by Peter Rimmer
Benny looked at Wally for a long moment, wondering what would come to him next. Ships passing in the night. There had been many in Benny's life. Sometimes he could see their faces, rarely remember their names. He felt the pain of loneliness for those parts of his lost life. Down in the valley he had left nothing else behind. The seduction trip had been a failure. With all his money, he wondered if the same could not be said for his life. Giving a wave to the valley, he turned the head of his horse. He was still not yet fifty. He would remember that. Maybe there would be something else for him to do with the rest of his life.
By the time they reached the signpost to Elephant Walk a week later, Wally Bowes-Leggatt had made up his mind. He was going home. He was going to England. He was going back to his regiment. In the depth of the war, he didn't think they would give a damn about his wife's indiscretions. What his father thought of him would have little effect on his life in France. He was a trained soldier. He couldn't keep a wife but he could keep the respect of his men. He would divorce the bitch as bitch she had to be to place horns on his head. He may have a funny-looking face. But the rest of him was sound.
"This is where we part ways," he said to Benny Lightfoot. After the killing of the lions, they had not been the best of friends. "I'll take the wagon onto Salisbury and leave your excess luggage at Meikles Hotel. They have a parcels office for farmers to centralise the delivery of their shopping. Deduct the wagon, horse and oxen deposit from your cheque. I'll pay off the boys and return the equipment. Can't say I've enjoyed the trip but that's how it goes, old boy. Not much of a safari. I'll keep the lion skins seeing you don't want them. It would be nice if you found out who Jackson was and give his family some money. But you rand barons probably don't have time for that sort of thing. I'll try my best when I'm in Salisbury. Oh, and just for a tip, old chap. She is young enough to be your granddaughter, just in case you think I missed the point."
"That's exaggerating."
"You know what I mean."
"What are you going to do?… I'm sorry."
"Shoot Germans instead of lions. Most of the regular officers are dead now. Even the colonel, if he's alive, won't have any objections. And if my father, the famous general, had any he can go to hell… I have written down every detail for your cheque. I presume the Standard Bank in Salisbury will honour your signature."
"I expect they will," Benny said sarcastically.
"When are you Americans coming into the war?"
"Soon. I rather think soon."
"Will you come over?"
"I'm nearly fifty."
"So what the hell."
"Maybe… You think I'd make a good soldier?"
"Yes. I think you would."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
"It is, Mr Lightfoot."
"How are you going to pay your passage back to England? By your own report, your mother won't be sending you money for another month."
"I'll sell the lion skins."
"Then their lives won't have been wasted… And I will find Jackson's family. You can be certain of that. One of the benefits of being a rand baron. I have some clout… And yes. You are right. She is too young. Men never think they are too old with women until they make fools of themselves."
"You didn't make a fool of yourself."
"Nearly. Very nearly."
Tina and Albert were two hundred yards down the track towards Elephant Walk.
"This won't be a long visit," said Benny, looking at Albert and Tina. "Albert wants to be back in Johannesburg."
"You never know."
"Those skins stink by the way."
"They do, don't they? There's always a price to pay for everything."
Chapter 15: July 1915
Emily Brigandshaw had been widowed at the age of thirty-seven by an elephant. Ever since, she had been dead. No light in her eyes. No care for herself. Just the daily chores and her children, Harry, Madge, and George. Even her father Sir Henry Manderville living on the farm had been of little consequence. Every day she went through the motions. No one on Elephant Walk ever saw her smile. What went on in her mind was a secret. Even Harry had given up trying to help her while he went about the business of running the farm.
