Men of Men

by Wilbur Smith

  She was twenty-three years old, and she had come a long hard way from the house in Mayfair where Madame Hortense had sold her maidenhood to an elderly Whig minister of state for one hundred guineas. She had been thirteen years old then, only ten years ago, but it seemed like a dozen lifetimes.

  The house in Mayfair was truly the only home she had ever known, and she often thought back with nostalgia to those days. Madame Hortense had treated her more like a daughter than a house girl. There was always a pretty bonnet or a new dress on her birthday and at Christmas, and she had had special privileges. Lil would ever be grateful for what she learned about men and money and power from Hortense.

  Then one Saturday evening a half dozen young officers from a famous cavalry regiment, celebrating their orders for foreign service, had visited the house in Mayfair. Amongst them was a young captain, dashing, rich and beautiful; he saw Lil across the salon the moment he entered. Ten days later Lil had sailed with him for India on the Peninsular and Orient mailship, while Madame Hortense wept on the quay and waved until the ship cleared the pool of London and disappeared beyond the first bend of the river. Forty days later Lil found herself abandoned by her protector.

  From an upper window of the Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town she watched her cavalry captain’s ship clear Table Bay for Calcutta, her sorrow at parting alleviated by the luxurious surroundings in which her protector had left her. Lil shrugged off her grief, drank a glass of gin, bathed and re-painted her face, then sent for the manager.

  ‘I cannot pay my bill,’ she told him and, taking his hand, led him unprotestingly into the bedroom of her suite.

  ‘Madame, may I give you some advice?’ he asked a little later as he retied his Ascot and shrugged into his waistcoat.

  ‘Good advice is always welcome, sir.’

  ‘There is a place called New Rush five hundred miles north of here and there are five thousand diggers there, each with a pocket full of diamonds.’

  Now Lil entered her canteen. It was still early for a Sunday. It was one of the things she had learned from Madame Hortense, always be there long before you are expected. It keeps clients satisfied and employees honest.

  Quickly she checked her clientele. It was the usual Sunday afternoon crowd. It would be better soon. She stooped and counted the bottles under the bar counter, examining the wax seals to make certain they had not been tampered with.

  ‘Never be greedy, darling,’ Hortense had taught her. ‘Water the beer, they expect that, but keep good whisky.’

  She straightened and opened the huge ornate cash register with a chime of bells, making certain that it flagged the correct price, and then touched the line of gold sovereigns in their special slotted drawer. The metal had a marvellous feel under her fingertips, and she picked up a coin as though merely to feel the weight and take pleasure from it. Gold was the only thing in all the world she trusted. Her barman was watching her in the mirror as he swabbed the counter top; she pretended to replace the sovereign in its slot, letting it clink and then palmed it smoothly and closed the drawer of the register. The barman was new. It would be interesting to see if he covered the shortage or reported it, little things like that had made her rich at the age of twenty-three.

  She glanced up into the mirror, once again appraising her own face and shoulders in the less flattering sunlight that streamed into the canteen. Her eyes were sharp as a stropped razor, but the skin around them was clear and fresh as rose petals without the first sign of wrinkling.

  ‘You will wear well, my dear,’ Hortense had told her, ‘if you use the gin and don’t let it use you.’ She had been right, Lil decided. She looked as she had when she was sixteen years old.

  She shifted her gaze from her own face, and swept the canteen. The mirror was imperfect, and the silvering was beginning to go in dark spots, slightly distorting the young face that was watching her intently. Her gaze flicked over it, and then came back.

  The boy was blushing as he studied her avidly, that was the only thing that had caught her attention. Now when she looked at him again she realized he was probably underage, and she already had trouble with the Committee. He wore a boy’s cloth cap on the back of his head and he was very obviously still growing, his Norfolk jacket straining around the sturdy arms and across the shoulders.

