Jack of Diamonds (100 page)

It’s hardly surprising when you realise that an African Grey can possess an amazing vocabulary, perhaps up to a thousand words. I’m sure he understood what he was saying, rather than simply ‘parroting’ it. These birds can greet people by name and seem to understand how they relate to their family or social group.

DJ loved the radio and had strong views on several of the BBC announcers.
‘Oh, not that bloody fool again!’
he’d say whenever a particular radio personality came on air. We don’t realise how often we swear until we live with an African Grey Parrot. Often their timing is impeccable, and even if it’s not, there’s no denying who’s responsible. They love to show off, and soak up love, attention and praise. Neither do they confine themselves to replicating human speech: African Greys have been known to reproduce such sounds as running water, the telephone, the front door bell and a dog-owner’s whistle, which must have driven the particular dog crazy, not to mention the owners of the telephone and front door bell.

Perhaps their most appealing characteristics are their intense loyalty and loving natures. In the wild they mate for life, and it would seem they are equally devoted to their human companions.

I wish I could tell you that Diamond Jim started to talk or knew the lyrics or at least the names of the jazz and blues numbers I played while we were together at Luswishi River. I avoided playing in front of an audience – jazz and blues didn’t rank very highly in the musical tastes of a mining town in the middle of Africa – but I practised regularly, and thought I was doing okay on the harmonica. Sure, it wasn’t a piano, but the sixteen-hole chromatic Hohner was nevertheless a beautiful instrument and I wanted to do it justice.

In my imagination I saw DJ as part of an act I was preparing for some imagined future when I would no longer be pursued by the Mafia. DJ would maybe act as a compere, the world’s first parrot to introduce a jazz and blues repertoire. No doubt he’d be capable of the odd spontaneous and amusing crack during a performance. But so far I’d had no luck. Apart from dancing, which was impressive and very amusing, DJ hadn’t said a single word from a single song. I guess the diamonds he carried in his crop might have been too big a responsibility for one little bird.

I hadn’t entirely given up on him, though. He was counting pretty well and learning his colours. I’d laugh and scratch him under the beak because, in truth, all he really had to be was Diamond Jim, whom I had quickly learned to love. My lonely childhood, with no pets and few if any close friends, had not prepared me for the intense feelings I had for this small grey parrot. But I kept working with him, my one ardent hope being that after I finished ‘Love Me or Leave Me’, he’d learn to say, ‘I love you, Bridgett’. Which just shows what a sentimental idiot I was and probably still am.

As I said, after the poker game, things started to improve for me. And then one day, almost two hours before my shift began, I got a message to come on shift half an hour early, to see Mike Tilson, the night manager for number seven shaft. When I got to the shaft head, he briefed me. ‘Jack, we’ve got the risk of a bad flood underground on the eleven hundred level. The diamond drillers on the morning shift were drilling a new ventilation shaft when they tapped into an underground spring.’

‘That’s pretty unusual, isn’t it?’

‘Well, it sometimes happens. The surveyors usually pick it up and we pipe the water away. But this time, it came as a surprise. The trouble is the shaft is already about thirty feet deep and filling fast. The pipe fitters can only get two pumps in while they try to fit a pipe to redirect the water into a safe area.’

I wasn’t sure I understood. ‘You mean, if the shaft fills, then flows over, it will flood . . . ?’

‘It will flood the cage shaft and pour down into the fourteen hundred level. We’ve already evacuated the mine, except for a pipe fitter and his gang, and we’ve recalled two diamond drillers from the eleven hundred level. The idea is to drill and blast. The blasted rock will partly fill the ventilation shaft, but the main thing is to widen it enough to allow three more pumps to work. We need you to stand by in case there’s trouble. I don’t have to tell you that what they’re doing down there is dangerous work. If the cage shaft floods, it’s a long climb to the surface; that is, if you can get to the emergency shaft ladders in time to climb out of the mine.’

‘Thanks for nothing, Mr Tilson,’ I said with a grin. ‘My medic team doesn’t come on shift for another twenty-five minutes. Shall I go on ahead?’

