A Time for Courage (31 page)

Frances spoke and she was not laughing now. ‘At least, Hannah, hold back until the Pensions Bill is through. Surely that is very important, especially to the two of us because we can see just how bad things are. Then make a decision whether to stay with the non-militants or give your allegiance to the suffragettes. I’m not asking you to fight. You have been doing that for years with the suffragists but I am asking you to be responsible and not add to the Government’s problems or encourage others to while they try to force this important reform through.’

Frances would not tell Hannah that she was only asking this of her because she feared that violence would indeed escalate within the ranks of the suffragettes and she wanted Hannah to be kept from it for as long as possible. After all, perhaps a miracle would occur and votes would be given, then she would never have to fight.

As Hannah stroked the dog’s back and smelt her odour she saw Bernie again, watching from the cottage as they walked on to the moor, and Mary, the match-girl who was now dead, and she knew, filled with frustration though she was, that she could not on principle campaign against this government as they fought in by-elections to be re-elected. She could not make their task more difficult as they tried to steer their Pensions Bill through the house. This would be her personal acknowledgement of their worth. But she also knew that she would shout and make demands when the Pensions Bill became an Act if the government did not then turn their attention to female suffrage because they would no longer deserve support.

‘I’ll wait,’ she said at last, taking comfort in the knowledge that it would not be long before she knew whether or not she would have to take up the struggle.

As she lay in bed that night, watching the moon through the undrawn curtains, she could not sleep in this strange bed. It was an attic room and the eaves came low as they had done in the Cornish cottage, but there was no picture in heavy oils, just prints of garden flowers.

It was a nice room, homely with pleasant furniture and a thick carpet and a fire which she had said she would look after since it was a long way up for Beatrice to come. Frances had smiled at her as she had said this. There were stocks in a vase by the bed and lavender amongst them. Their scent was not unhappy as she had feared it might be but brought her mother closer.

She felt tired now but today had been a good day; the empty space had been filled and soon she would either have the vote or would be fighting to gain it and would therefore be a person and not a thing. As she turned on her side she wondered how Harry was and when she would see him again.

And then she thought of Esther and knew that she must keep her close and too busy to forget her brother but as the clouds covered the moon she wondered how.

Harry sat on the
stoep
or verandah of his hotel. The voyage had left him feeling fit, he thought to himself, and he looked again at the telegram that he had received from the Ren Gold Mine, his employers.

Frank Canon would be meeting him here, or should already have met him according to the brief clipped words, and it was in this man’s company that he would begin the journey into the interior. Harry looked out across the street with its trams and trees, way over to the mountains which stood at the back of this beautiful Cape Town. It was these mountains he would be passing through soon and he felt a stirring of tension, of anticipation.

He walked now to the edge of the
stoep
, hearing the cicadas, watching the butterflies, brilliant in their blues and reds, first settling then moving from the bushes of herbs which grew around the hotel, their aroma thick in the air. He moved down the steps and along the streets until he could see the blue of the South Atlantic which was visible to the south from almost any street or window. Across the miles Esther would be wondering if he had arrived, if he was safe, and he longed to feel her body pressed to his, her white skin soft beneath his hands. She had not allowed him to make love to her and that was as it should be but how he had longed for it.

He turned, impatient now to be at work, to be starting the life which would make such thoughts reality, and walked back to the hotel to sit again beneath the fan, waiting with diminishing patience for Canon.

It was not until six in the evening that he arrived and Harry was still on the
stoep
breathing in the scent of herbs which seemed to grow everywhere in this climate; a climate which was nothing short of idyllic.

Frank was keen to eat before having the first and last good sleep either of them would have for longer than he cared to think, he said, shaking hands with a firm grip, his smile broad against his tanned skin. Lines of tiredness were etched in the same red dust which coated his shoes and he cursed as he sat down on the rocking bench and motioned for Harry to join him. But Harry shook his head and chose instead the heavy wooden chair he had been sitting in when Frank had finally arrived.

