Miss Emily’s Smile – By Paul C Venter – Chapter 9

Ninth Chapter

Love can be an illusion (Oom Schalk Lourens said) but without the illusion life’s not always worth living.

     Lieutenant Connery smashed his angry fist against the locked door of Bernardus van Aswegen’s compartment. He wanted answers and he believed the conductor had them.

     “Van Aswegen! I know this is your compartment! Open this door!” Again his fist thundered against the door. “Someone saw Pretorius leave with you! Where did you take him? Van Aswegen! Open this door!”

     Four of his most trusted men crowded the corridor behind Connery. Slices of moonlight, falling through the gun slits on the windows, lit the corridor. They were young, armed, very English in their uniforms and determined to avenge their fallen comrades. Just like Connery.

     He tried to open the door with his shoulder. It hurt. The door creaked but stayed shut.

     “Break it down!” he screamed.

     The men swung their rifle butts and the conductor’s door disintegrated.

     Connery drew his officer’s revolver, kicked the pieces of the door aside and stepped into the semi-dark compartment. There was no-one there.

     “Gerrit Johannes Pretorius is a fugitive,” Connery told his men. “Van Aswegen said he tied him up. From now on we will consider our conductor a fugitive as well.”

     Bernardus van Aswegen listened carefully against the door of the compartment Miss Emily should be in, heard nothing. That was not necessarily a bad sign. She could be sleeping. Then he hurried down the corridor of the second first-class carriage to the door at the end. The thunder of the train engine grew louder. He had to know if Captain Lawrence and the two detectives were keeping to the first first-class carriage right behind the engine.

     Every war produces a Bernardus van Aswegen although not always as tall or from the Boer tribe. The war takes his family, everything he owns. And he spends the rest of his life fiercely fighting to feel whole again but it never happens.

     He would give his life for a brave orphan like Gerrit Johannes, and he would take that boy’s life if he decided it could achieve what he needed to become whole.

     He did not know it yet, but that moment of decision would soon be upon him.

     “Take this to the engine driver, it’s a matter of grave urgency.” Captain Lawrence finished pencilling the note and signed it. “We must be in Durban before sunrise, I can’t afford stopping to drop passengers.”

     He offered the note to the detectives, but Blair and Thatcher just looked at it.  

     “Begging your pardon, Captain,” said Blair, “but we can’t get to the engine driver without stopping.”

     “Why not? There’s only the coal wagon between us and the locomotive.”

     “The coal wagon is still quite full,” said Thatcher.

     “You can see it in the moonlight when we go around a bend,” added Blair. “It’s like a hill.”

     Lawrence frowned. “Are you saying it doesn’t have…there’s no walkway?”

     The detectives thought basically the same thought: Did this imbecile even look at the armoured train before boarding it?

     “I don’t believe there’s anything of the sort, sir.” Blair tried to keep the disdain out of his voice.

     “Not so you’d notice.” Thatcher didn’t even try to keep it out of his voice. “We’ll have to climb over and you might have noticed the wind.”

     Lawrence picked up on the disdain and glared at them. “This note is a written instruction, gentlemen, an official command signed by the officer in charge.”

     “Begging your pardon, sir,” Blair said, “our officer in charge has passed on.”

     “And we have to finish our incident report on that matter,” added Thatcher.

     Lawrence dropped his voice the way people often do to keep from screaming their heads off. “We are on a mission of the utmost importance and you’re implying you won’t take  the slightest risk?”

     The detectives probably shared the same thought again: Yes, Captain, we love taking risks, just like you do.

     Thatcher said,”We’ll have to stop some time, coal and water can’t last all the way to Durban.”

     “That is true.” Blair tried to smile at Lawrence.

     The Captain didn’t return the smile. “Where do we have to stop next?”

     “Not the foggiest,” Thatcher shrugged.

     Bernardus van Aswegen appeared in the open compartment door.

     “Captain,” he said grimly, “pardon the intrusion.”

     Lawrence turned his anger like a gun on the conductor. “Why don’t I have the schedule for coal and water stops? I’m supposed to know what’s going on here!”

     He did spit a bit, enough for Bernardus van Aswegen to carefully wipe his cheek.

     “I gave it to the chief detective as instructed, Captain. Must be among his things.”

     Lawrence opened his mouth, closed it again. If his anger was a gun, he now seemed in danger of shooting himself with it.      

