To the Manor Born

by Peter Rimmer

Many days later, on the day they reached the end of Lake Nyasaland now in British Tanganyika, unbeknown to any of them on board the Mary Magdalen, the stock market crashed in New York changing the face of the world.

  * * *

  A week later when the expedition was deep into Tanganyika after a four-day rest to shoot game and dry the meat, a man who had been rich jumped from the window of his office in Wall Street killing himself when he hit the pavement down below. Oblivious of anything but themselves, Keppel and his party reached the shore of Lake Tanganyika and found another boat to take them up the new lake. By then, Captain O’Leary was back next to the drums of petrol at the south end of Lake Nyasaland and Singleton had come aboard with the monthly whisky. With nothing else really to tell each other, O’Leary told Singleton about Ralph Madgwick as much as he knew.

  “Women. How strange when we can’t have them,” said Singleton, when O’Leary finished the story. By then Singleton was drunk. “And when we have them we behave like me and the governor… What was the poor girl’s name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Singleton cracked open the second bottle of whisky and began to pour.

  * * *

  The new boat was a steamboat owned by an Arab from the island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean off the shore of Tanganyika. And Zanzibar was British, the new captain told Tinus in English. The man spoke Arabic, Swahili and not very good English. On the lower deck with the horses and the porters were stacks of cut wood that fired the boiler.

  Tinus, who was always interested in a good story, had made friends with the new captain soon after the steamer left the shore going north, trailing smoke and a small, wide U-shaped wall of water made by the front of the wooden boat. Tinus watched the thin line on the water spread back over the smooth surface of the lake. They had not swum in the lake while they were looking for a boat camped on the shore. They could all see the Nile crocodiles on the sandbanks watching them during the daytime. When the captain told Tinus his boat had once been a Nile steamer at the time the Mahdi killed General Gordon, the Lord preserve his soul, Tinus thought all things on the lake came from the River Nile: the steamboat, the perch and the crocodiles. Tinus had no idea who the Mahdi had killed or whoever was the Mahdi but thought better than ask questions. The captain had a dark, leathery face with a big hooked nose and eyes like a fish eagle. Except the captain’s eyes were black. Tinus liked the captain very much. The captain told stories of ancient times whenever Tinus joined him at the wheel of the steamboat. There was one other crew, a black man whose job was to feed the boiler all day with the chopped wood stacked on the lower deck. The black man only spoke Swahili. Tinus tried twice speaking to the black man in Shona but without any effect.

  Slowly, day after day, with the rain clouds building in the east preluding the rains, they steamed up the lake going further and further from Rhodesia and his home. Once or twice Tinus thought of his mother. It was better not to think of his mother. Mostly Tinus tried to think of Uncle Harry and Uncle Harry teaching him to fly the Handley Page. Tinus thought it quite simple to blow up the tyres again and fly up into the sky.

  The new uncles had asked the captain to ask the black man if he knew of any aircraft that somewhere had fallen out of the sky. The man had rolled his eyes showing the whites of his eyes. Always the black man kept as far away from Tinus and his uncles. Tinus thought and hoped the man had something to say rather than roll his eyes and be frightened. For the first time in his life, a man was frightened to look at him. If they could only just talk, Tinus told himself, as the days went by.

  Every night the new captain took his boat inshore to cut more wood. The horses liked the stops. Right through the nights, the horses grazed the grass that grew on the banks of the lake. The grass had roots in the water and was green.

  At night, they made two fires and listened to the wild animals while they slept around the fires under the nets they hung up under the trees. The black men liked a fire to themselves even though they all came from Elephant Walk. The captain liked to sleep close to Tinus. Tinus slept next to his gun in case he had to protect the horses on their long tethers in the middle of the night. Tinus was the only one who knew all the animal noises in the night and knew when to get up with his gun. He would walk around the horses in the light of the fires, with flickering firelight going up to the top of the trees and far into the bush, which had been brown all the way down to the lake due to the dry season. It had been better for the men on the Mary Magdalen away from the mosquitoes but not for the horses. The mosquito nets they slept under made Tinus hot. Only when the lions roared, did the horses not like being on the shore. With the sound of the lions, Tinus would stand with the horses close to the fire as the horses whickered with fear. The look of fear in the eyes of the horses was the same look of the black man who put wood in the fire of the boiler, and mostly when he saw Tinus or the uncles coming his way. Never before had a black man been frightened of Tinus. Something was wrong.

  On the fifth night up the lake, a group of black men on the shore were standing watching the boat as it came into shore. They had likely seen the Arab captain many times before. At their feet were wild fruit and vegetables they were going to trade, so it seemed to Tinus as he watched them getting bigger.

  The black men ran away leaving the fruit and green vegetables where they were when the uncles jumped into the shallow water to wade ashore. Tinus had stayed on the boat with his gun pointed at the water looking for crocodiles. When everyone was on shore, only then did he jump in himself.

  Once on shore, the blacks who had brought the fruit were nowhere to be seen… Something was not right… Probably the black men onshore had never seen whites before. That was what he thought.

