As we waltzed up the avenue, hand-in-hand, I allowed Maria’s shrill chatter to pour over my ears and into my central nervous system like warm balm. I did not on the whole listen to the content of her monologue: the unexpected cadences, the rising and falling pitch, the stammering staccatos and syncopated silences were to me of far greater interest than what she was actually saying. Thank heaven the stream of words required no more than grunts and expressions of astonishment by way of reply, for even when I tried I could make neither head nor tail of her discourse. Quite apart from the fact that her accent was quite foreign (though charming) to my ears, the rapid, fragmented topics which she covered were equally alien to me. These topics seemed mainly to concern local characters, all called only Auntie or Uncle, with whom she expected me to be as familiar as she was, an assumption which somehow gave an air of pleasing intimacy to our system of communication (I cannot call it ‘conversation’). I felt curiously at peace with myself.
There was something about the atmosphere on that long, shadowy avenue that reminded me of Oxford, though I knew perfectly well that no such conifer-lined road existed in that city of parks and gardens. Perhaps it was merely the pleasure of being in the company of an adorable chatterbox that soothed me and allowed me to surrender my defences, making me feel for once at home with both myself and my immediate environment.
But all at once I knew exactly why I felt I was in Oxford.
From the direction of the aviaries floated a familiar sound. At first one could be forgiven for thinking someone was sliding his lips up and down a flute or pipes of some kind, testing out the instrument with rapid scales. This precarious solo was followed by a chorus of whistles and chirps, and within minutes the blissful music of the English countryside was flooding through the palm trees and bougainvillaea as every blackbird, nightingale, thrush and chaffinch that I had brought with me across the sea burst inexplicably into song. It seemed scarcely believable. I was now in the ridiculous position of wanting to rush to my cages to ascertain the cause of this sudden phenomenon but having to drag my feet unbearably in order to keep pace with the dear little creature beside me. I longed to pick her up, to swing her on to my shoulders so that I could break into a run – what vestigial parental instinct yet lurked? – but knew such behaviour was doomed to failure because my inexperience with such matters would be only too evident: oh for the gift of spontaneity!
Our progress across the lawns beside the horseshoe of hydrangeas was made even slower as Maria bent down to gather acorns dropped by squirrels, or stiffened into statues of arrested excitement when the squirrels themselves darted across the lawn. An earthworm abandoned by a sparrow caused her to drop to her knees with a cry of pity, whereupon she proceeded to dig a hole in the lawn as a safe haven for this fortunate Annelid, which she tucked beneath the soil with all the concern of a mother putting her infant to bed.
At last we reached the aviaries, submerged, as usual, in purple shadow while the rest of the garden glowed in the sun. There was no sign of Salisbury and Chamberlain leaping in exultation, as one might expect. I could see in a flash that no nightingale sang, nor any thrush in the cage next door. The chaffinches and blackbirds too were songless as ever, hunched accusingly in the dark. The entire clamour tumbled from the cage of starlings who had, to the last bird, given up their vow of silence and were simultaneously exercising their syrinxes not so much in song as in unadulterated mimicry! The singing lessons they had received daily from their absent tutors now repeated themselves endlessly in the liquid trills, warbles and flutings of their silent co-species, and I cursed myself for having been so entirely deceived by their well-known imitative powers.
But what had triggered off this chorus of plagiarised birdsong from a species that, till the morning, was struck dumb as the rest of them? Even as the question formed itself in my mind, a jaunty whistle from a starling by my ear gave me the answer. The bright-eyed little mimic was reproducing, with syncopated expertise, exactly the rhythmic melodies that had disturbed me in my morning slumbers. It seemed that the dissonances of the Cakewalk were having precisely the effect upon the starling syrinx as they had had on my naked legs: neither song nor dance could resist its call.
‘The b-birds are singing nicely, hey?’
Maria’s little face was alight with pleasure. I could not bring myself to speak of my own disappointment, so I said, consciously imitating the sing-song way Kipling spoke to the very young: ‘Well, Maria, would you like to give names to the birds who are singing or to the ones who aren’t singing?’
She placed her chubby index finger over her chin, its tip poking into her mouth and arousing the interest of her gleaming red tongue.
‘I think …’ Clearly she had no idea what she thought, but much enjoyed this pose of deep seriousness. ‘I think I’ll name the singing b-birds … no, the birds who aren’t singing … no …’ Then: ‘The singing ones mustn’t sing too much or they’ll get sore throats, hey?’