     “Where’s the next stop for coal and water?” Blair asked.

     “That would be Harrismith,” Bernardus van Aswegen said. “We should be there around or just after midnight. Lots of passengers are getting off.”

     Lawrence found his voice and a shred of dignity. “This will be the last time. Conductor, when we arrive at Harrismith you will inform our driver we will not be stopping for passengers again.”

     “That’s orright, it will work out fine.” Bernardus addressed Lawrence as he would a child recovering from a tantrum. “From Harrismith onward we only have to drop passengers when we take on coal or water.”

     It was possible, if you looked closely, to almost see the thought the two detectives were sharing now: Captain Lawrence makes an imbecile look fucking brilliant.

     Bernardus is staying away too long, Gerrit Johannes thought. I’ve had enough of this.

     “I’ve had enough of this,” he said. “Bernardus is staying away too long.”

     “Ja-nee, you go,” Johnny Zulu said on the carriage roof behind him.

     Manny Porra just looked worried.

     “Wait here,” Gerrit Johannes said.

     He opened the door to the second first-class carriage, stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind him. On the roof of the first second-class carriage, wind tearing at them, Johnny Zulu and Manny Porra looked at each other.

     “We don’t wait,” Johnny Zulu said.

     “Please, amigo, please!” Manny Porra really wanted to do something.

     Johnny Zulu giggled, got up, leaning against the wind. He cautiously moved back a few steps, then suddenly ran forward into the wind and jumped to the roof of the second first-class carriage. He landed hard, rolled, grabbed the edge of the roof to stay on it.

     This was something Manny Porra understood.

     “Orright!” he laughed.

     Willy’s tooth was starting up again. He pulled his scarf over his mouth, as if the cold wind was causing the fierce pain. If only he could light a fine big cigar and hold the smoke in his mouth. Emily used to tease he needed those shiny sharp instruments in a dentist’s room, but he was convinced the smoke did help and told her so.

      “Oh well, I suppose there’s a first time for everything,” she grinned.

     He was still angry, but he was starting to miss her. He didn’t build that huge house for himself. He wanted Lady Emily gracing it with her lovely presence. With their sweet children playing around her. It was hard to let go of that picture in his heart.

     Neef Berg crouched against the side of the gondola with his scarf pulled over his head and tied under his chin. His gloved hands held the shotgun upright between his knees. The holster on his belt hung so low the mouth of his Colt revolver nearly touched the gondola floor. He was thinking of the girl who knitted this scarf for him. She was fifteen with a very wise smile.

      He said, “I feel the wind is getting stronger. Are we still on course?”

      “We should be.” Willy opened his compass and the glass winked in the moonlight. “We’re slightly to the northwest of Harrismith. That means the railway’s no longer directly below us. It should be a bit to the east…or it can’t pass through the town.”

      “Ag nee, man, Harrismith is not even halfway between Pretoria and Durban.” It sounded to Willy as if Neef Berg was blaming him. “I thought we were going faster.”

      The aching tooth shortened Willy’s fuse. “How fast do you think we were going when we passed the train? We’re bloody flying.”

     Neef Berg looked up at him. “I wonder if there’s still a dentist in Harrismith? I remember we had old Joe Cohen, a Jew you could talk to about the Bible. He died before the war.”

     “I know you and Louis Botha come from around here, everyone knows that.”

     “Why don’t you get rid of that tooth in Durban? It’s making you unpleasant.  I’m hungry, but I’m not unpleasant about it although you’re supposed to be the captain here. Louis Botha never took his men into the field without proper rations.”

     “Even when you had to steal them?” Willy attempted a friendlier tone. “It’s cold and we’re tired, why don’t you lie down and sleep a bit?”

     Neef Berg snorted. “Lie down where?”

     “Try and bundle up. It’s going to get even colder over the mountains.”       

     “I know. We had a secret camp in the mountains, full commando, good horses, we slept there in the day and hammered you lot in the dark.” Neef Berg smiled wryly. “I wonder if they still have those balloons in Harrismith?”

     “Surely not at night.”

     “ We shot them full of holes a number of times, Tommies kept patching them up. They didn’t have a basket this size, couldn’t really carry more than one observer.”

     “It’s called a gondola, I’ve told you.”

     “Yes, Sir William, but why? It looks like a basket, a gondola is a boat in a place in Italy; I don’t just read my Bible, you know.”

