Smiling Willie And The Tiger

Part One

‘It’s very rude of him, she said,

to come and spoil the fun.’

Lewis Carroll

Through the Looking Glass

One

‘Money,’ Willie Herbillon said earnestly, ‘is the first essential to any chap’s happiness.’

The Tiger looked up from the newspaper he was reading. He’d had it in his pocket for days now and it was growing a little dog-eared. ‘I can vouch for that,’ he said. ‘Because I’ve got none.’

Flat on his back and speaking from under the brim of the wideawake hat which rested over his face to keep the bright South African sun out of his eyes, Willie gestured airily. ‘Looking as though you’d got it isn’t enough,’ he went on. ‘A red waistcoat and a red carnation with red eyeballs from Cape brandy to match just won’t do.’ He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. ‘You’ve got to have the spondulicks.’

There was a long silence, then the Tiger lowered his paper. ‘You could earn it,’ he suggested.

It was some time before Willie replied. The thought seemed to have taken his breath away. He pushed his hat back and stared at the Tiger with intense cornflower-blue eyes – a casually dressed blond young man with an innocent expression like an overgrown schoolboy.

‘What you know about earning money, old chap,’ he said pleasantly, ‘you could write on a tomtit’s arse and still leave room for the Lord’s Prayer.’

The Tiger, who had been about to shove another earnest spoke in, closed his mouth with a click. Born Horace Clarence Lavender, of Stepney, his attire was more formal than Willie’s and he wore an ear-biting starched collar, detachable cuffs and shirt-front, a watch-chain – at that moment minus a watch because he’d had to pawn it – and a bowler hat. ‘You’re nobody to talk,’ he said. ‘You spent all my savings hanky-pankying with a girl.’

He blinked indignantly at Willie, his sandy-orange hair on end, his melancholy purple-blue eyes staring hotly from a pink oval face, so that he looked a little like an angry ferret.

Willie didn’t reply, contemplating the motionless leaves of the group of mimosas where they rested, to give the Tiger time to get over his umbrage. They were both young, and they were waiting just north of Venter’s Road Sidings on the western edge of the Orange Free State. Their horses cropped at the dried grass nearby and overhead the sun seemed to boil in the diamond-bright sky, making the shadows harsh and mirror-clear. The date was 20 September 1900.

When he spoke again Willie changed the subject. ‘Don’t you ever get sick of reading that thing?’ he asked.

The Tiger looked up. ‘Once a newspaperman, always a newspaperman,’ he said. ‘Surprising what the smell of printing ink can do.’

Since he was not yet twenty and had worked at a great variety of other jobs in his short life, it didn’t seem to Willie Herbillon that he could have absorbed all that much printing ink. However, he gave the Tiger a smile. It had a very special quality. Whatever the circumstances, Willie’s smile could be guaranteed to warm the day.

Encouraged, the Tiger tapped the newspaper importantly. ‘It says here,’ he announced, ‘that the war’s over.’

Willie jerked a hand towards the north where it was just possible to pick out a regiment of bell-tents like white mushrooms on a faint rise of ground. ‘If it is,’ he asked, ‘why are all those fellers still there?’

The Tiger looked indignant. ‘That’s what it says,’ he insisted. ‘Pretoria, 13 September 1900’ – he began to read in his high-pitched nervous voice – ‘Lord Roberts today announced that with the flight of President Kruger the war had degenerated into guerilla warfare. With the annexation of the Transvaal, he said, the war was over in all essentials and many of the troops could now go home.’

Willie pulled a face. To him the war had been nothing but a nuisance. He had had to spend far too much of his precious time keeping out of the clutches of people who thought it his patriotic duty to join the army, and the number of white feathers he’d collected would have filled a mattress. His resistance worn down in the end, in fact, he and the Tiger had finally been foolish enough to join one of the mounted units from the Cape. Since they’d been sent almost immediately after the enemy into the wild blue yonder without so much as a ‘by your leave’, they’d promptly unjoined and he had no intention of being caught again.

