Account Rendered & Other Stories Read online

  They have machines here to split the stones, cracking and crushing them smaller and ever smaller in order to achieve something approaching a soil that can be tilled. Paul’s thoughts would have been better left unexpressed, he realizes too late as, like the coiling nests of snakes revealed when those stones are lifted, Zarouhi’s suspicion rears up, to be followed quickly by triumph. She does not need to say anything. He knows what she is thinking. He experiences a moment of panic.

  He supposes she has reached the truth in the same way that he knew who the father of Arus’s child, was, by a combination of intuitive knowledge and deduction.

  When Arus failed to conceive, he had refused to consider either of them undergoing the necessary tests, since he had no doubt of the cause of their childlessness. He had picked up a severe viral infection when he was at college, rumoured to leave one sterile, which at the time he’d dismissed as typical undergraduate humour, an unwarranted and feeble joke, but one which now redounded sickeningly. So much so that he couldn’t bring himself to speak about it.

  Although Arus was basically gentle and feminine, she had been born and educated in London and, like her contemporaries, had been taught to think independently. Above all, there was a core of something adamant in her, common to all Armenian women, who are proud and strong, their natures forged in the fires of adversity. That was something Paul should have remembered, when an issue as important to her as that was at stake. He should have known that she would go ahead with her own tests, regardless. And afterwards . . .

  She must have been told that the chances were that the fault lay within him, counted on the fact that for his part he would never consent to suffer those humiliating investigations, and would therefore never know for certain.

  But if only she had turned to anyone else but Kazarian!

  Paul is only too conscious of how Zarouhi’s mind is working. He is beginning to have some inkling of what is in store for him, to see that he has given her the lever she has been looking for. She cannot possibly know how Kazarian died, or why, but she has instinctively homed in on his guilt, she senses that here is something he will do anything to avoid discussing, though there is no proof of what happened, and there never will be. She moves closer to him, with such an expression of cold calculation on her face that he recoils, with a dangerous backward movement that almost overbalances him. He wobbles, arms flailing. A moment passes while someone manoeuvres past Zarouhi with a drink in his hand, then, just as Kazarian did, that day on his boat, Paul loses his struggle. He goes over the edge with a scarcely perceptible sound, that is magnified by Zarouhi’s scream of horror, and by others as they join her to gaze down into that stony abyss where no human body can have survived. In the same way that Paul gazed down into the sea at Kazarian struggling to keep afloat, before he raised the alarm, having waited just long enough for it to be too late.

  But Zarouhi would swear that as Paul’s body teetered on the parapet, he could have saved himself, had he so wished.

  In that split second before he made his choice, did Paul Enderby have doubts? Did it come to him that he may simply have imagined Zarouhi as his Nemesis, his goddess of retribution and vengeance? Did he wonder whether he might have been wrong about Kazarian, and Arus? Or did he feel relief in surrendering at last to his punishment?

  It hardly matters in the scheme of things. It is no more than another scratch on the scarred landscape, a tiny speck in Armenia’s history of murder and bloodshed, begun thirty centuries ago, and not yet ended.

  MURDER IN A TIME OF SIEGE

  They would soon be reduced to eating the horses. The idea was nathema to any Britisher—they would do it, of course, if it was a question of survival, but thank God it hadn’t come to that, not yet.

  The small township in the middle of nowhere lay sweltering on the unending, sun-scorched expanse of the African veld. A hitherto pleasant, orderly and uneventful place, now seething with fifteen hundred defending troops, surrounded by the enemy, Mafeking had suddenly found itself turned into a garrison by virtue of its strategic position on the borderland railway.

  The first actions of the Boers had been to cut through the telephone wires, tear up two miles of railway line and seize the waterworks outside the redoubts—though as to this last, they might have saved themselves the trouble: there remained an ample supply of water within the town from tanks, and from wells drilled through the rock. Three months of siege had followed, yet morale stayed resolutely high. Though the bombardment had been heavy, loss of life and the numbers of wounded had been comparatively light so far, mostly confined to the military in their storming parties against the enemy. Relief was expected daily, but was not yet forthcoming. Belts were tightened further, while the overall commander, Colonel Baden-Powell, the idol and hero of the hour, continued to keep General Cronje and his Afrikaaners busy, driving them back with his cavalry sorties and causing them considerable losses. His indefatigable, cheery confidence was immensely heartening to the townsfolk. Better than a pint of dry champagne any day, good old B-P!

  Undeterred, the Boers celebrated the first day of the new century by shelling the women’s laager. Fortunately, only one person was slightly injured.

  Then, on the ninety-ninth day of the siege, Edward Carradine was arrested for murder.

  * * *

  Mafeking upon the hundredth day of siege sends loyal devotion to your Majesty, and assurances of continued resolve to maintain your Majesty’s supremacy in this town.

