Snare of Serpents (40 page)

Things are getting worse and I can see no solution to the problem but war. Chamberlain and Milner are going to reject this five years’ franchise suggested by Kruger and Smuts. It is only to be expected. Those who contribute so largely to the wealth of the country cannot be denied a say in its affairs. The British foray into South Africa some years ago was something of a humiliation for us. We cannot allow that to happen again. There is a rumour that Chamberlain is sending ten thousand troops to augment the army already there. You must realise what, a dangerous situation is brewing. There is time. You cannot have settled in very firmly yet. You and Miss Milne should get the next ship back to England while there is time.

He had clearly not received my letter as he had made no mention of it.

I reread his letter. It contained little else but the need for us to come home.

I turned to Zillah’s. Hers was more lighthearted.

I hope you are getting on all right. Ninian Grainger goes on and on about the trouble out there. He is certain you ought to come home. He asks me to write and add my persuasion to his. So I will. I miss you. Life is rather dull here. I think I shall travel a bit. I’ve been to London several
times, but I mean go abroad. I think that would be fun. Wouldn’t it be nice if you were here? We could go together. I hope you will soon be home. We could have fun.

I showed Lilias Ninian’s letter. She read it and frowned.

“Go home!” she said. “Of course we won’t. Just as the school is beginning to expand. It’s doing us so much good here. The people are nice to us. They don’t want to make war on
us.
This insistence of his is almost hysterical.”

“People in Kimberley are mainly British.”

“But the Boers and the natives … they are all very friendly.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be our war … yours and mine, Lilias.”

“You’re not hankering after going back, are you?”

I hesitated. I was thinking how kind and thoughtful Ninian was. I liked what Lilias called his hysterical insistence. It surprised and comforted me that after all this time I was still more than an ordinary case to him. I should love to talk to him and it saddened me that we were so far apart. So perhaps the answer was yes, I was hankering after going home.

I believe that if I had not suffered such bitter disillusionment over Jamie, if Ninian had not shown such an interest in Zillah, I might have faced my true feelings towards him. But having been so deceived, how could I be judge … even of myself? Perhaps I had been in a bewildered state since the trial.

“Are you?” Lilias was demanding.

“Well … we do seem to be settling in here, I suppose.”

“And you are so much better. I know you are. You don’t jump every time someone mentions something from the past.”

“No, I suppose I don’t.”

“What are you going to do? Write to him?”

“I suppose so … in due course.”

She nodded. “Tell him that these matters are exaggerated. Everything is just the same out here as when we came.”

“Yes, I will.” Lilias was right. We could not pack up and go home at a moment’s notice just because Ninian … miles away … had heard rumours of war.

I
WAS BECOMING
a frequent visitor to Riebeeck House. Sometimes I stayed the night. Lilias did not mind that; I felt she rather enjoyed dealing with all the pupils; and I was realising more and more that my presence in the school could be easily dispensed with. Lilias was delighted to have paid off the first instalment to the Emigration Society. I said that as I was taking more and more time off to be with Myra I did not deserve what I was paid and it should be hers. But she was adamant. “That matter is closed,” she said.

Meanwhile I was becoming well acquainted with the Lestrange household. Paul and I were good friends. He liked school and was doing very well; and although I sensed that he still bore a grudge against his stepfather for marrying his mother, he seemed to be accepting it. Roger was always charming to me, as he was with everyone. The servants all liked him; and I gathered that the house was a more pleasant place than it had been under the Riebeecks.

Mrs. Prost, the housekeeper, appeared to take quite an interest in me. She was a woman who liked to gossip; and I must confess, so did I.

A strong friendship was growing between Myra and me and I fancied that she was less nervous. Mrs. Prost said my visits did her a power of good. I stayed a night or two occasionally. We played chess together. Lilias had taught me and I taught Myra. She was becoming quite an enthusiast.

There was one day when Roger went to Johannesburg on business and he asked me if I would spend the night at the house to keep Myra company. I said I would and we spent a pleasant evening chatting and playing chess.

In the night Mrs. Prost came to my room to tell me that Mrs. Lestrange was ill and she needed my help with her. I went with her to Myra who was very sick.

After a while she recovered and I said I would stay with her, which I did. I was very relieved when, in the morning, she was considerably better.

She took great pains to make light of her disorder.

“Don’t tell Roger,” she said. “I’m glad it happened when he
was away. He doesn’t like illness … and he worries about it too much.”

“Perhaps he ought to know,” I said. “Perhaps we ought to call the doctor.”

“Oh no … no. That’s the last thing. I tell you I’m perfectly all right. It was just something I ate … something that didn’t agree with me. I’m going to be all right now.”

She did admit to feeling a little tired and said she would spend the morning in bed.

While she was resting I went down to Mrs. Prost’s sitting room.

“Do you think it was something she had eaten?” I asked the housekeeper.

Mrs. Prost was a little shocked.

“Cook wouldn’t be very pleased to hear that, Miss Grey.”

“Well, certain things upset some people. It may be something that she just can’t take.”

“I don’t know, I’m sure. But I reckon we ought to be watchful. She was really bad. She frightened me. I was glad you were here … Mr. Lestrange being away.”

She told me it was a different household from what it used to be. “When the Riebeecks were here … my goodness. You had to be all right and proper then, I can tell you.”

“You must know this house very well, Mrs. Prost.”

“I was here before I was married. Then my husband and I … we were both here together. He was a butler and I was a housemaid when we met … and I stayed on when we were married. It worked well, the pair of us … and then he died … a heart attack. Very sudden. And I stayed on.”

“That all happened when the Riebeecks were here, of course.”

