‘However, you do agree that it will be an act of international banditry, Papa?’ Ralph removed the cheroot from his mouth and tapped off the ash. ‘We won’t have one shred of moral justification for it.’
Ralph watched the scar on Zouga’s cheek turn white as bone-china. It was an infallible barometer of his mood.
‘I do not understand,’ Zouga said, but they both knew he understood perfectly.
‘It’s robbery,’ Ralph persisted. ‘Not just a little footpaddery, but robbery on the grand scale. We are plotting to steal a country.’
‘Did we then steal this land from the Matabele?’ Zouga demanded.
‘That was different,’ Ralph smiled. ‘They were pagan savages, but here we are planning to overthrow a government of fellow Christians.’
‘When we consider the greater good of the Empire,’ Zouga’s scar had turned from icy white to crimson.
‘Empire, Papa?’ Ralph was still smiling. ‘If there are two people who should be entirely honest with each other, they are you and me. Look at me, and tell me straight that there will be no profit in it for us – other than the satisfaction of having done our duty to the Empire.’
But Zouga did not look at him. ‘I am a soldier—’
‘Yes,’ Ralph cut him short. ‘But you are also a rancher who has just come through the rinderpest. You managed to sell five thousand head of cattle, but we both know that was not enough. How much do you owe, Papa?’
After a moment’s hesitation, Zouga told him grudgingly. ‘Thirty thousand pounds.’
‘Do you have any expectation of paying off those debts?’
‘No.’
‘Not unless we take the Transvaal?’
Zouga did not reply, but the scar faded and he sighed.
‘All right,’ Ralph told him. ‘I just wanted to be certain that I was not alone in my motives.’
‘You will go through with it?’ Zouga asked.
‘Don’t worry, Papa. We’ll come out of it, I promise you that.’ Ralph pushed himself away from the pillar, and called to the grooms to bring his horse.
From the saddle he looked down at his father and for the first time noticed how the weariness of age had faded the green of his eyes.
‘My boy, just because some of us will be rewarded for our endeavours, it does not mean that the enterprise is not a noble one. We are the servants of the Empire, and faithful servants are entitled to a fair wage.’
Ralph reached down and clasped his shoulder, then he picked up the reins and rode down the hill through the acacia forests.
The railhead was feeling its way up the escarpment, like a cautious adder, often following the ancient elephant roads, for these huge beasts had pioneered the easiest gradients and the gentlest passes. It had left the swollen baobabs and yellow fever trees of the Limpopo basin far below and the forests were lovelier, the air sweeter, and the streams clearer and colder.
Ralph’s base camp had moved up with the railhead into one of the secluded valleys, just out of earshot of the hammers of the gangs driving the steel spikes into the teak railway sleepers. The spot had many of the charms of the remote wilderness. In the evenings a herd of sable antelope came down to feed in the grass glade below the camp, and the barking of baboons from the hills roused them each dawn. Yet the telegraph hut at the railhead was ten minutes’ stroll away, around the foot of the wooded hill, and the locomotive bringing up the rails and sleepers from Kimberley delivered as well the latest copy of The Diamond Fields Advertiser, and any other small luxuries that the camp required.
In an emergency Cathy would have the railway overseer and any men of his gang to call upon, while the camp itself was protected by twenty loyal Matabele servants and Isazi, the little Zulu driver, who pointed out modestly that he alone was worth twenty more of the bravest Matabele. In the unlikely event of Cathy becoming lonely or bored, the Harkness Mine was only thirty miles away, and Harry and Vicky promised to ride across every weekend.
‘Can’t we come with you, Daddy?’ Jonathan pleaded. ‘I could help you, really I could.’
Ralph lifted him into his lap. ‘One of us has to stay and look after Mama,’ he explained. ‘You are the only one I can trust.’
‘We can take her with us,’ Jonathan suggested eagerly, and Ralph had a vision of his wife and child in the midst of an armed revolution, with barricades in the streets and Boer commandos ravaging the countryside.
‘That would be very nice, Jon-Jon,’ Ralph agreed, ‘but what about the new baby? What happens if the stork arrives here while we are all away and there is nobody to sign for your little sister?’