I took her by the arm and led her to the silent cages. ‘Perhaps if you give these ones names they’ll begin to sing,’ I suggested.
‘Then will they come when I call them?’
‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
Maria’s system of nomenclature was unrelated to the methods of taxonomy I had hitherto encountered. I did not try to influence her decisions other than to point out that female birds might not logically be given names such as Eric, Cyril or George, and after making several such mistakes the clever child moved on to genderless names like Sunshine, Whistle or Treetops. Certainly the naming of birds was a passionate affair for her and an object of considerable interest to me, as I perceived the absolute necessity in the child for bestowing individual identities upon each of these creatures. Salisbury and Chamberlain, who had materialised from nowhere, pretending they had never been absent, sulked on the other side of the aviaries and grumbled loudly in their own tongue: it struck me that they had already named the birds according to some primitive classification system of their tribe.
‘Say good morning to the Professor, dear.’ Mrs Kipling’s soft voice curled up from behind my back. A conflict of emotions instantly erupted in my breast: displeasure at the interruption of my intimacy à deux, and pleasure at the sound of Mrs K’s motherly voice. However, fixing my features into a rictus of indifference, I turned to confront the smiling woman, who pushed forward the little girl of yesterday’s hydrangeas. This young person curtsied briefly and uttered the required greeting in a leaden voice (quite unlike the sugary chirrups provoked by her papa), her eyes resting with lively interest upon Maria’s pointing finger as the child continued to reel out her list of imaginative names.
‘I see we are interrupting a christening!’ exclaimed Mrs K gaily. ‘Run along and help, dear. Isn’t it interesting, Professor Wills, how children’s first concern is always to give everything a name – whether it’s a toy bear or a tortoise. Oh dear! I mustn’t speak too loudly or my husband will instantly compose a story upon the topic. Did you know he was writing a little book of children’s stories – how the leopard got his spots, that sort of thing. Not quite the explanation Mr Darwin would have provided, I daresay …’ Her plain face darted with mischief.
‘Mr Darwin has certainly incited a mania in the literary world for inventing origins,’ I remarked dryly. ‘I only hope that the confusions created in the children’s minds will not create havoc in their later lives.’
This attack on her husband’s work seemed to amuse her further. ‘Oh, these stories will certainly ruin any sense of Geography, I assure you – rhinoceroses by the Red Sea, hedgehogs on the Amazon – but does it matter, as long as they delight the imaginations of children?’
‘I am the wrong person to ask. I deal in facts, not imaginative fictions. Invention plays no part in my drab life.’
‘Are you then opposed to delight, Professor Wills?’ she enquired, a smile twitching in just one corner of her mouth.
‘It is perfectly possible to obtain delight from the natural world just as it is. Darwin’s Beagle journals are full of rapture at the infinite variation and diversity of nature, as indeed is his Origin of Species. For myself, I consider imagination to be much overrated.’
‘Well, you must be delighted to have your birds singing at last! What a relief!’ She seemed so pleased for my sake that I found it almost painful to have to inform her of the true state of affairs.
‘Oh, no one will know the difference!’ she exclaimed, then turned, still smiling, to the little girls at the aviaries, each outdoing the other in choosing bird-names. ‘Listen!’
The names had drifted into the category of the absurd.
‘Umbrella!’
‘Cough-drops!’
‘Suitcase!’
‘Moustache!’
‘Frog!’
Mrs K was clearly enchanted. For a woman who had scientific aspirations, her enthusiasm for nonsense seemed excessive. By the end of their performance she was nearly bent double with laughter, and I must say I envied her sense of humour: to me the children’s game dwelt in the impenetrable category of play, an area of human behaviour about which I know little. Finally, wiping a tear from her eye, she controlled her laughter and gasped: ‘Oh what fun! I assume – by the gap in her mouth – that the little one is responsible for our adventure last night. She’s gorgeous, Professor. Where did you find her?’
I never know whether questions like this are meant to be taken literally, and was about to reply to this one with complete geographical references when a jovial greeting saved me the effort.
‘Hail to thee, blithe spirits!’ called out Kipling, skipping down the flight of stone steps that led to the aviaries. ‘Or am I in the wrong poem? Good to hear your birds singing, Wills. And how are you, O best beloved? Your Mummy tells me you are quite, quite better.’ And he swung his daughter into the air with a lack of self-consciousness that I could only envy.
‘Can I smoke your chimbling, Daddy?’ The little girl whipped his smoking pipe from the depths of his moustache and placed it between her tiny lips.