He made himself more comfortable and allowed his gaze to drift over his surroundings. There was a patch of rocky outcropping along the road to the south, starting as pebbles and growing gradually larger until it lifted up to a low mound known as Klipspringer Kopje. To one side there was a deep ravine carved out of the earth where a tributary of the Inanda River would have flowed but for the fact that, like a lot of South African rivers, for most of the year it would have been easier to suffocate in the dust along its sunken bed than drown in its flood. Along its edge there were a group of thorn bushes and willows and the mimosas that filled the air with their powerful scent. At this point several large boulders had rolled from the kopje on to the road – almost, Willie thought admiringly, as though artistically arranged by a divine providence that had read their thoughts.

The Tiger put down the newspaper again and returned to the original subject of discussion.

‘You could always work,’ he suggested once more.

Willie shuddered. ‘I worked,’ he said. ‘Once. And there’s already enough pious nose-to-the-grindstone in my family.’

For a long time there was silence, then there was a clatter of stones and another young man came bounding down to them from among the rocks of the kopje. Willie lifted his hat to look at him.

‘The Tiger says the war’s won, Poser,’ he said.

‘Suits me.’ The Poser – officially Adolphus C Fish, of Tylersville, Texas – studied them with steady dark eyes that were fringed with the sort of lashes a woman would have given her back teeth for. He was a neatly built youngster and wolfishly handsome in the cast of a matinée idol. Like Willie and the Tiger, he also hadn’t quite seen eye to eye with the army.

‘I’m an American citizen,’ he continued. ‘They got no call on me.’

‘Took the Queen’s Shilling,’ Willie pointed out.

Fish grinned. ‘Only because of the lousy Boers. And when I got in I found the Boers wasn’t lousy and the army was.’

Willie gestured at the kopje. ‘See anything up there?’ he asked.

‘Not a thing!’

‘It’s late,’ the Tiger observed.

‘Perhaps it’s because the war’s won.

‘It ain’t won with that feller De Wet still out,’ Fish said. ‘He blew up the line near Kroonstad a few days ago. That’s goddam warlike for peacetime.’

Willie had taken a cigar from his pocket. ‘Last one,’ he said. ‘Short of funds.’

‘Aren’t we all?’

Willie nodded and indicated the camp to the north. ‘Do you know, that regiment at Corneliusdal hasn’t been paid for weeks,’ he said. ‘Weeks! A thousand pounds they’re due. Or thereabouts.’

‘Could do a lot with a thousand pounds,’ he went on. ‘Champagne at Petticoat Poll’s for a start.’

‘I’d go home,’ Fish said dreamily. ‘Back to my ranch.’

Willie glanced at the Tiger and rolled his eyes heavenwards. Fish’s ranch was an old joke. In fact, he’d been born in Cape Town of British parentage but had gone to the States as a child, and like all converts had become tuppence-coloured when the originals had remained penny-plain.

He was staring at the distant tents now. ‘I heard the whole goddam division was spread out the other side of the rise there,’ he said.

Willie turned on his elbow and glanced idly towards the south where the railways sidings at Venter’s Road lay.

‘Reckon we ought to go to Cape Town afterwards,’ he said. ‘You can see the sea there.’ He sighed, because they were about as far from the sea as they could get without trying, and they’d almost forgotten what it looked like. ‘I could use a thousand pounds,’ he ended. ‘Come in useful.’

‘They deserve to lose it,’ the Tiger said. ‘The way they move it about. Hardly any guard.’

Fish passed a bottle of dop brandy round. The Tiger was the last to put his hands on it. He stared at it doubtfully, his pale-lashed eyes blinking rapidly as though he thought it might bite him. ‘Might be dangerous not to,’ he decided, lifting the bottle.

Willie raised himself on his elbow again and stared at the distant tents once more. ‘All a bit on edge up there, shouldn’t wonder,’ he said. ‘Big review at Fairplay, I heard. For when Roberts comes through on his way home.’

‘They’ve decorated the town,’ the Tiger said. ‘Flags all over the show. The general’s wife planned it.’

Fish grinned. ‘There was a strong rumour in Venter’s Road that De Wet’s going to kidnap her and hold her to ransom. The general’s worried.’

Willie lay back in the grass and began to sing softly.

‘Wife, children and friends,

A blessing that never grows stale…’

The Tiger gave him a bleak look. ‘Don’t know how you can sing at a time like this,’ he said.

Willie smiled. ‘Always one for a song,’ he pointed out. ‘And the Lord God of Stresses and Strains never objected to music.’ He glanced at the sun. ‘That blasted train’s late,’ he said.

