The Sun Between Their Feet: Collected African Stories Volume Two
The Sun Between Their Feet: Collected African Stories Volume Two
Doris Lessing
The second volume of Doris Lessing’s ‘Collected African Stories’, and a classic work from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.‘As for these stories – when I write one, it is as if I open a gate into a landscape which is always there. Time has nothing to do with it. A certain kind of pulse starts beating, and I recognise it: it is time I wrote another story from that landscape, external and internal at the same time, which was once the Old Chief’s Country.’ Doris Lessing, from the PrefaceThis much-acclaimed collection of stories vividly evokes both the grandeur of Africa and the glare of its sun and the wide open space, as well as the great, irresolvable tensions between whites and blacks. Tales of poor white farmers and their lonely wives, of storm air thick with locusts, of ants and pomegranate trees, black servants and the year of hunger in a native village – all combine to present a powerful image of a continent which seems incorruptible in spite of all the people who plough, mine and plunder it to make their living. In Doris Lessing’s own words, ‘Africa gives you the knowledge that man is a small creature, among other creatures, in a large landscape.’
MODERN CLASSIC
DORIS LESSING
The Sun Between Their Feet
Collected African Stories
Volume Two
Contents
Cover (#ubdfb01b4-d09e-5c7c-b97e-db85053e418c)
Title Page (#ufdd90e06-04e2-56d6-891f-6d94ef552fcf)
Preface (#ulink_9ecb2dbb-5b0d-5891-95af-e4ff29aceafe)
Spies I Have Known (#ulink_f026425a-772f-5226-82cf-2d349b1798a1)
The Story of a Non-Marrying Man (#ulink_6f4bbf3f-59a2-5c3e-83a9-15f75de0d4b3)
The Black Madonna (#ulink_f79426d4-f7f1-5c09-8198-ca47f6b0ecef)
The Trinket Box (#ulink_e2a60891-ada9-574e-8bcb-948611abe869)
The Pig (#ulink_c699550e-d0b3-5514-a54a-9d5f0ad40f14)
Traitors (#ulink_178443ee-49ab-5c2f-be9f-acf10c14086c)
The Words He Said (#ulink_25353232-4a6f-52fb-888e-4866e2e577f2)
Lucy Grange (#ulink_34bf2c9d-2a2f-5a5d-98b6-76fe1df33cdc)
A Mild Attack of Locusts (#ulink_54cdc092-8018-59f6-9afa-5b7c7a03d9c1)
Flavours of Exile (#ulink_95368ca4-f6ac-51f4-9eaf-057b3fa0a15e)
Getting off the Altitude (#ulink_a4408be4-cf32-54e4-8287-068051055ebf)
A Road to the Big City (#ulink_4a9bd856-e844-5d73-b802-d97467784ed5)
Plants and Girls (#ulink_f28c53fc-7ec9-52db-9cf7-c0bd871fa5b5)
Flight (#ulink_32bdd40d-204f-5284-b3f9-18e9d42b3d03)
The Sun Between Their Feet (#ulink_2d2650e0-c6d3-5db1-9726-2230ac7cd67b)
The Story of Two Dogs (#ulink_ad9b6269-ed5f-5faf-8f23-ec2d576843d3)
The New Man (#ulink_d51682e7-ab8d-5467-a47c-089a979728fc)
A Letter from Home (#ulink_6b50cbf2-6a44-57cd-abda-02569add66d1)
Hunger (#ulink_a7d82440-ba10-5ada-9359-753799356b0e)
Bibliographical Note (#ulink_db129786-bd3b-59bb-91e8-bb22f977ab57)
About the Author (#ulink_536d5929-a2b4-5e48-93eb-a7d6361dbf42)
By the same author (#ulink_6d0d31b8-317d-55c6-9ab0-3536feab3708)
Read On (#uad3bdb87-9e58-5d6f-8c17-eccf9a6b8a84)
The Grass is Singing (#u1e70607d-c616-57bb-873c-f54316c6b0a8)
The Golden Notebook (#udae92efe-8714-57c2-87f3-ee7195be0106)
The Good Terrorist (#u7854abfe-6a97-5214-aef4-391da79053c5)
Love, Again (#u3529e198-daf2-5c99-8230-d1692c6b76bc)
The Fifth Child (#u22d6453b-dee7-5bd2-a613-87e34f6d2f8c)
Copyright (#ulink_e78f4b52-ca93-54a5-8d66-924cf4706df8)
About the Publisher (#ulink_1c7467d1-ddd8-5003-a42f-7f55bafb7523)
Preface (#ulink_893af67c-5f8a-5bd1-91aa-7d0447f73017)
This collection has in it some of the stories I like best. One of them is the title story to this volume, The Sun Between Their Feet. It was written out of memories of a part of Rhodesia that was very different from the part I was brought up in, which was Banket, in Mashonaland, not far from Sinoia. But I used to visit around the Marandellas and Macheke districts, which are mostly sandveld, and scattered all over with clumps of granite boulders piled on each other in a way I haven’t seen anywhere else. These piles appear to be so arbitrary, so casual, that sometimes it seems as if a perched boulder may topple with a puff of wind. I spent hours, days, weeks sitting around, walking about, on that pale crusty soil, so different from the heavy dark soil of the district my father’s farm was in, examining the vegetation and the insects.
Here, too, is The Story of Two Dogs, which I think is as good as any I have done. And it is a ‘true’ story: at least, there were two pairs of dogs in my childhood, the first called Lion and Tiger, and the second Jock and Bill. I don’t know now which incidents belong to which pair of dogs; but it is true that Bill, or the ‘stupid’ dog, rescued Jock, the ‘clever’ dog, by gnawing through a strand of wire in which he was trapped – thus wearing his teeth down to stubs and shortening his life.
A Letter from Home seems to me to have in it the stuff of present-day South Africa. What sparked it off was hearing the account of a white friend, living in Cape Town with another – two bachelors in a small house – looked after, or nannied, by a large Zulu woman who treated them both like small boys. And then, as food for the same story, was my thinking about another friend, a marvellous poet, so I am told – but I don’t understand his own language – who writes his poetry in one of the very many languages of the world which ‘no one speaks’. Except the million or so people born into it. Which leads one on to the thought that if a poet is born into one of the common languages he can be a world-poet; but if he is, for instance, Afrikaans, he can be as great as any poet in the world but it would be hard for this fact to cross the language barriers.
Of the five long stories, or short novels in Five, Hunger which is reprinted here is the failure and, it seems, the most liked.
It came to be written like this. I was in Moscow with a delegation of writers, back in 1952. It was striking that while the members of the British team differed very much politically, we agreed with each other on certain assumptions about literature – in brief, that writing had to be a product of the individual conscience, or soul. Whereas the Russians did not agree at all – not at all. Our debates, many and long, were on this theme.
Stalin was still alive. One day we were taken to see a building full of presents for Stalin, rooms full of every kind of object – pictures, photographs, carpets, clothes, etc., all gifts from his grateful subjects and exhibited by the State to show other subjects and visitors from abroad. It was a hot day. I left the others touring the stuffy building and sat outside to rest. I was thinking about what Russians were demanding in literature – greater simplicity, simple judgements of right and wrong. We, the British, had argued against it, and we felt we were right and the Russians wrong. But after all, there was Dickens, and such a short time ago, and his characters were all good or bad – unbelievably Good, monstrously Bad, but that didn’t stop him from being a great writer. Well, there I was, with my years in Southern Africa behind me, a society as startlingly unjust as Dickens’s England. Why, then, could I not write a story of simple good and bad, with clear-cut choices, set in Africa? The plot? Only one possible plot – that a poor black boy or girl should come from a village to the white man’s rich town and … there he would encounter, as occurs in life, good and bad, and after much trouble and many tears he would follow the path of …
I tried, but it failed. It wasn’t true. Sometimes one writes things that don’t come off, and feels more affectionate towards them than towards those that worked.
Flight is, I think, a good story. But do I like it because I remember a very old man in a suburb in Africa, in a small house crammed with half-grown girls, all his life in his shelf of birds under jacaranda trees well away from that explosive house? In a green lacy shade he would sit and croon to his birds, or watch them wheel and speed and then come dropping back through the sky to his hand. The memory has something in it of a nostalgic dream.
I am addicted to The Black Madonna, which is full of the bile that is produced in me by the thought of ‘white’ society in Southern Rhodesia as I knew and hated it.
Traitors is about two little girls. Why? It should have been a boy and a girl: the children were my brother and myself. I remember there was a short period when I longed for a sister: perhaps this tale records that time.
I have only recently written Spies I Have Known and The Non-Marrying Man.
Which brings me to a question raised often by people who write to me, usually from universities. In what order has one written this or that?
This seems to be a question of much interest to scholars. I don’t see why. No one who understands anything about how artists work – and there is surely no excuse not to, since artists of all kinds write so plentifully about our creative processes – could ask such a question at all. You can think about a story for years and then write it down in an hour. You may work out the shape of a novel for decades, before spending a few months working on it.
As for the stories like these – which I always think of under the heading of This Was the Old Chief’s Country, the title of my first collection of stories – when I write one, it is as if I open a gate into a landscape which is always there. Time has nothing to do with it. A certain kind of pulse starts beating, and I recogize it; it is time I wrote another story from that landscape, external and internal at the same time, which was once the Old Chief’s Country.
Doris Lessing
January 1972
Spies I Have Known (#ulink_2502a4f0-608e-5699-8624-f22b9399e1fd)
I don’t want you to imagine that I am drawing any sort of comparison between Salisbury, Rhodesia, of thirty years ago, a one-horse town then, if not now, and more august sites. God forbid. But it does no harm to lead into a weighty subject by way of the minuscule.
It was in the middle of the Second World War. A couple of dozen people ran a dozen or so organizations, of varying degrees of leftwingedness. The town, though a capital city, was still in that condition when ‘everybody knows everybody else’. The white population was about ten thousand; the number of black people, then as now, only guessed at. There was a Central Post Office, a rather handsome building, and one of the mail sorters attended the meetings of The Left Club. It was he who explained to us the system of censorship operated by the Secret Police. All the incoming mail for the above dozen organizations was first put into a central box marked CENSOR and was read – at their leisure, by certain trusted citizens. Of course all this was as to be expected, and what we knew must be happening. But there were other proscribed organizations, like the Watchtower, a religious sect for some reason suspected by governments up and down Africa (perhaps because they prophesied the imminent end of the world?) and some Fascist organizations – reasonably enough in a war against Fascism. There were organizations of obscure aims and perhaps five members and a capital of five pounds, and also individuals whose mail had first to go through the process, as it were, of decontamination, or defusing. It was this last list of a hundred or so people which was the most baffling. What did they have in common, these sinister ones whose opinions were such a threat to the budding Southern Rhodesian State, then still in the Lord Malvern phase of the Huggins/Lord Malvern/Welenski/Garfield Todd/Winston Field/Smith succession? After months, indeed years, of trying to understand what could unite them, we had simply to give up. Of course, half were on the left, kaffir lovers and so on, but what of the others? It was when a man wrote a letter to the Rhodesia Herald in solemn parody of Soviet official style – as heavy then as now, urging immediate extermination by firing squad of our government, in favour of a team from the Labour Opposition, and we heard from our contact in the Post Office that his name was now on the Black List, that we began to suspect the truth.
Throughout the war, this convenient arrangement continued. Our Man in the Post Office – by then several men, but it doesn’t sound so well – kept us informed of what and who was on the Black List. And if our mail was being held up longer than we considered reasonable, the censors being on holiday, or lazy, authority would be gently prodded to hurry things up a little.
This was my first experience of Espionage.
Next was when I knew someone who knew someone who had told him of how a certain Communist Party Secretary had been approached by the man whose occupation it was to tap communist telephones – we are now in Europe. Of course, the machinery for tapping was much more primitive then. Probably by now they have dispensed with human intervention altogether, and a machine judges the degree of a suspicious person’s disaffection by the tones of his voice. Then, and in that country, they simply played back records of conversation. This professional had been in the most intimate contact with communism and communists for years, becoming involved with shopping expeditions, husbands late from the office, love affairs, a divorce or so, children’s excursions. He had been sucked into active revolutionary politics through the keyhole.
‘I don’t think you ought to let little Jackie go at all. He’ll be in bed much too late, and you know how bad tempered he gets when he is overtired.’
‘She said to me No, she said. That’s final. If you want to do a thing like that, then you must do it yourself. You shouldn’t expect other people to pull your chestnuts out of the fire, she said. If he was rude to you, then it’s your place to tell him so.’
He got frustrated, like an intimate friend or lover with paralysis of the tongue. And there was another thing, his involvement was always at a remove. He was listening to events, emotions, several hours old. Sometimes weeks old, as for instance when he went on leave and had to catch up with a month’s dangerous material all in one exhausting twenty-four hours. He found that he was getting possessive about certain of his charges, resented his colleagues listening in to ‘my suspects’. Once he had to wrestle with temptation because he longed to seek out a certain woman on the point of leaving her husband for another man. Due to his advantageous position he knew the other man was not what she believed. He imagined how he would trail her to the café which he knew she frequented, sit near her, then lean over and ask: ‘May I join you? I have something of importance to divulge.’ He knew she would agree: he knew her character well. She was unconventional, perhaps not as responsible as she ought to be, careless for instance about the regularity of meals, but fundamentally, he was sure, a good girl with the potentiality of good wifehood. He would say to her: ‘Don’t do it, my dear! No, don’t ask me how I know, I can’t tell you that. But if you leave your husband for that man, you’ll regret it!’ He would press her hands in his, looking deeply into her eyes – he was sure they were brown, for her voice was definitely the voice of a brown-eyed blonde – and then stride for ever out of her life. Afterwards he could check on the success of his intervention through the tapes.
To cut a process short that took some years, he at last went secretly to a communist bookshop, bought some pamphlets, attended a meeting or two, and discovered that he would certainly become a Party Member if it were not that his job, and a very well paid one with good prospects, was to spy on the Communist Party. He felt in a false position. What to do? He turned up at the offices of the Communist Party, asked to see the Secretary, and confessed his dilemma. Roars of laughter from the Secretary.
These roars are absolutely obligatory in this convention, which insists on a greater degree of sophisticated understanding between professionals, even if on opposing sides, even if at war – Party officials, government officials, top ranking soldiers and the like – than the governed, ever a foolish, trusting and sentimental lot.
First, then, the roar. Then a soupçon of whimsicality: alas for this badly-ordered world where men so well-equipped to be friends must be enemies. Finally, the hard offer.
Our friend the telephone-tapper was offered a retaining fee by the Communist Party, and their provisional trust, on condition that he stayed where he was, working for the other side. Of course, what else had he expected? Nor should he have felt insulted, for in such ways are the double agents born, those rare men at an altogether higher level in the hierarchies of espionage than he could ever aspire to reach. But his finer feelings had been hurt by the offer of money, and he refused. He went off and suffered for a week or so, deciding that he really did have to leave his job with the Secret Police – an accurate name for what he was working for, though of course the name it went under was much blander. He returned to the Secretary in order to ask for the second time to become just a rank and file Communist Party member. This time there was no roar of laughter, not even a chuckle, but the frank (and equally obligatory) I-am-concealing-nothing statement of the position. Which was that he surely must be able to see their point of view – the Communist Party’s. With a toehold in the enemy camp (a delicate way of describing his salary and his way of life) he could be of real use. To stay where he was could be regarded as a real desire to serve the People’s Cause. To leave altogether, becoming just honest John Smith, might satisfy his conscience (a subjective and conditioned organ as he must surely know by now if he had read those pamphlets properly) but would leave behind him an image of the capricious, or even the unreliable. What had he planned to tell his employers? ‘I am tired of tapping telephones, it offends me!’ Or: ‘I regard this as an immoral occupation!’ – when he had done nothing else for years? Come, come, he hadn’t thought it out. He would certainly be under suspicion for ever more by his ex-employers. And of course he could not be so innocent, after so long spent in that atmosphere of vigilance and watchfulness not to expect the communists to keep watch on himself? No, his best course would be to stay exactly where he was, working even harder at tapping telephones. If not, then his frank advice (the Secretary’s) could only be that he must become an ordinary citizen, as far from any sort of politics as possible, for his own sake, the sake of the Service he had left, and the sake of the Communist Party -which of course they believed he now found his spiritual home.
But the trouble was that he did want to join it. He wanted nothing more than to become part of the world of stern necessities he had followed for so long, but as it were from behind a one-way pane of glass. Integrity had disenfranchised him. From now on he could not hope to serve humanity except through the use of the vote.
His life was empty. His resignation had cut off his involvement, like turning off the television on a soap opera, with the deathless real-life dramas of the tapes.
He felt that he was useless. He considered suicide, but thought better of it. Then, having weathered a fairly routine and unremarkable nervous breakdown, became a contemplative monk – high Church of England.
Another spy I met at a cocktail party, said in the course of chat about this or that – it was in London, in the late Fifties -that at the outbreak of the Second World War he had been in Greece, or perhaps it was Turkey, where at another cocktail party, over the canapés, an official from the British Embassy invited him to spy for his country.
‘But I can’t,’ said this man. ‘You must know that perfectly well.’
‘But why ever not?’ enquired the official. A Second Secretary, I think he was.
‘Because, as of course you must know, I am a Communist Party member.’
‘Indeed? How interesting! But surely that is not going to stand in the way of your desire to serve your country?’ said the official, matching ferocious honesty with bland interest.
Cutting this anecdote short – it comes, after all, from a pretty petty level in the affairs of men, this man went home and spent a sleepless night weighing his allegiances, and decided by morning that of course the Second Secretary was right. He would like to serve his country, which was after all engaged in a war against Fascism. He explained his decision to his superiors in the Communist Party, who agreed with him, and to his wife and his comrades. Then meeting the Second Secretary at another cocktail party, he informed him of the decision he had taken. He was then invited to attach himself to a certain Army Unit, in some capacity to do with the Ministry of Information. He was to await orders. In due course they came, and he discovered that it was his task to spy on the Navy, or rather, that portion of it operating near him. Our Navy, of course. He was always unable to work out the ideology of this. That a communist should not be set to spy on, let’s say, Russia, seemed to him fair and reasonable, but why was he deemed suitable material to spy on his own side? He found it all baffling, and indeed rather lowering. Then, at a cocktail party, he happened to meet a naval officer with whom he proceeded to get drunk, and they both suddenly understood on a wild hunch that they were engaged on spying on each other, one for the Navy, and one for the Army. Both found this work without much uplift, they were simply not able to put their hearts into it, apart from the fact that they had been in the same class at prep school and had many other social ties. Not even the fact that they weren’t being paid, since it was assumed by their superiors – quite correctly of course -that they would be happy to serve their countries for nothing, made them feel any better. They developed the habit of meeting regularly in a café where they drank wine and coffee and played chess in a vine-covered arbour overlooking a particularly fine bit of the Mediterranean where, without going through all the tedious effort of spying on each other, they simply gave each other relevant information. They were found out. Their excuse that they were fighting the war on the same side was deemed inadequate. They were both given the sack as spies, and transferred to less demanding work. But until D-Day and beyond, the British Army spied on the British Navy, and vice versa. They probably all still do.
The fact that human beings, given half a chance, start seeing each other’s point of view seems to me the only ray of hope there is for humanity, but obviously this tendency must be one to cause anguish to seniors in the diplomatic corps and the employers of your common or garden spy – not the high level spies, but of that in a moment. Diplomats, until they have understood why, always complain that as soon as they understand a country and its language really well, hey presto, off they are whisked to another country. But diplomacy could not continue if the opposing factotums lost a proper sense of national hostility. Some diplomatic corps insist that their employees must only visit among each other, and never fraternize with the locals, obviously believing that understanding with others is inculcated by a sort of osmosis. And of course, any diplomat that shows signs of going native, that is to say really enjoying the manners and morals of a place, must be withdrawn at once.
Not so the masters among the spies: one dedicated to his country’s deepest interests must be worse than useless. The rarest spirits must be those able to entertain two or three allegiances at once; the counter spies, the double and triple agents. Such people are not born. It can’t be that they wake up one morning at the age of thirteen crying: Eureka, I’ve got it, I want to be a double agent! That’s what I was born to do! Nor can there be a training school for multiple spies, a kind of top class that promising pupils graduate towards. Yet that capacity which might retard a diplomat’s career, or mean death to the small fry among spies, must be precisely the one watched out for by the Spymasters who watch and manipulate in the high levels of the world’s thriving espionage systems. What probably happens is that a man drifts, even unwillingly, into serving his country as a spy – like my acquaintance of the cocktail party who then found himself spying on the Senior Service of his own side. Then, whether there through a deep sense of vocation or without enthusiasm, he must begin by making mistakes, sometimes pleased with himself and sometimes not; he goes through a phase of wondering whether he would not have done better to go into the Stock Exchange, or whatever his alternative was – then suddenly there comes that moment, fatal to punier men but a sign of his own future greatness, when he is invaded by sympathy for the enemy. Long dwelling on what X is doing, likely to be doing, or thinking, or planning, makes X’s thoughts as familiar and as likeable as his own. The points of view of the nation he spends all his time trying to undo, are comfortably at home in a mind once tuned only to those of his own dear Fatherland. He is thinking the thoughts of those he used to call enemies before he understands that he is already psychologically a double agent, and before he guesses that those men who must always be on the watch for such precious material have noticed, perhaps even prognosticated, his condition.
On those levels where the really great spies move, whose names we never hear, but whose existence we have to deduce, what fantastic feats of global understanding must be reached, what metaphysical heights of international brotherhood!
It is of course not possible to do more than take the humblest flights into speculation, while making do with those so frequent and highly publicized spy dramas, for some reason or other so very near to farce, that do leave obscurity for our attention.
It can’t be possible that the high reaches of espionage can have anything in common with, for instance, this small happening.
A communist living in a small town in England, who had been openly and undramatically a communist for years, and for whom the state of being a communist had become rather like the practice of an undemanding religion – this man looked out of his window one fine summer afternoon to see standing in the street outside his house a car of such foreignness and such opulence that he was embarrassed, and at once began to work out what excuses he could use to his working-class neighbours whose cars, if any, would be dust in comparison. Out of this monster of a car came two large smiling Russians, carrying a teddy bear the size of a sofa, a bottle of vodka, a long and very heavy roll, which later turned out to be a vast carpet with a picture of the Kremlin on it, and a box of chocolates of British make, with a pretty lady and a pretty dog.
Every window in the street already had heads packed behind the curtains.
‘Come in,’ said he, ‘but I don’t think I have the pleasure of knowing who …’
The roll of carpet was propped in the hall, the three children sent off to play with the teddy bear in the kitchen, and the box of chocolates set aside for the lady of the house, who was out doing the week’s shopping in the High Street. The vodka was opened at once.
It turned out that it was his wife they wanted: they were interested in him only as a go-between. They wished him to ask his wife, who was an employee of the town council, to get hold of the records of the council’s meetings, and to pass these records on to them. Now, this wasn’t London, or even Edinburgh. It was a small unimportant North of England town, in which it would be hard to imagine anything ever happening that could be of interest to anyone outside it, let alone the agents of a Foreign Power. But, said he, these records are open, anyone could go and get copies – you, for instance – ‘Comrades, I shall be delighted to take you to the Town Hall myself.’
No, what they had been instructed to do was to ask his wife to procure them minutes and records, nothing less would do.
A long discussion ensued. It was all no use. The Russians could not be made to see that what they asked was unnecessary. Nor could they understand that to arrive in a small suburban street in a small English town in a car the length of a battleship, was to draw the wrong sort of attention.
‘But why is that?’ they enquired. ‘Representatives of the country where the workers hold power should use a good car. Of course, comrade. You have not thought it out from a class position!’
The climax came when, despairing of the effect of rational argument, they said: ‘And comrade, these presents, the bear, the carpet, the chocolates, the vodka, are only a small token in appreciation of your work for our common cause. Of course you will be properly recompensed.’
At which point he was swept by, indeed taken over entirely by, atavistic feelings he had no idea were in him at all. He stood up and pointed a finger shaking with rage at the door: ‘How dare you imagine,’ he shouted, ‘that my wife and I would take money? If I were going to spy, I’d spy for the love of mankind, for duty, and for international socialism. Take those bloody things out of here, wait, I’ll get that teddy bear from the kids. And you can take your bloody car out of here too.’
His wife, when she came back from the supermarket and heard the story, was even more insulted than he was.
But emotions like these are surely possible only in the lowest possible levels of spy material – in this case so low they didn’t qualify for the first step, entrance into the brotherhood.
Full circle back to Our Man in the Post Office, or rather, the first of three.
After sedulous attendance at a lot of left-wing meetings, semi-private and public – for above all Tom was a methodical man who, if engaged in a thing, always gave it full value – he put his hand up one evening in the middle of a discussion about Agrarian Reform in Venezuela, and said: ‘I must ask permission to ask a question.’
Everyone always laughed at him when he did this, put up his hand to ask for permission to speak, or to leave, or to have opinions about something. Little did we realize that we were seeing here not just a surface mannerism, or habit, but his strongest characteristic.
It was late in the meeting, at that stage when the floor is well-loaded with empty coffee cups, beer glasses, and full ash trays. Some people had already left.
He wanted to know what he ought to do: ‘I want to have the benefit of your expert advice.’ As it happened he had already taken the decision he was asking about.
After some two years of a life not so much double – the word implies secrecy – as dual, his boss in the Central Post Office called him to ask how he was enjoying his life with the Left. Tom was as doggedly informative with him as he was with us, and said that we were interesting people, well-informed, and full of a high-class brand of idealism which he found inspiring.
‘I always feel good after going to one of their meetings,’ he reported he had said. ‘It takes you right out of yourself and makes you think.’
His chief said that he, for his part, always enjoyed hearing about idealism and forward-looking thought, and invited Tom to turn in reports about our activities, our discussions, and most particularly our plans for the future, as well in advance as possible.
Tom told us that he said to his boss that ‘he didn’t like the idea of doing that sort of thing behind our backs, because say what you like about the reds, they are very hospitable’.
The chief had said that it would be for the good of his country.
Tom came to us to say that he had told his boss that he had agreed, because he wanted to be of assistance to the national war effort.
It was clear to everyone that having told us that he had agreed to spy on us, he would, since that was his nature, most certainly go back to his boss and tell him that he had told us that he had agreed to spy. After which he would come back to us to tell us that he had told his boss that … and so on. Indefinitely, if his boss didn’t get tired of it. Tom could not see that his chief would shortly find him unsuitable material for espionage, and might even dismiss him from being a sorter in the Post Office altogether – a nuisance for us. After which he, the chief, would probably look for someone else to give him information.
It was Harry, one of the other two Post Office employees attending Left Club meetings, who suggested that it would probably be himself who would next be invited to spy on us, now that Tom had ‘told’. Tom was upset, when everybody began speculating about his probable supersession by Harry or even Dick. The way he saw it was that his complete frankness with both us and his chief was surely deserving of reward. He ought to be left in the job. God knows how he saw the future. Probably that both his boss and ourselves would continue to employ him. We would use him to find out how our letters were slowly moving through the toils of censorship, and to hurry them on, if possible; his chief would use him to spy on us. When I say employ, I don’t want anyone to imagine this implies payment. Or at least, certainly not from our side. Ideology had to be his spur, sincerity his reward.
It will by now have been noticed that our Tom was not as bright as he might have been. But he was a pleasant enough youth. He was rather good-looking too, about twenty-two. His physical characteristic was neatness. His clothes were always just so; he had a small alert dark moustache; he had glossy dark well-brushed hair. His rather small hands were well-manicured – the latter trait bound to be found offensive by good colonials, whose eye for such anti-masculine evidence – as they were bound to see it, then if not now – was acute. But he was a fairly recent immigrant, from just before the war, and had not yet absorbed the mores. He probably had not noticed that real Rhodesians, in those days at least, did not like men who went in for a careful appearance.
Tom, in spite of our humorous forecast that he would be bound to tell his boss that he had told us, and his stiff and wounded denials that such a thing was possible, found himself impelled to do just that. He reported back that his chief had ‘lost his rag with him’.
But that was not the end. He was offered the job of learning how to censor letters. He had said to his boss that he felt in honour bound to tell us, and his boss said: ‘Oh for Christ’s sake. Tell them anything you damned well like. You won’t be choosing what is to be censored.’
As I said, this was an unsophisticated town in those days, and the condition of ‘everybody knowing everybody else’ was bound to lead to such warm human situations.
He accepted the offer because: ‘My mother always told me that she wanted me to do well for myself, and I’ll increase my rating into Schedule Three as soon as I start work on censoring, and that means an increment of £50 a year.’
We congratulated him, and urged him to keep us informed about how people were trained as censors, and he agreed to do this. Shortly after that the war ended, and all the wartime camaraderie of wartime ended as the Cold War began. The ferment of Left activity ended too.
We saw Tom no more, but followed his progress, steady if slow, up the Civil Service. The last I heard he was heading a Department among whose duties is censorship. I imagine him, a man in his fifties, husband and no doubt a father, looking down the avenues of lost time of those dizzy days when he was a member of a dangerous revolutionary organization. ‘Yes,’ he must often say, ‘you can’t tell me anything about them. They are idealistic, I can grant you so much, but they are dangerous. Dangerous and wrong-headed! I left them as soon as I understood what they really were.’
But of our three Post Office spies Harry was the one whose career, for a while at least, was the most rewarding for humanist idealists.
He was a silent, desperately shy schoolboy who came to a public meeting and fell madly in love for a week or so with the speaker, a girl giving her first public speech and as shy as he was. His father had died and his mother, as the psychiatrists and welfare workers would say, was ‘inadequate’. That is to say, she was not good at being a widow, and was frail in health. What little energy she had went into earning enough money for her two younger sons to live on. She nagged at Harry for not having ambition, and for not studying for the examinations which would take him up the ladder into the next grade in the Post Office – and for wasting time with the reds. He longed to be of use. For three years he devoted all his spare time to organization on the Left, putting up exhibitions, hiring halls and rooms, decorating ballrooms for fund-raising dances, getting advertisements for our socialist magazine -circulation two thousand – and laying it out and selling it. He argued principle with town councillors: ‘But it’s not fair not to let us have the hall, this is a democratic country, isn’t it?’ – and spent at least three nights a week discussing world affairs in smoke-filled rooms.
At the time we would have dismissed as beyond redemption anyone who suggested it, but I daresay now that the main function of those gatherings was social. Southern Rhodesia was never exactly a hospitable country for those interested in anything but sport and the sundowner, and the fifty or so people who came to the meetings were all, whether in the Forces, or refugees from Europe, or simply Rhodesians, souls in need of congenial company. And they were friendly occasions, those meetings, sometimes going on till dawn.
A girl none of us had seen before came to a public meeting. She saw Harry, a handsome, confident, loquacious, energetic, efficient young man. Everyone relied on him.
She fell in love, took him home, and her father, recognizing one of the world’s born organizers, made him manager in his hardware shop.
Which leaves the third, Dick. Now there are some people who should not be allowed anywhere near meetings, debates, or similar intellect-fermenting agencies. He came to two meetings. Harry brought him, describing him as ‘keen’. It was Harry who was keen. Dick sat on the floor on a cushion. Wild bohemian ways, these, for well-brought-up young whites. His forehead puckered like a puppy’s while he tried to follow wild unRhodesian thought. He, like Tom, was a neat, well-set-up youth. Perhaps the Post Office, or at least in Rhodesia, is an institution that attracts the well-ordered? I remember he reminded me of a boiled sweet, bland sugar with a chemical tang. Or perhaps he was like a bulldog, all sleek latent ferocity, with its little bulging eyes, its little snarl. Like Tom, he was one for extracting exact information. ‘I take it you people believe that human nature can be changed?’
At the second meeting he attended, he sat and listened as before. At the end he enquired whether we thought socialism was a good thing in this country where there was the white man’s burden to consider.
He did not come to another meeting. Harry said that he had found us seditious and unRhodesian. Also insincere. We asked Harry to go and ask Dick why he thought we were insincere, and to come back and tell us. It turned out that Dick wanted to know why The Left Club did not take over the government of the country and run it, if we thought the place ill run. But we forgot Dick, particularly as Harry, at the zenith of his efficiency and general usefulness, was drifting off with his future wife to become a hardware store manager. And by then Tom was lost to us.
Suddenly we heard that ‘The Party for Democracy, Liberty, and Freedom’ was about to hold a preliminary mass meeting. One of us was delegated to go along and find out what was happening. This turned out to be me.
The public meeting was in a sideroom off a ballroom in one of the town’s three hotels. It was furnished with a sideboard to hold the extra supplies of beer and sausage rolls and peanuts consumed so plentifully during the weekly dances, a palm in a pot so tall the top fronds were being pressed down by the ceiling, and a dozen stiff dining-room chairs ranged one by one along the walls. There were eleven men and women in the room, including Dick. Unable to understand immediately why this gathering struck me as so different from the ones in which I spent so much of my time, I then saw it was because there were elderly people present. Our gatherings loved only the young.
Dick was wearing his best suit in dark grey flannel. It was a very hot evening. His face was scarlet with endeavour and covered with sweat, which he kept sweeping off his forehead with impatient fingers. He was reading an impassioned document in tone rather like the Communist Manifesto, which began: ‘Fellow Citizens of Rhodesia! Sincere Men and Women! This is the Time for Action! Arise and look about you and enter into your Inheritance! Put the forces of International Capital to flight!’
He was standing in front of the chairs, his well-brushed little head bent over his notes, which were handwritten and in places hard to read, so that these inflammatory sentiments were being stammered and stumbled out, while he kept correcting himself, wiping off sweat, and then stopping with an appealing circular glance around the room at the others. Towards him were lifted ten earnest faces, as if at a saviour or a Party leader.
The programme of this nascent Party was simple. It was to ‘take over by democratic means but as fast as possible’ all the land and the industry of the country ‘but to cause as little inconvenience as possible’ and ‘as soon as it was feasible’ to institute a régime of true equality and fairness in this ‘land of Cecil Rhodes’.
He was intoxicated by the emanations of admiration from his audience. Burning, passionate faces like these (alas, and I saw how far we had sunk away from fervour) were no longer to be seen at our Left Club meetings, which long ago had sailed away on the agreeable tides of debate and intellectual speculation.
The faces belonged to a man of fifty or so, rather grey and beaten, who described himself as a teacher ‘planning the total reform of the entire educational system’; a woman of middle age, a widow, badly dressed and smoking incessantly, who looked as if she had long since gone beyond what she was strong enough to bear from life; an old man with an angelic pink face fringed with white tufts who said he was named after Keir Hardie; three schoolboys, the son of the widow and his two friends; the woman attendant from the ladies’ cloakroom who had unlocked this room to set out the chairs and then had stayed out of interest, since it was her afternoon off; two aircraftsmen from the RAF; Dick the convener; and a beautiful young woman no one had ever seen before who, as soon as Dick had finished his manifesto, stood up to make a plea for vegetarianism. She was ruled out of order. ‘We have to get power first, and then we’ll simply do what the majority wants.’ As for me, I was set apart from them by my lack of fervour, and by Dick’s hostility.
This was in the middle of the Second World War, whose aim it was to defeat the hordes of National Socialism. The Union of Socialist Soviet Republics was thirty years old. It was more than a hundred and fifty years after the French Revolution, and rather more than that after the American Revolution which overthrew the tyrannies of Britain. The Independence of India would shortly be celebrated. It was twenty years after the death of Lenin. Trotsky still lived.
One of the schoolboys, a friend of the widow’s son, put up his hand to say timidly, instantly to be shut up, that ‘he believed there might be books which we could read about socialism and that sort of thing’.
‘Indeed there are,’ said the namesake of Keir Hardie, nodding his white locks, ‘but we needn’t follow the writ that runs in other old countries, when we have got a brand new one here.’
(It must be explained that the whites of Rhodesia, then as now, are always referring to ‘this new country’.)
‘As for books,’ said Dick, eyeing me with all the scornful self-command he had acquired since leaving his cushion weeks before on the floor of our living-room, ‘books don’t seem to do some people any good, so why do we need them? It is all perfectly simple. It isn’t right for a few people to own all the wealth of a country. It isn’t fair. It should be shared out among everybody, equally, and then that would be a democracy.’
‘Well, obviously,’ said the beautiful girl.
‘Ah yes,’ sighed the poor tired woman, emphatically crushing out her cigarette and lighting a new one.
‘Perhaps it would be better if I moved that palm a little,’ said the cloakroom attendant, ‘it does seem to be a little in your way perhaps.’ But Dick did not let her show her agreement in this way.
‘Never mind about the palm,’ he said. ‘It’s not important.’
And this was the point when someone asked; ‘Excuse me, but where do the Natives come in?’ (In those days, the black inhabitants of Rhodesia were referred to as the Natives.)
This was felt to be in extremely bad taste.
‘I don’t really think that is applicable,’ said Dick hotly. ‘I simply don’t see the point of bringing it up at all unless it is to make trouble.’
‘They do live here,’ said one of the RAF.
‘Well, I must withdraw altogether if there’s any likelihood of us getting mixed up with kaffir trouble,’ said the widow.
‘You can be assured that there will be nothing of that,’ said Dick, firmly in control, in the saddle, leader of all, after only half an hour of standing up in front of his mass meeting.
‘I don’t see that,’ said the beautiful girl. ‘I simply don’t see that at all! We must have a policy for the Natives.’
Even twelve people in one small room, whether starting a mass Party or not, meant twelve different, defined, passionately held viewpoints. The meeting at last had to be postponed for a week to allow those who had not had a chance to air their views to have their say. I attended this second meeting. There were fifteen people present. The two RAF were not there, but there were six white trade unionists from the railways who, hearing of the new party, had come to get a resolution passed. ‘In the opinion of this meeting, the Native is being advanced too fast towards civilization and in his own interests the pace should be slowed.’
This resolution was always being passed in those days, on every possible occasion. It probably still is.
But the nine from the week before were already able to form a solid block against this influx of alien thought – not as champions of the Natives, of course not, but because it was necessary to attend to first things first. ‘We have to take over the country first, by democratic methods. That won’t take long, because it is obvious our programme is only fair, and after that we can decide what to do about the Natives.’ The six railway workers then left, leaving the nine from last week, who proceeded to form their Party for Democracy, Liberty and Freedom. A steering committee of three was appointed to draft a constitution.
And that was the last anyone ever heard of it, except for one cyclostyled pamphlet which was called ‘Capitalism is Unfair! Let’s Join Together to Abolish it! This Means You!’
The war was over. Intellectual ferments of this sort occurred no more. Employees of the Post Office, all once again good citizens properly employed in sport and similar endeavours, no longer told the citizens in what ways they were censored and when.
Dick did not stay in the Post Office. That virus, politics, was in his veins for good. From being a spokesman for socialism for the whites, he became, as a result of gibes that he couldn’t have socialism that excluded most of the population, an exponent of the view that Natives must not be advanced too fast in their own interests, and from there he developed into a Town Councillor, and from there into a Member of Parliament. And that is what he still is, a gentleman of distinguished middle age, an indefatigable server on Parliamentary Committees and Commissions, particularly those to do with the Natives, on whom he is considered an authority.
An elderly bulldog of the bulldog breed he is, every inch of him.
The Story of a Non-Marrying Man (#ulink_7f8b626f-febf-593a-bfd7-2dceeb277ef6)
I met Johnny Blakeworthy at the end of his life. I was at the beginning of mine, about ten or twelve years old. This was in the early Thirties, when the Slump had spread from America even to us, in the middle of Africa. The very first sign of the Slump was the increase in the number of people who lived by their wits, or as vagrants.
Our house was on a hill, the highest point of our farm. Through the farm went the only road, a dirt track, from the railway station seven miles away, our shopping and mail centre, to the farms farther on. Our nearest neighbours were three, four, and seven miles away. We could see their roofs flash in the sunlight, or gleam in the moonlight across all those trees, ridges, and valleys.
From the hill we could see the clouds of dust that marked the passage of cars or wagons along the track. We would say: ‘That must be so-and-so going in to fetch his mail.’ Or: ‘Cyril said he had to get a spare for the plough, his broke down, that must be him now.’
If the cloud of dust turned off the main road and moved up through the trees towards us, we had time to build up the fire and put on the kettle. At busy times for the farmers, this happened seldom. Even at slack times, there might be no more than three or four cars a week, and as many wagons. It was mostly a white man’s road, for the Africans moving on foot used their own quicker, short-cutting paths. White men coming to the house on foot were rare, though less rare as the Slump set in. More and more often, coming through the trees up the hill, we saw walking towards us a man with a bundle of blankets over his shoulder, a rifle swinging in his hand. In the blanket-roll were always a frying pan and a can of water, sometimes a couple of tins of bully beef, or a Bible, matches, a twist of dried meat. Sometimes this man had an African servant walking with him. These men always called themselves Prospectors, for that was a respectable occupation. Many did prospect, and nearly always for gold.
One evening, as the sun was going down, up the track to our house came a tall stooped man in shabby khaki with a rifle and a bundle over one shoulder. We knew we had company for the night. The rules of hospitality were that no one coming to our homes in the bush could be refused; every man was fed, and asked to stay as long as he wanted.
