Half of One Thing Read online

  Zirk Van Den Berg

  HALF OF ONE THING

  Contents

  By the Same Author

  1902

  18 January 1902

  1901

  1 August 1901

  24 August 1901

  1 September 1901

  14 September 1901

  27 October 1901

  27–28 October 1901

  28 October 1901

  28–29 October 1901

  29 October 1901

  29 October–11 November 1901

  12–13 November 1901

  13 November 1901

  14 November 1901

  17 November 1901

  18 November 1901

  26 November 1901

  27 November 1901 (1)

  27 November 1901 (2)

  27 November 1901 (3)

  28 November 1901

  29–30 November 1901

  30 November 1901

  4–31 December 1901

  1902

  18 January 1902

  POSTSCRIPT

  1902–1960

  Follow Penguin

  By the Same Author:

  Ekstra dun vir meer gevoel

  Wydsbeen

  Nobody Dies

  No-Brainer

  ’n Ander mens

  This one is for Elsie

  1902

  18 January 1902

  Gideon Lancaster betrayed both sides in the Boer War through one and the same act, and felt betrayed himself.

  Since waking up in a hospital in Bloemfontein six weeks earlier, he wanted to think about nothing except what had happened to him. Now that he was finally on the train, heading home, other demands on his attention had fallen away. He could become immersed in thought, hoping to find out when and why his life had taken this course.

  Did it begin on the day he first saw the Boer woman Esther, or when Major Bryce asked him to become a spy among the Boers? Of course, neither of those things would have happened if he hadn’t been in Africa in the first place, in the army. So this whole business really began when New Zealand went to war against the Boer republics and he followed suit, answering the call of Queen and Country and his own restless nature. But he would hardly have done so if it hadn’t been for that time when he saw a platoon of redcoats come marching down Queen Street, bayonets pointing at the heavens, which rained down on them. He was seventeen, waiting for his father outside the Auckland Savings Bank. The soldiers looked so dashing and defiant, so different to the bank clerk his father wanted him to become. You could say everything flowed from there. So why couldn’t he get the memory of his brother out of his head? The two of them swimming at Piha beach, ten and twelve years old. A wave came and he never saw Edward again. Hell, you could probably go back much further than that, to before his birth even, when his father, returning from a Grand Tour, met his mother in Holland … You could trace the chain of events as far as you wanted, pick any moment as its start. It didn’t matter though, the beginning didn’t change the end, and the end was what he wanted to change more than anything. Not to be here. Not to feel like this.

  But perhaps there was still a chance.

  He was on a troop train headed to Cape Town, to meet a ship that would take him back to New Zealand. The train had an armoured carriage front and back, bristling with Nordenfelt gun barrels, and cattle cars in the middle for soldiers who had finished their tour of duty. The other men were boisterous or pretended to be, as they were leaving the war behind. The parting was slow and some of them would no doubt carry the scars with them for a long, long time. Mile after mile, as the train chugged southward, they saw the signs of war. Every farmhouse was burnt down – blackened walls and empty windows turning the buildings into giant skulls. Large stretches of veldt were completely bare, covered in nothing but cinders and ash. There were no fences; all the poles had been burnt for fuel long ago. The train steamed past evenly spaced blockhouses, built here to protect the Empire army’s supply line from sabotage. At some of these fortifications, soldiers had ventured outside, smoking in the shade. They waved at the passing train. Once Gideon saw a distant rider in uniform, pushing his mount hard.

  That could have been him, six months earlier.

  1901

  1 August 1901

  Unless you knew the land like it was your own, shelter was hard to find on these plains. Small grey bushes, sparse yellow grass and red soil mile after mile; towards the north the hint of a rise, Petrusburg. On this seemingly flat expanse, the Boers often managed to melt away, finding subtle hollows to lie low where strangers saw nothing. At the moment, Gideon Lancaster was more concerned about any Boers appearing rather than disappearing. He was part of a small detachment busy exporting four prisoners back to base. He didn’t like his role. Seeing these men through binoculars or over gun sights was one thing. Up close they were all too human, speaking the language of his mother.

  His unit had come upon the Boers at midday. The four of them had apparently become so engrossed in figuring out the best way to skin and barbecue a porcupine that they neglected to keep watch. They were taken without a shot being fired. They seemed to Gideon to be a rather despicable lot, people of low class. He had encountered Boer prisoners of war before. They were not all as bad as these four, but he found them all surly, bitter at having been beaten. You’d sometimes find a more educated Boer who could speak English, but none of these four could handle much more than yes and no. Gideon didn’t let on that he could speak their language. Talking to these men had little point. Any information they’d give would be as likely to send you into an ambush as be useful. Instead he gazed at the horizon, which seemed lower than he had seen it anywhere except at sea. In most directions, the plain stretched as far as the eye could see. The grasses and bushes scarcely reached halfway to the horses’ knees. The featureless landscape made the sky all the more interesting, deep blue and flecked with clouds that almost made pictures if you squinted and used some imagination.

  ‘Hey, shouldn’t we tell them about the Khaki?’ the Boer closest to Gideon asked, in their version of Dutch. He had yellow hair and teeth.

