The Angels Weep (29 page)

The foremen levelled them with cast-iron wedges and the hammer
boy followed them, driving in the steel spikes with ringing
blows. Half a mile back was the construction headquarters. A
square sweat box of wood and corrugated iron that could be moved
up each day. The chief engineer was in his shirtsleeves, sweating
over a desk made of condensed-milk cases nailed together.

‘What is your mileage?’ Ralph demanded from the
door of the shack.

‘Mr Ballantyne, sir,’ the engineer jumped up. He
was an inch taller than Ralph, bull-necked and with thick hairy
forearms, but he was afraid of Ralph. You could see it in his
eyes. It gave Ralph a flicker of satisfaction, he was not trying
to be the most popular man in Africa. There was no prize for
that. ‘We didn’t expect you, not until the end of the
month.’

‘I know. What’s your mileage?’

‘We have had a few snags, sir.’

‘By God, man, do I have to kick it out of
you?’

‘Since the first of the month,’ the engineer
hesitated. He had proved to himself that there was no profit in
lying to Ralph Ballantyne. ‘Sixteen miles.’

Ralph crossed to the survey map, and checked the figures. He
had noted the beacon numbers of the railhead as he passed.

‘Fifteen miles and six hundred yards, isn’t
sixteen,’ he said.

‘No, sir. Almost sixteen.’

‘Are you satisfied with that?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Nor am I.’ That was enough, Ralph told himself,
any more would decrease the man’s usefulness, and there
wasn’t a better man to replace him, not between here and
the Orange river.

‘Did you get my telegraph from Bulawayo?’

‘No, Mr Ballantyne. The lines have been down for
days.’

‘The line to Kimberley?’

‘That is open.’

‘Good. Get your operator to send this.’

Ralph stooped over the message pad and scribbled quickly.

‘For Aaron Fagan, attorney at law, De Beers Street,
Kimberley. Arriving early tomorrow 6th. Arrange urgent noon
meeting with Rough Rider from Rholand.’

Rough Rider was the private code for Roelof Zeederberg,
Ralph’s chief rival in the transport business.
Zeederberg’s express coaches plied from Delagoa to Algoa
Bay, from the goldfields of Pilgrims Rest to Witwatersrand, to
the railhead at Kimberley.

While his telegraph operator tapped it out on the brass and
teak instrument, Ralph turned back to his engineer.

‘All right, what were the snags that held you up, and
how can we beat them?’

‘The worst is the bottle-neck at Kimberley
shunting-yards.’

For an hour they worked, and at the end of it the locomotive
whistled outside the shack. They went out, still arguing and
planning. Ralph tossed his saddlebag and blanket-roll onto the
first flat car, and held the train for ten minutes longer while
he arranged the final details with his engineer.

‘From now on you will get your hardware faster than you
can nail it down,’ he promised grimly, as he vaulted up
onto the bogie and waved at the driver.

The whistle sent a jet of steam spurting into the dry desert
air, and the locomotive wheels spun and then gripped with a jolt,
and the long string of empty cars began to trundle southwards,
building up speed rapidly. Ralph found a corner of the truck out
of the wind, and rolled into his blanket. Eight days’ ride
from the Lupani river to the railhead. It had to be some sort of
record.

‘But there is no prize for that either,’ he
grinned wearily, pulled his hat over his eyes and settled down to
listen to the song of the wheels over the ties. ‘We have
got to hurry. We have got to hurry.’ And then just before
he fell asleep, the song changed: ‘The cattle are dying.
The cattle are dead,’ sang the wheels over and over again,
but even that could not keep him awake one second longer.

T
hey pulled
into the shunting-yards at Kimberley, sixteen hours later. It was
just past four in the morning.

Ralph jumped down off the bogie as the locomotive slowed for
the points, and with his saddlebags slung over his shoulder,
trudged up De Beers Street. There was a light on in the telegraph
office and Ralph beat on the wooden hatch until the night
operator peered out at him like a barn owl from its nest.

‘I want to send an urgent telegraph to
Bulawayo.’

‘Sorry, mate, the line is down.’

‘When will it be open again?’

‘God knows, it’s been out for six days
already.’

Ralph was still grinning as he swaggered into the lobby of
Diamond Lil’s Hotel.