Johnny Blakeworthy was burned by the suns of Africa to a dark brown, and his eyes in a dried wrinkled face were grey, the whites much inflamed by the glare. He kept screwing up his eyes, as if in sunlight, and then, in a remembered effort of will, letting loose his muscles, so that his face kept clenching and unclenching like a fist. He was thin: he spoke of having had malaria recently. He was old: it was not only the sun that had so deeply lined his face. In his blanket-roll he had, as well as the inevitable frying pan, an enamel one-pint saucepan, a pound of tea, some dried milk, and a change of clothing. He wore long, heavy khaki trousers for protection against lashing grasses and grass-seeds, and a khaki bush-shirt. He also owned a washed-out grey sweater for frosty nights. Among these items was a corner of a sack full of maize-meal. The presence of the maize-flour was a statement, and probably ambiguous, for the Africans ate maize-meal porridge as their staple food. It was cheap, easily obtainable, quickly cooked, nourishing, but white men did not eat it, at least, not as the basis of their diet, because they did not wish to be put on the same level as Africans. The fact that this man carried it, was why my father, discussing him later with my mother, said: ‘He’s probably gone native.’
This was not criticism. Or rather, while with one part of the collective ethos the white men might say, He’s gone native! and in anger; with a different part of their minds, or at different times it could be said in bitter envy. But that is another story …
Johnny Blakeworthy was of course asked to stay for supper and for the night. At the lamplit table, which was covered with every sort of food, he kept saying how good it was to see so much real food again, but it was in a vaguely polite way, as if he was having to remind himself that this was how he should feel. His plate was loaded with food, and he ate, but kept forgetting to eat, so that my mother had to remind him, putting a little bit more of nice undercut, a splash of gravy, helpings of carrots and spinach from the garden. But by the end he had eaten very little, and hadn’t spoken much either, though the meal gave an impression of much conversation and interest and eating, like a feast, so great was our hunger for company, so many were our questions. Particularly the two children questioned and demanded, for the life of such a man, walking quietly by himself through the bush, sometimes, twenty miles or more a day, sleeping by himself under the stars, or the moon, or whatever weather the seasons sent him, prospecting when he wished, stopping to rest when he needed – such a life, it goes without saying, set us restlessly dreaming of lives different from those we were set towards by school and by parents.
We did learn that he had been on the road for ‘some time, yes, some time now, yes’. That he was sixty. That he had been born in England, in the South, near Canterbury. That he had been adventuring up and down and around Southern Africa all his life – but adventure was not the word he used, it was the word we children repeated until we saw that it made him uncomfortable. He had mined: had indeed owned his own mine. Had farmed, but had not done well. Had done all kinds of work, but ‘I like to be my own master.’ He had owned a store, but ‘I get restless, and I must be on the move.’
Now there was nothing in this we hadn’t heard before -every time, indeed, that such a wanderer came to our door. There was nothing out of the ordinary in his extraordinariness, except, perhaps, as we remembered later, sucking all the stimulation we could out of the visit, discussing it for days, he did not have a prospector’s pan, nor had he asked my father for permission to prospect on this farm. We could not remember a prospector who had failed to become excited by the farm, for it was full of chipped rocks and reefs, trenches and shafts, which some people said went back to the Phoenicians. You couldn’t walk a hundred yards without seeing signs ancient and modern of the search for gold. The district was called ‘Banket’ because it had running through it reefs of the same formation as reefs on the Rand called Banket. The name alone was like a signpost.
But Johnny said he liked to be on his way by the time the sun was up. I saw him leave, down the track that was sun-flushed, the trees all rosy on one side. He shambled away out of sight, a tall, much too thin, rather stooping man in washed-out khaki and soft hide shoes.
Some months later, another man, out of work and occupying himself with prospecting, was asked if he had ever met up with Johnny Blakeworthy, and he said yes, he had indeed! He went on with indignation to say that ‘he had gone native’ in the Valley. The indignation was false, and we assumed that this man too might have ‘gone native’, or that he wished he had, or could. But Johnny’s lack of a prospecting pan, his maize meal, his look at the supper table of being out of place and unfamiliar – all was explained. ‘Going native’ implied that a man would have a ‘bush wife’, but it seemed Johnny did not.
‘He said he’s had enough of the womenfolk, he’s gone to get out of their way,’ said this visitor.
I did not describe, in its place, the thing about Johnny’s visit that struck us most, because at the time it did not strike us as more than agreeably quaint. It was only much later that the letter he wrote us matched up with others, and made a pattern.
Three days after Johnny’s visit to us, a letter arrived from him. I remember my father expected to find that it would ask after all, for permission to prospect. But any sort of letter was odd. Letter-writing equipment did not form part of a tramp’s gear. The letter was on blue Croxley writing paper, and in a blue Croxley envelope, and the writing was as neat as a child’s. It was a ‘bread and butter’ letter. He said that he had very much enjoyed our kind hospitality, and the fine cooking of the lady of the house. He was grateful for the opportunity of making our acquaintance. ‘With my best wishes, yours very truly, Johnny Blakeworthy.’
Once he had been a well-brought-up little boy from a small English country town. ‘You must always write and say thank you after enjoying hospitality, Johnny.’
We talked about the letter for a long time. He must have dropped in at the nearest store after leaving our farm. It was twenty miles away. He probably bought a single sheet of paper and a lone envelope. This meant that he had got them from the African part of the store, where such small retailing went on – at vast profit, of course, to the storekeeper. He must have bought one stamp, and walked across to the post office to hand the letter over the counter. Then, due having been paid to his upbringing, he moved back to the African tribe where he lived beyond post offices, letter writing, and other impedimenta that went with being a white man.
The next glimpse I had of the man, I still have no idea where to fit into the pattern I was at last able to make.
It was years later. I was a young woman at a morning tea party. This one, like all the others of its kind, was an excuse for gossip, and most of that was – of course, since we were young married women – about men and marriage. A girl, married not more than a year, much in love, and unwilling to sacrifice her husband to the collective, talked instead about her aunt from the Orange Free State. ‘She was married for years to a real bad one, and then up he got and walked out. All she heard from him was a nice letter, you know, like a letter after a party or something. It said Thank you very much for the nice time. Can you beat that? And later still she found she had never been married to him because all the time he was married to someone else.’
‘Was she happy?’ one of us asked, and the girl said, ‘She was nuts all right, she said it was the best time of her life.’
‘Then what was she complaining about?’
‘What got her was, having to say Spinster, when she was as good as married all those years. And that letter got her goat, I feel I must write and thank you for … something like that.’
‘What was his name?’ I asked, suddenly understanding what was itching at the back of my mind.
‘I don’t remember. Johnny something or other.’
That was all that came out of that most typical of South African scenes, the morning tea party on the deep shady veranda, the trays covered with every kind of cake and biscuit, the gossiping young women, watching their offspring at play under the trees, filling in a morning of their lazy lives before going back to their respective homes where they would find their meals cooked for them, the table laid, and their husbands waiting. That tea party was thirty years ago, and still that town has not grown so wide that the men can’t drive home to take their midday meals with their families. I am talking of white families, of course.
The next bit of the puzzle came in the shape of a story which I read in a local paper, of the kind that gets itself printed in the spare hours of presses responsible for much more renowned newspapers. This one was called the Valley Advertiser, and its circulation might have been ten thousand. The story was headed: Our Prize-winning story, The Fragrant Black Aloe. By our new Discovery, Alan McGinnery. ‘When I have nothing better to do, I like to stroll down the Main Street, to see the day’s news being created, to catch fragments of talk, and to make up stories about what I hear. Most people enjoy coincidences, it gives them something to talk about. But when there are too many, it makes an unpleasant feeling that the long arm of coincidence is pointing to a region where a rational person is likely to feel uncomfortable. This morning was like that. It began in a flower shop. There a woman with a shopping list was saying to the salesman: “Do you sell black aloes?” It sounded like something to eat.
‘“Never heard of them,” said he. “But I have a fine range of succulents. I can sell you a miniature rock garden on a tray.”
‘“No, no, no, I don’t want the ordinary aloes. I’ve got all those. I want the Scented Black Aloe.”
‘Ten minutes later, waiting to buy a toothbrush at the cosmetic counter at our chemist, Harry’s Pharmacy, I heard a woman ask for a bottle of Black Aloe.
‘Hello, I thought, black aloes have suddenly come into my life!
‘“We don’t stock anything like that,” said the salesgirl, offering rose, honeysuckle, lilac, white violets and jasmine, while obviously reflecting that black aloes must make a bitter kind of perfume.
‘Half an hour later I was in a seedshop, and when I heard a petulant female voice ask: “Do you stock succulents?” then I knew what was coming. This had happened to me before, but I couldn’t remember where or when. Never before had I heard of the Scented Black Aloe, and there it was, three times in an hour.
‘When she had gone I asked the salesman, “Tell me, is there such a thing as the Scented Black Aloe?”
‘“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “But people always want what’s difficult to find.”
‘And at that moment I remembered where I had heard that querulous, sad, insistent hungry note in a voice before (voices, as it turned out!), the note that means that the Scented Black Aloe represents, for that time, all the heart’s desire.
‘It was before the war. I was in the Cape and I had to get to Nairobi. I had driven the route before, and I wanted to get it over. Every couple of hours or so you pass through some little dorp, and they are all the same. They are hot, and dusty. In the tearoom there is a crowd of youngsters eating icecream and talking about motor cycles and film stars. In the bars men stand drinking beer. The restaurant, if there is one, is bad, or pretentious. The waitress longs only for the day when she can get to the big city, and she says the name of the city as if it was Paris, or London, but when you reach it, two hundred or five hundred miles on, it is a slightly larger dorp, with the same dusty trees, the same tearoom, the same bar, and five thousand people instead of a hundred.
‘On the evening of the third day I was in the Northern Transvaal, and when I wanted to stop for the night, the sun was blood-red through a haze of dust, and the main street was full of cattle and people. There was the yearly Farmers’ Show in progress, and the hotel was full. The proprietor said there was a woman who took in people in emergencies.
‘The house was by itself at the end of a straggling dust street, under a large jacaranda tree. It was small, with chocolate-coloured trellis-work along the veranda, and the roof was sagging under scarlet bougainvillaea. The woman who came to the door was a plump, dark-haired creature in a pink apron, her hands floury with cooking.
‘She said the room was not ready. I said that I had come all the way from Bloemfontein that morning, and she said, “Come in, my second husband was from there when he came here in the beginning.”
‘Outside the house was all dust, and the glare was bad, but inside it was cosy, with flowers and ribbons and cushions and china behind glass. In every conceivable place were pictures of the same man. You couldn’t get away from them. He smiled down from the bathroom wall, and if you opened a cupboard door, there he was, stuck up among the dishes.
‘She spent two hours cooking a meal, said over and over again how a woman has to spend all her day cooking a meal that is eaten in five minutes, enquired after my tastes in food, offered second helpings. In between, she talked about her husband. It seemed that four years ago a man had arrived in the week of the Show, asking for a bed. She never liked taking in single men, for she was a widow living alone, but she did like the look of him, and a week later they were married. For eleven months they lived in a dream of happiness. Then he walked out and she hadn’t heard of him since, except for one letter, thanking her for all her kindness. That letter was like a slap in the face, she said. You don’t thank a wife for being kind, like a hostess, do you? Nor do you send her Christmas cards. But he had sent her one the Christmas after he left, and there it was, on the mantelpiece, With Best Wishes for a Happy Christmas. But he was so good to me, she said. He gave me every penny he ever earned, and I didn’t need it, because my first hubby left me provided for. He got a job as a ganger on the railways. She could never look at another man after him. No woman who knew anything about life would. He had his faults of course, like everyone. He was restless and moody, but he loved her honestly, she could see that, and underneath it all, he was a family man.
‘That went on until the cocks began to crow and my face ached with yawning.
‘Next morning I continued my drive North, and that night, in Southern Rhodesia, I drove into a small town full of dust and people standing about in their best clothes among milling cattle. The hotel was full. It was Show time.
‘When I saw the house, I thought time had turned back twenty-four hours, for there were the creepers weighing down the roof, and the trellised veranda, and the red dust heaped all around it. The attractive woman who came to the door was fair-haired. Behind her, through the door, I saw a picture on the wall of the same handsome blond man with his hard grey eyes that had sunmarks raying out from around them into the sunburn. On the floor was playing a small child, obviously his.
‘I said where I had come from that morning, and she said wistfully that her husband had come from there three years before. It was all just the same. Even the inside of the house was like the other, comfortable and frilly and full. But it needed a man’s attention. All kinds of things needed attention. We had supper and she talked about her “husband” – he had lasted until the birth of the baby and a few weeks beyond it – in the same impatient, yearning, bitter, urgent voice of her sister of the evening before. As I sat there listening, I had the ridiculous feeling that in hearing her out so sympathetically I was being disloyal to the other deserted “wife” four hundred miles South. Of course he had his faults, she said. He drank too much sometimes, but men couldn’t help being men. And sometimes he went into a daydream for weeks at a stretch and didn’t hear what you said. But he was a good husband, for all that. He had got a job in the Sales Department of the Agricultural Machinery Store, and he had worked hard. When the little boy was born he was so pleased … and then he left. Yes, he did write once, he wrote a long letter saying he would never forget her “affectionate kindness”. That letter really upset her. It was a funny thing to say, wasn’t it?
‘Long after midnight I went to sleep under such a large tinted picture of the man that it made me uncomfortable. It was like having someone watching you sleep.
‘Next evening, when I was about to drive out of Southern Rhodesia into Northern Rhodesia, I was half looking for a little town full of clouds of reddish dust and crowding cattle, the small house, the waiting woman. There seemed no reason why this shouldn’t go on all the way to Nairobi.
‘But it was not until the day after that, on the Copper Belt in Northern Rhodesia, that I came to a town full of cars and people. There was going to be a dance that evening. The big hotels were full. The lady whose house I was directed to was plump, red-haired, voluble. She said she loved putting people up for the night, though there was no need for her to do it since while her husband might have his faults (she said this with what seemed like hatred) he made good money at the garage where he was a mechanic. Before she was married, she had earned her living by letting rooms to travellers, which was how she had met her husband. She talked about him while we waited for him to come in to supper. “He does this every night, every night of my life! You’d think it wasn’t much to ask to come in for meals at the right time, instead of letting everything spoil, but once he gets into the bar with the men, there is no getting him out.”
‘There wasn’t a hint in her voice of what I had heard in the voices of the other two women. And I have often wondered since if in her case too absence would make the heart grow fonder. She sighed often and deeply, and said that when you were single you wanted to be married, and when you were married, you wanted to be single, but what got her was, she had been married before, and she ought to have known better. Not that this one wasn’t a big improvement on the last, whom she had divorced.
‘He didn’t come in until the bar closed, after ten. He was not as good-looking as in his photographs, but that was because his overalls were stiff with grease, and there was oil on his face. She scolded him for being late, and for not having washed, but all he said was: “Don’t try to housetrain me.” At the end of the meal she wondered aloud why she spent her life cooking and slaving for a man who didn’t notice what he ate, and he said she shouldn’t bother, because it was true, he didn’t care what he ate. He nodded at me, and went out again. It was after midnight when he came back, with a stardazed look, bringing a cold draught of night air into the hot lamplit room.
‘“So you’ve decided to come in?” she complained.
‘“I walked out into the veld a bit. The moon is strong enough to read by. There’s rain on the wind.” He put his arm around her waist and smiled at her. She smiled back, her bitterness forgotten. The wanderer had come home.’
I wrote to Alan McGinnery and asked him if there had been a model for his story. I told him why I wanted to know, told him of the old man who had walked up to our house through the bush, fifteen years before. There was no reason to think it was the same man, except for that one detail, the letters he wrote, like ‘bread and butter’ letters after a party or a visit.
I got this reply: ‘I am indebted to you for your interesting and informative letter. You are right in thinking my little story had its start in real life. But in most ways it is far from fact. I took liberties with the time of the story, moving it forward by years, no, decades, and placing it in a modern setting. For the times when Johnny Blakeworthy was loving and leaving so many young women – I’m afraid he was a very bad lot! – are now out of the memory of all but the elderly among us. Everything is so soft and easy now. “Civilization” so-called has overtaken us. But I was afraid if I put my “hero” into his real setting, it would seem so exotic to present-day readers that they would read my little tale for the sake of the background, finding that more interesting than my “hero”.
‘It was just after the Boer War. I had volunteered for it, as a young man does, for the excitement, not knowing what sort of war it really was. Afterwards I decided not to return to England. I thought I would try the mines, so I went to Johannesburg, and there I met my wife, Lena. She was the cook and housekeeper in a men’s boarding-house, a rough job, in rough days. She had a child by Johnny, and believed herself to be married to him. So did I. When I made enquiries I found she had never been married, the papers he had produced at the office were all false. This made things easy for us in the practical sense, but made them worse in some ways. For she was bitter and I am afraid never really got over the wrong done to her. But we married, and I became the child’s father. She was the original of the second woman in my story. I describe her as home-loving, and dainty in her ways. Even when she was cooking for all those miners, and keeping herself and the boy on bad wages, living in a room not much larger than a dog’s kennel, it was all so neat and pretty. That was what took my fancy first. I daresay it was what took Johnny’s too, to begin with, at any rate.
‘Much later – very much later, the child was almost grown, so it was after the Great War – I happened to hear someone speak of Johnny Blakeworthy. It was a woman who had been “married” to him. It never crossed our minds to think – Lena and me – that he had betrayed more than one woman. After careful thought, I decided never to tell her. But I had to know. By then I had done some careful field work. The trail began, or at least, began for me, in Cape Province, with a woman I had heard spoken of, and had then tracked down. She was the first woman in my story, a little plump pretty thing. At the time Johnny married her, she was the daughter of a Boer farmer, a rich one. I don’t have to tell you that this marriage was unpopular. It took place just before the Boer War, that nasty time was to come, but she was a brave girl to marry an Englishman, a rionek. Her parents were angry, but later they were kind and took her back when he left her. He did really marry her, in Church, everything correct and legal. I believe that she was his first love. Later she divorced him. It was a terrible thing, a divorce for those simple people. Now things have changed so much, and people wouldn’t believe how narrow and churchbound they were then. That divorce hurt her whole life. She did not marry again. It was not because she did not want to! She had fought with her parents, saying she must get a divorce, because she wanted to be married. But no one married her. In that old-fashioned rural community, in those days, she was a Scarlet Woman. A sad thing, for she was a really nice woman. What struck me was that she spoke of Johnny with no bitterness at all. Even twenty years later, she loved him.
‘From her, I followed up other clues. With my own wife, I found four women in all. I made it three in my little story: life is always much more lavish with coincidence and drama than any fiction writer dares to be. The red-headed woman I described was a barmaid in a hotel. She hated Johnny. But there was little doubt in my mind what would happen if he walked in through that door.
‘I told my wife that I had been big game hunting. I did not want to stir up old unhappiness. After she died I wrote the story of the journey from one woman to another, all now of middle age, all of whom had been “married” to Johnny. But I had to alter the settings of the story. How fast everything has changed! I would have had to describe the Boer family on their farm, such simple and old-fashioned, good and bigoted people. And their oldest daughter – the “bad” one. There are no girls like that now, not even in convents. Where in the world now would you find girls brought up as strictly and as narrowly as those on those Boer farms, fifty years ago? And still she had the courage to marry her Englishman, that is the marvellous thing. Then I would have had to describe the mining camps of Johannesburg. Then the life of a woman married to a storekeeper in the bush. Her nearest neighbour was fifty miles away and they didn’t have cars in those days. Finally, the early days of Bulawayo, when it was more like a shanty town than a city. No, it was Johnny that interested me, so I decided to make the story modern, and in that way the reader would not be distracted by what is past and gone.’
It was from an African friend who had known the village in which Johnny died that I heard of his last years. Johnny walked into the village, asked to see the Chief, and when the Chief assembled with his elders, asked formally for permission to live in the village, as an African, not as a white man. All this was quite correct, and polite, but the elders did not like it. This village was a long way from the centres of white power, up towards the Zambesi. The traditional life was still comparatively unchanged, unlike the tribes near the white cities, whose structure had been smashed for ever. The people of this tribe cherished their distance from the white man, and feared his influence. At least, the older ones did. While they had nothing against this white man as a man – on the contrary, he seemed more human than most – they did not want a white man in their life. But what could they do? Their traditions of hospitality were strong: strangers, visitors, travellers, must be sheltered and fed. And they were democratic; a man was as good as his behaviour, it was against their beliefs to throw a person out for a collective fault. And perhaps they were, too, a little curious. The white men these people had seen were the tax-collectors, the policemen, the Native Commissioners, all coldly official or arbitrary. This white man behaved like a suppliant, sitting quietly on the outskirts of the village, beyond the huts, under a tree, waiting for the council to make up its mind. Finally they let him stay, on condition that he shared the life of the village in every way. This proviso they probably thought would get rid of him. But he lived there until he died, six years, with short trips away to remind himself, perhaps, of the strident life he had left. It was on such a trip that he had walked up to our house and stayed the night.
The Africans called him Angry Face. This name implied that it was only the face which was angry. It was because of his habit of screwing up then letting loose his facial muscles. They also called him Man Without a Home, and The Man Who Has no Woman.
The women found him intriguing, in spite of his sixty years. They hung about his hut, gossiped about him, brought him presents. Several made offers, even young girls.
The Chief and his elders conferred again, under the great tree in the centre of the village, and then called him to hear their verdict.
‘You need a woman,’ they said, and in spite of all his protests, made it a condition of his staying with them, for the sake of the tribe’s harmony.
They chose for him a woman of middle age whose husband had died of the blackwater fever, and who had had no children. They said that a man of his age could not be expected to give the patience and attention that small children need. According to my friend, who as a small boy had heard much talk of this white man who had preferred their way of life to his own, Johnny and his new woman ‘lived together in kindness’.
It was while I was writing this story that I remembered something else. When I was at school in Salisbury there was a girl called Alicia Blakeworthy. She was fifteen, a ‘big girl’ to me. She lived with her mother on the fringes of the town. Her step-father had left them. He had walked out.
Her mother had a small house, in a large garden, and she took in paying guests. One of these guests had been Johnny.
He had been working as a game warden up towards the Zambesi river, and had had malaria badly. She nursed him. He married her and took a job as a counter hand in the local store. He was a bad husband to Mom, said Alicia. Terrible. Yes, he brought in money, it wasn’t that. But he was a cold hard-hearted man. He was no company for them. He would just sit and read, or listen to the radio, or walk around by himself all night. And he never appreciated what was done for him.
Oh how we schoolgirls all hated this monster! What a heartless beast he was.
But the way he saw it, he had stayed for four long years in a suffocating town house surrounded by a domesticated garden. He had worked from eight to four selling groceries to lazy women. When he came home, this money, the gold he had earned by his slavery, was spent on chocolates, magazines, dresses, hair-ribbons for his townified stepdaughter. He was invited, three times a day, to sit down at a table crammed with roast beef and chickens and puddings and cakes and biscuits.
He used to try and share his philosophy of living.
‘I used to feed myself for ten shillings a week!’
‘But why? What for? What’s the point?’
‘Because I was free, that’s the point! If you don’t spend a lot of money then you don’t have to earn it and you are free. Why do you have to spend money on all this rubbish? You can buy a piece of rolled brisket for three shillings, and you boil it with an onion and you can live off it for four days! You can live off mealiemeal well enough, I often did, in the bush.’
‘Mealiemeal! I’m not going to eat native food!’
‘Why not? What’s wrong with it?’
‘If you can’t see why not, then I’m afraid I can’t help you.’
Perhaps it was here, with Alicia’s mother, that the idea of ‘going native’ had first come into his head.
‘For crying out aloud, why cake all the time, why all these new dresses, why do you have to have new curtains, why do we have to have curtains at all, what’s wrong with the sunlight? What’s wrong with the starlight? Why do you want to shut them out? Why?’
That ‘marriage’ lasted four years, a fight all the way.
Then he drifted North, out of the white man’s towns, and up into those parts that had not been ‘opened up to white settlement’, and where the Africans were still living, though not for long, in their traditional ways. And there at last he found a life that suited him, and a woman with whom he lived in kindness.
The Black Madonna (#ulink_b20749e6-f01c-5359-9892-74b9ea4fd66c)
There are some countries in which the arts, let alone Art, cannot be said to flourish. Why this should be so it is hard to say, although of course we all have our theories about it. For sometimes it is the most barren soil that sends up gardens of those flowers which we all agree are the crown and justification of life, and it is this fact which makes it hard to say, finally, why the soil of Zambesia should produce such reluctant plants.
Zambesia is a tough, sunburnt, virile, positive country contemptuous of subtleties and sensibility: yet there have been States with these qualities which have produced art, though perhaps with the left hand. Zambesia is, to put it mildly, unsympathetic to those ideas so long taken for granted in other parts of the world, to do with liberty, fraternity and the rest. Yet there are those, and some of the finest souls among them, who maintain that art is impossible without a minority whose leisure is guaranteed by a hardworking majority. And whatever Zambesia’s comfortable minority may lack, it is not leisure.
Zambesia – but enough; out of respect for ourselves and for scientific accuracy, we should refrain from jumping to conclusions. Particularly when one remembers the almost wistful respect Zambesians show when an artist does appear in their midst.
Consider, for instance, the case of Michele.
He came out of the internment camp at the time when Italy was made a sort of honorary ally, during the Second World War. It was a time of strain for the authorities, because it is one thing to be responsible for thousands of prisoners of war whom one must treat according to certain recognized standards; it is another to be faced, and from one day to the next, with these same thousands transformed by some international legerdemain into comrades in arms. Some of the thousands stayed where they were in the camps; they were fed and housed there at least. Others went as farm labourers, though not many; for while the farmers were as always short of labour, they did not know how to handle farm labourers who were also white men: such a phenomenon had never happened in Zambesia before. Some did odd jobs around the towns, keeping a sharp eye out for the trade unions, who would neither admit them as members nor agree to their working.
Hard, hard, the lot of these men, but fortunately not for long, for soon the war ended and they were able to go home.
Hard, too, the lot of the authorities, as has been pointed out; and for that reason they were doubly willing to take what advantages they could from the situation; and that Michele was such an advantage there could be no doubt.
His talents were first discovered when he was still a prisoner of war. A church was built in the camp, and Michele decorated its interior. It became a show-place, that little tin-roofed church in the prisoners’ camp, with its whitewashed walls covered all over with frescoes depicting swarthy peasants gathering grapes for the vintage, beautiful Italian girls dancing, plump dark-eyed children. Amid crowded scenes of Italian life appeared the Virgin and her Child, smiling and beneficent, happy to move familiarly among her people.
Culture-loving ladies who had bribed the authorities to be taken inside the camp would say, ‘Poor thing, how homesick he must be.’ And they would beg to be allowed to leave half a crown for the artist. Some were indignant. He was a prisoner, after all, captured in the very act of fighting against justice and democracy, and what right had he to protest? – for they felt these paintings as a sort of protest. What was there in Italy that we did not have right here in Westonville, which was the capital and hub of Zambesia? Were there not sunshine and mountains and fat babies and pretty girls here? Did we not grow – if not grapes, at least lemons and oranges and flowers in plenty?
People were upset – the desperation of nostalgia came from the painted white walls of that simple church, and affected everyone according to his temperament.
But when Michele was free, his talent was remembered. He was spoken of as ‘that Italian artist’. As a matter of fact, he was a bricklayer. And the virtues of those frescoes might very well have been exaggerated. It is possible they would have been overlooked altogether in a country where picture-covered walls were more common.
When one of the visiting ladies came rushing out to the camp in her own car, to ask him to paint her children, he said he was not qualified to do so. But at last he agreed. He took a room in the town and made some nice likenesses of the children. Then he painted the children of a great number of the first lady’s friends. He charged ten shillings a time. Then one of the ladies wanted a portrait of herself. He asked ten pounds for it; it had taken him a month to do. She was annoyed, but paid.
And Michele went off to his room with a friend and stayed there drinking red wine from the Cape and talking about home. While the money lasted he could not be persuaded to do any more portraits.
There was a good deal of talk among the ladies about the dignity of labour, a subject in which they were well versed; and one felt they might almost go so far as to compare a white man with a kaffir, who did not understand the dignity of labour either.
He was felt to lack gratitude. One of the ladies tracked him down, found him lying on a camp-bed under a tree with a bottle of wine, and spoke to him severely about the barbarity of Mussolini and the fecklessness of the Italian temperament. Then she demanded that he should instantly paint a picture of herself in her new evening dress. He refused, and she went home very angry.
It happened that she was the wife of one of our most important citizens, a General or something of that kind, who was at that time engaged in planning a military tattoo or show for the benefit of the civilian population. The whole of Westonville had been discussing this show for weeks. We were all bored to extinction by dances, fancy-dress balls, fairs, lotteries and other charitable entertainments. It is not too much to say that while some were dying for freedom, others were dancing for it. There comes a limit to everything. Though, of course, when the end of the war actually came and the thousands of troops stationed in the country had to go home – in short, when enjoying themselves would no longer be a duty, many were heard to exclaim that life would never be the same again.
In the meantime, the Tattoo would make a nice change for us all. The military gentlemen responsible for the idea did not think of it in these terms. They thought to improve morale by giving us some idea of what war was really like. Headlines in the newspaper were not enough. And in order to bring it all home to us, they planned to destroy a village by shell-fire before our very eyes.
First, the village had to be built.
It appears that the General and his subordinates stood around in the red dust of the parade-ground under a burning sun for the whole of one day, surrounded by building materials, while hordes of African labourers ran around with boards and nails, trying to make something that looked like a village. It became evident that they would have to build a proper village in order to destroy it; and this would cost more than was allowed for the whole entertainment. The General went home in a bad temper, and his wife said what they needed was an artist, they needed Michele. This was not because she wanted to do Michele a good turn; she could not endure the thought of him lying around singing while there was work to be done. She refused to undertake any delicate diplomatic missions when her husband said he would be damned if he would ask favours of any little Wop. She solved the problem for him in her own way: a certain Captain Stocker was sent out to fetch him.
The Captain found him on the same camp-bed under the same tree, in rolled-up trousers, and an uncollared shirt; unshaven, mildly drunk, with a bottle of wine standing beside him on the earth. He was singing an air so wild, so sad, that the Captain was uneasy. He stood at ten paces from the disreputable fellow and felt the indignities of his position. A year ago, this man had been a mortal enemy to be shot on sight. Six months ago, he had been an enemy prisoner. Now he lay with his knees up, in an untidy shirt that had certainly once been military. For the Captain, the situation crystallized in a desire that Michele should salute him.
‘Piselli!’ he said sharply.
Michele turned his head and looked at the Captain from the horizontal. ‘Good morning,’ he said affably.
‘You are wanted,’ said the Captain.
‘Who?’ said Michele. He sat up, a fattish, olive-skinned little man. His eyes were resentful.
‘The authorities.’
‘The war is over?’
The Captain, who was already stiff and shiny enough in his laundered khaki, jerked his head back, frowning, chin out. He was a large man, blond, and wherever his flesh showed, it was brick-red. His eyes were small and blue and angry. His red hands, covered all over with fine yellow bristles, clenched by his side. Then he saw the disappointment in Michele’s eyes, and the hands unclenched. ‘No, it is not over,’ he said. ‘Your assistance is required.’
‘For the war?’
‘For the war effort. I take it you are interested in defeating the Germans?’
Michele looked at the Captain. The little dark-eyed artisan looked at the great blond officer with his cold blue eyes, his narrow mouth, his hands like bristle-covered steaks. He looked and said: ‘I am very interested in the end of the war.’
‘Well?’ said the Captain between his teeth.
‘The pay?’ said Michele.
‘You will be paid.’
Michele stood up. He lifted the bottle against the sun, then took a gulp. He rinsed his mouth out with wine and spat. Then he poured what was left on to the red earth, where it made a bubbling purple stain.
‘I am ready,’ he said. He went with the Captain to the waiting lorry, where he climbed in beside the driver’s seat and not, as the Captain had expected, into the back of the lorry. When they had arrived at the parade-ground the officers had left a message that the Captain would be personally responsible for Michele and for the village. Also for the hundred or so labourers who were sitting around on the grass verges waiting for orders.
The Captain explained what was wanted, Michele nodded. Then he waved his hand at the Africans. ‘I do not want these,’ he said.
‘You will do it yourself – a village?’
‘Yes.’
‘With no help?’
Michele smiled for the first time. ‘I will do it.’
The Captain hesitated. He disapproved on principle of white men doing heavy manual labour. He said: ‘I will keep six to do the heavy work.’
Michele shrugged; and the Captain went over and dismissed all but six of the Africans. He came back with them to Michele.
‘It is hot,’ said Michele.
‘Very,’ said the Captain. They were standing in the middle of the parade-ground. Around its edge trees, grass, gulfs of shadow. Here, nothing but reddish dust, drifting and lifting in a low hot breeze.
‘I am thirsty,’ said Michele. He grinned. The Captain felt his stiff lips loosen unwillingly in reply. The two pairs of eyes met. It was a moment of understanding. For the Captain, the little Italian had suddenly become human. ‘I will arrange it,’ he said, and went off down-town. By the time he had explained the position to the right people, filled in forms and made arrangements, it was late afternoon. He returned to the parade-ground with a case of Cape brandy, to find Michele and the six black men seated together under a tree. Michele was singing an Italian song to them, and they were harmonizing with him. The sight affected the Captain like an attack of nausea. He came up, and the Africans stood to attention. Michele continued to sit.
‘You said you would do the work yourself?’
‘Yes, I said so.’
The Captain then dismissed the Africans. They departed, with friendly looks towards Michele, who waved at them. The Captain was beef-red with anger. ‘You have not started yet?’
‘How long have I?’
“Three weeks.’
“Then there is plenty of time,’ said Michele, looking at the bottle of brandy in the Captain’s hand. In the other were two glasses. ‘It is evening,’ he pointed out. The Captain stood frowning for a moment. Then he sat down on the grass, and poured out two brandies.
‘Ciao,’ said Michele.
‘Cheers,’ said the Captain. Three weeks, he was thinking. Three weeks with this damned little Itie! He drained his glass and refilled it, and set it in the grass. The grass was cool and soft. A tree was flowering somewhere close – hot waves of perfume came on the breeze.
‘It is nice here,’ said Michele. ‘We will have a good time together. Even in a war, there are times of happiness. And of friendship. I drink to the end of the war.’
Next day, the Captain did not arrive at the parade-ground until after lunch. He found Michele under the frees with a bottle. Sheets of ceiling board had been erected at one end of the parade-ground in such a way that they formed two walls and part of a third, and a slant of steep roof supported on struts.
‘What’s that?’ said the Captain, furious.
‘The church,’ said Michele.
‘Wha-at?’
‘You will see. Later. It is very hot.’ He looked at the brandy bottle that lay on its side on the ground. The Captain went to the lorry and returned with the case of brandy. They drank. Time passed. It was a long time since the Captain had sat on grass under a tree. It was a long time, for that matter, since he had drunk so much. He always drank a great deal, but it was regulated to the times and seasons. He was a disciplined man. Here, sitting on the grass beside this little man whom he still could not help thinking of as an enemy, it was not that he let his self-discipline go, but that he felt himself to be something different: he was temporarily set outside his normal behaviour. Michele did not count. He listened to Michele talking about Italy, and it seemed to him he was listening to a savage speaking: as if he heard tales from the mythical South Sea islands where a man like himself might very well go just once in his life. He found himself saying he would like to make a trip to Italy after the war. Actually, he was attracted only by the North and the Northern people. He had visited Germany, under Hitler, and though it was not the time to say so, had found it very satisfactory. Then Michele sang him some Italian songs. He sang Michele some English songs. Then Michele took out photographs of his wife and children, who lived in a village in the mountains of North Italy. He asked the Captain if he were married. The Captain never spoke about his private affairs.
He had spent all his life in one or other of the African colonies as a policeman, magistrate, native commissioner, or in some other useful capacity. When the war started, military life came easily to him. But he hated city life, and had his own reasons for wishing the war over. Mostly, he had been in bush-stations with one or two other white men, or by himself, far from the rigours of civilization. He had relations with native women; and from time to time visited the city where his wife lived with her parents and the children. He was always tormented by the idea that she was unfaithful to him. Recently he had even appointed a private detective to watch her; he was convinced the detective was inefficient.
Army friends coming from L—where his wife was, spoke of her at parties, enjoying herself. When the war ended, she would not find it so easy to have a good time. And why did he not simply live with her and be done with it? The fact was, he could not. And his long exile to remote bush-stations was because he needed the excuse not to. He could not bear to think of his wife for too long; she was that part of his life he had never been able, so to speak, to bring to heel.
Yet he spoke of her now to Michele, and of his favourite bush-wife, Nadya. He told Michele the story of his life, until he realized that the shadows from the trees they sat under had stretched right across the parade-ground to the grandstand. He got unsteadily to his feet, and said: ‘There is work to be done. You are being paid to work.’
‘I will show you my church when the light goes.’
The sun dropped, darkness fell, and Michele made the Captain drive his lorry on to the parade-ground a couple of hundred yards away and switch on his lights. Instantly, a white church sprang up from the shapes and shadows of the bits of board.
‘Tomorrow, some houses,’ said Michele cheerfully.
At the end of the week, the space at the end of the parade-ground had crazy gawky constructions of lath and board over it, that looked in the sunlight like nothing on this earth. Privately, it upset the Captain; it was like a nightmare that these skeleton-like shapes should be able to persuade him, with the illusions of light and dark, that they were a village. At night, the Captain drove up his lorry, switched on the lights, and there it was, the village, solid and real against a background of full green trees. Then, in the morning sunlight, there was nothing there, just bits of board stuck in the sand.
‘It is finished,’ said Michele.
‘You were engaged for three weeks,’ said the Captain. He did not want it to end, this holiday from himself.
Michele shrugged. ‘The army is rich,’ he said. Now, to avoid curious eyes, they sat inside the shade of the church, with the case of brandy between them. The Captain talked endlessly about his wife, about women. He could not stop talking.
Michele listened. Once he said: ‘When I go home – when I go home – I shall open my arms …’ He opened them, wide. He closed his eyes. Tears ran down his cheeks. ‘I shall take my wife in my arms, and I shall ask nothing, nothing. I do not care. It is enough, it is enough. I shall ask no questions and I shall be happy.’
The Captain stared before him, suffering. He thought how he dreaded his wife. She was a scornful creature, gay and hard, who laughed at him. She had been laughing at him ever since they married. Since the war, she had taken to calling him names like Little Hitler, and Storm-trooper. ‘Go ahead, my Little Hitler,’ she had cried last time they met. ‘Go ahead, my Storm-trooper. If you want to waste your money on private detectives, go ahead. But don’t think I don’t know what you do when you’re in the bush. I don’t care what you do, but remember that I know it …’
The Captain remembered her saying it. And there sat Michele on his packing-case, saying: ‘It’s a pleasure for the rich, my friend, detectives and the law. Even jealousy is a pleasure I don’t want any more. Ah, my friend, to be together with my wife again, and the children, that is all I ask of life. That and wine and food and singing in the evening.’ And the tears wetted his cheeks and splashed on to his shirt.
That a man should cry, good Lord! thought the Captain. And without shame! He seized the bottle and drank.
Three days before the great occasion, some high-ranking officers came strolling through the dust, and found Michele and the Captain sitting together on the packing-case, singing. The Captain’s shirt was open down the front, and there were stains on it.
The Captain stood to attention with the bottle in his hand, and Michele stood to attention too, out of sympathy with his friend. Then the officers drew the Captain aside – they were all cronies of his – and said, what the hell did he think he was doing? And why wasn’t the village finished? Then they went away.
‘Tell them it is finished,’ said Michele. ‘Tell them I want to go.’
‘No,’ said the Captain, ‘no. Michele, what would you do if your wife …’
‘This world is a good place. We should be happy – that is all.’
‘Michele …’
‘I want to go. There is nothing to do. They paid me yesterday.’
‘Sit down, Michele. Three more days and then it’s finished.’
‘Then I shall paint the inside of the church as I painted the one in the camp.’
The Captain laid himself down on some boards and went to sleep. When he woke, Michele was surrounded by the pots of paint he had used on the outside of the village. Just in front of the Captain was a picture of a black girl. She was young and plump. She wore a patterned blue dress and her shoulders came soft and bare out of it. On her back was a baby slung in a band of red stuff. Her face was turned towards the Captain and she was smiling.
‘That’s Nadya,’ said the Captain. ‘Nadya …’ He groaned loudly. He looked at the black child and shut his eyes. He opened them, and mother and child were still there. Michele was very carefully drawing thin yellow circles around the heads of the black girl and her child.
‘Good God,’ said the Captain, ‘you can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘You can’t have a black Madonna.’
‘She was a peasant. This is a peasant. Black peasant Madonna for black country.’
‘This is a German village,’ said the Captain.
‘This is my Madonna,’ said Michele angrily. ‘Your German village and my Madonna. I paint this picture as an offering to the Madonna. She is pleased – I feel it.’
The Captain lay down again. He was feeling ill. He went back to sleep. When he woke for the second time, it was dark. Michele had brought in a flaring paraffin lamp, and by its light was working on the long wall. A bottle of brandy stood beside him. He painted until long after midnight, and the Captain lay on his side and watched, as passive as a man suffering a dream. Then they both went to sleep on the boards. The whole of the next day Michele stood painting black Madonnas, black saints, black angels. Outside, troops were practising in the sunlight, bands were blaring and motor cyclists roared up and down. But Michele painted on, drunk and oblivious. The Captain lay on his back, drinking and muttering about his wife. Then he would say ‘Nadya, Nadya’, and burst into sobs.
