Sunset at Sheba (2 page)

The bar of the Plummerton Hotel was one of the biggest single rooms in the town, stretching as it did the full length of the building, from the entrance hall to the dining-room where, in the old days, a man could always sleep on the floor at night when rooms were in short supply.

At one end of it a card game was in progress, the chatter of the excited players cutting through the small talk at the zinc-topped counter. The shelves of bottles along the mirrored wall were punctuated here and there with the skulls of springbok, eland and the magnificent kudu with its ponderous spiral armament, relics of the days when they could be shot almost in Theophilus Street. They were set in pairs flanking the picture of the gentle, bearded man who was King of England, screwed directly to the bare wall which here in the bar had been kept untouched by the heavy red and gold paper that graced the rest of the hotel.

The four newcomers paused in the entrance, staring round them, then they pushed through the crowd unnoticed towards the billiard-room door, a hotch-potch of glass like the porch of a chapel in coloured cubes and lozenges. The Portuguese, newly up from Delagoa Bay who was acting as reception clerk, looked up as the door clashed behind them, every scrap of glass chattering in its leaden socket, then he threw down his pen and hurried after them.

The big man with the yellow moustache was standing by the billiard table glancing round him, tapping the dusty green baize with restless white fingers. For a long time he said nothing, then he swung round, smacking the flat of his hand down on the table.

‘Where’s Winter?’ he snapped. ‘He’s supposed to be meeting me here.’

The other three - the soldier, the tall high-nosed boy and the plump spectacled legal-looking man - watched him silently, saying nothing, and he swung round, staring irritably about the room, as though searching the sparse furnishings.

‘This is a damn’ fine time to go and hide himself,’ he growled. ‘Go and get him, somebody, and let’s have something to drink. How about a glass of cham’ with a lump of ice for a cooler? I
need
something to take the taste of dust away.’

As the boy moved to the door, the Portuguese clerk appeared, proud of his English and eager to please.

‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘If you’re wanting rooms, I’m sorry we’re full up.’

The big man stared at him down his long nose. ‘Don’t talk damn’ nonsense,’ he said shortly.

‘Sir?’ The clerk’s jaw dropped.

‘I don’t want a room,’ the big man said. ‘I’m here to talk business.’

The clerk glanced round dubiously for a moment, startled by the big man’s reaction, then he licked his lips and tried again.

‘We have an excellent lounge,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I might suggest...’

‘No, you mightn’t,’ the big man said fiercely. ‘I know you’ve got a lounge.
And
a writing room.
And
a coffee room. But I
like
this room. We used to hold smoking concerts in here in the old days.
Let me like a soldier fall
and
Champagne Charlie
and
The Queen, God bless her.
It was in here we decided to put a stop to Chief Jeremiah’s damn’ nonsense and bring Dhanziland into the Empire. It was here I always did business with Rhodes and Barney Barnato and Beit. I started doing business in this room thirty years ago, and I’ve used it ever since. I’ve got used to it now. I’ve hired it - as from this minute and for as long as I want it.’

The clerk hesitated by the door, scared a little by the big man’s manner and uncertain what his next move should be.

The big man picked up a cue and, bending over the table, poked listlessly at the scattered balls. From the bar the muffled sound of argument found its way through the door, then the high-pitched voices of a group of Kaffirs quarrelling in the street outside the window broke into the room.

‘Stop those boys making that damn’ row,’ the big man said; and the glass door clashed as the spectacled man stepped outside. The racket of voices ceased abruptly.

The Portuguese clerk, still uncertain what to do, was watching cautiously, awed by the big man, who leaned over the table and sent one of the balls spinning down its length with a twist of his thick fingers. At last he seemed to realise the clerk was still there waiting alongside him, and he stared down at him with pale watery eyes.

‘Winter been here?’ he demanded.

‘Winter, sir?’

‘Francis Winter, from the newspaper. Where is he? He knew what time I’d arrive.’

There was something about the peremptory tone he employed that indicated he was used to being obeyed, and expected to be obeyed, and the clerk put on a show of eager servitude.

‘I’ll send a boy for him, sir,’ he said. ‘At once.’

‘Better go yourself. I don’t trust those damn’ boys.’

‘But sir...’

‘Get going, man! For God’s sake!’

