One of the survivors would serve as undertaker. We’d knock together a coffin out of old whisky cases, douse the departed in quicklime, then encase him with black limbo or calico. The coffin was put on a Scotch cart hauled by oxen to the graveyard. The rest of the town marched behind, clad in slacks and rolled-up shirtsleeves, no coats. There were no Bibles beyond the mission, so the elected undertaker would recite fragments of the Burial Service, the other mourners filling in where they could.
Once, a coffin got stuck halfway down because the grave was too narrow. The undertaker leaned in to see what was the matter and tipped right on top of it. We hoisted him up, then the coffin, and set about digging a wider hole. It happened again when our chemist, Mr Moore, disappeared into the bush, delirious, and was found days later in a dreadful state of putrefaction. When we lifted him, he simply fell apart. The air was blue and thick enough to cut. At the burial, our appointed undertaker masked his nausea with gin, then fell in the hole because he was tight!
There was a lot of drink at The Old Drift – understandable, what with the boredom and the savagery to keep at bay, to say nothing of the competitive sports: gambling, prospecting, surviving. But high as our death rate was, we were a cheery camp. If only I’d known the greatest threat to our beloved Deadrock was the railway bridge I had long anticipated. Where once we lived as brave pioneers, things were soon to become ‘civilised’ in the worst possible way.
* * *
When operations began on the foundations in 1904, I crossed the Zambesi to see what was what on its southern banks. I am proud to say I ate the first meal ever served at the Victoria Falls Hotel. This was at the start a long, simple structure of wood and iron, with a dining room and bar. At the most it housed twenty men, at 12/6d per day. Its logo was a lion and a sphinx – Cape to Cairo, Cecil Rhodes’s dream for a railway line that would run vertically up the continent.
The chef at the hotel was a Frenchman, Marcel Mitton, a hunter and a former miner. The barman was an American from Chicago – an ex-prizefighter named Fred who refereed our frequent brawls. Arabs and coloured men served the guests with a servility bordering on sarcasm, then sent the Kaffirs scurrying to do their jobs for them. Management was a man named Pietro Gavuzzi, a Piedmontese who had worked at the Carlton and the Savoy in London, and then at the Grand in Bulawayo before coming here. You’d think he would have been better suited for life on the railway frontier but he was the sort of man who grew his own strawberries to garnish the dinner plates.
While the bridge was being built, an outside bar called the Iron & Timber was set up for the workmen. A rough lot, even for the wilds, and they made the hotel uncomfortable for those more sedate and worldly. Gavuzzi was scared out of his wits by their antics. Whenever he came in sight of the Iron & Timber, he got chased round the premises. If caught, he was made to stand drinks all round. Once, the assembly collared him and tucked him up onto the mantelpiece, commanding him to sing. Warble he did, like a wood pigeon! Gavuzzi had not the knack of taking such fun fondly.
The Italians around here generally went the pious route. The Waldensian missionaries – the Coïssons and the Jallas – built churches and schools, then retired back to Italy laden with children and wealth. They never went full native, as we say. That sort of consorting was frowned upon. I once met a Jewish trader with four native wives and a host of salt-and-pepper children – people regarded him as pretty low down. Any overtures from native men in the other direction led straight to the gallows. Nothing seethes the blood of most settlers more than the thought of racial contamination.
Like most Europeans, Gavuzzi had brought a wife with him, an English girl. I knew at first glance that Ada was a shopkeeper’s daughter. Always slumping around with a hangdog look, slinging her daughter everywhere with her. That girl, Lina, a lass of five, had a vicious streak – this place had clearly got to her, as I soon learned directly.