Towards nightfall the troops went away. The officers came back, and the Captain went off with them to show how the village sprang into being when the great lights at the end of the parade-ground were switched on. They all looked at the village in silence. They switched the lights off, and there were only tall angular boards leaning like gravestones in the moonlight. On went the lights – and there was the village. They were silent, as if suspicious. Like the Captain, they seemed to feel it was not right. Uncanny it certainly was, but that was not it. Unfair – that was the word. It was cheating. And profoundly disturbing.
‘Clever chap, that Italian of yours,’ said the General.
The Captain, who had been woodenly correct until this moment, suddenly came rocking up to the General, and steadied himself by laying his hands on the august shoulder. ‘Bloody Wops,’ he said. ‘Bloody kaffirs. Bloody … Tell you what, though, there’s one Itie that’s some good. Yes, there is. I’m telling you. He’s a friend of mine, actually.’
The General looked at him. Then he nodded at his underlings. The Captain was taken away for disciplinary purposes. It was decided, however, that he must be ill, nothing else could account for such behaviour. He was put to bed in his own room with a nurse to watch him.
He woke twenty-four hours later, sober for the first time in weeks. He slowly remembered what had happened. Then he sprang out of bed and rushed into his clothes. The nurse was just in time to see him run down the path and leap into his lorry.
He drove at top speed to the parade-ground, which was flooded with light in such a way that the village did not exist. Everything was in full swing. The cars were three deep around the square, with people on the running-boards and even the roofs. The grandstand was packed. Women dressed up as gipsies, country girls, Elizabethan court dames, and so on, wandered about with trays of ginger beer and sausage-rolls and programmes at five shillings each in aid of the war effort. On the square, troops deployed, obsolete machine-guns were being dragged up and down, bands played, and motor cyclists roared through flames.
As the Captain parked the lorry, all this activity ceased, and the lights went out. The Captain began running around the outside of the square to reach the place where the guns were hidden in a mess of net and branches. He was sobbing with the effort. He was a big man, and unused to exercise, and sodden with brandy. He had only one idea in his mind -to stop the guns firing, to stop them at all costs.
Luckily, there seemed to be a hitch. The lights were still out. The unearthly graveyard at the end of the square glittered white in the moonlight. Then the lights briefly switched on, and the village sprang into existence for just long enough to show large red crosses all over a white building beside the church. Then moonlight flooded everything again, and the crosses vanished. ‘Oh, the bloody fool!’ sobbed the Captain, running, running as if for his life. He was no longer trying to reach the guns. He was cutting across a corner of the square direct to the church. He could hear some officers cursing behind him: ‘Who put those red crosses there? Who? We can’t fire on the Red Cross.’
The Captain reached the church as the searchlight burst on. Inside, Michele was kneeling on the earth looking at his first Madonna. ‘They are going to kill my Madonna,’ he said miserably.
‘Come away, Michele, come away.’
‘They’re going to …’
The Captain grabbed his arm and pulled. Michele wrenched himself free and grabbed a saw. He began hacking at the ceiling board. There was a dead silence outside. They heard a voice booming through the loudspeakers: ‘The village that is about to be shelled is an English village, not as represented on the programme, a German village. Repeat, the village that is about to be shelled is …’
Michele had cut through two sides of a square around the Madonna.
‘Michele,’ sobbed the Captain, ‘get out of here.’
Michele dropped the saw, took hold of the raw edges of the board and tugged. As he did so, the church began to quiver and lean. An irregular patch of board ripped out and Michele staggered back into the Captain’s arms. There was a roar. The church seemed to dissolve around them into flame. Then they were running away from it, the Captain holding Michele tight by the arm. ‘Get down,’ he shouted suddenly, and threw Michele to the earth. He flung himself down beside him. Looking from under the crook of his arm, he heard the explosion, saw a great pillar of smoke and flame, and the village disintegrated in a mass of debris. Michele was on his knees gazing at his Madonna in the light from the flames. She was unrecognizable, blotted out with dust. He looked horrible, quite white, and a trickle of blood soaked from his hair down one cheek.
‘They shelled my Madonna,’ he said.
‘Oh, damn it, you can paint another one,’ said the Captain. His own voice seemed to him strange, like a dream voice. He was certainly crazy, as mad as Michele himself … He got up, pulled Michele to his feet, and marched him towards the edge of the field. There they were met by the ambulance people. Michele was taken off to hospital, and the Captain was sent back to bed.
A week passed. The Captain was in a darkened room. That he was having some kind of a breakdown was clear, and two nurses stood guard over him. Sometimes he lay quiet. Sometimes he muttered to himself. Sometimes he sang in a thick clumsy voice bits out of opera, fragments from Italian songs, and – over and over again – There’s a Long Long Trail. He was not thinking of anything at all. He shied away from the thought of Michele as if it were dangerous. When, therefore, a cheerful female voice announced that a friend had come to cheer him up, and it would do him good to have some company, and he saw a white bandage moving towards him in the gloom, he turned sharp over on to his side, face to the wall.
‘Go away,’ he said. ‘Go away, Michele.’
‘I have come to see you,’ said Michele. ‘I have brought you a present.’
The Captain slowly turned over. There was Michele, a cheerful ghost in the dark room. ‘You fool,’ he said. ‘You messed everything up. What did you paint those crosses for?’
‘It was a hospital,’ said Michele. ‘In a village there is a hospital, and on the hospital the Red Cross, the beautiful Red Cross – no?’
‘I was nearly court-martialled.’
‘It was my fault,’ said Michele. ‘I was drunk.’
‘I was responsible.’
‘How could you be responsible when I did it? But it is all over. Are you better?’
‘Well, I suppose these crosses saved your life.’
‘I did not think,’ said Michele. ‘I was remembering the kindness of the Red Cross people when we were prisoners.’
‘Oh shut up, shut up, shut up.’
‘I have brought you a present.’
The Captain peered through the dark. Michele was holding up a picture. It was of a native woman with a baby on her back, smiling sideways out of the frame.
Michele said: ‘You did not like the haloes. So this time, no haloes. For the Captain – no Madonna.’ He laughed. ‘You like it? It is for you. I painted it for you.’
‘God damn you!’ said the Captain.
‘You do not like it?’ said Michele, very hurt.
The Captain closed his eyes. ‘What are you going to do next?’ he asked tiredly.
Michele laughed again. ‘Mrs Pannerhurst, the lady of the General, she wants me to paint her picture in her white dress. So I paint it.’
‘You should be proud to.’
‘Silly bitch. She thinks I am good. They know nothing -savages. Barbarians. Not you, Captain, you are my friend. But these people, they know nothing.’
The Captain lay quiet. Fury was gathering in him. He thought of the General’s wife. He disliked her, but he had known her well enough.
‘These people,’ said Michele. ‘They do not know a good picture from a bad picture. I paint, I paint, this way, that way. There is the picture – I look at it and laugh inside myself.’ Michele laughed out loud. ‘They say, he is a Michelangelo, this one, and try to cheat me out of my price. Michele -Michelangelo – that is a joke, no?’
The Captain said nothing.
‘But for you I painted this picture to remind you of our good times with the village. You are my friend. I will always remember you.’
The Captain turned his eyes sideways in his head and stared at the black girl. Her smile at him was half innocence, half malice.
‘Get out,’ he said suddenly.
Michele came closer and bent to see the Captain’s face. ‘You wish me to go?’ He sounded unhappy. ‘You saved my life. I was a fool that night. But I was thinking of my offering to the Madonna – I was a fool, I say it myself. I was drunk, we are fools when we are drunk.’
‘Get out of here,’ said the Captain again.
For a moment the white bandage remained motionless. Then it swept downwards in a bow. Michele turned towards the door.
‘And take that bloody picture with you.’
Silence. Then, in the dim light, the Captain saw Michele reach out for the picture, his white head bowed in profound obeisance. He straightened himself and stood to attention, holding the picture with one hand, and keeping the other stiff down his side. Then he saluted the Captain.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said, and he turned and went out of the door with the picture.
The Captain lay still. He felt – what did he feel? There was a pain under his ribs. It hurt to breathe. He realized he was unhappy. Yes, a terrible unhappiness was filling him, slowly, slowly. He was unhappy because Michele had gone. Nothing had ever hurt the Captain in all his life as much as that mocking Yes, sir. Nothing. He turned his face to the wall and wept. But silently. Not a sound escaped him, for the fear the nurses might hear.
The Trinket Box (#ulink_0990c855-ff83-5f2d-82c0-240dd0830c35)
Yes, but it was only recently, when it became clear that Aunt Maud really could not last much longer, that people began to ask all those questions which should have been asked, it seems now, so long ago.
Or perhaps it is the other way about: Aunt Maud, suddenly finding that innumerable nieces and nephews and cousins were beginning to take an interest in her, asking her to meet interesting people, was so disturbed to find herself pushed into the centre of the stage where she felt herself to be out of place, that she took to her bed where she could tactfully die?
Even here, lying on massed pillows, like a small twig that has been washed up against banks of smooth white sand, she is not left in peace. Distant relations who have done no more than send her Christmas cards once a year come in to see her, sit by her bed for hours at a time, send her flowers. But why? It is not merely that they want to know what London in the Nineties was like for a young woman with plenty of money, although they wake her to ask: ‘Do tell us, do you remember the Oscar Wilde affair?’ Her face puckers in a worried look, and she says: ‘Oscar Wilde? What? Oh yes, I read such an interesting book, it is in the library.’
Perhaps Aunt Maud herself sees that pretty vivacious girl (there is a photograph of her in an album somewhere) as a character in a historical play. But what is that question which it seems everyone comes to ask, but does not ask, leaving at length rather subdued, even a little exasperated – perhaps because it is not like Aunt Maud to suggest unanswerable questions?
Where did it all begin? Some relation returned from a long holiday, and asking casually after the family, said: ‘What! Aunt Maud still alive? Isn’t she gone yet?’ Is that how people began asking: ‘Well, but how old is she? Eighty? Ninety?’ ‘Nonsense, she can’t be ninety.’
‘But she says she remembers …’ And the names of old ‘incidents’ crop up, the sort of thing one finds in dusty books of memoirs. They were another world. It seems impossible that living people can remember them, especially someone we know so well.
‘She remembers earlier than that. She told me once – it must be twenty years ago now – of having left home years before the Boer War started. You can work that out for yourself.’
‘Even that only makes her seventy – eighty perhaps. Eighty is not old enough to get excited about.’
‘The Crimean War …’ But now they laugh. ‘Come, come, she’s not a hundred!’
No, she cannot be as much as that, but thirty years ago, no less, an old frail lady climbed stiffly but jauntily up the bank of a dried-up African river, where she was looking after a crowd of other people’s children on a picnic, and remarked: ‘My old bones are getting creaky.’ Then she bought herself an ancient car. It was one of the first Ford models, and she went rattling in it over bad corrugated roads and even over the veld, if there were no roads. And no one thought it extraordinary. Just as one did not think of her as an old maid, or a spinster, so one did not think of her as an old lady.
And then there was the way she used to move from continent to continent, from family to family, as a kind of unpaid servant. For she had no money at all by then: her brother the black sheep died and she insisted on giving up all her tiny capital to pay his debts. It was useless of course; he owed thousands, but no one could persuade her against it. ‘There are some things one has to do,’ she said. Now, lying in bed she says: ‘One doesn’t want to be a nuisance,’ in her small faded voice; the same voice in which she used to announce, and not so very long ago: ‘I am going to South America as companion to Mrs Fripp – she is so very very kind.’ For six months, then, she was prepared to wait hand and foot on an old lady years younger than herself simply for the sake of seeing South America? No, we can no longer believe it. We are forced to know that the thought of her aches and pains put warmth into Mrs Fripp’s voice when she asked Aunt Maud to go with her.
And from the Andes or the Christmas Islands, or some place as distant and preposterous as the Russian-Japanese war or the Morocco scramble seem to be in time, came those long long letters beginning: ‘That white dressing-jacket you gave me was so useful when I went to the mountains.’ She got so many presents from us all that now we feel foolish. They were not what she wanted after all.
Then, before we expected it, someone would write and say: ‘By the way, did you know I have had Aunt Maud with me since Easter?’ She had come back from the Andes, or wherever it was? But why had she gone there? Was Anne having another baby perhaps?
Sitting up in bed surrounded by the cushions and photographs that framed her in the way other people’s furniture frames them, always very early in the morning – she wrote letters from five to seven every day of her life – she answered in her tiny precise handwriting: ‘Jacko’s leg is not quite healed yet, although I think he is well on the way to recovery. And then I shall be delighted to avail myself of your kind offer. I will be with you by the middle of …’ Punctually to the hour she would arrive; the perfect guest. And when she left, because of the arrival of a baby or a sudden illness perhaps five hundred miles away or in another country, with what affectionate heart-warming gratitude she thanked us, until it was easy to forget the piles of mending, the delicious cooking, the nights and nights of nursing. A week after she had left would arrive the inevitable parcel, containing presents so apt that it was with an uneasy feeling that we sat down to write thanks. How did she come to know our most secret wants? And, imperceptibly, the unease would grow to resentment. She had no right, no right at all, to give such expensive presents when she was dependent on relations for her support.
So it was that after every visit a residue of spite and irritation remained. And perhaps she intended that the people she served should never have to feel the embarrassment of gratitude? Perhaps she intended us – who knows? -to think as we sat writing our thank-yous: But after all, she has to live on us, it is after all a kindness to feed and house her for a few weeks.
It is all intolerable, intolerable; and it seems now that we must march into that bedroom to ask: ‘Aunt Maud, how did you bear it? How could you stand, year in and year out, pouring out your treasures of affection to people who hardly noticed you? Do you realize, Aunt Maud, that now, thirty years or more after you became our servant, it is the first time that we are really aware you were ever alive? What do you say to that, Aunt Maud? Or did you know it all the time …’ For that is what we want to be sure of: that she did not know it, that she never will.
We wander restlessly in and out of her room, watching that expression on her face which – now that she is too ill to hide what she feels – makes us so uneasy. She looks impatient when she sees us; she wishes we would go away. Yesterday she said: ‘One does not care for this kind of attention.’
All the time, all over the house, people sit about, talking, talking, in low urgent anxious voices, as if something vital and precious is leaking away as they wait.
‘She can’t be exactly the same, it is impossible!’
‘But I tell you, I remember her, on the day the war started -the old war, you know. On the platform, waving good-bye to my son. She was the same, wrinkle for wrinkle. That little patch of yellow on her cheek – like an egg-stain. And those little mauvish eyes, and that funny voice. People don’t talk like that now, each syllable sounding separately.’
‘Her eyes have changed though.’ We sneak in to have a look at her. She turns them on us, peering over the puffs of a pink bedjacket – eyes where a white film is gathering. Unable to see us clearly, afraid – she who has sat by so many deathbeds – of distressing us by her unsightliness, she turns away her head, lies back, folds her hands, is silent.
When other people die, it is a thing of horror, swellings, gross flesh, smells, sickness. But Aunt Maud dies as a leaf shrivels. It seems that a little dryish gasp, a little shiver, and the papery flesh will crumble and leave beneath the bedclothes she scarcely disturbs a tiny white skeleton. That is how she is dying, giving the least trouble to the niece who waited sharp-sightedly for someone else to use the phrase ‘a happy release’ before she used it herself. ‘She might not eat anything, but one has to prepare the tray all the same. And then, there are all these people in the house.’
‘Before she retired, what did she do?’
‘Taught, didn’t you know? She was forty when her father married again, and she went out and took a post in a school. He never spoke one word to her afterwards.’
‘But why, why?’
‘He was in the wrong of course. She didn’t marry so as to look after him.’
‘Oh, so she might have married? Who was he?’
‘Old John Jordan, do you remember?’
‘But he died before I left school – such a funny old man!’
Impossible to ask why she never married. But someone asks it. A great-niece, very young, stands beside the bed and looks down with shivering distaste at such age, such death: ‘Aunt Maud, why did you never marry?’
‘Marry! Marry! Who is talking about marrying?’ she sounds angered and sullen; then the small eyes film over and she says: ‘Who did you say is getting married?’
The niece is banished and there are no more questions.
No more visitors either, the doctor says. A question of hours. A few hours, and that casket of memories and sensations will have vanished. It is monstrous that a human being who has survived miraculously and precariously so many decades of wars, illnesses and accidents should die at last, leaving behind nothing.
Now we sit about the bed where she lies and wait for her to die. There is nothing to do. No one stirs. We are all sitting, looking, thinking, surreptitiously touching the things that belonged to her, trying to catch a glimpse, even for a moment, of the truth that will vanish in such a little while.
And if we think of the things that interested her, the enthusiasms we used to laugh at, because it seemed so odd that such an old lady should feel strongly about these great matters, what answer do we get? She was a feminist, first and foremost. The Pankhursts, she said, ‘were so devoted’. She was a socialist; she had letters from Keir Hardie. There had been no one like him since he died. She defended vegetarians, but would not be one herself, because it gave people so much trouble in the kitchen. Madame Curie, Charles Lindbergh, Marie Corelli, Lenin, Clara Butt – these were her idols, and she spoke of them in agitated defiance as if they were always in need of defence. Inside that tiny shrivelled skull what an extraordinary gallery of heroes and heroines. But there is no answer there. No matter how hard we try, fingering her handkerchief sachet, thinking of the funny flat hats she wore, draped with bits of Liberty cottons, remembering how she walked, as if at any moment she might be called upon to scale a high wall, she eludes us. Let us resign ourselves to it and allow her to die.
Then she speaks after such long hours of waiting it is as if a woman already dead were speaking. Now, now!! We lean forward, waiting for her to say that one thing, the perfect word of forgiveness that will leave us healed and whole.
She has made her will, she says, and it is with the lawyer ‘who has always been so kind’ to her. She has nothing to leave but a few personal trinkets … The small precise voice is breathless, and she keeps her eyes tight shut. ‘I have told my lawyer that my possessions, such as they are, are kept in my black trinket box in the cupboard there. He knows. Everything is in order. I put everything right when people became so kind and I knew I was ill.’
And that is the last thing she will ever say. We wait intently, shifting our feet and avoiding each other’s eyes for fear that our guilty glances may imprint upon our memories of her the terrible knowledge let slip in the order of the words of that final sentence. We do not want to remember her with guilt, oh no! But although we wait, straining, nothing else comes; she seems to be asleep, and slowly we let our limbs loosen and think of the black box. In it we will find the diaries, or the bundle of letters which will say what she refuses to say. Oh most certainly we will find something of that sort. She cannot die like this, leaving nothing. There will be evidence of a consumed sorrow, at the least, something that will put substance into this barrenness. And when at last we look up, glancing at our watches, we see there is a stillness in the tiny white face which means she is dead.
We get up, rather stiffly, because of the hours of sitting, and then after a decent interval open the black box. It is full to the brim with bits of lace and ribbon, scraps of flowery stuffs, buckles, braid, brooches, cheap glass necklaces. Each has a bit of paper pinned to it. ‘These buttons I thought would do for the frock Alice was making when I was there last month.’ And: ‘To little Robin with my fond love. I bought this glass peacock in Cape Town in 1914 for another little boy.’ And so on, each of us has something. And when we come to the end and search for the diaries and letters there is nothing! Secretively each of us taps at the wood of the bottom – but no, it is solid. And we put back the things and we feel for the first time that Aunt Maud is dead. We want to cry. We would, if it were not absurd to cry for an old woman whom none of us wanted. What would she say if she saw those tears? ‘One cannot help feeling it would have been more useful to feel for me when I was still alive’? No, she would never say a thing like that; but we can have no illusions now, after that last remark of hers, which revealed the Aunt Maud she had been so carefully concealing all these years. And she would know we were not weeping for her at all.
We cannot leave the black box. We finger the laces, stroke the wood. We come back to it again and again, where it lies on the table in the room in which she is waiting for the funeral people. We do not look at her, who is now no more than a tiny bundle under the clothes. And slowly, slowly, in each of us, an emotion hardens which is painful because it can never be released. Protest, is that what we are feeling? But certainly a protest without bitterness, for she was never bitter. And without pity, for one cannot imagine Aunt Maud pitying herself. What, then, is left? Are we expected to go on, for the rest of our lives (which we hope will be as long as hers) feeling this intolerable ache, a dull and sorrowful rage? And if we all feel, suddenly, that it is not to be borne, and we must leap up from our chairs and bang our fists against the wall, screaming: ‘No, no! It can’t be all for nothing!’ – then we must restrain ourselves and remain quietly seated; for we can positively hear the scrupulous little voice saying: ‘There are some things one does not do.’
Slowly, slowly, we become still before the box, and now it seems we hold Aunt Maud in the hollow of our palms. That was what she was; now we know her.
So it comes to this: we are grown proud and honest out of the knowledge of her honesty and pride and, measuring ourselves against her we allow ourselves to feel only the small, persistent, but gently humorous anger she must have felt. Only anger, that is permissible, she would allow that. But against what? Against what?
The Pig (#ulink_b837cb8c-9dd3-5e55-96ce-0f9c6955fa45)
The farmer paid his labourers on a Saturday evening, when the sun went down. By the time he had finished it was always quite dark, and from the kitchen door where the lantern hung, bars of yellow light lay down the steps, across the path, and lit up the trees and the dark faces under them.
This Saturday, instead of dispersing as usual when they took their money, they retired a little way into the dark under the foliage, talking among themselves to pass the time. When the last one had been paid, the farmer said: ‘Call the women and the children. Everybody in the compound must be here.’ The boss-boy, who had been standing beside the table calling out names, stood forward and repeated the order. But in an indifferent voice, as a matter of form, for all this had happened before, every year for years past. Already there was a subdued moving at the back of the crowd as the women came in from under the trees where they had been waiting; and the light caught a bunched skirt, a copper armlet, or a bright headcloth.
Now all the dimly-lit faces showed hope that soon this ritual would be over, and they could get back to their huts and their fires. They crowded closer without being ordered.
The farmer began to speak, thinking as he did so of his lands that lay all about him, invisible in the darkness, but sending on the wind a faint rushing noise like the sea; and although he had done this before so often, and was doing it now half-cynically, knowing it was a waste of time, the memory of how good those fields of strong young plants looked when the sun shone on them put urgency and even anger into his voice.
The trouble was that every year black hands stripped the cobs from the stems in the night, sacks of cobs; and he could never catch the thieves. Next morning he would see the prints of bare feet in the dust between the rows. He had tried everything; had warned, threatened, docked rations, even fined the whole compound collectively – it made no difference. The lands lying next to the compound would be cheated of their yield, and when the harvesters brought in their loads, everyone knew there would be less than what had been expected.
And if everyone knew it, why put on this display for the tenth time? That was the question the farmer saw on their faces in front of him; polite faces turning this way and that over impatient bodies and shifting feet. They were thinking only of the huts and the warm meal waiting for them. The philosophic politeness, almost condescension, with which he was being treated infuriated the farmer; and he stopped in the middle of a sentence, banging on the table with his fist, so that the faces centred on him and the feet stilled.
‘Jonas,’ said the fanner. Out on to the lit space stepped a tall elderly man with a mild face. But now he looked sombre. The farmer saw that look and braced himself for a fight. This man had been on the farm for several years. An old scoundrel, the farmer called him, but affectionately: he was fond of him, for they had been together for so long. Jonas did odd jobs for half the year; he drew water for the garden, cured hides, cut grass. But when the growing season came he was an important man.
‘Come here, Jonas,’ the farmer said again; and picked up the. 33 rifle that he had been leaning against his chair until now. During the rainy season, Jonas slept out his days in his hut, and spent his nights till the cold dawns came guarding the fields from the buck and the pigs that attacked the young plants. They could lay waste whole acres in one night, a herd of pigs. He took the rifle, greeting it, feeling its familiar weight on his arm. But he looked reluctant nevertheless.
‘This year, Jonas, you will shoot everything you see -understand?’
‘Yes, baas.’
‘Everything, buck, baboons, pig. And everything you hear. You will not stop to look. If you hear a noise, you will shoot.’
There was a movement among the listening people, and soft protesting noises.
‘And if it turns out to be a human pig, then so much the worse. My lands are no place for pigs of any kind.’
Jonas said nothing, but he turned towards the others, holding the rifle uncomfortably on his arm, appealing that they should not judge him.
‘You can go,’ said the farmer. After a moment the space in front of him was empty, and he could hear the sound of bare feet feeling their way along dark paths, the sound of loudening angry talk. Jonas remained beside him.
‘Well, Jonas?’
‘I do not want to shoot this year.’
The farmer waited for an explanation. He was not disturbed at the order he had given. In all the years he had worked this farm no one had been shot, although every season the thieves moved at night along the mealie rows, and every night Jonas was out with a gun. For he would shout, or fire the gun into the air, to frighten intruders. It was only when dawn came that he fired at something he could see. All this was a bluff. The threat might scare off a few of the more timid; but both sides knew, as usual, that it was a bluff. The cobs would disappear; nothing could prevent it.
‘And why not?’ asked the farmer at last.
‘It’s my wife. I wanted to see you about it before,’ said Jonas, in dialect.
‘Oh, your wife!’ The farmer had remembered. Jonas was old-fashioned. He had two wives, an old one who had borne him several children, and a young one who gave him a good deal of trouble. Last year, when this wife was new, he had not wanted to take on this job which meant being out all night.
‘And what is the matter with the day-time?’ asked the farmer with waggish good-humour, exactly as he had the year before. He got up, and prepared to go inside.
Jonas did not reply. He did not like being appointed official guardian against theft by his own people, but even that did not matter so much, for it never once occurred to him to take the order literally. This was only the last straw. He was getting on in years now, and he wanted to spend his nights in peace in his own hut, instead of roaming the bush. He had disliked it very much last year, but now it was even worse. A younger man visited his pretty young wife when he was away.
Once he had snatched up a stick, in despair, to beat her with; then he had thrown it down. He was old, and the other man was young, and beating her could not cure his heartache. Once he had come up to his master to talk over the situation, as man to man; but the farmer had refused to do anything. And, indeed, what could he do? Now, repeating what he had said then, the farmer spoke from the kitchen steps, holding the lamp high in one hand above his shoulder as he turned to go in, so that it sent beams of light swinging across the bush: ‘I don’t want to hear anything about your wife, Jonas. You should look after her yourself. And if you are not too old to take a young wife, then you aren’t too old to shoot. You will take the gun as usual this year. Good night.’ And he went inside, leaving the garden black and pathless. Jonas stood quite still, waiting for his eyes to accustom themselves to the dark; then he started off down the path, finding his way by the feel of the loose stones under his feet.
He had not yet eaten, but when he came to within sight of the compound, he felt he could not go farther. He halted, looking at the little huts silhouetted black against cooking fires that sent up great drifting clouds of illuminated smoke. There was his hut, he could see it, a small conical shape. There his wives were, waiting with his food prepared and ready.
But he did not want to eat. He felt he could not bear to go in and face his old wife, who mocked him with her tongue, and his young wife, who answered him submissively but mocked him with her actions. He was sick and tormented, cut off from his friends who were preparing for an evening by the fires, because he could see the knowledge of his betrayal in their eyes. The cold pain of jealousy that had been gnawing at him for so long, felt now like an old wound, aching as an old wound aches before the rains set in.
He did not want to go into the fields, either to perch until he was stiff in one of the little cabins on high stilts that were built at the corners of each land as shooting platforms, or to walk in the dark through the hostile bush. But that night, without going for his food, he set off as usual on his long vigil.
The next night, however, he did not go; nor the next, nor the nights following. He lay all day dozing in the sun on his blanket, turning himself over and over in the sun, as if its rays could cauterize the ache from his heart. When evening came, he ate his meal early before going off with the gun. And then he stood with his back to a tree, within sight of the compound; indeed, within a stone’s throw of his own hut, for hours, watching silently. He felt numb and heavy. He was there without purpose. It was as if his legs had refused an order to march away from the place. All that week the lands lay unguarded, and if the wild animals were raiding the young plants, he did not care. He seemed to exist only in order to stand at night watching his hut. He did not allow himself to think of what was happening inside. He merely watched; until the fires burned down, and the bush grew cold and he was so stiff that when he went home, at sunrise, he had the appearance of one exhausted after a night’s walking.
The following Saturday there was a beer drink. He could have got leave to attend it, had he wanted; but at sundown he took himself off as usual and saw that his wife was pleased when he left.
As he leaned his back to the tree trunk that gave him its support each night, and held the rifle lengthwise to his chest, he fixed his eyes steadily on the dark shape that was his hut, and remembered that look on his young wife’s face. He allowed himself to think steadily of it, and of many similar things. He remembered the young man, as he had seen him only a few days before, bending over the girl as she knelt to grind meal, laughing with her; then the way they both looked up, startled, at his approach, their faces growing blank.
He could feel his muscles tautening against the rifle as he pictured that scene, so that he set it down on the ground, for relief, letting his arms fall. But in spite of the pain, he continued to think; for tonight things were changed in him, and he no longer felt numb and purposeless. He stood erect and vigilant, letting the long cold barrel slide between his fingers, the hardness of the tree at his back like a second spine. And as he thought of the young man another picture crept into his mind again and again, that of a young waterhuck he had shot last year, lying soft at his feet, its tongue slipping out into the dust as he picked it up, so newly dead that he imagined he felt the blood still pulsing under the warm skin. And from the small wet place under its neck a few sticky drops rolled over glistening fur. Suddenly, as he stood there thinking of the blood, and the limp body of the buck, and the young man laughing with his wife, his mind grew clear and cool and the oppression on him lifted.
He sighed deeply, and picked up the rifle again, holding it close, like a friend, against him, while he gazed in through the trees at the compound.
It was early, and the flush from sunset had not yet quite gone from the sky, although where he stood among the undergrowth it was night. In the clear spaces between the huts groups of figures took shape, talking and laughing and getting ready for the dance. Small cooking fires were being lit; and a big central fire blazed, sending up showers of sparks into the clouds of smoke. The tom-toms were beating softly; soon the dance would begin. Visitors were coming in through the bush from the other compounds miles away: it would be a long wait.
Three times he heard steps along the path close to him before he drew back and turned his head to watch the young man pass, as he had passed every night that week, with a jaunty eager tread and eyes directed towards Jonas’s hut. Jonas stood as quiet as a tree struck by lightning, holding his breath, although he could not be seen, because the thick shadows from the trees were black around him. He watched the young man thread his way through the huts into the circle of firelight, and pass cautiously to one side of the groups of waiting people, like someone uncertain of his welcome, before going in through the door of his own hut.
Hours passed, and he watched the leaping dancing people, and listened to the drums as the stars swung over his head and the night birds talked in the bush around him. He thought steadily now, as he had not previously allowed himself to think, of what was happening inside the small dark hut that gradually became invisible as the fires died and the dancers went to their blankets. When the moon was small and high and cold behind his back, and the trees threw sharp black windows on the path, and he could smell morning on the wind, he saw the young man coming towards him again. Now Jonas shifted his feet a little, to ease the stiffness out of them, and moved the rifle along his arm, feeling for the curve of the trigger on his finger.
As the young man lurched past, for he was tired, and moved carelessly, Jonas slipped out into the smooth dusty path a few paces behind, shrinking back as the released branches swung wet into his face and scattered large drops of dew on to his legs. It was cold; his breath misted into a thin pearly steam dissolving into the moonlight.
He was so close to the man in front that he could have touched him with the raised rifle; had he turned there would have been no concealment; but Jonas walked confidently, though carefully, and thought all the time of how he had shot down from ten paces away that swift young buck as it started with a crash out of a bush into a cold moony field.
When they reached the edge of the land where acres of mealies sloped away, dimly green under a dome of stars, Jonas began to walk like a cat. He wanted now to be sure; and he was only fifty yards from the shooting platform in the corner of the field, that looked in this light like a crazy fowl-house on stilts. The young man was staggering with tiredness and drink, making a crashing noise at each step as he snapped the sap-full mealies under heavy feet.
But the buck had shot like a spear from the bush, had caught the lead in its chest as it leaped, had fallen as a spear curves to earth; it had not blundered and lurched and swayed. Jonas began to feel a disgust for this man, and the admiration and fascination he felt for his young rival vanished. The tall slim youth who had laughed down at his wife had nothing to do with the ungainly figure crashing along before him, making so much noise that there could be no game left unstartled for miles.
When they reached the shooting platform, Jonas stopped dead, and let the youth move on. He lifted the rifle to his cheek and saw the long barrel slant against the stars, which sent a glint of light back down the steel. He waited, quite still, watching the man’s back sway above the mealies. Then, at the right moment, he squeezed his finger close, holding the rifle steady to fire again.
As the sound of the shot reverberated, the round dark head jerked oddly, blotting out fields of stars; the body seemed to crouch, one hand went out as if he were going to lean sideways to the ground. Then he disappeared into the mealies with a startled thick cry. Jonas lowered the rifle and listened. There was a threshing noise, a horrible grunting, and half-words muttered, like someone talking in sleep.
Jonas picked his way along the rows, feeling the sharp leaf edges scything his legs, until he stood above the body that now jerked softly among the stems. He waited until it stilled, then bent to look, parting the chilled, moon-green leaves so that he could see clearly.
It was no clean small hole: raw flesh gaped, blood poured black to the earth, the limbs were huddled together shapeless and without beauty, the face was pressed into the soil.
‘A pig,’ said Jonas aloud to the listening moon, as he kicked the side gently with his foot, ‘nothing but a pig.’
He wanted to hear how it would sound when he said it again, telling how he had shot blind into the grunting, invisible herd.
Traitors (#ulink_834ef656-9ed4-5d0d-bd70-a70f37f608e4)
We had discovered the Thompsons’ old house long before their first visit.
At the back of our house the ground sloped up to where the bush began, an acre of trailing pumpkin vines, ash-heaps where pawpaw trees sprouted, and lines draped with washing where the wind slapped and jiggled. The bush was dense and frightening, and the grass there higher than a tall man. There were not even paths.
When we had tired of our familiar acre we explored the rest of the farm: but this particular stretch of bush was avoided. Sometimes we stood at its edge, and peered in at the tangled granite outcrops and great ant-heaps curtained with Christmas fern. Sometimes we pushed our way a few feet, till the grass closed behind us, leaving overhead a small space of blue. Then we lost our heads and ran back again.
Later, when we were given our first rifle and a new sense of bravery, we realized we had to challenge that bush. For several days we hesitated, listening to the guinea-fowl calling only a hundred yards away, and making excuses for cowardice. Then, one morning, at sunrise, when the trees were pink and gold, and the grass-stems were running bright drops of dew, we looked at each other, smiling weakly, and slipped into the bushes with our hearts beating.
At once we were alone, closed in by grass, and we had to reach out for the other’s dress and cling together. Slowly, heads down, eyes half-closed against the sharp grass-seeds, two small girls pushed their way past ant-heap and outcrop, past thorn and gully and thick clumps of cactus where any wild animal might lurk.
Suddenly, after only five minutes of terror, we emerged in a space where the red earth was scored with cattle tracks. The guinea-fowl were clinking ahead of us in the grass, and we caught a glimpse of a shapely dark bird speeding along a path. We followed, shouting with joy because the forbidding patch of bush was as easily conquered and made our own as the rest of the farm.
We were stopped again where the ground dropped suddenly to the vlei, a twenty-foot shelf of flattened grass where the cattle went to water. Sitting, we lifted our dresses and coasted down-hill on the slippery swathes, landing with torn knickers and scratched knees in a donga of red dust scattered with dried cow-pats and bits of glistening quartz. The guinea-fowl stood in a file and watched us, their heads tilted with apprehension; but my sister said with bravado: ‘I am going to shoot a buck!’
She waved her arms at the birds and they scuttled off. We looked at each other and laughed, feeling too grown-up for guinea-fowl now.
Here, down on the verges of the vlei, it was a different kind of bush. The grass was thinned by cattle, and red dust spurted as we walked. There were sparse thorn trees, and everywhere the poison-apple bush, covered with small fruit like yellow plums. Patches of wild marigold filled the air with a rank, hot smell.
Moving with exaggerated care, our bodies tensed, our eyes fixed half a mile off, we did not notice that a duiker stood watching us, ten paces away. We yelled with excitement and the buck vanished. Then we ran like maniacs, screaming at the tops of our voices, while the bushes whipped our faces and the thorns tore our legs.
Ten minutes later we came slap up against a barbed fence. ‘The boundary,’ we whispered, awed. This was a legend; we had imagined it as a sort of Wall of China, for beyond were thousands and thousands of miles of unused Government land where there were leopards and baboons and herds of koodoo. But we were disappointed; even the famous boundary was only a bit of wire after all, and the duiker was nowhere in sight.
Whistling casually to show we didn’t care, we marched along by the wire, twanging it so that it reverberated half a mile away down in the vlei. Around us the bush was strange; this part of the farm was quite new to us. There was still nothing but thorn trees and grass; and fat wood-pigeons cooed from every branch. We swung on the fence stanchions and wished that Father would suddenly appear and take us home to breakfast. We were hopelessly lost.
It was then that I saw the pawpaw tree. I must have been staring at it for some minutes before it grew in on my sight; for it was such an odd place for a pawpaw tree to be. On it were three heavy yellow pawpaws.
‘There’s our breakfast,’ I said.
We shook them down, sat on the ground, and ate. The insipid creamy flesh soon filled us, and we lay down, staring at the sky, half asleep. The sun blared down; we were melted through with heat and tiredness. But it was very hard. Turning over, staring, we saw worn bricks set into the ground. All round us were stretches of brick, stretches of cement.
‘The old Thompson house,’ we whispered.
And all at once the pigeons seemed to grow still and the bush became hostile. We sat up, frightened. How was it we hadn’t noticed it before? There was a double file of pawpaws among the thorns; a purple bougainvillaea tumbled over the bushes; a rose tree scattered white petals at our feet; and our shoes were scrunching in broken glass.
It was desolate, lonely, despairing; and we remembered the way our parents had talked about Mr Thompson who had lived here for years before he married. Their hushed, disapproving voices seemed to echo out of the trees; and in a violent panic we picked up the gun and fled back in the direction of the house. We had imagined we were lost; but we were back in the gully in no time, climbed up it, half sobbing with breathlessness, and fled through that barrier of bush so fast we hardly noticed it was there.
It was not even breakfast-time.
‘We found the Thompsons’ old house,’ we said at last, feeling hurt that no one had noticed from our proud faces that we had found a whole new world that morning. ‘Did you?’ said Father absently. ‘Can’t be much left of it now.’
Our fear vanished. We hardly dared look at each other for shame. And later that day we went back and counted the pawpaws and trailed the bougainvillaea over a tree and staked the white rosebush.
In a week we had made the place entirely our own. We were there all day, sweeping the debris from the floor and carrying away loose bricks into the bush. We were not surprised to find dozens of empty bottles scattered in the grass. We washed them in a pothole in the vlei, dried them in the wind, and marked out the rooms of the house with them, making walls of shining bottles. In our imagination the Thompson house was built again, a small brick-walled place with a thatched roof.
We sat under a blazing sun, and said in our Mother’s voice: ‘It is always cool under thatch, no matter how hot it is outside.’ And then, when the walls and the roof had grown into our minds and we took them for granted, we played other games, taking it in turn to be Mr Thompson.
Whoever was Mr Thompson had to stagger in from the bush, with a bottle in her hand, tripping over the lintel and falling on the floor. There she lay and groaned, while the other fanned her and put handkerchiefs soaked in vlei water on her head. Or she reeled about among the bottles, shouting abusive gibberish at an invisible audience of natives.
It was while we were engaged thus, one day, that a black woman came out of the thorn trees and stood watching us. We waited for her to go, drawing together; but she came close and stared in a way that made us afraid. She was old and fat, and she wore a red print dress from the store. She said in a soft, wheedling voice: ‘When is Boss Thompson coming back?’
‘Go away!’ we shouted. And then she began to laugh. She sauntered off into the bush, swinging her hips and looking back over her shoulder and laughing. We heard that taunting laugh away among the trees; and that was the second time we ran away from the ruined house, though we made ourselves walk slowly and with dignity until we knew she could no longer see us.
For a few days we didn’t go back to the house. When we did we stopped playing Mr Thompson. We no longer knew him: that laugh, that slow, insulting stare had meant something outside our knowledge and experience. The house was not ours now. It was some broken bricks on the ground marked out with bottles. We couldn’t pretend to ourselves we were not afraid of the place; and we continually glanced over our shoulders to see if the old black woman was standing silently there, watching us.
Idling along the fence, we threw stones at the pawpaws fifteen feet over our heads till they squashed at our feet. Then we kicked them into the bush.
‘Why have you stopped going to the old house?’ asked Mother cautiously, thinking that we didn’t know how pleased she was. She had instinctively disliked our being there so much.
‘Oh, I dunno …’
A few days later we heard that the Thompsons were coming to see us; and we knew, without anyone saying, that this was no ordinary visit. It was the first time; they wouldn’t be coming after all these years without some reason. Besides, our parents didn’t like them coming. They were at odds with each other over it.
Mr Thompson had lived on our farm for ten years before we had it, when there was no one else near for miles and miles. Then, suddenly, he went home to England and brought a wife back with him. The wife never came to this farm. Mr Thompson sold the farm to us and bought another one. People said:
‘Poor girl! Just out from home, too.’ She was angry about the house burning down, because it meant she had to live with friends for nearly a year while Mr Thompson built a new house on his new farm.
The night before they came, Mother said several times in a strange, sorrowful voice, ‘Poor little thing; poor, poor little thing.’
Father said: ‘Oh, I don’t know. After all, be just. He was here alone all those years.’
