Роберт Фиш - Rough Diamond

And the city itself, white and gleaming in the sunlight, running from the busy docks to flood the shallow plain between the sea and the mountain with houses and buildings, and even beginning to scatter itself on the little rivulets of land that ran up the slopes leading to the sheer cliffs, giving their inhabitants, Barney was sure, a superb view. It was a far cry from Cobb’s Court and Petticoat Lane where he had been raised in London’s East End slums; a far cry, indeed, from any part of sprawling, crowded London. It was tiny by any comparison with the British metropolis, of course, but distinct in every way. Everything seemed so clean. Especially the air, Barney thought, remembering the pea-soup fogs along the Thames, the coal-fired dank air that made his father choke and cough over his tailor’s bench. Here a man could breathe! And the buildings were so white, not the sooty dark gray that seemed to be the only color to be found in the East End—

“Hoy, Barney!”

He looked around. It was Tommy Thomas, a stoker on the ship. The two had held a boxing bout for the entertainment of the first-class passengers about a week before landing; the hat passed around for the winner after the bout had gone to Barney. It had brought his total capital up to nearly twenty pounds, still no great amount as he well knew, and one that had to last him to Kimberley and probably awhile afterward.

“Hi,” Barney said. “What’s up?”

“Ain’t you goin’ ashore?”

“Sure, in a while. Why?”

“Last lighter’s gettin’ ready to shove off. Want a ’and with your gear?”

Barney grinned derisively. “What? Me sixty-four trunks full of me extensive wardrobe? Me fifty-five cases of jools and me eighteen crates of quid notes I carry just to tip the lower classes?” He shook his head. “I guess I can manage a couple of bags.”

The stocky young stoker wet his lips. A more direct approach, it appeared, would be required. “Say, Barney, what I was tryin’ to say—’ow about th’ loan o’ a quid?”

“Loan?” Young Barney looked at Tommy with amusement, the amusement of a person who had heard and seen everything in his young life, but nothing quite as comically outrageous as this. It was as good as anything anyone ever tried to pull back home in the King of Prussia. “And when d’you suppose we’d ever see each other so’s you could pay me back me loan? We both know the answer to that ’un. Never.”

Tommy Thomas grinned, the brash grin of a person with nothing to lose. “All th’ better, then. Come on, Barney, be a sport! Y’picked up over eight quid when y’dumped me on me arse. An’ y’got a brother struck it rich in th’ diamonds up Kimberley way, y’said!”

“That’s right on,” Barney said. His voice had become quiet, intent. “Me brother struck it rich in the diamonds. Only what’s his is his, it ain’t mine. I ain’t struck it rich yet. When I do, look me up. You’ll get yer loan of a quid.” He winked broadly and started toward his cabin to pick up his suitcases.

“ ’Ow about arf a quid, then? Ten stinkin’ shillin’?”

“When I strike it rich in the fields, I’ll make that a quid, ten shillin’,” Barney promised expansively, and walked away.

Behind him, Tommy Thomas shrugged. He hadn’t really had any great hopes of getting the money. The fault, he knew, was his own. He should have knocked the cheeky little Jew on his arse in the ring, instead of being knocked on his own. And the thing was he still couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t…

There were seamen’s quarters at the waterfront, rooming bins over the chandler’s shops and the fish-and-chips shops, and bins they were and no more. Little cubicles with doors that did not lock, slivers of glass for windows in those cubbyholes lucky enough to be placed on an outer wall and then only giving a view of a similar wall a few inches away, with inner walls that were warped partitions that did not reach the ceiling of the long lofts, a small candle for illumination and the proprietor to put the candle out after nine at night. And the constant smell of rancid oil from the chips shops below, or worse, from the slops buckets put out in the narrow passageways for collection and which often waited there a day before being picked up. But the bin was a shilling a night, better than the three to five shillings it would have cost at a fancier rooming place. Barney started to push his two cardboard suitcases under the sagging cot and then with a frown drew them back. It didn’t look the sort of place where his few possessions would be safe the minute they left his sight. He considered a moment and then picked them up, carrying them down the steps. The proprietor eyed him with a frown, and spoke around his cigar.

“No refunds, son.”

“I’ll be back to sleep. Just goin’ out to see the town.”

The proprietor removed his cigar from his mouth as if it helped him to stare. “Carrying two heavy suitcases? Leave them here. They’ll be safe.”

“They’ll be safer in me hands,” Barney said flatly, and turned, about to walk out into the street. Then he turned back. “Where d’they take off from, headin’ for the fields? The diamond fields?”

The proprietor tucked his cigar back into his mouth and jerked his thumb toward the ceiling.

“Son,” he said almost sadly, “half the rooms upstairs are filled with men come back from the fields. Ain’t none of them come back rich or they wouldn’t be staying here, and that’s the fact. They’re waiting for ships to get out, ships they can work their passage, but the crews are all full. A year or so ago a ship come into Cape Town and the crew was gone as soon as the anchor went down, off to the fields, all going to get rich! But now it’s a different story. Men who’ve found diamonds in India and Brazil; if they’re giving up it’s because they know more than you and me. No, sir, son. The diamonds are all run out, and that’s the fact.”

“And I’m goin’ up there anyways,” Barney said, “so if you’ll be so kind as to tell me where they take off from—?”

The proprietor heaved another sigh, shaking his head. “Son, how old are you?”

“Eighteen. Why?”

“You’re short but you look fairly husky. There’s work to be had, here in Cape Town. Not a bad place to live, either. Damn sight better than Kimberley. I could use a kid in here to help, myself—”

“I’ll find the bloody place meself,” Barney said flatly, and started to walk out into the street again.

“Hey! It’s the Grand Parade, son. Up Dock Road to Adderley — that’s the main street — then up a block on the left to Darling. It’s just before the castle. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks,” Barney said dryly, and walked out.

The proprietor removed his cigar and studied it, as if it could help him make sense of the world about him. That’s a tough little monkey, he thought, but a lot tougher than him got taught their lesson up in Colesberg Kopje and the other mines. I’ll give him six months and he’ll be back, tough as he is. And with a lot less lip. Still, if anyone ought to get by I suppose it would be someone like him. Looks like a bloody Boer with that light hair and them blue eyes, and thinks like an Englishman, with the streetwise brains of an East End kid. But even so, I give him six months. If he was any less tough, the proprietor told the unresponsive cigar, I’d give him three…

The city, seen at close range, was far from as clean as it had appeared from the deck of the Anglian . Heavy traffic choked the Dock Road, wide as it was: carts, coaches, drays, men on horseback, ox wagons, each jostling to pass, raising clouds of dust that settled on everything; and always the danger of a load being dropped from one of the swinging davits that jutted from the decks of ships lucky enough to have found space along the crowded docks. And the wagons awaiting the crate or bale from the ships, blocking the road, their drovers exchanging insults with those forced to try and find passage around them. Still, Barney thought, it was different from the mud of the roads along the Thames, and at least there were not the piles of filth one had to step high to clear in almost every lane or narrow alley that led from the river in London into the city itself.