“We never thought there’d be change. The house had been in the Riebeeck family for years … about two hundred, I think. Very strict they are … Boers … I know because Mr. Prost was one of them. My family came out when I was a little girl. And once you’re English, you’re always English, and though I married Mr. Prost I was never one of them … if you know what I mean.”

“It must have been a great shock when the Riebeecks decided to sell the house.”

“You can say that again! It was all this trouble that’s been going on for ten years or more. The British and the Boers. It went badly for the British, but old Mr. Riebeeck said it wouldn’t end there. There’d be more trouble and he didn’t like the look of things. The British would never let things stay as they were, so he thought he’d get out while the going was good. He’d always been back and forth to Holland … something to do with business. He was more Dutch than anything else … and I suppose, getting old, he had this hankering for going home. So he just sold Riebeeck House, lock, stock and barrel.”

“All the furniture and everything … and the Model House.”

“Yes, that and all. The lot. So it’s all just as it used to be as far as that goes. Well, Mr. Lestrange, he’d just got married to Margarete Van Der Vroon.”

“So you were here when all that happened!”

“Of course I was. I can tell you there was quite a stir in the town when Jacob Van Der Vroon found that diamond. They reckoned it was one of the biggest finds, not only in Kimberley but in the whole of South Africa.”

“Did you know the Van Der Vroons?”

“No … not really. I didn’t know any of the miners. They lived in one of those places near the mine … more like huts than houses. No, I can’t say I knew them. What a find, though! The whole town was buzzing with it. They were nothing and then overnight …”

“Paul was quite a child then. I was surprised to hear he was not Mr. Lestrange’s son.”

“Oh, Mr. Lestrange is such a
good
man. He tries to be a father to that boy. He’s put up with quite a lot from him. When I think of all he’s done for that boy …”

“Poor Paul. He remembers his father and a child can’t be expected to switch fathers just when he is told to.”

“All the same, I think young Paul ought to be a little more grateful. But Mr. Lestrange makes the best of it. It was a bit of luck for Margarete Van Der Vroon that she got such a man.”

“I didn’t think she was very lucky. Didn’t she die soon after?”

“Oh, a tragic accident, that was. Poor Mr. Lestrange. He was heartbroken. They’d only been married a year. I used to think how lucky she was. To come to a lovely house like this with a man like Mr. Lestrange as her husband. She’d never had much before, I can tell you. They bought this house soon after they married. It fitted in nicely. The Riebeecks leaving everything like … the house and all the furniture that went with it. A ready-made home for them, all waiting.”

“I heard that.”

“And Mr. Lestrange was here with his bride. It must have been an eye-opener for her … after living in one of those little places … and Paul a little boy who’d lost his father, now to have another who’d look after him. There she was … a frightened little thing when she found herself left a widow … but a widow with something worthwhile … this Kimberley Treasure as they call it. There were one or two after her … or shall I say after the diamond. Mr. Lestrange was different. He had money of his own. He just fell in love with her. I think it was because she was a poor helpless little thing. It touched him somehow … and that sort of thing can lead to love. The present Mrs. Lestrange is rather like that. He’s a tender-hearted man, is Mr. Lestrange.”

“You admire him very much.”

“Anyone would who’d worked for the Riebeecks. They are as different as chalk from cheese.”

“The marriage didn’t last long. There was that dreadful accident.”

Her voice sank to a whisper. “I think she drank … too much.”

“Oh?”

“Mr. Lestrange was upset about that. He didn’t want a slur on her memory. But I think what happened that night was that she had been drinking too much … she didn’t see the top step … and down she went and killed herself.”

She paused, clearly upset at the memory.

I said: “Who found her?”

“I did. I was the one. It was early morning. I just went down to see her. I’d just gone to see that everything was all right, as I did most mornings, and there she was … lying on the floor. All twisted up. It was a terrible shock.”

“It must have been. How long had she been there?”

“Since the early hours of the morning, they said.”

“And Mr. Lestrange?”

“When he woke she wasn’t there. He thought she’d got up early as she sometimes did. She’d get up without him being aware. She’d go down to the garden. She loved the garden … then they’d meet for breakfast.”

“What did you do?”

“I ran up to their room and knocked on the door. Mr. Lestrange was asleep. I went in. I couldn’t stop myself. I cried out, ‘It’s Mrs. Lestrange. She’s lying at the foot of the stairs and she looks … she looks …’ He stumbled out in his dressing gown and we went together. It was just terrible. We knew she was dead. He was so shocked. All he could say was ‘Margarete … Margarete’ just like that. I’ve never seen a man so shocked. He was very upset he was … heartbroken.”

“He soon married again.”

“Well, there’s some men who have to have a wife … lost without one. And the present Mrs. Lestrange … well, she reminds me of the first. She’s gentle. Not very sure of herself … and very much in love with her husband. Of course, Mrs. Myra has been brought up as a lady. You couldn’t really say that of the other … dead though she is. She wasn’t exactly a lady … but there’s something similar about them …”

“I think I understand what you mean.”

I came away from that conversation feeling that Roger Lestrange must be a very good master to arouse such admiration and loyalty in his servants.

T
HERE WAS A CERTAIN TENSION
in the streets. Trouble was coming. Everyone was talking of it and speculating what the outcome would be. Negotiations were ensuing between Paul Kruger and Jan Smuts on one side and Joseph Chamberlain and the
High Commissioner Sir Alfred Milner on the other. There was deadlock while we all waited for the result.

There were changes in the town. The garrison was being strengthened and one saw more and more soldiers in the streets. There were other new faces. The Afrikaners were coming into the town. I heard their voices, saw their faces … stern, weather-beaten, determined.