The Angels Weep (32 page)

Ralph let the unfinished statement rest for ten beats of his
racing heart, and then he asked: ‘Or?’

‘Or else I will destroy you, utterly,’ said Mr
Rhodes. Calmly he met the ferocious hatred in the eyes of the
young man before him. He was inured by now both to adulation and
to hatred, such things were meaningless when measured against the
grand design of his destiny. Yet he could afford a placating
word.

‘You must understand that there is nothing personal in
this, Ralph,’ he said. ‘I have nothing but admiration
for your courage and determination. As I said earlier, it is in
young men like you that I place my hope for the future. No,
Ralph, it is not personal. I simply cannot allow anything or
anybody to stand in my way. I know what has to be done, and there
is so little time left in which to do it.’

The instinct to kill came upon Ralph in a black unholy rage.
He could clearly imagine his fingers locked into the swollen
throat, feel his thumbs crushing the larynx from which that
shrill cruel voice rose. Ralph closed his eyes and fought off his
rage. He threw it off the way a man throws off a sodden cloak
when he comes in from the storm, and when he opened his eyes
again, he felt as though his whole life had changed. He was icy
calm, the tremor gone from his hands, and his voice was
level.

‘I understand,’ he nodded. ‘In your place I
would probably do the same thing. Shall we ask Jordan to draw up
the contract making over any rights I or my partners might have
in the Wankie coalfields to the BSA Company, and in consideration
thereof the BSA Company irrevocably confirms my rights in the
claims known as the Harkness Mine.’

Mr Rhodes nodded approvingly. ‘You will go far, young
man. You are a fighter.’ Then he looked up at Jordan.
‘Do it!’ he said.

T
he locomotive
roared on into the night, and despite the tons of lead that had
been placed over the axles to soften the ride for Mr Rhodes, the
carriages lurched rhythmically and the ties clattered harshly
under the steel wheels.

Ralph sat by the window in his stateroom. The goose-down
coverlet was drawn back invitingly on the double bed behind the
green velvet curtains, but it had no attraction for him. He was
still fully dressed, though the ormolu clock on the beside table
showed the time as three o’clock in the morning. He was
drunk, yet unnaturally clear-headed, as though his rage had
burned up the alcohol as soon as he swallowed it.

He stared out of the window. There was a full moon standing
over the strangely shaped purple kopjes along the horizon, and
every once in a while the beat of the wheels changed to a ringing
gong as they crossed another low steel bridge over a dry river
course in which the sugary sand glowed like molten silver in the
moonlight.

Ralph had sat through dinner at Mr Rhodes’ board,
listening to his high, jarring voice parading a succession of
weird and grandiose ideas, interspersed with sudden startling
truths or shop-worn old maids’ platitudes that spilled
endlessly out of the big man with the lumpy, ungainly body.

The only reason why Ralph managed to control his emotions and
keep a good face, the reason why he even managed to nod in
agreement or smile at one of Mr Rhodes’ sallies, was the
realization that he had uncovered another of his
adversary’s weaknesses. Mr Rhodes lived in a stratum so
high above other men, he was so cushioned by his vast wealth, so
blinded by his own visions, that he did not seem even to realize
that he had made a mortal enemy. If he did think at all of
Ralph’s feelings, it was to suppose that he had already
discounted the loss of the Wankie coalfields, and accepted it as
philosophically and impersonally as Mr Rhodes himself had.

Even so, the choice food and noble wines were tasteless as
sawdust, and Ralph swallowed them with difficulty and experienced
a surge of relief when Mr Rhodes finally declared the evening
ended in his usual abrupt manner by pushing back his chair
without warning and rising to his feet. Only then he paused for a
moment to examine Ralph’s face.

‘I measure a man by the style in which he faces
adversity,’ he said. ‘You will do, young
Ballantyne.’

In that moment Ralph had come close, once again, to losing
control, but then Mr Rhodes had left the saloon with his bearlike
gait, leaving the two brothers together at the table.

‘I am sorry, Ralph,’ Jordan had said simply.
‘I tried to warn you once. You should not have challenged
him. You should not have forced me to choose between you and him.
I have put a bottle of whisky in your stateroom. We will reach
the village of Matjiesfontein in the morning. There is a
first-rate hotel run by a fellow called Logan. You can wait there
for the northbound train to take you back to Kimberley tomorrow
evening.’