  Having despatched this doughty telegram to his Queen, via a trooper valiant enough to risk breaking through the enemy lines and riding with it to Pretoria, Mr Frank Whiteley, the mayor of Mafeking, forsook his bicycle for once and made his way down the main street. The town lay baking under the dry wind; red, gritty dust puffed out from under his boots at every step. An upright man with a clear and steady gaze, he was deeply tanned by his many years under the suns of Africa, thinner than he had been by reason of the privations to which they had all been subjected in recent months, here in Mafeking. Ever since he was seventeen, he had followed the business of an interior trader and hunter, in partnership with a brother-in-law in Bulawayo, and no one was better acquainted with, the territories and people of Bechuanaland and the country north of the Limpopo than he. He loved and understood Africa and the African people almost as much as he honoured England and the English. His hard years in this land had made him a man of foresight and courage. But at the moment, he was also a man beset by worries: namely, the great loss to him of his company stores, recently reduced to rubble by heavy shelling, his business already in decline because of the war, the longing for his absent wife and children, the continuing need to eke out food supplies. The responsibility—entirely his—of looking after five hundred women, children and nuns in the women’s laager. And not least, the troubling business of Edward Carradine, an all-consuming anxiety which almost eclipsed everything else.

  Carradine! That unfortunate young man who had arrived in Mafeking with such high hopes and was even now languishing in a makeshift gaol until he could be moved to prison in Pretoria.

  Although he was of good family, his people English immigrants who had interests in the diamond industry in Kimberley, and it was understood that he would, in time, come in to a not inconsiderable inheritance, Edward Carradine was of that new breed which needed to prove that they could make their own way in the world, a young man of independence who had chosen railway engineering as his special field. Due to this, he had been called to Mafeking to work on the Bechuanaland Railway. On the outbreak of hostilities he had immediately leaped, with characteristic enthusiasm and impetuosity, in to the foray as a volunteer fighter in the amateur army, four hundred of its number being native Africans, who augmented the forces drawn from the ranks of the British South Africa Police and the five hundred strong of Colonel Hoare’s irregular cavalry. Since the township was bursting at the seams with police, the mayor should have felt able to leave Edward Carradine to them, despite their somewhat backward methods of d
etection, but he could not. It was a damnable business, but he could not simply wash his hands of this rash young man, a friend, a fellow Britisher, tiresome and foolhardy though he had turned out to be.

  Nor could he push the problem aside in his homeward progress. At every step he was greeted by friends and acquaintances wanting to discuss Carradine and the whys and wherefores of his incarceration. And when eventually he thought he had spoken to the very last of them, coming towards him was that prince of good fellows, Baden-Powell himself, but having other things on his mind, thank God, than Carradine. ‘Never fear, Frank,’ he greeted the mayor. ‘We shall win through, come what may, and no small thanks to you and your calmness in the face of adversity. We are fortunate indeed in having such a stout fellow to maintain and support us in our efforts!’

  Frank was uneasy with such compliments. A man of action, he preferred deeds to words. He was a notable game-shot and had had desperate adventures, had escaped being trampled by a rogue elephant and had saved a companion from a rhinoceros by great personal daring, and still his only comment on being congratulated on his bravery had been: ‘It was to be done, and I did it.’

  He waved the flies away and sought an answer now as B-P clasped his shoulder and made further congratulatory remarks on his capable administration. ‘I said at the beginning I would sit tight and keep my hair on, and that’s all I have done,’ he replied at last with a smile, taking off his hat and wiping his face with a bandanna.

  The mayor’s noble brow, compensated for by his luxuriant, drooping moustache, attested to the fact that this was not to be taken literally, and the twinkle in B-P’s eye showed he appreciated the joke. ‘That’s the ticket! It’ll take more than brother Boer to prevent we Britishers from holding aloft the flag, eh? Nil desperandum, Frank, nil desperandum has always been my motto!’ And with the parting shot that Lord Roberts had promised relief within a few weeks and he had therefore placed the garrison on full rations again, the intrepid commander went on his way down the street, whistling and cheerful as though he had not a care in the world.

  Frank accepted most of these comments with reservations, having more knowledge of the stubbornness of the Boer character than most of the British commanders. He was not alone in having the greatest admiration for Baden-Powell’s leadership qualities, but it was with growing alarm that he thought of the colonel’s last rash statement, relative to his own rapidly dwindling stores of provisions, hitherto so carefully husbanded. When the events of war began moving to a crisis, he had foreseen the strong possibility that Mafeking might fall under siege, and its people be forced to capitulate, not to the Boers, but to starvation. Planning for survival was second nature to him, and, prepared for the worst, he had collected enormous stores of staple foods and medical supplies. The resulting diet was monotonous, to be sure, with no fresh meat other than that obtained through forages by the soldiery into the local African villages—something which the mayor strongly deplored—but it was a diet which kept hunger at bay. It was in no small part due to his native Yorkshire prudence that the story of the resistance of the gallant little garrison, which had not been expected to last out a month, had already become the stuff of legend back home in England.

  If he had been vouchsafed the knowledge that Mafeking’s ordeal had but reached the halfway mark, he would have been even less sanguine.

