Acacia - Secrets of an African Painting

CHAPTER FIFTEEN – SO TO AFRICA

  “Flight number SA235 to Johannesburg is boarding now. All remaining passengers should make their way immediately to gate 34 for final boarding.” The metallic, disembodied voice rang out through the terminal, alerting us to get moving from the spot where we had rooted for the past hour or so, sipping scalding hot coffee and munching on fairly unappetising pastries and sandwiches. We roused ourselves while picking up our hand luggage, including the leather bound book, now making its way back to the continent of its creation.

  I also had the painting Nellie had left me. It was well protected in a black leather carry case bought specifically for the purpose, but I was unsure at the moment of its usefulness or otherwise. It was Tara who had suggested we bring it with us, for what reason she couldn’t or wouldn’t say. After a brief argument, I relented and packed it ready for travel.

  It was three weeks since the day of revelations, as the both of us had now christened it and we had done some more digging in the meantime. Tara’s journalist friend had come up trumps with a story from the “Times” from the 1920’s. It concerned a certain Harry Porter, youngest son of wealthy and aristocratic parents whose business empire had been closely linked to burgeoning colonial interests in many parts of the African continent since the late nineteenth century. The family had moved rapidly up the social ladder and by the twenties, had two members of parliament and a lord as members of their clan. Harry, though, was a bit of a rebel by all accounts. Stories of his philandering peppered the gossip sheets of the day and his business activities were nefarious to say the least, dealing as they did in the remnants of the now very illegal slave trade, importation of drugs, and racketeering of all kinds. This was the story that broke in the Times, at least, because the focus of the text was on the fact that his parents and the entire clan had disowned Harry and also, on his subsequent disappearance from these shores. His assets were stripped from him, for what they were worth, as the newspaper reported he was effectively bankrupt. What he did have had been gained through illicit and immoral means, according to the family lawyers.

  Despite a thorough search, Tara’s journalist hadn’t managed to find any follow up stories. This was strange, as you would normally expect either that the man had been found somewhere, dead or alive, or that he had returned begging forgiveness, etc. It was almost, so he said, as if the guy’s record had been deleted. He surmised that the family had purposely kept all mention of him out of the public domain to minimise any scandal.

  This Harry Porter just had to be our Harry Porter; we were sure of it and discussed it at length before concluding that with no proof either way, for our purposes at least, we would presume him to be Nellie’s husband.

  We hurried down the interminably long corridors they seem to install at all airports, heading towards what was, of course, the furthest gate from the terminal and our flight to South Africa. Our plan was to first head to Cape Town and see if there were any records there of Frederick and his family. Then we would trace his route, as near as we could, up through South Africa and into Zimbabwe. Mum had told us that she thought Nellie had lived somewhere northwest of Harare, so it was to the nation’s capital that we would head first to see what could be discovered there.

  The money that Nellie had left meant that we could afford to travel in relative luxury, so we had booked good hotels and grunty four-wheel-drive rental cars for the entire trip which was to last a little over three weeks.

  As we settled into our business class seats and accepted the proffered glasses of champagne, I pondered what we might find out there in Africa. I was as excited by the trip as I was nervous, that strange sense of foreboding having never really left me. There was something else that I was worried about too. This trip was as much about finding treasure as it was finding the truth. What if the truth was something we, meaning the Braughton family, didn’t want to hear? As much as I loved and trusted Nellie with every fibre of my being, that trust had been developed during a life where none of the tragedies of her earlier existence were known to me. I was sure that the deaths of her sons and husband were all innocent, but there was a nagging doubt that something was not quite right about it all, that there was a piece of this particular jigsaw that had fallen off the table and was lying somewhere on the floor waiting to be discovered and fitted into place. Only when it was, would the real picture be entirely clear and it was this thought that worried me the most; that perhaps the picture wasn’t one I wanted to see.

  I wondered again about the painting that Tara had insisted we bring with us and so I asked her the question.