‘Can’t rely on a thing since the war,’ Fish agreed. He climbed to his feet and peered again to the north. ‘Those poor fellers up there! No pay for a month!’

‘Perhaps they’re worried De Wet’ll pinch it. Or some soldier. Wonder why nobody ever thought of it.’

‘It’s the weight,’ the Tiger said. ‘I once did a couple of months as an office boy in a bank. A hundred quids’ worth of mixed silver weighs twenty-five pounds.’

‘Who’s going to stuff that in his pack?’ Fish said. He stared towards the sun again and a slow grin crossed his face. ‘I can see smoke,’ he said.

As Willie scrambled to his feet the Tiger hurriedly stuffed away his paper and struggled to throw a saddle over his mount. It was a one-eyed grey ex-police horse he’d bought for ten pounds from a Jewish diamond prospector who’d spotted him a mile away. It had a vicious temper and would only permit him to approach it from the right front where it could see him. If he came on it unexpectedly from any other direction it lashed out with its near hind hoof, and he was dancing about now like a hen on hot bricks.

‘Try the other side,’ Willie suggested. ‘And don’t forget to tighten the girth this time, or you’ll be hanging head-down between his legs again.’ He gestured towards the tents. ‘Won’t those fellers over there be looking forward to their Saturday pennies?’ he said.

They all laughed and Willie smiled his rich smile. ‘And won’t they be cross,’ he ended, ‘when they don’t get ’em.’

Two

A line of ragged trees marks the first sight of Venter’s Road Sidings as you approach it from the south. To the north lies the stump of Klipspringer Kopje, like a broken tooth against the sky.

Major Augustus Southey, the Divisional Paymaster, stared at the trees and frowned Napoleonically. Despite his manner, however, Southey was no soldier. He had been a temporary quartermaster-sergeant-major in one of the troublesome little native wars of the previous century, but he was always a trader first and a soldier afterwards and from the proceeds of numerous small transactions he had undertaken on behalf of his department he had acquired a hotel in Kimberley.

He was a big man, florid-faced with a large moustache and a stomach the size of a washtub. On the outbreak of the war against the Boers, he had got himself a command in a mounted regiment where his chief claim to fame lay in the way he drilled his men in the heat until their tongues were hanging out and then dismissed them outside his saloon door. When his unit had gone to the front he had managed to have a touch of what he called the Transvaal Trots and had wisely disappeared to a cushy job in Cape Colony before eventually finding his way into the Paymaster’s Department.

He was at home in South Africa, and it was his intention when the war finally ground to a stop to sell his hotel and go into the diamond business. He had been boring his fellow passenger, Paymaster Adye, ever since Bloemfontein with the tricks of the trade.

‘Knew a feller once who filled his shot-gun with illicit stones,’ he was saying, ‘and fired them into his horse’s backside. When it healed over he simply rode it past the police, blew its brains out and recovered the stones.’

Adye barely heard him. He’d been listening to Southey for a long time now and he was bored. ‘Hard luck on the gee,’ he said.

‘Can’t afford sentiment,’ Southey pointed out loudly. ‘Hard country, Africa. Have to be hard with it. Tough young fellers who get in on the ground floor are going to go up like rockets now the war’s over. They’ll pour money into it from London to develop it. It’ll be as well to be ready. I shall.’

Adye stifled a yawn, but Southey failed to notice and went on remorselessly, his voice driving through the rattle of the train like the steady thud of a steam hammer.

‘Got up to all sorts of tricks in the old days round Christiana,’ he said. ‘Champagne corks used to go like file-firing in those days, and you never knew what the next feller was up to. People used to jump at things like crows after walnuts and a good company promoter could have floated a dunghill with the right patter and sold the shares at top prices. That’s why the place’s grown. Look at Jo’burg. Nothing there in eighteen-eighty-six. Look at Kimberley. Look at Bloemfontein. Look at Chichester Junction. Look at Winifred. They’re developing everywhere.’

The train was slowing down now for the sidings and to Adye’s relief Southey halted his diatribe at last to stick his head out of the window, blinking at the dust that blew back into his face.

‘Corrugated iron and wood,’ he pointed out. ‘Five years from now it’ll be brick and they’ll be laying cobbled streets.’

