Journeys to the End of the World

Journeys to the End of the World

A novel by Clive Algar

Copyright ©2014 Clive Algar

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 978-0-620-60084-2

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Also by Clive Algar - available on Smashwords:

Comets

Flowers in the Sand

Dedicated to the memory of

Colin Ernest Algar

(1898-1982)

who served with zeal and devotion

on the Western Front

and never spoke of it.

But many there stood still

To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,

Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.

- Wilfred Owen: Spring Offensive

* * *

With what victim do we make atonement?

- S.E.K. Mqhayi: The Sinking of the Mendi

Chapter One

2001

Five or six hours’ drive eastward from Cape Town, the N2 highway reaches the wooded coastal hills above the town of Plettenberg Bay, opening up a vista of the Keurbooms Lagoon, far below, with its meandering sandbanks submerged in blue-green water. The colour of the water is darkest where the winding channel is deepest, and from the high vantage point the traveller can see the combined waters of the Keurbooms and Bitou rivers pushing their way through the lagoon to the Indian Ocean.

A bar of sand, dotted with scrub, separates the lagoon from the bluer sea, except at the narrow mouth where salty breakers infiltrate the fresh water at the end of its journey from the Langkloof mountains inland. Visible beyond the lagoon are hills known as The Crags, and further away still the cloud-capped peaks of the Tzitzikama Range stretching parallel to the coast until sky, sea and mountain merge into a blue blur.

The two young people in a yellow, rusting CitiGolf had both seen Plettenberg Bay before – Vicky more often than Mark – but by mutual consent they deviated on the way to their rented holiday flat, and headed for the Signal Hill viewing site.

They stepped out and stretched after their 500 kilometre drive; feeling a cool, salty breeze in their faces, they walked to the timber deck that projected from the deserted hillside and gazed out towards the hazy horizon of the Indian Ocean.

Nothing but ocean between here and Antarctica, said Mark.

They scanned the rippling surface for signs of whales, but today there was no glimpse of a great tail or a steamy blow.

Directly below them was Beacon Island – connected to the shore by a short causeway – that had once been the site of a stinking whaling station but was now dominated by a luxury hotel. There was no harbour, and a scattering of fishing boats lay at anchor a few hundred metres off Central Beach. There were perhaps a dozen human figures visible in the surf. A couple of kilometres to the right, pointing south like a giant finger, was the great bulk of the Robberg peninsula, a nature reserve which included Nelson’s Bay cave, an important stone age site.

* * *

If you want to know more about your great-grandfather you’d better ask Granny very soon or it could be too late. Every time I phone her she seems to have drifted further away from reality.

These words of her father’s, spoken two weeks before, had provided the trigger for this trip to Plettenberg Bay. Vicky Watts turned over the words in her mind while striding out purposefully on a treadmill in the gym at the University of Cape Town’s sports centre. Doing this kind of repetitive exercise didn’t help her to think more clearly – her brain seemed to get into step with her long legs and the same series of thoughts would repeat themselves without leading her to any conclusion. It was only when she had stepped down from the contraption, wiped her dripping face and headed for the showers, that her brain seemed to regain its freedom to process ideas.

She allowed the spray of warm water to massage her until she felt the tiredness washing out of her muscles. The difficulty in thinking creatively while doing something repetitive was a concept that interested her mildly as a postgraduate psychology student, but the current focus of her academic interest was a much graver aspect of the mind.

In February, when she had registered for her honours, she had chosen Post-traumatic Stress Disorder as the subject for her thesis.

Her father’s advice about the urgency of talking to her grandmother was connected to her thesis. Although she hardly expected to learn anything from the old lady that would contribute to her work, Vicky felt quite strongly that she should at least explore the truth of suggestions that her own great-grandfather had come back from World War I suffering from shell-shock.

She turned off the taps, dried herself quickly, dressed and combed her short brown hair. Her head was still damp so she pulled up the snug hood of her tracksuit as she stepped out of the building into the wintry chill of the late August afternoon. The colours of the cars were reflected in shallow puddles on the tarred surface of the car park. She headed for the yellow CitiGolf and heard the engine starting as she approached.