‘Yes, darling child. Why not wear my hat as well!’ With high seriousness he drowned her in his drooping Panama and placed her back on the ground. The child shrieked with glee, evidently enjoying the sensation of being plunged into utter darkness.
‘Look, Mummy! Now I’m Daddy!’ The effort of speaking with a large pipe in her mouth proved too much, and a violent coughing fit followed. Papa retrieved his belongings, while Mama thumped the child on her back till normal breathing was resumed: ‘Really, dear, you do over-excite the child! You know she was poorly last night.’
‘I’m a terrible man,’ agreed Kipling, packing his pipe bowl with fresh tobacco and inhaling sharply in the way smoking men do. He directed his boyish, dimpled smile at me. ‘We owe you a debt of gratitude, Professor Wills. I must say, I’m having to revise my opinion of Oxford dons. I can make precisely one bird sound –’ and he proceeded to emit a harsh rasping noise, flapping his arms and bending his neck forward as he did so, much to the delight of the little girls. (Chamberlain and Salisbury choked back giggles from behind their hands.)
‘The vulture?’ I suggested.
‘Ah, now the vulture is the bird to bring back my earliest childhood memories.’ He puffed on his pipe, his eyes dancing behind his thick spectacles, while the children gathered round. ‘The vultures of Bombay, these are the birds responsible for my very first memory.’
‘Not in front of the children, dear,’ murmured Mrs K, but he continued as if he had not heard her.
‘We lived by the sea in the shadow of palm groves, but I did not know that our little house on the Bombay esplanade was near the Towers of Silence, where the Hindoos expose their dead to the waiting vultures. One day something dropped from the sky into our garden. I was playing in the open, near the palms. The something fell almost at my feet. My nanya rushed across and picked it up before I could see the something.’ He sucked hard on his pipe, which appeared to have died on him again. ‘She thought I hadn’t seen what fell out of the sky. But even now I often think of that little brown hand, dropping from the vulture’s beak – or would it have been talons, Professor?’
‘As I remember, the vultures of the Old World have feet like eagles, designed to grasp their prey,’ I murmured. ‘Unlike New World vultures.’
But Kipling’s attention had been diverted by the arrival of another guest who now limped down the stone steps, his face still a brilliant yellow above his none-too-clean collar.
‘Vultures?’ yelled Challenger. ‘Stupid bloody birds, if you’ll pardon my language, Madam. They can be standing right next to rotting flesh in the grass, and unless they can see the thing, they won’t know it’s there. Not like the black-and-white carrion crow that can smell a carcass from miles off. Good morning, Madam.’ He bowed at Mrs K, releasing wafts of brandy and tobacco as he did so. ‘Good morning, all. Morning, Wills. Good to see you again.’
It fell to me to introduce Challenger to the Kiplings, a task I rather enjoyed doing with heavy formality.
‘I trust you have had a good night’s sleep?’ said Mrs K, perhaps in the hope of an apology for the previous night’s events, but it was plain that Challenger had no recollection whatever of any irregular behaviour.
‘Top of the world, thank you,’ he replied. ‘Mind you, once you’ve slept under a cloud of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in a leech-infested swamp, anywhere is comfortable.’
‘Ah, Challenger.’ Kipling interrupted the wild cackle that followed this piece of information. ‘I was hoping to get a chance to speak to you. You’re a famous ivory hunter and dealer. Your African elephant is a very different creature from my Indian one, and I need some information for a story I’m writing. May I pick your brains?’
‘By all means. What’s left of them. Africa addles the frontal lobes, I’m afraid.’
‘My story goes like this: An African tribesman kills an elephant with poisoned arrows. Tusk number one is exchanged with a slave trader for a Snider rifle and a hundred cartridges; the slave trader exchanges the tusk for neck yokes and brass collars; eventually it reaches the West Coast of Africa from whence it is transported to Europe. Meantime the original hunter’s village is raided by Arabs and his wife taken prisoner and ransomed for ivory in the form of tusk number two. This tusk finds its way to the East Coast and on to Zanzibar and on to the salesrooms of the London docks where it is reunited with tusk number one. Tusk number one is converted into piano keys while tusk number two is less gloriously metamorphosed into billiard balls and umbrella handles. Now, what I need to know is details about the weight of tusks, their length, their quality. Are both the tusks the same size, for instance? Can you help me?’ He gave an amiable puff on his pipe.
