The Angels Weep (22 page)

A
ll the windows
of the mule coach were open and the shutters were lowered so that
Mr Rhodes could converse freely with the men who rode in close
attendance upon each side. They were the aristocracy of this new
land, only a dozen or so of them, but between them they owned
vast tracts of fertile, virgin country, sprawling herds of native
cattle, and blocks of mineral claims beneath which lay dreams of
uncountable wealth.

The man in the luxurious carriage, drawn by a team of five
matched white mules, was their head. In his capacity as a private
citizen, he enjoyed such wealth and power as was usually only
commanded by kings. His Company owned a land which was bigger
than the United Kingdom and Ireland put together, which he
administered by decree as a private estate. He controlled the
world’s production of diamonds through a cartel that he had
made as powerful as an elected government. He owned outright the
mines that produced ninety-five per cent of the world’s
diamonds. On the fabulous Witwatersrand gold fields, his
influence was not as great as it might have been, for he had
passed up many opportunities to acquire claims along the strike,
where the gold-rich banket reef had once stood proud above the
surrounding grassland, sharp and black as a shark’s dorsal
fin, before the miners had whittled it away.

‘I do not sense the power in this reef,’ he had
said once, as he stood on the outcrop, staring at it moodily with
those pale Messianic blue eyes. ‘I can sit on the lip of
the great hole at Kimberley and I know just how many carats are
coming up with each load, but this—’ He had shaken
his head and gone back to his horse, turning his back on
£100 million in pure gold.

When, finally, he had been forced to accept the true potential
of the ‘Ridge of White Waters’ and was on the very
point of hurrying back to pick up what few properties were still
available, a tragic accident had distracted him. His dearest
friend, a fine and beautiful young man named Neville Pickering,
his companion and partner of many years, had been thrown from his
horse and dragged.

Rhodes had stayed at Kimberley to nurse him, and then when
Neville died, to mourn him. The great opportunities had slipped
away from Rhodes in those weeks. Yet still he had at last founded
his Consolidated Goldfields Company upon the reef, and though it
was nothing like his De Beers Consolidated Mines Company, nor the
gold empire that his old rival J. B. Robinson had built, yet at
the end of the last financial year it had paid a dividend of 125
per cent.

His fortune was such that when, on a whim, he decided to
pioneer the farming of deciduous fruit in southern Africa, he had
instructed one of his managers to purchase the entire Franschhoek
valley.

‘Mr Rhodes, it will cost a million pounds,’ the
manager had demurred.

‘I did not ask for your estimate,’ Rhodes replied
testily. ‘I simply gave you an order – buy
it!’

That was his private life, but his public life was no less
spectacular.

He was a privy councillor to the queen, and thus could speak
directly to the men who steered the greatest empire the world had
ever known. In truth, some of them were less than sympathetic to
him. Gladstone had once remarked, ‘I know only one thing
about Mr Rhodes. He has made a great deal of money in a very
short time. This does not fill me with any overwhelming
confidence.’

The rest of the British nobility were less critical, and
whenever he visited London, he was the darling of society, lords
and dukes and earls flocked to him, for there were lucrative
directorships on the Board of the BSA Company to be filled, and a
single word from Mr Rhodes could lead to a killing on the stock
exchange.

Added to all this, Mr Rhodes was the elected prime minister of
Cape Colony, sure of the vote of every English-speaking citizen
and through the good offices of his old friend Hofmeyr and his
Afrikander Bond, sure of most of the Dutch-speaking votes as
well.

Thus, as he lolled on the green leather seat of his coach,
dressed untidily in a rumpled high-buttoned suit, the knot of his
Oriel College necktie slipping a little, he was at the very
zenith of his wealth and power and influence.

Seated opposite him, Jordan Ballantyne was pretending to study
the shorthand notes that Mr Rhodes had just dictated, but over
the pad he was watching his master with a shadow of concern in
his sensitive long-lashed eyes. Although the flat brim of his hat
kept Mr Rhodes’ eyes in shadow and prevented Jordan from
reading any trace of pain in them, yet his colour was high and
unhealthy, and though he spoke with all his old force, he was
sweating more heavily than the early morning cool warranted.

