merryweather was riding through tall grass that came up to his knees. He was hotter than he had ever been before in his life, and the rifle he had been assured would kill an elephant was banging against his knee in its bucket holster. On either side, thickly wooded msasa trees stopped any vision further than twenty yards. The hat band of his broad-brimmed brown felt hat was soaked with sweat and the tsetse fly were beginning to attack as the sun went down, blood reddening the western sky, leaving patches of turquoise blue. They had been riding since the dawn, the four of them, Jack, Harry Brigandshaw, and two big black men that worked at Elephant Walk.
They had found not a trace of the Great Elephant that had killed Harry's father. They had been riding for a week. Searching the vast open bush for one elephant that had last been sighted by Tinus Oosthuizen thirty years before, before, that is, it was wounded by an American hunter and Sebastian Brigandshaw had gone out to put the animal out of its pain. It was thought the elephant was seventy years old, the biggest in Central Africa, and had roamed all its life between the Congo and Limpopo rivers, some said as far as the sea. Before being wounded by the American, the Great Elephant had been a legend that nobody believed.
The train had arrived at Salisbury Station in Southern Rhodesia three days after the SS King Emperor had docked in Cape Town harbour. Jack Merryweather had had no problem booking a sleeper for himself, as Harry and Robert St Clair were sharing again together, the three of them eating their meals at the same table in the dining car. The Great Karoo had been dry, the semi-desert of Bechuanaland, hotter with patches of mopane forest, tall, thin-trunked trees, some pushed over by the vast herds of elephant that roamed out from the Okavango Delta, the wetland at the heart of the British Protectorate that teamed with every species of game known to Southern and Central Africa, the great paradise for birds and animals. On the third day of their journey north, they crossed the border into Southern Rhodesia and rode the steel rails through the mopane forests of Matabeleland to Bulawayo. Early the next morning they stepped down from the train at Salisbury, the capital of Southern Rhodesia. After a good breakfast at Meikles Hotel they had taken the hired trap out on the Mazoe Road and arrived at Elephant Walk just before lunch. The eldest son had returned home, this time as head of the family.
Robert St Clair, thinking of a good lunch to follow his good breakfast had forgotten the reason for Harry's return home.
"Leave them alone, Robert," Jack Merryweather had said after the brief introductions. "This is family. There's a river down past the lawn. Let us leave them to console each other."
Madge and her mother were crying. Young George was hugging his elder brother for comfort. The old man that had been introduced as Harry's maternal grandfather stood back holding what looked like a butterfly net. Aunt Alison and her daughter Katinka were somewhere at a place Jack Merryweather could not pronounce. It was a sad homecoming, and Jack, with Robert in tow, left them alone and waited on the rocks overlooking the river, shaded by a tall acacia tree where Harry found them two hours later.
"Thank you," he had said. "Mother's in a state and young George is hysterical. Not a good thing to lose your father when you are only eleven years old." They stayed silent for a long time looking at the flow of the river.
Harry broke the silence. "There has been a legend in these parts for as long as many black people can remember, an elephant so big they named it the Great Elephant in every language spoken from here to the northern borders of the Belgian Congo. Every white hunter including Uncle Tinus hunted the Great Elephant for the weight of its tusks and the legend that would stay with the man who killed the greatest mammal on earth. Sometimes they saw the huge footpads marked in the dust. Once my Uncle Tinus caught a glimpse when he was descending the escarpment into the Zambezi Valley but by the time he reached the floor of the valley, the Great Elephant had swum the river and headed north at a run. Two years ago a party of Americans on safari found the Great Elephant and one of them put a bullet in its head. The white hunter followed the blood trail all day but never caught up with the elephant. He presumed the animal would die on its own but it didn't. Reports came in of African villages being ransacked by a huge elephant. People were killed. The government sent the police out to track and kill the rogue elephant. Instead, the elephant killed two black policemen, trampling them to death. Ten weeks ago the administrator came himself to Elephant Walk to plead with my father to hunt down the killer elephant. For the first time in twenty years my father agreed to go out and kill an animal for other than its meat. My Grandfather Manderville tells the story from the report of the serving major who mounted the expedition for my father. Not even seventy miles north of here the Great Elephant charged the camp. My father stood his ground but the bullet was old and when he pulled the trigger at twenty yards the gun did not fire. The major by then was high up a tree, along with the rest of them in their separate trees. The last he saw, the elephant was heading north. My father was dead two seconds after his gun misfired. I'm going after the bloody elephant and I'm going to kill him. If you want to come you are welcome. But it's dangerous. That
elephant is in great pain, probably with a lead bullet lodged in its head it does not like people."
"Not really my bag, Harry," said Robert St Clair. "You know me. Better stay and look after your family. How old is your sister Madge?"
"She's seventeen but don't waste your time. She's been in love with Barend, Uncle Tinus's son, since they were toddlers."
"But he's not here, I understand. Went off no one knows where."
"Doesn't matter to Madge. She'll wait for him." Slightly irritated, Harry had turned to Jack Merryweather… "Jack, it's dangerous but you won't be bored. Hot and bitten to buggery by insects, but not bored. I'm taking two black men from the farm. You're welcome. I'd like the company. I'll teach you how to handle an elephant gun as we look for this elephant. You said you'd come to hunt. You can ride, of course? I want to leave at first light before he kills more villagers. The villagers who are scattered sparsely through the bush don't have elephant guns to protect themselves. We may be gone for weeks."
The night Sallie Barker spent her first day with Lily White and Albert Pringle, Harry and Jack were camped on the high bank of a small river, the blacks having gathered wood for a fire that would burn all night. An old, hard teak, the tree pushed over long ago by an elephant wanting to eat the green, succulent leaves that grew at the tree top, was burning on the fire, throwing light and shadow into the surrounding msasa trees, sparks like fireflies were drifting upon the hot air from the fire towards the vast dome of sky, layer upon layer of stars that Jack had never experienced before.
That night, when it was his turn to feed the fire, he stood alone looking up at the stars in awe, with the fire burnt down and glowing red at his feet, and saw the vastness of the universe for the first time. A hyena cackled a laugh from the pitch dark of the woods, sending a cold shiver of primal fear through his body. Quickly he picked up some of the stacked wood and threw the pieces on the fire, sending sparks flying high up into the night. Somewhere further away he heard what he now knew was the roar of a lion. He built up the fire sending flames twenty feet into the air. There was no wind, the flames tonguing straight up to the heavens. Feeling happier than he had ever been in his life, he crawled back into his sleeping bag as he was fully clothed, not three feet from the fire. Within seconds he was sound asleep. Around him in the bitterly cold night air the rustle of Africa continued. The hyena, frightened of the flames, went off for easier prey. An owl hooted softly from far away.