  Leaving behind the cricket ground and the racecourse, a now ruined hotel and several private houses turned into hospitals, he approached his own residence, about a mile distant. This was a smart bungalow with a pitched gabled roof, surrounded by trees, a low wall and iron railings, with a striped awning to keep out the sun, and draped lace curtains at the windows. The most English home, the most hospitable rendezvous for British friends in Mafeking. At the corner of the garden, the flagpole defiantly flew the Union Jack. It was in this house, at one of Sarah’s ‘at homes’ that Edward Carradine had first met Kitty Rampling.

  With this sombre reminder of happier times in his mind, he entered his now cheerless house, empty of all but servants, for his wife Sarah, and his little boy and girl, were six thousand miles away, at home in England. But safe from the perils of war and starvation, thank God.

  Sarah had not wanted to return home. She had stayed with him throughout the anxious period, when peace hung in the balance, while the gathering clouds of war began to darken the sky, and other women fled. ‘My place, as your wife, is here, by your side!’ she declared, willing to enrol herself in the band of women who, rather than seek the safety of Cape Town, had elected to stay, and nurse the sick and wounded. Duties at which she would have excelled, as she did in most things. During the eight years they had been married, Sarah had proved herself to be everything a man could want in a wife: handsome, smiling and good-humoured, a woman of cultivated tastes and true Yorkshire grit. He counted himself a lucky man.

  ‘Do you not think, my dearest,’ he had answered in a low voice, ‘that you would not be the greatest support and comfort to me, the best friend a man might have at his side at such a time? But I should be a lesser man had I so little regard for your safety—or the safety of our children.’

  It was only this last persuasion which had induced her to travel with the children the nine hundred miles to Cape Town, on the last train before the line was blown up, and thence to take ship for the long journey to England. Now, her piano stayed as a silent reminder of her presence, the inexorable dry, dust of the plains which insinuated itself everywhere collecting upon its keys, her books gathered more dust as they stood unopened on the shelves, her sketchbook and watercolours put away, her sewing laid aside. Only her precious garden remained as she would have wished it. Frank tended it himself and would not leave it to the African boys. He missed her as a man might miss his right arm, but he had no regrets as to his decision.

  How was he to answer her, when he wrote to her about Edward Carradine?

  Carradine had been a favourite of Sarah’s, a popular adjunct to Mafeking society, agreeable, amusing and clever, if too outspoken in his extraordinary opinions, which he was wont to state with no little vehemence and even less tact, and with no expectation in the world of being disbelieved. He had lately aired his view, for instance, after one glass of wine too many at Frank’s table, that it was a barbarity to hunt the ostrich and the elephant, not pausing to reflect that this happened to be the basis of Frank’s livelihood. Ostrich feathers for fans, boas and hats, for debutantes to wear in their hair. Elephant ivory for piano keys, billiard balls, oriental carvings and jewellery, for every decorative use that could be imagined. His was a luxury trade which had made him, if not rich, then comfortably off.

  ‘With respect, sir,’ Carradine had continued heatedly, ‘you do not realize the significance of what you are doing! Mark my words, these magnificent animals will one day be hunted to extinction and disappear from the face of the earth! You hunters resemble the ostrich you hunt—you run away and hide your heads in the sand!’

  Frank had managed to conceal his anger and lighten the embarrassment at this rash and ill-considered statement—for Africa was vast, the bounty of her wildlife inexhaustible, was it not? Culling was necessary to keep the elephant population down, to preserve the trees and vegetation they destroyed. He made some humorous remark about the ugly, bald and manifestly unmagnificent ostrich, which occasioned smiles all round and passed the moment off. He would not take issue with one who was a guest in his house and moreover, despite his brashness, was, for the most part, a very likeable fellow. His greatest fault lay in his youth, which time would overcome. His heart was in the right place. And to do him justice, Carradine had later apologized.

  It was Sarah who had warned Frank of what was happening between Carradine and Mrs Rampling, and the gossip it was causing. A certain coolness had always been evinced towards this lady by the female population, if not by their husbands, but it was impossible for someone of Sarah’s warm-hearted and generous nature to follow suit, and she had been at special pains to be agreeable to her.


  Kitty Rampling was pretty, lively, engaging, and thirty-five if she was a day. She had made an unfortunate and apparently disappointing marriage. Her husband, George, was considerably older than she was, a brute of a man, a sullen individual with a great propensity for quarrelling, a man with whom Carradine, for one, had recently had a violent argument. He was said to owe money all around the town—as he certainly did to the mayor. Too busy, it was rumoured in the racecourse bar, drinking and losing on the horses what money remained to him to be any more suspicious of his wife’s affair with the handsome young railway engineer than he had been of countless others. She held him in the hollow of her cool little hand—or under her thumb, depending on which way you regarded Kitty Rampling. She was small and feminine, wore pretty frocks rather than the fashionable, mannish coats and skirts, the shirtwaists and the ties which the other ladies favoured at the moment, and had huge, innocent brown eyes.

  Foolish and infatuated as Edward Carradine might be, however, Frank could not believe that he was the sort of man to shoot another, and in the back, too.