And the chandlers’ shops along the Dock Road! Some of them even had samples of their wares stacked before their doors, something no Petticoat Lane merchant would have considered for an instant; he would have been stolen blind in five minutes if not in two. Barney marched along, his bowler far back on his head in the growing heat, his suitcases banging against his legs, his wide eyes trying to take in everything at once and still avoid being ridden down by a rider or a coach forcing its way through the crowd. Up the Dock Road to Adderley Street, no chance of mistaking that main road with its neat buildings on either side; and beyond the head of the road ending in gardens the majesty of Table Mountain giving a feeling of security and beauty to the scene. Then across Adderley, watching out again for the wagons, and up to Darling Street — and there it was, hard to mistake, the Grand Parade, off to the left, a vast space in a city where spaces apparently were ample and far different from crowded London. How fine this is! Barney thought, pleased to be there, pleased with the warmth of the day at a time when he knew London would be starting to get chilly and nasty and damp now that late fall had come, and wondered that he had passed his entire life in conditions he never would have questioned had he not, by pure accident, started out to join his successful brother. Well, the fact was that here he was in Cape Town, in southern Africa, mind you, thousands of miles from home, and to his surprise he was very happy about it.
The Grand Parade had once been exactly that, a parade ground adjoining the castle; now it was the center for the coaches and the mule trains to gather their custom and take off for Durban or Port Elizabeth, or the Colesberg Kopje — now, together with Dutoitspan and Bultfontein, renamed Kimberley in honor of the new Colonial Secretary — or Pretoria in the distant Transvaal, or to the Orange Free State, or places with exciting names waved before each coach or mule train on placards, places with names like Pietermaritzburg, or Bloemfontein; Roodepoort or Potchefstroom.
Barney set his suitcases down and stared about him. The scene was one of utter confusion. Hostlers attended to their charges, leading them to and from the area to stables across Darling Street and down Parliament and Plein streets, while drivers waved their placards and bawled their destinations and their hoped-for prices. Potential passengers moved from coach to coach, or from mule train to mule train, bargaining, attempting to select the least uncomfortable vehicle, studying the seats of the mule wagons or the springs of the coaches upon which they would be painfully jostled for the following weeks, asking after the food they would eat, or the places they would sleep. Arriving coaches discharged bone-weary passengers and immediately took up their place for new custom, the driver being exchanged for a brother or a cousin or an uncle while the exhausted man staggered off for a drink and a pallet. The sweating horses were backed from their traces and replaced with fresh ones while young lads swarmed over the newly arrived coaches with heavy feather dusters, attempting with small success to sweep away some of the grime of the trip coming through the Great Karroo or the Kalahari, depending upon the source of the trip, and older boys packed the wheel hubs with ox grease and made sure in a rapid inspection that the coach was sufficiently intact for the next trip.
Mules stood and stared in their sleepy uninterested way, while their drivers bargained not just for passengers but mainly for freight, freight that had a certain urgency for its delivery to justify its cost but was too heavy for the more fragile horse-drawn coaches, while still being light enough not to require the slower transport by ox wagon. The sight was something Barney could never have imagined, and he was still staring about almost in disbelief when he felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up into a familiar, friendly face. It was a middle-aged man who had been on the Anglian, a first-class passenger; the one, actually, who had started to pass the hat for contributions after his boxing bout, insisting that an exhibition such as Barney had put on deserved a decent reward.
“Ah! Young Barney Isaacs! Ready to go off and make your fortune in the diamond fields, I see.”
“Yes, sir. You, too?”
The man smiled and shook his head. “No, no. I’m a Capetonian and prefer it that way. I’m merely here to see that some equipment of mine gets to Bloemfontein within a reasonable period of time. When are you leaving?”
“I… I dunno, sir.” Barney hesitated and then cleared his throat. “Sir — I can’t get what they’re all sayin’, there’s so much yellin’ and such. How much d’they want to get to Kimberley?”
“Oh, they bargain, but in general the cheapest is around sixty pounds to go by coach, and about twenty to go by mule train. Mule train takes almost twice as long, of course. Almost a month, I’m afraid.”
“Sixty quid!” Barney swallowed. “Sir, how d’you get there if you ain’t got nowhere near money like that? I mean, if you can’t spare even the twenty quid for the mules?”
“Well, now.” The man looked at Barney a bit speculatively and then smiled. “You won a bit better than eight pounds on your boxing skills aboard ship, as I recall. And I will be honest and say I did a bit better than that by wagering on you. I liked the way you looked. So suppose I lend you another twelve pounds to add to your eight, and off you go by mule train? You’ll repay me when you can.”
Barney shook his head decisively. “No, sir. ‘Nei’der a borrower ner a lender be.’” He suddenly grinned. “Me, I just said no to Tommy Thomas on board ship to be the one, and I ain’t about to start bein’ the other right after.”
The man’s eyebrows went up. Shakespeare? From this youngster from the London slums? Incredible! Almost unbelievable. “Tell me, Barney,” he said. “Are you familiar with Hamlet? Or was that just something you once heard someplace?” His eyes were steady on the lad, prepared for almost any answer.
“I know ’Amlet — I mean Hamlet,” Barney said quietly, almost bitterly. He was accustomed to disbelief whenever he mentioned either his knowledge or his passion for the theater, but it didn’t make him like it any better. He also knew that once he was taken with the dramatics of a scene and was carried away he unconsciously dropped into the worst of his Cockney. He didn’t like that any better either, but it seemed to be a habit he hadn’t been able to break. “Yes, sir. I seen Sir Henry Irving do it a dozen times.” He unconsciously took a stance. “Nei’der a borrower ner a lender be, fer loan oft loses both itself an’ friend, an’ borrowin’ dulls th’ edge o’ ’usbandry. This above all, to thine own self be true.’” He suddenly grinned, a gamin grin that made him look even younger than his eighteen years. “I know that ’un by heart. Most of the others I only know the last part.”
The man frowned. “How’s that?”
Barney laughed. “Me, I’d stand outside the theater, see? Half the blokes just went because it was expected of them, y’know? They hated the show, but they had wives, y’know, made ’em go. But they couldn’t make ’em stay. They’d sneak off to the nearest pub between acts and ferget to come back. So after the first act or the second act — and sometimes in between — they’d sneak out and I’d cadge the rest o’ their ticket from ’em, see? So I’d see lots o’ second and third acts.”