Fire on the Horizon, page 19
Essie thanked him and ran back to the office through the sparks and hammering.
• • •
R
yder arrived at the Mount Nelson while Saffron was on the telephone to the factory. The lobby was a fug of tobacco smoke and loud male voices but he caught sight of her in the telephone booth. Her image was splintered by the engraved glass, but he would know that turn of a shoulder, the colour of her hair anywhere. He shoved his way through the crowd towards her, his vision flickering with the buttons and stripes of military insignia.
Saffron had seen him. She pushed the door open and stepped out while a man in civilian clothes, his face red and sweating, bustled in behind her and snatched up the telephone. Ryder caught her by the shoulders.
‘That was Essie Taylor on the telephone,’ she said.
‘From the works?’
‘Yes, and thank God for her,’ Saffron said. ‘One of the men saw Leon and a native boy jumping the train out to East London at nine o’clock last night.’
Ryder thought for a moment. ‘A native boy? I am a fool. It was that lad from the fire. They were together at the docks when the troops were arriving. Tau.’
‘Good,’ Saffron said, then seeing Ryder’s expression of surprise, she added hastily: ‘I would hate to think of Leon alone and without friends, Ryder.’
She looked up at him, his strong features and dark eyes. ‘Ryder, we must go after him.’
‘We shall.’ He spoke without doubt or hesitation.
A middle-aged man, clean shaven and wearing a shabby tweed jacket, cleared his throat. He was standing close beside them, waiting his turn at the precious telephone.
‘Couldn’t help overhearing, sir, madam,’ he said, with a nod to them both. ‘Did you say the nine o’clock train for East London?’
‘That’s right,’ Ryder said.
The man elbowed the fellow next to him who was making strange, scribbled notes on a pad of paper, seemingly indifferent to the crush around him.
‘Oi, wake up, Stammers! Weren’t Philip and John on the last train to East London last night?’
‘What?’ The man with the pad was young, but his greased-back hair was already thinning. ‘Yes, clever bastards scooped all the rest of us on that.’
Saffron looked between the two men. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Our esteemed colleagues, war correspondents from The Times and the Daily Post, ma’am,’ the older man said. ‘They worked out a way to get to Natal ahead of us – taking the train to East London, then the mail boat up the coast to Durban. From there it’s not far to the frontline at Ladysmith. By the time the rest of us had figured out what was going on, they’d already headed off, hence my friend’s salty language.’ The younger man shrugged. ‘Turns out it was the last train going that way. So you can’t follow, I’m afraid. Not by that route, anyway. Is the lad trying to get to Ladysmith?’
‘He is trying to reach Mafeking,’ Saffron said firmly and Ryder looked at her in disbelief.
The younger man scratched his nose. ‘Long way round! War will be over before he gets there,’ he said nonchalantly.
‘Rubbish, boy’s got his head screwed on,’ the older man replied in a sudden roar. ‘If he can jump the trains in the Transvaal, then he’ll be in Mafeking long before the army can send a relief column to lift the siege. He’ll be in plenty of time to see the fun.’
The two men began to argue about the alternatives, waving their arms to trace Leon’s imagined route in the air.
Saffron clenched her fists. ‘I’ll ride. I’ll sail. I’ll walk every foot of the way if I have to, but I’m going after my son.’
Saffron took her husband’s arm and he led her upstairs. Before they opened the door to the suite, Saffron told Ryder about Ahmed’s letters.
‘I thought if we let him stay in Cairo and study, he’d stop resenting us so much,’ she said, ‘but it seems he is willing to go to great trouble to keep on hurting us.’
‘How did Leon get the letters?’ Ryder asked.
‘Nazeera.’ Saffron saw his face darken. ‘Ryder! We did not tell her that she should not pass any letters on. She is a close friend of Bacheet’s. None of them knew what the letters contained. How could they?’
He took his hand from the door and leaned against the wall. ‘We’ve made quite a household for ourselves, Saffy.’
‘It wasn’t all our doing,’ she replied.
