He was slumped in a large wicker chair, his long legs crossed, a glass of something dark and frothy in one hand, a Turkish cigarette in the other. His massive head sagged. Beside him stood a trolley of crystal decanters and glasses. The long verandah had been cleared of children and nursemaids, though I saw Huxley vanish through a far door as I approached.
Yes, I suppose there is a look of Napoleon, even Caesar, in that florid face. The big nose, hooked and slightly askew. The meaty cheeks. The working mouth. The glaring eyes. Which were turned upon the darkening mountain-face but which I knew had registered my arrival by their slight tremor.
‘Pull up a chair, Wills.’ His falsetto voice soared. ‘No, not that way – look what you’re missing, man. And pour yourself a drink. I’ve got something to say to you.’
Though I did not normally drink alcohol at that early hour, I felt that a strong whisky would give me the courage I would probably need during the exchanges to come. I turned a wicker chair to face the mountain so that we sat side by side, sipping our drinks. I could not bring myself to lift my eyes, and focused instead on the formal Dutch garden immediately before me. A cicada began to shrill from under one of the great wooden chests behind us.
‘Great things are done when men and mountains meet, Which are not – which are not what, Wills?’
‘Which are not done by jostling in the street.’ I swallowed the entire contents of my glass and wished I had poured more into it.
‘I’ve never heard a truer word. I’m not what you call a practising Christian, Wills, but the church I’d like to meet is up there, made of cliffs and ravines and waterfalls and trees. I have some of my best Thoughts in some mountain kloof, when I’m alone with the Alone.’ (He had forgotten that I’d already heard all this mystical claptrap.) After a melancholy pause: ‘What time is it, Wills?’
I informed him that it was a quarter past six.
‘You’ll have noticed that the sun has already set on this side of the mountain. People told me I was crazy to build my house in the mountain’s shadow, but I like the shade, Wills, I like the shade.’ He shifted his great mass in the chair. ‘If we were in Cape Town itself we’d be sitting in bright sunlight, watching the sun still quite high above the ocean’s horizon. Magnificent sunsets you get there. Pinks, oranges. All reflected in the sea. Pity you haven’t got time to see them.’
‘This is indeed a land of extraordinary beauty,’ I murmured.
‘And all the more beautiful for being British, Wills. And the whole of Southern Africa could be beautified in the same way: a united South Africa under the Crown, through peace and gold. Now I fear it will be federation through blood and gold.’
I remembered Milner’s words and said: ‘Once you have Africa, what of other continents?’
He was ready enough to reply, though his voice slurred a little. ‘I would recover America if I could – just think, if we had retained America there would be millions more English living. Yes, I would procure the Holy Land – China – Japan …’ He threw out his arms at the darkening sky. ‘Why, man, I would annex the planets if I could!’
He flung his head backwards so that it rested on the upper rim of the chair, and fell silent. A cricket in the garden struck up a dissonant counterpoint with the cicada. I myself had no inclination to speak. Minutes must have passed. When he spoke again his voice was calm.
‘See that pine up there, Wills? The solitary one. Apart from all the others.’
A very fine, exceptionally tall specimen of Corsican Pine stood alone behind the Dutch-styled gardens, separated from the forest that darkened the lower slopes. ‘I wonder how that happened,’ I mused politely. ‘Was it a gardener’s decision, or a careless act of nature?’
He ignored this contribution and drew on his foul-smelling cigarette. ‘A few years back a Dutch Member of Parliament and I were sitting on that old Chesterfield back there, admiring the view. In those days I had many Dutch friends, strange as it might seem now.’ His voice quavered in the upper registers, but a gulp at his glass steadied him. ‘Suddenly the Dutchman turned to me and said, “Do you know, Meneer, who that tree reminds me of?” I replied in the negative. He laughed and said, “Meneer, it reminds me of you!” It was my turn to laugh. “I don’t follow. Why do you compare me to a tree?” He then said: “Because it stands out by itself; and do you not stand out by yourself in comparison with other men?’”
Privately, I wondered what the Dutchman wanted from my host – free scab disinfectant for his constituents’ sheep, or something like – but I allowed my vocal cords to release a non-committal grunt which could have been interpreted as admiring agreement. However, he was not interested in my response and continued with his somewhat immodest ruminations.
