The Brigandshaw Chronicles Box Set 2, page 135
part #4 of The Brigandshaw Chronicles Series
“The pretty ones get snapped up quickly, Ant. If you want a varied love life don’t go live in Rhodesia. Girls from England from good homes with no money go out to find husbands. Pretty ones are married in six weeks, pregnant in seven and never go home again. Live in the middle of nowhere like your grandmother for the rest of their lives. Some like it. Most don’t. Suburban girls from Epsom used to typing in offices and chatting all day. Can’t speak a word of Shona. Staff can’t speak a word of English. Husband in the lands all day. They have lots of children. Not much else to get up to, the next farm an hour away over a terrible dirt road. Most of them take to drinking by the time they’re thirty. Sundowners. Oh well, better than a thirty-year mortgage on a semi-detached if they were lucky, or a dried-up old spinster more likely. After the war there were too few men in England, the ones they might have met and married buried in France. So they go to the colonies to find a life, dreaming of a great country estate, not a thatched bungalow in the back of beyond.”
“I thought you liked living in Rhodesia, Ralph?”
“Of course I do. It’s a great life if you like a farm, one wife and six children. And a liking for whisky and soda. Life’s never boring in Rhodesia. You make of life what you want. Hunting trips in the bush and up the rivers. Carving a bit of civilisation out of the bush. Sometimes I think the blacks look at us as nuts. ‘What are they doing here?’ Every black man I’ve known with a missionary education has gone to Salisbury or better still Johannesburg. To get out of the bush. Some of the smart ones like Tembo dream about a second chimurenga.”
“What’s a chimurenga?”
“War of liberation.”
“Doesn’t Tembo like working for us?”
“All men like to rule. You’ll see. Of course he likes working for us. He’d just prefer to be the local chief with the real prestige and power that goes with it. Who likes to be told what to do by foreigners? Especially when the foreigner knows what he’s doing and makes everyone money.”
“Then he’s jealous.”
“Not Tembo. He just wants to be the king. Why I like him so much. A proud man.”
“All sounds too complicated.”
To Anthony, looking round the big room with the high ceiling and sash windows along the courtyard side from the floor to the roof and remembering his conversation with Cousin Tinus, the women in their summer frocks looked happy. Most of them were laughing and smiling. One woman was having trouble with her brood of children.
Two tables away a young man was holding the hand of a young girl. Neither of them were talking. The man wore a blue uniform with a single thick ring of a flying officer at the bottom of the sleeves. On the shoulder, at the top of the uniform arm, was the word Rhodesia in a slight curve. Anthony guessed the man was on his way overseas, the girl seeing him off. She was not what Tinus would have called pretty. The look she was giving her man forgave any outward appearance. Anthony could see the look of love in her eyes, eyes on the brink of tears, already pining her loss. On the man’s chest, white and new, shone the wings of a recently commissioned pilot. The girl’s look and the man’s stoicism made Anthony feel guilty he was not taking the same journey. Then the two of them got up, still holding hands, neither prepared to let go. They turned round their table in the direction of the hotel dining room at the end of the long room opposite the hotel’s entrance, the man’s eyes catching Anthony looking at him. In the girl’s eyes he had seen love. In the man’s was stark fear. The man was only physically in the room, his mind already fighting the distant battle. Without thinking, Anthony gave the man a salute, making the man in the Royal Rhodesian Air Force uniform smile. They both smiled at each other while the pair went off to lunch, Ralph Madgwick following the interchange.
Both Ralph and Anthony were silent, thinking the same thoughts.
“Is the Handley-Page still in the hangar?” asked Anthony.
“Better ask Tembo. He was the last to fly in the plane with Tinus Oosthuizen. The tyres will be flat. I take it you fly? That chap was scared.”
“So would I be.”
“Is Tinus all right?”
“I hope so. I’ll have a look at the Handley-Page.”
“You’re wise to keep out of the RAF.”