Now he raised his voice, calling in that high, almost petulant
tone, ‘Ballantyne!’ And Zouga Ballantyne spurred his
horse up beside the window and leaned attentively from the
saddle.

‘Tell me, my dear fellow,’ Rhodes demanded.
‘What is this new building to be?’

He pointed at the freshly opened foundation trenches and the
stacks of red burned brick piled on the corner plot at the
intersection of two of Bulawayo’s wide and dusty
streets.

‘That’s the new synagogue,’ Zouga told
him.

‘So my Jews have come to stay!’ Mr Rhodes said
with a smile, and Zouga suspected that Mr Rhodes had known
precisely what those foundations were for, but had asked the
question to pave the way for his own witticism. ‘Then my
new country will be all right, Ballantyne. They are the birds of
good omen, who would never roost in a tree marked for
felling.’

Zouga chuckled dutifully, and they went on talking while Ralph
Ballantyne, riding in the bunch, watched them with such interest
that he neglected the lady riding beside him, until she tapped
him on the forearm with her crop.

‘I said, it will be interesting to see what happens when
we reach Khami,’ Louise repeated, and Ralph’s
attention jerked back to his stepmother. She rode astride, the
only woman he knew that did so, and though she wore ankle-length
divided skirts, her seat was elegant and sure. Ralph had seen her
out-ride his own father, beating him in a gruelling
point-to-point race over rough terrain. That had been in
Kimberley, before the trek to the north and this land, but the
years had treated Louise kindly indeed. Ralph smiled to himself
as he recalled the youthful crush he had been smitten with when
he first saw her driving her phaeton and pair of golden palominos
down Kimberley’s crowded main street. That was so many
years ago, and though she had married his father since then, he
still felt a special affection for her that was definitely
neither filial nor dutiful. She was only a few years older than
he was, and the Blackfoot Indian blood in her veins gave her
beauty a certain timeless element.

‘I cannot imagine that even Robyn, my honoured aunt and
mother-in-law, would use the occasion of her youngest
daughter’s marriage for political advantage,’ Ralph
said.

‘Are you confident enough to wager on that, a guinea,
say?’ Louise asked with a flash of even white teeth, but
Ralph threw back his head and laughed.

‘I have learned my lesson – I’ll never bet
against you again.’ Then he dropped his voice.
‘Besides, I don’t really have that much faith in my
mother-in-law’s restraint.’

‘Then why on earth does Mr Rhodes insist on going to the
wedding? He must know what to expect.’

‘Well, firstly, he owns the land the Mission is built
upon, and, secondly, he probably feels that the ladies of Khami
Mission are depriving him of a valued possession.’ Ralph
lifted his chin to indicate the bridegroom who rode a little
ahead of the group. Harry Mellow had a flower in his button-hole,
a gloss on his boots and a grin upon his lips.

‘He hasn’t lost him,’ Louise pointed
out.

‘He fired him as soon as he realized he couldn’t
talk Harry out of it.’

‘But he is such a talented geologist, they say he can
smell gold a mile away.’

‘Mr Rhodes does not approve of his young men marrying,
no matter how talented.’

‘Poor Harry, poor Vicky, what will they do?’

‘Oh, it’s all arranged,’ Ralph beamed.

‘You?’ she hazarded.

‘Who else?’

‘I should have known. In fact it would not surprise me
to learn that you engineered the whole business,’ Louise
accused, and Ralph looked pained.

‘You do me a grave injustice, Mama.’ He knew she
did not like that title and used it deliberately, to tease her.
Then Ralph looked ahead and his expression changed like a
bird-dog scenting the pheasant.

The wedding party had ridden out past the last new buildings
and shanties of the town, onto the broad rutted wagon road.
Coming towards them, up from the south, was a convoy of transport
wagons. There were ten of them, so strung out that the furthest
of them were marked only by columns of fine white dust rising
above the flat-topped acacia trees. On the nearest wagon-tent
Louise could already read the company name,
‘RHOLANDS’, the shortened form of ‘Rhodesian
Lands and Mining Co’, which Ralph had chosen as the
umbrella for his multitudinous business activities.