It was no good; she disliked not only Mr Thompson but Father too, that evening; and we were on her side. She put her arms round us, and looked accusingly at Father. ‘Women get all the worst of everything,’ she said.
He said angrily: ‘Look here, it’s not my fault these people are coming.’
‘Who said it was?’ she answered.
Next day, when the car came in sight, we vanished into the bush. We felt guilty, not because we were running away, a thing we often did when visitors came we didn’t like, but because we had made Mr Thompson’s house our own, and because we were afraid if he saw our faces he would know we were letting Mother down by going.
We climbed into the tree that was our refuge on these occasions, and lay along branches twenty feet from the ground, and played at Mowgli, thinking all the time about the Thompsons.
As usual, we lost all sense of time; and when we eventually returned, thinking the coast must be clear, the car was still there. Curiosity got the better of us.
We slunk on to the veranda, smiling bashfully, while Mother gave us a reproachful look. Then, at last, we lifted our heads and looked at Mrs Thompson. I don’t know how we had imagined her; but we had felt for her a passionate, protective pity.
She was a large, blonde, brilliantly coloured lady with a voice like a go-away bird’s. It was a horrible voice. Father, who could not stand loud voices, was holding the arms of his chair, and gazing at her with exasperated dislike.
As for Mr Thompson, that villain whom we had hated and feared, he was a shaggy and shambling man, who looked at the ground while his wife talked, with a small apologetic smile. He was not in the least as we had pictured him. He looked like our old dog. For a moment we were confused; then, in a rush, our allegiance shifted. The profound and dangerous pity, aroused in us earlier than we could remember by the worlds of loneliness inhabited by our parents, which they could not share with each other but which each shared with us, settled now on Mr Thompson. Now we hated Mrs Thompson. The outward sign of it was that we left Mother’s chair and went to Father’s.
‘Don’t fidget, there’s good kids,’ he said.
Mrs Thompson was asking to be shown the old house. We understood, from the insistent sound of her voice, that she had been talking about nothing else all afternoon; or that, at any rate, if she had, it was only with the intention of getting round to the house as soon as she could. She kept saying, smiling ferociously at Mr Thompson: ‘I have heard such interesting things about that old place. I really must see for myself where it was that my husband lived before I came out …’ And she looked at Mother for approval.
But Mother said dubiously: ‘It will soon be dark. And there is no path.’
As for Father, he said bluntly: ‘There’s nothing to be seen. There’s nothing left.’
‘Yes, I heard it had been burnt down,’ said Mrs Thompson with another look at her husband.
‘It was a hurricane lamp…’ he muttered.
‘I want to see for myself.’
At this point my sister slipped off the arm of my Father’s chair, and said, with a bright, false smile at Mrs Thompson, ‘We know where it is. We’ll take you.’ She dug me in the ribs and sped off before anyone could speak.
At last they all decided to come. I took them the hardest, longest way I knew. We had made a path of our own long ago, but that would have been too quick. I made Mrs Thompson climb over rocks, push through grass, bend under bushes. I made her scramble down the gully so that she fell on her knees in the sharp pebbles and the dust. I walked her so fast, finally, in a wide circle through the thorn trees that I could hear her panting behind me. But she wasn’t complaining: she wanted to see the place too badly.
When we came to where the house had been it was nearly dark and the tufts of long grass were shivering in the night breeze, and the pawpaw trees were silhouetted high and dark against a red sky. Guinea-fowl were clinking softly all around us.
My sister leaned against a tree, breathing hard, trying to look natural. Mrs Thompson had lost her confidence. She stood quite still, looking about her, and we knew the silence and the desolation had got her, as it got us that first morning.
‘But where is the house?’ she asked at last, unconsciously softening her voice, staring as if she expected to see it rise out of the ground in front of her.
‘I told you, it was burnt down. Now will you believe me?’ said Mr Thompson.
‘I know it was burnt down … Well, where was it then?’ She sounded as if she were going to cry. This was not at all what she had expected.
Mr Thompson pointed at the bricks on the ground. He did not move. He stood staring over the fence down to the vlei, where the mist was gathering in long white folds. The light faded out of the sky, and it began to get cold. For a while no one spoke.
‘What a god-forsaken place for a house,’ said Mrs Thompson, very irritably, at last. ‘Just as well it was burnt down. Do you mean to say you kids play here?’
That was our cue. ‘We like it,’ we said dutifully, knowing very well that the two of us standing on the bricks, hand in hand, beside the ghostly rosebush, made a picture that took all the harm out of the place for her. ‘We play here all day,’ we lied.
‘Odd taste you’ve got,’ she said, speaking at us, but meaning Mr Thompson.
Mr Thompson did not hear her. He was looking around with a lost, remembering expression. ‘Ten years,’ he said at last. ‘Ten years I was here.’
‘More fool you,’ she snapped. And that closed the subject as far as she was concerned.
We began to trail home. Now the two women went in front; then came Father and Mr Thompson; we followed at the back. As we passed a small donga under a cactus tree, my sister called in a whisper, ‘Mr Thompson, Mr Thompson, look here.’
Father and Mr Thompson came back. ‘Look,’ we said, pointing to the hole that was filled to the brim with empty bottles.
‘I came quickly by a way of my own and hid them,’ said my sister proudly, looking at the two men like a conspirator.
Father was very uncomfortable. ‘I wonder how they got down here?’ he said politely at last.
‘We found them. They were at the house. We hid them for you,’ said my sister, dancing with excitement.
Mr Thompson looked at us sharply and uneasily. ‘You are an odd pair of kids,’ he said.
That was all the thanks we got from him; for then we heard Mother calling from ahead: ‘What are you all doing there?’ And at once we went forward.
After the Thompsons had left we hung around Father, waiting for him to say something.
At last, when Mother wasn’t there, he scratched his head in an irritable way and said: ‘What in the world did you do that for?’
We were bitterly hurt. ‘She might have seen them.’ I said. ‘Nothing would make much difference to that lady,’ he said at last. ‘Still, I suppose you meant well.’
In the corner of the veranda, in the dark, sat Mother, gazing into the dark bush. On her face was a grim look of disapproval, and distaste and unhappiness. We were included in it, we knew that.
She looked at us crossly and said, ‘I don’t like you wandering over the farm the way you do. Even with a gun.’
But she had said that so often, and it wasn’t what we were waiting for. At last it came.
‘My two little girls,’ she said, ‘out in the bush by themselves, with no one to play with …’
It wasn’t the bush she minded. We flung ourselves on her. Once again we were swung dizzily from one camp to the other. ‘Poor Mother,’ we said. ‘Poor, poor Mother.’
That was what she needed. ‘It’s no life for a woman, this,’ she said, her voice breaking, gathering us close.
But she sounded comforted.
The Words He Said (#ulink_0d999fb9-a090-5ccb-9e0c-977526448b93)
On the morning of the braavleis, Dad kept saying to Moira, as if he thought it was a joke, ‘Moy, it’s going to rain.’ First she did not hear him, then she turned her head slow and deliberate and looked at him so that he remembered what she said the day before, and he got red in the face and went indoors out of her way. The day before, he said to her, speaking to me, ‘What’s Moy got into her head? Is the braavleis for her engagement or what?’
It was because Moira spent all morning cooking her lemon cake for braavleis, and she went over to Sam the butcher’s to order the best ribs of beef and best rump steak.
All the cold season she was not cooking, she was not helping Mom in the house at all, she was not taking an interest in life, and Dad was saying to Mom: ‘Oh get the girl to town or something, don’t let her moon about here, who does she think she is?’
Mom just said, quiet and calm, the way she was with Dad when they did not agree: ‘Oh let her alone, Dickson.’ When Mom and Dad were agreeing, they called each other Mom and Dad; when they were against each other, it was Marion and Dickson, and that is how it was for the whole of the dry season, and Moira was pale and moony and would not talk to me, and it was no fun for me, I can tell you.
‘What’s this for?’ Dad said once about half-way through the season, when Moira stayed in bed three days and Mom let her. ‘Has he said anything to her or hasn’t he?’
Mom just said: ‘She’s sick, Dickson.’
But I could see what he said had gone into her, because I was in our bedroom when Mom came to Moira.
Mom sat down on the bed, but at the bottom of it, and she was worried. ‘Listen, girl,’ said Mom, ‘I don’t want to interfere, I don’t want to do that, but what did Greg say?’
Moira was not properly in bed, but in her old pink dressing-gown that used to be Mom’s, and she was lying under the quilt. She lay there, not reading anything, watching out of the window over at the big water-tanks across the railway lines. Her face looked bad, and she said: ‘Oh, leave me alone, Mom.’
Mom said: ‘Listen, girlie, just let me say something, you don’t have to follow what I say, do you?’
But Moira said nothing.
‘Sometimes boys say a thing, and they don’t mean it the way we think. They feel they have to say it. It’s not they don’t mean it, but they mean it different.’
‘He didn’t say anything at all,’ said Moira. ‘Why should he?’
‘Why don’t you go into town and stay with Auntie Nora a while? You can come back for the holidays when Greg comes back.’
‘Oh let me alone,’ said Moira, and she began to cry. That was the first time she cried. At least, in front of Mom. I used to hear her cry at night when she thought I was asleep.
Mom’s face was tight and patient, and she put her hand on Moira’s shoulder, and she was worried I could see. I was sitting on my bed pretending to do my stamps, and she looked over at me, and seemed to be thinking hard.
‘He didn’t say anything, Mom,’ I said. ‘But I know what happened.’
Moira jerked her head up and she said: ‘Get that kid away from me.’
They could not get me away from Moira, because there were only two bedrooms, and I always slept with Moira. But she would not speak to me that night at all; and Mom said to me, ‘Little pitchers have big ears.’
It was the last year’s braavleis it happened. Moira was not keen on Greg then, I know for a fact, because she was sweet on Jordan. Greg was mostly at the Cape in college, but he came back for the first time in a year, and I saw him looking at Moira. She was pretty then, because she had finished her matric and spent all her time making herself pretty. She was eighteen, and her hair was wavy, because the rains had started. Greg was on the other side of the bonfire, and he came walking around it through the sparks and the white smoke, and up to Moira. Moira smiled out of politeness, because she wanted Jordan to sit by her, and she was afraid he wouldn’t if he saw her occupied by Greg.
‘Moira Hughes?’ he said. Moira smiled, and he said: ‘I wouldn’t have known you.’
‘Go on,’ I said, ‘you’ve known us always.’
They did not hear me. They were just looking. It was peculiar. I knew it was one of the peculiar moments of life because my skin was tingling all over, and that is how I always know.
Because of how she was looking at him, I looked at him too, but I did not think he was handsome. The holidays before, when I was sweet on Greg Jackson, I naturally thought he was handsome, but now he was just ordinary. He was very thin, always, and his hair was ginger, and his freckles were thick, because naturally the sun is no good for people with white skin and freckles.
But he wasn’t bad, particularly because he was in his sensible mood. Since he went to college he had two moods, one noisy and sarcastic; and then Moira used to say, all lofty and superior: ‘Medical students are always rowdy, it stands to reason because of the hard life they have afterwards.’ His other mood was when he was quiet and grown-up, and some of the gang didn’t like it, because he was better than us, he was the only one of the gang to go to university at the Cape.
After they had finished looking, he just sat down in the grass in the place Moira was keeping for Jordan, and Moira did not once look around for Jordan. They did not say anything else, just went on sitting, and when the big dance began holding hands around the bonfire, they stood at one side watching.
That was all that happened at the braavleis, and that was all the words he said. Next day, Greg went on a shooting trip with his father who was the man at the garage, and they went right up the Zambesi valley, and Greg did not come back to our station that holidays or the holidays after.
I knew Moira was thinking of a letter, because she bought some of Croxley’s best blue at the store, and she always went herself to the post office on mail days. But there was no letter. But after that she said to Jordan, ‘No thanks, I don’t feel like it,’ when he asked her to go into town to the flicks.
She did not take any notice of any of the gang after that, though before she was leader of the gang, even over the boys.
That was when she stopped being pretty again; she looked as she did before she left school and was working hard for her matric. She was too thin, and the curl went out of her hair, and she didn’t bother to curl it either.
All that dry season she did nothing, and hardly spoke, and did not sing; and I knew it was because of that minute when Greg and she looked at each other; that was all; and when I thought of it, I could feel the cold-hot down my back.
Well, on the day before the braavleis, like I said, Moira was on the veranda, and she had on her the dress she wore last year to the braavleis. Greg had come back for the holidays the night before, we knew he had, because his mother said so when Mom met her at the store. But he did not come to our house. I did not like to see Moira’s face, but I had to keep on looking at it, it was so sad, and her eyes were sore. Mom kissed her, putting both her arms around her, but Moira gave a hitch of her shoulders like a horse with a fly bothering it.
Mom sighed, and then I saw Dad looking at her, and the look they gave each other was most peculiar, it made me feel very peculiar again. And then Moira started in on the lemon cake, and went to the butcher’s, and that was when Dad said that about the braavleis being for the engagement. Moira looked at him, with her eyes all black and sad, and said: ‘Why have you got it in for me, Dad, what have I done?’
Dad said: ‘Greg’s not going to marry you. Now he’s got to college, and going to be a doctor, he won’t be after you.’
Moira was smiling, her lips small and angry.
Mom said: ‘Why Dickson, Moira’s got her matric and she’s educated, what’s got into your head?’
Dad said: ‘I’m telling you, that’s all.’
Moira said, very grown-up and quiet: ‘Why are you trying to spoil it for me, Dad? I haven’t said anything about marrying, have I? And what have I done to you, anyway?’
Dad didn’t like that. He went red, and he laughed, but he didn’t like it. And he was quiet for a bit at least.
After lunch, when she’d finished with the cake, she was sitting on the veranda when Jordan went past across to the store, and she called out: ‘Hi, Jordan, come and talk to me.’
Now I know for a fact that Jordan wasn’t sweet on Moira any more, he was sweet on Beth from the store, because I know for a fact he kissed her at the last station dance, I saw him. And he shouted out, ‘Thanks, Moy, but I’m on my way.’
‘Oh, please yourself then,’ said Moira, friendly and nice, but I knew she was cross, because she was set on it.
Anyway, he came in, and I’ve never seen Moira so nice to anyone, not even when she was sweet on him, and certainly never to Greg. Well, and Jordan was embarrassed, because Moira was not pretty that season, and all the station was saying she had gone off. She took Jordan into the kitchen to see the lemon cake and dough all folded ready for the sausage rolls, and she said slow and surprised, ‘But we haven’t got enough bread for the sandwiches, Mom, what are you thinking of?’
Mom said, quick and cross, because she was proud of her kitchen. ‘What do you mean? And no one’s going to eat sandwiches with all that meat you’ve ordered. And it’ll be stale by tomorrow.’
‘I think we need more bread,’ said Moira. And she said to me in the same voice, slow and lazy, ‘Just run over to the Jacksons’ and see if they can let us have some bread.’
At this I didn’t say anything, and Mom did not say anything either, and it was lucky Dad didn’t hear. I looked at Mom, and she made no sign, so I went out across the railway lines to the garage, and at the back of the garage was the Jacksons’ house, and there was Greg Jackson reading a book about the body because he was going to be a doctor.
‘Mom says,’ I said, ‘can you let us have some bread for the braavleis?’
He put down the book, and said, ‘Oh, hullo, Betty.’
‘Hullo,’ I said.
‘But the store will be open tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Isn’t the braavleis tomorrow?’
‘It’s Sunday tomorrow,’ I said.
‘But the store’s open now.’
‘We want some stale bread,’ I said. ‘Moy’s making some stuffing for the chicken, our bread’s all fresh.’
‘Mom’s at the store,’ he said, ‘but help yourself.’
So I went into the pantry and got half a stale loaf, and came out and said ‘Thanks,’ and walked past him.
He said, ‘Don’t mench.’ Then, when I was nearly gone, he said, ‘And how’s Moy?’ And I said, ‘Fine, thanks, but I haven’t seen much of her this hols because she’s busy with Jordan.’ And I went away, and I could feel my back tingling, and sure enough there he was coming up behind me, and then he was beside me, and my side was tingling.
‘I’ll drop over and say hullo,’ said Greg, and I felt peculiar I can tell you, because what I was thinking was: Well! If this is love.
When we got near our house, Moira and Jordan were side by side on the veranda wall, and Moy was laughing, and I knew she had seen Greg coming because of the way she laughed.
Dad was not on the veranda, so I could see Mom had got him to stay indoors.
‘I’ve brought you the bread, Moy,’ I said, and with this I went into the kitchen, and there was Mom, and she was looking more peculiar than I’ve ever seen her. I could have bet she wanted to laugh; but she was sighing all the time. Because of the sighing I knew she had quarrelled with Dad. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said, and she threw the bread I’d fetched into the waste-bucket.
There sat Mom and I in the kitchen, smiling at each other off and on in a peculiar way, and Dad was rattling his paper in the bedroom where she had made him go. He was not at the station that day, because the train had come at nine o’clock and there wasn’t another one coming. When we looked out on the veranda in about half an hour Jordan was gone, and Greg and Moira were sitting on the veranda wall. And I can tell you she looked so pretty again, it was peculiar her getting pretty like that so sudden.
That was about five, and Greg went back to supper at home, and Moira did not eat anything, she was in our room curling her hair, because she and Greg were going for a walk.
‘Don’t go too far, it’s going to rain,’ Mom said, but Moira said, sweet and dainty, ‘Don’t worry, Mom, I can look after myself.’
Mom and Dad said nothing to each other all the evening.
I went to bed early for a change, so I’d be there when Moy got in, although I was thirteen that season and now my bedtime was up to ten o’clock.
Mom and Dad went to bed, although I could see Mom was worried, because there was a storm blowing up, the dry season was due to end, and the lightning kept spurting all over the sky.
And I lay awake saying to myself, Sleep sleep go away, come again another day, but I went to sleep, and when I woke up, the room was full of the smell of rain, of the earth wet with rain, the light was on and Moira was in the room.
‘Have the rains come?’ I said, and then I woke right up and saw of course they hadn’t, because the air was as dry as sand, and Moira said, ‘Oh shut up and go to sleep.’
She did not look pretty as much as being different from how I’d seen her, her face was soft and smiling, and her eyes were different. She had blue eyes most of the time, but now they seemed quite black. And now her hair was all curled and brushed, it looked pretty, like golden syrup. And she even looked a bit fatter. Usually when she wasn’t too thin, she was rather fat, and when she was one of the gang we used to call her Pudding. That is, until she passed her J.C., and then she fought everyone, and the boys too, so that she could be called Moy. So no one had called her Pudding for years now except Dad to make her cross. He used to say, ‘You’re going to make a fine figure of a woman like your mother.’ That always made Moy cross, I can tell you, because Mom was very fat, and she wore proper corsets these days, except just before the rains when it was so hot. I remember the first time the corsets came from the store, and she put them on, Moy had to lace her in, and Mom laughed so much Moy couldn’t do the laces, and anyway she was cross because Mom laughed, and she said to me afterwards, ‘It’s disgusting, letting yourself go – I’m not going to let myself go.’
So it would have been more than my life was worth to tell her she was looking a bit fatter already, or to tell her anything at all, because she sat smiling on the edge of her bed, and when I said, ‘What did he say, Moy?’ she just turned her head and made her eyes thin and black at me, and I saw I’d better go to sleep. But I knew something she didn’t know I knew, because she had some dead jacaranda flowers in her hair, so that meant she and Greg were at the water-tanks. There were only two jacaranda trees at our station, and they were at the big water-tanks for the engines, so if they were at the water-tanks, they must have been kissing, because it was romantic at the tanks. It was the end of October, and the jacarandas were shedding, and the tanks looked as if they were standing in pools of blue water.
Well next morning Moy was already up when I woke, and she was singing, and she began ironing her muslin dress that she made for last Christmas, even before breakfast.
Mom said nothing; Dad kept rustling his newspaper; and I wouldn’t have dared open my mouth. Besides, I wanted to find out what Greg said. After breakfast, we sat around, because of its being Sunday, and Dad didn’t have to be at the station office because there weren’t any trains on Sundays. And Dad kept grinning at Moira and saying: ‘I think it’s going to rain,’ and she pretended she didn’t know what he meant, until at last she jumped when he said it and turned herself and looked at him just the way she did the day before, and that was when he got red in the face, and said: ‘Can’t you take a joke these days?’ and Moira looked away from him with her eyebrows up, and Mom sighed, and then he said, very cross, ‘I’ll leave you all to it, just tell me when you’re in a better temper,’ and with this he took the newspaper inside to the bedroom.
Anybody could see it wasn’t going to rain properly that day, because the clouds weren’t thunder-heads, but great big white ones, all silver and hardly any black in them.
Moy didn’t eat any dinner, but went on sitting on the veranda, wearing her dress that was muslin, white with red spots, and big puffed sleeves, and a red sash around her waist.
After dinner, time was very slow, and it was a long time before Greg came down off the Jacksons’ veranda, and came walking slowly along the gum-tree avenue. I was watching Moy’s face, and she couldn’t keep the smile off it. She got paler and paler until he got underneath our veranda, and she looking at him so that I had goose-flesh all over.
Then he gave a jump up our steps to the veranda, and said: ‘Hoy, Moy, how’s it?’ I thought she was going to fall right off the veranda wall, and her face had gone all different again.
‘How are you, Gregory?’ said Moira, all calm and proud.
‘Oh, skidding along,’ he said, and I could see he felt awkward, because he hadn’t looked at her once, and his skin was all red around the freckles. And she didn’t say anything, and she was looking at him as if she couldn’t believe it was him.
‘I hope the rain will keep off for the braavleis,’ said Mom, in her visiting voice, and she looked hard at me, and I had to get up and go inside with her. But I could see Greg didn’t want us to go at all, and I could see Moy knew it; her eyes were blue again, a pale thin blue, and her mouth was small.
Well Mom went into the kitchen to finally make the sausage rolls, and I went into our bedroom, because I could see what went on on the veranda from behind the curtains.
Greg sat on the veranda wall, and whistled, he was whistling, I love you, yes I do; and Moira was gazing at him as if he were a Christmas beetle she had just noticed; and then he began whistling. Three little words, and suddenly Moira got down off the wall, and stretched herself like a cat when it’s going to walk off somewhere, and Greg said, ‘Skinny!’
At this she made her eyebrows go up, and I’ve never seen such a look.
And he was getting redder in the face, and he said: ‘You’d better not wear that dress to the braavleis, it’s going to rain.’
Moira didn’t say a word for what seemed about half an hour, and then she said, in that lazy sort of voice, ‘Well, Greg Jackson, if you’ve changed your mind it’s okay with me.’
‘Changed my mind?’ he said, very quick, and he looked scared; and she looked scared, and she asked: ‘What did you say all those things for last night?’
‘Say what?’ he asked, scareder than ever, and I could see he was trying to remember what he’d said.
Moira was just looking at him, and I wouldn’t have liked to be Greg Jackson just then, I can tell you. Then she walked off the veranda, letting her skirts swish slowly, and through the kitchen, and into our room, and then she sat on the bed.
‘I’m not going to the braavleis, Mom,’ she said, in that sweet slow voice like Mom when she’s got visitors and she wishes they’d go.
Mom just sighed, and slapped the dough about on the kitchen table. Dad made the springs of the bed creak, and he said half aloud: ‘Oh my God preserve me!’
Mom left the pastry, and gave a glare through the door of their bedroom at Dad, and then came into our room. There was Moira sitting all lumped up on her bed as if she’d got the stitch, and her face was like pastry dough. Mom said nothing to Moira, but went on to the veranda Greg was still sitting there looking sick.
‘Well, son,’ Mom said, in her easy voice, the voice she had when she was tired of everything, but keeping up, ‘Well, son, I think Moy’s got a bit of a headache from the heat.’
As I’ve said, I wasn’t sweet on Greg that holidays but if I was Moy I would have been, the way he looked just then, all sad but grown-up, like a man, when he said: ‘Mrs Hughes, I don’t know what I’ve done.’ Mom just smiled, and sighed. ‘I can’t marry, Mrs Hughes, I’ve got five years’ training ahead of me.’
Mom smiled and said, ‘Of course, son, of course.’
I was lying on my bed with my stamps, and Moira was on her bed, listening, and the way she smiled gave me a bad shiver.
‘Listen to him,’ she said, in a loud voice, ‘Marry? Why does everyone go on about marrying? They’re nuts. I wouldn’t marry Greg Jackson anyway if he was the last man on a desert island.’
Outside, I could hear Mom sigh hard, then her voice quick and low, and then the sound of Greg’s feet crunching off over the cinders of the path.
Then Mom came back into our room, and Moira said, all despairing, ‘Mom, what made you say that about marrying?’
‘He said it, my girl, I didn’t.’
‘Marrying!’ said Moira, laughing hard.
Mom said: ‘What did he say then, you talked about him saying something?’
‘Oh you all make me sick,’ said Moira, and lay down on her bed, turned away from us. Mom hitched her head at me, and we went out. By then it was five in the afternoon and the cars would be leaving at six, so Mom finished the sausage rolls in the oven, and packed the food, and then she took off her apron and went across to Jordan’s house. Moira did not see her go, because she was still lost to the world in her pillow.
Soon Mom came back and put the food into the car. Then Jordan came over with Beth from the store and said to me, ‘Betty, my Mom says, will you and Moy come in our car to the braavleis, because your car’s full of food.’
‘I will,’ I said, ‘but Moira’s got a headache.’
But at this moment Moira called out from our room, ‘Thanks, Jordan, I’d like to come.’
So Mom called to Pop, and they went off in our car together and I could see she was talking to him all the time, and he was just pulling the gears about and looking resigned to life.
I and Moira went with Jordan and Beth in their car. I could see Jordan was cross because he wanted to be with Beth, and Beth kept smiling at Moira with her eyebrows up, to tell her she knew what was going on, and Moira smiled back, and talked a lot in her visiting voice.
At the braavleis it was a high place at the end of a vlei, where it rose into a small hill full of big boulders. The grass had been cut that morning by natives of the farmer who always let us use his farm for the braavleis. It was pretty, with the hill behind and the moon coming up over it, and then the cleared space, and the vlei sweeping down to the river, and the trees on either side. The moon was just over the trees when we got there, so the trees looked black and big, and the boulders were big and looked as if they might topple over, and the grass was silvery, but the great bonfire was roaring up twenty feet, and in the space around the fire it was all hot and red. The trench of embers where the spits were for the meat was on one side, and Moira went there as soon as she arrived, and helped with the cooking.
Greg was not there, and I thought he wouldn’t come, but much later, when we were all earing the meat, and laughing because it burned our fingers it was so hot, I saw him on the other side of the fire talking to Mom. Moira saw him talking, and she didn’t like it, but she pretended not to see.
By then we were seated in a half-circle on the side of the fire the wind was blowing, so that the red flames were sweeping off away from us. There were about fifty people from the station and some farmers from round about. Moira sat by me, quiet, eating grilled ribs and sausage rolls, and she was pleased I was there for once, so that she wouldn’t seem to be by herself. She had changed her dress back again, and it was the dress she had last year for the braavleis, it was blue with pleats, and it was the dress she had for best the last year at school, so it wasn’t very modern any more. Across the fire, I could see Greg. He did not look at Moira and she did not look at him. Except that this year Jordan did not want to sit by Moira but by Beth, I kept feeling peculiar, as if this year was really last year, and in a minute Greg would walk across past the fire, and say: ‘Moira Hughes? I wouldn’t have known you.’
But he stayed where he was. He was sitting on his legs, with his hands on his knees. I could see his legs and knees and his big hands all red from the fire and the yellow hair glinting on the red. His face was red too and wet with the heat.
Then everyone began singing. We were singing Sarie Marais, and Sugar Bush, and Henrietta’s Wedding and We don’t want to go home. Moira and Greg were both singing as hard as they could.
It began to get late. The natives were damping down the cooking trench with earth, and looking for scraps of meat and bits of sausage roll, and the big fire was sinking down. It would be time in a minute for the big dance in a circle around the fire.
Moira was just sitting. Her legs were tucked under sideways, and they had got scratched from the grass. I could see the white dry scratches across the sunburn, and I can tell you it was a good thing she didn’t wear her best muslin because there wouldn’t have been much left of it. Her hair, that she had curled yesterday, was tied back in a ribbon, so that her face looked small and thin.
I said: ‘Here, Moy, don’t look like your own funeral,’ and she said: ‘I will if I like.’ Then she gave me a bit of a grin, and she said: ‘Let me give you a word of warning for when you’re grown-up, don’t believe a word men say, I’m telling you.’
But I could see she was feeling better just then.
At that very moment the red light of the fire on the grass just in front of us went out, and someone sat down, and I hoped it was Greg and it was. They were looking at each other again, but my skin didn’t tingle at all, so I looked at his face and at her face, and they were both quiet and sensible.
Then Moira reached out for a piece of grass, pulled it clean and neat out of the socket, and began nibbling at the soft piece at the end; and it was just the way Mom reached out for her knitting when she was against Dad. But of course Greg did not know the resemblance.
‘Moy,’ he said, ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘My name is Moira,’ said Moira, looking him in the eyes.
‘Oh heck, Moira,’ he said, sounding exasperated just like Dad.
I wriggled back away from the two of them into the crowd that was still singing softly Sarie Marais, and looking at the way the fire was glowing low and soft, ebbing red and then dark as the wind came up from the river. The moon was half-covered with the big soft silvery clouds, and the red light was strong on our faces.
I could just hear what they said, I wasn’t going to move too far off, I can tell you.
‘I don’t know what I’ve said,’ said Greg.
‘It doesn’t matter in the slightest,’ said Moira.
‘Moira, for crying out aloud!’
‘Why did you say that about marrying?’ said Moira, and her voice was shaky. She was going to cry if she didn’t watch out. ‘I thought you thought I meant …’
‘You think too much,’ said Moira, tossing her head carefully so that her long tail of hair should come forward and lie on her shoulder. She put up her hand, and stroked the curls smooth.
‘Moira, I’ve got another five years at university. I couldn’t say to you, let’s get engaged for five years.’
‘I never said you should,’ said Moira, calm and lofty, examining the scratches on her legs.
The way she was sitting, curled up sideways, with her hair lying forward like syrup on her shoulder, it was pretty, it was as pretty as I’ve ever seen, and I could see his face, sad and almost sick.
‘You’re so pretty, Moy,’ he said, jerking it out.
Moira seemed not to be able to move. Then she turned her head slowly and looked at him. I could see the beginning of something terrible on her face. The shiver had begun under my hair at the back of my neck, and was slowly moving down to the small of my back.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said, sounding angry, leaning right forward with his eyes almost into her face.
And now she looked the way she had last night, when I was not awake and said, was it raining outside.
‘When you look like that,’ he said, quite desperate about everything, ‘it makes me feel …’
People were getting up now all around us, the fire had burned right down, it was a low wave of red heat coming out at us. The redness was on our shoulders and legs, but our faces were having a chance to cool off. The moon had come out again full and bright, and the cloud had rolled on, and it was funny the way the light was red to their shoulders, and the white of the moon on their faces, and their eyes glistening. I didn’t like it; I was shivering; it was the most peculiar moment of all my life.
‘Well,’ said Moira, and she sounded just too tired even to try to understand, ‘that’s what you said last night, wasn’t it?’
‘Don’t you see,’ he said, trying to explain, his tongue all mixed up, ‘I can’t help – I love you, I don’t know …’
Now she smiled, and I knew the smile at once, it was the way Mom smiled at Dad when if he had any sense he’d shut up. It was sweet and loving, but it was sad, and as if she was saying, Lord, you’re a fool, Dickson Hughes!
Moira went on smiling like that at Greg, and he was sick and angry and not understanding a thing.
‘I love you,’ he said again.
‘Well I love you and what of it?’ said Moira.
‘But it will be five years.’
‘And what has that got to do with anything?’ At this she began to laugh.
‘But Moy …’
‘My name is Moira,’ she said, once and for all.
For a moment they were both white and angry, their eyes glimmering with the big white moon over them.
There was a shout and a hustle, and suddenly all the people were in the big circle around the big low heap of fire, and they were whirling around and around, yelling and screaming. Greg and Moira stayed where they were, just outside the range of the feet, and they didn’t hear a thing.
‘You’re so pretty,’ he was saying, in that rough, cross, helpless voice. ‘I love you, Moira, there couldn’t ever be anyone but you.’
She was smiling, and he went on saying: ‘I love you, I see your face all the time, I see your hair and your face and your eyes.’
And I wished he’d go on, the poor sap, just saying it, for every minute, it was more like last night when I woke up and I thought it had rained, the feeling of the dry earth with the rain just on it, that was how she was, and she looked as if she would sit there and listen for ever to the words he said, and she didn’t want to hear him saying. Why don’t you say something Moy, you don’t say anything, you do understand don’t you? – it’s not fair, it isn’t right to bind you when we’re so young. But he started on saying it in just a minute, and then she smiled her visiting smile, and she said: Gregory Jackson, you’re a fool.
Then she got herself off the grass and went across to Mom to help load the car up, and she never once looked at Greg again, not for the rest of the holidays.
Lucy Grange (#ulink_bcb7a68c-6e36-58d1-b143-93f491858e2a)
The farm was fifty miles from the nearest town, in a maize-growing district. The mealie lands began at a stone’s throw from the front door of the farm house. At the back were several acres of energetic and colourful domestic growth: chicken runs, vegetables, pumpkins. Even on the veranda were sacks of grain and bundles of hoes. The life on the farm, her husband’s life, washed around the house leaving old scraps of iron on the front step where the children played wagon-and-driver, or a bottle of medicine for a sick animal on her dressing-table among the bottles of Elizabeth Arden.
One walked straight from the veranda of this gaunt, iron-roofed, brick-barracks of a house into a wide drawing-room that was shaded in green and orange Liberty linens.
‘Stylish?’ said the farmers’ wives, when they came on formal calls, asking questions of themselves while they discussed with Lucy Grange the price of butter and servants’ aprons and their husbands discussed the farm with George Grange. They never ‘dropped over’ to see Lucy Grange; they never rang her up with invitations to ‘spend the day’. They would finger the books on child psychology, politics, art; gaze guiltily at the pictures on her walls, which they felt they ought to be able to recognize, and say: ‘I can see you are a great reader, Mrs Grange.’
There were years of discussing her among themselves before their voices held the good-natured amusement of acceptance: ‘I found Lucy in the vegetable patch wearing gloves full of cold cream.’ ‘Lucy has ordered another dress pattern from town.’ And later still, with self-consciously straightened shoulders, eyes directed primly before them, discreet non-committal voices: ‘Lucy is very attractive to men.’
One can imagine her, when they left at the end of those mercifully so-short visits, standing on the veranda and smiling bitterly after the satisfactory solid women with their straight ‘tailored’ dresses, made by the Dutchwoman at the store at seven-and-six a time, buttoned loosely across their well-used breasts, with their untidy hair permed every six months in town, with their femininity which was asserted once and for all by a clumsy scrawl of red across the mouth. One can imagine her clenching her fists and saying fiercely to the mealie fields which rippled greenly all around her, cream-topped like the sea: ‘I won’t. I simply won’t. He needn’t imagine that I will!’
‘Do you like my new dress, George?’
‘You’re the best-looking woman in the district, Lucy.’ So it seemed, on the face of it, that he didn’t expect, or even want, that she should …
Meanwhile she continued to order cook-books from town, made new recipes of pumpkin and green mealies and chicken, put skin-food on her face at night; constructed attractive nursery furniture out of packing cases enamelled white – the farm wasn’t doing too well; and discussed with George how little Betty’s cough was probably psychological.
‘I’m sure you’re right, my dear.’
Then the rich, over-controlled voice: ‘Yes, darling. No, my sweetheart. Yes, of course, I’ll play bricks with you, but you must have your lunch first.’ Then it broke, hard and shrill: ‘Don’t make all that noise, darling. I can’t stand it. Go on, go and play in the garden and leave me in peace.’
Sometimes, storms of tears. Afterwards: ‘Really, George, didn’t your mother ever tell you that all women cry sometimes? It’s as good as a tonic. Or a holiday.’ And a lot of high laughter and gay explanations at which George hastened to guffaw. He liked her gay. She usually was. For instance, she was a good mimic. She would ‘take off, deliberately trying to relieve his mind of farm worries, the visiting policemen, who toured the district once a month to see if the natives were behaving themselves, or the Government agricultural officials.
‘Do you want to see my husband?’
That was what they had come for, but they seldom pressed the point. They sat far longer than they had intended, drinking tea, talking about themselves. They would go away and say at the bar in the village: ‘Mrs Grange is a smart woman, isn’t she?’
And Lucy would be acting for George’s benefit, how a khaki-clad, sun-raw youth had bent into her room, looking around him with comical surprise, had taken a cup of tea thanking her three times, had knocked over an ashtray, stayed for lunch and afternoon tea, and left saying with awkward gallantry: ‘It’s a real treat to meet a lady like you who is interested in things.’
‘You shouldn’t be so hard on us poor Colonials, Lucy.’
Finally one can imagine how one day, when the house-boy came to her in the chicken-runs to say that there was a baas waiting to see her at the house, it was no sweating policeman, thirsty after fifteen dusty miles on a motor-cycle, to whom she must be gracious.
He was a city man, of perhaps forty or forty-five, dressed in city clothes. At first glance she felt a shudder of repulsion. It was a coarse face, and sensual; and he looked like a patient vulture as the keen heavy-lidded eyes travelled up and down her body.
‘Are you looking for my husband perhaps? He’s in the cow-sheds this morning.’
‘No, I don’t think I am. I was.’
She laughed. It was as if he had started playing a record she had not heard for a long time, and which began her feet tapping. It was years since she had played this game. ‘I’ll get you some tea,’ she said hurriedly and left him in her pretty drawing-room.
Collecting the cups, her hands were clumsy. ‘Why, Lucy!’ she said to herself, archly. She came back very serious and responsible to find him standing in front of the picture which filled half the wall at one end of the room. ‘I should have thought you had sunflowers enough here,’ he said, in his heavy over-emphasized voice, which made her listen for meanings behind his words. And when he turned away from the wall and came to sit down, leaning forward, examining her, she suppressed an impulse to apologize for the picture: ‘Van Gogh is obvious, but he’s rather effective,’ she might have said; and felt that the whole room was that: effective but obvious. But she was pleasantly conscious of how she looked: graceful and cool in her green linen dress, with her corn-coloured hair knotted demurely in her neck. She lifted wide serious eyes to his face and asked: ‘Milk? Sugar?’ and knew that the corners of her mouth were tight with self-consciousness.
When he left, three hours later, he turned her hand over and lightly kissed the palm. She looked down at the greasy dark head, the red folded neck, and stood rigid, thinking of the raw creased necks of vultures.
Then he straightened up and said with simple kindliness: ‘You must be lonely here, my dear,’ and she was astounded to find her eyes full of tears.
‘One does what one can to make a show of it,’ She kept her lids lowered and her voice light. Inside she was weeping with gratitude. Embarrassed, she said quickly: ‘You know, you haven’t yet said what you came for.’
‘I sell insurance. And besides, I’ve heard people talk of you.’
She imagined the talk and smiled stiffly. ‘You don’t seem to take your work very seriously.’
‘If I may I’ll come back another time and try again?’
She did not reply. He said: ‘My dear, I’ll tell you a secret: one of the reasons I chose this district was because of you. Surely there aren’t so many people in this country one can really talk to that we can afford not to take each other seriously?’
He touched her cheek with his hand, smiled, and went. She heard the last thing he had said like a parody of the things she often said and felt a violent revulsion.
She went to her bedroom, where she found herself in front of the mirror. Her hands went to her cheeks and she drew in her breath with the shock. ‘Why, Lucy, whatever is the matter with you?’ Her eyes were dancing, her mouth smiled irresistibly. Yet she heard the archness of her Why, Lucy and thought: I’m going to pieces. I must have gone to pieces without knowing it.
Later she found herself singing in the pantry as she made a cake, stopped herself; made herself look at the insurance salesman’s face against her closed eyelids, and instinctively wiped the palms of her hands against her skirt.
He came three days later. Again, in the first shock of seeing him stand at the door, smiling familiarly, she thought: ‘It’s the face of an old animal. He probably chose this kind of work because of the opportunities it gives him.’
He talked of London, where he had lately been on leave; about the art galleries and the theatres.
She could not help warming, because of her hunger for this kind of talk. She could not help an apologetic note in her voice, because she knew that after so many years in this exile she must seem provincial. She liked him because he associated himself with her abdication from her standards by saying: ‘Yes, yes, my dear, in a country like this we all learn to accept the second rate.’
While he talked his eyes were roving. He was listening. Outside the window in the dust the turkeys were scraping and gobbling. In the next room the houseboy was moving; then there was silence because he had gone to get his midday meal. The children had had their lunch and gone off to the garden with the nurse.
No, she said to herself. No, no, no.
‘Does your husband come back for lunch?’
‘He takes it on the lands at this time of the year, he’s so busy.’
He came over and sat beside her. ‘Well, shall we console each other?’ She was crying in his arms. She could feel their impatient and irritable tightening.
In the bedroom, she kept her eyes shut. His hand travelled up and down her back. ‘What’s the matter, little one? What’s the matter?’
His voice was a sedative. She could have fallen asleep and lain there for a week inside the anonymous comforting arms. But he was looking at his watch over her shoulder. ‘We’d better get dressed, hadn’t we?’
‘Of course.’