‘I could have met an ocean, if I’d wanted to.’ His voice floated up softly between the columns. ‘Many men of my stature like to gaze upon a vast sweep of ocean. I could have built a seaside mansion like the others. But I prefer to pour my money back into Africa, into my railway. My railway is like a spine, a backbone, pushing its way up through the African hinterland right now, through the swamps, round the great lakes, soon to reach the deserts. Yes, I like that image – I’m giving the continent backbone, Wills. But what were we speaking of? Houses by the sea. Today we visited the little hut I’ve bought in Muizenberg. I can breathe there. The sea air clears my lungs. Sometimes I fancy I might die there, Wills, on the rim of the Atlantic Ocean.’
‘Let us not speak of death,’ said I, for want of any other reply.
‘Do you know how long they gave me to live when I was twenty?’ he demanded.
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Six months. Six months, would you believe. And that was – how long? – nearly thirty years ago.’ He snorted derisively. ‘But the big question is: how long d’ye think they’ll remember me after I’ve died? Ten years? Fifty? A hundred? A thousand? I would reckon a thousand. That’s the only thing that makes the thought of early death endurable – that what I’ve done will live on long after me.’
‘Your achievements must make you very happy,’ I said uncomfortably.
He pulled his gaze from the mountain to turn the full force of his ravaged face upon me. ‘Happy? I, happy? When there is still so much to be done?’ He lifted an arm as if it were made of lead. ‘Look at this pulse of mine, Wills.’
He rolled back his cuff and thrust his inside wrist beneath my nose. ‘Just look at it jumping!’ And indeed I could see a great blue knot in his wrist throbbing at a highly irregular rate. I fingered my own pulse and began counting in private while he said: ‘That’s my heart, Wills. It’s letting me down. So I’m relying on your nightingales. The day after tomorrow they’ll be released. A great flock of British birds, ready to breed on an African mountain. It does me good just to think about it.’ He inhaled deeply on the stub of his cigarette. ‘But leave that aside for the moment. I’ve called you here to thank you personally for your quick thinking last night. Don’t suppose Challenger really meant to shoot anyone – a little the worse for Cognac, and felt he had to make a show, you know, since losing the arm. I expect those psychology chappies from Vienna think they could explain it all to us – lot of nonsense, really. Anyway, thanks, old chap!’ He raised his glass and presented me with one of those elastic smiles which contract into melancholy a moment later.
He fell silent as he attended to the lighting and inhaling of his tobacco. A light breeze had sprung up, making such tasks more difficult. I sipped my whisky and enjoyed the warm glow in my head. The entire garden was humming with cicadas.
‘Your friend. His case interests me a great deal.’
‘My friend? Oh, you mean Oscar?’
Oscar. The word flew out of the back of my throat and hung like a bat between the colonnade columns, stretching and folding its wings. Stretch and fold. Oscar. It occurred to me that no other English word filled the mouth so completely. My own name was a mere twitch of the lips by comparison.
He exhaled a dense cloud of tobacco smoke. ‘Above all, one must stand by one’s friends, Wills. That is my first rule in life. I think I said this to you yesterday.’ The silence that followed was so lengthy I thought he had finished with this topic. Just as I was searching for an excuse to take my leave, he heaved a great sigh and started again. ‘I am a man to whom friendship means a great deal. Almost as much as my railway. I’ve seen pictures of Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde’s – friend … He bears an uncanny resemblance to a close friend of mine – who died many years ago now. When he died I thought I would never recover. I suppose you could say I still grieve for him. Another drink, Wills?’
‘No thank you. Well, perhaps, yes. May I recharge your glass?’
We resettled. I could feel every muscle in my body slacken and grow warm. Never had I drunk so much whisky in one sitting – and on an empty stomach at that.
‘He was a sunny-tempered kind of chap. Charming. Gregarious. Everyone loved him, including the ladies. He made me laugh. He had cheek. Do you know what he gave me, Wills? He gave me youth! I made him my chief clerk of the mining company. I lived with him in a shack in Kimberley not much bigger than a native’s hut. And not much better equipped. Material things have never meant much to me. Friendship means far, far more.’ These observations caused him to ruminate privately once again, with many a sigh and grunt. I felt compelled to remind him of my presence.
‘Would this have been before you came to Oxford, or after?’