‘Ah, elephants! What couldn’t I tell you about elephants!’ And for the next twenty minutes Challenger regaled us with one elephantine anecdote after another (Mrs K and the two girls stole away half-way through as much of it was bloodthirsty). And once elephants were dealt with, he lectured us on the most appropriate guns for shooting different types of big game; this led him to reminisce about his childhood and his ability with guns even in his early youth; this in turn reminded him of Winchester, whose playing fields he had transformed into the cradle of Africa; now he remembered his burning childhood ambition to discover the true source of the Nile and his bitter disappointment when Speke proved that that mighty river sprang from Lake Albert and not the Four Mystical Fountains of Herodotus, as Livingstone had so passionately believed; this led him to regret the intrusion of the missionary …
How is it possible to be a bore when the content of your discourse is extraordinary? Perhaps if we had been sitting in a lecture hall we might have listened with awe to this frenzied monologue but, instead, both Kipling and I found ourselves shifting from one foot to another, glancing at each other helplessly as either he or I attempted to interrupt the relentless torrent of words. Yet, even in the rigidity of my boredom, I felt soothed. I could spend hours, days, weeks, in the company of this madman, thought I, as I tugged at my beard and found the most coiled spring of hair in it; there is something about his craziness that allays my fears. Perhaps I will one day capture the Dodo with him, and become ravaged by Africa, that I may ravage her in return …
‘Even twenty years ago Africa was still the terra incognita where we Europeans might at last come to know ourselves,’ cried Challenger, revived by the deep draught he had taken from his flask. ‘But now, with all due respect to Dr Livingstone, whom I admire more than any man, living or dead, we have missionaries by the hundred trying to introduce that very civilisation from which men like myself are trying to escape. In their innocence, those missionaries do untold damage to the tribal structures they seek to uplift through Christianity –’
At this point Kipling removed his spectacles and began to clean them with exaggerated vigour. ‘I would have thought,’ said he, his face owlish and round-cheeked without the protection of his glasses, ‘that the arrival of the gun had more impact on African social structures than any missionary. Surely –’
‘Bunduki sultani ya bara bara!’ thundered Challenger in a terrible voice. ‘The gun is the Sultan of Africa, as Mr Stanley’s wangwana so succinctly expressed it. Why do you think Robert Moffat, the most successful missionary in Southern Africa, had the Matabele flocking to his sermons? Not to be converted, I assure you. Twenty-four is a generous estimate of the number of Matabeles Moffat succeeded in converting. No, Moffat had two attributes the Matabeles wanted and needed: he could cure their ailments with his medicine box and, more importantly, he was prepared to mend their guns!’
‘And would you not say that a man like yourself has done untold damage to the indigenous wildlife of Africa, to say nothing of its social structures?’ asked Kipling politely, though continuing to polish the lenses of his spectacles till I feared they might fall apart. ‘My tusk story will have the sister of the slaughtered elephant finding herself safe in the sanctuary set up in the north by the old Boer president.’
Challenger’s eyes roved wildly. He seemed to be addressing the top of a distant palm tree when he next spoke. ‘The truth of it is not so much that I possess the gun, but that the gun possesses me. I cannot live without it. When I have my new arm measured in England, I might just as well have a rifle fitted permanently to my shoulder instead. When in Africa, shoot. It’s the only language that everyone understands at once. Give me a light, old chap.’ From some other pocket he produced a silver case of heavily scented cigarillos, which he offered me with his shaking hand. Kipling sprang forward to oblige. ‘I keep a tally of what I have shot: most hunters do. Last year in the space of six months I had shot a hundred and seven big-game animals: thirty-two –’
An abrupt movement at the top of the flight of stone steps made him pause. Frank Harris leaned on his cane, raised his hat, and grinned. ‘Ah, Wills! I was told you’d be down here!’ Spruce and gleaming, he could have been on the way to his club, or the opera, a dandy on the Strand. It struck me that this man was always in remarkably good health. His eyes bore no trace of our late-night drinking; his body was lean and supple; the flush in his cheek was due to good circulation rather than over-indulgence. Again, I felt an unaccountable surge of affection upon hearing his voice.
Challenger was gazing at the intruder with an incredulity that I at first attributed to outrage at this interruption. But as he knitted his brows together and gazed upon Harris with a fervour that altogether lacked resentment, I saw in his eyes the stirrings of delighted recognition. Harris, for his part, bounded down the steps, swinging his cane and greeting Kipling with a breezy confidence that made me realise they already knew each other. Challenger watched his every move; then a hideous smile cracked open his face, and he staggered towards the swarthy little fellow before him.