Adye knew Venter’s Road Sidings could hardly grow duller. It was so small it warranted only a few assorted service units, a town major and a squad of military police; its only reason for existence was the set of shimmering steel lines that had been run there from Bloemfontein in 1894 and onwards in the following years to Johannesburg.

The station was devoid of white men in the hot silence as the train came in sight. A group of Kaffirs and yellow-faced Hottentots with their peppercorn hair dozed in the shade near the parked carts and buggies like bundles of old rags, their heads down on their knees, their dogs as though dead in the dust. Near the station water tower there were a few soldiers in raspy grey-back shirts, their necks burned red by the sun, and a few army horses flicking their tails at the flies. For the rest the street was empty, silent and still.

The long-drawn-out whistle of the approaching train roused the somnolent coloured men so that they stirred themselves in the hope of a tip. Underneath the warehouse, in what had once been the factor’s office, Lieutenant Hubert Mace, who carried out the combined duties of Town Major, Provost Marshal and Railway Transport Officer, looked up. He was a tall young man whose narrow honest features were spoiled by a peeling nose and a sad case of acne.

‘Corporal Instant,’ he called.

There was no response and he called again, and a moment later Corporal Harry Instant appeared. He had been fast asleep.

‘Train’s been signalled,’ Mace said. ‘You ready?’

‘Yessir,’ Instant said. ‘Me and Wooden.’

Temporary Acting Lance-Corporal Wooden was also fast asleep, he knew, but he decided he was still as near ready as he ever would be because it was never very much.

Mace stared at him. ‘You know your job?’ he asked.

‘Yessir.’ Instant was an enthusiastic young soldier who was looked on with favour by Lieutenant Mace. ‘To accompany the Divisional Paymaster to Corneliusdal, Tobaccoberg and around. To provide a guard.’ He paused and frowned. ‘It’s not a very big guard, sir,’ he pointed out doubtfully. ‘Just me and Wooden.’

‘All we can raise,’ Mace said. ‘The general’s pinched all my men for his precious levee at Fairplay for Lord Roberts.’

Instant vanished and a moment later Mace heard him chivvying what appeared to be a very reluctant Wooden, whose voice came, bitter, low and slurred with drowsiness.

‘What a shocking shame,’ he was saying. ‘Just when I’d dropped off.’ His voice rose deliberately so that Mace would hear. ‘That shocker Mace, I suppose.’

Mace frowned. He’d known Wooden a long time and had learned to endure him as a cross he had to bear. As he picked up his sun helmet and riding crop, Instant’s voice grew stronger. He wasn’t very fond of Wooden either.

‘Look lively, man,’ he was saying. ‘And see if you can’t manage for a change to behave like one of Queen Victoria’s all-conquering soldiers.’

‘Shock Queen Vic-shocking-toria,’ Wooden said with feeling. ‘The silly old bag’s dead, anyway, and Teddy’s running the show now, ain’t ’e?’

‘Oh, shut your stupid mouth!’ Instant began to lose his temper, aware that his small command was in its usual state of near-mutiny. ‘Macey’s probably listening.’

‘Shock Mace as well,’ Wooden said with monumental indifference. ‘My feet ’urt.’

Corporal Instant, an earnest-minded young man who liked to imagine himself in a year or two’s time as a regimental sergeant-major, flushed with anger. Wooden was his most obdurate soldier, a man whose oratory was restricted to words of one syllable – four-letter syllables at that – and he’d been pushed over to the Provost Department because he was useless anywhere else. Shoving discipline or knowledge into him was like trying to teach a cow to waltz.

‘Got your rifle?’ he asked.

‘’Ere.’

‘Rations?’

‘’Ere. An’ shockin’ poor ones they are an’ all. I reckon that shockin’ cook’s sellin’ ’em to the ’otel.’

‘Well, if ’e is,’ Corporal Instant said energetically, ‘we’ll have to investigate him, won’t we?’

‘You’ve a hope,’ Wooden said in a voice as flat as a smack across the chops. ‘He’s a sight cleverer than you are.’

Instant stared at Wooden, loathing him and longing for the courage to put him on a charge for insolence.

‘I suppose you have got your ammunition?’ he said sarcastically.