  ‘Well, now we are on the aircraft, I can tell you I suppose,’ she replied, ‘I was worried that you would think I was stupid and wouldn’t bring it along.’

  ‘Me, think you were stupid? Perish the thought.’ I said in mock horror at such an absurd suggestion.

  She gave me a sideways look and a frown before continuing, ‘Well, it occurred to me that Frederick’s diary said we should look behind the acacia, didn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ I said slowly, not entirely sure where she was going with this.

  ‘Well, the painting is of an acacia isn’t it?’

  Again, I wasn’t sure that I fully understood what she was getting at, although a faint twinkling light beckoned at the end of the tunnel. ‘So, you think the painting is of the acacia he talked about?’

  ‘Hallelujah, the Brains Trust is on the case!’ She could be so cutting sometimes, but I thought I might just have the upper hand here.

  ‘So you think, and stop me if I’m wrong, that all we need to do is find the acacia in the picture and then we’ll find the treasure.’ This last bit I said in a singsong voice, like you might use when talking to a small child, a point she picked up on fairly quickly.

  ‘If you’re going to talk to me in that manner then I have nothing more to say to you.’ She folded her arms, turned her head, and pouted. However, the debater in her got the better of the argument and she turned back, unfolded her arms both to hit me and to take another sip of champagne.

  ‘Yes, actually, that’s exactly what I mean. I mean, it may not be perfect as a clue, but it’s all we’ve got at the moment, so it will have to do.’

  I thought that she perhaps overlooked one or two minor points, upon which I began to elaborate. ‘But let’s just think about this a moment shall we. There are several elements in the painting that are very, very possibly not going to be there anymore. The old man and the girl we can assume will be dead by now, the tree itself is very probably dead, although admittedly, my tree knowledge is a tad sketchy when it comes to the exact lifespan of your average acacia, and the village is probably farmland by now and all traces will have been erased decades ago. In fact, the only things in the picture that will still exist are the mountains and they could be pretty much anywhere.’ I finished my tirade with a flourish, the pitch of my voice rising with the levels of incredulity I felt at Tara’s assumptions.

  She of course, had something more to say. ‘That may all be true, but there is one more thing in the painting that will still be there.’ She was going to make me ask, so I did.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The sun.’

  ‘The sun?’

  ‘The sun! If you look at the picture, you can see that the shadows indicate it was painted in the morning right?’

  I couldn’t argue with that, as I had noticed the fact long ago. ‘OK, Sherlock, go on.’

  ‘So, we can see where in the sky the sun is in relation to the mountains can’t we, and with that knowledge, as long as we can find the mountains then we can get a rough idea of the location.’ She raised her glass in mock toast to her supposed brilliance and leant back in her seat with a smug and cheery smile on her face. I couldn’t think of a reply, so I didn’t give one. We had the painting with us now so it didn’t make much difference because if it was useful then fine. If it wasn’t, then I would win the argument and I would torment Tara with that fact for the rest of her natural life. Easy.
br />   The remainder of the flight passed without incident or argument, the food was okay, the movie passed an hour or so, and we both managed to catch a bit of sleep in the large comfy seats. The scenery from the window caught my attention on more than one occasion; the vast expanses of desert as we flew over northern Africa and then the equally vast plains as we moved further south. The captain made note of the time we flew over the equator and the great scar that is the Rift Valley, extending from Jordan in the north to the Zambezi in the south.

  Before we knew it, we were on final approach for Johannesburg and the adventure was truly about to begin. We were both quiet at this point, lost in our own thoughts, each wondering what the following weeks would bring. I was growing a little concerned at Tara’s increasing fixation on the treasure, as I still didn’t really believe it existed. If it did, I figured it would have been discovered years ago. She though, managed to bring the diamonds into nearly every discussion we had about our plans for this trip, and the fact she had insisted the painting came along was another minor event in a growing trend of behaviour.