‘Inundi! My brother!’ he cried hoarsely.
Harris looked up at him in surprise, no doubt taking him for some beggar we had stumbled upon in the gardens. Then surprise was overtaken by horror as the beggar threw his remaining arm round Harris’s neck and implanted a resonant kiss upon his closely-shaved, perfumed cheek. The little dandy leapt back, wiping his face with the handkerchief that peeped from his pocket: for a moment I thought he had lost his famous self-assurance.
‘I fear you are – mistaken!’ he exclaimed, but even as he uttered the last word, doubt entered his flashing eyes, and exactly the same emotion I had observed upon Challenger’s face now began to transform his gaze. In a changed voice he whispered:
‘It is you!’
‘Zambezi rapids ’96!’ blurted Challenger. ‘Treacherous carriers; malaria; high fever; no quinine; imminent death –then you appeared like a mirage with your line of porters and your medicine chest: you saved my life, no less – and I never even learnt your name!’
By now Harris had recovered his composure and was puffing out his chest with ill-disguised pleasure as Challenger catalogued his gratitude. ‘Think nothing of it, my dear chap,’ he purred. ‘We were ships that passed in the night. You’d have done the same for me, no question of that. But that excursion of mine along the Zambezi was soon to become a nightmare of intolerable proportions. I can quite honestly say I nearly died.’ He shuddered theatrically, and continued: ‘My charming porters deserted me and smashed my medicine chest when I was in a state of delirium brought on by blackwater fever. I was left with three tins of sardines to live on. By the time I arrived in Portuguese East Africa, I weighed eighty pounds, literally skin and bone. The Negroes fled from me in the streets, thinking I was a zombie or suchlike.’ His glance suddenly descended to Challenger’s empty sleeve. ‘I say, lost an arm, have you?’
‘Perhaps you two need to be introduced,’ interposed Kipling. ‘Frank Harris, editor, adviser to the rich and famous, bon viveur. G. B. Challenger, ivory hunter and explorer.’
Harris’s editorial eye lit up. ‘You don’t mean the Challenger – whose exploits the nation reads about in the broadsheets? The man I have longed to meet and interview?’
Challenger took a swig from his flask and bared his yellow teeth. ‘The very same!’ he leered. ‘At your service!’
‘But where is Mary?’ cried Frank. ‘Where is your little poodle? Of course! How could I have been so stupid? You and she were already inseparable when I met you in ’96 – but in ’96 you were not a household name!’
‘Mary!’ called out Challenger, and the little creature flew out of a pot of tumbling geraniums and scampered up to her master on her hind legs. I began to back away, my whole body at once throbbing with high anxiety – when Mary turned round and daintily, daintily, dropped her front paws to the ground and trotted up to me. I felt the sweat gush from my forehead and armpits, and by a supreme act of self-discipline restrained myself from shrieking out aloud.
‘Go on, old boy, give her a pat. Not often she comes up to a stranger!’
Mary sat on her haunches before me and smiled. Whether this was a circus trick she had learnt from Challenger I could not say, but her black lips stretched back into her white curls in what was unmistakably a gesture of friendliness. She raised one tiny paw.
‘She wants it shaken. She’ll never forgive you if you don’t!’
The dog’s laughing eyes egged me on. I could see the pleasure of grasping her paw momentarily with my fingertips – but what if those sharp little teeth sank into my scarred hand?
Kipling and Harris had joined Challenger with cries of encouragement, somehow sensing the seriousness of this moment. I forced a shrill, quivering voice out of my throat:
‘Sure she doesn’t b-b-bite?’
‘Not if she likes you – which she does! Clear as day!’
I bent my knees. A drop of moisture fell from my face on to the dog’s head. Her tail began to wag. Inch by inch, as it seemed, I extended my hand.
And touched her little paw with my finger. She lowered her jaws, but before I could whip my hand away, her pink tongue protruded into my palm. It was extremely wet and extremely warm.
‘There you are!’ cried Challenger. ‘She’s giving you a kiss!’
Her job done, Mary began to sniff at the shoes of all the gentlemen, and might have offered them her paw (I found myself hoping she would not) when an unfamiliar noise drifted up from the far end of the avenue.
At this point, Chamberlain and Salisbury disentangled themselves from the shadows beyond the cages and ran forward joyously, chanting out a word at first incomprehensible to me: ‘ah-tah-mah-beeleh! ah-tab-mah-beeleh!’