She had known Harry's father, Sebastian, most of her life. In the early years she had lived with her widowed father in genteel poverty at Hastings Court in the south of England, the family fortune having dwindled to the old house that had stood on the same piece of ground for centuries. Nearby, Captain Brigandshaw, founder of Colonial Shipping, had built The Oaks. They had been inseparable as children, Emily and Sebastian. Between the gnarled roots of an oak tree they had seduced each other without understanding any of the implications. She had just turned sixteen. Sebastian seventeen. Neither of them knew another world even existed. Left on their own they had been the only thing in each other's lives. But like so many other things in life, Emily was to find out later it was not to be. The Captain, whom many in his erstwhile employ called the Pirate, for the origin of his wealth, stolen, they said, a lot of it in his early years on the high seas. The Captain coveted Hastings Court and the antiquity of Sir Henry Manderville's baronetcy that went back to the time of the Normans. And all the money in the world, (and as Colonial Shipping grew there was plenty of that) could not buy the old Pirate respectability. He was certain everyone thought him as common as dirt. All they were after was his trade. His money. Somewhere he had read a family could become gentry in three generations.
The plan he hatched was for his grandchildren. He could buy himself a hereditary title by donating large sums of money to the Tory party. He could leave his family rich. What he could not do was leave bluer blood in the veins of his descendants without some outside help. He made Sir Henry do a deal with the devil. In exchange for the hand of Sir Henry's daughter in marriage to his eldest son, the eldest son who would inherit the title he was going to buy, the Pirate would purchase the falling down Hastings Court, which would be restored, and bequeathed to the eldest son of his eldest son. The Pirate's grandson would have wealth and the respect of ancient lineage. Arthur, the eldest son of the Pirate, debauched and living off his father's fantasy, fell in with the plan. Sebastian, the Pirate's youngest son was shipped out to the colonies to get him out of Emily's way. Emily, struck dumb by the secret knowledge she was pregnant with Sebastian's child, fell in with the plan. To a point. She refused to sleep with Arthur who merely chortled with glee. Not only was the stuck-up little penniless aristocrat not going to give him trouble with his mistresses, the prissy little thing was pregnant, pregnant Arthur was sure, by brother Sebastian, a lovely joke on their father. All Arthur had to do was sit back and enjoy his life. Everything had been done for him. Even the breeding of his son, who wasn't his son but still his father's grandson. Arthur Brigandshaw regularly laughed himself to sleep.
The grandson, Harry, was born at Hastings Court. Sebastian, getting wind of the timing of the birth later came back from Africa, ran a ladder up to the nursery window at Hastings Court, kidnapped his son, Arthur's wife Emily, and for good measure Alison Ford, the boy's nurse. Arthur was delighted. All his troubles had gone out of the window at the same time. Leaving the countryside and Hastings Court to the birds, he went back to his life of debauchery in London.
Not so contrite, the Pirate threw a fit and had his youngest son pursued for kidnapping. If caught, Sebastian would have been hanged. Deep in the African bush they had finally been left alone, husband and wife in everything but name, until Arthur died of drink and obesity in 1901. If Harry had not been declared a bastard after his mother's marriage had been annulled for lack of consummation, he would have inherited Colonial Shipping. That is if he knew which he didn't. Even that part of Emily's responsibility had passed her by.
After Sebastian had been killed by the Great Elephant, nothing had seemed to have a point for Emily. What did it all matter? Their love was dead, severed by an elephant. Nothing, she said to herself, mattered an
y more. And now Madge had gone off with Barend Oosthuizen to the other side of Elephant Walk to start another section. Even the one-time nurse of Harry, Alison, Barend's mother, had gone with them. George, her youngest son had come back from school in Cape Town and then gone to England, so he said, to go to Oxford like his brother Harry before him. It had been six months and no one had heard a word.
The sound of strange horses coming into the compound made Emily's stomach sink. George was dead. They were coming to tell her. And she wanted to scream. Why did nothing good ever come to her in life?
Emily stood in the dining room behind the window that looked onto her veranda. There were three riders. One was a young girl. Praise be to God, she said out loud to herself. It's not George. Then she saw her father come out of the third house in the compound and walk across the tree-dotted lawn towards the strangers. Emily let the lace curtain fall back into place and walked through the dining room into the kitchen. Her black cook was working at the sink.
"Better get Tembo to kill a chicken. Three more for dinner. Ask the gardener to dig up some more potatoes. And cut some vegetables."