“You never know. February is a long way away.”
“Are you hungry?”
“I’m always hungry. Mum says I have worms.”
“The RAF has a flying training school at Gwelo. Some of the chaps training there want to come back to Rhodesia after the war. It’s a bit hot right now but generally the highveld climate is perfect. When the rains finally break it will cool down.”
“That was thunder outside.”
“Better have lunch and go back to the farm. Don’t want to be caught between two rivers. Rebecca still worries about me. Took to Africa like a duck to water. Misses her father. Had her mother out. What a disaster. Mrs Rosenzweig and Mrs Brigandshaw both trying to rule the roost at the same time. We were married on the farm. Did I tell you that? Becky ran off from her father’s apartment in New York to find me in England. I’d gone to Rhodesia so she followed. Apart from my odd forced night in this hotel we have never been parted. The cynics say you can’t love someone all your life. We have. Hope you have the same luck. Come on. I’m starving.”
“Why don’t they serve cold roast beef?”
“Don’t be silly. Cold Yorkshire pudding is soggy and horrible. The kids are looking forward to meeting you. Be prepared for a million questions.”
The only English thing missing with the lunch was a foot of snow on the ground outside the dining room window. The dining room was full. They ate the food and went home. When they left the man and his girl were still holding hands across their table. They both only had eyes for each other.
“Came in the truck. Hope you don’t mind. Transport is expensive to Elephant Walk so I always fill the back of the truck up when I come into Salisbury. Despite the lunch we all hate coming into town. Once you’ve found your own peace and quiet you don’t need people. Let’s go. I have a surprise for you. For you and your father. Isn’t he worried about the Blitz? Every night they are saying on the radio London docks are burning, every night. How do people live? Get used to it? Go about their ordinary lives?”
“Dad sleeps on the platform of Charing Cross Tube station. Some sleep in between the rails. They turn the electricity off on the rails at night. The Germans only bomb at night. When you’ve been through what dad’s been through in his life, what’s a few German bombs? The night fighters don’t do any good. Why the Germans have switched to coming over at night. When they tried hitting Fighter Command’s airfields and radar stations during the day they were massacred. The Messerschmitt is no match for a Spitfire or a Hurricane in a dogfight. Some say it was Churchill bombing Berlin that changed Hitler’s mind. The Cape Times thinks the Luftwaffe were losing too many pilots they couldn’t afford. Some in the South African papers are saying the peak of the Battle of Britain is over. That Germany will not gain air supremacy over England. That trying to land the German Army on British soil will be impossible. London can take it. They’ll have to if we want to win the war. The Royal Navy hasn’t been touched. Why we were able to evacuate the British Army from Dunkirk. The Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy and every small boat that would float. A friend of Dad’s went down in a small boat on his fourteenth trip. He’d spent Christmas with us. Flew with us to Romanshorn before the war. Phillip Crookshank was the only one on board the Seagull when it took a direct hit from a German dive-bomber. Dad wrote to me when he found out. The family are still on the Isle of Wight. A wife and two small boys. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to Dad. His wife’s name is Mavis. Frank had a fist fight with the eldest boy when they spent last Christmas with us at Hastings Court. It doesn’t seem possible to me that Mr Crookshank is dead. He was so alive at Christmas.”
“I’m sorry, Anthony. Even out here the war gets real and close. I was eighteen when the last war ended. Lost my small finger.”
“I’m seventeen. By the look of it this one has just started. It’s wrong being able to fly an aeroplane. I’ll be eighteen in May. What the hell am I going to do? Did you see the look in that chap’s eyes?”
“Just don’t talk about it in front of your grandmother. Her son George was killed in the last war. What triggered your father to go to England in 1915 and join the Royal Flying Corps. Revenge. Keep the war out of it. Aunty Madge expects a cable every moment of the day. We may be six thousand miles away but the war sits right with us on Elephant Walk. My wife’s Jewish. Just about her whole race has been rounded up in occupied Europe. Stories filter through the Jews are being systematically slaughtered. What makes people do things like that?”