‘Damn me,’ he exclaimed happily. ‘Old Isazi
has brought them in five days ahead of schedule. That little
black devil is a miracle.’ He tipped his hat in apology to
Louise. ‘Business calls. Excuse me, please, Mama.’
And he galloped ahead, swinging off his horse as he came level
with the lead wagon, and embracing the diminutive figure in
cast-off military-style jacket who skipped at the flank of the
bullock team brandishing a thirty-foot-long trek whip.

‘What kept you so long, Isazi?’ Ralph demanded.
‘Did you meet a pretty Matabele girl on the
road?’

The little Zulu driver tried not to grin, but the network of
wrinkles that covered his face contracted and there was a puckish
sparkle in his eyes.

‘I can still deal with a Matabele girl and her mother
and all her sisters in the time it would take you to inspan a
single ox.’

It was not only a declaration of virility, but also an oblique
reference to Ralph’s skill as a teamsman. Isazi had taught
him all he knew of the open road, but still treated Ralph with
the indulgent condescension usually reserved for a small boy.

‘No, little Hawk, I did not want to rob you of too much
bonus money by bringing them in more than five days
ahead.’

This was a gentle reminder of what Isazi expected in his next
pay packet.

Now the little Zulu, with the headring granted him by King
Cetewayo before the battle of Ulundi still upon his snowy head,
stood back and looked at Ralph with the speculative eye he
usually reserved for a bullock.

‘Hau, Henshaw, what finery is this?’ He glanced at
Ralph’s suit and English boots, and at the sprig of mimosa
blossom in Ralph’s button-hole. ‘Even flowers like a
simpering maiden at her first dance. And what is that under your
coat, surely the Nkosikazi is the one who carries the babies in
your family?’

Ralph glanced down at his own midriff. Isazi was being unfair,
there was barely a trace of superfluous flesh there, nothing that
a week of hard hunting would not remove, but Ralph sustained the
banter that they both enjoyed.

‘It is the privilege of great men to wear fine apparel
and eat good food,’ he said.

‘Then fall to, little Hawk with fine feathers.’
Isazi shook his head disapprovingly. ‘Eat your fill. While
wiser men do the real work, you play like a boy.’ His tone
belied the warmth of his smile, and Ralph clasped his
shoulder.

‘There was never a driver like you, Isazi, and there
probably never will be again.’

‘Hau, Henshaw, so I have taught you something, even if
only to recognize true greatness when you see it,’ Isazi
chuckled at last, and put the long lash up into the air with a
report like a shot of cannon, and called to his oxen.

‘Come, Fransman, you black devil! Come, Sathan, my
darling.
Pakamisa
, pick it up!’

Ralph mounted and backed his horse off the road and watched
his laden wagons trundle by. There was £3,000 of profit in
that single convoy for him, and he had 200 wagons, plying back
and forth across the vast sub-continent. Ralph shook his head in
awe as he remembered the single elderly eighteen-footer that he
and Isazi had driven out of Kimberley that first time. He had
purchased it on borrowed money, and laden it with trade goods
that he did not own.

‘A long road and a hard one,’ he said aloud, as he
wheeled his horse and kicked it into a gallop in pursuit of the
mule coach and the wedding party.

He fell in again beside Louise, and she started from a reverie
as though she had not even noticed his absence.

‘Dreaming,’ he accused her, and she spread the
fingers of one graceful hand in admission of guilt, and then
lifted it to point.

‘Do look, Ralph. How beautiful it is!’

A bird flitted across the track ahead of the coach. It was a
shrike with a shiny black back, and a breast of a stunning
crimson that burned in the white sunlight like a precious
ruby.

‘How beautiful it all is,’ she exulted as the bird
disappeared into the scrub, and Louise turned in the saddle to
take in the whole horizon with a sweep of her arm that made the
tassels of her white buckskin jacket flutter. ‘Do you know,
Ralph, that King’s Lynn is the very first real home I have
ever known.’ And only then Ralph realized that they were
still on his father’s land. Zouga Ballantyne had used up
the entire fortune he had won from the blue ground of
Kimberley’s pit to buy the land grants of the drifters and
never-contents amongst Doctor Jameson’s troopers who had
ridden into Matabeleland in the expeditionary force that had
defeated Lobengula. Each of them had been entitled to four
thousand acres of his choice, and some of them had sold that
right to Zouga Ballantyne for as little as the price of a bottle
of whisky.