Sitting slightly hunched in his small car, Mark Adams watched the tall girl in her navy blue tracksuit striding towards him with a cheerful grin on her face. There was something about Vicky that always made Mark feel good. She was not exactly beautiful but she had a sexual charm that always compelled him to stop whatever he was doing and touch her.

He closed the large, hard-covered book he had been reading – a recent work on stone age man by a South African academic now teaching at an American university – and put it on the back seat. Vicky opened the back door, dropped her gym bag inside, then climbed into the front passenger seat, pulled off her hood and shook her damp hair. Mark looked at her glowing skin and bright blue eyes, smelt the fresh soap and shampoo, and leant across to give her a long kiss while the palm of his hand rested on her thigh.

Wow! she said in his ear, you know how to make a girl feel welcome.

Mark and Vicky had been sharing a small flat in Rondebosch, near the university, for a little over six months, since the beginning of the academic year. They had known each other for more than two years and the relationship had become serious enough for them to move in together. Vicky had moved into Mark’s flat, as he had a place of his own and she had lived with her parents throughout her undergraduate years. When she had told them of her intention they had reacted as modern, understanding South African parents. To earlier generations this relationship would have been, if not impossible, certainly unacceptable to most whites and, during the apartheid years, illegal. For Mark’s birth certificate stated that he was Coloured. In any case, Mr and Mrs Watts liked the young man with straight black hair, olive skin and dark eyes set in a narrow face, and speculated privately on whether he might become their son-in-law. Vicky was their third and youngest child; her older brothers were already married.

Mark had first noticed Vicky because she was taller than most of the girls on campus. He was a lean 6 foot 3 and one of his friends had come up to him at the tennis club one summer evening with Vicky in tow, and said: Do you know Vicky? She’d be a nice tall partner for you in the mixed doubles.

They had previously seen each other on campus but had never met, as Vicky was then an undergraduate and he was doing honours in archaeology.

They had played tennis as partners that evening and several times more over the next few weeks, and one thing had led to another. It was only months later that she admitted to him with a grin that she had engineered their introduction.

I wanted a tall boyfriend for a change, she said.

As they drove home together through the drizzle, Vicky turned to him.

I’ve got an idea that I want to talk to you about, she said.

Mmmm ...?

"You know I’ve told you about my Granny – also Victoria – in Plettenberg Bay? My father’s mother. Well I need to talk to her – quite soon. My Dad says that Gran’s mother – my great-granny Beatrice – was married twice. Gran was the child of Beatrice’s first marriage, and this first husband of hers – my great-grandfather – came back from World War I with shell-shock. My Dad never knew his grandfather but he says Gran can tell me about him. It’s partly academic and partly personal. There might just be something to follow up for my thesis, but in any case – knowing what I know now about PTSD – I’d like to hear about a blood relation who apparently had it.

"Problem is – Granny possibly, probably, has Alzheimer’s, and if I don’t talk to her soon it could be too late. In a few months she might not remember anything. So I thought about going to Plett during the September short vac. I know that postgrads aren’t supposed to take a break then, but I’d have no lectures and I’ve pretty well completed my thesis, except for a few loose ends that I’ve got to sort out.

And, she continued, I just know that you’d find something to do there for a week or so. Isn’t the Nelson’s Bay cave on Robberg peninsula just up your street?

* * *

Mark was certainly interested in coastal caves that had been the home of early man, but Nelson’s Bay cave was a national monument that had been thoroughly investigated over many decades. Its excavations were well documented and nothing significant had been found there in recent years, so it did not particularly appeal to him. A few hundred kilometres to the west, near the seaside holiday village of Stilbaai, was Blombos cave, a site that was attracting a lot of international attention. Mark had taken part in excavations there during his honours year.

Other caves containing early human remains and artefacts were known both east and west of Plettenberg Bay, but no systematic survey of the coastline had been carried out and there were almost certainly more sites waiting to be discovered. Meanwhile property developers were steadily providing more and more holiday apartments, golf courses and other amenities along this southern coast to meet an apparently insatiable demand, and fragile archaeological and ecological treasures could be at risk.