And from the curve of the driveway emerged the object of their excitement, all brass and leather and heat and dust, with the Colossus himself behind the wheel, surrounded by three laughing female faces.
Jove in his chariot could not have looked more exultant than our sweating host, most of whose face was obscured by a pair of grotesque, rubber-rimmed spectacles, surmounted by a well-worn slouch hat. Beneath this headgear hung an ecstatic smile that nevertheless suggested to me a hint of mental derangement, in the style of Dodgson’s Cheshire Cat. And clustered around him, like laughing cherubs upon grubby clouds, were the two little girls and Mrs K, her stern visage relaxed into the same beaming smile.
‘Well, what do you think?’
Our host levered himself out of the driver’s seat and removed his ridiculous rubber spectacles. Miraculously absolved of our father-confessor roles, Kipling, Harris and I hurried to the top of the stairs, while Challenger appeared not to have heard the summons. Mrs K and the two girls waved feverishly.
The Colossus had by now pulled off his hat so that the crumpled thatch of his hair stood on end. His eyes were bloodshot once again, but full of blue animation. Words began to erupt from his mouth. ‘The country’s first horseless carriage – sprung and braked, single cylinder, belt-driven, fixed-ignition, twelve miles an hour: shall I buy her?’
At once Kipling, Harris, Salisbury and Chamberlain sprang into action. It was as if an invisible key had been turned to ignite some area of their consciousness and set their motors throbbing. The two boys danced in adoration around the automobile, touching the tyres, the brass trimmings, the folded Victoria hood, with a reverence they had certainly never accorded my birds, while the three men entered into a contest concerning the superior features of the French horseless carriage as compared with German and American rival makes. I had the feeling that unless someone turned their engines off they would run forever.
It seemed that Kipling already had a steam-car called a Locomobile, and had test-driven the very first Lanchester, whose springing he pronounced to be perfect. Harris, needless to say, had bought a motor-car three years earlier in Monte Carlo: a Georges Richard, seven horsepower, driven by belts. He was the first person in the world to have seen the four great cathedrals of France in one day, driving his motor from Amiens to Paris to Chartres to Rheims before the sun set.
‘Of course, aeroplanes will eventually supersede motorcars,’ he declared in his confident way. ‘Last year I went up for three hundred yards in an American machine – not far I know, but you can see that as far as flying’s concerned, not even the sky’s the limit!’
Mrs K was growing restless, even in her position of driver’s consort. When the men paused to draw breath in preparation for excited debate on this topic, she cut in swiftly with a revived smile and said, her voice sharp as a sword: ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you two gentleman, but I have a suggestion to make.’
The men gazed at her vaguely, as if trying to remember who she was. Then good manners forced the Colossus to stammer: ‘A-a suggestion?’
‘What I would like to suggest,’ Mrs K’s smile was charming, ‘is a visit to the seaside. In this very vehicle. I have recently discovered that Professor Wills here has spent several days on this estate without once setting foot outside it! In my opinion he needs to roll up his trousers and paddle, and I’m sure the girls would be only too delighted to assist him!’
I felt myself grow scarlet at her words. The notion of visiting the seaside was to me almost as foreign as that of visiting the Bangweolo Swamps, and my initial reaction was to reject the idea outright. But the little girls had immediately broken into cheers, and both the Colossus and Kipling stroked their moustaches to hide their smiles, while the excitement of my two young assistants grew to fever pitch. I could see that the suggestion had kindled the interest of our host, who, one would think, should have had more important things to do than paddle in the sea.
‘My dear Mrs Kipling, what a delightful idea,’ said he. ‘I should like nothing more than to visit my little cottage in Muizenberg. And I can think of nothing more pleasant than rolling up my trousers and refreshing my feet in the Atlantic Ocean. It will take us an hour to get there by automobile. We can paddle for an hour or two and be back in time for supper.’
‘Hooray!’ cried Kipling and threw his hat into the air.
‘Please, baas!’ whimpered Chamberlain and Salisbury, their eyes brimming with incipient gratitude.
‘It will be an entirely new ornithological experience for you,’ said Mrs Kipling as I shrank away from the vehicle into which her husband, wreathed in smiles, was now climbing. ‘There are some quite remarkable waders for you to observe, I can assure you.’
Fortunately I remembered to look at my fob-watch at this point and was able to exclaim in quite genuine surprise: ‘Oh dear! I’d quite lost track of the time. I’m afraid I have an appointment to keep!’