She sat naked on the bed, covering herself with her arms, looking at his white hairy body in loathing, and then at the creased red neck. She became extremely gay, and in the living-room they sat side by side on the big sofa, being ironical. Then he put his arm around her, and she curled up inside it, and cried again. She clung to him and felt him going away from her, and in a few minutes he stood up saying: ‘Wouldn’t do for your old man to come in and find us like this, would it?’ Even while she was hating him for the ‘old man’ she put her arms around him and said: ‘You’ll come back soon.’
‘I couldn’t keep away.’ The voice purred caressingly over her head, and she said: ‘You know, I’m very lonely.’
‘Darling, I’ll come as soon as I can. I’ve a living to make, you know.’
She let her arms drop, and smiled, and watched him drive away down the rutted red-dust farm road, between the rippling sea-coloured mealies.
She knew he would come again, and next time she would not cry; she would stand again like this watching him go, hating him, thinking of how he had said: In this country we learn to accept the second-rate; and he would come again and again and again; and she would stand here, watching him go and hating him.
A Mild Attack of Locusts (#ulink_38c875e1-9d8a-5235-8d29-6c5c48f01dff)
The rains that year were good, they were coming nicely just as the crops needed them – or so Margaret gathered when the men said they were not too bad. She never had an opinion of her own on matters like the weather, because even to know about what seems a simple thing like the weather needs experience. Which Margaret had not got. The men were Richard her husband, and old Stephen, Richard’s father, a farmer from way back, and these two might argue for hours whether the rains were ruinous, or just ordinarily exasperating. Margaret had been on the farm three years. She still did not understand how they did not go bankrupt altogether, when the men never had a good word for the weather, or the soil, or the Government. But she was getting to learn the language. Farmer’s language. And they neither went bankrupt nor got very rich. They jogged along, doing comfortably.
Their crop was maize. Their farm was three thousand acres on the ridges that rise up towards the Zambesi escarpment, high, dry windswept country, cold and dusty in winter, but now, being the wet season, steamy with the heat rising in wet soft waves off miles of green foliage. Beautiful it was, with the sky blue and brilliant halls of air, and the bright green folds and hollows of country beneath, and the mountains lying sharp and bare twenty miles off across the river. The sky made her eyes ache, she was not used to it. One does not look so much at the sky in the city she came from. So that evening when Richard said: ‘The Government is sending out warnings that locusts are expected, coming down from the breeding grounds up North,’ her instinct was to look about her at the trees. Insects – swarms of them – horrible! But Richard and the old man had raised their eyes and were looking up over the mountains. ‘We haven’t had locusts in seven years,’ they said. ‘They go in cycles, locusts do.’ And then: ‘There goes our crop for this season!’
But they went on with the work of the farm just as usual, until one day they were coming up the road to the homestead for the midday break, when old Stephen stopped, raised his finger and pointed: ‘Look, look, there they are!’
Out ran Margaret to join them, looking at the hills. Out came the servants from the kitchen. They all stood and gazed. Over the rocky levels of the mountain was a streak of rust-coloured air. Locusts. There they came.
At once Richard shouted at the cook-boy. Old Stephen yelled at the house-boy. The cook-boy ran to beat the old ploughshare hanging from a tree-branch, which was used to summon the labourers at moments of crisis. The house-boy ran off to the store to collect tin cans, any old bit of metal. The farm was ringing with the clamour of the gong, and they could see the labourers come pouring out of the compound, pointing at the hills and shouting excitedly. Soon they had all come up to the house, and Richard and old Stephen were giving them orders – Hurry, hurry, hurry.
And off they ran again, the two white men with them, and in a few minutes Margaret could see the smoke of fires rising from all around the farm-lands. Piles of wood and grass had been prepared there. There were seven patches of bared soil, yellow and ox-blood colour, and pink, where the new mealies were just showing, making a film of bright green, and around each drifted up thick clouds of smoke. They were throwing wet leaves on to the fires now, to make it acrid and black. Margaret was watching the hills. Now there was a long low cloud advancing, rust-colour still, swelling forwards and out as she looked. The telephone was ringing. Neighbours – quick, quick, there come the locusts. Old Smith had had his crop eaten to the ground. Quick, get your fires started. For of course, while every farmer hoped the locusts would overlook his farm and go on to the next, it was only fair to warn each other, one must play fair. Everywhere, fifty miles over the countryside, the smoke was rising from myriads of fires, Margaret answered the telephone calls, and between stood watching the locusts. The air was darkening. A strange darkness, for the sun was blazing – it was like the darkness of a veld fire, when the air gets thick with smoke. The sunlight comes down distorted, a thick hot orange. Oppressive it was, too, with the heaviness of a storm. The locusts were coming fast. Now half the sky was darkened. Behind the reddish veils in front which were the advance guard of the swarm, the main swarm showed in dense black cloud, reaching almost to the sun itself.
Margaret was wondering what she could do to help. She did not know. Then up came old Stephen from the lands. ‘We’re finished! These beggars can eat every leaf and blade off the farm in half an hour! And it is only early afternoon – if we can make enough smoke, make enough noise till the sun goes down, they’ll settle somewhere else perhaps …’ And then: ‘Get the kettle going. It’s thirsty work, this.’
So Margaret went to the kitchen, and stoked up the fire, and boiled the water. Now, on the tin roof of the kitchen she could hear the thuds of falling locusts, or a scratching slither as one skidded down. Here were the first of them. From down on the lands came the beating and banging and clanging of a hundred petrol tins and bits of metal. Stephen impatiently waited while one petrol tin was filled with tea, hot, sweet and orange-coloured, and the other with water. In the meantime, he told Margaret about how twenty years back he was eaten out, made bankrupt by the locust armies. And then, still talking, he hoisted up the petrol cans, one in each hand, by the wood pieces set corner-wise each, and jogged off down to the road to the thirsty labourers. By now the locusts were falling like hail on to the roof of the kitchen. It sounded like a heavy storm. Margaret looked out and saw the air dark with a criss-cross of the insects, and she set her teeth and ran out into it – what men could do, she could. Overhead the air was thick, locusts everywhere. The locusts were flopping against her, and she brushed them off, heavy red brown creatures, looking at her with their beady old-men’s eyes while they clung with hard serrated legs. She held her breath with disgust and ran into the house. There it was even more like being in a heavy storm. The iron roof was reverberating, and the clamour of iron from the lands was like thunder. Looking out, all the trees were queer and still, clotted with insects, their boughs weighed to the ground. The earth seemed to be moving, locusts crawling everywhere, she could not see the lands at all, so thick was the swarm. Towards the mountains it was like looking into driving rain -even as she watched, the sun was blotted out with a fresh onrush of them. It was a half-night, a perverted blackness. Then came a sharp crack from the bush – a branch had snapped off. Then another. A tree down the slope leaned over and settled heavily to the ground. Through the hail of insects a man came running. More tea, more water was needed. She supplied them. She kept the fires stoked and filled tins with liquid, and then it was four in the afternoon, and the locusts had been pouring across overhead for a couple of hours. Up came old Stephen again, crunching locusts underfoot with every step, locusts clinging all over him, cursing and swearing, banging with his old hat at the air. At the doorway he stopped briefly, hastily pulling at the clinging insects and throwing them off, then he plunged into the locust-free living-room.
‘All the crops finished. Nothing left,’ he said.
But the gongs were still beating, the men still shouting, and Margaret asked: ‘Why do you go on with it, then?’
‘The main swarm isn’t settling. They are heavy with eggs. They are looking for a place to settle and lay. If we can stop the main body settling on our farm, that’s everything. If they get a chance to lay their eggs, we are going to have everything eaten flat with hoppers later on.’ He picked a stray locust off his shirt, and split it down his thumbnail – it was clotted inside with eggs. ‘Imagine that multiplied by millions. You ever see a hopper swarm on the march? Well, you’re lucky.’
Margaret thought an adult swarm was bad enough. Outside now the light on the earth was a pale thin yellow, clotted with moving shadow, the clouds of moving insects thickened and lightened like driving rain. Old Stephen said: ‘They’ve got the wind behind them, that’s something.’
‘Is it very bad?’ asked Margaret fearfully, and the old man said emphatically: ‘We’re finished. This swarm may pass over, but once they’ve started, they’ll be coming down from the North now one after another. And then there are the hoppers – it might go on for two or three years.’
Margaret sat down helplessly, and thought: Well, if it’s the end, it’s the end. What now? We’ll all three have to go back to town … But at this, she took a quick look at Stephen, the old man who had farmed forty years in this country, been bankrupt twice, and she knew nothing would make him go and become a clerk in the city. Yet her heart ached for him; he looked so tired, the worry-lines deep from nose to mouth. Poor old man … He had lifted up a locust that had got itself somehow into his pocket, holding it in the air by one leg. ‘You’ve got the strength of a steel-spring in those legs of yours,’ he was telling the locust, good-humouredly. Then, although he had been fighting locusts, squashing locusts, yelling at locusts, sweeping them in great mounds into the fires to burn for the last three hours, nevertheless he took this one to the door, and carefully threw it out to join its fellows as if he would rather not harm a hair of its head. This comforted Margaret, all at once she felt irrationally cheered. She remembered it was not the first time in the last three years the men had announced their final and irremediable ruin.
‘Get me a drink, lass,’ he then said, and she set the bottle of whisky by him.
In the meantime, out in the pelting storm of insects, her husband was banging the gong, feeding the fires with leaves, the insects clinging to him all over – she shuddered. ‘How can you bear to let them touch you?’ she asked. He looked at her, disapproving. She felt suitably humble – just as she had when he had first taken a good look at her city self, hair waved and golden, nails red and pointed. Now she was a proper farmer’s wife, in sensible shoes and a solid skirt. She might even get to letting locusts settle on her – in time.
Having tossed back a whisky or two, old Stephen went back into the battle, wading now through glistening brown waves of locusts.
Five o’clock. The sun would set in an hour. Then the swarm would settle. It was as thick overhead as ever. The trees were ragged mounds of glistening brown.
Margaret began to cry. It was all so hopeless – if it wasn’t a bad season, it was locusts, if it wasn’t locusts, it was army-worm, or veld fires. Always something. The rustling of the locust armies was like a big forest in the storm, their settling on the roof was like the beating of the rain, the ground was invisible in a sleek brown surging tide – it was like being drowned in locusts, submerged by the loathsome brown flood. It seemed as if the roof might sink in under the weight of them, as if the door might give in under their pressure and these rooms fill with them – and it was getting so dark … she looked up. The air was thinner, gaps of blue showed in the dark moving clouds. The blue spaces were cold and thin: the sun must be setting. Through the fog of insects she saw figures approaching. First old Stephen, marching bravely along, then her husband, drawn and haggard with weariness. Behind them the servants. All were crawling all over with insects. The sound of the gongs had stopped. She could hear nothing but the ceaseless rustle of a myriad of wings.
The two men slapped off the insects and came in.
‘Well,’ said Richard, kissing her on the cheek, ‘the main swarm has gone over.’
‘For the Lord’s sake,’ said Margaret angrily, still half-crying, ‘what’s here is bad enough, isn’t it?’ For although the evening air was no longer black and thick, but a clear blue, with a pattern of insects whizzing this way and that across it, everything else – trees, buildings, bushes, earth, was gone under the moving brown masses.
‘If it doesn’t rain in the night and keep them here – if it doesn’t rain and weight them down with water, they’ll be off in the morning at sunrise.’
‘We’re bound to have some hoppers. But not the main swarm, that’s something.’
Margaret roused herself, wiped her eyes, pretended she had not been crying, and fetched them some supper, for the servants were too exhausted to move. She sent them down to the compound to rest.
She served the supper and sat listening. There is not one maize-plant left, she heard. Not one. The men would get the planters out the moment the locusts had gone. They must start all over again.
‘But what’s the use of that?’ Margaret wondered, if the whole farm was going to be crawling with hoppers? But she listened while they discussed the new Government pamphlet which said how to defeat the hoppers. You must have men out all the time moving over the farm to watch for movement in the grass. When you find a patch of hoppers, small lively black things, like crickets, then you dig trenches around the patch, or spray them with poison from pumps supplied by the Government. The Government wanted them to cooperate in a world plan for eliminating this plague for ever. You should attack locusts at the source. Hoppers, in short. The men were talking as if they were planning a war, and Margaret listened, amazed.
In the night it was quiet, no sign of the settled armies outside, except sometimes a branch snapped, or a tree could be heard crashing down.
Margaret slept badly in the bed beside Richard, who was sleeping like the dead, exhausted with the afternoon’s fight. In the morning she woke to yellow sunshine lying across the bed, clear sunshine, with an occasional blotch of shadow moving over it. She went to the window. Old Stephen was ahead of her. There he stood outside, gazing down over the bush. And she gazed, astounded – and entranced, much against her will. For it looked as if every tree, every bush, all the earth, were lit with pale flames. The locusts were fanning their wings to free them of the night dews. There was a shimmer of red-tinged gold light everywhere.
She went out to join the old man, stepping carefully among the insects. They stood and watched. Overhead the sky was blue, blue and clear.
‘Pretty,’ said old Stephen, with satisfaction.
Well, thought Margaret, we may be ruined, we may be bankrupt, but not everyone has seen an army of locusts fanning their wings at dawn.
Over the slopes, in the distance, a faint red smear showed in the sky, thickened and spread. ‘There they go,’ said old Stephen. ‘There goes the main army, off South.’
And now from the trees, from the earth all round them, the locusts were taking wing. They were like small aircraft, manoeuvring for the take-off, trying their wings to see if they were dry enough. Off they went. A reddish-brown steam was rising off the miles of bush, off the lands, the earth. Again the sunlight darkened.
And as the clotted branches lifted, the weight on them lightening, there was nothing but the black spines of branches, trees. No green left, nothing. All morning they watched, the three of them, as the brown crust thinned and broke and dissolved, flying up to mass with the main army, now a brownish-red smear in the Southern sky. The lands which had been filmed with green, the new tender mealie plants, were stark and bare. All the trees stripped. A devastated landscape. No green, no green anywhere.
By midday the reddish cloud had gone. Only an occasional locust flopped down. On the ground were the corpses and the wounded. The African labourers were sweeping these up with branches and collecting them in tins.
‘Ever eaten sun-dried locust?’ asked old Stephen. ‘That time twenty years ago, when I went broke, I lived on mealiemeal and dried locusts for three months. They aren’t bad at all – rather like smoked fish, if you come to think of it.’
But Margaret preferred not even to think of it.
After the midday meal the men went off to the lands. Everything was to be replanted. With a bit of luck another swarm would not come travelling down just this way. But they hoped it would rain very soon, to spring some new grass, because the cattle would die otherwise – there was not a blade of grass left on the farm. As for Margaret, she was trying to get used to the idea of three or four years of locusts. Locusts were going to be like bad weather, from now on, always imminent. She felt like a survivor after the war – if this devastated and mangled countryside was not ruin, well, what then was ruin?
But the men ate their supper with good appetites.
‘It could have been worse,’ was what they said. ‘It could be much worse.’
Flavours of Exile (#ulink_1e21cb16-78e4-5190-951c-148545d84f5c)
At the foot of the hill, near the well, was the vegetable garden, an acre fenced off from the Big Field whose earth was so rich that mealies grew there year after year ten feet tall. Nursed from that fabulous soil, carrots, lettuces, beets, tasting as I have never found vegetables taste since, loaded our table and the tables of our neighbours. Sometimes, if the garden boy was late with the supply for lunch, I would run down the steep pebbly path through the trees at the back of the hill, and along the red dust of the wagon road until I could see the windlass under its shed of thatch. There I stopped. The smell of manure, of sun on foliage, of evaporating water, rose to my head: two steps farther, and I could look down into the vegetable garden enclosed within its tall pale of reeds, rich chocolate earth studded emerald green, frothed with the white of cauliflowers, jewelled with the purple globes of eggplant and the scarlet wealth of tomatoes. Around the fence grew lemons, pawpaws, bananas, shapes of gold and yellow in their patterns of green.
In another five minutes I would be dragging from the earth carrots ten inches long, and so succulent they snapped between two fingers. I ate my allowance of these before the cook could boil them and drown them in the white flour sauce without which – and unless they were served in the large china vegetable dishes brought from that old house in London – they were not carrots to my mother.
For her, that garden represented a defeat.
When the family first came to the farm, she built vegetable beds on the kopje near the house. She had in her mind, perhaps, a vision of the farmhouse surrounded by out buildings and gardens like a hen sheltering its chicks.
The kopje was all stone. As soon as the grass was cleared off its crown where the house stood, the fierce rains beat the soil away. Those first vegetable beds were thin sifted earth walled by pebbles. The water was brought up from the well in the water-cart.
‘Water is gold,’ grumbled my father, eating peas which he reckoned must cost a shilling a mouthful. ‘Water is gold!’ he came to shout at last, as my mother toiled and bent over those reluctant beds. But she got more pleasure from them than she ever did from the exhaustless plenty of the garden under the hill.
At last, the spaces in the bush where the old beds had been were seeded by wild or vagrant plants, and we children played there. Someone must have thrown away gooseberries, for soon the low-spreading bushes covered the earth. We used to creep under them, William MacGregor and I, lie flat on our backs, and look through the leaves at the brilliant sky, reaching around us for the tiny sharp-sweet yellow fruits in their jackets of papery white. The smell of the leaves was spicy. It intoxicated us. We would laugh and shout, then quarrel; and William, to make up, shelled a double handful of the fruit and poured it into my skirt, and we ate together, pressing the biggest berries on each other. When we could eat no more, we filled baskets and took them to the kitchen to be made into that rich jam which – if allowed to burn just the right amount on the pan – is the best jam in the world, clear sweet amber, with lumps of sticky sharpness in it, as if the stings of bees were preserved in honey.
But my mother did not like it. ‘Cape gooseberries!’ she said bitterly. ‘They aren’t gooseberries at all. Oh, if I could let you taste a pie made of real English gooseberries.’
In due course, the marvels of civilization made this possible; she found a tin of gooseberries in the Greek store at the station, and made us a pie.
My parents and William’s ate the pie with a truly religious emotion.
It was this experience with the gooseberries that made me cautious when it came to brussels sprouts. Year after year my mother yearned for brussels sprouts, whose name came to represent to me something exotic and for ever unattainable. When at last she managed to grow half a dozen spikes of this plant, in one cold winter which offered us sufficient frost, she of course sent a note to the MacGregors, so that they might share the treat. They came from Glasgow, they came from Home, and they could share the language of nostalgia. At the table the four grown-ups ate the bitter little cabbages and agreed that the soil of Africa was unable to grow food that had any taste at all. I said scornfully that I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. But William, three years older than myself, passed his plate up and said he found them delicious. It was like a betrayal; and afterwards I demanded how he could like such flavourless stuff. He smiled at me and said it cost us nothing to pretend, did it?
That smile, so gentle, a little whimsical, was a lesson to me and I remembered it when it came to the affair of the cherries. She found a tin of cherries at the store, we ate them with cream; and while she sighed over memories of barrows loaded with cherries in the streets of London, I sighed with her, ate fervently, and was careful not to meet her eyes.
And when she said: ‘The pomegranates will be fruiting soon,’ I would offer to run down and see how they progressed; and returned from the examination saying: ‘It won’t be long now, really it won’t – perhaps next year.’
The truth was, my emotion over the pomegranates was not entirely due to the beautiful lesson in courtesy given me by William. Brussels sprouts, cherries, English gooseberries -they were my mother’s; they recurred in her talk as often as ‘a real London pea-souper’, or ‘chestnuts by the fire’, or ‘cherry blossom at Kew’. I no longer grudged these to her; I listened and was careful not to show that my thoughts were on my own inheritance of veld and sun. But pomegranates were an exotic for my mother; and therefore more easily shared with her. She had been in Persia, where, one understood, pomegranate juice ran in rivers. The wife of a minor official, she had lived in a vast stone house cooled by water trickling down a thousand stone channels from the mountains, she had lived among roses and jasmine, walnut trees and pomegranates. But, unfortunately, for too short a time.
Why not pomegranates here, in Africa? Why not?
The four trees had been planted at the same time as the first vegetable beds; and almost at once two of them died. A third lingered on for a couple of seasons and then succumbed to the white ants. The fourth stood lonely among the Cape gooseberry bushes, bore no fruit, and at last was forgotten.
Then one day my mother was showing Mrs MacGregor her chickens and as they returned through tangles of grass and weed, their skirts lifted high in both hands, my mother exclaimed: ‘Why, I do believe the pomegranate is fruiting at last. Look, look, it is!’ She called to us, the children, and we went running, and stood around a small thorny tree, and looked at a rusty-red fruit the size of a child’s fist. ‘It’s ripe,’ said my mother, and pulled it off.
Inside the house we were each given a dozen seeds on saucers. They were bitter, but we did not like to ask for sugar. Mrs MacGregor said gently: ‘It’s wonderful. How you must miss all that!’
‘The roses!’ said my mother. ‘And sacks of walnuts … and we used to drink pomegranate juice with the melted snow water … nothing here tastes like that. The soil is no good.’
I looked at William, sitting opposite me. He turned his head and smiled. I fell in love.
He was then fifteen, home for the holidays. He was a silent boy, thoughtful; and the quietness in his deep grey eyes seemed to me like a promise of warmth and understanding I had never known. There was a tightness in my chest, because it hurt to be shut out from the world of simple kindness he lived in. I sat there, opposite him, and said to myself that I had known him all my life and yet until this moment had never understood what he was. I looked at those extraordinarily clear eyes, that were like water over grey pebbles, I gazed and gazed, until he gave me a slow direct look which showed he knew I had been staring. It was like a warning, as if a door had been shut.
After the MacGregors had gone, I went through the bushes to the pomegranate tree. It was about my height, a tough, obstinate-looking thing; and there was a round yellow ball the size of a walnut hanging from a twig.
I looked at the ugly little tree and thought Pomegranates! Breasts like pomegranates and a belly like a heap of wheat! The golden pomegranates of the sun, I thought … pomegranates like the red of blood.
I was in a fever, more than a little mad. The space of thick grass and gooseberry bushes between the trees was haunted by William, and his deep grey eyes looked at me across the pomegranate tree.
Next day I sat under the tree. It gave no shade, but the acrid sunlight was barred and splotched under it. There was hard cracked red earth beneath a covering of silvery dead grass. Under the grass I saw grains of red, and half a hard brown shell. It seemed that a fruit had ripened and burst without our knowing – yes, everywhere in the soft old grass lay the tiny crimson seeds. I tasted one; warm sweet juice flooded my tongue. I gathered them up and ate them until my mouth was full of dry seeds. I spat them out and thought that a score of pomegranate trees would grow from that mouthful.
As I watched, tiny black ants came scurrying along the roots of the grass, scrambling over the fissures in the earch, to snatch away the seeds. I lay on my elbow and watched. A dozen of them were levering at a still unbroken seed. Suddenly the frail tissue split as they bumped it over a splinter, and they were caught in a sticky red ooze.
The ants would carry these seeds for hundreds of yards; there would be an orchard of pomegranates. William MacGregor would come visiting with his parents, and find me among the pomegranate trees; I could hear the sound of his grave voice, mingled with the tinkle of camel bells and the splashing of falling water.
I went to the tree every day and lay under it, watching the single yellow fruit ripening on its twig. There would come a moment when it must burst and scatter crimson seeds; I must be there when it did; it seemed as if my whole life was concentrated, and ripening with that single fruit.
It was very hot under the tree. My head ached. My flesh was painful with the sun. Yet there I sat all day, watching the tiny ants at their work, letting them run over my legs, waiting for the pomegranate fruit to ripen. It swelled slowly; it seemed set on reaching perfection, for when it was the size that the other had been picked, it was still a bronzing yellow, and the rind was soft. It was going to be a big fruit, the size of both my fists.
Then something terrifying happened. One day I saw that the twig it hung from was splitting off the branch. The wizened, dry little tree could not sustain the weight of the fruit it had produced. I went to the house, brought down bandages from the medicine chest, and strapped the twig firm and tight to the branch, in such a way that the weight was supported. Then I wet the bandage, tenderly, and thought of William, William, William. I wet the bandage daily, and thought of him.
What I thought of William had become a world, stronger than anything around me. Yet, since I was mad, so weak, it vanished at a touch. Once, for instance, I saw him driving with his father on the wagon along the road to the station. I remember I was ashamed that that marvellous feverish world should depend on a half-grown boy in dusty khaki, gripping a piece of grass between his teeth as he stared ahead of him. It came to this – that in order to preserve the dream, I must not see William. And it seemed he felt something of the sort himself, for in all those weeks he never came near me, whereas once he used to come every day. And yet I was convinced it must happen that William and the moment when the pomegranate split open would coincide.
I imagined it in a thousand ways, as the fruit continued to grow. Now, it was a clear bronze yellow with faint rust-coloured streaks. The rind was thin, so soft that the swelling seeds within were shaping it. The fruit looked lumpy and veined, like a nursing breast. The small crown where the stem fastened on it, which had been the sheath of the flower, was still green. It began to harden and turn back into iron-grey thorns.
Soon, soon, it would be ripe. Very swiftly, the skin lost its smooth thinness. It took on a tough pored look, like the skin of an old weatherbeaten countryman. It was a ruddy scarlet now, and hot to the touch. A small crack appeared, which in a day had widened so that the packed red seeds within were visible, almost bursting out. I did not dare leave the tree. I was there from six in the morning until the sun went down. I even crept down with the candle at night, although I argued it could not burst at night, not in the cool of the night, it must be the final unbearable thrust of the hot sun which would break it.
For three days nothing happened. The crack remained the same. Ants swarmed up the trunk, along the branches and into the fruit. The scar oozed red juice in which black ants swam and struggled. At any moment it might happen. And William did not come. I was sure he would: I watched the empty road helplessly, watching for him to come striding along, a piece of grass between his teeth, to me and the pomegranate tree. Yet he did not. In one night, the crack split another half-inch, I saw a red seed push itself out of the crack and fall. Instantly it was borne off by the ants into the grass.
I went up to the house and asked my mother when the MacGregors were coming to tea.
‘I don’t know, dear. Why?’
‘Because. I just thought …’
She looked at me. Her eyes were critical. In one moment, she would say the name William. I struck first. To have William and the moment together, I must pay fee to the family gods. ‘There’s a pomegranate nearly ripe, and you know how interested Mrs MacGregor is …’
She looked sharply at me. ‘Pick it, and we’ll make a drink of it.’
‘Oh no, it’s not quite ready. Not altogether …’
‘Silly child,’ she said at last. She went to the telephone and said: ‘Mrs MacGregor, this daughter of mine, she’s got it into her head – you know how children are.’
I did not care. At four that afternoon I was waiting by the pomegranate tree. Their car came thrusting up the steep road to the crown of the hill. There was Mr MacGregor in his khaki, Mrs MacGregor in her best afternoon dress – and William. The adults shook hands, kissed. William did not turn round and look at me. It was not possible, it was monstrous, that the force of my dream should not have had the power to touch him at all, that he knew nothing of what he must do.
Then he slowly turned his head and looked down the slope to where I stood. He did not smile. It seemed he had not seen me, for his eyes travelled past me, and back to the grownups. He stood to one side while they exchanged their news and greetings; and then all four laughed, and turned to look at me and my tree. It seemed for a moment they were all coming. At once, however, they went into the house, William trailing after them, frowning.
In a moment he would have gone in; the space in front of the old house would be empty. I called ‘William!’ I had not known I would call. My voice sounded small in the wide afternoon sunlight.
He went on as if he had not heard. Then he stopped, seemed to think, and came down the hill towards me while I anxiously examined his face. The low tangle of the gooseberry bushes was around his legs, and he swore sharply.
‘Look at the pomegranate,’ I said. He came to a halt beside the tree, and looked. I was searching those clear grey eyes now for a trace of that indulgence they had shown my mother over the brussels sprouts, over that first unripe pomegranate.
Now all I wanted was indulgence; I abandoned everything else.
‘It’s full of ants,’ he said at last.
‘Only a little, only where it’s cracked.’
He stood, frowning, chewing at his piece of grass. His lips were full and thick-skinned; and I could see the blood, dull and dark around the pale groove where the grass-stem pressed.
The pomegranate hung there, swarming with ants.
Now, I thought wildly. Now – crack now.
There was not a sound. The sun pouring down, hot and yellow, drawing up the smell of the grasses. There was, too, a faint sour smell from the fermenting juice of the pomegranate.
‘It’s bad,’ said William, in that uncomfortable, angry voice. ‘And what’s that bit of dirty rag for?’
‘It was breaking, the twig was breaking off – I tied it up.’
‘Mad,’ he remarked, aside, to the afternoon. ‘Quite mad,’ He was looking about him in the grass. He reached down and picked up a stick.
‘No,’ I cried out, as he hit at the tree. The pomegranate flew into the air and exploded in a scatter of crimson seeds, fermenting juice and black ants.
The cracked empty skin, with its white clean-looking inner skin faintly stained with juice, lay in two fragments at my feet.
He was poking sulkily with the stick at the little scarlet seeds that lay everywhere on the earth.
Then he did look at me. Those clear eyes were grave again, thoughtful, and judging. They held that warning I had seen in them before.
‘That’s your pomegranate,’ he said at last.
‘Yes.’ I said.
He smiled. ‘We’d better go up, if we want any tea.’ We went together up the hill to the house, and as we entered the room where the grown-ups sat over the teacups, I spoke quickly, before he could. In a bright careless voice I said: ‘It was bad, after all, the ants had got at it. It should have been picked before.’
Getting off the Altitude (#ulink_3ac1505a-14e1-5dc8-9418-08593b81d34a)
That night of the dance, years later, when I saw Mrs Slatter come into the bedroom at midnight, not seeing me because the circle of lamplight was focused low, with a cold and terrible face I never would have believed could be hers after knowing her so long during the day-times and the visits -that night, when she had dragged herself out of the room again, still not knowing I was there, I went to the mirror to see my own face. I held the lamp as close as I could and looked into my face. For I had not known before that a person’s face could be smooth and comfortable, though often sorrowful, like Molly Slatter’s had been all those years, and then hard-set, in the solitude away from the dance and the people (that night they had drunk a great deal and the voices of the singing reminded me of when dogs howl at the full moon), into an old and patient stone. Yes, her face looked like white stone that the rain has trickled over and worn through the wet seasons.
My face, that night in the mirror, dusted yellow from the lamplight, with the dark watery spaces of the glass behind, was smooth and enquiring, with the pert flattered look of a girl in her first long dress and dancing with the young people for the first time. There was nothing in it, a girl’s face, empty. Yet I had been crying just before, and I wished then I could go away into the dark and stay there for ever. Yet Molly Slatter’s terrible face was familiar to me, as if it were her own face, her real one. I seemed to know it. And that meant that the years I had known her comfortable and warm in spite of all her troubles had been saying something else to me about her. But only now I was prepared to listen.
I left the mirror, set the lamp down on the dressing-table, and went out into the passage and looked for her among the people, and there she was in her red satin dress looking just as usual, talking to my father, her hand on the back of his chair, smiling down at him.
‘It hasn’t been a bad season, Mr Farquar,’ she was saying, ‘the rains haven’t done us badly at all.’
Driving home in the car that night, my mother asked: ‘What was Molly saying to you?’
And my father said: ‘Oh I don’t know, I really don’t know.’ His voice was sad and angry.
She said: ‘That dress of hers. Her evening dresses look like a cheap night-club.’
He said, troubled and sorrowful, ‘Yes. Actually I said something to her.’
‘Somebody should.’
‘No,’ he said, quick against the cold criticizing voice. ‘No. It’s a – pretty colour. But I said to her, There’s not much to that dress, is there?’
‘What did she say?’
‘She was hurt. I was sorry I said anything.’
‘H’mm,’ said my mother, with a little laugh.
He turned his head from his driving, so that the car lights swung wild over the rutted track for a moment, and said direct at her: ‘She’s a good woman. She’s a nice woman.’
But she gave another offended gulp of laughter. As a woman insists in an argument because she won’t give in, even when she knows she is wrong.
As for me, I saw that dress again, with its criss-cross of narrow sweat-darkened straps over the ageing white back, and I saw Mrs Slatter’s face when my father criticized her. I might have been there, I saw it so clearly. She coloured, lifted her head, lower her lids so that the tears would not show, and she said: ‘I’m sorry you feel like that, Mr Farquar.’ It was with dignity. Yes. She had put on that dress in order to say something. But my father did not approve. He had said so.
She cared what my father said. They cared very much for each other. She called him Mr Farquar always, and he called her Molly; and when the Slatters came over to tea, and Mr Slatter was being brutal, there was a gentleness and a respect for her in my father’s manner which made even Mr Slatter feel it and even, sometimes, repeat something he had said to his wife in a lower voice, although it was still impatient.
The first time I knew my father felt for Molly Slatter and that my mother grudged it to her was when I was perhaps seven or eight. Their house was six miles away over the veld, but ten by the road. Their house like ours was on a ridge. At the end of the dry season when the trees were low and the leaves thinning, we could see their lights flash out at sundown, low and yellow across the miles of country. My father, after coming back from seeing Mr Slatter about some farm matter, stood by our window looking at their lights, and my mother watched him. Then he said: ‘Perhaps she should stand up to him? No, that’s not it. She does, in her way. But Lord, he’s a tough customer, Slatter.’
My mother said, her head low over her sewing: ‘She married him.’
He let his eyes swing around at her, startled. Then he laughed. ‘That’s right, she married him.’
‘Well?’
‘Oh come off it, old girl,’ he said almost gay, laughing and hard. Then, still laughing angrily he went over and kissed her on the cheek.
‘I like Molly,’ she said, defensive. ‘I like her. She hasn’t got what you might call conversation but I like her.’
‘Living with Slatter, I daresay she’s got used to keeping her mouth shut.’
When Molly Slatter came over to spend the day with my mother the two women talked eagerly for hours about household things. Then, when my father came in for tea or dinner, there was a lock of sympathies and my mother looked ironical while he went to sit by Mrs Slatter, even if only for a minute, saying: ‘Well, Molly? Everything all right with you?’
‘I’m very well, thank you, Mr Farquar, and so are the children.’
Most people were frightened of Mr Slatter. There were four Slatter boys, and when the old man was in a temper and waving the whip he always had with him, they ran off into the bush and stayed there until he had cooled down. All the natives on their farm were afraid of him. Once when he knew their houseboy had stolen some soap he tied him to a tree in the garden without food and water all of one day, and then through the night, and beat him with his whip every time he went past, until the boy confessed. And once, when he had hit a farm-boy, and the boy complained to the police, Mr Slatter tied the boy to his horse and rode it at a gallop to the police station twelve miles off and made the boy run beside, and told him if he complained to the police again he would kill him. Then he paid the ten-shilling fine and made the boy run beside the horse all the way back again.
I was so frightened of him that I could feel myself begin trembling when I saw his car turning to come up the drive from the farm lands.
He was a square fair man, with small sandy-lashed blue eyes, and small puffed cracked lips, and red ugly hands. He used to come up the wide red shining steps of the veranda, grinning slightly, looking at us. Then he would take a handful of tow-hair from the heads of whichever of his sons were nearest, one in each fist, and tighten his fists slowly, not saying a word, while they stood grinning back and their eyes filled slowly. He would grin over their heads at Molly Slatter, while she sat silent, saying nothing. Then, one or other of the boys would let out a sound of pain, and Mr Slatter showed his small discoloured teeth in a grin of triumphant good humour and let them go. Then he stamped off in his big farm boots into the house.
Mrs Slatter would say to her sons: ‘Don’t cry. Your father doesn’t know his own strength. Don’t cry.’ And she went on sewing, composed and pale.
Once at the station, the Slatter car and ours were drawn up side by side outside the store. Mrs Slatter was sitting in the front seat, beside the driver’s seat. In our car my father drove and my mother was beside him. We children were in the back seats. Mr Slatter came out of the bar with Mrs Pritt and stood on the store veranda talking to her. He stood before her, legs apart, in his way of standing, head back on his shoulders, eyes narrowed, grinning, red fists loose at his sides, and talked on for something like half an hour. Meanwhile Mrs Pritt let her weight slump on to one hip and lolled in front of him. She wore a tight shrill green dress, so short it showed the balls of her thin knees.
And my father leaned out of our car window though we had all our stores in and might very well leave for home now, and talked steadily and gently to Mrs Slatter, who was quiet, not looking at her husband, but making conversation with my father and across him to my mother. And so they went on talking until Mr Slatter left Mrs Pritt, and slammed himself into the driver’s seat and started the car.
I did not like Mrs Pritt and I knew neither of my parents did. She was a thin wiry tall woman with black short jumpy hair. She had a sharp knowing face and a sudden laugh like the scream of a hen caught by the leg. Her voice was always loud, and she laughed a great deal.
But seeing Mr Slatter with her was enough to know that they fitted. She was not gentle and kindly like Mrs Slatter. She was as tough in her own way as Mr Slatter. And long before I ever heard it said I knew well enough that, as my mother said primly, they liked each other. I asked her, meaning her to tell the truth, Why does Mr Slatter always go over when Mr Pritt is away, and she said: I expect Mr Slatter likes her.
In our district, with thirty or forty families on the farms spread over a hundred square miles or so, nothing happened privately. That day at the station I must have been ten years old, eleven, but it was not the first or the last time I heard the talk between my parents:
My father: ‘I daresay it could make things easier for Molly.’
She, then: ‘Do you?’
‘But if he’s got to have an affair, he might at least not push it down our throats, for Molly’s sake.’
And she: ‘Does he have to have an affair?’
She said the word, affair, with difficulty. It was not her language. Nor, and that was what she was protesting against, my father’s. For they were both conventional and religious people. Yet at moments of crisis, at moments of scandal and irregularity, my father spoke this other language, cool and detached, as if he were born to it.
‘A man like Slatter,’ he said thoughtfully, as if talking to another man, ‘it’s obvious. And Emmy Pritt. Yes. Obviously, obviously! But it depends on how Molly takes it. Because if she doesn’t take it the right way, she could make it hell for herself.’
‘Take it the right way,’ said my mother, with bright protesting eyes, and my father did not answer.
I used to stay with Mrs Slatter sometimes in the holidays. I went across-country over the kaffir paths, walking or on my bicycle, with some clothes in a small suitcase.
The boys were, from having to stand up to Mr Slatter, tough and indifferent boys, and went about the farm in a closed gang. They did man’s work, driving tractors and superintending the gangs of boys before they were in their ‘teens. I stayed with Mrs Slatter. She cooked a good deal, and sewed and gardened. Most of the day she sat on the veranda sewing. We did not talk much. She used to make her own dresses, cotton prints and pastel linens, like all the women of the district wore. She made Mr Slatter’s khaki farm shirts and the boys’ shirts. Once she made herself a petticoat that was too small for her to get into, and Mr Slatter saw her struggling with it in front of the mirror, and he said: ‘What size do you think you are, Bluebell?’ in the same way he would say, as we sat down to table, ‘What have you been doing with your lily-white hands today, Primrose?’ To which she would reply, pleasantly, as if he had really asked a question: ‘I’ve made some cakes.’ Or: ‘I got some salt meat from the butcher at the station today fresh out of the pickle.’ About the petticoat she said, ‘Yes, I must have been putting on more weight than I knew.’
When I was twelve or thereabouts, I noticed that the boys had turned against their mother, not in the way of being brutal to her, but they spoke to her as their father did, calling her Bluebell, or the Fat Woman at the Fair. It was odd to hear them, because it was as if they said simply, Mum, or Mother. Not once did I hear her lose her temper with them. I could see she had determined to herself not to make them any part of what she had against Mr Slatter. I knew she was pleased to have me there, during that time, with the five men coming in only for meals.
One evening during a long stay, the boys as usual had gone off to their rooms to play when supper was done, and Mr Slatter said to his wife: ‘I’m off. I’ll be back tomorrow for breakfast.’ He went out into the dark and the wet. It was raining hard that night. The window panes were streaked with rain and shaking with the wind. Mrs Slatter looked across at me and said – and this was the first time it had been mentioned how often he went off after dinner, coming back as the sun rose, or sometimes not for two or three days: ‘You must remember something. There are some men, like Mr Slatter, who’ve got more energy than they know what to do with. Do you know how he started? When I met him and we were courting he was a butcher’s boy at the corner. And now he’s worth as much as any man in the district.’
‘Yes,’ I said, understanding for the first time that she was very proud of him.
She waited for me to say something more, and then said: ‘Yes, we have all kinds of ideas when we’re young. But Mr Slatter’s a man that does not know his own strength. There are some things he doesn’t understand, and it all comes from that. He never understands that other people aren’t as strong as he is.’
We were sitting in the big living-room. It had a stone floor with rugs and skins on it. A boot clattered on the stone and we looked up and there was Mr Slatter. His teeth were showing. He wore his big black boots, shining now from the wet, and his black oilskin glistened. ‘The bossboy says the river’s up,’ he said. ‘I won’t get across tonight.’ He took off his oilskin there, scattering wet on Mrs Slatter’s polished stone floor, tugged off his boots, and reached out through the door to hang his oilskin in the passage and set his boots under it, and came back.
There were two rivers between the Slatters’ farm and the Pritts’ farm, twelve miles off, and when the water came down they could be impassable for hours.
‘So I don’t know my own strength?’ he said to her, direct, and it was a soft voice, more frightening than I had ever heard from him, for he bared grinning teeth as usual, and his big fists hung at his sides.