Now the whisky bottle was empty, Ralph looked at it with
astonishment. He should have been comatose from the amount that
he had drunk. It was only when he tried to stand that his legs
cheated him, and he fell against the washstand. He steadied
himself, and peered into his own image in the mirror.

It was not the face of a drunkard. His jaw was hard-edged, his
mouth firm, his eyes dark and angry. He pulled back from the
mirror, glanced at the bed, and knew that he could not sleep, not
even now when he was almost burned out with rage and hatred.
Suddenly he wanted surcease, a short oblivion, and he knew where
to find it. At the far end of the saloon, behind the tall double
doors of intricate marquetry work, was an array of bottles, the
finest and most exotic liquors gathered from every civilized land
– that was where he could find oblivion.

Ralph crossed his stateroom, fumbled with the door catch and
stepped out. The cold Karroo night air flicked his hair and he
shivered in his shirtsleeves, and then weaved down the narrow
corridor towards the saloon. He bumped first one shoulder and
then the other against the polished teak bulkheads, and cursed
his own clumsiness. He crossed the open balcony between coaches,
clutching at the handrail to steady himself, eager to get out of
the wind. As he entered the corridor of the second coach, one of
the doors slid open ahead of him, and a shaft of yellow light
outlined the slim and graceful figure that stepped through.

Jordan had not seen his brother. He paused in the doorway and
looked back into the stateroom beyond. His expression was as soft
and as loving as that of a mother leaving her sleeping infant.
Gently, with exaggerated care, he closed the sliding door so as
not to make the least sound. Then he turned and found himself
face to face with Ralph.

Like his brother, Jordan was coatless, but his shirt was
unbuttoned down to the silver buckle of his breeches; the cuffs
of his sleeves were not linked as though the garment had been
thrown on carelessly, and Jordan’s feet were bare, very
white and elegantly shaped against the dark-toned carpet.

None of this surprised Ralph. He expected that, like himself,
Jordan was hungry or visiting the heads. He was too fuddled to
ponder on it, and was about to invite Jordan to come with him to
find another bottle, when he saw the expression on Jordan’s
face.

He was instantly transported back fifteen years in time, to
the thatched bungalow of his father’s camp near the great
pit of the Kimberley mine where he and Jordan had passed most of
their youth. One night, that long ago, Ralph had surprised his
brother in a childish act of onanism, and had seen that same
expression, that stricken dread and guilt, upon his lovely
face.

Now again Jordan was transfixed, rigid and pale, staring at
Ralph with huge terrified eyes, his hand raised as though to
shield his throat. Suddenly Ralph understood. He recoiled in
horror and found the door onto the balcony closed behind him. He
flattened his back against it, unable to speak for infinite
seconds, while they stared at each other. When at last Ralph
regained his voice, it was rough as though he had run a hard
race.

‘By God, now I know why you have no use for whores, for
you are one yourself.’

Ralph turned and tore open the door, he ran out onto the
balcony and looked about him wildly, like a creature in a trap,
and saw the clean moon-washed spaces of the open veld. He kicked
open the gate of the balcony, swung down the steps, and let
himself drop into the night.

The earth hit him with crushing force and he rolled down the
ballasting and came to rest face down in the harsh scrub beside
the tracks. When he lifted his head, the red running-lights of
the caboose were dwindling away into the south, and the sound of
the wheels was already muted, by distance.

Ralph pushed himself up, and limped and staggered away into
the empty veld. Half a mile from the tracks he fell to his knees
again, and gagged and retched as he vomited up the whisky and his
own disgust. The dawn was an unearthly orange wash behind a crisp
black cut-out of flat-topped hills. Ralph lifted his face to it,
and he spoke aloud.

‘I swear I will have him. I swear that I will destroy
this monster, or destroy myself in the attempt.’

At that moment the rim of the sun pushed up above the hills
and hurled a brazen dart of light into Ralph’s face as
though a god had been listening, and had sealed the pact with
flame.