  * * *

  When the next day they sailed into the lake port of Ujiji, where Stanley had found Doctor Livingstone many years before, they learnt of a party of whites from America hunting the area where they had camped the night before. The British had built a railway line from Dar es Salaam to Ujiji. They were almost back in civilisation. The British Resident informed Keppel Howland he was wasting his time looking for the plane crash. If there had been an aeroplane crash anywhere between Ujiji and Khartoum he would have heard. Something so awesome for the blacks would be talked about and he would have heard: reporting to the British governor in Dar es Salaam was part of his job as the British Resident.

  Sending a second report to Glen Hamilton on the train to Dar es Salaam, Keppel and Ralph discussed what they should do. So far, no one had been ill with fever. The mosquito nets they hung up under the trees when they slept near shallow water had been successful. The rains were about to break. They could take the train to the coast, sail down to Beira on the next liner and take the train up to Salisbury. There seemed no point in going any further. Like Stanley at Ujiji, they had come to the end of their search.

  * * *

  Tinus, listening to the uncles, hoped he could go home. Now he knew of Americans hunting big game near the black people who had left their fruit and vegetables on the shore, his last hope of finding Uncle Harry was dashed. The fear in the black man’s eyes held no deep secret for Tinus. Tembo’s dream had been wrong. Uncle Harry was never coming back to teach him how to fly an aeroplane.

  * * *

  Only on the boat that had sailed down Africa through the Suez Canal on its east coast way to the Cape did they hear of the panic in the world stock markets. Ralph thought how it might affect Uncle Wallace and Sir Jacob Rosenzweig. Rumour had it on the boat, companies that had been trading for centuries were going insolvent and closing down. That walking down Wall Street in New York was hazardous to a man’s health. That nothing financially would ever be quite the same again. Some of the passengers who had started their journey rich were saying the world would plunge into recession. That Hitler’s Nazi would now win the election in Germany and take Europe back into war. That America stripped of its economic might would worry about its own problems and have no wish to sort out other people’s argumen
ts this time around. That America would mind its own business if it came to another war in Europe. Tinus had no idea what they were talking about. He was happy to be going back home to Elephant Walk. Looking forward to seeing his mother. Even looking forward to seeing his sisters. The uncles had said nothing happening in Europe and America would ever affect Elephant Walk and that was all that mattered to Tinus. He would tell his mother they had tried very hard to find Uncle Harry.

  * * *

  While Keppel Howland in the writing room of the liner was writing up the journal he was going to sell to America and British publishers, the Arab captain was finally sailing out of Ujiji with a full cargo of trade goods that had come up the new British railway line from Dar es Salaam. On board were the horses he had bought for a good price from Keppel Howland. Instead of waiting for customers up on the north shore of the lake, he was going ashore with the horses packed with the products from English factories. The blacks wanted pots and pans. Drums to carry water. Blankets for the winter nights. He wanted elephant tusks and the horns of rhinoceros that were so valued in Arabia for making the intricate handles of daggers which every rich Arab carried at his belt. This time he was going to barter enough to go back to Zanzibar and become a trader in ivory and horn. The young boy on the expedition always asking him to tell a story had made him want a wife and his own family before it was too late. Before he died not leaving behind his own self on earth. He wanted to be rich. Dressed in fine silk. His wives dressed in fine silk. His children educated. Able to read and calculate. Able to trade and make money. With the horses and the porters who were now working for him under the instruction of Tembo who spoke English like himself, he, a descendant of the great Saladin who had conquered the infidels in the land of his forefathers and ran them out of Palestine, was finally going to be rich and live in a palace. Only money and God brought happiness. He was going to be happy like Tembo said the porters were going to be when they finally went back to their home in Rhodesia.

  Buying the horses had been the difficult part of his plan. He was frightened the Englishmen would ask too much money which he did not have. That the Englishmen would put the prized salted horses on the train down to Dar es Salaam where they would fetch a much better price. The one called Ralph was happy to give him his horse. The horse and the man had come together in the months they had travelled. The horse had looked at the man and whickered when the man left. The horse had known the man was not coming back. The man called Ralph had said it was good to give the horse to a man who loved horses, which the captain understood. A man and his horse in the bush or the desert had to rely on each other to survive. The horses and the porter all came from a place called Elephant Walk where they were going back after helping to make him rich. The porters believed the Englishmen who said they would be paid for going on the expedition to find an aircraft that had fallen out of the sky. The captain had heard them jabbering in a language he did not understand while the Englishmen were deciding whether to go home or go further north. The Englishmen had camped near the wooden jetty alongside the tied steamboat. The captain had asked Tembo in English what the porters were talking about.

  “Their wages which they will receive on Elephant Walk. When they reach home, they will buy cattle to exchange for wives and build huts by the river. They are paid by the week. They can either go home on the train and a big boat on the sea or help you trade for ivory. They know you are going to buy the horses. The young boy Tinus told them. If the expedition goes on, they will have enough money for three wives who will work their fields and make beer so they can get drunk with their friends like me. This is my plan. I will help you take these goods you are buying deep into the bush where the elephant are thick. We will shoot the elephant ourselves while we look for more ivory to trade from the tribesmen. You will pay the porters their same weekly wage in gold when we all reach Dar es Salaam. Plus a big bonus for me.”