Without moving his head to acknowledge my question, he appeared to address the mountain, or a star which flashed above it before the sun had fully set. ‘After. I’d made my fortune, after a fashion, in diamonds. Then gold was discovered up on the Witwatersrand. Beginning of all the trouble. I was up there inspecting the prospects, about to buy a block of claims, when news came that he was dying. I dropped everything to be at his side. I’ve often thought, if I hadn’t done that, I could have been the richest man in the world. But all I could think of was, how am I going to go on living when he’s gone?’
The rocky texture of the mountain had softened in the evening gloom. A purple mist melted the sharp edges where grey cliff plummeted into green ravine. The breeze was persistent. Dead leaves scuttled about. I might have grown cold had not my body been hot with whisky.
‘His death was so unnecessary. He’d fallen off a horse and landed on a thorn bush two years earlier. Those damned thorns had poisoned his system, his bones, in some way, and eventually they killed him. At his funeral I wept like a woman. I wanted to die myself – jump into his grave, that sort of thing. It was a bad time.’
The violet sky was suddenly pierced with alien stars. I found myself searching for the Southern Cross.
‘Jameson saved me,’ said the Colossus. ‘He pulled me up from the abyss. He gave me back my life. Wonderful doctor, actually. Wonderful friend too. Everyone loves him. We call him Jimjam. Silly name, I know, but it’s a mark of our affection.’ His queer soprano voice trembled. ‘I like to think now, in these troubled days, that I have given him back his life.’
‘He has much to be grateful for,’ I said guardedly.
‘Friendship, Wills, friendship and loyalty. These are the chief emotions, in my book. And gratitude. He went in without my authority, Wills, but I’d placed him on the Transvaal border in readiness.’
‘He meant well.’
‘Some show of strength was necessary. It still is, God help us all. There are more Britons in Johannesburg than there are Boer men and women in the whole of the Boer Republic; they’re responsible for nine-tenths of the wealth in the land – but they’re not allowed to vote. Pity you don’t play bridge, Wills.’
‘I need an early night. I wish I had your energy.’
‘Your friend. Where is he now?’
‘He’s somewhere in the north of France.’
‘His financial state is not good. He has become dependent on hand-outs.’
‘That so?’ I could see a light kindling in the Colossus’ damp eyes. ‘I have a certain sympathy with the chap, though in many ways he is a loafer of the very worst kind. Tell you what, Wills.’
‘Yes?’ I could almost hear the thought processes whirring in that great, untidy head.
‘I’d be happy to send him a few hundred – anonymously, of course. Would he accept it, d’ye think?’
‘There would be no question of that,’ I smiled.
At this point Huxley appeared, looking animated. ‘Mr Selous is here, sir,’ he announced, not even trying to keep the awe out of his voice.
‘Selous!’ I exclaimed, for a foolish moment thinking he meant the ornithologist.
My host smiled. ‘Yes, he works for me now – has done for the last ten years or so – up in what used to be called Mashonaland. He helped me gain the land for Her Majesty’s Empire. Come to think of it, I nearly employed his brother to bring the songbirds out. But the brother wouldn’t hear of it. Bit of a hermit by all accounts. You bird people are a funny, nervous lot… ah, Selous! Good to see you!’
The man who strode down the verandah had not changed much from the personage I had seen in that candle-lit club nearly fifteen years ago. A slightly receding hairline and a grey beard were all that pointed to the passing of time, but his step had retained its spring and his figure was that of a young man’s. He showed little interest in me when introduced, until I said, perhaps in a spirit of pique, and strengthened by whisky: ‘I once attended a talk you gave many years ago.’
‘And where would that have been?’ His teeth flashed ivory against his sunburnt skin.
‘A little club off Regent Street. Doorkeeper by the name of Lizzie. You were telling a group of gentlemen about your exploits.’
Selous glanced at the Colossus, who was stubbing out a difficult cigarette.
‘My dear chap, I fear you’ve made a mistake. I’ve never spoken in a little club off Regent Street – you’re confusing me with someone else.’ He turned away.
I smiled. ‘Perhaps.’
After bidding good evening to the two gentlemen I finally rose from my chair. My knees were weakened by alcohol: I felt I was stepping into dark, open pits as I made my way across the chequered floor of the verandah. But as I opened the door which led back into the house, my host turned his head and called out: ‘See one of my secretaries about writing a cheque for that charity we were talking about. Make it five hundred.’
‘It will be much appreciated.’
If it is not too late.