“I’ll avoid the war, Mr Madgwick.”
“Call me Ralph, we’re not so formal in Rhodesia.”
For half an hour they were silent, thinking their own deep thoughts. Anthony had never known his Uncle George. There was no point in worrying about his father or Tinus. But, always, they were in his thoughts.
“There it is. What do you think of that, Anthony?”
“What’s all the water?”
“The Mazoe dam.”
“It’s the size of a big lake.”
“Will be after the rains. Why we had to build a high road to go round the water. Using a road contractor to finish the dam wasn’t so stupid after all. Good old Rhodesian ingenuity. We can do anything in this country when we put our minds to it.”
“It’s beautiful. You could sail a boat on all that water. In the middle of Africa!”
“That’s just the Mazoe. They have plans to dam the Zambezi and put a lake across Rhodesia almost to the Victoria Falls. Hydroelectric power. Irrigation. You’ll be able to put an ocean liner on a lake that big. Biggest man-made lake in the world. All we need is time and money to bring southern Africa into the modern world.”
“Do they want to?”
“Who, Anthony?”
“The blacks. I wouldn’t want to change this. Water, yes, so you don’t suffer droughts. The rest wouldn’t be for me. Have you asked them?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Maybe you should. One man’s idea of paradise isn’t necessarily another’s. This to me looks like paradise just as it is, wild animals, birds in the blue sky, very few people. Now that’s paradise.”
“You’re wise before your time, Anthony Brigandshaw.”
“And I haven’t yet seen Elephant Walk with eyes that can remember. Babies don’t remember anything. Can you imagine what Rhodesia must have been like when my grandfather first rode his horse through this country? Paradise on earth. Dorian’s going to enjoy his life on the farm.”
On the top of the hill Ralph stopped the truck.
“There it is down in the valley. When your grandfather first saw this view, so the story goes, it was during the great elephant migration up Africa. Legend has it the elephant migrate twice a century. Down there, head to tail, the trunks of the baby elephants holding on to their mother’s tails, mile after mile of moving grey elephant. They were all walking slowly through the valley. Why your grandfather called his house Elephant Walk.”
“Someone should write about it. Have the elephant been back again?”
“Not yet.”
“You say the whole valley down there was full of walking elephant?”
“So the legend says. Come on. That was thunder again. Are you ready to meet your family?”
“Thank you for bringing me home in this way, Ralph.”
Far away to the northeast the storm clouds were black. As Anthony stood for another moment outside the truck on a rock looking at where he came from the thunder rumbled. To his untrained ear the sound was going away, the storm abating. His mind marvelled. His father and one of his antecedents had ridden over this country. Hunting. Sometimes alone. He a part of them unknown. He felt the call of the bush, the distant thunder a sound of comfort rather than fear. Rain was coming. The rain that nurtured the bush and fed the animals. Anthony’s mind ran off as he smiled at how much he had to discover away from the tarred roads and brick walls of England. Where people did not drop high explosives on their cousins. Where a small boy did not punch another small boy he had never before seen in his life.
“It’s so wild,” he said in awe.
“The thunder is moving away.”
“I thought so. Does it get in your blood, Ralph?”
“Oh yes.”
“Can it be born in your blood?”
“Tembo says it can. Why underneath his acquiescence he hates us whites for taking his land. Not a specific piece of land. His land with everything in it. He told me once. All the birds and trees. The animals. His land. His land where he came from. They don’t think of ownership like we do. The tribe and the ancestors own the land. We English are so material. Buy and sell what we own. They never realised we wanted to own the land. Put a fence round our farm, own it like a cow. They don’t see how anyone can own land that has existed from eternity. We humans come and go so how can we own something when we are dead? Land, like the air we breathe, belongs to everyone. Can never be bought or sold.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“There’ll be trouble in the end.”