‘No,’ she said steadily, ‘I don’t think you do.’ She did not lift her eyes, but stayed quiet in the corner of the sofa under the lamp. ‘We aren’t alone,’ she added quickly, and now she did look warningly at him.
He turned his head and looked towards me. I made fast for the door. I heard her say, ‘Please, I’m sorry about the river. But leave me alone, please.’
‘So you’re sorry about the river.’
‘Yes.’
‘And I don’t know my own strength?’
I shut the door. But it was a door that was never shut, and it swung open again and I ran down the passage away from it, as he said: ‘So that’s why you keep your bedroom door locked, Lady Godiva, is that it?’
And she screamed out: ‘Ah, leave me alone. I don’t care what you do. I don’t care now. But you aren’t going to make use of me. I won’t let you make use of me.’
It was a big house, rooms sprawling everywhere. The boys had two rooms and a playroom off at one end of a long stone passage. Dairies and larders and kitchen opened off the passage. Then a dining-room and some offices and a study. Then the living-room. And another passage off at an angle, with the room where I slept and beside it Mrs Slatter’s big bedroom with the double bed and after that a room they called the workroom, but it was an ordinary room and Mr Slatter’s things were in it, with a bed.
I had not thought before that they did not share a bedroom. I knew no married people in the district who had separate rooms and that is why I had not thought about the small room where Mr Slatter slept.
Soon after I had shut the door on myself, I heard them come along the passage outside, I heard voices in the room next door. Her voice was pleading, his loud, and he was laughing a lot.
In the morning at breakfast I looked at Mrs Slatter but she was not taking any notice of us children. She was pale. She was helping Mr Slatter to his breakfast. He always had three or four eggs on thick slats of bacon, and then slice after slice of toast, and half a dozen cups of tea as black as it would come out of the pot. She had some toast and a cup of tea and watched him eat. When he went out to the farm work he kissed her, and she blushed.
When we were on the veranda after breakfast, sewing, she said to me, apologetically and pink-cheeked: ‘I hope you won’t think anything about last night. Married people often quarrel. It doesn’t mean anything.’
My parents did not quarrel. At least, I had not thought of them as quarrelling. But because of what she said I tried to remember times when they disagreed and perhaps raised their voices and then afterwards laughed and kissed each other. Yes, I thought, it is true that married people quarrel, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t happy together.
That night after supper when the boys had gone to their room Mr Slatter said, ‘The rivers are down, I’m off.’ Mrs Slatter, sitting quiet under the lamp, kept her eyes down, and said nothing. He stood there staring at her and she said: ‘Well, you know what that means, don’t you?’
He simply went out, and we heard the lorry start up and the headlights swung up against the window-panes a minute, so that they dazzled up gold and hard, and went black again.
Mrs Slatter said nothing, so that my feeling that something awful had happened slowly faded. Then she began talking about her childhood in London. She was a shop assistant before she met Mr Slatter. She often spoke of her family, and the street she lived in, so I wondered if she were homesick, but she never went back to London so perhaps she was not homesick at all.
Soon after that Emmy Pritt got ill. She was not the sort of woman one thought of as being ill. She had some kind of operation, and they all said she needed a holiday, she needed to get off the altitude. Our part of Central Africa was high, nearly four thousand feet, and we all knew that when a person got rundown they needed a rest from the altitude in the air at sea-level. Mrs Pritt went down to the Cape, and soon after Mr and Mrs Slatter went too, with the four children, and they all had a holiday together at the same hotel.
When they came back, the Slatters brought a farm assistant with them. Mr Slatter could not manage the farm-work, he said. I heard my father say that Slatter was taking things a bit far; he was over at the Pritts every weekend from Friday night to Monday morning and nearly every night from after supper until morning. Slatter, he said, might be as strong as a herd of bulls, but no one could go on like that; and in any case, one should have a sense of proportion. Mr Pritt was never mentioned, though it was not for years that I thought to consider what this might mean. We used to see him about the station, or at gymkhanas. He was an ordinary man, not like a farmer, as we knew farmers, men who could do anything; he might have been anybody, or an office person. He was ordinary in height, thinnish, with his pale hair leaving his narrow forehead high and bony. He was an accountant as well. People used to say that Charlie Slatter helped Emmy Pritt run their farm, and most of the time Mr Pritt was off staying at neighbouring farms doing their accounts.
The new assistant was Mr Andrews, and as Mrs Slatter said to my mother when she came over for tea, he was a gentleman. He had been educated at Cambridge in England. He came of a hard-up family, though, for he had only a few hundred pounds of capital of his own. He would be an assistant for two years and then start his own farm.
For a time I did not go to stay with Mrs Slatter. Once or twice I asked if she had said anything to my mother about my coming, and she said in a dry voice, meaning to discourage me, ‘No, she hasn’t said anything.’ I understood when I heard my father say: ‘Well, it might not be such a bad thing. For one thing he’s a nice lad, and for another it might make Slatter see things differently.’ And another time: ‘Perhaps Slatter would give Molly a divorce? After all, he practically lives at the Pritts! And then Molly could have some sort of life at last.’
‘But the boy’s not twenty-five,’ said my mother. And she was really shocked, as distinct from her obstinate little voice when she felt him to be wrong-headed or loose in his talk -a threat of some kind. ‘And what about the children? Four children!’
My father said nothing to this, but after some minutes he came off some track of thought with: ‘I hope Molly’s taking it sensibly. I do hope she is. Because she could be laying up merry hell for herself if she’s not.’
I saw George Andrews at a gymkhana standing at the rail with Mrs Slatter. Although he was an Englishman he was already brown, and his clothes were loosened up and easy, as our men’s clothes were. So there was nothing to dislike about him on that score. He was rather short, not fat, but broad, and you could see he would be fat. He was healthy-looking above all, with a clear reddish face the sun had laid a brown glisten over, and very clear blue eyes, and his hair was thick and short, glistening like fur. I wanted to like him and so I did. I saw the way he leaned beside Mrs Slatter, with her dust-coat over his arm, holding out his programme for her to mark. I could understand that she would like a gentleman who would open doors for her and stand up when she came into the room, after Mr Slatter. I could see she was proud to be with him. And so I liked him though I did not like his mouth; his lips were pink and wettish. I did not look at his mouth again for a long time. And because I liked him I was annoyed with my father when he said, after that gymkhana, ‘Well, I don’t know. I don’t think I like it after all. He’s a bit of a young pup, Cambridge or no Cambridge.’
Six months after George Andrews came to the district there was a dance for the young people at the Slatters’. It was the first dance. The older boys were eighteen and seventeen and they had girls. The two younger boys were fifteen and thirteen and they despised girls. I was fifteen then, and all these boys were too young for me, and the girls of the two older boys were nearly twenty. There were about sixteen of us, and the married people thirty or forty, as usual. The married people sat in the living-room and danced in it, and we were on the verandas. Mr Slatter was dancing with Emmy Pritt, and sometimes another woman, and Mrs Slatter was busy being hostess and dancing with George Andrews. I was still in a short dress and unhappy because I was in love with one of the assistants from the farm between the rivers, and I knew very well that until I had a long dress he would not see me. I went into Mrs Slatter’s bedroom latish because it seemed the only room empty, and I looked out of the window at the dark wet night. It was the rainy season and we had driven over the swollen noisy river and all the way the rain-water was sluicing under our tyres. It was still raining and the lamplight gilded streams of rain so that as I turned my head slightly this way and that, the black and the gold rods shifted before me, and I thought (and I had never thought so simply before about these things): ‘How do they manage? With all these big boys in the house? And they never go to bed before eleven or half-past these days, I bet, and with Mr Slatter coming home unexpectedly from Emmy Pritt – it must be difficult. I suppose he has to wait until everyone’s asleep. It must be horrible, wondering all the time if the boys have noticed something …’ I turned from the window and looked from it into the big low-ceilinged comfortable room with its big low bed covered over with pink roses, the pillows propped high in pink frilled covers, and although I had been in that room during visits for years of my life, it seemed strange to me, and ugly. I loved Mrs Slatter. Of all the women in the district she was the kindest, and she had always been good to me. But at that moment I hated her and I despised her.
I started to leave the bedroom, but at the door I stopped, because Mrs Slatter was in the passage, leaning against the wall, and George Andrews had his arms around her, and his face in her neck. She was saying, ‘Please don’t, George, please don’t, please, the boys might see.’ And he was swallowing her neck and saying nothing at all. She was twisting her face and neck away and pushing him off. He staggered back from her, as though she had pushed him hard, but it was because he was drunk and had no balance, and he said: ‘Oh come on into your bedroom a minute. No one will know.’ She said, ‘No, George. Why should we have to snatch five minutes in the middle of a dance, like – ‘
‘Like what?’ he said, grinning. I could see how the light that came down the passage from the big room made his pink lips glisten.
She looked reproachfully at him, and he said: ‘Molly, this thing is getting a bit much, you know. I have to set my alarm clock for one in the morning, and then I’m dead-beat. I drag myself out of my bed, and then you’ve got your clock set for four, and God knows working for your old man doesn’t leave one with much enthusiasm for bouncing about all night.’ He began to walk off towards the big room where the people were dancing. She ran after him and grabbed at his arm. I retreated backwards towards Mr Slatter’s room, but almost at once she had got him and turned him around and was kissing him. The people in the big room could have seen if they had been interested.
That night Mrs Slatter had on an electric blue crêpe dress with diamonds on the straps and in flower patterns on the hips. There was a deep V in front which showed her breasts swinging loose under the crêpe, though usually she wore strong corsets. And the back was cut down to the waist. As the two turned and came along, he put his hand into the front of her dress, and I saw it lift out her left breast, and his mouth was on her neck again. Her face was desperate, but that did not surprise me, because I knew she must be ashamed. I despised her, because her white long breast lying in his hand like a piece of limp floured dough, was not like Mrs Slatter who called men Mister even if she had known them twenty years, and was really very shy, and there was nothing Mr Slatter liked more than to tease her because she blushed when he used bad language. ‘What did you make such a fuss for?’ George Andrews was saying in a drunken sort of way. ‘We can lock the door, can’t we?’
‘Yes, we can lock the door,’ she answered in the same way, laughing.
I went back into the crowd of married people where the small children were, and sat beside my mother, and it was only five minutes before Mrs Slatter came back looking as usual, from one door, and then George Andrews, in at another.
I did not go to the Slatters’ again for some months. For one thing, I was away at school, and for another people were saying that Mrs Slatter was run down and she should get off the altitude for a bit. My father was not mentioning the Slatters by this time, because he had quarrelled with my mother over them. I knew they had, because whenever Molly Slatter was mentioned, my mother tightened her mouth and changed the subject.
And so a year went by. At Christmas they had a dance again, and I had my first long dress, and I went to that dance not caring if it was at the Slatters’ or anywhere else. It was my first dance as one of the young people. And so I was on the veranda dancing most of the evening, though sometimes the rain blew in on us, because it was raining again, being the full of the rainy season, and the skies were heavy and dark, with the moon shining out like a knife from the masses of the clouds and then going in again leaving the veranda with hardly light enough to see each other. Once I went down the steps to say goodbye to some neighbours who were going home early because they had a new baby, and coming back up the steps there was Mr Slatter and he had Mrs Slatter by the arm. ‘Come here, Lady Godiva,’ he said. ‘Give us a kiss.’
‘Oh go along,’ she said, sounding good-humoured. ‘Go along with you and leave me in peace.’
He was quite drunk, but not very. He twisted her arm around. It looked like a slight twist but she came up sudden against him, in a bent-back curve, her hips and legs against him, and he held her there. Her face was sick, and she half-screamed: ‘You don’t know your own strength.’ But he did not slacken the grip, and she stayed there, and the big sky was filtering a little stormy moonlight and I could just see their faces, and I could see his grinning teeth. ‘Your bloody pride, Lady Godiva,’ he said, ‘who do you think you’re doing in, who do you think is the loser over your bloody locked door?’ She said nothing and her eyes were shut. ‘And now you’ve frozen out George, too? What’s the matter, isn’t he good enough for you either?’ He gave her arm a wrench, and she gasped, but then shut her lips again, and he said: ‘So now you’re all alone in your tidy bed, telling yourself fairy stories in the dark, Sister Theresa, the little flower.’
He let her go suddenly, and she staggered, so he put out his other hand to steady her, and held her until she was steady. It seemed odd to me that he should care that she shouldn’t fall to the ground, and that he should put his hand like that to stop her falling.
And so I left them and went back on to the veranda. I was dancing all the night with the assistant from the farm between the rivers. I was right about the long dress. All those months, at the station or at gymkhanas, he had never seen me at all. But that night he saw me, and I was wanting him to kiss me. But when he did I slapped his face. Because then I knew that he was drunk. I had not thought he might be drunk, though it was natural he was, since everybody was. But the way he kissed me was not at all what I had been thinking. ‘I beg your pardon I’m sure,’ he said, and I walked past him into the passage and then into the living-room. But there were so many people and my eyes were stinging, so I went through into the other passage, and there, just like last year, as if the whole year had never happened, were Mrs Slatter and George Andrews. I did not want to see it, not the way I felt.
‘And why not?’ he was saying, biting into her neck.
‘Oh George, that was all ended months ago, months ago!’
‘Oh come on, Moll, I don’t know what I’ve done, you never bothered to explain.’
‘No.’ And then, crying out, ‘Mind my arm.’ ‘What’s the matter with your arm?’ ‘I fell and sprained it.’
So he let go of her, and said: ‘Well, thanks for the nice interlude, thanks anyway, old girl.’ I knew that he had been meaning to hurt her, because I could feel what he said hurting me. He went off into the living-room by himself, and she went off after him, but to talk to someone else, and I went into her bedroom. It was empty. The lamp was on a low table by the bed, turned down, and the sky through the windows was black and wet and hardly any light came from it.
Then Mrs Slatter came in and sat on the bed and put her head in her hands. I did not move.
‘Oh my God!’ she said. ‘Oh my God, my God!’ Her voice was strange to me. The gentleness was not in it, though it was soft, but it was soft from breathlessness.
‘Oh my God!’ she said, after a long long silence. She took up one of the pillows from the bed, and wrapped her arms around it, and laid her head down on it. It was quiet in this room, although from the big room came the sound of singing, a noise like howling, because people were drunk, or part-drunk, and it had the melancholy savage sound of people singing when they are drunk. An awful sound, like animals howling.
Then she put down the pillow, tidily, in its proper place, and swayed backwards and forwards and said: ‘Oh God, make me old soon, make me old. I can’t stand this, I can’t stand this any longer.’
And again the silence, with the howling sound of the singing outside, the footsteps of the people who were dancing scraping on the cement of the veranda.
‘I can’t go on living,’ said Mrs Slatter, into the dark above the small glow of lamplight. She bent herself up again, double, as if she were hurt physically, her hands gripped around her ankles, holding herself together, and she sat crunched up, her face looking straight in front at the wall, level with the lamp-light. So now I could see her face. I did not know that face. It was stone, white stone, but her eyes gleamed out of it black, and with a flicker in them. And her black shining hair that was not grey at all yet had loosened and hung in streaks around the white stone face.
‘I can’t stand it,’ she said again. The voice she used was strange to me. She might have been talking to someone. For a moment I even thought she had seen me and was talking to me, explaining herself to me. And then, slowly, she let herself unclench and she went out into the dance again.
I took up the lamp and held it as close as I could to the mirror and bent in and looked at my face. But there was nothing to my face.
Next day I told my father I had heard Mrs Slatter say she could not go on living. He said, ‘Oh Lord, I hope it’s not because of what I said about her dress,’ but I said no, it was before he said he didn’t like the dress. “Then if she was upset,’ he said, ‘I expect what I said made her feel even worse.’ And then: ‘Oh poor woman, poor woman!’ He went into the house and called my mother and they talked it over. Then he got on to the telephone and I heard him asking Mrs Slatter to drop in next time she was going past to the station. And it seemed she was going in that morning, and before lunchtime she was on our veranda talking to my father. My mother was not there, although my father had not asked her in so many words not to be there. As for me I went to the back of the veranda where I could hear what they said.
‘Look, Molly,’ he said, ‘we are old friends. You’re looking like hell these days. Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong? You can say anything to me, you know.’
After quite a time she said: ‘Mr Farquar, there are some things you can’t say to anybody. Nobody.’
‘Ah, Molly,’ he said, ‘if there’s one thing I’ve learned and I learned it early on, when I was a young man and I had a bad time, it’s this. Everybody’s got something terrible, Molly. Everybody has something awful they have to live with. We all live together and we see each other all the time, and none of us knows what awful thing the other person might be living with.’
And then she said: ‘But, Mr Farquar, I don’t think that’s true. I know people who don’t seem to have anything private to make them unhappy.’
‘How do you know, Molly? How do you know?’
‘Take Mr Slatter,’ she said. ‘He’s a man who does as he likes. But he doesn’t know his own strength. And that’s why he never seems to understand how other people feel.’
‘But how do you know, Molly? You could live next to someone for fifty years and still not know. Perhaps he’s got something that gives him hell when he’s alone, like all the rest of us?’
‘No, I don’t think so, Mr Farquar.’
‘Molly,’ he said, appealing suddenly, and very exasperated. ‘You’re too hard on yourself, Molly.’ She didn’t say anything.
He said: ‘Listen, why don’t you get away for a while, get yourself down to the sea, this altitude drives us all quietly crazy. You get down off the altitude for a bit.’
She still said nothing, and he lowered his voice, and I could imagine how my mother’s face would have gone stiff and cold had she heard what he said: ‘And have a good time while you’re there. Have a good time and let go a bit.’
‘But, Mr Farquar. I don’t want a good time.’ The words, a good time, she used as if they could have nothing to do with her.
‘If we can’t have what we want in this world, then we should take what we can get.’
‘It wouldn’t be right,’ she said at last slowly. ‘I know people have different ideas, and I don’t want to press mine on anyone.’
‘But Molly -’ he began, exasperated, or so it sounded, and then he was silent.
From where I sat I could hear the grass chair creaking: she was getting out of it. ‘I’ll take your advice,’ she said. ‘I’ll get down to the sea and I’ll take the children with me. The two younger ones.’
‘To hell with the kids for once. Take your old man with you and see that Emmy Pritt doesn’t go with you this time.’
‘Mr Farquar,’ she said, ‘if Mr Slatter wants Emmy Pritt, he can have her. He can have either one or the other of us. But not both. If I took him to the sea he would be over at her place ten minutes after we got back.’
‘Ah, Molly, you women can be hell. Have some pity on him for once.’
‘Pity? Mr Slatter’s a man who needs nobody’s pity. But thank you for your good advice, Mr Farquar. You are always very kind, you and Mrs Farquar.’
And she said goodbye to my father, and when I came forward she kissed me and asked me to come and see her soon, and she went to the station to get the stores.
And so Mrs Slatter went on living. George Andrews bought his own farm and married and the wedding was at the Slatters’. Later on Emmy Pritt got sick again and had another operation and died. It was a cancer. Mr Slatter was ill for the first time in his life from grief, and Mrs Slatter took him to the sea, by themselves, leaving the children, because they were grown-up anyway. For this was years later, and Mrs Slatter’s hair had gone grey and she was fat and old, as I had heard her say she wanted to be.
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Doris Lessing
The second volume of Doris Lessing’s ‘Collected African Stories’, and a classic work from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.‘As for these stories – when I write one, it is as if I open a gate into a landscape which is always there. Time has nothing to do with it. A certain kind of pulse starts beating, and I recognise it: it is time I wrote another story from that landscape, external and internal at the same time, which was once the Old Chief’s Country.’ Doris Lessing, from the PrefaceThis much-acclaimed collection of stories vividly evokes both the grandeur of Africa and the glare of its sun and the wide open space, as well as the great, irresolvable tensions between whites and blacks. Tales of poor white farmers and their lonely wives, of storm air thick with locusts, of ants and pomegranate trees, black servants and the year of hunger in a native village – all combine to present a powerful image of a continent which seems incorruptible in spite of all the people who plough, mine and plunder it to make their living. In Doris Lessing’s own words, ‘Africa gives you the knowledge that man is a small creature, among other creatures, in a large landscape.’
MODERN CLASSIC
DORIS LESSING
The Sun Between Their Feet
Collected African Stories
Volume Two
Contents
Cover (#ubdfb01b4-d09e-5c7c-b97e-db85053e418c)
Title Page (#ufdd90e06-04e2-56d6-891f-6d94ef552fcf)
Preface (#ulink_9ecb2dbb-5b0d-5891-95af-e4ff29aceafe)
Spies I Have Known (#ulink_f026425a-772f-5226-82cf-2d349b1798a1)
The Story of a Non-Marrying Man (#ulink_6f4bbf3f-59a2-5c3e-83a9-15f75de0d4b3)
The Black Madonna (#ulink_f79426d4-f7f1-5c09-8198-ca47f6b0ecef)
The Trinket Box (#ulink_e2a60891-ada9-574e-8bcb-948611abe869)
The Pig (#ulink_c699550e-d0b3-5514-a54a-9d5f0ad40f14)
Traitors (#ulink_178443ee-49ab-5c2f-be9f-acf10c14086c)
The Words He Said (#ulink_25353232-4a6f-52fb-888e-4866e2e577f2)
Lucy Grange (#ulink_34bf2c9d-2a2f-5a5d-98b6-76fe1df33cdc)
A Mild Attack of Locusts (#ulink_54cdc092-8018-59f6-9afa-5b7c7a03d9c1)
Flavours of Exile (#ulink_95368ca4-f6ac-51f4-9eaf-057b3fa0a15e)
Getting off the Altitude (#ulink_a4408be4-cf32-54e4-8287-068051055ebf)
A Road to the Big City (#ulink_4a9bd856-e844-5d73-b802-d97467784ed5)
Plants and Girls (#ulink_f28c53fc-7ec9-52db-9cf7-c0bd871fa5b5)
Flight (#ulink_32bdd40d-204f-5284-b3f9-18e9d42b3d03)
The Sun Between Their Feet (#ulink_2d2650e0-c6d3-5db1-9726-2230ac7cd67b)
The Story of Two Dogs (#ulink_ad9b6269-ed5f-5faf-8f23-ec2d576843d3)
The New Man (#ulink_d51682e7-ab8d-5467-a47c-089a979728fc)
A Letter from Home (#ulink_6b50cbf2-6a44-57cd-abda-02569add66d1)
Hunger (#ulink_a7d82440-ba10-5ada-9359-753799356b0e)
Bibliographical Note (#ulink_db129786-bd3b-59bb-91e8-bb22f977ab57)
About the Author (#ulink_536d5929-a2b4-5e48-93eb-a7d6361dbf42)
By the same author (#ulink_6d0d31b8-317d-55c6-9ab0-3536feab3708)
Read On (#uad3bdb87-9e58-5d6f-8c17-eccf9a6b8a84)
The Grass is Singing (#u1e70607d-c616-57bb-873c-f54316c6b0a8)
The Golden Notebook (#udae92efe-8714-57c2-87f3-ee7195be0106)
The Good Terrorist (#u7854abfe-6a97-5214-aef4-391da79053c5)
Love, Again (#u3529e198-daf2-5c99-8230-d1692c6b76bc)
The Fifth Child (#u22d6453b-dee7-5bd2-a613-87e34f6d2f8c)
Copyright (#ulink_e78f4b52-ca93-54a5-8d66-924cf4706df8)
About the Publisher (#ulink_1c7467d1-ddd8-5003-a42f-7f55bafb7523)
Preface (#ulink_893af67c-5f8a-5bd1-91aa-7d0447f73017)
This collection has in it some of the stories I like best. One of them is the title story to this volume, The Sun Between Their Feet. It was written out of memories of a part of Rhodesia that was very different from the part I was brought up in, which was Banket, in Mashonaland, not far from Sinoia. But I used to visit around the Marandellas and Macheke districts, which are mostly sandveld, and scattered all over with clumps of granite boulders piled on each other in a way I haven’t seen anywhere else. These piles appear to be so arbitrary, so casual, that sometimes it seems as if a perched boulder may topple with a puff of wind. I spent hours, days, weeks sitting around, walking about, on that pale crusty soil, so different from the heavy dark soil of the district my father’s farm was in, examining the vegetation and the insects.
Here, too, is The Story of Two Dogs, which I think is as good as any I have done. And it is a ‘true’ story: at least, there were two pairs of dogs in my childhood, the first called Lion and Tiger, and the second Jock and Bill. I don’t know now which incidents belong to which pair of dogs; but it is true that Bill, or the ‘stupid’ dog, rescued Jock, the ‘clever’ dog, by gnawing through a strand of wire in which he was trapped – thus wearing his teeth down to stubs and shortening his life.
A Letter from Home seems to me to have in it the stuff of present-day South Africa. What sparked it off was hearing the account of a white friend, living in Cape Town with another – two bachelors in a small house – looked after, or nannied, by a large Zulu woman who treated them both like small boys. And then, as food for the same story, was my thinking about another friend, a marvellous poet, so I am told – but I don’t understand his own language – who writes his poetry in one of the very many languages of the world which ‘no one speaks’. Except the million or so people born into it. Which leads one on to the thought that if a poet is born into one of the common languages he can be a world-poet; but if he is, for instance, Afrikaans, he can be as great as any poet in the world but it would be hard for this fact to cross the language barriers.
Of the five long stories, or short novels in Five, Hunger which is reprinted here is the failure and, it seems, the most liked.
It came to be written like this. I was in Moscow with a delegation of writers, back in 1952. It was striking that while the members of the British team differed very much politically, we agreed with each other on certain assumptions about literature – in brief, that writing had to be a product of the individual conscience, or soul. Whereas the Russians did not agree at all – not at all. Our debates, many and long, were on this theme.
Stalin was still alive. One day we were taken to see a building full of presents for Stalin, rooms full of every kind of object – pictures, photographs, carpets, clothes, etc., all gifts from his grateful subjects and exhibited by the State to show other subjects and visitors from abroad. It was a hot day. I left the others touring the stuffy building and sat outside to rest. I was thinking about what Russians were demanding in literature – greater simplicity, simple judgements of right and wrong. We, the British, had argued against it, and we felt we were right and the Russians wrong. But after all, there was Dickens, and such a short time ago, and his characters were all good or bad – unbelievably Good, monstrously Bad, but that didn’t stop him from being a great writer. Well, there I was, with my years in Southern Africa behind me, a society as startlingly unjust as Dickens’s England. Why, then, could I not write a story of simple good and bad, with clear-cut choices, set in Africa? The plot? Only one possible plot – that a poor black boy or girl should come from a village to the white man’s rich town and … there he would encounter, as occurs in life, good and bad, and after much trouble and many tears he would follow the path of …
I tried, but it failed. It wasn’t true. Sometimes one writes things that don’t come off, and feels more affectionate towards them than towards those that worked.
Flight is, I think, a good story. But do I like it because I remember a very old man in a suburb in Africa, in a small house crammed with half-grown girls, all his life in his shelf of birds under jacaranda trees well away from that explosive house? In a green lacy shade he would sit and croon to his birds, or watch them wheel and speed and then come dropping back through the sky to his hand. The memory has something in it of a nostalgic dream.
I am addicted to The Black Madonna, which is full of the bile that is produced in me by the thought of ‘white’ society in Southern Rhodesia as I knew and hated it.
Traitors is about two little girls. Why? It should have been a boy and a girl: the children were my brother and myself. I remember there was a short period when I longed for a sister: perhaps this tale records that time.
I have only recently written Spies I Have Known and The Non-Marrying Man.
Which brings me to a question raised often by people who write to me, usually from universities. In what order has one written this or that?
This seems to be a question of much interest to scholars. I don’t see why. No one who understands anything about how artists work – and there is surely no excuse not to, since artists of all kinds write so plentifully about our creative processes – could ask such a question at all. You can think about a story for years and then write it down in an hour. You may work out the shape of a novel for decades, before spending a few months working on it.
As for the stories like these – which I always think of under the heading of This Was the Old Chief’s Country, the title of my first collection of stories – when I write one, it is as if I open a gate into a landscape which is always there. Time has nothing to do with it. A certain kind of pulse starts beating, and I recogize it; it is time I wrote another story from that landscape, external and internal at the same time, which was once the Old Chief’s Country.
Doris Lessing
January 1972
Spies I Have Known (#ulink_2502a4f0-608e-5699-8624-f22b9399e1fd)
I don’t want you to imagine that I am drawing any sort of comparison between Salisbury, Rhodesia, of thirty years ago, a one-horse town then, if not now, and more august sites. God forbid. But it does no harm to lead into a weighty subject by way of the minuscule.
It was in the middle of the Second World War. A couple of dozen people ran a dozen or so organizations, of varying degrees of leftwingedness. The town, though a capital city, was still in that condition when ‘everybody knows everybody else’. The white population was about ten thousand; the number of black people, then as now, only guessed at. There was a Central Post Office, a rather handsome building, and one of the mail sorters attended the meetings of The Left Club. It was he who explained to us the system of censorship operated by the Secret Police. All the incoming mail for the above dozen organizations was first put into a central box marked CENSOR and was read – at their leisure, by certain trusted citizens. Of course all this was as to be expected, and what we knew must be happening. But there were other proscribed organizations, like the Watchtower, a religious sect for some reason suspected by governments up and down Africa (perhaps because they prophesied the imminent end of the world?) and some Fascist organizations – reasonably enough in a war against Fascism. There were organizations of obscure aims and perhaps five members and a capital of five pounds, and also individuals whose mail had first to go through the process, as it were, of decontamination, or defusing. It was this last list of a hundred or so people which was the most baffling. What did they have in common, these sinister ones whose opinions were such a threat to the budding Southern Rhodesian State, then still in the Lord Malvern phase of the Huggins/Lord Malvern/Welenski/Garfield Todd/Winston Field/Smith succession? After months, indeed years, of trying to understand what could unite them, we had simply to give up. Of course, half were on the left, kaffir lovers and so on, but what of the others? It was when a man wrote a letter to the Rhodesia Herald in solemn parody of Soviet official style – as heavy then as now, urging immediate extermination by firing squad of our government, in favour of a team from the Labour Opposition, and we heard from our contact in the Post Office that his name was now on the Black List, that we began to suspect the truth.
Throughout the war, this convenient arrangement continued. Our Man in the Post Office – by then several men, but it doesn’t sound so well – kept us informed of what and who was on the Black List. And if our mail was being held up longer than we considered reasonable, the censors being on holiday, or lazy, authority would be gently prodded to hurry things up a little.
This was my first experience of Espionage.
Next was when I knew someone who knew someone who had told him of how a certain Communist Party Secretary had been approached by the man whose occupation it was to tap communist telephones – we are now in Europe. Of course, the machinery for tapping was much more primitive then. Probably by now they have dispensed with human intervention altogether, and a machine judges the degree of a suspicious person’s disaffection by the tones of his voice. Then, and in that country, they simply played back records of conversation. This professional had been in the most intimate contact with communism and communists for years, becoming involved with shopping expeditions, husbands late from the office, love affairs, a divorce or so, children’s excursions. He had been sucked into active revolutionary politics through the keyhole.
‘I don’t think you ought to let little Jackie go at all. He’ll be in bed much too late, and you know how bad tempered he gets when he is overtired.’
‘She said to me No, she said. That’s final. If you want to do a thing like that, then you must do it yourself. You shouldn’t expect other people to pull your chestnuts out of the fire, she said. If he was rude to you, then it’s your place to tell him so.’
He got frustrated, like an intimate friend or lover with paralysis of the tongue. And there was another thing, his involvement was always at a remove. He was listening to events, emotions, several hours old. Sometimes weeks old, as for instance when he went on leave and had to catch up with a month’s dangerous material all in one exhausting twenty-four hours. He found that he was getting possessive about certain of his charges, resented his colleagues listening in to ‘my suspects’. Once he had to wrestle with temptation because he longed to seek out a certain woman on the point of leaving her husband for another man. Due to his advantageous position he knew the other man was not what she believed. He imagined how he would trail her to the café which he knew she frequented, sit near her, then lean over and ask: ‘May I join you? I have something of importance to divulge.’ He knew she would agree: he knew her character well. She was unconventional, perhaps not as responsible as she ought to be, careless for instance about the regularity of meals, but fundamentally, he was sure, a good girl with the potentiality of good wifehood. He would say to her: ‘Don’t do it, my dear! No, don’t ask me how I know, I can’t tell you that. But if you leave your husband for that man, you’ll regret it!’ He would press her hands in his, looking deeply into her eyes – he was sure they were brown, for her voice was definitely the voice of a brown-eyed blonde – and then stride for ever out of her life. Afterwards he could check on the success of his intervention through the tapes.
To cut a process short that took some years, he at last went secretly to a communist bookshop, bought some pamphlets, attended a meeting or two, and discovered that he would certainly become a Party Member if it were not that his job, and a very well paid one with good prospects, was to spy on the Communist Party. He felt in a false position. What to do? He turned up at the offices of the Communist Party, asked to see the Secretary, and confessed his dilemma. Roars of laughter from the Secretary.
These roars are absolutely obligatory in this convention, which insists on a greater degree of sophisticated understanding between professionals, even if on opposing sides, even if at war – Party officials, government officials, top ranking soldiers and the like – than the governed, ever a foolish, trusting and sentimental lot.
First, then, the roar. Then a soupçon of whimsicality: alas for this badly-ordered world where men so well-equipped to be friends must be enemies. Finally, the hard offer.
Our friend the telephone-tapper was offered a retaining fee by the Communist Party, and their provisional trust, on condition that he stayed where he was, working for the other side. Of course, what else had he expected? Nor should he have felt insulted, for in such ways are the double agents born, those rare men at an altogether higher level in the hierarchies of espionage than he could ever aspire to reach. But his finer feelings had been hurt by the offer of money, and he refused. He went off and suffered for a week or so, deciding that he really did have to leave his job with the Secret Police – an accurate name for what he was working for, though of course the name it went under was much blander. He returned to the Secretary in order to ask for the second time to become just a rank and file Communist Party member. This time there was no roar of laughter, not even a chuckle, but the frank (and equally obligatory) I-am-concealing-nothing statement of the position. Which was that he surely must be able to see their point of view – the Communist Party’s. With a toehold in the enemy camp (a delicate way of describing his salary and his way of life) he could be of real use. To stay where he was could be regarded as a real desire to serve the People’s Cause. To leave altogether, becoming just honest John Smith, might satisfy his conscience (a subjective and conditioned organ as he must surely know by now if he had read those pamphlets properly) but would leave behind him an image of the capricious, or even the unreliable. What had he planned to tell his employers? ‘I am tired of tapping telephones, it offends me!’ Or: ‘I regard this as an immoral occupation!’ – when he had done nothing else for years? Come, come, he hadn’t thought it out. He would certainly be under suspicion for ever more by his ex-employers. And of course he could not be so innocent, after so long spent in that atmosphere of vigilance and watchfulness not to expect the communists to keep watch on himself? No, his best course would be to stay exactly where he was, working even harder at tapping telephones. If not, then his frank advice (the Secretary’s) could only be that he must become an ordinary citizen, as far from any sort of politics as possible, for his own sake, the sake of the Service he had left, and the sake of the Communist Party -which of course they believed he now found his spiritual home.
But the trouble was that he did want to join it. He wanted nothing more than to become part of the world of stern necessities he had followed for so long, but as it were from behind a one-way pane of glass. Integrity had disenfranchised him. From now on he could not hope to serve humanity except through the use of the vote.
His life was empty. His resignation had cut off his involvement, like turning off the television on a soap opera, with the deathless real-life dramas of the tapes.
He felt that he was useless. He considered suicide, but thought better of it. Then, having weathered a fairly routine and unremarkable nervous breakdown, became a contemplative monk – high Church of England.
Another spy I met at a cocktail party, said in the course of chat about this or that – it was in London, in the late Fifties -that at the outbreak of the Second World War he had been in Greece, or perhaps it was Turkey, where at another cocktail party, over the canapés, an official from the British Embassy invited him to spy for his country.
‘But I can’t,’ said this man. ‘You must know that perfectly well.’
‘But why ever not?’ enquired the official. A Second Secretary, I think he was.
‘Because, as of course you must know, I am a Communist Party member.’
‘Indeed? How interesting! But surely that is not going to stand in the way of your desire to serve your country?’ said the official, matching ferocious honesty with bland interest.
Cutting this anecdote short – it comes, after all, from a pretty petty level in the affairs of men, this man went home and spent a sleepless night weighing his allegiances, and decided by morning that of course the Second Secretary was right. He would like to serve his country, which was after all engaged in a war against Fascism. He explained his decision to his superiors in the Communist Party, who agreed with him, and to his wife and his comrades. Then meeting the Second Secretary at another cocktail party, he informed him of the decision he had taken. He was then invited to attach himself to a certain Army Unit, in some capacity to do with the Ministry of Information. He was to await orders. In due course they came, and he discovered that it was his task to spy on the Navy, or rather, that portion of it operating near him. Our Navy, of course. He was always unable to work out the ideology of this. That a communist should not be set to spy on, let’s say, Russia, seemed to him fair and reasonable, but why was he deemed suitable material to spy on his own side? He found it all baffling, and indeed rather lowering. Then, at a cocktail party, he happened to meet a naval officer with whom he proceeded to get drunk, and they both suddenly understood on a wild hunch that they were engaged on spying on each other, one for the Navy, and one for the Army. Both found this work without much uplift, they were simply not able to put their hearts into it, apart from the fact that they had been in the same class at prep school and had many other social ties. Not even the fact that they weren’t being paid, since it was assumed by their superiors – quite correctly of course -that they would be happy to serve their countries for nothing, made them feel any better. They developed the habit of meeting regularly in a café where they drank wine and coffee and played chess in a vine-covered arbour overlooking a particularly fine bit of the Mediterranean where, without going through all the tedious effort of spying on each other, they simply gave each other relevant information. They were found out. Their excuse that they were fighting the war on the same side was deemed inadequate. They were both given the sack as spies, and transferred to less demanding work. But until D-Day and beyond, the British Army spied on the British Navy, and vice versa. They probably all still do.
The fact that human beings, given half a chance, start seeing each other’s point of view seems to me the only ray of hope there is for humanity, but obviously this tendency must be one to cause anguish to seniors in the diplomatic corps and the employers of your common or garden spy – not the high level spies, but of that in a moment. Diplomats, until they have understood why, always complain that as soon as they understand a country and its language really well, hey presto, off they are whisked to another country. But diplomacy could not continue if the opposing factotums lost a proper sense of national hostility. Some diplomatic corps insist that their employees must only visit among each other, and never fraternize with the locals, obviously believing that understanding with others is inculcated by a sort of osmosis. And of course, any diplomat that shows signs of going native, that is to say really enjoying the manners and morals of a place, must be withdrawn at once.
Not so the masters among the spies: one dedicated to his country’s deepest interests must be worse than useless. The rarest spirits must be those able to entertain two or three allegiances at once; the counter spies, the double and triple agents. Such people are not born. It can’t be that they wake up one morning at the age of thirteen crying: Eureka, I’ve got it, I want to be a double agent! That’s what I was born to do! Nor can there be a training school for multiple spies, a kind of top class that promising pupils graduate towards. Yet that capacity which might retard a diplomat’s career, or mean death to the small fry among spies, must be precisely the one watched out for by the Spymasters who watch and manipulate in the high levels of the world’s thriving espionage systems. What probably happens is that a man drifts, even unwillingly, into serving his country as a spy – like my acquaintance of the cocktail party who then found himself spying on the Senior Service of his own side. Then, whether there through a deep sense of vocation or without enthusiasm, he must begin by making mistakes, sometimes pleased with himself and sometimes not; he goes through a phase of wondering whether he would not have done better to go into the Stock Exchange, or whatever his alternative was – then suddenly there comes that moment, fatal to punier men but a sign of his own future greatness, when he is invaded by sympathy for the enemy. Long dwelling on what X is doing, likely to be doing, or thinking, or planning, makes X’s thoughts as familiar and as likeable as his own. The points of view of the nation he spends all his time trying to undo, are comfortably at home in a mind once tuned only to those of his own dear Fatherland. He is thinking the thoughts of those he used to call enemies before he understands that he is already psychologically a double agent, and before he guesses that those men who must always be on the watch for such precious material have noticed, perhaps even prognosticated, his condition.
On those levels where the really great spies move, whose names we never hear, but whose existence we have to deduce, what fantastic feats of global understanding must be reached, what metaphysical heights of international brotherhood!
It is of course not possible to do more than take the humblest flights into speculation, while making do with those so frequent and highly publicized spy dramas, for some reason or other so very near to farce, that do leave obscurity for our attention.
It can’t be possible that the high reaches of espionage can have anything in common with, for instance, this small happening.
A communist living in a small town in England, who had been openly and undramatically a communist for years, and for whom the state of being a communist had become rather like the practice of an undemanding religion – this man looked out of his window one fine summer afternoon to see standing in the street outside his house a car of such foreignness and such opulence that he was embarrassed, and at once began to work out what excuses he could use to his working-class neighbours whose cars, if any, would be dust in comparison. Out of this monster of a car came two large smiling Russians, carrying a teddy bear the size of a sofa, a bottle of vodka, a long and very heavy roll, which later turned out to be a vast carpet with a picture of the Kremlin on it, and a box of chocolates of British make, with a pretty lady and a pretty dog.
Every window in the street already had heads packed behind the curtains.
