1972 - A Story Like the Wind (50 page)

It irritated François somewhat that Ousie-Johanna and !#grave;Bamuthi, so unlike their usual, spontaneous selves, carried out his instructions with extreme formality. As always they seemed to have profound reservations about Cape-coloured people. He knew the Cape-coloured men were not without blame in the matter. They were so proud of the European element in their blood that they tended to regard themselves as superior to the indigenous people of the land. Therefore Africans like Ousie-Johanna and !#grave;Bamuthi, not unnaturally, countered prejudice with a protective prejudice of their own.

Luckily, their sense of hospitality and respect for travellers was great enough to keep contact between them all on a correct, if not the warmest of levels. Things were greatly helped along by the fact that the coffee was greeted with a great colloquial shout of ‘Here comes real ‘travellers’ comfort’!’ When the coffee was followed by the gifts of fruit and vegetables from the garden, some buckets of milk, and finally the supply of fresh meat for each wagon, all prejudices had crumbled. The result was a display of gaiety that made carnival of the scene. The feeling was perhaps best expressed in a remark François heard from the head of one wagon group to another: ‘I say,
gammietjie
[the Cape-coloured equivalent of the Cockney ‘my old cock-sparrow’], we must have got the blerrie day wrong and it’s Christmas! All we need is a bottle or two of ‘blitz’ to make it New Year as well!’

Blitz was their word for brandy and, hearing it, François was instantly reminded of one of his favourite Matabele proverbs: ‘Letting the roof leak for a handful of thatch’. Although it was against the law to give alcohol in any form whatever, whether as wine, spirits or beer to the coloured and black peoples of the land, François had seen Ouwa himself flout it so often that he had no hesitation in going to their huge cellar and returning with a bottle of Cape brandy for each of the wagons.

From that moment on the two hours that the wagon train allowed itself at Hunter’s Drift seemed to François like a kind of
Kermesse Hero’ique
, a phrase he had picked up from Ouwa. It leapt to his mind partly because
kermis
was still a favourite Cape-coloured word for a feast. Just then he heard it being used all around him. Besides there was something truly heroic in such a capacity for gaiety from a people for whom life was always precarious and the inducements for resentment and bitterness as continuous as they were immense. For the time being, work at Hunter’s Drift was brought to a standstill. Everybody, attracted by the laughter, the music, singing and, despite the increasing heat of the day, ultimately the improvised dancing, was drawn to witness so unusual a sight.

Even the departure of the wagons was not the sad anti-climax of François’s recollection. Travellers came and went, tending to leave one feeling somewhat abandoned and forlorn. But on this occasion the wagons departed on an ascending note of joyful-ness which affected everyone watching.

As that historical and evocative call went up: ‘Come on; Trek!’ the women and girls in their brightly coloured head-cloths and dresses appeared not to climb back to their places on the wagons, so much as flutter over them like a swarm of butterflies. The little boys, standing at the ready between the great crescent horns of the huge oxen, confidently took up their leather leads and pulled the teams one after the other into following them. Seeing well-trained oxen bowing their heads to thrust their broad shoulders against their heavy yokes, while the long steel chains which connected them to the wagon, came glittering out of the dust and went taut with strain, was as always a moving sight to François and the Matabele onlookers.

First came the magenta span of eighteen, to be followed by the brindled ones, the strawberry roans, the cream whites, the Cape-gooseberry yellows, the earth red and, last of all, the coal-black team. At that the Matabele, who love and know cattle as few men do, forgot all reservations and cheered the train on with a reverberating, ‘
Hamba Gashle!
’ Go in happiness.

They were answered in dialect with a shimmer of voices chanting ‘Stay joyfully, you farmers there! Stay joyfully!’ At the same time, the long whips flashed and crackled like lightning over the heads of the teams and the wagoners exhorted the oxen with cries like: ‘Step up, Fatherland! Pull President, you lazy devil, pull! We’ve drunk tiger-milk now and can do the job ourselves, if you won’t!’