During Mark’s undergraduate years he had become fascinated with the results of new research in the southern coastal caves that provided reliable evidence of Middle Stone Age people who had behaved in a modern way as long as 100,000 years ago. If it were true – and hardly any heavyweights in the field were now disputing this – it meant that modern man had originated here and had migrated to other continents, where the earliest evidence of modern people was much later.

The southern coastal people had painted their bodies red and had carved abstract symbols; they had caught fish and had made fine, symmetrical stone blades, and bone awls which were perhaps used for working leather into clothes. All of this at least 40,000 years – and perhaps up to 60,000 years – before Homo sapiens arrived in Europe.

The most thrilling concept, as far as Mark was concerned, was that the people who had inhabited these caves and wandered these beaches and had left intriguing clues of how they had lived, were shown by genetic evidence to be the ancestors of everyone living on earth today. They had discovered the art of fishing here and had overexploited the local resources before moving on, up the coast, on and on, generation after generation. Leaving Africa they had first colonized the Middle East and then one strand of migrants had turned west to Europe where they had confronted and replaced the doomed Neanderthal people. Other strands had dispersed as far as Asia and the Americas.

As he stood at the view site with Vicky, looking out towards Robberg, Mark wondered what it was that had enabled people here to heave themselves out of aeons of ape-like behaviour and start ascending the ladder towards the kind of life that people led now.

* * *

They had booked a two-roomed, second floor holiday apartment in a small sea-facing block on the hillside Main Street. From the lounge, bedroom and balcony there was a vista similar to that from the viewing site, but it was a better vantage point for the lagoon.

I believe that my great-grandmother grew up in a little house on the west bank of the Keurbooms River, just where it flows into the lagoon, Vicky told Mark. It’s where the camp site is now, I think. You can’t see it from here.

It was the 1st of September and they had booked the apartment until the morning of the 8th. The university term would start again on the 10th, so that would give them a day back in Cape Town to sort themselves out before going back to their studies.

Do you want to go and see your Gran today? he asked.

Yes, when I spoke to her on the phone yesterday I said I’d get to her by late afternoon. I think I’d better go alone, if it’s OK with you. It’ll just be a short visit and I’ll take you tomorrow to be introduced. I want to see whether she’ll be up to the shock of meeting a 6 foot 3 inch trench excavator!

Mark pulled a face.

How did she seem when you spoke to her?

Fine. She seemed to know exactly who I was. I suspect, though, that Dad had primed her. Do you think I should change, or can I go like this in shorts and T-shirt?

Go as you are. There are probably a few old boys there who’ll get a thrill out of seeing your legs.

Vicky cuffed him quite hard on the ear, picked up the car keys and set off, while Mark settled down on a white plastic chair on the balcony to read copies of the local fortnightly newspaper CX Press (CX were the vehicle registration letters for Plettenberg Bay and its larger neighbour Knysna) and the weekly What’s New in Plett?

As was often the case these days, there was a letter from a Concerned Resident about the unsightly squatter camp that was daily growing larger on the other side of the highway, next to the industrial area. Mark had noticed the straggling camp just before he had turned in to the town; he could not recall having seen it before. It consisted of hundreds of ramshackle wooden structures arranged along crooked lanes. Smoke from cooking fires hung in the air and discarded plastic shopping bags flapped on the broken barbed-wire fence that nominally separated the squatters from the highway.

The correspondent was making the point that the steady flow of unemployed black people from the neighbouring Eastern Cape Province to Plettenberg Bay was changing the character of the town and was exacerbating the already worrying social problems of the area, namely poverty, disease, drunkenness and crime. He (or she) wrote that the town’s resources had barely been able to cope with providing services to the coloured underclass, and that the black influx of the past six or seven years – since the ending of apartheid – was now out of control.

Mark reflected on the contrasts of wealth and poverty seen in Plett – more so than in many other South African towns. Plett was Johannesburg by the sea, the holiday refuge of hundreds of wealthy families from inland, many of whom owned luxurious houses in the best parts of the town to which they would probably retire in due course. There were daily scheduled flights between the little Plett airport and Johannesburg. During the main holiday seasons of December-January and Easter, Plett’s streets thronged with fashionable people in and out of their Range-Rovers.