  Gideon wondered who they were talking about. He was aware that the Boers called all Empire soldiers Khakis, for the colour of their uniforms. What Khaki would they be talking about?

  ‘To hell with him,’ said an older man. ‘Let him die, the swine. One less to worry about.’

  ‘I was so surprised when they jumped us that I completely forgot about him.’

  ‘Did you tie him up like I asked?’ It was the furthest man who seemed to be the leader of the group.

  ‘Yeah. He wouldn’t get free even if he did regain consciousness.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll bleed to death?’

  ‘Probably not, that wound’s not that serious I think. The bleeding should stop … I reckon it will probably be thirst that kills him.’

  ‘Unless a snake gets to him, or a predator of some sort.’

  Now Gideon had to ask. ‘Who’s this Khaki and where is he?’

  They looked around, surprised at hearing their language from a New Zealander. ‘Have you been following our conversation?’ The leader.

  ‘There’s not much else going on out here. Who is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. We just found him this morning, out on his own. Looked like he had got himself lost. He raised his rifle and we shot him. One shot got him on the head, knocked him out. His horse ran off and we couldn’t catch it.’

  Gideon imagined lying on that red earth, tied up, bleeding in the bright sun. ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘You can’t expect us to take a prisoner like that, we need our horses for ourselves.’

  ‘So where is this place where you left him? How far?’

  ‘I do
n’t know … I can show you.’

  Gideon thought about it for a moment, but he wouldn’t want to be out there by himself with any of these men. ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘How can I explain it to you? To you it probably all looks the same out here.’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘It was near a drift, about–’

  ‘What’s a drift?’ Gideon hadn’t encountered the word before.

  ‘I told you it was useless … It’s where the road crosses the river.’

  The yellow-haired one added, ‘Where we shot the porcupine.’

  Probably not far from where they were captured then. There could be a trail of blood drops he could find, left by the porcupine.

  ‘Corporal?’ Gideon spurred on his horse to the corporal at the head of the group. Corporal Stewart was an affable chap, mid-thirties, freckled. ‘These men apparently shot one of our men this morning. He’s still out there, alive when they left him.’

  ‘We can’t all turn back, we won’t make it to base before night and I don’t want to have to guard the prisoners after dark.’

  ‘I can go alone. I’ll go see if I can find him and bring him back.’

  The corporal looked out over the veldt. ‘There could still be Boers about. These four probably just split off from a larger force.’

  ‘We can’t leave a man there to die, one of ours.’

  ‘New Zealander?’

  ‘I don’t know, but he is someone on our side … He probably came to this country just like us, to do the right thing. And now he’s going to die out there in the middle of nowhere, with nobody around. It’s not right.’

  ‘You realise you’re going to be out here on your own in the night?’

  ‘Hopefully I’ll have the wounded man with me.’

  Corporal Stewart thought about it. ‘I tell you what. When we get to the camp, we’ll tell them and they can send people to look tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow could be too late for this man.’ Gideon had the mental image of the wounded man’s hand reaching out to him, as if from under water.

  The corporal blew through pursed lips, shook his head. ‘You’re staying with us.’ He must have read Gideon’s expression, because he added, ‘That’s an order.’

  Gideon reined his horse in and waited for the others to pass so he could take his usual place. As a boy, he used to set himself tasks: train until you can run to the big tree on Jervois Road and back in five minutes; learn to write upside down in mirror script; memorise the royal family tree from 1066 to the present day; swim underwater from one side of Mr Oram’s anchored sloop to the other; and so on. Here was a real challenge, something that made a difference to more than just the way he felt about himself. That man could die if he didn’t act.

  When the last man had ridden past him, he pulled his horse around and kicked the animal in the flanks. ‘Go!’

  He heard Corporal Stewart call after him. ‘Lancaster! Come back, right now!’

  But he just kept his head down, bum up and put as much distance between himself and the others as he could. He’d handle the consequences tomorrow.

  About half a mile away, he reined in his horse and looked back. The others were moving, away from him. He waved, but nobody waved back. So be it. He went back on the tracks they had made earlier, heading south.

  Every time he thought he might be on a slight rise, he stopped, stood up in the stirrups and scoured the horizon through the binoculars. Just grass and scrubland, the shadows of clouds shifting darker patches around. He drank from his canteen, just a small sip. He had to leave water for the wounded man. Off again.

  It was nearly two hours later, much of it at walking pace, when he spotted buzzards circling about. He spurred the horse on, worried that the carrion eaters might be going for the wounded man. It had been known to happen. He found the birds flapping about in the faintest of hollows, rode straight at them, shouting and waving his hat. They flew up and landed twenty yards away. There was something bloody on the ground, too small to be a man. The porcupine carcass. So this is where they caught the Boers. The wounded man had to be close by. Gideon rode around the carcass, looking for blood splatters. He found a couple about ten yards away. So that’s the side the Boers had come from. He rode slowly. Behind him, the buzzards returned to their feast. There, another dark red drop. He found two more blood marks before he looked up and saw the horse. It stood out in this flat expanse. It stopped its grazing, looked at the approaching rider. His horse whinnied and the other one shied away. Then Gideon saw the man, a motionless khaki shape. The horse must have returned to its rider.