As each wagon pulled clear out into the road, a rag and tatter minstrel walked ahead, either strumming a guitar, playing a concertina or mouth-organ, with the people riding on the wagons accompanying him in song. François and everybody else watching, could just hear the wagons creaking mournfully under their heavy loads like ships in a storm at sea. Also they heard the muffled pounding of the earth under the great feet of the long spans of oxen who, watered and well-fed, despite their phlegmatic natures, seemed to be responding positively either to the music or the crackling of the whips.

The song varied from wagon to wagon at first, but soon one song, perhaps the greatest of them all, took over and dominated the white, silent noonday. The watchers, sad that such infectious music and gaiety should be creeping by them towards the muted copper bush, heard its chorus passing up and down the line again and again.

No!No, my mistress, no!

Here, I have no home
.

My time has come to go
.

No one knows the way
,

But there where the sun

And the moon go down
,

Road and home are one
.

!#grave;Bamuthi, seeing the last of the wagons and their lines of colourful oxen disappear like stitches of glistening medieval tapestry into the heavy hem of the bush, shook his great head and remarked in Sindabele, ‘Those are men who know not that the yoke is never tired.’

François knew that this meant ‘Journeys have no end’. And only a fool would have thought, that thereby they meant only journeys by road.

Some two hours later François, accompanied by Hintza, followed the wagons on horseback. François did this because he had promised the wagon master that he would join them for the most dangerous hour of the afternoon. He did this for two reasons. He hoped it would give him a glimpse of Sir James’s camp. And he did not feel like lending his gun again to the wagon master because of the thought that another fifty rounds of ammunition might be wasted should he do so. His only regret was that he could not do the journey on foot. Much as he loved horses in the bush where tracks were narrow and where one had to go slowly and silently, he felt infinitely more at home on foot than on a horse. It was remarkable how much one missed when one rode through the bush on horseback. All the dramatic and ever-changing detail of the drama of life enacted by the birds, insects and smaller animals in the bush, which were really just as interesting and subtle to François as the behaviour of the greater animals, somehow got overlooked.

However on this occasion he had no option. He had to overtake the wagons, lead them safely to Sir James’s land and get home himself before dark and even on horseback he would have to travel fast.

So he set off at a smart gallop, but something seemed to have enabled the wagons to travel at such a pace that François did not overtake them. Some twelve miles from his home he came out of the bush on the edge of Sir James’s land to look down from a hump of earth on to the great natural clearing which had originally caught Sir James’s fancy. He was just in time to see the last of the wagons about half a mile ahead of him, turning out of the road and making straight for a small hill alone in the level clearing about a mile from the Amanzim-tetse river.

François could not understand why the wagons were not making directly for the river itself. Somehow he assumed that Sir James would do what they had done and build his home near the river so that he had easy access to water both for house and gardens. Indeed so certain was he of this, that his eyes searched the land by the gleaming river banks with the greatest. care, but nowhere could he see signs of Sir James’s party. It was not until he looked again at the hill for which the wagons were heading that he saw to his amazement the caboose, trailer and truck drawn up at the foot of the hill, some tents already pitched, several fires lit and their smoke standing above them like palms in the mirage of an oasis, before merging with the brilliant afternoon light.

He wished he had brought some binoculars to examine the distant camp because he realized now that, since the wagons would reach their destination well before sundown, he had no excuse for going any further and seeing the camp itself. Why precisely he wanted to see more of the camp just then, he did not know; perhaps because his astonishment at such a choice of site, so far from natural water, was too great…So he turned his horse and made his way back home.

Unlike Hunter’s Drift, Sir James’s house was to be built, not on level ground but on the commanding height of that little hill. That hill indeed, imaginatively, had been the inspiration for the name of his property. In his years of exile he had proposed calling it Hunter’s Hill; a name derived from the poem by Stevenson already quoted. This poem, not unnaturally, in a person with his Scottish background, had captured his imagination as a boy. Consequently as a result he had a keen feeling of frustration when he discovered that the imagery of the hunter had already been captured in the name for a neighbouring property. That made the idea of calling his own land Hunter’s Hill tamely derivative. So, at that very moment, when the amazed François, unbeknown to him, was looking down on the hill from his horse’s back, Sir James was announcing to his daughter that he proposed calling their new home: ‘Silverton-Hill’.