  These worries were wrought from my mind though in the melee that ensued as the aircraft finally came to a halt at the terminal building and the doors were opened. The building itself was nothing particularly special, just another international airport, although the armed guards were a trifle off-putting. As we made our way through customs, we passed what at first sight appeared to be a small group of Hitler Youth, but I realised were in fact some of the ultra-right wing Boers whose presence was increasingly being felt here in these changing times. One of their supposed leaders had been on the telly recently, but he came across as a bit of a clown, so I wasn’t sure if he and his band of “warriors” were anything to be concerned about or not. Pretty much everyone ignored this particular group and they seemed a little ridiculous to me while dressed in quasi-Nazi outfits and carrying their little banners proclaiming a new “Volkstaat”.

  We soon passed them by and jumped into a taxi outside the terminal building. Jo’burg was like most big cities on first impressions. There were office buildings and apartment buildings crammed into as small a space as could be accomplished in the centre of the city. The suburbs were like suburbs anywhere, with neat houses on neat streets that were butting up in places to industrial areas, where small factories and warehouses marred the landscape.

  One thing did strike me though as we passed through the suburbs, and that was the security apparent around each house. High walls and fences, topped with barbed wire gave way to inner cordons of more fences, with padlocked gates and more barbed wire. Large dogs could be seen roaming the grounds of some of these houses and poles were strategically placed around the properties, topped with closed circuit TV cameras, swivelling to capture as wide a view as possible. I hadn’t realised before now how dangerous this city was. It surprised me that people chose to live like this, in self-imposed prisons complete with guards and spotlights, but I figured that there must be benefits outweighing these negatives, perhaps the relative luxury of these dwellings in comparison to what could be afforded in other parts of the world.

  Our hotel was part of a new development in the suburbs to the south of the city proper, but was only a fifteen-minute taxi ride from the centre. On our arrival, we took some time to rest and recuperate and then met down in the bar for a drink before dinner. Tara came down just a few moments after me and we ordered two bottles of the local brew, Castle lager. I always think it is only polite to try out the local beers when arriving in a new country. After the waitress brought over our beers, we pulled out a map book of the country and pored over it, planning our route down to Cape Town.

  We decided that in order to make the best use of our time, we should stick to the main highway, N1, all the way down. I pointed out though that I would like to stop at Kimberley, just as Frederick had on his journey north, so we settled on the N14 out of Jo’burg, past Soweto, and then through Potchefstroom (which neither of us could pronounce), then a stop at the Bloemhof Dam Nature Reserve before heading on down to Kimberley. After that, we would drive through the Karoo desert before linking up with the N1 to Cape Town.

  We figured that we would take two days for the drive to Kimberley and a further two to Cape Town, although I reserved the right to make a dash for Cape Town after Kimberley. I didn’t think there would much to see on that stretch and by then we would be eager to get to Frederick’s old home.

  We set off early the next morning, driving through the first signs of rush hour, luckily against the general flow into the city. When we got to Soweto, there was another surprise for us. We had imagined a sprawling mass of corrugated iron shacks, with dusty roads, mangy dogs and little else. What we saw, though, was a pleasant looking suburban landscape with attractive bungalows, paved roads, and little sign of poverty. I assumed that there must be some poorer areas there as well, but felt a little cheated that the western media had portrayed the entire area as run down and poverty stricken. I idly wondered what else would be news to us on this trip. There was talk in the press before we left England that Mandela was about to be released and we were quietly hoping that it would happen while we were here so we could witness this historic event first hand.

  After we left the city outskirts, we soon fell in to that stupor that comes across you when you’re on a long journey, and the countryside flashed by in a series of snapshot images. Fields of immense proportions, planted out in corn and wheat. Black workers were wandering along the roadside; advertising hoardings for a surprising number of western goods despite the supposed sanctions the country had been suffering from for some time. There were distant hills, purple in colour and some way off. After Klerksdorp, the railway line in the distance roughly following the road, or was that the other way round?