The clerk was halfway out of the door and into the bar before he realised that he was being propelled by the big man’s hand on his elbow.

‘Yes, sir - of course! But who shall I say wants him?’

He was outside now, gazing back into the billiard room, baffled, a little scared, but eager to please still.

The big man stared at him, then at his three companions, and finally back at the clerk.

‘I’m Plummer, you damn’ fool,’ he said in a loud voice. ‘I started this place. Offy Plummer.’

Plummer was still pottering round the billiard table when Winter arrived, apparently absorbed but arguing all the time with the various minor politicians, agents and hangers-on who had made their way into the room as soon as the word had got round that he was in town. He gave his instructions and offered his opinions, laying his hands on every facet of the complicated machinery of his professional and political organisation, without once stopping his slow trudge round the billiard table and his unskilful poking at the yellowing balls.

But, in spite of his absorption, there was a fretful agitation behind his expression that kept breaking out in angry exclamations, a petulant anxiety that showed his attention was not wholly on the men who had gathered there to receive his decisions. The plump spectacled man who had arrived with him squatted, straddle-legged, across a chair by the door, his elbows resting on its back. The youngster with the high nose was stretched at full length on the horse-hair bench that ran round two sides of the room, his leather coat on the floor beside him, his eyes fixed on the noisome fly-papers on the brasswork fitted over the table to hold the lights. The soldier who had met them stood wide-legged at the window, his hot eyes on the street, his thin face alert, his body tensed, a taut handsome figure with his bright rows of medal ribbons, his mouth grim as he held his obvious impatience in check with difficulty.

The sycophantic group of hangers-on by the door were talking quietly, all of them with drinks in their hands, paid for by Plummer, waiting their turn while a man wearing the black armbands of a printer followed the great man backwards and forwards round the table, juggling a glass of whisky as he tried to listen to him over his broad shoulder.

Plummer seemed at last to have dispensed with his business and the agitation in his manner had come out into the open now.

‘Keep it out of the paper, Hazell,’ he was saying urgently in a soft voice that didn’t carry beyond the table. ‘Not a word, for God’s sake!’

‘Not a word, Mr Plummer.’

Three years before they had given Plummer a belated and somewhat reluctant knighthood for his services to the Empire but no one had ever got into the habit of calling him anything else but ‘Mister’.

‘Where’s my brother now?’ he was asking angrily. ‘Is he still in town?’

‘I heard so.’ The reply was given cautiously. ‘But I don’t know.’

‘Dammit - ‘ Plummer struck the white ball and watched it glance off the red into a pocket. The soldier by the window retrieved it silently and sent it down the table to him ‘ - dammit, Winter was supposed to keep an eye on him.
All the time!
We all knew the old fool hadn’t much sense. Good God, guns and ammunition at a time like this!’

He placed the ball on the spot at the head of the table and nodded to the soldier who had returned it. ‘Thanks, Kitto,’ he said. He glanced round him before leaning across the table again. ‘Where the hell is that damn’ Winter?’ he asked.

‘They’re looking for him now,’ the boy stretched on the settee said languidly.

‘Well, get him!’ Plummer looked up in the middle of his stroke and barked the order. ‘Get him, Romanis! Don’t just loaf about like that.’

The boy on the bench rose quickly, his face sulky, and crossed to the door, trailing his leather coat. Plummer finished his stroke, reaching across the table with a grunt, then as Romanis pushed through the group at the door, he lifted his head again. ‘Don’t come back without him,’ he called. ‘He should be here. What the hell was Willie thinking about?’ he went on bitterly, talking to himself, almost as though he were alone. ‘Selling weapons to the bloody Boers!’

‘I heard he was just hoping for a bit of quick profit, Mr Plummer,’ Hazell said helpfully. ‘Just some old Army stores. Coffee. Tea. Sugar et cetera. He didn’t bother to inquire where the stuff was going, that’s all. Nobody objected. Nobody stopped him, so he just went on. After all, there’ve been a lot of funny things happening lately, so he wasn’t alone. Rifles have been disappearing in towns loyal to the Government, and they’ve been making biltong and Boer biscuits for De Wet as fast as they can go up round Rustenburg and Marico. There’s plenty of talk of sedition.’

Kitto, the soldier, gave a quick restless terrier-like movement. ‘Wish I’d known about it,’ he said. ‘He deserves to be shot. Might be
my
people who’ll be on the wrong end of those damned guns.’