‘No, that is true. What shall we do with the girls and Matthew while we are gone?’
‘Leave that to me.’
‘Gladly,’ he said. ‘I am going to telegraph the railway and have the train searched at De Aar.’
Saffron turned to him, her eyes bright. ‘That is a good idea! Then we might even know they are safe and waiting for us before we leave Cape Town.’ She stretched to kiss his lightly stubbled cheek. ‘They will be safe, won’t they, Ryder? I feel sick to my stomach not knowing anything and thinking of them out there.’
Ryder cupped Saffron’s face in his hand and wondered if he could ever forgive his son for worrying her in this way, or forgive himself for letting his child make him lose his self-control. ‘We will bring them back home, Saffy. I swear it to you.’
• • •
W
hen Leon awoke the morning after his escape from Cape Town, the first thing he saw were the words stencilled on the side of the wooden crates between which he and Tau had slept: COURTNEY MANUFACTURING. Leon huffed, then lifted himself up on his elbow so he could look between the slatted planks of the carriage at the passing scenery. He caught glimpses of a huge expanse of rust-coloured earth and scrub reaching out to the horizon, low rocky mounds dusted with yellow and gold grasses. In the distance he could see the purple of rising hills. His mouth was dry and his stomach rumbled. For the first time he began to consider the necessities of his journey. He had a full water bottle in his knapsack, the chocolates and some sweet biscuits he had stolen from the tin on the sideboard in their hotel room.
Leon got out the water bottle and took a swig, then shook Tau awake and gave him some too. Then they ate the biscuits and began to explore the wagon, sliding past the closely packed stacks of boxes, or clambering over them, until they had discovered all of their new home’s secrets. Leon found a dozen packing cases stamped with the legend FORTNUM & MASON and used his penknife to ease out the nails of the lid of the top one. Inside was a stack of large square parcels, each labelled with the name of an officer. Leon licked his lips. Sometimes Amber’s English publishers, or the London gallery where Saffron showed her paintings, sent packages which looked like this to their house in Cairo. They were a cause of great celebration. Once the thick brown paper was removed, Leon knew that he would find a wicker basket filled with savoury biscuits and jams, anchovy paste, cheese and Dundee cake in tins. His stomach growled.
Tau scrambled into the gap next to him and peered over his shoulder, then looked at him quizzically. ‘What is it?’
Leon explained what was in the parcels, then ran his hand through his hair. ‘But it would be such a rotten thing to steal one, Tau. These men are fighting for the Empire, and how would it be if they got this present from home and then opened it up and there wasn’t anything in it?’
‘You have money?’
‘Yes, but still. Who wants a shilling when you were looking forward to Dundee cake in a tin?’
Tau didn’t know what Dundee cake was, but he understood the principle. ‘Take only one thing from each basket,’ he said. ‘Each man will have a little less, but only a little less, and a shilling. And if you take cake from a man who wants it very much, his friends will share.’ Tau frowned. ‘And if he has not got friends who are happy to share, then he is probably not a good man and so does not deserve cake, don’t you agree?’
Leon agreed.
For the next hour the boys occupied themselves with opening packages, selecting their purchases, albeit at prices they invented themselves, then rebuckling the hampers and reknotting the string. They retired to their hiding place behind the crates to feed themselves on a mixture of potted beef and water biscuits.
• • •
L
eon and Tau digested their feast as the train sped them across the great open spaces of the Karoo, then Leon spent a couple of hours trying to teach Tau to read. He discovered it might take longer than he had thought, but puzzling over the problem for a while, a memory of his own first lessons in the mining camp in Abyssinia bubbled up from the depths of his memory. On the blank pages at the back of his copy of Huckleberry Finn, he drew an illustrated alphabet, beginning with A for apple, accompanied by a small drawing of the fruit, and B with a rather good bat, and so on all the way to Z. Leon’s work was not, he had to admit, anywhere near as good as his mother’s. Her pictures had been little stories in themselves, but after Leon explained which creature was a horse and which a zebra, and replaced the camel – an animal Tau did not know or recognise – with a smoking cigar, it seemed it might work.