‘Come in,’ said he, ‘but I don’t think I have the pleasure of knowing who …’
The roll of carpet was propped in the hall, the three children sent off to play with the teddy bear in the kitchen, and the box of chocolates set aside for the lady of the house, who was out doing the week’s shopping in the High Street. The vodka was opened at once.
It turned out that it was his wife they wanted: they were interested in him only as a go-between. They wished him to ask his wife, who was an employee of the town council, to get hold of the records of the council’s meetings, and to pass these records on to them. Now, this wasn’t London, or even Edinburgh. It was a small unimportant North of England town, in which it would be hard to imagine anything ever happening that could be of interest to anyone outside it, let alone the agents of a Foreign Power. But, said he, these records are open, anyone could go and get copies – you, for instance – ‘Comrades, I shall be delighted to take you to the Town Hall myself.’
No, what they had been instructed to do was to ask his wife to procure them minutes and records, nothing less would do.
A long discussion ensued. It was all no use. The Russians could not be made to see that what they asked was unnecessary. Nor could they understand that to arrive in a small suburban street in a small English town in a car the length of a battleship, was to draw the wrong sort of attention.
‘But why is that?’ they enquired. ‘Representatives of the country where the workers hold power should use a good car. Of course, comrade. You have not thought it out from a class position!’
The climax came when, despairing of the effect of rational argument, they said: ‘And comrade, these presents, the bear, the carpet, the chocolates, the vodka, are only a small token in appreciation of your work for our common cause. Of course you will be properly recompensed.’
At which point he was swept by, indeed taken over entirely by, atavistic feelings he had no idea were in him at all. He stood up and pointed a finger shaking with rage at the door: ‘How dare you imagine,’ he shouted, ‘that my wife and I would take money? If I were going to spy, I’d spy for the love of mankind, for duty, and for international socialism. Take those bloody things out of here, wait, I’ll get that teddy bear from the kids. And you can take your bloody car out of here too.’
His wife, when she came back from the supermarket and heard the story, was even more insulted than he was.
But emotions like these are surely possible only in the lowest possible levels of spy material – in this case so low they didn’t qualify for the first step, entrance into the brotherhood.
Full circle back to Our Man in the Post Office, or rather, the first of three.
After sedulous attendance at a lot of left-wing meetings, semi-private and public – for above all Tom was a methodical man who, if engaged in a thing, always gave it full value – he put his hand up one evening in the middle of a discussion about Agrarian Reform in Venezuela, and said: ‘I must ask permission to ask a question.’
Everyone always laughed at him when he did this, put up his hand to ask for permission to speak, or to leave, or to have opinions about something. Little did we realize that we were seeing here not just a surface mannerism, or habit, but his strongest characteristic.
It was late in the meeting, at that stage when the floor is well-loaded with empty coffee cups, beer glasses, and full ash trays. Some people had already left.
He wanted to know what he ought to do: ‘I want to have the benefit of your expert advice.’ As it happened he had already taken the decision he was asking about.
After some two years of a life not so much double – the word implies secrecy – as dual, his boss in the Central Post Office called him to ask how he was enjoying his life with the Left. Tom was as doggedly informative with him as he was with us, and said that we were interesting people, well-informed, and full of a high-class brand of idealism which he found inspiring.
‘I always feel good after going to one of their meetings,’ he reported he had said. ‘It takes you right out of yourself and makes you think.’
His chief said that he, for his part, always enjoyed hearing about idealism and forward-looking thought, and invited Tom to turn in reports about our activities, our discussions, and most particularly our plans for the future, as well in advance as possible.
Tom told us that he said to his boss that ‘he didn’t like the idea of doing that sort of thing behind our backs, because say what you like about the reds, they are very hospitable’.
The chief had said that it would be for the good of his country.
Tom came to us to say that he had told his boss that he had agreed, because he wanted to be of assistance to the national war effort.
It was clear to everyone that having told us that he had agreed to spy on us, he would, since that was his nature, most certainly go back to his boss and tell him that he had told us that he had agreed to spy. After which he would come back to us to tell us that he had told his boss that … and so on. Indefinitely, if his boss didn’t get tired of it. Tom could not see that his chief would shortly find him unsuitable material for espionage, and might even dismiss him from being a sorter in the Post Office altogether – a nuisance for us. After which he, the chief, would probably look for someone else to give him information.
It was Harry, one of the other two Post Office employees attending Left Club meetings, who suggested that it would probably be himself who would next be invited to spy on us, now that Tom had ‘told’. Tom was upset, when everybody began speculating about his probable supersession by Harry or even Dick. The way he saw it was that his complete frankness with both us and his chief was surely deserving of reward. He ought to be left in the job. God knows how he saw the future. Probably that both his boss and ourselves would continue to employ him. We would use him to find out how our letters were slowly moving through the toils of censorship, and to hurry them on, if possible; his chief would use him to spy on us. When I say employ, I don’t want anyone to imagine this implies payment. Or at least, certainly not from our side. Ideology had to be his spur, sincerity his reward.
It will by now have been noticed that our Tom was not as bright as he might have been. But he was a pleasant enough youth. He was rather good-looking too, about twenty-two. His physical characteristic was neatness. His clothes were always just so; he had a small alert dark moustache; he had glossy dark well-brushed hair. His rather small hands were well-manicured – the latter trait bound to be found offensive by good colonials, whose eye for such anti-masculine evidence – as they were bound to see it, then if not now – was acute. But he was a fairly recent immigrant, from just before the war, and had not yet absorbed the mores. He probably had not noticed that real Rhodesians, in those days at least, did not like men who went in for a careful appearance.
Tom, in spite of our humorous forecast that he would be bound to tell his boss that he had told us, and his stiff and wounded denials that such a thing was possible, found himself impelled to do just that. He reported back that his chief had ‘lost his rag with him’.
But that was not the end. He was offered the job of learning how to censor letters. He had said to his boss that he felt in honour bound to tell us, and his boss said: ‘Oh for Christ’s sake. Tell them anything you damned well like. You won’t be choosing what is to be censored.’
As I said, this was an unsophisticated town in those days, and the condition of ‘everybody knowing everybody else’ was bound to lead to such warm human situations.
He accepted the offer because: ‘My mother always told me that she wanted me to do well for myself, and I’ll increase my rating into Schedule Three as soon as I start work on censoring, and that means an increment of £50 a year.’
We congratulated him, and urged him to keep us informed about how people were trained as censors, and he agreed to do this. Shortly after that the war ended, and all the wartime camaraderie of wartime ended as the Cold War began. The ferment of Left activity ended too.
We saw Tom no more, but followed his progress, steady if slow, up the Civil Service. The last I heard he was heading a Department among whose duties is censorship. I imagine him, a man in his fifties, husband and no doubt a father, looking down the avenues of lost time of those dizzy days when he was a member of a dangerous revolutionary organization. ‘Yes,’ he must often say, ‘you can’t tell me anything about them. They are idealistic, I can grant you so much, but they are dangerous. Dangerous and wrong-headed! I left them as soon as I understood what they really were.’
But of our three Post Office spies Harry was the one whose career, for a while at least, was the most rewarding for humanist idealists.
He was a silent, desperately shy schoolboy who came to a public meeting and fell madly in love for a week or so with the speaker, a girl giving her first public speech and as shy as he was. His father had died and his mother, as the psychiatrists and welfare workers would say, was ‘inadequate’. That is to say, she was not good at being a widow, and was frail in health. What little energy she had went into earning enough money for her two younger sons to live on. She nagged at Harry for not having ambition, and for not studying for the examinations which would take him up the ladder into the next grade in the Post Office – and for wasting time with the reds. He longed to be of use. For three years he devoted all his spare time to organization on the Left, putting up exhibitions, hiring halls and rooms, decorating ballrooms for fund-raising dances, getting advertisements for our socialist magazine -circulation two thousand – and laying it out and selling it. He argued principle with town councillors: ‘But it’s not fair not to let us have the hall, this is a democratic country, isn’t it?’ – and spent at least three nights a week discussing world affairs in smoke-filled rooms.
At the time we would have dismissed as beyond redemption anyone who suggested it, but I daresay now that the main function of those gatherings was social. Southern Rhodesia was never exactly a hospitable country for those interested in anything but sport and the sundowner, and the fifty or so people who came to the meetings were all, whether in the Forces, or refugees from Europe, or simply Rhodesians, souls in need of congenial company. And they were friendly occasions, those meetings, sometimes going on till dawn.
A girl none of us had seen before came to a public meeting. She saw Harry, a handsome, confident, loquacious, energetic, efficient young man. Everyone relied on him.
She fell in love, took him home, and her father, recognizing one of the world’s born organizers, made him manager in his hardware shop.
Which leaves the third, Dick. Now there are some people who should not be allowed anywhere near meetings, debates, or similar intellect-fermenting agencies. He came to two meetings. Harry brought him, describing him as ‘keen’. It was Harry who was keen. Dick sat on the floor on a cushion. Wild bohemian ways, these, for well-brought-up young whites. His forehead puckered like a puppy’s while he tried to follow wild unRhodesian thought. He, like Tom, was a neat, well-set-up youth. Perhaps the Post Office, or at least in Rhodesia, is an institution that attracts the well-ordered? I remember he reminded me of a boiled sweet, bland sugar with a chemical tang. Or perhaps he was like a bulldog, all sleek latent ferocity, with its little bulging eyes, its little snarl. Like Tom, he was one for extracting exact information. ‘I take it you people believe that human nature can be changed?’
At the second meeting he attended, he sat and listened as before. At the end he enquired whether we thought socialism was a good thing in this country where there was the white man’s burden to consider.
He did not come to another meeting. Harry said that he had found us seditious and unRhodesian. Also insincere. We asked Harry to go and ask Dick why he thought we were insincere, and to come back and tell us. It turned out that Dick wanted to know why The Left Club did not take over the government of the country and run it, if we thought the place ill run. But we forgot Dick, particularly as Harry, at the zenith of his efficiency and general usefulness, was drifting off with his future wife to become a hardware store manager. And by then Tom was lost to us.
Suddenly we heard that ‘The Party for Democracy, Liberty, and Freedom’ was about to hold a preliminary mass meeting. One of us was delegated to go along and find out what was happening. This turned out to be me.
The public meeting was in a sideroom off a ballroom in one of the town’s three hotels. It was furnished with a sideboard to hold the extra supplies of beer and sausage rolls and peanuts consumed so plentifully during the weekly dances, a palm in a pot so tall the top fronds were being pressed down by the ceiling, and a dozen stiff dining-room chairs ranged one by one along the walls. There were eleven men and women in the room, including Dick. Unable to understand immediately why this gathering struck me as so different from the ones in which I spent so much of my time, I then saw it was because there were elderly people present. Our gatherings loved only the young.
Dick was wearing his best suit in dark grey flannel. It was a very hot evening. His face was scarlet with endeavour and covered with sweat, which he kept sweeping off his forehead with impatient fingers. He was reading an impassioned document in tone rather like the Communist Manifesto, which began: ‘Fellow Citizens of Rhodesia! Sincere Men and Women! This is the Time for Action! Arise and look about you and enter into your Inheritance! Put the forces of International Capital to flight!’
He was standing in front of the chairs, his well-brushed little head bent over his notes, which were handwritten and in places hard to read, so that these inflammatory sentiments were being stammered and stumbled out, while he kept correcting himself, wiping off sweat, and then stopping with an appealing circular glance around the room at the others. Towards him were lifted ten earnest faces, as if at a saviour or a Party leader.
The programme of this nascent Party was simple. It was to ‘take over by democratic means but as fast as possible’ all the land and the industry of the country ‘but to cause as little inconvenience as possible’ and ‘as soon as it was feasible’ to institute a régime of true equality and fairness in this ‘land of Cecil Rhodes’.
He was intoxicated by the emanations of admiration from his audience. Burning, passionate faces like these (alas, and I saw how far we had sunk away from fervour) were no longer to be seen at our Left Club meetings, which long ago had sailed away on the agreeable tides of debate and intellectual speculation.
The faces belonged to a man of fifty or so, rather grey and beaten, who described himself as a teacher ‘planning the total reform of the entire educational system’; a woman of middle age, a widow, badly dressed and smoking incessantly, who looked as if she had long since gone beyond what she was strong enough to bear from life; an old man with an angelic pink face fringed with white tufts who said he was named after Keir Hardie; three schoolboys, the son of the widow and his two friends; the woman attendant from the ladies’ cloakroom who had unlocked this room to set out the chairs and then had stayed out of interest, since it was her afternoon off; two aircraftsmen from the RAF; Dick the convener; and a beautiful young woman no one had ever seen before who, as soon as Dick had finished his manifesto, stood up to make a plea for vegetarianism. She was ruled out of order. ‘We have to get power first, and then we’ll simply do what the majority wants.’ As for me, I was set apart from them by my lack of fervour, and by Dick’s hostility.
This was in the middle of the Second World War, whose aim it was to defeat the hordes of National Socialism. The Union of Socialist Soviet Republics was thirty years old. It was more than a hundred and fifty years after the French Revolution, and rather more than that after the American Revolution which overthrew the tyrannies of Britain. The Independence of India would shortly be celebrated. It was twenty years after the death of Lenin. Trotsky still lived.
One of the schoolboys, a friend of the widow’s son, put up his hand to say timidly, instantly to be shut up, that ‘he believed there might be books which we could read about socialism and that sort of thing’.
‘Indeed there are,’ said the namesake of Keir Hardie, nodding his white locks, ‘but we needn’t follow the writ that runs in other old countries, when we have got a brand new one here.’
(It must be explained that the whites of Rhodesia, then as now, are always referring to ‘this new country’.)
‘As for books,’ said Dick, eyeing me with all the scornful self-command he had acquired since leaving his cushion weeks before on the floor of our living-room, ‘books don’t seem to do some people any good, so why do we need them? It is all perfectly simple. It isn’t right for a few people to own all the wealth of a country. It isn’t fair. It should be shared out among everybody, equally, and then that would be a democracy.’
‘Well, obviously,’ said the beautiful girl.
‘Ah yes,’ sighed the poor tired woman, emphatically crushing out her cigarette and lighting a new one.
‘Perhaps it would be better if I moved that palm a little,’ said the cloakroom attendant, ‘it does seem to be a little in your way perhaps.’ But Dick did not let her show her agreement in this way.
‘Never mind about the palm,’ he said. ‘It’s not important.’
And this was the point when someone asked; ‘Excuse me, but where do the Natives come in?’ (In those days, the black inhabitants of Rhodesia were referred to as the Natives.)
This was felt to be in extremely bad taste.
‘I don’t really think that is applicable,’ said Dick hotly. ‘I simply don’t see the point of bringing it up at all unless it is to make trouble.’
‘They do live here,’ said one of the RAF.
‘Well, I must withdraw altogether if there’s any likelihood of us getting mixed up with kaffir trouble,’ said the widow.
‘You can be assured that there will be nothing of that,’ said Dick, firmly in control, in the saddle, leader of all, after only half an hour of standing up in front of his mass meeting.
‘I don’t see that,’ said the beautiful girl. ‘I simply don’t see that at all! We must have a policy for the Natives.’
Even twelve people in one small room, whether starting a mass Party or not, meant twelve different, defined, passionately held viewpoints. The meeting at last had to be postponed for a week to allow those who had not had a chance to air their views to have their say. I attended this second meeting. There were fifteen people present. The two RAF were not there, but there were six white trade unionists from the railways who, hearing of the new party, had come to get a resolution passed. ‘In the opinion of this meeting, the Native is being advanced too fast towards civilization and in his own interests the pace should be slowed.’
This resolution was always being passed in those days, on every possible occasion. It probably still is.
But the nine from the week before were already able to form a solid block against this influx of alien thought – not as champions of the Natives, of course not, but because it was necessary to attend to first things first. ‘We have to take over the country first, by democratic methods. That won’t take long, because it is obvious our programme is only fair, and after that we can decide what to do about the Natives.’ The six railway workers then left, leaving the nine from last week, who proceeded to form their Party for Democracy, Liberty and Freedom. A steering committee of three was appointed to draft a constitution.
And that was the last anyone ever heard of it, except for one cyclostyled pamphlet which was called ‘Capitalism is Unfair! Let’s Join Together to Abolish it! This Means You!’
The war was over. Intellectual ferments of this sort occurred no more. Employees of the Post Office, all once again good citizens properly employed in sport and similar endeavours, no longer told the citizens in what ways they were censored and when.
Dick did not stay in the Post Office. That virus, politics, was in his veins for good. From being a spokesman for socialism for the whites, he became, as a result of gibes that he couldn’t have socialism that excluded most of the population, an exponent of the view that Natives must not be advanced too fast in their own interests, and from there he developed into a Town Councillor, and from there into a Member of Parliament. And that is what he still is, a gentleman of distinguished middle age, an indefatigable server on Parliamentary Committees and Commissions, particularly those to do with the Natives, on whom he is considered an authority.
An elderly bulldog of the bulldog breed he is, every inch of him.
The Story of a Non-Marrying Man (#ulink_7f8b626f-febf-593a-bfd7-2dceeb277ef6)
I met Johnny Blakeworthy at the end of his life. I was at the beginning of mine, about ten or twelve years old. This was in the early Thirties, when the Slump had spread from America even to us, in the middle of Africa. The very first sign of the Slump was the increase in the number of people who lived by their wits, or as vagrants.
Our house was on a hill, the highest point of our farm. Through the farm went the only road, a dirt track, from the railway station seven miles away, our shopping and mail centre, to the farms farther on. Our nearest neighbours were three, four, and seven miles away. We could see their roofs flash in the sunlight, or gleam in the moonlight across all those trees, ridges, and valleys.
From the hill we could see the clouds of dust that marked the passage of cars or wagons along the track. We would say: ‘That must be so-and-so going in to fetch his mail.’ Or: ‘Cyril said he had to get a spare for the plough, his broke down, that must be him now.’
If the cloud of dust turned off the main road and moved up through the trees towards us, we had time to build up the fire and put on the kettle. At busy times for the farmers, this happened seldom. Even at slack times, there might be no more than three or four cars a week, and as many wagons. It was mostly a white man’s road, for the Africans moving on foot used their own quicker, short-cutting paths. White men coming to the house on foot were rare, though less rare as the Slump set in. More and more often, coming through the trees up the hill, we saw walking towards us a man with a bundle of blankets over his shoulder, a rifle swinging in his hand. In the blanket-roll were always a frying pan and a can of water, sometimes a couple of tins of bully beef, or a Bible, matches, a twist of dried meat. Sometimes this man had an African servant walking with him. These men always called themselves Prospectors, for that was a respectable occupation. Many did prospect, and nearly always for gold.
One evening, as the sun was going down, up the track to our house came a tall stooped man in shabby khaki with a rifle and a bundle over one shoulder. We knew we had company for the night. The rules of hospitality were that no one coming to our homes in the bush could be refused; every man was fed, and asked to stay as long as he wanted.
Johnny Blakeworthy was burned by the suns of Africa to a dark brown, and his eyes in a dried wrinkled face were grey, the whites much inflamed by the glare. He kept screwing up his eyes, as if in sunlight, and then, in a remembered effort of will, letting loose his muscles, so that his face kept clenching and unclenching like a fist. He was thin: he spoke of having had malaria recently. He was old: it was not only the sun that had so deeply lined his face. In his blanket-roll he had, as well as the inevitable frying pan, an enamel one-pint saucepan, a pound of tea, some dried milk, and a change of clothing. He wore long, heavy khaki trousers for protection against lashing grasses and grass-seeds, and a khaki bush-shirt. He also owned a washed-out grey sweater for frosty nights. Among these items was a corner of a sack full of maize-meal. The presence of the maize-flour was a statement, and probably ambiguous, for the Africans ate maize-meal porridge as their staple food. It was cheap, easily obtainable, quickly cooked, nourishing, but white men did not eat it, at least, not as the basis of their diet, because they did not wish to be put on the same level as Africans. The fact that this man carried it, was why my father, discussing him later with my mother, said: ‘He’s probably gone native.’
This was not criticism. Or rather, while with one part of the collective ethos the white men might say, He’s gone native! and in anger; with a different part of their minds, or at different times it could be said in bitter envy. But that is another story …
Johnny Blakeworthy was of course asked to stay for supper and for the night. At the lamplit table, which was covered with every sort of food, he kept saying how good it was to see so much real food again, but it was in a vaguely polite way, as if he was having to remind himself that this was how he should feel. His plate was loaded with food, and he ate, but kept forgetting to eat, so that my mother had to remind him, putting a little bit more of nice undercut, a splash of gravy, helpings of carrots and spinach from the garden. But by the end he had eaten very little, and hadn’t spoken much either, though the meal gave an impression of much conversation and interest and eating, like a feast, so great was our hunger for company, so many were our questions. Particularly the two children questioned and demanded, for the life of such a man, walking quietly by himself through the bush, sometimes, twenty miles or more a day, sleeping by himself under the stars, or the moon, or whatever weather the seasons sent him, prospecting when he wished, stopping to rest when he needed – such a life, it goes without saying, set us restlessly dreaming of lives different from those we were set towards by school and by parents.
We did learn that he had been on the road for ‘some time, yes, some time now, yes’. That he was sixty. That he had been born in England, in the South, near Canterbury. That he had been adventuring up and down and around Southern Africa all his life – but adventure was not the word he used, it was the word we children repeated until we saw that it made him uncomfortable. He had mined: had indeed owned his own mine. Had farmed, but had not done well. Had done all kinds of work, but ‘I like to be my own master.’ He had owned a store, but ‘I get restless, and I must be on the move.’
Now there was nothing in this we hadn’t heard before -every time, indeed, that such a wanderer came to our door. There was nothing out of the ordinary in his extraordinariness, except, perhaps, as we remembered later, sucking all the stimulation we could out of the visit, discussing it for days, he did not have a prospector’s pan, nor had he asked my father for permission to prospect on this farm. We could not remember a prospector who had failed to become excited by the farm, for it was full of chipped rocks and reefs, trenches and shafts, which some people said went back to the Phoenicians. You couldn’t walk a hundred yards without seeing signs ancient and modern of the search for gold. The district was called ‘Banket’ because it had running through it reefs of the same formation as reefs on the Rand called Banket. The name alone was like a signpost.
But Johnny said he liked to be on his way by the time the sun was up. I saw him leave, down the track that was sun-flushed, the trees all rosy on one side. He shambled away out of sight, a tall, much too thin, rather stooping man in washed-out khaki and soft hide shoes.
Some months later, another man, out of work and occupying himself with prospecting, was asked if he had ever met up with Johnny Blakeworthy, and he said yes, he had indeed! He went on with indignation to say that ‘he had gone native’ in the Valley. The indignation was false, and we assumed that this man too might have ‘gone native’, or that he wished he had, or could. But Johnny’s lack of a prospecting pan, his maize meal, his look at the supper table of being out of place and unfamiliar – all was explained. ‘Going native’ implied that a man would have a ‘bush wife’, but it seemed Johnny did not.
‘He said he’s had enough of the womenfolk, he’s gone to get out of their way,’ said this visitor.
I did not describe, in its place, the thing about Johnny’s visit that struck us most, because at the time it did not strike us as more than agreeably quaint. It was only much later that the letter he wrote us matched up with others, and made a pattern.
Three days after Johnny’s visit to us, a letter arrived from him. I remember my father expected to find that it would ask after all, for permission to prospect. But any sort of letter was odd. Letter-writing equipment did not form part of a tramp’s gear. The letter was on blue Croxley writing paper, and in a blue Croxley envelope, and the writing was as neat as a child’s. It was a ‘bread and butter’ letter. He said that he had very much enjoyed our kind hospitality, and the fine cooking of the lady of the house. He was grateful for the opportunity of making our acquaintance. ‘With my best wishes, yours very truly, Johnny Blakeworthy.’
Once he had been a well-brought-up little boy from a small English country town. ‘You must always write and say thank you after enjoying hospitality, Johnny.’
We talked about the letter for a long time. He must have dropped in at the nearest store after leaving our farm. It was twenty miles away. He probably bought a single sheet of paper and a lone envelope. This meant that he had got them from the African part of the store, where such small retailing went on – at vast profit, of course, to the storekeeper. He must have bought one stamp, and walked across to the post office to hand the letter over the counter. Then, due having been paid to his upbringing, he moved back to the African tribe where he lived beyond post offices, letter writing, and other impedimenta that went with being a white man.
The next glimpse I had of the man, I still have no idea where to fit into the pattern I was at last able to make.
It was years later. I was a young woman at a morning tea party. This one, like all the others of its kind, was an excuse for gossip, and most of that was – of course, since we were young married women – about men and marriage. A girl, married not more than a year, much in love, and unwilling to sacrifice her husband to the collective, talked instead about her aunt from the Orange Free State. ‘She was married for years to a real bad one, and then up he got and walked out. All she heard from him was a nice letter, you know, like a letter after a party or something. It said Thank you very much for the nice time. Can you beat that? And later still she found she had never been married to him because all the time he was married to someone else.’
‘Was she happy?’ one of us asked, and the girl said, ‘She was nuts all right, she said it was the best time of her life.’
‘Then what was she complaining about?’
‘What got her was, having to say Spinster, when she was as good as married all those years. And that letter got her goat, I feel I must write and thank you for … something like that.’
‘What was his name?’ I asked, suddenly understanding what was itching at the back of my mind.
‘I don’t remember. Johnny something or other.’
That was all that came out of that most typical of South African scenes, the morning tea party on the deep shady veranda, the trays covered with every kind of cake and biscuit, the gossiping young women, watching their offspring at play under the trees, filling in a morning of their lazy lives before going back to their respective homes where they would find their meals cooked for them, the table laid, and their husbands waiting. That tea party was thirty years ago, and still that town has not grown so wide that the men can’t drive home to take their midday meals with their families. I am talking of white families, of course.
The next bit of the puzzle came in the shape of a story which I read in a local paper, of the kind that gets itself printed in the spare hours of presses responsible for much more renowned newspapers. This one was called the Valley Advertiser, and its circulation might have been ten thousand. The story was headed: Our Prize-winning story, The Fragrant Black Aloe. By our new Discovery, Alan McGinnery. ‘When I have nothing better to do, I like to stroll down the Main Street, to see the day’s news being created, to catch fragments of talk, and to make up stories about what I hear. Most people enjoy coincidences, it gives them something to talk about. But when there are too many, it makes an unpleasant feeling that the long arm of coincidence is pointing to a region where a rational person is likely to feel uncomfortable. This morning was like that. It began in a flower shop. There a woman with a shopping list was saying to the salesman: “Do you sell black aloes?” It sounded like something to eat.
‘“Never heard of them,” said he. “But I have a fine range of succulents. I can sell you a miniature rock garden on a tray.”
‘“No, no, no, I don’t want the ordinary aloes. I’ve got all those. I want the Scented Black Aloe.”
‘Ten minutes later, waiting to buy a toothbrush at the cosmetic counter at our chemist, Harry’s Pharmacy, I heard a woman ask for a bottle of Black Aloe.
‘Hello, I thought, black aloes have suddenly come into my life!
‘“We don’t stock anything like that,” said the salesgirl, offering rose, honeysuckle, lilac, white violets and jasmine, while obviously reflecting that black aloes must make a bitter kind of perfume.
‘Half an hour later I was in a seedshop, and when I heard a petulant female voice ask: “Do you stock succulents?” then I knew what was coming. This had happened to me before, but I couldn’t remember where or when. Never before had I heard of the Scented Black Aloe, and there it was, three times in an hour.
‘When she had gone I asked the salesman, “Tell me, is there such a thing as the Scented Black Aloe?”
‘“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “But people always want what’s difficult to find.”
‘And at that moment I remembered where I had heard that querulous, sad, insistent hungry note in a voice before (voices, as it turned out!), the note that means that the Scented Black Aloe represents, for that time, all the heart’s desire.
‘It was before the war. I was in the Cape and I had to get to Nairobi. I had driven the route before, and I wanted to get it over. Every couple of hours or so you pass through some little dorp, and they are all the same. They are hot, and dusty. In the tearoom there is a crowd of youngsters eating icecream and talking about motor cycles and film stars. In the bars men stand drinking beer. The restaurant, if there is one, is bad, or pretentious. The waitress longs only for the day when she can get to the big city, and she says the name of the city as if it was Paris, or London, but when you reach it, two hundred or five hundred miles on, it is a slightly larger dorp, with the same dusty trees, the same tearoom, the same bar, and five thousand people instead of a hundred.
‘On the evening of the third day I was in the Northern Transvaal, and when I wanted to stop for the night, the sun was blood-red through a haze of dust, and the main street was full of cattle and people. There was the yearly Farmers’ Show in progress, and the hotel was full. The proprietor said there was a woman who took in people in emergencies.
‘The house was by itself at the end of a straggling dust street, under a large jacaranda tree. It was small, with chocolate-coloured trellis-work along the veranda, and the roof was sagging under scarlet bougainvillaea. The woman who came to the door was a plump, dark-haired creature in a pink apron, her hands floury with cooking.
‘She said the room was not ready. I said that I had come all the way from Bloemfontein that morning, and she said, “Come in, my second husband was from there when he came here in the beginning.”
‘Outside the house was all dust, and the glare was bad, but inside it was cosy, with flowers and ribbons and cushions and china behind glass. In every conceivable place were pictures of the same man. You couldn’t get away from them. He smiled down from the bathroom wall, and if you opened a cupboard door, there he was, stuck up among the dishes.
‘She spent two hours cooking a meal, said over and over again how a woman has to spend all her day cooking a meal that is eaten in five minutes, enquired after my tastes in food, offered second helpings. In between, she talked about her husband. It seemed that four years ago a man had arrived in the week of the Show, asking for a bed. She never liked taking in single men, for she was a widow living alone, but she did like the look of him, and a week later they were married. For eleven months they lived in a dream of happiness. Then he walked out and she hadn’t heard of him since, except for one letter, thanking her for all her kindness. That letter was like a slap in the face, she said. You don’t thank a wife for being kind, like a hostess, do you? Nor do you send her Christmas cards. But he had sent her one the Christmas after he left, and there it was, on the mantelpiece, With Best Wishes for a Happy Christmas. But he was so good to me, she said. He gave me every penny he ever earned, and I didn’t need it, because my first hubby left me provided for. He got a job as a ganger on the railways. She could never look at another man after him. No woman who knew anything about life would. He had his faults of course, like everyone. He was restless and moody, but he loved her honestly, she could see that, and underneath it all, he was a family man.
‘That went on until the cocks began to crow and my face ached with yawning.
‘Next morning I continued my drive North, and that night, in Southern Rhodesia, I drove into a small town full of dust and people standing about in their best clothes among milling cattle. The hotel was full. It was Show time.
‘When I saw the house, I thought time had turned back twenty-four hours, for there were the creepers weighing down the roof, and the trellised veranda, and the red dust heaped all around it. The attractive woman who came to the door was fair-haired. Behind her, through the door, I saw a picture on the wall of the same handsome blond man with his hard grey eyes that had sunmarks raying out from around them into the sunburn. On the floor was playing a small child, obviously his.
‘I said where I had come from that morning, and she said wistfully that her husband had come from there three years before. It was all just the same. Even the inside of the house was like the other, comfortable and frilly and full. But it needed a man’s attention. All kinds of things needed attention. We had supper and she talked about her “husband” – he had lasted until the birth of the baby and a few weeks beyond it – in the same impatient, yearning, bitter, urgent voice of her sister of the evening before. As I sat there listening, I had the ridiculous feeling that in hearing her out so sympathetically I was being disloyal to the other deserted “wife” four hundred miles South. Of course he had his faults, she said. He drank too much sometimes, but men couldn’t help being men. And sometimes he went into a daydream for weeks at a stretch and didn’t hear what you said. But he was a good husband, for all that. He had got a job in the Sales Department of the Agricultural Machinery Store, and he had worked hard. When the little boy was born he was so pleased … and then he left. Yes, he did write once, he wrote a long letter saying he would never forget her “affectionate kindness”. That letter really upset her. It was a funny thing to say, wasn’t it?
‘Long after midnight I went to sleep under such a large tinted picture of the man that it made me uncomfortable. It was like having someone watching you sleep.
‘Next evening, when I was about to drive out of Southern Rhodesia into Northern Rhodesia, I was half looking for a little town full of clouds of reddish dust and crowding cattle, the small house, the waiting woman. There seemed no reason why this shouldn’t go on all the way to Nairobi.
‘But it was not until the day after that, on the Copper Belt in Northern Rhodesia, that I came to a town full of cars and people. There was going to be a dance that evening. The big hotels were full. The lady whose house I was directed to was plump, red-haired, voluble. She said she loved putting people up for the night, though there was no need for her to do it since while her husband might have his faults (she said this with what seemed like hatred) he made good money at the garage where he was a mechanic. Before she was married, she had earned her living by letting rooms to travellers, which was how she had met her husband. She talked about him while we waited for him to come in to supper. “He does this every night, every night of my life! You’d think it wasn’t much to ask to come in for meals at the right time, instead of letting everything spoil, but once he gets into the bar with the men, there is no getting him out.”
‘There wasn’t a hint in her voice of what I had heard in the voices of the other two women. And I have often wondered since if in her case too absence would make the heart grow fonder. She sighed often and deeply, and said that when you were single you wanted to be married, and when you were married, you wanted to be single, but what got her was, she had been married before, and she ought to have known better. Not that this one wasn’t a big improvement on the last, whom she had divorced.
‘He didn’t come in until the bar closed, after ten. He was not as good-looking as in his photographs, but that was because his overalls were stiff with grease, and there was oil on his face. She scolded him for being late, and for not having washed, but all he said was: “Don’t try to housetrain me.” At the end of the meal she wondered aloud why she spent her life cooking and slaving for a man who didn’t notice what he ate, and he said she shouldn’t bother, because it was true, he didn’t care what he ate. He nodded at me, and went out again. It was after midnight when he came back, with a stardazed look, bringing a cold draught of night air into the hot lamplit room.
‘“So you’ve decided to come in?” she complained.
‘“I walked out into the veld a bit. The moon is strong enough to read by. There’s rain on the wind.” He put his arm around her waist and smiled at her. She smiled back, her bitterness forgotten. The wanderer had come home.’
I wrote to Alan McGinnery and asked him if there had been a model for his story. I told him why I wanted to know, told him of the old man who had walked up to our house through the bush, fifteen years before. There was no reason to think it was the same man, except for that one detail, the letters he wrote, like ‘bread and butter’ letters after a party or a visit.
I got this reply: ‘I am indebted to you for your interesting and informative letter. You are right in thinking my little story had its start in real life. But in most ways it is far from fact. I took liberties with the time of the story, moving it forward by years, no, decades, and placing it in a modern setting. For the times when Johnny Blakeworthy was loving and leaving so many young women – I’m afraid he was a very bad lot! – are now out of the memory of all but the elderly among us. Everything is so soft and easy now. “Civilization” so-called has overtaken us. But I was afraid if I put my “hero” into his real setting, it would seem so exotic to present-day readers that they would read my little tale for the sake of the background, finding that more interesting than my “hero”.
‘It was just after the Boer War. I had volunteered for it, as a young man does, for the excitement, not knowing what sort of war it really was. Afterwards I decided not to return to England. I thought I would try the mines, so I went to Johannesburg, and there I met my wife, Lena. She was the cook and housekeeper in a men’s boarding-house, a rough job, in rough days. She had a child by Johnny, and believed herself to be married to him. So did I. When I made enquiries I found she had never been married, the papers he had produced at the office were all false. This made things easy for us in the practical sense, but made them worse in some ways. For she was bitter and I am afraid never really got over the wrong done to her. But we married, and I became the child’s father. She was the original of the second woman in my story. I describe her as home-loving, and dainty in her ways. Even when she was cooking for all those miners, and keeping herself and the boy on bad wages, living in a room not much larger than a dog’s kennel, it was all so neat and pretty. That was what took my fancy first. I daresay it was what took Johnny’s too, to begin with, at any rate.
‘Much later – very much later, the child was almost grown, so it was after the Great War – I happened to hear someone speak of Johnny Blakeworthy. It was a woman who had been “married” to him. It never crossed our minds to think – Lena and me – that he had betrayed more than one woman. After careful thought, I decided never to tell her. But I had to know. By then I had done some careful field work. The trail began, or at least, began for me, in Cape Province, with a woman I had heard spoken of, and had then tracked down. She was the first woman in my story, a little plump pretty thing. At the time Johnny married her, she was the daughter of a Boer farmer, a rich one. I don’t have to tell you that this marriage was unpopular. It took place just before the Boer War, that nasty time was to come, but she was a brave girl to marry an Englishman, a rionek. Her parents were angry, but later they were kind and took her back when he left her. He did really marry her, in Church, everything correct and legal. I believe that she was his first love. Later she divorced him. It was a terrible thing, a divorce for those simple people. Now things have changed so much, and people wouldn’t believe how narrow and churchbound they were then. That divorce hurt her whole life. She did not marry again. It was not because she did not want to! She had fought with her parents, saying she must get a divorce, because she wanted to be married. But no one married her. In that old-fashioned rural community, in those days, she was a Scarlet Woman. A sad thing, for she was a really nice woman. What struck me was that she spoke of Johnny with no bitterness at all. Even twenty years later, she loved him.
‘From her, I followed up other clues. With my own wife, I found four women in all. I made it three in my little story: life is always much more lavish with coincidence and drama than any fiction writer dares to be. The red-headed woman I described was a barmaid in a hotel. She hated Johnny. But there was little doubt in my mind what would happen if he walked in through that door.
‘I told my wife that I had been big game hunting. I did not want to stir up old unhappiness. After she died I wrote the story of the journey from one woman to another, all now of middle age, all of whom had been “married” to Johnny. But I had to alter the settings of the story. How fast everything has changed! I would have had to describe the Boer family on their farm, such simple and old-fashioned, good and bigoted people. And their oldest daughter – the “bad” one. There are no girls like that now, not even in convents. Where in the world now would you find girls brought up as strictly and as narrowly as those on those Boer farms, fifty years ago? And still she had the courage to marry her Englishman, that is the marvellous thing. Then I would have had to describe the mining camps of Johannesburg. Then the life of a woman married to a storekeeper in the bush. Her nearest neighbour was fifty miles away and they didn’t have cars in those days. Finally, the early days of Bulawayo, when it was more like a shanty town than a city. No, it was Johnny that interested me, so I decided to make the story modern, and in that way the reader would not be distracted by what is past and gone.’
It was from an African friend who had known the village in which Johnny died that I heard of his last years. Johnny walked into the village, asked to see the Chief, and when the Chief assembled with his elders, asked formally for permission to live in the village, as an African, not as a white man. All this was quite correct, and polite, but the elders did not like it. This village was a long way from the centres of white power, up towards the Zambesi. The traditional life was still comparatively unchanged, unlike the tribes near the white cities, whose structure had been smashed for ever. The people of this tribe cherished their distance from the white man, and feared his influence. At least, the older ones did. While they had nothing against this white man as a man – on the contrary, he seemed more human than most – they did not want a white man in their life. But what could they do? Their traditions of hospitality were strong: strangers, visitors, travellers, must be sheltered and fed. And they were democratic; a man was as good as his behaviour, it was against their beliefs to throw a person out for a collective fault. And perhaps they were, too, a little curious. The white men these people had seen were the tax-collectors, the policemen, the Native Commissioners, all coldly official or arbitrary. This white man behaved like a suppliant, sitting quietly on the outskirts of the village, beyond the huts, under a tree, waiting for the council to make up its mind. Finally they let him stay, on condition that he shared the life of the village in every way. This proviso they probably thought would get rid of him. But he lived there until he died, six years, with short trips away to remind himself, perhaps, of the strident life he had left. It was on such a trip that he had walked up to our house and stayed the night.
The Africans called him Angry Face. This name implied that it was only the face which was angry. It was because of his habit of screwing up then letting loose his facial muscles. They also called him Man Without a Home, and The Man Who Has no Woman.
The women found him intriguing, in spite of his sixty years. They hung about his hut, gossiped about him, brought him presents. Several made offers, even young girls.
The Chief and his elders conferred again, under the great tree in the centre of the village, and then called him to hear their verdict.
‘You need a woman,’ they said, and in spite of all his protests, made it a condition of his staying with them, for the sake of the tribe’s harmony.
They chose for him a woman of middle age whose husband had died of the blackwater fever, and who had had no children. They said that a man of his age could not be expected to give the patience and attention that small children need. According to my friend, who as a small boy had heard much talk of this white man who had preferred their way of life to his own, Johnny and his new woman ‘lived together in kindness’.
It was while I was writing this story that I remembered something else. When I was at school in Salisbury there was a girl called Alicia Blakeworthy. She was fifteen, a ‘big girl’ to me. She lived with her mother on the fringes of the town. Her step-father had left them. He had walked out.
Her mother had a small house, in a large garden, and she took in paying guests. One of these guests had been Johnny.
He had been working as a game warden up towards the Zambesi river, and had had malaria badly. She nursed him. He married her and took a job as a counter hand in the local store. He was a bad husband to Mom, said Alicia. Terrible. Yes, he brought in money, it wasn’t that. But he was a cold hard-hearted man. He was no company for them. He would just sit and read, or listen to the radio, or walk around by himself all night. And he never appreciated what was done for him.
Oh how we schoolgirls all hated this monster! What a heartless beast he was.
But the way he saw it, he had stayed for four long years in a suffocating town house surrounded by a domesticated garden. He had worked from eight to four selling groceries to lazy women. When he came home, this money, the gold he had earned by his slavery, was spent on chocolates, magazines, dresses, hair-ribbons for his townified stepdaughter. He was invited, three times a day, to sit down at a table crammed with roast beef and chickens and puddings and cakes and biscuits.
