The revised version of my book “Run, run as fast as you can” contains an additional 12 chapters which focus on my 18 years of writing and publishing books.
Here is one of the chapters, chapter 10, titled, the “When words weave their magic” which tells the back story to my adventure novel “Thunder in the Distance.”
Chapter 10
WHEN WORDS WEAVE THEIR MAGIC
My best adventure story is Thunder in the Distance, published in 2023. I got the idea of the story from a poem and the title from a song I heard in church. The poem is by W.B. Yeats entitled, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, and the song was written by Robin Mark and is called, Revival in Belfast.
And then, atypically, the main character, Fynn Armstrong, is a Scot!
I was reminded of these things recently as we sang Revival in our church and the words thrilled me again with the simple yet evocative descriptions of the desperate folk of Belfast:
From the preacher preaching when the well is dry,
To the lost soul reaching for a higher high.
From the young man working,
Through his hopes and fears,
To the widow walking through her veil of tears.
Ev’ry man and woman, ev’ry old and young,
Ev’ry father’s daughter ev’ry mother’s son.
I feel it in my spirit feel it in my bones,
You’re going to send revival,
Bring them all back home.
And then the powerful image of the chorus reminded me of the title of my novel:
I can hear the thunder in the distance,
Like a train on the edge of the town.
In the honours degree I did at Rhodes the specialty I chose was ‘Modern poets and writers’, staying well clear of anything to do with grammar. I developed a few favourites: Joseph Conrad and particularly his book Nostromo. And Yeats and Eliot for poetry, especially Eliot’s marvellous poem The Waste Land. I inexplicably remember some of the lines, can still recite them, from his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:
I grow old, I grow old
I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled
Do I dare to eat a peach?
Shall I part my hair behind?
I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each
I do not think they will sing for me.
I still don’t know what he meant, but I remember it, sometimes brag by quoting it. That must count for something!
I had several favourite Yeats poems and that included Irish Airman, which I liked particularly for the subject matter. The poem is about a young Irish man who joins the Royal Flying Corp in the First World War. This was firstly unusual as the southern Irish still regarded it as somewhat traitorous to fight for the English.
His motivation is that he comes from a poor family and can see no future for himself:
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave then happier than before.
As opposed to that bleak future there was another outlook:
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind.
The years to come seemed a waste of breath
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
This is precisely the motivation of young Fynn Armstrong, the main character in Thunder. He is the youngest of many children born to a life in a croft near Perth, Scotland. He sees no future, rather sign-up with the Black Watch Brigade to join the fight against the Boers in South Africa, and if he survives the war, there is the heady belief that Africa will offer him adventure and opportunity.
The novel has three main sections: The Sniper – South Africa, The Hunter – Bechuanaland and The District Commissioner – Rhodesia.
The first section covers his service with the Black Watch Brigade and later with Lovat’s Scouts, the first group in the British Army mandated to kill by sniping. Fynn is injured in the battle of Magersfontein and sent to Cape Town to recuperate. He returns to duty in the eastern Free State, and after exhibiting remarkable bravery in an action against the Boers, is accepted into the ranks of the Scouts.
In the second section of the book Fynn is in Mafeking when he meets Jeffrey Dyer, a cattle baron from the Tuli Block district of Bechuanaland. Dyer is impressed with Fynn’s letter of introduction from Lovat’s Scouts and offers him the job of hunter on his farm, his duties to shoot for the pot for the staff and protect the cattle from predators, whether man or beast.
In the final section Fynn leaves the farm after extreme disappointment at the outcome of his relationship with Dyers oldest daughter, and takes the train to Bulawayo where he seeks new employment, his choices eventually narrowing to the police or the administration of the Ndebele people.
There was a storm and thunder during the night they advanced on the Boer lines at Magersfontein and into the bullets of the enemy, and in his fevered dreams the sound of thunder becomes the symbol of danger. And the thunder comes again in difficult circumstances with the Scouts in the Drakensberg Mountains and in the Matopos Hills the night before he confronts, on his own, the powerful chief Mzekise, head of the Kumalo tribe.
Thunder in the Distance is an old fashioned adventure story, viewed through the eyes of a young man who overcomes extreme challenges of both a physical and mental nature. The Postscript gives the reasons why I was excited to be writing it and my choices of some of the locations and things Fynn gets up to:
My maternal grandfather was Jack Taylor, an Englishman who came out to South Africa as a young man to fight in the Second Anglo-Boer War. After the war he stayed on in the country and married a local woman, my grandmother. He found employment as a policeman in Vryburg where both my mother and her younger sister were born. Jack Taylor did patrols in Bechuanaland on camel.
My family arrived in Bulawayo by train on the 10th of October 1945, the day I turned one. My father had gained employment in the foundry of Rhodesian Railways. A few years later they made him foreman but by then he had realised he wanted more for his life. He joined African Administration, the organisation that ran the townships in Bulawayo.
So began a steep learning curve. He had to learn to speak isiNdebele and study and pass many law and administration exams, tasks made harder due to his lack of formal education as he had to leave school after standard six due to the Great Depression.
A few years later they decided to build the first location for married people and my father’s performance and potential resulted in him getting to plan and build the location, which
he named Mpopoma, the name of a river that runs through the Matopos Hills. He became Mpopoma’s first superintendent.
It was my memory of those years and my father’s dedication to improving the lot of the amaNdebele that made me choose Native Affairs for Fynn Armstrong.
They named a street after him in Mpopoma when he left the service. Cleary Avenue is still there.
My wife’s maiden name is Armstrong.
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