The night clerk was new. He did not recognize Ralph. He saw a
tall lean sunburned man, whose stained and dusty clothing hung
loosely on him. That wild ride had burned off all Ralph’s
excess flesh. He had not shaved since leaving the Lupani, and his
boots were scuffed almost through the uppers by the brushing of
the thorn scrub as he had ridden through it. Locomotive soot had
darkened his face and reddened his eyes, and the clerk recognized
a drifter when he saw one.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘The hotel
is full.’

‘Who is in the Blue Diamond suite?’ Ralph asked
affably.

‘Sir Randolph Charles,’ the clerk’s voice
was filled with reverence.

‘Get him out,’ said Ralph.

‘I beg your pardon?’ the clerk reared back, and
his expression was frosty. Ralph reached across the desk, and
took him by his watered silk cravat, and drew him closer.

‘Get him out of my suite,’ Ralph repeated, his
lips an inch from the man’s ear. ‘Quickly!’

It was at that moment that the day clerk came into the
reception office.

‘Mr Ballantyne,’ he cried with a mixture of alarm
and feigned pleasure as he rushed to the rescue of his colleague.
‘Your permanent suite will be ready in a minute.’
Then he hissed in the night clerk’s other ear. ‘Clear
that suite immediately, or he’ll do it for you.’

The Blue Diamond had one of the very few bathrooms in
Kimberley with laid-on hot water. Two black servants stoked the
boiler outside the window to keep steam whistling from the valve
while Ralph lay chin-deep and adjusted a trickle of scalding
water with his big toe on the tap. At the same time he shaved his
jaws with a straight razor, working by touch and scorning the
mirror. The day clerk had supervised the removal of Ralph’s
steamer trunk from the box-room, and hovered over the valets as
they pressed the suits and tried to improve upon the perfect
shine of the boots that they unpacked from the trunk.

At five minutes before noon, Ralph, smelling of brilliantine
and eau de Cologne, marched into Aaron Fagan’s office.
Aaron was a thin stooped man, with threadbare hair brushed
straight back from a deep intellectual forehead. His nose was
beaked, his mouth full and sensitive and his sloe-eyes aware and
bright.

He played a cruel game of kalabriasz, giving no quarter, and
yet there was a compassionate streak in his nature which Ralph
valued as highly as any of his other qualities. If he had known
what Ralph intended at this moment, he would have tried to
dissuade him, but after having put the case against it, he would
then have gone ahead and drawn up a contract as mercilessly as he
would have elevated his jasz and menel for a winning coup at
kalabriasz.

Ralph didn’t have time to argue ethics with him now, so
as they embraced and patted each other’s shoulder-blades
affectionately, he forestalled the question by asking: ‘Are
they here?’ and then pushing open the door to the inner
office.

Roelof and Doel Zeederberg did not rise as he entered and
neither they nor Ralph made any attempt to shake hands. They had
clashed viciously, but indecisively, on too many occasions.

‘So, Ballantyne, you want to waste our time
again?’ Roelof’s accent was still thick with his
Swedish ancestry, but under his pale ginger brows, his eyes were
quick with interest.

‘My dear Roelof,’ Ralph protested, ‘I would
never do that. All I want is that we should resolve this tariff
on the new Matabeleland route before we put each other out of
business.’

‘Ja!’ Doel agreed sarcastically.
‘That’s a good thought, like my mother-in-law should
love me.’

‘We are willing to listen, for a few minutes
anyway.’ Roelof’s tone was casual, but his interest
was quicker still.

‘One of us should buy the other out, and set his own
tariffs,’ said Ralph blandly, and the brothers glanced at
each other involuntarily. Roelof made a fuss of relighting his
dead cigar to hide his astonishment.

‘You are asking yourselves why?’ Ralph said.
‘You want to know why Ralph Ballantyne wants to sell
out.’ Neither brother denied it; they waited quietly as
vultures in the tree-tops.

‘The truth is this, I have over-extended myself in
Mata-beleland. The Harkness Mine—’

The lines of tension around Roelof’s mouth smoothed out.
They had heard about the mine, the talk on the Johannesburg stock
exchange floor was that it would cost £50,000 to bring it
into production.

‘I am behind on the railway contract for Mr
Rhodes,’ Ralph went on quietly and seriously. ‘I need
cash.’

‘You had a figure in mind?’ Roelof asked, and took
a puff on the cigar.