People of Cape Coloured or Griqua descent had traditionally formed the poor element of local society, though there were notable exceptions among them such as prosperous builders or taxi-operators.

But now the numbers of the poor were being augmented by black incomers from the Eastern Cape. Poverty and alcohol were inextricably intertwined, and Friday nights routinely brought increased hazards of drunks staggering in front of cars or stabbing each other in squalid drinking dens.

In contrast, Mark had been brought up as a member of the middle class. His father was a doctor and his mother a nursing sister, and the family house had been frequented by intellectuals and professionals. The house was in one of the smarter parts of Athlone; as Coloureds they had been required by the apartheid laws to live in a group area set aside for people of mixed race. Just a few blocks away were houses occupied by hawkers and dustmen. These days the family could live anywhere they could afford, but they remained in Athlone because Dr Adams’s practice was there.

Mark was sharply aware of the poverty that existed within those segments of society which had not been classified as white – in earlier years European – by the former government. Naturally he favoured the elimination of the gap between rich white and poor black in South Africa. But at the same time he recognized the complexity of the problem, which had grown over three centuries, and which could not be solved in a few years given South Africa’s limited economic resources. Jobs, housing, hospitals, schools ... there was an almost endless list of shortages which all had to be tackled at the same time if the economic legacy of apartheid was to be overcome.

Some of his friends at university had already thrown up their hands in despair and had decided to leave South Africa for long periods – perhaps forever – so that they could pursue their lives in less stressful surroundings. There were economic attractions in going abroad too – the rand was so weak against sterling and the US dollar that modest savings while abroad became substantial nest-eggs when transferred to South Africa. Some of his friends who already had their master’s or doctorates were making a lot of money in the UK or USA.

But Mark resisted the attractions of a long spell abroad. Medical practitioners, computer scientists and engineers could work anywhere, but he was passionately engaged in researching South African prehistory. He needed to be here.

Mark considered himself to be a South African who was a blend of many races, although, in all honesty, he had little idea of his family’s origins. His surname, Adams, provided some sort of clue, and so did his mother’s maiden name, Van Wyk. The names derived from Europe, but looking at himself in the mirror he felt that he must have at least one Indonesian ancestor. Indonesia – formerly the Dutch East Indies – had been the source of many of the Cape’s slaves in the 18th century. And then there were the indigenous Khoi people, with whom freed slaves had sometimes had children.

Race as a socio-political concept was not an issue for Mark, but as an archaeologist he was engrossed in human origins. He wondered whether some of his distant ancestors had migrated eastwards along this coastline 100,000 years ago, taking their genes to the northern hemisphere. And whether later Asian ancestors had returned to the Cape as slaves, and European ancestors as settlers, and had blended their genes with those of people who had never left.

Putting the newspapers aside, he fetched a notebook from his briefcase. In the week before setting out from Cape Town for Plett, he had listed a few stone age sites in the area that he would like to visit while Vicky was spending time with her grandmother. Apart from Nelson’s Bay cave there were several other caves and rock shelters in the sides of Robberg; then there was the Matjes River rock shelter, a little way on the east side of town, and, further along the coast, the Klasies River cave. All had been the sites of significant finds, and if not as exciting as Blombos cave at present, some at least would reward further investigation and interpretation.

On the way to visit her grandmother, Vicky stopped at the supermarket to buy a bunch of pink chrysanthemums. From there she drove back to the N2, turned the car east for a kilometre or so and then took a road that turned inland and steeply uphill towards the retirement home. At the security gate she said she had come to visit Mrs Victoria Watts; when she was asked her name she said: Her granddaughter, Vicky, and not Victoria Watts as she felt this might have sounded silly.

As she drove through the grounds she suddenly felt guilty that she did not know her grandmother better. She never telephoned her, except on her birthday. As a child she had seen Gran more often than she did now as an adult. Her father had a brother in Durban, one sister in Johannesburg and another in Port Elizabeth; Gran spent Christmas with each of them in turn. It was three years since she had come to Cape Town for Christmas and Vicky had seen her only once since then, on a short visit to Plett with her parents.

She called at the office and was able to speak briefly to the matron. How is my Gran? she asked, after introducing herself.