Leon left Tau to study and went on another tour of their domain. They had found a tin bucket in one of the crates to act as a chamber pot, but the day was hot, and even with the motion of the train whipping eddies of air through the wagon, the smell was getting unpleasant. Leon had decided that there must be some sort of trapdoor in the roof of the wagon, so while Tau studied his alphabet, Leon set himself the task of finding it.
It took him the best part of an hour to discover the hatch and manoeuvre enough crates into position so he could reach it. Only then could he start on working the rusted bolt free and pushing it open. The blast of light, air and flying dust as he put his head outside was exhilarating. The wind stung his skin. The sound of the wheels on the track and the regular beat of the engine’s pistons pounded against his ears and the air was full of smoke and soot.
Getting up to the hatch a second time, encumbered with the bucket, was less enjoyable. Tau watched carefully from below as Leon’s upper body and then the bucket disappeared outside the carriage. He heard a clank, and then a thumping sound. After a pause Leon made his way back down the stack of crates. Tau sniffed cautiously.
‘It didn’t hit me,’ Leon said, a defensive tone in his voice. ‘But we’ll need another bucket.’
Tau shifted over so that they could sit together and continue to examine the mysteries of the printed word.
• • •
D
arkness fell and the train pulled smoothly along the tracks. Both Leon and Tau were dozing when the hiss of the brakes jolted them awake.
‘De Aar!’ a deep voice called out on the platform. ‘De Aar! It is a half-hour halt, ladies and gentlemen!’
It was too dark in the wagon to look at the map, so Leon decided to climb up to the open hatch and see if he might be able to read it by moonlight. He hauled himself up, set the map on the roof and stared at it. It was not a very good map, designed for newspaper readers in London to gain a rough idea of the theatres of war, rather than for someone on the road like himself. He stared at it, willing himself into some sort of comprehension.
While he was lost in concentration, two men in railway uniforms walked past on the platform.
‘We don’t have time to search for runaways,’ one complained in a thick German accent.
Leon felt his blood run cold.
‘At least we aren’t searching the passenger cars,’ said the other. ‘Having to wake people up, or asking the passengers in the waiting room if they saw anything unusual. I’ll take the goods wagons any day.’
Leon heard the barn-like doors of one of the wagons nearer the engine being unchained and dragged open, then a grunt as one of the men clambered in. Leon ducked back down through the hatch.
‘Tau!’ he whispered, and beckoned upwards.
Tau was already packing Leon’s knapsack with the remains of their feast, the book and a rough, greasy blanket that he had found and commandeered. He slung the bag over his shoulder and sprang up the packing case tower.
Leon shoved the map into his pocket, pulled himself out through the hatch and rolled onto the roof. Tau appeared through the hatch behind him, seeming to spring through the hole like a jack-in-the-box. Leon could just about see his face in the gloom, tight with concentration. Tau reached for the cover, aiming to flip it closed but Leon shot out a hand, grabbing his slim wrist. Tau turned towards him with a frown, and Leon shook his head, putting his finger to his lips. Tau nodded.
The men had finished with the first wagon, jumping down onto the gravel between the tracks with a crunch. The boys waited, hardly daring to breathe, as the footsteps came closer. Leon tried to slow his hammering heart as the chain on their wagon was unhitched and the doors slid back heavily.
They heard a grunt as the German man helped his colleague climb in. After a few moments the Englishman called out: ‘Yes, they’ve been here, all right! Little devils have shifted things around and made a home for themselves. Come on and have a look.’
They heard more grunts as the German man made his way into the wagon, and a series of thumps and curses as the railway workers moved between the crates. Leon closed his eyes, willing them to go away.
‘I see no sign of them now,’ the German man said. ‘How have they got out? The chain and padlock had not been tempered with.’
‘Check the roof hatch,’ the Englishman replied.
Tau and Leon looked at each other. If one of them put their head out of the hatch, they would be seen at once.