‘Take it easy, Kitto,’ Plummer said heavily. ‘Nobody’ll ever get the chance to use ‘em. Botha and Smuts’ll have De Wet in the bag before they get that far.’

He slammed hard at the balls and watched them as they clicked together and rolled to a stop in the centre of the green baize. ‘This damn’ table’s out of true,’ he observed bitterly, then he swung round on the others, his face puzzled and angry at the same time.

‘Willie must have been mad,’ he said. ‘They tell me he was using the home of some damn’ fancy woman. By Snuff, I ought to let him face it.’

‘You ought to have thrown him over years ago,’ Kitto said scornfully. ‘He was never much of an asset.’

Plummer dug at his boot with the heel of the billiard cue. ‘If it had been something else - another of his damned swindles,’ he said, ‘I’d have let him go hang. By Ginger,’ he ended with a despairing goaded fury, ‘why did it have to happen
now,
of all times?’

‘He was always the same,’ Kitto said from the window. ‘Even when he first came out here twenty-odd years ago.’ He turned, his narrow honest face indignant. ‘Fights,’ he said contemptuously. ‘Gambling. Those damned coloured bits from the Bree Street shebeens who used to come up here to try for white and make their fortunes.’

Plummer made a despairing gesture, ignoring Kitto.

‘I’d managed to build up a reputation here for integrity,’ he said bitterly. ‘I had ‘em almost eating out of my hand. And then this,
this!’
He fought to control the anger that blazed in his face for a second, the muscles at his jaw line working, then he turned to the newspaperman again.

‘What’s the feeling round here anyway?’ he demanded sharply. ‘Whose side are they all on?’

The newspaperman was rubbing his chin, picking his words carefully, anxious not to offend.

‘Hard to say, Mr Plummer,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t think there’ll be any striking, as there was on the Rand, no burning the
Examiner
Office like they did with the Jo’burg
Star.
But what with Grant smashed by the Germans at Sandfontein, and Maritz turning traitor and selling out to them from Upington, they’re beginning to wonder what the hell’s going to happen. What can you expect, with Beyers loose in the north with fifteen thousand men, and De Wet running riot in the Free State? It isn’t so very long since the Boer War, and feelings still run a bit high.’

‘Don’t worry about De Wet and Beyers,’ Plummer said confidently. ‘Botha and Smuts’ll settle
them.
They’ve got the money and its money that wins wars. Botha’s already forced De Wet into Bechuanaland. He’s got cars, fast cars, and De Wet’s only got horses and no supplies. I’m raising men and arms as fast as I can to help. They’ve only got to pin him down.’

The newspaperman shrugged. ‘Well, someone had better pin someone down soon, Mr Plummer.’

Plummer bent over the table again. ‘Where the hell’s Winter got to?’ he said gloomily. ‘By the time he arrives, it’ll be all over town.’ He looked up at the printer. ‘Go on, what else do you know? About Willie, I mean.’

‘Everybody’s talking about the affair, of course,’ Hazell said. ‘The police were on to it like a ton of bricks. They’re naturally red hot on any sign of disaffection just now, and that damn’ fire-eating lawyer, Fabricius, who leads the Afrikaners here - naturally he’s got his ears pricked well up.’

Plummer nodded, gave the white ball a vicious bang, missed badly and flung down the cue with an angry gesture. It rolled off the table and clattered to the floor, and Kitto, by the window, stooped and, picking it up, handed it back to him silently, his dark handsome face faintly touched by scorn.

‘God damn Willie!’ Plummer said bitterly.

It was at that moment that Romanis returned, almost falling into the room. He slammed the door behind him, setting all the cubes and lozenges of coloured glass rattling in their sockets.

Plummer winced at the crash and looked up. ‘Go on,’ he commanded sharply.

‘Winter’s here,’ Romanis said, his lanky frame disjointed with excitement. ‘I just saw him coming into the hotel.’

Immediately, the buzz of conversation in the corner of the room stopped. Plummer paused with the cue in his hand, then he laid it down on the table with a clatter. The newspaperman moved away and Plummer waved an irritable hand at the group by the door. They nodded and backed out quickly so that only the intimates were left. Romanis, Kitto, Hoole and the newspaperman.