Very healthy, really, but quite forgetful now. She’s worse on some days than on others.

Vicky remembered from last time where Gran’s little flat was, and made her way there across the lawn. She knocked and, after a while, the door opened and she looked into the grey-blue eyes of a woman only slightly shorter than herself.

Hello, Gran, she said cheerily, kissing the old lady on her cheek. I’ve brought you some flowers.

Well, Vicky, how lovely. Just stand there for a moment, I want to look at you. You’ve grown so tall, and I’ve been shrinking – I think you’ve passed me, and I’m glad. I was getting tired of being the tallest woman in the family.

Certainly no sign of Alzheimer’s here, thought Vicky as she followed her grandmother into the little sitting room, where family photographs crowded the walls.

The kettle’s on, said Gran, taking the flowers. Sit down. I’ll just put these in water, then I’ll make tea and we can chat. I’ve got a packet of chocolate digestives – I remember they were always your favourite.

Lovely, Gran, said Vicky, who had no recollection of ever having liked chocolate digestives.

The old lady, neatly dressed, with her grey hair permed, bustled about in the kitchen alcove, making the tea. Vicky went to carry the tray to the sitting room table.

Now tell me, said Gran, how long are you here for and who is the friend who’s come with you? Am I going to meet him?

His name is Mark, Gran, and you’ll definitely meet him. We’ll be here for about a week.

Is it serious between you and Mark?

Y.... Yes, I suppose it is. We’re – she hesitated – living together.

In my day we called that ‘living in sin’.

Vicky’s face fell but Gran smiled.

Don’t worry, she said to her granddaughter, I’m not shocked. Did you know that when I was conceived my parents weren’t married?

Vicky felt herself blushing and Gran chuckled.

I’ll tell you about that someday. Now, you tell me about Mark. What does he do?

He’s a postgraduate student, Gran. He’s doing a master’s degree in archaeology.

I once knew an archaeologist, mused Gran. He told me about a cave that was so interesting. No, he wrote about a cave. I don’t know any more. I get so mixed up these days.

Mark does research about caves, said Vicky. Will you tell him whatever you remember about the cave?

I’ll try. It was something quite important, I think. It’ll come back to me.

They talked about Vicky’s parents and brothers. Then Vicky broached the subject of her great-grandfather.

I’m interested to know something about your father, Gran. Will you tell me about him?

My father? Which one?

I mean your own father, not your stepfather.

I don’t remember my own father. My stepfather and my mother brought me up.

Dad said you’d told him about your real father, about his being in World War I.

It’s so strange – sometimes people tell me about things I’ve said and I can’t remember saying them. There is something, but I can’t remember it now. I’ll try to remember. I wish there was someone still alive who I could ask. My mother must have told me, but she’s been gone more than 20 years. I get a bit upset when this happens.

Vicky saw tears forming in her grandmother’s eyes and she leapt up and put her arm around her shoulders.

Please don’t be upset. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is living for the present.

Vicky felt her own eyes becoming moist and she blinked rapidly a few times.

Gran smiled and wiped her eyes.

I do usually remember a lot of things about the past, my dear. I can remember every little detail about your father’s childhood and my other children’s. When you get to my age it’s so important to have a good memory. Almost the whole of one’s life is in the past, so to enjoy life you have to remember it. You can only look forward to the future in tiny little fragments because you can’t be sure of how much there’ll be...

Her voice tailed off and she looked tired. Vicky steered the conversation to a few light-hearted subjects and then decided it was time to go.

I’ll come and see you again tomorrow, Gran, and bring Mark. Thanks for the tea.

Yes, please come back tomorrow. I might remember something to tell you.

* * *

Vicky phoned her grandmother the next morning and at 10.30 she and Mark arrived at her door.

Hello, my dear, the old lady said to Vicky, kissing her on the cheek. She held out her hand to Mark. You must be Anthony, she said.

Mark looked puzzled and smiled.

He’s Mark, Gran. There isn’t an Anthony, said Vicky.

Oh, I’m sorry, said Gran despondently to Mark, I’ve been thinking of your name since yesterday and to help me remember I said to myself ‘Mark Anthony’ – you know, from Shakespeare – and then I go and remember the Anthony part and forget the Mark!

