Miss Emily’s Smile – By Paul C Venter – Chapter 4

A leopard can’t change its spots (said Oom Schalk Lourens) but when you’re running you don’t stop to look at its spots. 

     The widows Agnes and Gladys were both in their late forties but claimed they were in their thirties. Still attractive, they dressed and lived as their late husbands would have wanted them to. Two mining barons from Wales who decided to inspect one of their mines on the wrong day, their widows now sharing a young Boer, their children gone off to the fleshpots of Europe and Asia. That’s new money for you.

     It was quite a blow to the egos of the widows when they discovered Gerrit Johannes Pretorius was bedding both of them. At first they refused to see the beautiful young Boer again, but need can be as sharp as a pick-axe chipping away at rock. In the end they reached a compromise: they would share the cost of Gerrit Johannes (there was no other honest way to put it) but under no circumstances would they see him on the same evening or even openly admit to each other that they were seeing him.

     Gerrit Johannes enjoyed this. Two grand ladies meeting at those gossipy tea parties and acting as if they had amnesia on the subject of their young lover.

     Naturally he would give them some of the Cadbury’s won at the Guy Fawkes event. What was left after Johnny Zulu and Manny Porra had pounced on the basket. And naturally the widows would never tell each other they had received expensive chocolates from him.

     Miss Emily appeared distant when she handed him the prize.

     “Thank you for the show.” With hardly a smile. “It was quite lovely.”

    He wanted to say something nice, but she was already turning away, talking to the older fat woman. “It’s getting chilly, mother. We really should go now.” And off they went to a waiting coach, the entire family somehow fitting into it. She didn’t look back. Not once.

     It nearly broke his heart.

     At the bottom of the prize basket, underneath all the wrapped chocolate Johnny Zulu and Manny Porra were removing with considerable speed, Gerrit Johannes found a note in her handwriting:

 Sunday 3pm. Where we always met.

                                                        Em.

      He stopped breathing.  Em. Emily. Miss Emily. Did she still care for him? Or was she just being friendly?

     Starting something with her again would not be as deadly as a potent mix of chemicals starting to talk in fireworks, but certainly as dangerous as wrestling with a hunting leopard. Gerrit Johannes still had the scars. Of the leopard he thought he had killed, and of the time he had fallen in love with a dancer in a Johannesburg dance hall. A few pennies would get you a waltz and a foxtrot with her. Three years ago. He was 18 then, she 25. The prettiest thing he ever saw. 

     He loved her and believed she loved him back.

    They talked about a future. She asked if he wanted children. He said of course, every man wants children. She said then they didn’t have a future. A bastard of a miner raped her and she had to abort the baby herself. Nearly died. When her mother finally got her to a proper doctor, he said she would never have a child again. Her mother paid to have the rapist miner killed.

     Emily was crying when she told him this. He swore it didn’t matter, he loved her, he wanted to marry her. She said she would think about it. He thought she meant it. 

     And then she disappeared. Without a word of goodbye or explanation. And reappeared a year later as the pretty young wife of William Gibson, Bricky, the Englishman who had stolen the diamond mine from the Pretorius family who used to farm that land. Or so Gerrit Johannes and others wanted to believe.

     He read about the grand wedding in The Star newspaper, his lips probably moving. Did he wryly whisper “Ja-nee” to himself? Could be, he tended to overdo that.

     Did he get over Emily?

     Not so you’d notice.

     Willy didn’t attend his wife’s Guy Fawkes event because he was at a private dinner with Louis Botha. Kudu steaks, prepared by Botha’s beloved Annie. Apparently he shot the big-horned kudu himself. Could’ve been Neef Berg, of course. Willy didn’t eat much, suffering from toothache.

     The Prime Minister of South Africa reported that his ailing counterpart in England, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, had finally replied to his sealed letter sent by private courier. In the letter Botha very politely asked the British prime minister if he would accept the Gibson Diamond on behalf of King Edward VII as a “token of loyalty and respect from the Union government”. By then Botha and Willy knew other members of the royal family wouldn’t touch such a wildly extravagant gift without the King’s permission.

     Sir Henry wasn’t well at all, would soon be dead, and fudged his reply. He said the situation was difficult, awkward.