  We peered from the car, hoping to see some signs of the wild, untamed Africa of our dreams, but it was all very normal and some of it could easily have been parts of rural England or Europe. There were no wildebeest roaming majestically across the savannah, or leopards resting in the branches of the trees, just fields and the road.

  At Bloemhof, we found a pleasant little guesthouse and then went off to take a look at the reserve. The dam itself was huge; the blue waters gently lapping up on to its shores and the surrounding vegetation was lush and green. This was more like the Africa I had expected, although there was still a disappointing lack of wildlife around.

  In the morning, we hit the road again, heading for Kimberley. I was looking forward to seeing the Big Hole where so much wealth had been created and so many men had lived and worked. I had read the story of the town back in England and its history seemed to epitomise the colonisation of Africa, men going to any lengths to find some worth in the land they had come so far to claim.

  The town itself was open and pretty. Wide streets were lined with beautiful colonial houses and public buildings, some wooden and others brick and plaster. Wide verandas wrapped these buildings providing pleasant shade from the hot sun, and jacaranda trees gave the place a light and airy feel.

  This was a strongly Boer dominated area, however, and although the receptionist at the hotel was friendly enough, the harsh vowels of her speech made her sound as if she was constantly bad tempered and we checked in as soon as we could before she started barking orders at us. There was a map of the town in the room, showing the local landmarks and tourist attractions, including, of course, the Big Hole. It wasn’t too far from where we were, so I called Tara’s extension and suggested we take a walk down there.

  When we reached it, we were momentarily speechless. It was enormous at almost a mile across and deep enough to house a decent sized office block. We could see the terraces where men had chipped away at the rock over the years. There were signs of the varying claims that had been gradually bought up by the likes of Rhodes until the whole thing generated income for just a few select individuals.

  There was an old man sitting on a bench overlooking the vast emptiness. Upon closer inspection, he could h
ave been anything from ninety to a hundred and twenty years old. His face was deeply lined, the skin a dark leathery brown, looking as if he had spent many years in the sun. He simply sat and looked out over the hole and sat as still as the rock itself, lost in his own world.

  We went over and sat next to him. I wanted to strike up a conversation, without knowing exactly why.

  ‘It’s truly amazing, isn’t it?’ I said, not being able to think of anything else to say.

  ‘Ah, it is that, it really is that.’ He replied in a soft Irish brogue that was unexpected here in the very heart of South Africa.

  ‘Are you local, or just visiting like us?’ I asked him.

  He chuckled quietly to himself before answering. ‘I’m local, you could say. I’ve been here for more than eighty years, so you could definitely say I’m local. Though the blacks might have something different to say about it I suppose, but I’m too old to care what anyone thinks any more, can’t ya see?’

  I could see and said so. ‘Did you work down there?’ I asked, gesturing to the pit before us.

  ‘That I did son. It was hard you know, but not as hard as it was for the blacks mind. They had to do the really tough stuff, but there’s many a ghost down there that could attest to how hard it was. Friends, enemies, strangers, they’re all there you know.’

  He spoke quietly, with a matter of fact tone, not in a manner that would make you think he was either sad or mad, but instead just recalling the facts.

  ‘How many were there, working I mean, how many used to dig down there?’

  ‘Thousands, son, thousands. Never could count them all.’ He chuckled again, dissolving into a rasping coughing fit as he did so. I looked on nervously, not sure what to do, but he eventually recovered and pulled out a packet of cigarettes and proceeded to light one and draw heavily on it.

  ‘You probably think these things gave me the cough don’t you?’ he asked with a twinkle in his eye. ‘But I only took them up a couple of years ago. Never smoked a day in my life before that. Figure they won’t have enough time to kill me at my age.’

  This time we all laughed at his soft humour.

  I decided to find out a bit more about the mining operation that had been here.

  ‘I bet there were loads of diamonds stolen from here weren’t there?’ I asked, hoping to draw him out. I had wondered about the origin of the diamonds Frederick had written about and concluded that either this mine or others like it may have been it.