‘And I should like to take this opportunity of interviewing Challenger,’ said Harris, though I don’t believe he had been invited on the trip.
‘Oh, Professor, what a shame!’ Mrs K’s face puckered. She looked as if she wanted to query the nature of my appointment, but the Colossus had already started the engine by some mysterious means. With wild cries of delight the boys jumped on to the running board (they would be allowed to remain there as far as the gates).
Somewhat thankfully, I left Harris and Challenger to each other.
‘Ten minutes.’ Milner looked even grimmer than usual. The Cape cart waited outside the front entrance of the Great Granary, the two horses pawing the ground, their reins still in the driver’s hand. ‘In two hours I catch a train to Bloemfontein to meet the Flat Earth disciples. Where is the lady?’ He turned to mount the short flight of steps to the front door.
He reminded me of a fully wound clockwork toy, let loose to march around in circles. Clearly it would be fatal for him to stop moving.
‘Um, if you remember, the arrangement is that we’ll meet her on the mountain. As you’ll appreciate, she can’t very well come to this house.’
‘Stupid of me.’ He wheeled round to face me, suddenly half-smiling. ‘I suppose I’m quite intrigued to meet her. Not a beauty, though, is she?’ He was fiddling with his moustaches, nevertheless. ‘Come on, man, I’ve wasted two minutes already.’
‘This way.’ I led him across the lawn to the gate and we walked up the path rather more quickly than I might have wished. He was dressed very formally in pin-striped trousers and frock-coat, and carried his top hat under his arm. His head was bent forward in intense thought: he seemed oblivious of the banana trees and oleander that brushed his shoulder – an elephant or tiger would have crossed his path unnoticed.
Into the dark pine forest we marched, and I hoped that Miss Schreiner had kept her word and was waiting for us in Titania’s grove. The possibility that she might not be there began to stir considerable anxiety in my breast, as I did not feel strong enough to endure Milner’s displeasure.
‘How much further?’ he snapped as a mossy log caused him to slip and trip (his highly polished spats were quite unsuitable for this mountainous ascent) straight into the arms of Olive, who was standing ready for his entrance.
‘Sir Alfred!’ she cried, and then she too toppled over in a flurry of petticoats and hat-pins, his long body proving too heavy for her. As the two of them struggled on the ground I felt a spasm of regret that my Kodak did not hang around my neck.
‘You may laugh, Wills!’ Milner was all elbows and knees, trying to revert to the vertical on the slippery pine needles, while Olive was a dumpy pincushion with her legs splayed out. Her reticule had burst open, discharging its contents all around. Milner’s hat had landed upside down on a rock, as if begging for coins while the concoction on Olive’s head hung at an angle that released a torrent of dark unruly hair. I extended a helping hand.
‘Five minutes!’ shouted Milner, a gigantic segmented spider on his knees and hands, one of which held the fob-watch he had removed from his waistcoat pocket.
Miss Schreiner had a speech of exactly five minutes prepared. Summoning all her energies, and oblivious of the chunks of plant life that now clung to her bottle-green coat, she began to declaim:
‘Sir Alfred, I have to ask you to consider a very simple question. It is this: Who gains by war? What is it for? Not England! She has a great young nation’s heart to lose! She has treaties to violate … Not Africa! The great young nation, quickening today to its first consciousness of life, to be torn and rent … Not the brave English soldier. There are no laurels for him here. The dying lads with hands fresh from the plough; the old man tottering to the grave, who seizes the gun to die with it … Who gains by war? Not we the Africans whose hearts are knit to England. We love all. Each hired soldier’s bullet that strikes down a South African does more; it finds a bullet here in our hearts!’
And she struck her own breast thrice in her tremulous passion. Milner’s facial expression was deadpan. He had finally seated himself on the same fallen log that I had used the day before, and recovered his hat, which he placed upon his precariously crossed knees. Olive continued addressing her audience of one in the same ringing tones:
‘It may be said: but what has England to fear in a campaign with a country like Africa? … she can sweep it by mere numbers. We answer yes – she might do it – there is no doubt that England might send out sixty or a hundred thousand hired soldiers to South Africa, and they could bombard our towns and destroy our villages; they could shoot down men in the prime of life, and old men and boys, till there was hardly a kopje in the country without its stain of blood. When the war was over the imported soldier might leave the land – but not all. Some must be left to keep the remaining people down. There would be quiet in the land. South Africa would rise up silently, and count her dead and bury them. Have the dead no voices? In a thousand farmhouses black-robed women would hold memory of the country. There would be silence, but no peace!’ Miss Schreiner paused for dramatic effect.