‘I dare say you think you have come to a slice of heaven, Harry?’ Frank said, rubbing his sleeve over his forehead before removing his wide-brimmed hat and leaning his head back and closing his eyes.

Harry smiled. ‘It’s not what I expected, that I have to confess – and yes, it is grand.’

Frank did not open his eyes or move but murmured. ‘Make the most of it, old son, for tomorrow we travel and then you forget there was ever air to breathe.’

Harry looked at him. ‘It’s that hot, is it?’

‘It is, I’m afraid, at this time of year. January is not the best time to arrive. It’s high summer for the next two months and there’s been little rain on the Rand, not even the few showers that the good God sees fit to bestow normally.’ He yawned and made no attempt to cover his mouth with his hand. The insects were louder now, Harry noted, and the sun had almost gone. ‘You’ll think you’re breathing nothing but dust and you will be right.’ Frank continued, dropping his head forward on to his chest for a moment and then heaving himself to his feet. ‘Come on, old lad. I’ll freshen up and then let’s have asparagus and then some fish. Both are ambrosia though we are not yet gods. But there is time, eh?’ He winked at Harry and left him in the lobby while he climbed the stairs to the room which had been booked by the company.

Later they walked together into the dining-room where the coffee-coloured maids waited to serve them. There were many tables, all of them full, but conversation was muted, elegance was all around. As they ate Harry listened while Frank talked of his days in Venezuela where he had worked in the mines before coming out here to make his fortune and, before that, his time at Eton and Oxford.

‘I earn so much though that a fortune seems unnecessary. I’ve decided it’s safer to know that there’s money coming in, rather than living on nothing, hoping to find a diamond the size of an ostrich egg. I’ll be able to bring my fiancée over from Britain in a few years and we’ll set up house, in Cape Town, I hope. I love it here.’ Frank put down his knife and fork and leant back in his chair, pouring more wine for Harry. ‘They make a good wine in the Cape. What do you think of it?’

Harry smiled and lifted his glass. ‘It’s a bit too nice,’ he said, hearing the slight slurring of his own speech, the slowness of his thoughts.

Frank laughed and his blue eyes looked less tired as he did so. He wore his brown hair longer than Harry was used to and had a beard which was darker than his hair. His movements were deft and sure as he filleted the fish. His nails were cut short and square and Harry watched as Frank clicked his fingers towards the octoroon who stood waiting by the service door, watching their quarter of the dining-room. She wore a black dress with a starched white apron and walked towards them. Frank called, ‘Another bottle,’ pointing to the now empty one which stood on the small trolley by their table.

Harry watched the coloured girl almost bow before walking into the kitchen. She had straight hair and fine features and there was a grace and beauty to her. He turned back and found Frank watching him, laughter in his eyes.

‘You can look, but don’t touch,’ he grinned. ‘She’s what we call a Cape Coloured, a mixture of black and white.’

Harry lifted the backbone of his fish to one side of his plate, it was so fresh it tasted almost of the sea. He shook his head at Frank. ‘No fear of that.’

‘It’s as well, it only leads to trouble,’ Frank replied, patting his mouth with his starched napkin as the girl returned and placed the bottle on the table, the cork already removed. ‘Too much damned mating in the early days between the whites and the natives produced the likes of her. We each keep to our own sides of the track now.’ He bent his head to his meal again and Harry drank more wine.

No, there was no fear of him touching, not when Esther was forever in his thoughts and was his whole being, his reason to live. He hoped that Hannah had remembered that she had promised to somehow make the waiting more bearable for the girl that he loved.

They left early in the morning, taking the train which chugged away from the lushness of the Cape and on through the valleys which wound between the hills which were really mountains. They separate civilisation from the interior, Frank told him, settling himself back, lifting the pink
Sporting Life
, staining the pages with the sweat from his fingers.