     Willy opened his sore mouth, wanting to tell this man the place in bloody Italy was a bloody city called Venice, but at that moment the gondola struck something with shuddering force.

     “Emily? Em?”

     Miss Emily couldn’t hear him whisper over the sounds of the train, but she did see the door shake as Gerrit Johannes tried to force it. She hurried over, her tiny gun ready, slid the latch open. He basically jumped past her into the compartment, holding that telegram in his hand. She quickly closed the door and latched it again.

     “Are you orright? Tell me you’re orright,” he whispered.

     She let him have it, but fortunately not with the little Derringer. “You fucking bastard! Where on earth were you? What the fuck do you use for brains? You can’t just fucking leave me here for fucking hours! I thought you were fucking dead meanwhile I’m fucking stuck in here!”

     Was there, behind the flood of invective, a part of her actually concerned about him?

     Not so you’d notice.

     Harrismith sat at the foot of a tall mesa named Platberg and within reach of Sterkfontein Dam. The town had no electricity in those days, on moonlit nights it often disappeared in the shadow of Platberg. Everything to a certain height above Harrismith disappeared in the shadow of Platberg.

     Yes, especially the single observation balloon still tethered to the flag pole at Harrismith’s army camp. Certain members of the local Zulu population, angry over their chief losing his head in the hut tax uprising, occasionally talked themselves into sharpening their spears and polishing their knopkieries. It happened often enough to warrant keeping at least one balloon afloat at all times, its observers working in shifts around the clock. The observer on tonight’s late shift didn’t see anything out of the ordinary; he was fast asleep in a foetal position inside the balloon’s cramped gondola.

     This was the floating object hidden in Platberg’s shadow that Willy and Neef Berg didn’t see coming. It was not as large as their balloon, but it hung stationary in the sky and they came with the force of the wind behind them. The collision shattered the gondola of the smaller balloon, hurling its sleeping observer to the absolute worst awakening of his life just before his death by impalement on the army camp’s flag pole.

     Willy forgot about his tooth when he started falling as well. Neef Berg, using language a good Christian shouldn’t even know let alone use, managed to grab Willy by the collar and yanked him back into the now spinning gondola.

     The whole balloon was spinning wildly and yet continued its ride on the wind. It was way past the camp before the half-asleep soldiers realised that was not the Union Jack twitching at the top of their flag pole.

     The smaller balloon, losing all its gas with a bursting sound, spiralled down to the parade ground and struck three soldiers blinking up at the blood-dripping horror on the flag pole.

     Willy realised they were losing gas as well. He grabbed the handle and closed the flow. Almost. He could still hear a soft hiss.

     Neef Berg screamed, “Shut it, shut it!”

     “I’m trying!” Willy shouted back.

     He tried and kept on trying, but the slow hiss of escaping gas wouldn’t stop. The balloon slowed its spinning but starting losing height as the wind pushed them towards the flickering moon-silvered expanse of Sterkfontein Dam.

     Neef Berg, still somewhat nauseous from the spinning, stared at the approaching water with growing alarm. “It wasn’t this big.”

     “What?” It looked as if Willy was trying to realign the bent valve of the gas feed with his bare hands. “I think it got damaged in the crash.”

     “The dam. It used to be smaller.”

     Willy kept hurting his hands on the metal of the gas feed. “You were on the ground or on horseback, it just looked smaller. It’s the biggest bloody dam this side of the mountains. You know that.”

     Neef Berg, gripping the shotgun as if it would help him stay afloat, kept staring at the water coming closer too fast for his liking. “Will we make it to the other side?”

     “I don’t really know, we’’ll have to lose some weight.”

     “Dear Father in Heaven, how do we do that?”

     “Don’t be frightened, if we have to land in water it’s better than hitting rocks at this speed.”

     They were over the dam now, but still fairly high. The wind made waves on the water. The moon seemed to shine brighter here because the whole surface of the dam acted as its mirror.

     “I don’t want to land in water, Willy.”

     Willy realised the great bodyguard was scared and suddenly knew what the problem was. “You can’t be serious.”

     “The water will be too cold, we could die.”

     Willy burst out laughing. “You can’t bloody swim!”

     Neef Berg roared back at him: “Don’t laugh at me, you English bastard!”

     Willy’s laughter edged into hysteria. “Don’t be ridiculous! I’ll help you swim! There’s a first time for everything!”