Luciana was about to ask why but Sir James anticipated the question. He hastened to explain that, since his mother Catriona had been a Hamilton-of-Silverton-Hill, an old loyalist Highland family, he thought nothing could be nicer than connecting this hill in Africa with that other hill in Scotland which had been their original home. Besides, he added, if she deigned to look around there were other justifications for the name…In the brilliant light at that hour in that setting, he pointed out, surrounded as they were by a great forest, all copper and gold, the grass in the clearing, the brush on the hill and even the water of the flashing river in the distance, were all in one way or another just variations in tone of the brightest silver. Their new land, he concluded, was nothing if not ‘silverton’.

Luciana stared at him in amazement as if what she had just heard were evidence of a return of her resolute father to a state of grace. Her whole expression lightened, and she exclaimed, ‘Gosh Fa, I didn’t think you still knew how to pun.’ And then, to Sir James’s relief, she burst out laughing for the first time that day.

!#grave;Bamuthi’s reaction was as characteristic as that of Sir James’s daughter. When François first heard the name Silverton-Hill, he hastened to inform !#grave;Bamuthi, because !#grave;Bamuthi had almost daily asked him what their neighbours had decided to call their new property. !#grave;Bamuthi was obviously convinced that the place would not be properly protected against all the negative aspects of the forces of magic which invested the vast bushveld, until it had been well and truly named. However, even after a breakdown of the word Silverton, François found that its two-edged significance remained beyond !#grave;Bamuthi’s grasp, largely because !#grave;Bamuthi had no idea what silver was. He knew iron, steel, copper and even gold, but silver was not an African metal.

So François decided that only the sight of silver could make the meaning clear. He rushed into the house on impulse to seize the nearest piece of silver. By an extraordinary coincidence he found one of the maids polishing the household silver, including the heavy fish knives and forks Lammie had brought with her from the south. Taking a knife (because he knew that a knife would impress !#grave;Bamuthi more than a fork), he dashed back to hand it to !#grave;Bamuthi, saying: ‘There, Old Father, is the metal we call silver.’

!#grave;Bamuthi turned the knife over and over again between the fingers of his hands, the metal flashing like a mirror in the sun, before he felt the edge with a broad thumb. Instantly his face showed how he despised it for not being razor-sharp and piercing as all good Matabele knives were supposed to be. After contemplating it silently for quite a long time, as if searching his mind for some obscure association of his own with the knife, a shrewd look took possession of his features and he asked, ‘Tell me, Little Feather, is this not a thing used for the eating of fish?’

Up to that moment François had not given a thought to the use of the knife but now he admitted readily enough that !#grave;Bamuthi was right.

!#grave;Bamuthi gave a profound grunt of satisfaction, as if he might have known it all from the start and remarked, ‘The place is well named then, for who can doubt that in the kraal of the Great Kingfisher on the hill, more fish will be eaten than has ever been eaten in this land before.’

François’s impulse was to laugh at !#grave;Bamuthi’s comment but out of politeness he restrained himself. But out of this partial understanding a new name was born. Sir James’s home was from then on to be known far and wide among the peoples of Africa, not as Silverton-Hill, but Fish-Metal Hill, a fact which all persons instinctively conspired to keep hidden from Sir James, for knowing Matabele feelings in all matters concerned with fish, they would not have liked him to be hurt by the highly derogatory name.

François himself was not informed officially of the name, Silverton-Hill, until a fortnight after his abrupt parting with Sir James and his daughter. Busy as he had been with his studies and trying to fill in the gap created by Lammie and Ouwa’s absence, he still would have had time to ride over and visit his new neighbours. Indeed, all the engrained customs of a pioneering people like his own, would have compelled him to go to Silverton-Hill within a few days to see what he could do to help. But some instinct held him back. His willingness to help had been so implicit in his reception of Sir James and his party that it needed no re-emphasis. But he had been left uncertain about Sir James’s attitude to him. So, undecided, he drifted from day to day hoping a positive move would come from Sir James himself.