  Too young and certainly penniless. She had to get him out fast, and she turned quickly, her fists on her hips, her blond head cocked aggressively.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Lil.’ Ralph was stunned by his own audacity at addressing this heavenly presence directly. ‘I was about to buy my friends a round of drinks. We should be honoured if you would take a glass with us, ma’am.’ Ralph slapped the counter with a sovereign, and Lil uncocked her head and raised one hand from her hip to touch her hair.

  ‘I like a big spending gent.’ She flashed the little diamond in her front tooth at him and nodded to the barman. He would pour from her special bottle labelled Booth’s Gin but filled with rain water from the galvanized tank beside the backdoor.

  Suddenly she realized that the boy was bonny, with a strong jaw and good white teeth. Now that his blush had subsided, his skin was clear and smooth as her own, and his eyes a penetrating emerald green. And the eagerness and freshness that he exuded was so different from that of the hairy diggers, caked with red dirt and smelling like goats, that formed her usual clientele.

  Let the boy pay for his round of drinks, and there would be time to get rid of him after that. In the meantime his transparent adoration was amusing and flattering.

  ‘Lil, me darling.’ Barry Lennox leaned across the counter and she did not flinch from his breath. ‘Give me your pearl-like little ear.’

  Smiling her bright smile she held her ear to his lips, and cupped her hand in an exaggerated pantomime of secrecy.

  ‘Are you working tonight, Lil?’

  ‘I’m always ready for a quick rattle of the dice with you, my sweet. You want to go right now or finish your drink?’

  ‘No, darling, not me. How would you like to be first to put the saddle on an unbroken colt?’

  Her eyes flicked to Ralph’s face again, and her hard bright smile softened thoughtfully. He was a lovely boy, and for the first time since her cavalryman had left her in Cape Town she felt the prickle of her loins and bitter sweet catch in her throat, so that she did not trust her voice entirely.

  ‘It’s still early, Lil, and business isn’t good this time on Sunday, Lil dearie.’ Barry Lennox wheedled and chuckled beerily at the same time. ‘He is a pretty boy, and I should charge you for the pleasure, but I’ll just let you make me a special price instead.’

  Lil’s throat cleared instantly and the languid expression disappeared. Her reply was crisp.

  ‘I’ll not charge you school fees, Barry Lennox, just the usual ten guineas.’

  Lennox shook his head. ‘You are a hard one, Lil. I’ll send him to you, love. But just one thing, make it good, make it something that he will remember if he lives a hundred years.’

  ‘I don’t teach you to dig diamonds, Barry Lennox,’ she said, and without looking back swept from the canteen. They heard the door of her bedroom bang, and Ralph stared after her in dismay – but Barry Lennox put an arm around his shoulders and as he talked quietly, punctuating each sentence with a throaty lewd chuckle, all the colour fled from Ralph’s face.

  ‘Come in.’ Her voice reminded Ralph of the gentle contented cooing that the plump wild pigeons made at sunset in the top branch of the camel-thorn tree above Zouga’s camp.

  With his hand on the brass doorknob, he lifted his feet one at a time and polished the toe-cap of his boots against the back of his trouser leg. He had doused his head under the tap of the rainwater tank and combed his hair while it was still wet, sleeking it away from his forehead, and the droplets had run down his neck, turning the dust on his darned shirt collar into damp red mud.

  He glanced down at his hand on the doorknob, saw the black rinds under his finger nails and lifted it quickly to his mo
uth, trying desperately to pick out the dirt with his eye tooth.

  ‘Come in!’ The command was repeated; but this time there was no cooing of pigeons, but a sharp imperious command, and Ralph lunged for the door handle. There was no resistance, the door flew open, and Ralph went with it. He entered Diamond Lil’s boudoir like a cavalry charge, tripped on the frayed edge of a cheap oriental carpet and sprawled headlong across the brass bed.

  There was a Chinese lacquer screen across one corner of the small violently furnished room, and over the top of it rose Diamond Lil’s magnificently sculptured blonde coiffure.

  ‘Oh,’ she said sweetly, the sharp slanted eyes widening with amusement. ‘Are you going to start without me then, darling?’