      “We could die in that water! Both of us!”

      “I’m joking! All we have to do is gain some height!”

     “How?”

     “We need to lose weight or we’ll never get over the mountains.” Willy reached for the shotgun. “Something like this could probably help.”

     His fingers closed on the barrels of the Spanish shotgun. That ignited a raw, mindless panic in Neef Berg. He didn’t think any of this, but his entire being screamed it: his life was already in danger and now someone was trying to take his only weapon from his hands, he had to save himself the best way a Boer fighter could.

     He pulled both triggers.

     For the strangest moment and with incredible force, the loud explosive sound of the shotgun seemed responsible for propelling Willy backward and out of the gondola. There must have been blood, a great deal of blood, but Neef Berg never saw a single drop of it. Willy must have cried out, but Neef Berg never heard it.

     He did know one thing: Willy was looking up as he fell. He was staring back at Neef Berg in wry surprise. He certainly wasn’t dead yet. Sterkfontein Dam’s deep water would take care of that. Death by drowning. With a big hole blown right through him.

     Dropping the empty shotgun on the gondola floor, Neef Berg bent over the side and spewed his guts out. The surface of the silent dam rushed past, flickering with moonlight. Tears started down his cold face. He was not a man who cried easily, and never over the death of an Englishman.

     Bu there was a first time for everything.

     Gerrit Johannes and Miss Emily faced each other in the semi-dark compartment. The whispered shouting, the desperate explaining, her slapping him, him allowing it, that was over now. They spoke quietly, but not as friends would. No emotion showed, certainly not love. It seemed that was over too.       

     “I’m telling you it’s not my mum, idiot, she can’t wait to get to Australia.”

     She stood against the latched door with the telegram crumpled in a tight fist. As if she wanted to squeeze it out of existence.

     “I’m telling you someone talked. The Bricklayer didn’t read about it in the paper.”

     He stood between her and the window with the gun slit shining moonlight onto the back of his head, his face in shadow. She couldn’t see his eyes.

     “The fires at the stations…that’s Willy for his balloon.”

     “You don’t know that, Em.”

     “They use fires to guide when they fly at night. He’s coming to get me.”

     She said it as a statement of fact, didn’t show any anger or fear.

     “Come on, he can’t catch us.”

     “What on earth are you talking about? If the wind is right…Willy could reach Durban before us.”

     Gerrit Johannes obviously didn’t like the sound of this.

     “Orright, orright, let’s say that happens, we won’t be on the train then. I can grab the diamond tonight and we’ll jump off at the first station.”

     “Are you insane? I’m not jumping off anywhere with you.”

     “Ja-nee, that’s how you solve a problem: make an even bigger problem.”

     “What about my family? Did you ever consider them?”

     “Hey, listen to me,” he said softly and reach out to touch her.

     She slapped his hand away. “Get away from me! What am I doing here? You’re not insane, I’m insane! Running away with a stupid boy!”

     She should have slapped him in the face. It would have hurt less than her hard bitter words.

     The loss of Sir William Gibson (never truly a knight, alas) did lighten the load of the damaged balloon.

     Neef Berg noticed a subtle lift as the balloon rushed towards the sharp teeth of the mountains rising sheer against the moonlit sky. It could be his shredded screaming mind playing a trick on him, but it felt as if the wind was blowing harder now.

     If he smashed into one of those massive teeth at this speed he would not survive Willy by more than a few minutes. The basket – sorry, Sir William, gondola – would disintegrate and send his broken body spinning to its death in the valley below.

     Would the slight lift give the balloon enough height to pass over the mountain range?

     Neef Berg believed in the power of prayer, but his late mother and father also taught him not to expect or demand miracles from God. He knew it would take a real miracle to get this crippled balloon over the dangerous Drakensberg.

     It was time to land this thing.

     Using both his frozen hands, Neef Berg gripped the cord tied to one of the stays and pulled hard on it. He could hear the sharp ripping sound as a section of the balloon’s skin flew open, causing hot air to escape into the bright night sky. The balloon started wrinkling and collapsing in on itself, the loose canvas snapping in the wind.

     Holding onto the gondola for dear life, Neef Berg started his descent.

     That’s a rather understated way of describing what he experienced as a screaming and terrifying fall to earth.

     Miss Emily decided it was time to act.