She knew how to run the house. That was routine… She watched the cook boy dry his hands on his apron and go off to look for Tembo. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. Harry would be back from the lands when the sun went down. Even now Emily thought she could do with a drink. Three hours to sundowner time. She could wait. That was the one big rule on Elephant Walk. No drinking before the sun went down. Not even on Sundays. Not even at Christmas.
With the cook out of the kitchen, she made sure the kettle on the hob was full of hot water. Just before he made the tea, the cook boy would stoke the fire and bring the water to the boil.
In winter she didn't mind eating hot food for supper. Once the sun went down the temperature dropped quickly. Someone once had told her the reason was that they were three thousand feet above sea level. By seven o'clock they would need a wood fire burning in the lounge. The family of Egyptian geese, that had once been wild when she first came to Elephant Walk, took off noisily over the balustrade that surrounded the family compound, for the river, disturbed by the horses. There were now four separate dwellings, the last a small rondavel with bath and kitchen her father had built for Peregrine the ninth. His old wagon was still parked in the yard. Clary and Jeff, the wagon donkeys, had been put out to graze down by the river. Surprisingly to Emily, neither lion nor leopard had eaten either of the donkeys. There was something about the kick of a mule. It had to be. Predators kept away from donkeys and mules.
So relieved the horsemen were not bringing news of her youngest son from England, she opened the inside door to the veranda to go out and greet the guests, to trip over the female ridgeback lying on the reed mat. The dog gave her a look of 'mind where you're going' and closed its eyes. The three dogs were sprawled on the same large mat that covered most of the veranda floor. Only when Emily opened the fly screen door to the garden did the dogs take any notice of the horses on the pathway through the compound. Then they all got up and put their front paws on the low windowsill to see what was happening. Not greatly interested, they went back to the mat and their sleep. From the inside windowsill to the dining room window that opened into the long veranda the ginger cat watched the dogs carefully. When the dogs flopped back on the mat, the cat went back to sleep. There would be time enough to jump into the dining room if the dogs got up and snapped at him. The cat and dog war had been going on all his life. He was used to it. If the dogs had looked at him carefully, they would have seen a thin slit of yellow eyes. The cat never let his eyes quite close on the dogs.
It was always pleasant for Sir Henry Manderville to have a conversation with strangers. They were more isolated on Elephant Walk than most people on earth. After nearly two years of Peregrine the ninth living with them in the compound, the two old men had run out of new conversation, and like with a good book, they were going for a second and third good read. The last of the three riders was a lot older than the young couple in front. Even though he was sixty-three, and celibate for longer than he could remember, he could still see the girl was as pretty as anything stored in the memory of his mind from the long past of his life. He would have to be dead, he told himself, before he did not appreciate a good-looking woman.
Only when he walked closer to the horses did he see she was only a girl. The older man spurred his horse and rode forward.
"It's a bit of a cheek, I'm afraid," said the man. "We don't have a letter of introduction. You see, we went on safari and saw the sign back there, and Albert once met a Harry Brigandshaw on the boat, so we thought if you wouldn't mind the intrusion, so to speak."
The man was speaking English in an accent Sir Henry had never heard before in his life. "You don't have to explain. Sort of Rhodesian tradition. Travellers always welcome. Harry's in the lands but will be back by sundown. I'm Harry's grandfather, Henry Manderville. You'll stay for supper, of course. And there's always a bed."
"It's roast chicken," called Emily walking across the lawn to join her father.
"That's Emily. My daughter. Harry's mother."
"How do you do, ma'am. Benny Lightfoot. This is Tina Pringle and Albert Pringle."
"Welcome to Elephant Walk Mrs Pringle," said Henry formally.
"I'm not married. Bert's m' brother."
"I'm from America," said Benny, not sure why the old man's eyes lit up.
"Oh good," said Sir Henry. "My cousin lives in Virginia. He is my heir actually. Funny thing happened with titles in England."
"He won't be able to use it in America."