  “You don’t make sense, my friend. You are the black chief on Elephant Walk. Why don’t you want to go home now?”

  “That is my business. We all have our own business.”

  “Then we will all go up to the north of the lake. Together helping each other we can all become rich.”

  The Arab captain was puzzled by Tembo being rude. Telling him to mind his own business.

  “The rains are about to break. It will not be easy,” he said to Tembo not wanting to ask him any more questions.

  “Nothing is ever easy getting rich.” Tembo was now smiling. The look of an ulterior motive gone from his eyes.

  “There is one life on earth, God be thanked,” said the Arab captain.

  * * *

  The days waiting for the Englishmen to make up their minds had seen his one worker who stoked the fire and cut the cords of wood, refuse to get off the boat and go into Ujiji and help bring the trade goods to the jetty. Something was not right with the man. Whenever something is wrong there was money to be made. His man was frightened of the Englishmen. Like the blacks who had left their fruit and vegetables and run away into the bush. Something was wrong and he was going to find out why.

  He would like to know what he had seen in Tembo’s eyes when the black man told him to mind his own business.

  * * *

  Tembo had told Tinus he was staying to look after the porters and the horses. Keppel Howland had listened to the advice of the British Resident in Ujiji. Tembo had been more interested in the strange behaviour of the stoker when he found himself anywhere near one of the white men. And onshore the people had run away when they could make out the skin colour of the Englishmen on the boat as they steamed into the shore. No one worked to bring fruit and vegetables to the boat and then run away. It was not the way of any man whatever the tribe. Tembo would have liked the captain to question the stoker. To ask him what was wrong with the white men that he would not even look in their face. There was something around he could not catch hold of. Something that became more real the further north they travelled. Even the Irish captain had known something he was not telling them. Twice Tembo had watched the old man about to say something to young Tinus and change his mind.

  If the two men from England wanted to go home taking young Tinus there was no reason for him to give up the search. He may have to wait through the worst of the rains with the rivers swollen and impossible to pass. They would all live on the steamboat under the nets not to get sick. Now it was every night he was having the same dream. His ancestors were talking to him and only a fool ignored the ancestors when they spoke directly to a man in a dream.

  Tembo had asked in Ujiji. The next lake north they called Victoria was so wide in the part that was Uganda, a man could not see the other shore. It was to Uganda Tembo wanted to go. However long it took. The Arab had been sent to him by the ancestors. It was why every night now they kept showing Tembo the great sea in his dreams.

  * * *

  As the steamboat moved away from the small village by the lake that was Ujiji, Tembo smiled to himself. His wives had been bickering for the last year. It would do them good to live without him for a while longer. So when he went home they would appreciate him more and stop nagging… Then he smiled a bigger smile at the thought of all his children. He was a rich man. All those girls would bring him many cows when they married, when he was too old to drive the car and make everyone behave themselves on Elephant Walk. An old man needed many children to support his old age… Which brought him back to thinking about his wives. If they were still as nasty when he got home, he would find a fourth, very young wife. That would really make them bicker. But only after he had made them all pregnant again would he look for the very young wife.

  * * *

  The stoker looking up from tending the fire in the boiler looked at Tembo’s face and smiled. Intentionally not looking back at Ujiji, in case the three gods had come down the jetty to see off the boat, he felt better.

  When the village eventually sank into the lake behind them in a flash of crimson and red, the colour reflected in the cl
ouds floating high over the water, he felt even better, the spirit of the unknown lifting from his mind. To the north behind the mountains that came down to the lake, thunder was rolling, the gods clapping their hands in approval up in heaven where they lived. Not down on the boat where he worked frightened every day out of his wits every time one of them tried to catch his eye.

  On the lower deck with the horses under the shade of the canvas, the porters were singing a song the stoker had never heard before. It was a lonely song though he did not know the words… But he understood… The porters were a long way from home and singing a lonely song that all together made them feel better.

  That evening, the boat anchored out in the lake, not going into shore. They had brought tight bales of hay in Ujiji that would feed the horses all the way up the last third of the lake where they were going to leave him to look after the boat while they crossed on horseback to the bigger lake in the north. The stoker was looking forward to having the peace of the steamboat all to himself without having to work and feed the boiler all day long in the heat. If he was lucky, he would find a young girl to keep him company while he waited for his captain to return with the men from the south who never understood a word of what he said. Even when he was telling them about the gods who had come down from the sky and his captain was trying to listen to what he was saying. Oh, yes, he told himself, he was going to have a good time on his own. He hoped the rains would go on for months keeping the others away and leaving him in peace to live on the comfortable boat far enough out in the lake at night so the mosquitoes did not bite. A peaceful night free of the flies was worth firing the boiler. Better still he would stay out on the lake fishing. Once he had found himself a woman and got her on the boat.