     He wasn’t lying. His government was still smarting from the universal outrage against the harsh measures it took against the Zulu rebellion of 1906. In the Natal colony a British colonial force armed with machine guns and cannon exterminated 4000 Zulu rebel warriors armed only with fighting sticks, spears and cowhide shields. More than 7000 Zulus were imprisoned and 4000 flogged. Apparently chief Bambatha, the rebel leader, was killed in the action and his head later shown around London as a curiosity.

     Why did Bambatha and his rebels stand up against the Crown? Were they trying to take their land back again?

     Not so you’d notice. It was something called the hut tax. God spoke to the white Christian government of South Africa and said:  If a black creature builds himself a mud hut somewhere he has to pay tax on it, hopefully it will help keep him in his place. God knows why I made them, I obviously wasn’t thinking.

     So thank you but no, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman wasn’t about to start another costly rebellion down in Africa (he was obviously thinking of the jolly good fun his people recently had with the Boers). If the South African Union wanted to take the matter up directly with the King, very well, good luck but count His majesty’s government out. Willy was devastated, Botha not so much.

     “Stop worrying,” the fearless Christian told Willy, “I have an ace up my sleeve.”

     The next day, Saturday, Botha called an emergency government meeting and asked the members to vote on it. Should the Union offer the Gibson Diamond as a gift to His Majesty King Edward VII?

     Willy himself wasn’t in the gallery to watch the vote. He was playing cricket. He was good at it. Opening batsman, always. His toothache seemed better, but in the first innings he only scored two runs. Mind wasn’t quite on the bloody ball, was it?

     The 61 members of the government voted 42 for, 19 against. The reporters in the press gallery assumed the Boer members had voted against. In fact, the naysayers were all English who didn’t trust their prime minister. They knew he was having private dinners with that common, filthy rich bricklayer who seriously believed he could call himself a knight and get away with it. The Boers voted yes. They also knew Botha was dining with Bricky, but they didn’t mind: they knew Botha would remember them later.

     Botha wasn’t much of a drinker, although he did love eating and his waistline was starting to show it, so Willy did most of the drinking that Saturday night.

     Meanwhile a private courier was already on his way to London, carrying a very important sealed letter. It was not addressed to King Edward VII. The name on the envelope was that of Winston Churchill, deputy minister in His Majesty’s Government.

     The ace up Botha’s sleeve.

     That Sunday afternoon, three o’clock.

     Gerrit Johannes probably made sure of it on his pocket watch. Dressed in his best three-piece suit, fine hat, he sat on a rock overlooking the Crocodile River a fast gallop north of Johannesburg. Across the river black cows grazed in a green field. This side of the river there were thickly wooded with trees and thorn bush. A footpath winded through the heavy growth. It was used mainly by anglers fishing for carp in the muddy river. But not on this Sunday. Gerrit Johannes was the only human presence on the riverbank. Birds sat quietly in the tree above his head, the cows were silent and the river too lazy to make a sound.

     A November Sunday, early African summer, the sun so fierce it boiled the scent of camphor from the overhanging leaves and the baked red earth under his feet had a musky smell. He again looked at the fine pocket-watch the widow Agnes bought him for Valentine’s Day.

     Miss Emily was late.

     A carp jumped in the river. The ripples died slowly.

     The birds in the camphor tree heard her horse first and flew off. She came cantering along the footpath, dressed for the hunt in cap, blouse, jodhpurs and boots. Proud in the saddle, riding like a man.

     He suddenly found it hard to breathe.

     He must’ve said something about helping her down because she shook her head curtly and quickly slid to the ground before he could touch her. He was the only one smiling and knew it made him look like an idiot.

     “I can’t stay,” she said. “We’re hunting jackal on Lord Fleming’s farm. Sir Cecil’s master of the hunt.”

     Lord Fleming, Sir Cecil, name-dropping as if they were more than just acquaintances. Three years ago she would’ve been halfway out of her clothes by now, and he’d have her bending over against the tree.

     “Then why are you here?”

     “Why are you working for my husband?”

     “I’m working for your husband?”

     “If you’re going to be childish…”

     “Emily, I’m a miner, orright? I go where the work is.”

     “Of all the mines you chose his?”

     “I wanted to see you.”