  Again, the old man cackled softly. ‘No son, there was nothing much stolen from here, I can tell you. There was so much security around this place you would not believe. There were guards guarding the guards and they searched everyone each time they left the pit, and I mean thoroughly too. Oh, they tried all right, many men tried. They stuck them in places you wouldn’t believe, including up their arses. However, they were all discovered, there was no way they would ever get anything out and not many of them survived the punishments handed out.

  I could tell you some tales, but the young lady would find them distasteful.’ He laughed again and once more dissolved into a coughing fit.

  We decided to leave him with his memories and after taking one more look out at this vast crater of contrasts, started to walk back up to the hotel.

  I thought about everything he had said and was obviously miles away as I became aware of Tara speaking loudly and nudging me at the same time.

  ‘Earth to James.’

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘What was that all about? The questions about stealing diamonds I mean?’

  I explained my theory that diamonds in the quantities mentioned in the diary would have had to come from existing mines, and big ones at that. ‘As far as I am aware, there were no recorded diamond mines north of the Limpopo at that time, so it’s the only answer I can think of.’

  ‘But from what the old man said, there is no way they would have been able to get diamonds out, especially in the quantities we are talking about.’ She was right, and for the moment, I couldn’t think of a reasonable answer to the conundrum.

  ‘What if the guards were in on it though?’ I suggested, ‘then they could turn a blind eye at the appropriate moments, but still catch enough men to make it look as if they were doing a good job.’

  Tara was doubtful. ‘But there would still need to have been a huge operation to get so much out, wouldn’t there? It just doesn’t make sense.’

  I wondered if our modern, conservative, safe outlook on life could be blinding us to what was possible if man really put his mind to it. ‘But think about the Big Hole behind us, Tara. Would you have thought that was possible? That was a hill when it was first discovered. Now it is a moon crater, all dug without the aid of mechanical diggers, just with the bare hands of men after a goal.’ I felt quite impassioned by now and realised that the sight of that enormous pit had affected me, more than I had at first thought. It really was an incredible feat and a testament to the times in which it was dug.

  We popped into the Kimberley Mine Museum on Tucker Street to see if there was anything further to be discovered about the theory of theft on a massive scale from the mines. We found more facts about the history of the area and how Erasmus Jacobs found the first diamond, the “Eureka”, on the banks of the Orange River. That diamond was on display here and was actually yellow in colour, something I didn’t know about diamonds. I had always assumed they were just clear, like glass. Tara snorted at my ignorance when I confessed to this fact.

  Then the famous “Star of Africa” was discovered by a Griqua shepherd and traded for all the possessions of a local farmer, Schalk van Niekerk. It was after this discovery that the rush was well and truly on and tens of thousands of men flooded to the area to stake their claims of some thirty-foot square patches of land. The hillock, Colesberg Kopje, was soon reduced to nothing and then these men continued down a further two hundred and fifteen metres, dislodging some twenty-two million tons of earth. There was a photograph of the pit when it was still in operation and it clearly showed the individual claims, all at varying heights and levels depending on the speed and resources of the individual miner, creating a landscape part Grand Canyon and part New York skyline. There were also thousands of ropes and cables stringing out from each claim to the rim of the crater, allowing for the removal of earth and rock in buckets. By the time the mine was exhausted and work suspended, some two thousand seven hundred kilos of diamonds had been discovered.

  The numbers were minzd-boggling and the wealth created saw men lighting cigars with bank notes and women bathing in champagne. However, one thing that interested me was that as more and more men flooded in, the complex mine workings became a hotbed of violence and chaos where regular riots broke out. This situation continued until Rhodes and Barnato took control of things and introduced some order into the place. It occurred to me that amongst the chaos and until the time that the entire operation was under Rhodes’ control alone, after he bought Barnato out in 1888, there would have been ample opportunity for theft.