‘For all the shockin’ good it’ll do me. I couldn’t ’it a bull in a barn door.’

Instant wished he had the nerve to swing his rifle by the barrel and drive Wooden into the ground like a six-inch nail with the butt. The dull monotony of Wooden’s oaths thudded like blows against his sensitive mind. He had often hoped that one night when cleaning his rifle Wooden would make a mistake and drive a bullet between his own eyes. Instant would happily have commanded the guard of honour at the funeral. The farewell volley over Wooden’s grave would have been a feu de joie to Corporal Instant.

They were marching up to the station now, Wooden shuffling through the dust in a clear attitude of disgust and contempt for the war, for the army, for Lieutenant Mace, and most of all for Corporal Instant. Clomping on to the splintered platform, he dropped his rifle with a clatter without waiting for an order and took off his sun helmet to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

‘Twenty-odd shockin’ miles in the back of a cart in the sun,’ he said. ‘A shockin’ rotten billet at the end of it because nobody’s going to give up his tent for us, then twenty-odd shockin’ miles back tomorrer.’

‘You could always try cheering up,’ Instant said, but the look that Wooden gave him – designed to turn him like Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt where he stood – had the effect of silencing him with far more efficiency than all his stolid cursing. Depressed, hating Wooden and everything about him in the wretched little town, Instant moved to one side and, taking out a yellow packet, extracted a cigarette and lit it.

‘Got a spare one?’ Wooden asked.

There was more iron in Instant’s soul than he realised. ‘No,’ he said firmly.

‘Thanks,’ Wooden said. ‘For shockin’ nothing.’

The train was just heaving into sight round the bend when Mace, timing his arrival rather better, clattered up in a neat little yellow and black gig.

‘Warm,’ he said cheerfully to Instant as he climbed down.

‘Yessir.’ Instant was all briskness again at once.

‘War’s going well,’ Mace went on. ‘Almost over. We’ll be home before we know where we are.’

As he walked briskly down the wooden platform, slapping at his riding boots with his crop, he caught sight of himself in the window of the stationmaster’s office, and he was pleased with what he saw. He was tall, lean and good-looking enough, despite his acne, for the girls of Venter’s Road to notice him. He eyed himself again. Neat moustache, slim figure, long legs. Not bad really. He was very satisfied.

Then he caught sight of Wooden’s basilisk stare on him. He blushed and tried to pretend he’d been examining a faded notice that someone had pasted to the wall alongside the window during one of the minor rebellions of a few years before.

Volunteers Wanted for the Front and the Grand Attack on Chief Secocoeni’s Town, it read. Loot and booty money. Better prospects than the gold diggings. Same rations as a general. Enrol now before it is too late.

He sighed nostalgically. Those were the days, he thought. That was soldiering. Free and easy, with no half-witted seniors who’d learned their trade at Aldershot breathing down your neck. No wretched provost duties chasing up deserters and ration thieves. No Woodens even.

Feeling inadequate, he edged closer to Corporal Instant. Despite his elusive aitches, Instant was a clever young man and Mace felt much more at home with him than with the rest of his small command.

‘Watch Wooden,’ he said quietly.

‘I’ll get him to sit beside the driver, sir,’ Instant suggested. ‘I’ll be in the back. It’s stuffy in there under the cover but if anybody tries anything, they won’t see me.’

‘Excellent idea, Corporal. Excellent idea. Cart ready?’

Instant jerked a hand. A small covered cart was backed up to the platform, with a Basuto driver in khaki trousers and a cast-off military tunic standing by the heads of the two mules.

The train was pulling into the station now with a long-drawn-out hiss of steam. A few officers climbed down, blinking in the afternoon glare, and the Kaffirs grabbed for their baggage. Then Southey and Adye appeared. Southey was still holding forth.

‘Ten years from now,’ he was saying, ‘there’ll be a decent station here, you see. Not something that looks as though it ought to be a public lavatory.’

He looked round as Mace appeared in front of him, slamming up to a salute that would have done credit to the Guards.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he demanded.

Mace frowned. ‘Lieutenant Mace, sir,’ he said. ‘Town Major, Provost Marshal and RTO.’

Southey turned to Adye. ‘Expect they picked him because he was no good for anything else.’

Mace heard him and hoped that one day he would have the pleasure of arresting