‘If you would, please, Jack. We’ll send them down as soon as they arrive. Shorty Bronkhorst’s medic team has to come to the surface as soon as you get down. He’s had a bad asthma attack and his team, as you know, can’t stay behind without a white medic in charge.’

‘Who are the diamond drillers and the pipe fitter?’ I asked as I went to get a freshly charged lamp pack and clipped the light to my miner’s helmet.

‘Piet Wenzel, who you know, I think,’ Mike Tilson replied. ‘Then a new guy, Klaas Potgieter, I don’t think you’d know him, he’s only been here two weeks. The pipe fitter is Hungarian, I think: Adorjan Hajdu.’

‘Okay. The cage is waiting to take me down; I’ll make myself known when I get there.’

The miners’ cage was designed to take twenty people up or down at a time but I was the only one in it as it plunged down humming on its cables to the eleven hundred level. When I got clear of the cage, I could hear the blasting hooter going and, shortly after, a muffled explosion. I estimated it was probably about a five-minute walk away.

By the time I got to the blasting site, the air blowers had cleared the smoke from the blast, and I was met by Piet Wenzel, whose opinion of me had improved since that memorable poker game.

‘Howzit, Jack?’ he said as I approached.

‘Fine, Piet; this is an unusual shift for a diamond driller, isn’t it? By this time, you guys are usually well pissed,’ I joked.

He laughed. ‘You can say that again, Jack. I dunno how you do this midnight to dawn stuff. You’re a crazy man. It’s time you became a diamond driller. We’ll train you, man. You’ve got the size and the brains.’

He then introduced me to the second diamond driller. ‘This is Klaas Potgieter; Klaas, this is Jack Reed.’ Potgieter nodded but didn’t offer his hand. ‘Nice to meet you, Mr Potgieter,’ I said. Diamond drillers were on the top of the mining heap and a certain formality, while not entirely necessary, was a sign of respect. Piet then turned towards the pipe fitter. ‘And this is . . . ah . . .’

I jumped in and extended my hand, smiling. ‘You must be Mr Adorjan Hajdu; nice to meet you, I’m Jack Reed.’ The pipe fitter seemed pleased to have both his names used and smiled broadly, shaking my hand vigorously.

They and their African gangs were soaked to the skin, and it occurred to me that could be why Klaas Potgieter hadn’t shaken hands. But now he turned to Piet Wenzel. ‘Hey, is this the guy I heard about, the
kaffir
lover?’ He could have said this in Afrikaans and I wouldn’t have understood, so obviously it was meant for me to hear. Nice guy.

Piet Wenzel was quick to defend me, also speaking in English. ‘
Heere
, Klaas, that’s old stuff now. Jack is a good guy, n’
regte man
[a real man]’.

But Klaas Potgieter seemed unimpressed and turned away, calling to his black gang to return to his drilling site.

Piet Wenzel turned to me. ‘Take no notice, Jack. He’s new, from down south. I knew him before, we were together in Randfontein; both of us were on the miners’ union committee.’ He jerked his head in the direction Klaas Potgieter had taken. ‘That one, he’s always had a big mouth.’ He then explained to me that they had one more drill each to do, two blasts, then they’d lash the walls of the shaft, and the pipe fitter would be able to get two more pumps working; or that was the plan. ‘Jack, how come you can remember his name, man? They all the same to me, these foreigners.’

‘Blessed with a good memory, I guess.’

‘
Ja
, that’s why you so good at cards, hey?’ He laughed. ‘I’ll never forget those Congo guys when you spoke to them in French. They shat themselves, I swear it, man,
kaked
their trousers.’

He left to do his final drill and, shortly afterwards, my team arrived, though Samson was off sick with malaria, according to Daniel. I explained the situation in Cikabanga to the remaining three. ‘I don’t think there will be any problems,’ I concluded, to reassure them, then, as an afterthought, I asked, ‘Do any of you swim?’

Jackson laughed. ‘I born by the river,
Bwana
Jack.’

‘Any of you know anything about artificial respiration?’

Daniel put up his hand. ‘I have one demonstration long, long time,
Bwana
Jack.’

‘Well, they seem to have everything under control and it’s probably not something we will need, but I’ll give you all a demonstration.’