Ralph nodded and gave it to him, and Roelof choked on his
smoke. His brother pounded him between his shoulders until he
regained his breath, and then Roelof chuckled and shook his
head.

‘Ja,’ he said. ‘That’s good.
That’s a very good one.’

‘It looks as though you were right,’ Ralph agreed.
‘I am wasting your time.’ He pushed back his chair
and stood up.

‘Sit down.’ Roelof stopped laughing. ‘Sit
down and let’s talk,’ he said briskly, and by the
following noon Aaron Fagan had drawn up the contract in his own
hand.

It was very simple. The purchasers accepted the attached
statement of assets as complete and correct. They agreed to take
over all existing contracts of carriage and the responsibility of
all goods at present in transit. The seller gave no guarantees.
The purchase price was in cash, no share transfers were involved,
and the effective date was that of the signatures – walk
out, walk in.

They signed in the presence of their attorneys, and then both
parties, accompanied by their legal counsellors, crossed the
street to the main branch of the Dominion Colonial and Overseas
Bank where the cheque of Zeederberg Bros was presented and duly
honoured by the manager. Ralph swept the bundles of five-pound
notes into his carpet bag, tipped his hat to the brothers
Zeederberg.

‘Good luck to you, gentlemen,’ and then he took
Aaron Fagan’s arm and led him in the direction of Diamond
Lil’s Hotel.

Roelof Zeederberg massaged the bald spot on his crown.
‘I suddenly have this strange feeling,’ he murmured
uneasily as he watched them go.

T
he next
morning, Ralph left Aaron Fagan at the door of his office.

‘You’ll be hearing from the good brothers
Zeederberg again sooner than you expect,’ he warned him
affably. ‘Try not to bother me with their accusations,
there’s a good fellow.’ He sauntered away across the
Market Square, leaving Aaron staring after him thoughtfully.

Ralph’s progress was slow, half a dozen acquaintances
stopped him to enquire solicitously after his health, and then
seek confirmation of the sale of his transport company, or to
find out if he intended making a public issue of Harkness Mine
shares.

‘Give me a nod when you decide, Ralph.’

‘Any help I can give, it will be my pleasure, Mr
Ballantyne.’

Rumours of the ‘payable’ values of the Harkness
ore put it as high as sixty ounces to the ton, and everybody he
met wanted to be let in, so it took him almost an hour to cover
the five hundred yards to the offices of the De Beers
Consolidated Mines Company.

It was a magnificent edifice, a temple dedicated to the
worship of diamonds. The open balconies on all three floors were
laced with white grilles of delicate ironwork, the walls were of
redbrick with corners picked out in worked stone blocks, the
windows were of stained glass and the doors were oiled teak with
polished brass fittings.

Ralph signed his name in the visitors’ book and a
uniformed janitor with white gloves led him up the spiral
staircase to the top floor. There was a brass plate on the teak
door, a name only, with no title to accompany it: ‘Mr
Jordan Ballantyne’. But the grandeur of the office beyond
the door gave some indication of Jordan’s importance in the
hierarchy of De Beers Diamond Company.

The double windows looked out over the Kimberley mine; the
excavation was almost a mile across, and it was impossible even
from this height to see into its depth. It seemed as though a
meteor had struck and ploughed this crater through the
earth’s crust. Each day saw it driven deeper and deeper
still, as the miners followed the fabulous cone of blue
kimberlite conglomerate downwards. Already that hole had
delivered up almost ten million carats of fine diamonds, and Mr
Rhodes’ Company owned it all.

Ralph merely glanced once at this view of the pit in which he
had spent most of his youth grovelling and scratching for the
elusive stones, and then he surveyed the room appraisingly. The
panelling was of seasoned oak, the intricate carving worked by
craftsmen, the carpets over the floor were silk Qum, and the
books in the shelves were matching sets bound in morocco and
stamped in gold leaf.

There was the sound of running water from the open door of the
bathroom, and a voice asked, ‘Who is it?’

Ralph spun his hat onto the stand, and turned to face the door
as Jordan came through it. He was in his shirtsleeves with
protectors over his cuffs, his shirt was the finest Irish linen
and the cravat under his stock was watered silk. He was drying
his hands on a monogrammed towel, but he froze when he saw Ralph,
then he threw the towel aside and crossed to him with three long
lithe strides and a cry of delight.