‘M
y
father killed a great elephant upon this spot. The tusks stand on
the stoep at King’s Lynn,’ Ralph said quietly.
‘And I shot a fine lion here myself. It seems strange that
things like that will never happen again at this
place.’

Beside him Harry Mellow straightened up from the theodolite,
and for a moment his face was grave.

‘We have come to conquer the wilderness,’ he said.
‘Soon there will be a high headgear reaching up into the
sky, and if the Harkness reef runs true, one day a town with
schools and churches, hundreds perhaps thousands of families.
Isn’t that what we both want?’

Ralph shook his head. ‘I would be getting soft if I did
not. It just seems strange, when you look at it now.’

The low valleys were still blowing with the soft pink grasses,
the timber along the ridges was tall, the tree trunks silver in
the sunlight, but even as they watched one of them shivered
against the sky and then toppled with a rending crackling roar.
The Matabele axemen swarmed over the fallen giant to lop off the
branches and for a moment longer the shadow of regret lingered in
Ralph’s eyes, then he turned away.

‘You have picked a good site,’ he said, and Harry
followed the direction of his gaze.

‘Knobs Hill,’ he laughed.

The thatch and daub hut was sited so that it would not
overlook the compound for the black labourers. Instead it had a
breathtaking view over the forest to where the southern
escarpment dipped away into infinite blue distances. A tiny
feminine figure came out of the hut, her apron a merry spot of
tulip yellow against the raw red earth which Vicky hoped would
one day be a garden. She saw the two men below her and waved.

‘By God, that girl has done wonders.’ Harry lifted
his hat above his head to acknowledge the greeting, his
expression fondly besotted. ‘She copes so well, nothing
upsets her – not even the cobra in the lavatory this
morning – she just up and blasted it with a shotgun. Of
course, I’ll have to fix the seat.’

‘It’s her life,’ Ralph pointed out.
‘Put her in a city and she’d probably be in tears in
ten minutes.’

‘Not my girl,’ said Harry proudly.

‘All right, you made a good choice,’ Ralph agreed,
‘but it’s bad form to boost your own wife.’

‘Bad form?’ Harry shook his head wonderingly.
‘You limeys!’ he said, and stooped to put his eye
back to the lens of the theodolite.

‘Leave that damn thing for a minute.’ Ralph
pinched his shoulder lightly. ‘I didn’t ride three
hundred miles to look at your backside.’

‘Fine.’ Harry straightened. ‘I’ll let
the work lie. What do you want to talk about?’

‘Show me how you decided on the site of your No.1
shaft,’ Ralph invited, and they went down the valley, while
Harry pointed out the factors which had led him to choose the
spot.

‘The ancient trenches are inclined at just over forty
degrees, and we have three layers of schists over-running. Now I
extended out the strike of the ancient reef, and we put in the
potholes here—’

The exploratory potholes were narrow vertical shafts, each
under a gantry of raw native timber, spaced out in a straight
line along the slope of the hill.

‘We went down a hundred feet on five of them, down
through the friable levels, and we picked up the upper schist
layer again—’

‘Schist isn’t going to make us rich.’

‘No, but the reef’s still under it.’

‘How do you know?’

‘You hired me for my nose.’ Harry chuckled.
‘I can smell it.’ And led Ralph on. ‘So you see
this is the only logical spot for the main shaft. I reckon to
intersect the reef again at three hundred feet and once we are on
it we can stope it out.’

A small gang of black men were clearing the collar area of the
reef and Ralph recognized the tallest of them.

‘Bazo,’ he cried, and the induna straightened up
and rested on his pick handle.

‘Henshaw,’ he greeted Ralph gravely. ‘Have
you come to watch the real men at work?’

Bazo’s flat hard muscle shone like wet anthracite, and
running sweat had left snaking trails down it.

‘Real men?’ Ralph asked. ‘You promised me
two hundred, and you have brought me twenty.’

‘The others are waiting,’ Bazo promised.
‘But they will not come if they cannot bring their women
with them. One-Bright-Eye wants the women to stay in the
villages.’

‘They can bring their women, as many as they wish. I
will speak to One-Bright-Eye. Go to them. Choose the strongest
and the best. Bring me your old comrades from the Moles impi, and
tell them I will pay them well and feed them better, and they can
bring their women and breed strong sons to work my
mines.’