Vicky and Mark both said it was nothing at all, and they went in to have tea. Gran busied herself with the kettle, teabags and chocolate digestives. Vicky had scanned her grandmother’s face when she had introduced Mark, wondering anxiously whether, as a member of an older generation, she would be surprised to find that her grand-daughter’s boyfriend was slightly coloured. But if the old lady had noticed she had shown no sign.

Now just let me get everything done and then we can talk, she called from the kitchen alcove. I can’t seem to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, these days.

Mark sat down and Vicky walked to the wall where dozens of family photographs were displayed. She found one of herself as an eight-year-old, playing in the surf at Central Beach. There was one of her father, as a schoolboy in the 1950s, and then there was her parents’ wedding picture. She recognized portraits of her uncle and aunts, and some of her cousins, but there were other faces she did not know. When Mark had helped Gran bring the tea things through, Vicky asked her.

That’s my mother when she was quite old. She died in 1980 when you were only a tiny thing, so you can’t remember her, can you? And over here ... that’s her when she was a young woman.

So that’s my great-granny Beatrice, murmured Vicky, looking intently at the earlier photograph, which was coloured a light sepia. It showed a pretty girl of perhaps 17, with an oval face, full lips and eyes that seemed to be looking at something far away. The photographer had caught a reflection of light in her eyes, giving the face a living quality so often absent from old studio photos. The girl’s hair was swept back and she was wearing a wonderful hat with a low crown and a medium brim on which were arranged a profusion of cloth flowers. To Vicky the hat looked like a triumph of the Edwardian milliner’s craft.

She grew up here at Plett, didn’t she? asked Vicky.

Yes, at the Keurbooms River where her parents – and later her mother and brothers, after her father died – had a business running the old pont across the river. She was a teacher though – she taught at the Wittedrift school.

Where’s Wittedrift? Mark wanted to know.

It’s a village a little inland from here, said Vicky. You turn off between the Bitou and the Keurbooms rivers, don’t you Gran?

Yes, just on the other side of the Bitou.

And who is this? Vicky asked, pointing to the portrait of a square-faced man with a thick white moustache.

That’s my stepfather, Ernest Davidson. He was kind and loving, as if he had been my own father. He’s the only father I knew.

And this soldier? Vicky asked, pointing to a small, full-length picture of a young man.

Ah ... yes. You were asking me about him the other day weren’t you? That’s my own father, Daniel Butler, when he was in the Great War.

The soldier was no more than a boy. Looking closely, Vicky saw that his face had an innocence and wistfulness about it that made the military cap, the tunic with its shiny Sam Browne, the breeches and riding boots, seem entirely incongruous.

Vicky looked expectantly at her grandmother, but the old lady only shrugged.

You want to know about him, don’t you? But I can’t seem to remember anything. I’ll have to think hard, my dear. I know my mother told me about him and she gave me some photographs and a notebook, but I can’t think where they are now. Didn’t I give them to your father?

He says you’ve got everything, Gran.

Oh dear. I’m just trying to think where I might have put them. I’ll have to look around and phone you. Is there a phone at your flat?

I’ve got a cellphone, Gran, she replied. I’ll write down the number for you.

When they had finished their tea and biscuits, Mark asked a question.

Mrs Watts, Vicky mentioned that you knew something about a cave.

Yes, Ant .... I mean Mark, someone told me such an interesting story about a cave and an archaeologist ... you’re an archaeologist aren’t you? No, it couldn’t have been you – I’m so silly, I’ve only just met you. And it’s a story about long ago ... I’m so sorry, it’s just gone. I’ve got such a lot of thinking to do, if I’m going to be able to tell you the things you want to know. And you’ve come such a long way.

Oh Gran, said Vicky, getting up and kneeling beside her grandmother’s chair, we came to see you. It doesn’t matter if you can’t remember things."

But there were tears in the old lady’s eyes again.

When they left, Vicky said to Mark that she wanted to call at the office to talk to the matron. Mark let her go alone, while he walked around the garden.

When Vicky found the matron and said she wanted to talk