      “What on earth’s the matter with you? I’m a married woman.”

     “I love you.”

     “Love. You’re such a child. Please tell me you’re not up to something silly.”

     “Come on, the Bricklayer doesn’t even know I exist. What could I be up to?”

     “You know very well.”

     Suddenly he knew William Gibson didn’t know. “Oh Emily, you never told him. Ja-nee, if you didn’t confess that before the wedding, you must’ve known already how much he wants children.”

     She actually grabbed his arm. “Ten pounds, cash. Tell Captain Lawrence you’re moving, you’re going to Kimberley.  Go dig diamonds there. And please don’t come back. Ever.”

     “That’s all I’m worth? Ten pounds? Why not one hundred and fifty thousand pounds?”

     She glared at him and he wanted to kiss her. “What on earth are you talking about?”

     “Em, you know what I’m talking about. That’s what Prime Minister Botha’s government paid your husband for the stone. Guess what it’s really worth?”

     “Nothing. It will be presented as a gift…”

     “Itr’s worth five hundred thousand pounds.”

     “Oh do grow up! You’re babbling like a baby!”

     “And Bricky need never know you can’t have one.” She slapped him. “Em, he helped you get out of the saloons, I understand, but do you truly want to spend your life under that old thing?” She slapped him again. “Emily, listen to me. A good cutter will turn that stone into four very expensive stones, it could be worth more than five hundred thousand.”

     She didn’t slap him again. “What on earth are you talking about? No-one has that kind of money.”

     “I’m not talking about one buyer. You sell the pieces to different buyers in Amsterdam, Paris, New York, no-one will even know it used to be the big blue. Use your brain, please. Prime Minister Botha will just give that stone to the king of his old enemy? I promise you it’s going to disappear on the way to London, end up in pieces in Amsterdam or somewhere. But why should Botha and his Boer mates get all that money? They’re already rich. I fought in the war, I’m not rich. Your father fought in the war but you’re not rich, everything on you belongs to the Bricklayer.”

     “I’m leaving.” She turned away.

     “Help me take it, Em. Please. Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds in your pocket. You and your family will never have to work or pleasure bastards again, I swear on my mother’s grave.”

     “You never had a mother. Stay away from me, I warn you. When I summon the constables now they really do arrive.”

     “Please listen to me!”

     “No! You’re a child. I don’t listen to children.”

     She was back in the saddle and spurring the horse on before he could speak again. He watched her thunder down the path and disappear into the bush.

     Ja-nee, I handled that well, he thought wryly.

     He probably didn’t really believe what he told Emily about Botha and friends stealing the big blue. Botha wanted power more than money. Giving the King the stone could lead to that power.

     Gerrit Johannes sat down again. Looked at his pocket-watch again. Five minutes passed.

     She’s not coming back, you idiot.

     The birds did come back, squabbling over perches in the camphor tree. Across the river a tickbird swooped in and landed on one of the cows.  He looked at his pocket-watch again: Five minutes and thirty-nine seconds. The birds in the camphor tree settled down. Six minutes. Across the river the cow snorted angrily, and the tickbird flew away. Six minutes and eleven seconds. The river whispered in the quiet afternoon.

     And then she came back. There were tears in her eyes. She didn’t dismount. Her hands trembled as she held the reins.

     “What on earth am I doing here? You’re insane, babbling, you’re a baby. How can I trust you, Gerrit?”

     It nearly broke his heart to hear her say his name again. He helped her off the horse, held her against him.

     “Don’t trust me, Em. Trust your common sense.”

     “I’m afraid.” A tear hung from the tip of her nose, exactly like a diamond. “Not just of you. What will Willy do when he finds out I can’t …I can’t give him what he wants.”

     “What can he do? He can’t kill you.”

     “That’s what you think,” she said, “you don’t know him.”

     She started sobbing.

     He held her until she stopped shaking.

     Then he started talking quietly. She listened.

     Time passed. She said something, he replied. She laughed. He laughed with her. A great deal more was said, plans laid, gentle kisses exchanged, then furious ones, and in the end he did take Miss Emily against the camphor tree. Tenderly. Looking into her eyes this time. Great glowing eyes. It was probably the first time she truly enjoyed him.