‘There would be peace if all fighting men in arms had been shot or taken prisoner,’ remarked Milner.
Olive’s eyes lit up. ‘Yes, but what of the women? If there were left but five thousand pregnant South African-born women and all the rest of their people destroyed, these women would breed up again a race like the first!’
She had finished, and gazed fiercely down at Milner, whose expression had not changed. Then a fleeting contraction of his lower eyelid muscles indicated he was about to speak.
‘You have a high opinion of the Boer.’ His voice was distant.
Miss Schreiner took a deep breath and began again. ‘As a child I was brought up to despise the Boer. I remember being given a handful of sugar by a Boer child and throwing it away when I thought no one was looking because I thought I would have been contaminated if I’d eaten it. But later, when I lived among them for five years as a teacher on their farms, watching them in all the vicissitudes of life from birth to death, I learnt to love the Boer; but more, I learnt to admire him. I learnt that in the African Boer we have one of the most intellectually virile and dominant races the world has seen; a people who beneath a calm and almost stolid surface hide the most intense passions and the most indomitable resolution. Sir Alfred, the British race cannot afford to make an enemy of these people! There is a spiritual depth in the Boer entirely lacking in the treasure hunters and goldbugs who leech off the mines in the North and pretend they have come to Africa for some greater purpose. The Boer loves Africa for her own sake, and curses the day that gold was found in the rocks of their simple Republic!’
Milner hooded his eyes. ‘So you do not believe in economic progress? You think the world should remain in its primitive state?’
For a moment Olive wavered. She recognised that this cool man, who respected only restraint and shrewd logic, had opened up a trap into which she must not fall. But her fiery nature could not contain itself, and she broke into inflammatory prose:
‘But what does all this vast accumulation of material goods lead to? Does the human creature who craves more and more material possessions become a better creature? I say that the human spirit and even the human body are being crushed under this vast accumulation of material things, this ceaseless thirst for more and more; that the living creature is building up about itself a tomb in which it will finally dwindle and d–’
Milner stood up, an elaborate unfolding of a multi-jointed gentleman. I heard his knees crack several times.
‘Miss Schreiner,’ he declared, ‘I’m afraid my time has run out. These people you describe may be decadent and degenerate in your opinion, but you forget one thing. They are British. And I cannot tolerate the spectacle of thousands of British subjects kept permanently in the position of helots, calling vainly to Her Majesty’s Government for redress. I bid you good afternoon.’
I detected a click of highly polished heels among the pine needles. Olive looked as if she might fling herself at these very heels: instead, she straightened her stricken hat and said, in an altered voice: ‘You do not see the larger issue. Thank you for your time.’ Her face was grey.
Milner began his descent and I started to follow him, feeling I did not have the strength to remain with Olive in her state of mind. But even as I timidly moved into the shadow of the august High Commissioner of South Africa, Olive grabbed my arm with frightening strength, and pulled me back.
‘Stay!’ she hissed. Her eyes were wilder than I had ever seen them. ‘I have another card to play. But I need your help. Together we can still save this country from the catastrophe of war!’
Alfred the tarantula lasted two years in a glass box contained in a larger box of straw in my bedroom. I gained a certain notoriety through being his owner. He was the only pet I have ever had. He allowed me to stroke his furry back. One day I found him dead in the straw, his legs neatly folded. I grieved, but made no effort to replace him.
Violins appeared to be playing in Miss Schreiner’s chest. Brushing a frond of fern from her skirt, she informed me, in a voice which sliced through this delicate string accompaniment: ‘You may be interested to hear that my brother Will is Prime Minister of this colony!’
Her hand was still on my arm. We could hear Milner beating his retreat down the mountain path. I pulled my elbow free.
‘Miss Schreiner, I have business to attend to.’
How is it that some people can command by the timbre of their voice alone? Miss Schreiner looked absurd: her hat was askew and her clothes covered in foliage, but her speech, wild as it was, brimmed with an absolute assurance which cannot be ignored: like an obedient dog I stayed and heard her out, though longing to escape to some ill-defined freedom. (I once heard an old woman calmly require a street urchin to return the purse he had just picked from her pocket: as if mesmerised, he complied with her request, even muttering a few words of apology. I have absolutely no doubt that had I attempted to address him in the same way I would have had mud or worse slung in my eye, accompanied by a barrage of impudent imitations and verbal assaults.)
Olive began to speak.