Artificial respiration was essential knowledge for a medic working on a beach-landing craft. The method taught by the Royal Life Saving Society was known as the Holger Nielsen Method of Artificial Respiration.

Nick Reed, my stepfather, always claimed it was pretty inefficient; in fact, almost ineffectual. If you kept the throat clear, victims of drowning more or less found their own way back to breathing, or died or were probably dead anyhow. ‘Right,’ I said in Cikabanga, using Jackson as my patient. ‘Place the patient on his stomach, with his hands crossed like this, and placed under his forehead. Turn his head to the side, so his mouth and nose aren’t covered. Place your hands on his shoulder blades, with the thumbs along his spine, like this.’ I demonstrated. ‘Then lean forward – one, two – and that presses air out of the lungs, then grab his arms here – three,’ I grasped Jackson’s upper arms near the elbows, ‘and lift – four, five – and his lungs fill with air. And repeat.’ I sat back on my heels. ‘That’s about it.’

I lay down beside Jackson and asked the other two black medics to demonstrate the method on us.

The second blast occurred half an hour or so later, and when the smoke finally cleared, Piet Wenzel’s gang started to use crowbars to pry any loose rock from the walls of the shaft – or lash the shaft – to further widen it. Some rocks still clung precariously to the walls and it was important that these were loosened and sent tumbling into the water below.

By lowering a weighted line into the water, we estimated that it was now around ten feet deep. Water was still pouring from the underground spring, but Adorjan Hajdu assured me he could get two more pumps in, and that ought to stop the water rising until he could attach a pipe to the spring’s outlet.

Piet’s gang, working nearest to us, had just about completed lashing, except for one stubborn slab of rock that clung to the side of the shaft. The men, using a long crowbar, seemed to be having trouble prying it off. Piet pushed two of his gang aside. ‘
Heere
, man, these
blerrie kaffirs
, you show them how to do it, but they never focking learn,’ he said impatiently. He then grabbed a long crowbar from one of the gang and started to work on the slab. Suddenly it came away, knocking him into one of his gang and then straight down some twenty feet into the darkness of the water-filled tunnel. Almost at once, the African he’d struck overbalanced and followed him down. Both disappeared into the black hole and, an instant later, we heard the huge splash as they almost simultaneously hit the water.

‘Jesus!’ I screamed, then, grabbing the rope we used to measure the depth, I pointed to another rope and yelled for Jackson to grab it. Daniel and Milo, working frantically, wrapped one around Jackson’s waist and the other around mine and lowered us into the shaft, feeding out the ropes and shining their headlamps into the shaft so we could see.

My ears strained to detect any sound from the water below, but I could hear nothing. I reached the water first and almost immediately saw the arm of the black guy. Clinging to the rope with one arm I pulled him towards me with the other. As soon as he was close enough, I clamped both arms around his chest and yelled to be pulled up.

I could feel the rock on the sides of the shaft cutting into my back through my heavy woollen miner’s vest as they hauled us up, a process that seemed to take an eternity. Hands seemed to come from everywhere to grab at us and then pull us into a clear space. I was gasping and panting, but somehow, with the help of Daniel and Milo, I managed to place the unconscious black miner face down so that I could begin artificial respiration in the manner I’d just demonstrated to my team.

A minute or so later, Jackson emerged with Piet Wenzel, also unconscious. Jackson looked exhausted, so I yelled for Daniel to take over from Jackson and work on Piet, who, I noted, had a serious-looking gash on his forehead. ‘Milo, you fix the cut on the
bwana
’s head,’ I gasped. The black guy under my hands showed no signs of life, but I kept working on him. If he had any chance of recovering, I daren’t stop.
Bloody Samson, where was he when I needed him?
Then, after another minute or so, I felt the black miner’s chest heave and he began to cough, expelling a flood of water from his mouth and nose. Still coughing and spluttering, he started to expel more water from his lungs, then painfully drew air into them. It had worked! He was alive. Elated, I yelled over to Jackson, ‘Take care of this guy; he’s going to be okay, just hold his head clear, watch out he doesn’t choke.’