The Angels Weep (4 page)

Now, listening to his son talk with that infectious energy and
charisma which even those hard days and nights of physical labour
on the claims could not dull, Zouga reflected that Ralph had laid
the telegraph lines from Kimberley to Fort Salisbury, that his
construction gangs were at this moment laying the railway lines
across the same wilderness towards Bulawayo, that his two hundred
wagons carried trade goods to more than a hundred of
Ralph’s own trading-posts scattered across Bechuanaland and
Matabeleland and Mashonaland, that as of today Ralph was a
half-owner of a gold mine that promised to be as rich as any on
the fabulous Witwatersrand.

Zouga smiled to himself as he listened to Ralph talk in the
flickering firelight, and he thought suddenly, ‘Damn it,
but they might be right after all – the puppy might just
possibly be a millionaire already.’ And his pride was
tinged with envy. Zouga himself had worked and dreamed from long
before Ralph was born, had made sacrifices and had suffered
hardships that still made him shudder when he thought about them,
all for much lesser reward. Apart from this new reef, all he had
to show for a lifetime of striving was King’s Lynn and
Louise – and then he smiled. With those two possessions, he
was richer than Mr Rhodes would ever be.

Zouga sighed and tilted his hat forward over his eyes, and
with Louise’s beloved face held firmly in the eye of his
mind he drifted into sleep, while across the fire Ralph still
talked quietly, for himself more than for his father, and
conjured up new visions of wealth and power.

I
t was two full
days’ ride back to the wagons, but they were still half a
mile from the camp when they were spotted, and a joyous tide of
servants and children and dogs and wives came clamouring out to
greet them.

Ralph spurred forward and leaned low from the saddle to sweep
Cathy up onto the pommel so violently that her hair tumbled into
her face and she shrieked breathlessly until he silenced her with
a kiss full on the mouth, and he held the kiss unashamedly while
little Jonathan danced impatiently around the horse shouting,
‘Me too! Lift me up, too, Papa!’

When at last he broke the kiss, Ralph held her close still,
and his stiff dark moustache tickled her ear as he whispered,
‘The minute I get you into the tent, Katie my love, we will
give that new mattress of yours a stiff test.’

She flushed a richer tone of pink and tried to slap his cheek,
but the blow was light and loving. Ralph chuckled, then reached
down and picked Jonathan up by one arm and dropped him into the
gelding’s croup behind the saddle.

The boy wrapped his arms around Ralph’s waist and
demanded in a high piping voice: ‘Did you find gold,
Papa?’

‘A ton.’

‘Did you shoot any lions?’

‘A hundred.’

‘Did you kill any Matabele?’

‘The season’s closed,’ Ralph laughed, and
ruffled his son’s dark thick curls, but Cathy scolded
quickly.

‘That’s a wicked thing to ask your father, you
bloodthirsty little pagan.’

Louise followed the younger woman and the child at a more
sedate pace, stepping lightly and lithely in the thick dust of
the wagon road. Her hair was drawn back from her broad forehead
and hung down her back to the level of her waist in a thick
braid. It emphasized the high arches of her cheekbones.

Her eyes had changed colour again. It always fascinated Zouga
to see the shifts of her mood reflected in those huge slanted
eyes. Now they were a lighter softer blue, the colour of
happiness. She stopped at the horse’s head and Zouga
stepped down from the stirrup and lifted the hat from his head,
studying her gravely for a moment before he spoke.

‘Even in such a short time I had forgotten how truly
beautiful you are,’ he said.

‘It was not a short time,’ she contradicted him.
‘Every hour I am away from you is an eternity.’

It was an elaborate camp, for this was Cathy and Ralph’s
home. They owned no other, but like gypsies moved to where the
pickings were richest. There were four wagons outspanned under
the tall arched wild fig trees on the bank of the river above the
ford. The tents were of new snowy canvas, one of which, set a
little apart, served for ablution. This contained a galvanized
iron bath in which one could stretch out full length. There was a
servant whose sole duty was to tend the forty-gallon drum on the
fire behind the tent and to deliver unlimited quantities of hot
water, day and night. Another smaller tent beyond held a commode
whose seat Cathy had hand-painted with cupids and bouquets of
roses, and beside the commode she had placed the ultimate luxury,
scented sheets of soft coloured paper in a sandalwood box.