Jonathan scowled. He was already developing a healthy dislike for this not yet arrived but eternally present female personage. She seemed to stand squarely in the way of every pleasant prospect or exciting plan, both parents managed to introduce his darling sister into almost every conversation, and his mother spent much of the time formerly devoted to Master Jonathan’s interests in knitting and sewing or just sitting smiling to herself. She no longer went out riding with him each morning and evening, nor indulged in those rowdy romps which he enjoyed so heartily. Jonathan had in fact already consulted Isazi on the possibility of getting a message to the stork and telling him not to bother, that they had changed their minds. However, Isazi had not been very encouraging, although he had promised to have a word with the local witchdoctor on Jonathan’s behalf.
Now confronted once more with that ubiquitous female, Jonathan capitulated with poor grace.
‘Well, can I come with you when my baby sister is here to look after Mama?’
‘I tell you what, old fellow, I’ll do better than that. How would you like to go on a big boat across the sea?’ This was the kind of talk Jonathan preferred, and his face lit up.
‘Can I sail it?’ he demanded.
‘I’m sure the captain will let you help him,’ Ralph chuckled. ‘And when we get to London, we will stay in a big hotel and we will buy all sorts of presents for your mama.’
Cathy dropped her knitting into her lap, and stared at him in the lamplight.
‘What about me?’ Jonathan demanded. ‘Can we buy all sorts of presents for me too?’
‘And for your baby sister,’ Ralph agreed. ‘Then when we come back we will go to Johannesburg and we will buy a big house, with shining chandeliers and marble floors.’
‘And stables for my pony.’ Jonathan clapped his hands.
‘And a kennel for Chaka.’ Ralph ruffled his curls. ‘And you will go to a fine brick school with lots of other little boys.’ Jonathan’s grin wavered slightly, that was perhaps carrying things a little too far, but Ralph stood him on his feet again, slapped his backside lightly and told him, ‘Now go and kiss your mother goodnight, and ask her to tuck you up in your cot.’
Cathy hurried back from the nursery tent, moving with the appealing awkwardness of her pregnancy into the firelight, and she came to where Ralph sat in the canvas folding chair with his boots stretched to the blaze, and the whisky glass in his hand. She stopped behind his chair, put both arms around his neck and, with her lips pressed to his cheek, whispered: ‘Is it true, or are you just teasing me?’
‘You have been a good brave girl for long enough. I’m going to buy you a home that you didn’t dare even dream about.’
‘With chandeliers?’
‘And a carriage to take you to the opera.’
‘I don’t know if I like opera – I’ve never been to one.’
‘We’ll find out in London, won’t we?’
‘Oh Ralph, I’m so happy I think I could cry. But why now? What has happened to make it all change?’
‘Something is going to happen before Christmas that is going to change our lives. We are going to be rich.’
‘I thought we were already rich?’
‘I mean really rich, the way Robinson and Rhodes are rich.’
‘Can you tell me what it is?’
‘No,’ he said simply. ‘But you only have a few short weeks to wait, j
ust until Christmas.’
‘Oh, darling,’ she sighed. ‘Will you be away that long, I miss you so.’
‘Then let’s waste no more precious time talking.’ He stood up, picked her up in his arms and carried her carefully to the bell tent under the spreading wild fig tree.
In the morning Cathy stood with Jonathan beside her, holding his hand to restrain him, and they looked up at Ralph on the foot-plate of the big green locomotive.
‘We always seem to be saying goodbye.’ She had to raise her voice above the hiss of steam from the driving wheels and the roar of the flames in the firebox.
‘It’s the last time,’ Ralph promised her.
How handsome and gay he was, it made her heart swell until it threatened to choke her.
‘Come back to me as soon as you can.’
‘I will, just as soon as I can.’ The engine-driver pulled down the brass throttle-handle and the huff of steam drowned Ralph’s next words.
‘What? What did you say?’ Cathy trotted heavily beside the locomotive as it began to trundle down the steel tracks.
‘Don’t lose the letter,’ he repeated.