"I suppose not. Never thought of that. There's no money. Just the title. Poor Cousin George… You can leave your horses for Tembo."
"He's killing a chicken," put in Emily as she reached the men.
"Chickens die quite quickly. I'm quite sure Tembo will make the cook pluck and gut. Been with us for years. His privilege, you see," said Henry.
"Is it Lord Manderville?"
"Oh heavens, no. Just plain Sir Henry. Goes back a bit. One of my ancestors came over from France with the Conqueror… William the Conqueror," he added when Benny failed to register what he was saying.
"Man that built the Tower of London?"
"So you know. Jolly good. Come and have some tea, old chap. Offer you a drink but it's too early. You can all have a wash. Did you shoot anything? Where are the porters? Oh well never mind. Tie the steeds to that tree. Em's house is the place for tea. We all have our own. Harry will be so pleased to meet you."
Then Benny understood. The look of interest had not been for the old boy. For his grandson. Everybody seemed to be looking for something. Then he looked at Emily again. She had the most beautiful green eyes with orange flecks that smiled at him. He did not have to be told she was a beautiful woman when she was younger. Pity she didn't know how to dress. How to do her hair. Quite frankly, he told himself, the woman looked like she had walked through a hedge backwards. Benny thought it was a pity.
As he got down from his horse, four dogs burst out of the big house and rushed at him across the well-kept lawn between the trees that were ringed with flowerbeds. Standing his ground he looked the dogs in the eyes. Then he got down on his haunches and smiled at the dogs from their own level. The bitch of the pack began to lick his outstretched right hand.
"A dog can always tell," said Emily.
"What, Mrs Brigandshaw?" Benny was still watching the dogs carefully for any sign of aggression.
"A nice person. When the dogs growl at someone on first meeting, I never trust that person again… Ah. Here come the geese again. You frightened them."
"We didn't know… Dogs, will you please get out of the way," he said to the four ridgebacks. The dogs looked hopefully at the geese landing on the lawn. Then they began the afternoon chase around the trees and the flowerbeds. The ginger cat watching from its sill inside the veranda closed its eyes and went to sleep.
As with all visitors
to Elephant Walk, they were first taken off to see Henry's house, that boasted the pull-and-let-go toilet invented by Mister Crapper. Henry explained in detail how he had mastered the water supply with a series of windmills pumping water up the pipe from the Mazoe River; then up into the header tank on its tall wooden stand, that provided the water pressure for the house. He promised Benny Lightfoot he would show him the whole system down to the river when everyone had washed and had their tea.
"I'm a bit of a crackpot but it keeps me amused," said Henry. "The children encourage me but I think it's more indulgence. For years I've heard them say I'm potty. Why is it children think old people are deaf? I hear perfectly well. Much better than the kids when someone asked them to do a job. Not so much now. When they were younger. You'll like my grandson, Harry. Well, there it is. I'm boring everyone as usual… Those damn dogs make one hell of a noise. Maybe Miss Pringle can use the bathroom first. Jolly good. Well, I'll be off for tea. Later we'll have a snort or two. Oh, if you see a very old man that looks like Methuselah, it's our Peregrine. Takes a nap around about this time so you should be all right. I'll show you the tobacco tomorrow. The house with the long veranda. Where the dogs raced out from. Come and have a cup of tea. Toodle-oo… Damn those dogs. They ruin my flowerbeds… DOGS. SHUT UP," he yelled leaving Benny Lightfoot smiling at the door to the bathroom shut behind Tina Pringle.
"What a delightful old chap," he said to Albert Pringle.
The old man raised a hand still with his back to them. He had heard as Benny had intended. He had not become a rich man without using subtle praise as a tool for his trade. He had found out early in his life that there wasn't a single person on earth not susceptible to flattery.
"I can only stay one night," said Albert. "Business. Been away too long. Sallie can cope but she always needs help. I've taken advantage of her for long enough on this trip. You don't have to rush."
"You may be right. There's something about this place," agreed Benny.