There were horse-hair mattresses on each cot, comfortable
canvas chairs to sit on, and a long trestle-table to eat off
under the fly of the open-sided dining tent. There were canvas
coolers for the champagne and lemonade bottles, food safes
screened with insect-proof gauze, and thirty servants. Servants
to cut wood and tend fires, servants to wash and iron so that the
women could change their clothing daily, others to make the bed
and sweep up every fallen leaf from the bare ground between the
tents and then sprinkle it with water to lay the dust, one to
wait exclusively upon Master Jonathan, to feed him and bathe him
and ride him on a shoulder or sing to him when he grew petulant.
Servants to cook the food and to wait upon the table, servants to
light the lanterns and lace up the flies of the tents at
nightfall and even one to empty the bucket of the hand-painted
commode whenever the little bell tinkled.

Ralph rode in through the gate of the high thornbush stockade
that surrounded the entire camp to protect it from the nocturnal
visits of the lion prides. Cathy was still on the saddle in front
of him and his son up behind.

He looked about the camp with satisfaction, and squeezed
Cathy’s waist. ‘By God, it’s good to be home, a
hot bath, and you can scrub my back, Katie.’ He broke off,
and exclaimed with surprise. ‘Damn it, woman! You might
have warned me!’

‘You never gave me a chance,’ she protested.

Parked at the end of the row of wagons was a closed coach, a
vehicle with sprung wheels, the windows fitted with teak shutters
that could be raised against the heat. The body of the coach was
painted a cool and delightful green under the dust and dried mud
of hard travel, the doors were picked out in gold leaf and the
high wheels piped with the same gold. The interior was finished
in glossy green leather with gold tassels on the curtains. There
were fitted leather and brass steamer trunks strapped to the roof
rack, and beyond the coach in Ralph’s kraal of thornbush,
the big white mules, all carefully matched for colour and size,
were feeding on bundles of fresh grass that Ralph’s
servants had cut along the river bank.

‘How did Himself find us?’ Ralph demanded, as he
let Cathy down to the ground. He did not have to ask who the
visitor was, this magnificent equipage was famous across the
continent.

‘We are camped only a mile from the main road up from
the south,’ Cathy pointed out tartly. ‘He could
hardly miss us.’

‘And he has his whole gang with him, by the looks of
it,’ Ralph muttered. There were two dozen blood horses in
the kraal with the white mules.

‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s
men,’ Cathy agreed, and at that moment Zouga hurried in
through the gate with Louise on his arm. He was as excited by
their visitor as Ralph was irritated.

‘Louise tells me that he has broken his journey
especially to talk to me.’

‘You had better not keep him waiting then, Papa,’
Ralph grinned sardonically. It was strange how all men, even the
aloof and cool-headed Major Zouga Ballantyne, came under the
spell that their visitor wove. Ralph prided himself that he alone
was able to resist it, although at times it required a conscious
effort.

Zouga was striding eagerly down the row of wagons towards the
inner stockade with Louise skipping to keep up with him. Ralph
dawdled deliberately, admiring the remarkable animals that
Jonathan had moulded from river clay and now paraded for his
approbation.

‘Beautiful hippos, Jon-Jon! Not hippo? Oh, I see, the
horns fell off, did they? Well then, they are the most beautiful,
fattest hornless kudu that I have ever seen.’

Cathy tugged at his arm at last. ‘You know he wants to
speak to you also, Ralph,’ she urged, and Ralph swung
Jonathan up onto his shoulder, took Cathy on his other arm, for
he knew that such a display of domesticity would irritate the man
they were going to meet, and sauntered into the inner stockade of
the camp.

The canvas sides of the dining marquee had been rolled up to
allow the cool afternoon breeze to blow through it, and there
were half a dozen men seated at the long trestle-table. In the
centre of the group was a hulking figure, dressed in an
ill-fitting jacket of expensive English cloth that was closed to
the top button. The knot of his necktie had slipped and the
colours of Oriel College were dulled with the dust of the long
road up from the diamond city of Kimberley.

