but his hands slipped and he fell about a hundred feet. Fortune snatched him from death’s jaws – he landed on a ledge. They’d had to crane him out. No broken bones but an awful shock, from which he never quite recovered. Meanwhile, I had already been reported dead, and the news sent back to Bulawayo. A truer freedom I never knew! Far better to be a dead man walking than a man on the run. An American born in the Kingdom of Hawai’i eventually dethroned me as Orpheus of the Gorge. When he climbed down, he was actually struck by a boulder from a blast – it only crushed his foot but he died the next day.
* * *
The railway was completed in 1904, the bridge in 1906, and the years following brought a host of official settlers. The British South Africa Company – Rhodes’s imperial machine – owned The Old Drift and decided to move it to a sandy ridge six miles away. A drier, healthier spot, to be sure, but more importantly, closer to the rail. They renamed the town Livingstone, marked out 200 stands, some for government and some for settlers, and christened it capital of North-western Rhodesia. We dislocated pioneers could choose land wherever we liked, 6,000 acres at 3d per acre, and five years to pay it off. I got a permit for 2,000 acres but not wanting to compete with crafty old Mopane, I set up a curio shop across the river at Victoria Falls Town.
Decades later, they moved the capital of what became Northern Rhodesia 300 miles north to another dusty old town. This one was called ‘Lusaaka’ after a village headman and was built on a place called Manda Hill, which means graveyard: rather a fall in stature from ‘Livingstone’, I’d say. I tried to take the old permit I had bought in 1904 to the Lands Department Office in that new capital city. Could I perchance have my land in Livingstone? They laughed me out of the building. Ruled out by statute of limitations. Hardly startling – the white man’s reign in Africa was already dying out by then.
* * *
After I set up my shop, I went back home to marry Kate. We’d known each other umpteen years but she insisted now was the time for the shackling. A poker game won me eighty pounds, enough for the fare home. I must say, the English countryside seemed cramped quarters after my years in the veldt. My siblings barely recognised old P.M., emaciated and with a face-fungus in patches, reach-me-downs hanging off me – a fairly disreputable wisp of humanity I was! I received strict orders to scrape off the beard and make haste to the outfitters, cash in hand. The assistants took a peek at my ‘slops’ and offered me the lowest price. ‘Nothing better?’ I asked. Up we went by degrees, the timorous Tims and I. Finally, it dawned on them: the tough had money to burn. Out came the luxury goods!
We married on 15 February 1906 at Great St Andrew’s Church, Cambridge. Shock and dismay that the daughter of the Cambridge Clerk of the Peace had tied the knot to my bedraggled self! The Zambesi may as well be the Lethe: one plumb forgets the millstone the question of money ties around the neck in Merrie Old England. I was in such a dither that I neglected to give Kate my elbow as we left the vestry, which I suppose only proved my ‘country manners’. We honeymooned in Devonshire, but I was determined to sail back to Africa, where we could live in proper style.
When we arrived at Victoria Falls Town some months later, I learned I had once again been taken for a Johnny the Mug – the bloke I had hired to keep my shop and home had sold my belongings out from under me. I never caught the rascal. I was brought to tears by the kindness of my lenders. All but one – he knows who he is – forgave my debts.
Dear Kate had to build us a home from the ground up, from the very dust. My hutment was her hutment, misfortune be damned. At night, she curled close to me as the hyenas made the nights hideous with unremittent howling. One ached to hear them take two bars rest. Kate even shared my vigils when a leopard stole our chickens – we sat up, our nerves taut as banjo strings, hardly