  Gideon jumped off his horse and went to the man to find out how badly he had been hurt. The man was breathing shallowly. He had a gash on his head, where a bullet had torn through the scalp, but apparently not the skull. You could see the ghostly sheen of bone in the groove. His right shin seemed to be shattered, judging by the angle at which his leg lay, but there wasn’t much blood. It probably happened when he fell off the horse. Gideon got a knife from his saddlebag and hacked through the rawhide strips that bound the man’s hands and feet. He knelt and cradled the man’s head in his lap, trickling water onto his lips. ‘Drink.’ The man spluttered, groaned. Blood from the wound on his head stained Gideon’s pants. His eyes flickered open and looked Gideon straight in the face. He tried to speak, but Gideon couldn’t make out the words. ‘Don’t you worry, I’ll get you back to our people. They’ll fix you up.’

  The man’s helmet lay nearby, the name Coomey written inside. ‘Well, Mr Coomey, let’s get some field dressings on you and then we can go.’

  There was, of course, no answer.

  Gideon finished the dressings, caught the man’s horse and manhandled the limp figure into the saddle. Coomey collapsed forward onto the horse’s neck. Gideon slipped the man’s bedroll under his chest and head, put Coomey’s arms around the animal’s neck and tied them together. It wasn’t foolproof, but if they went at walking pace and Gideon kept a close eye, it would help the man stay in the saddle, even if he was unconscious. Gideon glanced at the sun. He probably had two more hours of daylight. He took the reins of the other horse, got onto his own, and set off.

  Once, from a rise, he saw a group of riders, way off towards the darkening eastern horizon. He couldn’t make out if they were friend or foe, so looked around for somewhere to lay low for a while. From where they were, he would be silhouetted against the sunset. Not finding a suitable spot to hide, he decided to head more westward at least, put some more distance between them. He pushed on. Coomey groaned occasionally, or made gurgling noises. Gideon wetted the man’s lips, but couldn’t do much more. The sky in the west turned orange, then displayed a greenish tinge before going purple and then blue-black.

  Then it was just the night and the veldt and the stars, the smell of grass and dust. This is the way the world had been before this war, before people even. A million pinpricks of light spread across the heavens. If he were an animal, the sight would have made him howl – the awesome grandeur of all that cold space. He looked up at the stars, then down at his blood-splattered uniform.

  24 August 1901

  In a small, double-storey Bloemfontein hotel that had been converted into an officers’ club, the men were clearing some space for Major Bryce to make good on a dare. Being Saturday night, it wasn’t easy to create enough of an opening among all the bodies. Bloemfontein had burst its seams since the British conquered the Orange Free State capital the year before. There were thousands of officers around and many of them found their way to this club, which was known to be louder and looser than the others.

  As usual, Bryce looked tipsy, but his mind was as clear as a Kimberley diamond. Playing the role of the garrulous good bloke made things easier for him. In just about every aspect you could think of, Major Bryce was not what he seemed. He was an officer, but not strictly speaking a gentleman. Rumour had it that he was related to the Queen by blood, through the shenanigans of a careless male relative. As a young man, Bryce had di
stinguished himself in the Sudan, gaining Lord Kitchener’s admiration. Admittedly, this had not led to the promotions he had hoped for. Nobody doubted that Bryce had the intellectual capacity to go with his bravery. He had read Nietzsche in German and modelled his moustache, if not his morality, on the German’s. It was said that he had even impressed the great Oscar Wilde, who reportedly remarked that Bryce was quite brilliant … for an infantryman. His sporadic but repeated contact with the Wilde circle reflected badly on Bryce when the writer was gaoled for buggery. Bryce could have stopped the suspicion by marrying, but claimed he didn’t wish the life of a soldier’s wife on anybody, all that time waiting for an absentee who may or may not return. The reality was that he had never cared for any woman as much as for his mother, and for her weakness he could never forgive her. Perhaps it was suspicions of wayward tendencies that had kept him out of higher office, but he didn’t think so. After all, Kitchener’s career flourished despite what anyone thought of his private predilections. No, the thing that counted against Bryce was his tendency to individualism. The way to prevent ostracism while maintaining his distance was to put in regular appearances at the club, put on a larger-than-life act. Of course, it helped that he had a good singing voice and was strong as a draught horse.

  This feat was one of his favourites, indulged in only once or twice a year when he could find a mainly new audience. The best thing about this war was that it brought together people from all over. He spotted Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, local colonials and, of course, the obligatory Scotsmen this evening. You can’t have a war without Highlanders. He fussed around with bar stools and made large gestures until the hubbub had died down and he had mostly everyone’s attention. Some of the men had gone partway up the stairs on the side of the room to get a better view. Bryce put three bar stools in a row, just under two feet apart. He sat down on the middle one and put his heels on another, shifting it till he had his legs straight. Then he leaned back with his shoulders onto the third. This one he manoeuvred upwards to support only his head. The grooves in the ceiling had been flattened out by coats of paint. He was probably the only one to notice it.