‘I won’t,’ she promised, and then the effort of keeping level with the rolling locomotive became too much. She came up short, and waved with the white lace handkerchief until the curve in the southbound tracks carried the train out of sight beyond the heel of a kopje, and the last mournful sob of its steam whistle died on the air. Then she turned back to where Isazi waited with the trap. Jonathan wrested his hand from hers and raced ahead to scramble up onto the seat.
‘Can I drive them, Isazi?’ he pleaded, and Cathy felt a prick of anger at the fickleness of boyhood – one moment tearful and bereft, the next shrieking with the prospect of handling the reins.
As she settled onto the buttoned leather rear seat of the trap, she slipped her hand into the pocket of her apron to check that the sealed envelope that Ralph had left with her was still safe. She drew it out and read the tantalizing instruction he had written upon the face: ‘Open only when you receive my telegraph.’
She was about to return it to her pocket; then she bit her lip, fighting the temptation, and at last ran her fingernail under the flap, splitting it open and drew out the folded sheet.
‘Upon receiving my telegraph, you must send the following telegraph immediately and urgently: “To Major Zouga Ballantyne. Headquarters of Rhodesian Horse Regiment at Pitsani Bechuanaland: YOUR WIFE MRS LOUISE BALLANTYNE GRAVELY ILL RETURN IMMEDIATELY KINGS LYNN.”’
Cathy read the instruction twice and suddenly she was deadly afraid.
‘Oh my mad darling, what are you going to do?’ she whispered, and Jonathan urged the horses into a trot back along the track towards the camp.
The workshops of the Simmer and Jack gold mine stood below the steel headgear on the crest of the ridge. The town of Johannesburg sprawled away in the low valley, and over the further rounded hills. The workshop was roofed and walled with corrugated iron, and the concrete floor was stained with black puddles of spilled engine oil. It was oven-hot under the iron, and beyond the big double sliding doors at the end of the shed the sunlight of early summer was blinding.
‘Close the doors,’ Ralph Ballantyne ordered, and two of the small group went to struggle with the heavy wood and iron structures, grunting and sweating with unaccustomed physical effort. With the doors closed, it was gloomy as a Gothic cathedral, and the white beams of sunlight through chinks in the iron walls were filled with swirling dust motes.
Down the centre of the floor stood a row of fifty yellow drums. Stencilled on each lid in black paint were the words: ‘Heavy Duty Engine Oil. 44 gals.’
Ralph slipped off his beige linen jacket, pulled down the knot of his necktie and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He selected a two-pound hammer and a cold chisel from the nearest workbench and started to hack open the lid of the nearest drum. The four other men crowded closer to watch. The hammer strokes echoed hollowly about the long shed. The yellow paint flew off in tiny flakes beneath the chisel, and the raw metal was bright as newly minted shillings.
At last Ralph prised open the half-severed lid, and bent it back. The surface of the oil glimmered glutinous and coal-black in the poor light; Ralph thrust his right arm into it as far as the elbow, and drew out a long oilskin-wrapped bundle dripping with the thick oil. He carried it to the workbench, and slit the binding with the chisel, and there were exclamations of satisfaction as he stripped away the covering.
‘The very latest Lee Metford bolt-action rifles firing the new smokeless cordite load. There is no other rifle in the world to match it.’
They passed the weapon from hand to hand, and when it reached Percy Fitzpatrick, he rattled the bolt, opening and closing it rapidly.
‘How many?’
‘Ten to a drum,’ Ralph answered. ‘Fifty drums.’
‘And the rest of them?’ demanded Frank Rhodes. He was as unlike his younger brother as Ralph was to Jordan. A tall lean man with deepset eyes and high cheekbones, his greying hair receding from a deep bony forehead.
‘I can bring through a shipment every week for the next five weeks,’ Ralph told him, wiping his greasy hands on a ball of cotton waste.
‘Can you do it quicker than that?’
‘Can you clean and distribute them quicker than that?’ Ralph countered, and without waiting for a reply, turned to John Hays Hammond, the brilliant American mining engineer whom he trusted more than Mr Rhodes’ effete brother.
‘Have you decided on the final plan of action?’ he asked. ‘Mr Rhodes will want to know when I return to Kimberley.’