  Ralph scrambled untidily to his feet like a puppy with oversized paws and stood to attention in the middle of the floor, holding his cloth cap to his stomach with both hands.

  From behind the screen came the most evocative sounds he had ever heard. The rustle of lace and cloth, the clink of china and the gurgle of water poured from a jug. The lacquer screen was ornamented with oriental figures, women bathing in a willow-screened pool with a waterfall in the background. The women were all naked, and the artist had lingered on their physical charms. Ralph felt his ears and neck heating again – and hated himself for it.

  He wished he had kept the cigar, as a proof of his manhood. He wished that he had worn a fresh shirt, he wished – but then there was no further time for wishing.

  Lil stepped out from behind the screen. She was barefooted, and her toes were chubby and rosy pink like those of a little girl.

  ‘I have seen you on the street, Mr Ballantyne,’ Lil told him quietly. ‘And I have admired your manly disposition. I am so glad we have had an opportunity to meet.’

  The words worked a miracle. Ralph felt himself growing in stature, the trembling in his legs stilled and they felt strong and sure under him.

  ‘Do you like my robe?’ Lil asked, and took the long skirts in her hands, turning to make them flare.

  Ralph nodded dumbly, his new-found strength had not yet reached his tongue, but his eyes were wide and feverish.

  She came to him and without her heels she stood only as high as his shoulder. ‘Let me help you with your coat.’ And when he was in his shirtsleeves, she said, ‘Come and sit on the sofa.’ She took his hand and led him across the room.

  ‘Do you like me, Mr Ballantyne?’

  At last he could speak, ‘Oh yes. Oh yes!’

  ‘May I call you Ralph? I feel I know you so well.’

  Very early one January morning long ago she had left the Mayfair house, and reached the deserted park where it had snowed during the night. The snow lay white and smooth and unmarked. She left the gravelled path, and the snow crumbled like sugar under her feet. When she looked back her tiny footprints were strung out across the unblemished snow, as though she were the first and only woman in the world. It gave her an extraordinary feeling of her own importance. Now as she lay on the wide bedstead beside the lad, she experienced that same feeling.

  He was not a lad, but she thought of him as that. His body was fully matured, but his innocence made him as vulnerable as an unweaned infant, and his body was like the snow which no other feet had trodden.

  The sun had stained his throat in a deep V down onto his chest, but the skin of his chest and flat belly were the lustrous white of watered marble or of freshly fallen snow. She touched it with her lips and when his little dusty rose nipples puckered and started her own skin crawling deliciously, she took his hands. His palms were rough and callused from work on the stagings and in the pit. The fingernails were torn and cracked, with ingrained dirt beneath them. But it was honest dirt, and the hands were shapely, long and graceful. She had learned to judge men by the shape of their hands, and now she lifted Ralph’s to her lips and kissed them lightly, watching his eyes as she did so.

  Then slowly she took his hands down and cupped them over her own soft breasts. She felt the rough skin rasp her own nipples, and they popped out like full moons, pale pink and tense.

  ‘You like that, Ralph?’

  She asked that same question five times, and the last time was when the room was almost dark and he was convulsed and shaking within the circle of her arms and her pliant thighs, drenched with his own sweet young sweat, and breathing in little choking sobs.

  ‘You like that, Ralph?’ And his reply was broken and ragged:

  ‘Oh yes. Oh yes, Miss Lil.’

  Suddenly she was sad. The snow was trodden, the magic was passing, just as the power she had wielded was transitory.

  She had not cried in ten long hard years, not since that first evening in the Mayfair house, but now she was shocked to find the constriction in her throat and the burning behind her eyes.

  ‘What is there to cry for?’ she wondered desolately. ‘It’s far too late for tears.’

  She rolled Ralph expertly onto his back, his body limp and unresisting – and for a moment she stared at him hatefully. He had touched something in her which had hurt unbearably. Then the hating passed and there was only the sadness.

  She kissed him once more, softly and regretfully.

  ‘You must go now, Ralph,’ she said.

  He lingered at the door, with his jacket over his arm and his cap in his hand.