Once they were through the hills, which seemed to take an interminable time, Harry looked out across red arid land where few cattle grazed but where ostriches occasionally walked, the heat making even them hang their heads. Frank pointed out the dry karroo bushes which in no way covered the red terrain. He told how wool had been the chief export before gold arrived and laughed at the red-dusted sheep which huddled around the pale, parched milk-bushes. He told of the classics; hard-rock-rabbits which would come out when evening came and it was cooler.

As Harry listened the heat made him want to die; it beat off the ground and the roof and in through the windows in spite of the shades pulled down. It took days and they slept when they could and ran water over their lips and Harry soaked his handkerchief and held it to his face and neck, listening as Frank told him of this country which was so hot and unbearable.

He told him how the Transvaal, which was where they were now heading, had been flooded by a shallow sea millions of years ago and how gold had been deposited when the sea finally ebbed. He explained how, many miles north of the river Vaal, one long ridge had been thrown up when faulting occurred; a ridge which was some sixty miles long from east to west. How, many millions of years later, Boer farmers saw streams glistening on this upland and called it the ridge of white water, the Witwatersrand.

‘What we call the Rand, my son,’ Frank said. ‘The Mecca to all the gold hunters in the world and Johannesburg is the centre of it all.’

Gone were the sheep and cattle, he told Harry, relegated to the land which they were now passing.

Harry asked about the diamonds, for he knew that if he was to become as rich as Arthur it was these little bits of carbon which would make it possible.

‘The diamonds will have to wait, Harry,’ Frank said, his voice cracked and hoarse, his legs sprawled across the carriage, his boots as dusty as Harry’s. ‘But don’t worry, we’ll be going to the fields fairly soon so you’ll be able to see what it’s really like there. There’ll be some message we have to deliver, you mark my words. I seem to spend my life running about this bloody land.

‘You’ll be working with the gold – at first anyway. That’s where we need the engineers. It’s hard rock but you’ll be used to that with your Cornish roots. It’s damned tough work, you know that? Especially in this heat. It’s not so bad during the winters.’

He laughed at Harry’s surprise. ‘Yes, we have winters and they can be bloody cold, you know. The Rand is high after all and so are the diamond fields, mark my words.’

The heat in Johannesburg was greater than Harry thought could be possible; the thermometer said that it was over 140 degrees and that was inside the house which he was to share with Frank, so what would it be out in the full glare of the sun?

The small corrugated iron house with its wooden
stoep
and the thin hedge of cypress trees on three sides lay on the extreme edge of the town alongside unlit, unpaved roads. They had taken a horse-drawn tram from the station to the house and Harry had found it an extraordinary and gaudy town which looked like a circus dropped in the middle of the moon, so barren was the veld through which they had travelled. The station was on the northern edge of the town close to the post office and the telephone exchange and Harry knew now where he could post his next letter to Esther.

They had passed some substantial two-storeyed houses in brick with first-floor balconies and Frank had laughed and said they should doff their hats for these were the big bosses. They had passed through Market Square around which the town had originally grown and had continued south past stone buildings: the Stock Exchange, banks, the offices of mining companies and the Rand Club which looked as smart as anything in London. Other trams had travelled the main thoroughfares and heat had blurred the air well above the ground.

Frank had been right, he had felt as though he were breathing dust and as he lay on the bed, stifled by the heat, he felt little better. Sweat ran from him in rivulets and the bed was wet beneath him. There was no fan here just whitewashed walls with no pictures and windows with blinds so that although the sun was kept from the room so was any vestige of a breeze. But would there have been such a thing as a cooling wind? Harry knew there would not. Frank had insisted before he threw his boots to the boy, who was black and thin, with a face that was almost frightening in its strangeness, that they would go out to the mine only when the sun had gone down.

And so it was not until the evening when the worst of the heat was over and the moon had cast a white light over the land that they left the house with its sparse furniture, covered all the time with fine dust, and set out to visit the mine which held so many of his hopes and Esther’s too.