‘We will seize the Pretoria fort and the arsenal as our first objective,’ Hays Hammond told him, and they fell into a detailed discussion with Ralph scribbling notes on the back of a cigarette packet. When at last Ralph nodded and stuffed the packet into his back pocket, Frank Rhodes demanded:
‘What is the news from Bulawayo?’
‘Jameson has his men, over six hundred of them. They are mounted and armed. He will be ready to move southwards to Pitsani on the last day of the month, that’s his latest report.’ Ralph shrugged on his jacket again. ‘It will be wiser if we are not seen together.’
He returned to shake hands with each of them, but when he reached Colonel Frank Rhodes, he could not resist the temptation to add, ‘It would also be wiser, Colonel, if you could limit your telegraph messages to essentials only. The code you are using, the daily references to this fictitious gold-mine flotation of yours is enough to attract the attention of even the most dimwitted of the Transvaal police agents, and we know for certain that there is one in the Johannesburg telegraph office.’
‘Sir, we have indulged in no unnecessary traffic,’ Frank Rhodes replied stiffly.
‘Then how do you rate your latest effort? “Are the six hundred northern shareholders in a position to take up their debentures?” Ralph mimicked his prim old maidish diction, then nodded farewell and went out to where his horse was tethered, and rode down the road to Fordsberg Dip and the city.
Elizabeth rose at a glance from her mother, and began to gather up the soup bowls.
‘You haven’t finished, Bobby,’ she told her young brother.
‘I’m not hungry, Lizzie,’ the child protested. ‘It tastes funny.’
‘You always have an excuse not to eat, Master Robert,’ Elizabeth scolded him. ‘No wonder you are so skinny, you’ll never grow up strong and tall like your papa.’
‘That’s enough, Elizabeth,’ Robyn spoke sharply. ‘Leave the boy, if he’s not hungry. You know he isn’t well.’
Elizabeth glanced at her mother, then dutifully stacked Robert’s bowl with the others. None of the girls had ever been allowed to leave food, not even when they were giddy with malaria, but she had learned not to protest the unfairness of Robyn’s indulgence of her only son. With the kerosene lantern in her other hand, Elizabeth went out of the back door and crossed to the thatched kitchen hut.
‘It is time she had a h
usband.’ Juba shook her head mournfully. ‘She needs a man in her bed and a baby to her breast to make her smile.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense, Juba,’ snapped Robyn. ‘There will be time for that later. She is doing important work here, I could not let her go. She is as good as a trained doctor.’
‘The young men come out from Bulawayo one after the other, and she sends them all away,’ Juba went on, ignoring Robyn’s injunction.
‘She’s a sensible, serious girl,’ Robyn agreed.
‘She is a sad girl, with a secret.’
‘Oh Juba, not every woman wants to spend her life as some man’s chattel,’ Robyn scoffed.
‘Do you remember when she was a girl?’ Juba went on unperturbed. ‘How bright she was, how she shone with joy, how she sparkled like a drop of morning dew.’
‘She has grown up.’
‘I thought it was the tall young rock-finder, the man from across the sea who took Vicky away.’ Juba shook her head. ‘It was not him. She laughed at Vicky’s wedding, and it was not the laughter of a girl who has lost her love. It is something else,’ Juba decided portentously, ‘or somebody else.’
Robyn was about to protest further, but she was interrupted by the sound of excited voices in the darkness outside the door, and she stood up quickly.
‘What is it?’ she called. ‘What is happening out there, Elizabeth?’ and the flame of the lantern came bobbing back across the yard, lighting Elizabeth’s flying feet but leaving her face in darkness.
‘Mama! Mama! Come quickly!’ Her voice rang with excitement. Elizabeth burst in through the door.
‘Control yourself, girl.’ Robyn shook her shoulder, and Elizabeth took a deep breath.
‘Old Moses has come up from the village – he says that there are soldiers, hundreds of soldiers riding past the church.’
‘Juba, get Bobby’s coat.’ Robyn took her woollen shawl and her cane down from behind the door. ‘Elizabeth, give me the lantern!’
Robyn led the family down the driveway under the dark spathodea trees, past the godowns of the hospital, towards the church. They went in a small tight group, with Bobby bundled up in a woollen coat riding on Juba’s fat hip, but before they reached the church, there were many other dark figures hurrying along in the darkness around them.