“There always is. Look at London. I’m only seventeen and I see trouble all round me. We are trouble. My teacher said at school every species becomes extinct in the end so your man is right. Why don’t people enjoy the land? Not fight over it. Isn’t what we produce from the land the only true value?”
“The wisdom of youth. Happy wisdom.”
“You’re going to plant orange trees all over the valley?”
“Every piece of ground that will succour a tree. Water will be sucked out of the dam through pipes. The valley will be rich.”
“What happens when the elephants want to go for a walk, all of them together? They’ll make a mess of your trees.”
“We’ll make them walk somewhere else.”
“I suppose we will. Poor elephants.”
“Progress.”
“For whom? The elephants? I just look out there now and don’t want to change a thing.”
“We all like our comforts. It gets rough out there when Mother Nature doesn’t give us rain. Can’t have what rain we do get for a few months of the year going off down the rivers to the Zambezi River which, far away, runs our water out into the sea. Wasted. No good to man or beast. There will be big parks for the elephant with water all year round. They won’t have to trek when it’s all there for them. Every time in my life I answer a big question I find another answer the next day. Often they contradict each other.”
“It’s all so beautiful.”
“I think what you see down there is why people believe in God.”
They both got in the truck.
“I hope that chap comes back and marries his girl,” said Anthony.
“So do I. There is nothing more beautiful in life than marrying the girl you love and living with her for the rest of your life. Now let’s get to the farm down there before I turn myself into a sentimental idiot.”
Anthony was smiling, looking straight ahead. Instinctively he knew he was going to like Mrs Madgwick. The heavily loaded truck began the slow grind down the winding road towards the valley. Far to the left, buffalo were grazing next to a herd of buck.
“What are those buck?” Anthony said pointing.
“Impala. They are slightly bigger than springbok.”
The sun found a gap in the black clouds making Ralph pull down the front of the bush hat shading his eyes, the rays of light brilliant from a patch of blue sky that looked through to heaven.
Part 5
The Cycle of Revenge – September to December 1941
1
When Anthony Brigandshaw, accompanied by his friend Felix Lombard, climbed up into the American-built Dakota in Gwelo to be flown to Cape Town he was wearing the uniform of a pilot officer in the Royal Air Force, the new wings on his chest as white as snow. No one from the family saw him off. For months, Anthony had fought with his conscience before throwing away his career in medicine. The argument had gone back and forth on Elephant Walk until after Christmas.
“To be called a coward, Grandmother? You want them to call me a coward? How am I going to feel in the years to come? I would never be able to look my father or Tinus in the face, let alone myself in the mirror. I’m a good pilot. Getting through flying training will be a cakewalk. There are men ten years my senior fighting in the RAF right now with less hours than mine. I spent days at Redhill picking Mr Woodall’s brains on how to fly in combat. I would never be able to face myself. Britain is not going to be defeated. Now the war goes to the Germans whether the Americans help or not. The Italians have been defeated in Libya forcing Hitler to send Rommel’s Afrika Korps to save North Africa for the Axis.”
“You’ll get yourself killed like George. He was your age. You all think war is a game.”
“It’s not a game, Grandma. Men have been fighting in wars right down the centuries.”
“Have you spoken to your mother?”
“She wouldn’t understand.”
“Your father?”
“I’ll tell Dad after I join up.”
The talk for weeks in the flying school had been the war in Europe. The pending invasion by Germany of England. The Blitz. The Americans still sitting on the fence. Now, looking out the window as the aircraft took to the air, Anthony sighed with relief. Whatever the outcome he had made the decision.
When the aircraft landed at Cape Town, Anthony had still not made up his mind what to do about his mother.
“Better go and see her, Ant. It’s not the end of the world.”
“It is for Mother. I’m her eldest son. If the war goes on long enough they’ll take her precious Frank. Come with me, Felix. You’ll love Beth. She’ll love you in that uniform. The boat only sails on Friday. Three whole days to enjoy ourselves.”