  ‘I will come and see you again, Lily.’

  She formed a bow with her lips and painted them with quick deft strokes before she replied, but while she worked she was watching him in the mirror.

  He was altered already, she saw. He stood four-square, his shoulders wide and his neat young head proud on the column of his sun-tanned neck. The sweet diffidence was gone, the appealing shyness evaporated. An hour before he would have said:

  ‘Please can I come and see you again, Miss Lil.’

  She smiled at him in the mirror, that bright burnished smile, and the diamond in her tooth winked sardonically.

  ‘You come any time, dearie – any time you have saved ten guineas.’

  It was only surprising that the full report of Ralph’s foray into the lilac fields of Venus took so long to reach Zouga, for Barry Lennox had repeated the story with zest and embroidery to anyone who would listen, and the chaff and banter had flown like a Kalahari dust-storm every evening in Diamond Lil’s canteen.

  ‘Gentlemen, you are speaking about the eldest son of one of the pillars of Kimberley Society,’ Lil admonished them saucily. ‘Remember that Major Ballantyne is not only a member of the Kimberley Club, but a respected ornament of the Diggers’ Committee.’ She knew that one of them would soon succumb to the temptation to take the story to Zouga Ballantyne. ‘I would love to hear what that cold-bellied, stuck-up prig will say when he hears,’ she told herself secretly. ‘Even the iced water in his veins will boil.’

  ‘Whores and whore masters,’ said Zouga. He stood on the wide verandah, in the shade of the thatched roof which had replaced the original tent of the first camp.

  Ralph stood below him in the sunlight, blinking up at his father.

  ‘Perhaps you have no respect for your family, for the name of Ballantyne – but do you have none for yourself and for your own body?’

  Zouga was barring the front door to the cottage of raw unbaked brick. He was bare-headed, so that his thick dark-gold hair shone like a war helmet and his neatly-cropped beard emphasized the jut of his heavy jaw, and the long black tapered hippohide kurbash whip hung from his right hand, touching the floor at the toe of his riding boot.

  ‘Do you have an answer?’ Zouga’s tone was quiet, and deadly cold.

  Ralph was still dusty as a miller from the pit. The dust was thick and red in his hair, and outlined the curl of his nostrils and ran like tears from the corners of his eyes. He wiped his forehead on his shirtsleeve, an excuse to break the gaze of his father’s eyes, and then examined the muddy smear with attention.

  ‘Answer me,’ Zouga’s voice did not alter. ‘Give me a reason – just one reason why I should not throw yo
u out of this home – for ever.’

  Jordan could bear it no longer, the thought of losing Ralph overcame his terror of his father’s wrath.

  He ran down the length of the verandah, and seized the arm that held the whip.

  ‘Papa! Please, Papa – don’t send him away.’

  Without glancing at Jordan, Zouga lashed out and the blow caught Jordan across the chest and hurled him back against the verandah wall.

  ‘Jordie did nothing,’ said Ralph, as quietly as his father had spoken.

  ‘Oh, you do have a tongue?’ Zouga asked.

  ‘Get out of it, Jordie,’ Ralph ordered. ‘This is not your business.’

  ‘Stay where you are, Jordan.’ Zouga still did not look at him, his gaze was riveted on Ralph’s face. ‘Stay here and learn about whores and the kind of men who lust after them.’

  Jordan was stricken, his face like last night’s camp-fire ashes, his lips dry and white as bone. He knew what they were talking about – for he had listened while Bazo and Ralph wove their fantasies aloud, and with his interest piqued, he had questioned Jan Cheroot furtively – and the replies had disgusted and terrified him.

  ‘Not like animals, Jan Cheroot, surely not like dogs or goats.’

  Jordan’s questions to Jan Cheroot had been generalized – men and women, not any person he knew or loved or respected. It had taken him days fully to appreciate Jan Cheroot’s reply, and then the terrible realization had struck – all men and women, his father who epitomized for him all that was noble and strong and right, his mother, that sweet and gentle being who was already a fading wraithlike memory – not them, surely not them.