Even Ralph, whose feelings for this ungainly giant of a man
were ambivalent, hostility mixed with a grudging admiration, was
shocked by the changes that a few short years had wrought on him.
The meaty features seemed to have sagged from the raw bones of
his face, his colour was high and unhealthy. He was barely forty
years of age, yet his moustache and sideburns had faded from
ruddy blond to dull silver, and he looked fifteen years older.
Only the pale blue eyes retained their force and mystic visionary
glitter.

‘Well, how are you, Ralph?’ His voice was high and
clear, incongruous in such a big body.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Rhodes,’ Ralph replied, and
despite himself let his son slip from his shoulder and lowered
him gently to the ground. Instantly the child darted away.

‘How is my railway progressing, while you are out here
enjoying yourself?’

‘Ahead of schedule and below budget,’ Ralph
countered the barely veiled rebuke, and with a small effort broke
the hypnotic gaze of those blue eyes and glanced at the men who
flanked Mr Rhodes.

On his right was the great man’s shadow, small,
narrow-shouldered and as neatly dressed as his master was untidy.
He had the prim but nondescript features of a schoolmaster, and
receding wispy hair, but keen and acquisitive eyes that gave the
lie to the rest of it.

‘Jameson,’ Ralph nodded coolly at him, using
neither Doctor Leander Starr Jameson’s title nor the more
familiar and affectionate ‘Doctor Jim’.

‘Young Ballantyne.’ Jameson slightly emphasized
the diminutive and gave it a faintly derogatory twist. From the
very first, their hostility had been mutual and instinctive.

From Rhodes’ left rose a younger man with straight back
and broad shoulders, an open handsome face and a friendly smile
which showed big even white teeth.

‘Hello, Ralph.’ His handshake was firm and dry,
his Kentucky accent easy and pleasant.

‘Harry, I was speaking of you this very morning.’
Ralph’s pleasure was obvious, and he glanced at Zouga.
‘Papa, this is Harry Mellow, the best mining engineer in
Africa.’

Zouga nodded. ‘We have been introduced.’ And
father and son exchanged a glance of understanding.

This young American was the one that Ralph had chosen to
develop and operate the Harkness Mine. It meant little to Ralph
that Harry Mellow, like most of the bright young bachelors of
special promise in southern Africa, already worked for Cecil John
Rhodes. Ralph intended to find the bait that would tempt him
away.

‘We must talk later, Harry,’ he murmured, and
turned to another young man seated at the end of the table.

‘Jordan,’ he exclaimed. ‘By God, it’s
good to see you.’

The two brothers met and embraced, and Ralph made no effort to
hide his affection, but then everybody loved Jordan. They loved
him not only for his golden beauty and gentle manner, but also
for his many talents and for the warmth and real concern that he
extended to all about him.

‘Oh Ralph, I have so much to ask, and so much to tell
you.’ Jordan’s delight was as intense as
Ralph’s.

‘Later, Jordan,’ Mr Rhodes broke in querulously.
He did not like to be interrupted, and he waved Jordan back to
his seat. Jordan went instantly. He had been Mr Rhodes’
private secretary since he was nineteen years of age, and
obedience to his master’s least whim was part of his nature
by now.

Rhodes glanced at Cathy and Louise. ‘Ladies, I am sure
you will find our discourse tedious, and you have urgent chores
to attend to, I am certain.’

Cathy glanced up at her husband, and saw Ralph’s quick
annoyance at the artless presumption with which Mr Rhodes had
taken over his camp and all within it. Surreptitiously Cathy
squeezed his hand to calm him, and felt Ralph relax slightly.
There was a limit to even Ralph’s defiance. He might not be
in Rhodes’ employ, but the railway contract and a hundred
cartage routes depended upon this man.

Then Cathy looked across at Louise, and saw that she was as
piqued by the dismissal. There was a blue spark in her eyes and a
faint heat under the fine freckles on her cheeks, but her voice
was level and cool as she replied for both Cathy and herself,
‘Of course you are correct, Mr Rhodes. Will you please
excuse us.’

It was well known that Mr Rhodes was uncomfortable in the
presence of females. He employed no female servants, would not
allow a painting nor statue of a woman to decorate his ornate
mansion at Groote Schuur in the Cape of Good Hope, he would not
even employ a married man in a position close to his person, and
immediately discharged even the most trusted employee who took
the unforgivable plunge into matrimony. ‘You cannot dance
to a woman’s whims and serve me at the same time,’ he
would explain as he fired an offender.