Tau pointed down the side of the wagon and Leon shook his head but Tau pointed again more emphatically. Leon inched his way towards the edge of the curved roof, moving sideways like a crab, and looked down. The wooden boards which formed the sides of the carriage were bolted to an external steel frame – verticals every eight feet or so, diagonals crossing between them. Below, Leon saw darkness and the glint of metal tracks. The rivets were painted and smooth. The diagonal bands stood out a little from the side of the wagon, but even if he could rest a toe on them, he couldn’t see what to hold on to.
‘Do what I do,’ Tau whispered.
Leon watched, his stomach churning. He could hear the men’s voices inside the wagon.
‘Made themselves a little ladder, the monkeys!’
Tau sat on the edge of the roof and twisted sideways, grabbing onto it with both hands, then he lowered himself down until his feet touched one of the diagonals. His bare toes seemed to grip onto the narrow space. Then he let go of the edge of the roof with one hand and braced himself against the nearest steel vertical. He released his other hand and hooked his fingers into a gap between the wooden planks, then looked back up at Leon.
‘You can do it,’ he encouraged Leon.
Leon’s mouth was dry. He had to act. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to imagine being caught by the collar and sent home in disgrace, and decided he’d rather break his leg than give up without a struggle. He slid to the edge of the roof and swung himself over as Tau had done.
‘Right foot down! Down!’ Tau whispered.
Leon’s foot found the solid support of the diagonal.
‘Left foot down, Leon.’
Leon stretched out with his left foot. He was breathing heavily, his right foot was cramping and his left could not find a place to land. The edge of the roof was pressing against his chest and his hands were slippery. At last his left foot hit the diagonal.
‘Good! Now hands.’
Leon stared at his fingers and willed himself to let go of the edge of the roof. He heard a curse from under the hatch and managed to unclench his right hand. For a nauseous second he thought he was going to fall backwards into the darkness, but his desperately searching fingers found a sharp-edged hole on the underlip of the roof’s narrow overhang and he clung to it. One more hand now, please, he begged himself, staring at his white fingers. Please. A head was emerging from the hatch. Leon released his left hand and reached blindly for a hold, dropping his head below the edge of the wagon at the same time. He found it, a crack in the planks just big enough for two fingers, but the grip with his left foot was weak and slipping. The muscles of his thighs felt hot and torn, the jagged metal cut into his fingers and he closed his mouth on a yelp.
‘Got out this way, most certainly.’
The man’s voice was close. Leon stopped breathing and bit his lip until it bled, struggling to ignore the pain and stay silent.
‘Any sign of them?’ the voice inside the carriage asked.
The man did not reply immediately. Leon prayed he would not climb out onto the roof after them. He was certain he would fall any second, sprawling and twisted on the gravel below – he could not cope with the pain for a moment longer.
‘No. They’re long gone.’
The hatch slammed shut, but it gave Leon no relief. He could not move and he could not hold on. His left hand lost its grip and slipped, and he flailed out desperately. At that moment his left foot went from under him, but even as it did, a hand grabbed his own and he heard Tau’s fierce whisper from above: ‘I have you, Leon!’
Leon managed to find his foothold again and the panic slowly left him.
‘Give me your other hand!’ Tau ordered.
Now all he could feel was pain – his legs had begun to shake with the effort of keeping him on the side of the carriage and his fingers were cut and bloody. Leon managed to reach up his other hand and felt Tau grab him, hauling him up and onto the roof. He lay on his back and closed his eyes, waiting for his heart to stop thumping in his chest.
A whistle blew and a long hiss of steam escaped from the engine. Leon opened his eyes and turned towards Tau. Tau had been lying across the roof. Now he rolled on his side and rubbed his forearms and wrists.
‘Thank you.’
Tau shrugged. ‘You emptied the bucket.’
A sudden jerk and the train began to ease forward. Leon shuffled to the hatch and tried to prise it open. It rattled and held.
‘Bolted,’ he said. He had a sudden image of being ripped off the top of the train and thrown onto the tracks. ‘We must get inside the train! We can’t hang on all night.’