He used to try and share his philosophy of living.
‘I used to feed myself for ten shillings a week!’
‘But why? What for? What’s the point?’
‘Because I was free, that’s the point! If you don’t spend a lot of money then you don’t have to earn it and you are free. Why do you have to spend money on all this rubbish? You can buy a piece of rolled brisket for three shillings, and you boil it with an onion and you can live off it for four days! You can live off mealiemeal well enough, I often did, in the bush.’
‘Mealiemeal! I’m not going to eat native food!’
‘Why not? What’s wrong with it?’
‘If you can’t see why not, then I’m afraid I can’t help you.’
Perhaps it was here, with Alicia’s mother, that the idea of ‘going native’ had first come into his head.
‘For crying out aloud, why cake all the time, why all these new dresses, why do you have to have new curtains, why do we have to have curtains at all, what’s wrong with the sunlight? What’s wrong with the starlight? Why do you want to shut them out? Why?’
That ‘marriage’ lasted four years, a fight all the way.
Then he drifted North, out of the white man’s towns, and up into those parts that had not been ‘opened up to white settlement’, and where the Africans were still living, though not for long, in their traditional ways. And there at last he found a life that suited him, and a woman with whom he lived in kindness.
The Black Madonna (#ulink_b20749e6-f01c-5359-9892-74b9ea4fd66c)
There are some countries in which the arts, let alone Art, cannot be said to flourish. Why this should be so it is hard to say, although of course we all have our theories about it. For sometimes it is the most barren soil that sends up gardens of those flowers which we all agree are the crown and justification of life, and it is this fact which makes it hard to say, finally, why the soil of Zambesia should produce such reluctant plants.
Zambesia is a tough, sunburnt, virile, positive country contemptuous of subtleties and sensibility: yet there have been States with these qualities which have produced art, though perhaps with the left hand. Zambesia is, to put it mildly, unsympathetic to those ideas so long taken for granted in other parts of the world, to do with liberty, fraternity and the rest. Yet there are those, and some of the finest souls among them, who maintain that art is impossible without a minority whose leisure is guaranteed by a hardworking majority. And whatever Zambesia’s comfortable minority may lack, it is not leisure.
Zambesia – but enough; out of respect for ourselves and for scientific accuracy, we should refrain from jumping to conclusions. Particularly when one remembers the almost wistful respect Zambesians show when an artist does appear in their midst.
Consider, for instance, the case of Michele.
He came out of the internment camp at the time when Italy was made a sort of honorary ally, during the Second World War. It was a time of strain for the authorities, because it is one thing to be responsible for thousands of prisoners of war whom one must treat according to certain recognized standards; it is another to be faced, and from one day to the next, with these same thousands transformed by some international legerdemain into comrades in arms. Some of the thousands stayed where they were in the camps; they were fed and housed there at least. Others went as farm labourers, though not many; for while the farmers were as always short of labour, they did not know how to handle farm labourers who were also white men: such a phenomenon had never happened in Zambesia before. Some did odd jobs around the towns, keeping a sharp eye out for the trade unions, who would neither admit them as members nor agree to their working.
Hard, hard, the lot of these men, but fortunately not for long, for soon the war ended and they were able to go home.
Hard, too, the lot of the authorities, as has been pointed out; and for that reason they were doubly willing to take what advantages they could from the situation; and that Michele was such an advantage there could be no doubt.
His talents were first discovered when he was still a prisoner of war. A church was built in the camp, and Michele decorated its interior. It became a show-place, that little tin-roofed church in the prisoners’ camp, with its whitewashed walls covered all over with frescoes depicting swarthy peasants gathering grapes for the vintage, beautiful Italian girls dancing, plump dark-eyed children. Amid crowded scenes of Italian life appeared the Virgin and her Child, smiling and beneficent, happy to move familiarly among her people.
Culture-loving ladies who had bribed the authorities to be taken inside the camp would say, ‘Poor thing, how homesick he must be.’ And they would beg to be allowed to leave half a crown for the artist. Some were indignant. He was a prisoner, after all, captured in the very act of fighting against justice and democracy, and what right had he to protest? – for they felt these paintings as a sort of protest. What was there in Italy that we did not have right here in Westonville, which was the capital and hub of Zambesia? Were there not sunshine and mountains and fat babies and pretty girls here? Did we not grow – if not grapes, at least lemons and oranges and flowers in plenty?
People were upset – the desperation of nostalgia came from the painted white walls of that simple church, and affected everyone according to his temperament.
But when Michele was free, his talent was remembered. He was spoken of as ‘that Italian artist’. As a matter of fact, he was a bricklayer. And the virtues of those frescoes might very well have been exaggerated. It is possible they would have been overlooked altogether in a country where picture-covered walls were more common.
When one of the visiting ladies came rushing out to the camp in her own car, to ask him to paint her children, he said he was not qualified to do so. But at last he agreed. He took a room in the town and made some nice likenesses of the children. Then he painted the children of a great number of the first lady’s friends. He charged ten shillings a time. Then one of the ladies wanted a portrait of herself. He asked ten pounds for it; it had taken him a month to do. She was annoyed, but paid.
And Michele went off to his room with a friend and stayed there drinking red wine from the Cape and talking about home. While the money lasted he could not be persuaded to do any more portraits.
There was a good deal of talk among the ladies about the dignity of labour, a subject in which they were well versed; and one felt they might almost go so far as to compare a white man with a kaffir, who did not understand the dignity of labour either.
He was felt to lack gratitude. One of the ladies tracked him down, found him lying on a camp-bed under a tree with a bottle of wine, and spoke to him severely about the barbarity of Mussolini and the fecklessness of the Italian temperament. Then she demanded that he should instantly paint a picture of herself in her new evening dress. He refused, and she went home very angry.
It happened that she was the wife of one of our most important citizens, a General or something of that kind, who was at that time engaged in planning a military tattoo or show for the benefit of the civilian population. The whole of Westonville had been discussing this show for weeks. We were all bored to extinction by dances, fancy-dress balls, fairs, lotteries and other charitable entertainments. It is not too much to say that while some were dying for freedom, others were dancing for it. There comes a limit to everything. Though, of course, when the end of the war actually came and the thousands of troops stationed in the country had to go home – in short, when enjoying themselves would no longer be a duty, many were heard to exclaim that life would never be the same again.
In the meantime, the Tattoo would make a nice change for us all. The military gentlemen responsible for the idea did not think of it in these terms. They thought to improve morale by giving us some idea of what war was really like. Headlines in the newspaper were not enough. And in order to bring it all home to us, they planned to destroy a village by shell-fire before our very eyes.
First, the village had to be built.
It appears that the General and his subordinates stood around in the red dust of the parade-ground under a burning sun for the whole of one day, surrounded by building materials, while hordes of African labourers ran around with boards and nails, trying to make something that looked like a village. It became evident that they would have to build a proper village in order to destroy it; and this would cost more than was allowed for the whole entertainment. The General went home in a bad temper, and his wife said what they needed was an artist, they needed Michele. This was not because she wanted to do Michele a good turn; she could not endure the thought of him lying around singing while there was work to be done. She refused to undertake any delicate diplomatic missions when her husband said he would be damned if he would ask favours of any little Wop. She solved the problem for him in her own way: a certain Captain Stocker was sent out to fetch him.
The Captain found him on the same camp-bed under the same tree, in rolled-up trousers, and an uncollared shirt; unshaven, mildly drunk, with a bottle of wine standing beside him on the earth. He was singing an air so wild, so sad, that the Captain was uneasy. He stood at ten paces from the disreputable fellow and felt the indignities of his position. A year ago, this man had been a mortal enemy to be shot on sight. Six months ago, he had been an enemy prisoner. Now he lay with his knees up, in an untidy shirt that had certainly once been military. For the Captain, the situation crystallized in a desire that Michele should salute him.
‘Piselli!’ he said sharply.
Michele turned his head and looked at the Captain from the horizontal. ‘Good morning,’ he said affably.
‘You are wanted,’ said the Captain.
‘Who?’ said Michele. He sat up, a fattish, olive-skinned little man. His eyes were resentful.
‘The authorities.’
‘The war is over?’
The Captain, who was already stiff and shiny enough in his laundered khaki, jerked his head back, frowning, chin out. He was a large man, blond, and wherever his flesh showed, it was brick-red. His eyes were small and blue and angry. His red hands, covered all over with fine yellow bristles, clenched by his side. Then he saw the disappointment in Michele’s eyes, and the hands unclenched. ‘No, it is not over,’ he said. ‘Your assistance is required.’
‘For the war?’
‘For the war effort. I take it you are interested in defeating the Germans?’
Michele looked at the Captain. The little dark-eyed artisan looked at the great blond officer with his cold blue eyes, his narrow mouth, his hands like bristle-covered steaks. He looked and said: ‘I am very interested in the end of the war.’
‘Well?’ said the Captain between his teeth.
‘The pay?’ said Michele.
‘You will be paid.’
Michele stood up. He lifted the bottle against the sun, then took a gulp. He rinsed his mouth out with wine and spat. Then he poured what was left on to the red earth, where it made a bubbling purple stain.
‘I am ready,’ he said. He went with the Captain to the waiting lorry, where he climbed in beside the driver’s seat and not, as the Captain had expected, into the back of the lorry. When they had arrived at the parade-ground the officers had left a message that the Captain would be personally responsible for Michele and for the village. Also for the hundred or so labourers who were sitting around on the grass verges waiting for orders.
The Captain explained what was wanted, Michele nodded. Then he waved his hand at the Africans. ‘I do not want these,’ he said.
‘You will do it yourself – a village?’
‘Yes.’
‘With no help?’
Michele smiled for the first time. ‘I will do it.’
The Captain hesitated. He disapproved on principle of white men doing heavy manual labour. He said: ‘I will keep six to do the heavy work.’
Michele shrugged; and the Captain went over and dismissed all but six of the Africans. He came back with them to Michele.
‘It is hot,’ said Michele.
‘Very,’ said the Captain. They were standing in the middle of the parade-ground. Around its edge trees, grass, gulfs of shadow. Here, nothing but reddish dust, drifting and lifting in a low hot breeze.
‘I am thirsty,’ said Michele. He grinned. The Captain felt his stiff lips loosen unwillingly in reply. The two pairs of eyes met. It was a moment of understanding. For the Captain, the little Italian had suddenly become human. ‘I will arrange it,’ he said, and went off down-town. By the time he had explained the position to the right people, filled in forms and made arrangements, it was late afternoon. He returned to the parade-ground with a case of Cape brandy, to find Michele and the six black men seated together under a tree. Michele was singing an Italian song to them, and they were harmonizing with him. The sight affected the Captain like an attack of nausea. He came up, and the Africans stood to attention. Michele continued to sit.
‘You said you would do the work yourself?’
‘Yes, I said so.’
The Captain then dismissed the Africans. They departed, with friendly looks towards Michele, who waved at them. The Captain was beef-red with anger. ‘You have not started yet?’
‘How long have I?’
“Three weeks.’
“Then there is plenty of time,’ said Michele, looking at the bottle of brandy in the Captain’s hand. In the other were two glasses. ‘It is evening,’ he pointed out. The Captain stood frowning for a moment. Then he sat down on the grass, and poured out two brandies.
‘Ciao,’ said Michele.
‘Cheers,’ said the Captain. Three weeks, he was thinking. Three weeks with this damned little Itie! He drained his glass and refilled it, and set it in the grass. The grass was cool and soft. A tree was flowering somewhere close – hot waves of perfume came on the breeze.
‘It is nice here,’ said Michele. ‘We will have a good time together. Even in a war, there are times of happiness. And of friendship. I drink to the end of the war.’
Next day, the Captain did not arrive at the parade-ground until after lunch. He found Michele under the frees with a bottle. Sheets of ceiling board had been erected at one end of the parade-ground in such a way that they formed two walls and part of a third, and a slant of steep roof supported on struts.
‘What’s that?’ said the Captain, furious.
‘The church,’ said Michele.
‘Wha-at?’
‘You will see. Later. It is very hot.’ He looked at the brandy bottle that lay on its side on the ground. The Captain went to the lorry and returned with the case of brandy. They drank. Time passed. It was a long time since the Captain had sat on grass under a tree. It was a long time, for that matter, since he had drunk so much. He always drank a great deal, but it was regulated to the times and seasons. He was a disciplined man. Here, sitting on the grass beside this little man whom he still could not help thinking of as an enemy, it was not that he let his self-discipline go, but that he felt himself to be something different: he was temporarily set outside his normal behaviour. Michele did not count. He listened to Michele talking about Italy, and it seemed to him he was listening to a savage speaking: as if he heard tales from the mythical South Sea islands where a man like himself might very well go just once in his life. He found himself saying he would like to make a trip to Italy after the war. Actually, he was attracted only by the North and the Northern people. He had visited Germany, under Hitler, and though it was not the time to say so, had found it very satisfactory. Then Michele sang him some Italian songs. He sang Michele some English songs. Then Michele took out photographs of his wife and children, who lived in a village in the mountains of North Italy. He asked the Captain if he were married. The Captain never spoke about his private affairs.
He had spent all his life in one or other of the African colonies as a policeman, magistrate, native commissioner, or in some other useful capacity. When the war started, military life came easily to him. But he hated city life, and had his own reasons for wishing the war over. Mostly, he had been in bush-stations with one or two other white men, or by himself, far from the rigours of civilization. He had relations with native women; and from time to time visited the city where his wife lived with her parents and the children. He was always tormented by the idea that she was unfaithful to him. Recently he had even appointed a private detective to watch her; he was convinced the detective was inefficient.
Army friends coming from L—where his wife was, spoke of her at parties, enjoying herself. When the war ended, she would not find it so easy to have a good time. And why did he not simply live with her and be done with it? The fact was, he could not. And his long exile to remote bush-stations was because he needed the excuse not to. He could not bear to think of his wife for too long; she was that part of his life he had never been able, so to speak, to bring to heel.
Yet he spoke of her now to Michele, and of his favourite bush-wife, Nadya. He told Michele the story of his life, until he realized that the shadows from the trees they sat under had stretched right across the parade-ground to the grandstand. He got unsteadily to his feet, and said: ‘There is work to be done. You are being paid to work.’
‘I will show you my church when the light goes.’
The sun dropped, darkness fell, and Michele made the Captain drive his lorry on to the parade-ground a couple of hundred yards away and switch on his lights. Instantly, a white church sprang up from the shapes and shadows of the bits of board.
‘Tomorrow, some houses,’ said Michele cheerfully.
At the end of the week, the space at the end of the parade-ground had crazy gawky constructions of lath and board over it, that looked in the sunlight like nothing on this earth. Privately, it upset the Captain; it was like a nightmare that these skeleton-like shapes should be able to persuade him, with the illusions of light and dark, that they were a village. At night, the Captain drove up his lorry, switched on the lights, and there it was, the village, solid and real against a background of full green trees. Then, in the morning sunlight, there was nothing there, just bits of board stuck in the sand.
‘It is finished,’ said Michele.
‘You were engaged for three weeks,’ said the Captain. He did not want it to end, this holiday from himself.
Michele shrugged. ‘The army is rich,’ he said. Now, to avoid curious eyes, they sat inside the shade of the church, with the case of brandy between them. The Captain talked endlessly about his wife, about women. He could not stop talking.
Michele listened. Once he said: ‘When I go home – when I go home – I shall open my arms …’ He opened them, wide. He closed his eyes. Tears ran down his cheeks. ‘I shall take my wife in my arms, and I shall ask nothing, nothing. I do not care. It is enough, it is enough. I shall ask no questions and I shall be happy.’
The Captain stared before him, suffering. He thought how he dreaded his wife. She was a scornful creature, gay and hard, who laughed at him. She had been laughing at him ever since they married. Since the war, she had taken to calling him names like Little Hitler, and Storm-trooper. ‘Go ahead, my Little Hitler,’ she had cried last time they met. ‘Go ahead, my Storm-trooper. If you want to waste your money on private detectives, go ahead. But don’t think I don’t know what you do when you’re in the bush. I don’t care what you do, but remember that I know it …’
The Captain remembered her saying it. And there sat Michele on his packing-case, saying: ‘It’s a pleasure for the rich, my friend, detectives and the law. Even jealousy is a pleasure I don’t want any more. Ah, my friend, to be together with my wife again, and the children, that is all I ask of life. That and wine and food and singing in the evening.’ And the tears wetted his cheeks and splashed on to his shirt.
That a man should cry, good Lord! thought the Captain. And without shame! He seized the bottle and drank.
Three days before the great occasion, some high-ranking officers came strolling through the dust, and found Michele and the Captain sitting together on the packing-case, singing. The Captain’s shirt was open down the front, and there were stains on it.
The Captain stood to attention with the bottle in his hand, and Michele stood to attention too, out of sympathy with his friend. Then the officers drew the Captain aside – they were all cronies of his – and said, what the hell did he think he was doing? And why wasn’t the village finished? Then they went away.
‘Tell them it is finished,’ said Michele. ‘Tell them I want to go.’
‘No,’ said the Captain, ‘no. Michele, what would you do if your wife …’
‘This world is a good place. We should be happy – that is all.’
‘Michele …’
‘I want to go. There is nothing to do. They paid me yesterday.’
‘Sit down, Michele. Three more days and then it’s finished.’
‘Then I shall paint the inside of the church as I painted the one in the camp.’
The Captain laid himself down on some boards and went to sleep. When he woke, Michele was surrounded by the pots of paint he had used on the outside of the village. Just in front of the Captain was a picture of a black girl. She was young and plump. She wore a patterned blue dress and her shoulders came soft and bare out of it. On her back was a baby slung in a band of red stuff. Her face was turned towards the Captain and she was smiling.
‘That’s Nadya,’ said the Captain. ‘Nadya …’ He groaned loudly. He looked at the black child and shut his eyes. He opened them, and mother and child were still there. Michele was very carefully drawing thin yellow circles around the heads of the black girl and her child.
‘Good God,’ said the Captain, ‘you can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘You can’t have a black Madonna.’
‘She was a peasant. This is a peasant. Black peasant Madonna for black country.’
‘This is a German village,’ said the Captain.
‘This is my Madonna,’ said Michele angrily. ‘Your German village and my Madonna. I paint this picture as an offering to the Madonna. She is pleased – I feel it.’
The Captain lay down again. He was feeling ill. He went back to sleep. When he woke for the second time, it was dark. Michele had brought in a flaring paraffin lamp, and by its light was working on the long wall. A bottle of brandy stood beside him. He painted until long after midnight, and the Captain lay on his side and watched, as passive as a man suffering a dream. Then they both went to sleep on the boards. The whole of the next day Michele stood painting black Madonnas, black saints, black angels. Outside, troops were practising in the sunlight, bands were blaring and motor cyclists roared up and down. But Michele painted on, drunk and oblivious. The Captain lay on his back, drinking and muttering about his wife. Then he would say ‘Nadya, Nadya’, and burst into sobs.
Towards nightfall the troops went away. The officers came back, and the Captain went off with them to show how the village sprang into being when the great lights at the end of the parade-ground were switched on. They all looked at the village in silence. They switched the lights off, and there were only tall angular boards leaning like gravestones in the moonlight. On went the lights – and there was the village. They were silent, as if suspicious. Like the Captain, they seemed to feel it was not right. Uncanny it certainly was, but that was not it. Unfair – that was the word. It was cheating. And profoundly disturbing.
‘Clever chap, that Italian of yours,’ said the General.
The Captain, who had been woodenly correct until this moment, suddenly came rocking up to the General, and steadied himself by laying his hands on the august shoulder. ‘Bloody Wops,’ he said. ‘Bloody kaffirs. Bloody … Tell you what, though, there’s one Itie that’s some good. Yes, there is. I’m telling you. He’s a friend of mine, actually.’
The General looked at him. Then he nodded at his underlings. The Captain was taken away for disciplinary purposes. It was decided, however, that he must be ill, nothing else could account for such behaviour. He was put to bed in his own room with a nurse to watch him.
He woke twenty-four hours later, sober for the first time in weeks. He slowly remembered what had happened. Then he sprang out of bed and rushed into his clothes. The nurse was just in time to see him run down the path and leap into his lorry.
He drove at top speed to the parade-ground, which was flooded with light in such a way that the village did not exist. Everything was in full swing. The cars were three deep around the square, with people on the running-boards and even the roofs. The grandstand was packed. Women dressed up as gipsies, country girls, Elizabethan court dames, and so on, wandered about with trays of ginger beer and sausage-rolls and programmes at five shillings each in aid of the war effort. On the square, troops deployed, obsolete machine-guns were being dragged up and down, bands played, and motor cyclists roared through flames.
As the Captain parked the lorry, all this activity ceased, and the lights went out. The Captain began running around the outside of the square to reach the place where the guns were hidden in a mess of net and branches. He was sobbing with the effort. He was a big man, and unused to exercise, and sodden with brandy. He had only one idea in his mind -to stop the guns firing, to stop them at all costs.
Luckily, there seemed to be a hitch. The lights were still out. The unearthly graveyard at the end of the square glittered white in the moonlight. Then the lights briefly switched on, and the village sprang into existence for just long enough to show large red crosses all over a white building beside the church. Then moonlight flooded everything again, and the crosses vanished. ‘Oh, the bloody fool!’ sobbed the Captain, running, running as if for his life. He was no longer trying to reach the guns. He was cutting across a corner of the square direct to the church. He could hear some officers cursing behind him: ‘Who put those red crosses there? Who? We can’t fire on the Red Cross.’
The Captain reached the church as the searchlight burst on. Inside, Michele was kneeling on the earth looking at his first Madonna. ‘They are going to kill my Madonna,’ he said miserably.
‘Come away, Michele, come away.’
‘They’re going to …’
The Captain grabbed his arm and pulled. Michele wrenched himself free and grabbed a saw. He began hacking at the ceiling board. There was a dead silence outside. They heard a voice booming through the loudspeakers: ‘The village that is about to be shelled is an English village, not as represented on the programme, a German village. Repeat, the village that is about to be shelled is …’
Michele had cut through two sides of a square around the Madonna.
‘Michele,’ sobbed the Captain, ‘get out of here.’
Michele dropped the saw, took hold of the raw edges of the board and tugged. As he did so, the church began to quiver and lean. An irregular patch of board ripped out and Michele staggered back into the Captain’s arms. There was a roar. The church seemed to dissolve around them into flame. Then they were running away from it, the Captain holding Michele tight by the arm. ‘Get down,’ he shouted suddenly, and threw Michele to the earth. He flung himself down beside him. Looking from under the crook of his arm, he heard the explosion, saw a great pillar of smoke and flame, and the village disintegrated in a mass of debris. Michele was on his knees gazing at his Madonna in the light from the flames. She was unrecognizable, blotted out with dust. He looked horrible, quite white, and a trickle of blood soaked from his hair down one cheek.
‘They shelled my Madonna,’ he said.
‘Oh, damn it, you can paint another one,’ said the Captain. His own voice seemed to him strange, like a dream voice. He was certainly crazy, as mad as Michele himself … He got up, pulled Michele to his feet, and marched him towards the edge of the field. There they were met by the ambulance people. Michele was taken off to hospital, and the Captain was sent back to bed.
A week passed. The Captain was in a darkened room. That he was having some kind of a breakdown was clear, and two nurses stood guard over him. Sometimes he lay quiet. Sometimes he muttered to himself. Sometimes he sang in a thick clumsy voice bits out of opera, fragments from Italian songs, and – over and over again – There’s a Long Long Trail. He was not thinking of anything at all. He shied away from the thought of Michele as if it were dangerous. When, therefore, a cheerful female voice announced that a friend had come to cheer him up, and it would do him good to have some company, and he saw a white bandage moving towards him in the gloom, he turned sharp over on to his side, face to the wall.
‘Go away,’ he said. ‘Go away, Michele.’
‘I have come to see you,’ said Michele. ‘I have brought you a present.’
The Captain slowly turned over. There was Michele, a cheerful ghost in the dark room. ‘You fool,’ he said. ‘You messed everything up. What did you paint those crosses for?’
‘It was a hospital,’ said Michele. ‘In a village there is a hospital, and on the hospital the Red Cross, the beautiful Red Cross – no?’
‘I was nearly court-martialled.’
‘It was my fault,’ said Michele. ‘I was drunk.’
‘I was responsible.’
‘How could you be responsible when I did it? But it is all over. Are you better?’
‘Well, I suppose these crosses saved your life.’
‘I did not think,’ said Michele. ‘I was remembering the kindness of the Red Cross people when we were prisoners.’
‘Oh shut up, shut up, shut up.’
‘I have brought you a present.’
The Captain peered through the dark. Michele was holding up a picture. It was of a native woman with a baby on her back, smiling sideways out of the frame.
Michele said: ‘You did not like the haloes. So this time, no haloes. For the Captain – no Madonna.’ He laughed. ‘You like it? It is for you. I painted it for you.’
‘God damn you!’ said the Captain.
‘You do not like it?’ said Michele, very hurt.
The Captain closed his eyes. ‘What are you going to do next?’ he asked tiredly.
Michele laughed again. ‘Mrs Pannerhurst, the lady of the General, she wants me to paint her picture in her white dress. So I paint it.’
‘You should be proud to.’
‘Silly bitch. She thinks I am good. They know nothing -savages. Barbarians. Not you, Captain, you are my friend. But these people, they know nothing.’
The Captain lay quiet. Fury was gathering in him. He thought of the General’s wife. He disliked her, but he had known her well enough.
‘These people,’ said Michele. ‘They do not know a good picture from a bad picture. I paint, I paint, this way, that way. There is the picture – I look at it and laugh inside myself.’ Michele laughed out loud. ‘They say, he is a Michelangelo, this one, and try to cheat me out of my price. Michele -Michelangelo – that is a joke, no?’
The Captain said nothing.
‘But for you I painted this picture to remind you of our good times with the village. You are my friend. I will always remember you.’
The Captain turned his eyes sideways in his head and stared at the black girl. Her smile at him was half innocence, half malice.
‘Get out,’ he said suddenly.
Michele came closer and bent to see the Captain’s face. ‘You wish me to go?’ He sounded unhappy. ‘You saved my life. I was a fool that night. But I was thinking of my offering to the Madonna – I was a fool, I say it myself. I was drunk, we are fools when we are drunk.’
‘Get out of here,’ said the Captain again.
For a moment the white bandage remained motionless. Then it swept downwards in a bow. Michele turned towards the door.
‘And take that bloody picture with you.’
Silence. Then, in the dim light, the Captain saw Michele reach out for the picture, his white head bowed in profound obeisance. He straightened himself and stood to attention, holding the picture with one hand, and keeping the other stiff down his side. Then he saluted the Captain.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said, and he turned and went out of the door with the picture.
The Captain lay still. He felt – what did he feel? There was a pain under his ribs. It hurt to breathe. He realized he was unhappy. Yes, a terrible unhappiness was filling him, slowly, slowly. He was unhappy because Michele had gone. Nothing had ever hurt the Captain in all his life as much as that mocking Yes, sir. Nothing. He turned his face to the wall and wept. But silently. Not a sound escaped him, for the fear the nurses might hear.
The Trinket Box (#ulink_0990c855-ff83-5f2d-82c0-240dd0830c35)
Yes, but it was only recently, when it became clear that Aunt Maud really could not last much longer, that people began to ask all those questions which should have been asked, it seems now, so long ago.
Or perhaps it is the other way about: Aunt Maud, suddenly finding that innumerable nieces and nephews and cousins were beginning to take an interest in her, asking her to meet interesting people, was so disturbed to find herself pushed into the centre of the stage where she felt herself to be out of place, that she took to her bed where she could tactfully die?
Even here, lying on massed pillows, like a small twig that has been washed up against banks of smooth white sand, she is not left in peace. Distant relations who have done no more than send her Christmas cards once a year come in to see her, sit by her bed for hours at a time, send her flowers. But why? It is not merely that they want to know what London in the Nineties was like for a young woman with plenty of money, although they wake her to ask: ‘Do tell us, do you remember the Oscar Wilde affair?’ Her face puckers in a worried look, and she says: ‘Oscar Wilde? What? Oh yes, I read such an interesting book, it is in the library.’
Perhaps Aunt Maud herself sees that pretty vivacious girl (there is a photograph of her in an album somewhere) as a character in a historical play. But what is that question which it seems everyone comes to ask, but does not ask, leaving at length rather subdued, even a little exasperated – perhaps because it is not like Aunt Maud to suggest unanswerable questions?
Where did it all begin? Some relation returned from a long holiday, and asking casually after the family, said: ‘What! Aunt Maud still alive? Isn’t she gone yet?’ Is that how people began asking: ‘Well, but how old is she? Eighty? Ninety?’ ‘Nonsense, she can’t be ninety.’
‘But she says she remembers …’ And the names of old ‘incidents’ crop up, the sort of thing one finds in dusty books of memoirs. They were another world. It seems impossible that living people can remember them, especially someone we know so well.
‘She remembers earlier than that. She told me once – it must be twenty years ago now – of having left home years before the Boer War started. You can work that out for yourself.’
‘Even that only makes her seventy – eighty perhaps. Eighty is not old enough to get excited about.’
‘The Crimean War …’ But now they laugh. ‘Come, come, she’s not a hundred!’
No, she cannot be as much as that, but thirty years ago, no less, an old frail lady climbed stiffly but jauntily up the bank of a dried-up African river, where she was looking after a crowd of other people’s children on a picnic, and remarked: ‘My old bones are getting creaky.’ Then she bought herself an ancient car. It was one of the first Ford models, and she went rattling in it over bad corrugated roads and even over the veld, if there were no roads. And no one thought it extraordinary. Just as one did not think of her as an old maid, or a spinster, so one did not think of her as an old lady.
And then there was the way she used to move from continent to continent, from family to family, as a kind of unpaid servant. For she had no money at all by then: her brother the black sheep died and she insisted on giving up all her tiny capital to pay his debts. It was useless of course; he owed thousands, but no one could persuade her against it. ‘There are some things one has to do,’ she said. Now, lying in bed she says: ‘One doesn’t want to be a nuisance,’ in her small faded voice; the same voice in which she used to announce, and not so very long ago: ‘I am going to South America as companion to Mrs Fripp – she is so very very kind.’ For six months, then, she was prepared to wait hand and foot on an old lady years younger than herself simply for the sake of seeing South America? No, we can no longer believe it. We are forced to know that the thought of her aches and pains put warmth into Mrs Fripp’s voice when she asked Aunt Maud to go with her.
And from the Andes or the Christmas Islands, or some place as distant and preposterous as the Russian-Japanese war or the Morocco scramble seem to be in time, came those long long letters beginning: ‘That white dressing-jacket you gave me was so useful when I went to the mountains.’ She got so many presents from us all that now we feel foolish. They were not what she wanted after all.
Then, before we expected it, someone would write and say: ‘By the way, did you know I have had Aunt Maud with me since Easter?’ She had come back from the Andes, or wherever it was? But why had she gone there? Was Anne having another baby perhaps?
Sitting up in bed surrounded by the cushions and photographs that framed her in the way other people’s furniture frames them, always very early in the morning – she wrote letters from five to seven every day of her life – she answered in her tiny precise handwriting: ‘Jacko’s leg is not quite healed yet, although I think he is well on the way to recovery. And then I shall be delighted to avail myself of your kind offer. I will be with you by the middle of …’ Punctually to the hour she would arrive; the perfect guest. And when she left, because of the arrival of a baby or a sudden illness perhaps five hundred miles away or in another country, with what affectionate heart-warming gratitude she thanked us, until it was easy to forget the piles of mending, the delicious cooking, the nights and nights of nursing. A week after she had left would arrive the inevitable parcel, containing presents so apt that it was with an uneasy feeling that we sat down to write thanks. How did she come to know our most secret wants? And, imperceptibly, the unease would grow to resentment. She had no right, no right at all, to give such expensive presents when she was dependent on relations for her support.
So it was that after every visit a residue of spite and irritation remained. And perhaps she intended that the people she served should never have to feel the embarrassment of gratitude? Perhaps she intended us – who knows? -to think as we sat writing our thank-yous: But after all, she has to live on us, it is after all a kindness to feed and house her for a few weeks.
It is all intolerable, intolerable; and it seems now that we must march into that bedroom to ask: ‘Aunt Maud, how did you bear it? How could you stand, year in and year out, pouring out your treasures of affection to people who hardly noticed you? Do you realize, Aunt Maud, that now, thirty years or more after you became our servant, it is the first time that we are really aware you were ever alive? What do you say to that, Aunt Maud? Or did you know it all the time …’ For that is what we want to be sure of: that she did not know it, that she never will.
We wander restlessly in and out of her room, watching that expression on her face which – now that she is too ill to hide what she feels – makes us so uneasy. She looks impatient when she sees us; she wishes we would go away. Yesterday she said: ‘One does not care for this kind of attention.’
All the time, all over the house, people sit about, talking, talking, in low urgent anxious voices, as if something vital and precious is leaking away as they wait.
‘She can’t be exactly the same, it is impossible!’
‘But I tell you, I remember her, on the day the war started -the old war, you know. On the platform, waving good-bye to my son. She was the same, wrinkle for wrinkle. That little patch of yellow on her cheek – like an egg-stain. And those little mauvish eyes, and that funny voice. People don’t talk like that now, each syllable sounding separately.’
‘Her eyes have changed though.’ We sneak in to have a look at her. She turns them on us, peering over the puffs of a pink bedjacket – eyes where a white film is gathering. Unable to see us clearly, afraid – she who has sat by so many deathbeds – of distressing us by her unsightliness, she turns away her head, lies back, folds her hands, is silent.
When other people die, it is a thing of horror, swellings, gross flesh, smells, sickness. But Aunt Maud dies as a leaf shrivels. It seems that a little dryish gasp, a little shiver, and the papery flesh will crumble and leave beneath the bedclothes she scarcely disturbs a tiny white skeleton. That is how she is dying, giving the least trouble to the niece who waited sharp-sightedly for someone else to use the phrase ‘a happy release’ before she used it herself. ‘She might not eat anything, but one has to prepare the tray all the same. And then, there are all these people in the house.’
‘Before she retired, what did she do?’
‘Taught, didn’t you know? She was forty when her father married again, and she went out and took a post in a school. He never spoke one word to her afterwards.’
‘But why, why?’
‘He was in the wrong of course. She didn’t marry so as to look after him.’
‘Oh, so she might have married? Who was he?’
‘Old John Jordan, do you remember?’
‘But he died before I left school – such a funny old man!’
Impossible to ask why she never married. But someone asks it. A great-niece, very young, stands beside the bed and looks down with shivering distaste at such age, such death: ‘Aunt Maud, why did you never marry?’
‘Marry! Marry! Who is talking about marrying?’ she sounds angered and sullen; then the small eyes film over and she says: ‘Who did you say is getting married?’
The niece is banished and there are no more questions.
No more visitors either, the doctor says. A question of hours. A few hours, and that casket of memories and sensations will have vanished. It is monstrous that a human being who has survived miraculously and precariously so many decades of wars, illnesses and accidents should die at last, leaving behind nothing.
Now we sit about the bed where she lies and wait for her to die. There is nothing to do. No one stirs. We are all sitting, looking, thinking, surreptitiously touching the things that belonged to her, trying to catch a glimpse, even for a moment, of the truth that will vanish in such a little while.
And if we think of the things that interested her, the enthusiasms we used to laugh at, because it seemed so odd that such an old lady should feel strongly about these great matters, what answer do we get? She was a feminist, first and foremost. The Pankhursts, she said, ‘were so devoted’. She was a socialist; she had letters from Keir Hardie. There had been no one like him since he died. She defended vegetarians, but would not be one herself, because it gave people so much trouble in the kitchen. Madame Curie, Charles Lindbergh, Marie Corelli, Lenin, Clara Butt – these were her idols, and she spoke of them in agitated defiance as if they were always in need of defence. Inside that tiny shrivelled skull what an extraordinary gallery of heroes and heroines. But there is no answer there. No matter how hard we try, fingering her handkerchief sachet, thinking of the funny flat hats she wore, draped with bits of Liberty cottons, remembering how she walked, as if at any moment she might be called upon to scale a high wall, she eludes us. Let us resign ourselves to it and allow her to die.
Then she speaks after such long hours of waiting it is as if a woman already dead were speaking. Now, now!! We lean forward, waiting for her to say that one thing, the perfect word of forgiveness that will leave us healed and whole.
She has made her will, she says, and it is with the lawyer ‘who has always been so kind’ to her. She has nothing to leave but a few personal trinkets … The small precise voice is breathless, and she keeps her eyes tight shut. ‘I have told my lawyer that my possessions, such as they are, are kept in my black trinket box in the cupboard there. He knows. Everything is in order. I put everything right when people became so kind and I knew I was ill.’
And that is the last thing she will ever say. We wait intently, shifting our feet and avoiding each other’s eyes for fear that our guilty glances may imprint upon our memories of her the terrible knowledge let slip in the order of the words of that final sentence. We do not want to remember her with guilt, oh no! But although we wait, straining, nothing else comes; she seems to be asleep, and slowly we let our limbs loosen and think of the black box. In it we will find the diaries, or the bundle of letters which will say what she refuses to say. Oh most certainly we will find something of that sort. She cannot die like this, leaving nothing. There will be evidence of a consumed sorrow, at the least, something that will put substance into this barrenness. And when at last we look up, glancing at our watches, we see there is a stillness in the tiny white face which means she is dead.
We get up, rather stiffly, because of the hours of sitting, and then after a decent interval open the black box. It is full to the brim with bits of lace and ribbon, scraps of flowery stuffs, buckles, braid, brooches, cheap glass necklaces. Each has a bit of paper pinned to it. ‘These buttons I thought would do for the frock Alice was making when I was there last month.’ And: ‘To little Robin with my fond love. I bought this glass peacock in Cape Town in 1914 for another little boy.’ And so on, each of us has something. And when we come to the end and search for the diaries and letters there is nothing! Secretively each of us taps at the wood of the bottom – but no, it is solid. And we put back the things and we feel for the first time that Aunt Maud is dead. We want to cry. We would, if it were not absurd to cry for an old woman whom none of us wanted. What would she say if she saw those tears? ‘One cannot help feeling it would have been more useful to feel for me when I was still alive’? No, she would never say a thing like that; but we can have no illusions now, after that last remark of hers, which revealed the Aunt Maud she had been so carefully concealing all these years. And she would know we were not weeping for her at all.
We cannot leave the black box. We finger the laces, stroke the wood. We come back to it again and again, where it lies on the table in the room in which she is waiting for the funeral people. We do not look at her, who is now no more than a tiny bundle under the clothes. And slowly, slowly, in each of us, an emotion hardens which is painful because it can never be released. Protest, is that what we are feeling? But certainly a protest without bitterness, for she was never bitter. And without pity, for one cannot imagine Aunt Maud pitying herself. What, then, is left? Are we expected to go on, for the rest of our lives (which we hope will be as long as hers) feeling this intolerable ache, a dull and sorrowful rage? And if we all feel, suddenly, that it is not to be borne, and we must leap up from our chairs and bang our fists against the wall, screaming: ‘No, no! It can’t be all for nothing!’ – then we must restrain ourselves and remain quietly seated; for we can positively hear the scrupulous little voice saying: ‘There are some things one does not do.’
Slowly, slowly, we become still before the box, and now it seems we hold Aunt Maud in the hollow of our palms. That was what she was; now we know her.
So it comes to this: we are grown proud and honest out of the knowledge of her honesty and pride and, measuring ourselves against her we allow ourselves to feel only the small, persistent, but gently humorous anger she must have felt. Only anger, that is permissible, she would allow that. But against what? Against what?
The Pig (#ulink_b837cb8c-9dd3-5e55-96ce-0f9c6955fa45)
The farmer paid his labourers on a Saturday evening, when the sun went down. By the time he had finished it was always quite dark, and from the kitchen door where the lantern hung, bars of yellow light lay down the steps, across the path, and lit up the trees and the dark faces under them.
This Saturday, instead of dispersing as usual when they took their money, they retired a little way into the dark under the foliage, talking among themselves to pass the time. When the last one had been paid, the farmer said: ‘Call the women and the children. Everybody in the compound must be here.’ The boss-boy, who had been standing beside the table calling out names, stood forward and repeated the order. But in an indifferent voice, as a matter of form, for all this had happened before, every year for years past. Already there was a subdued moving at the back of the crowd as the women came in from under the trees where they had been waiting; and the light caught a bunched skirt, a copper armlet, or a bright headcloth.
Now all the dimly-lit faces showed hope that soon this ritual would be over, and they could get back to their huts and their fires. They crowded closer without being ordered.
The farmer began to speak, thinking as he did so of his lands that lay all about him, invisible in the darkness, but sending on the wind a faint rushing noise like the sea; and although he had done this before so often, and was doing it now half-cynically, knowing it was a waste of time, the memory of how good those fields of strong young plants looked when the sun shone on them put urgency and even anger into his voice.
The trouble was that every year black hands stripped the cobs from the stems in the night, sacks of cobs; and he could never catch the thieves. Next morning he would see the prints of bare feet in the dust between the rows. He had tried everything; had warned, threatened, docked rations, even fined the whole compound collectively – it made no difference. The lands lying next to the compound would be cheated of their yield, and when the harvesters brought in their loads, everyone knew there would be less than what had been expected.
And if everyone knew it, why put on this display for the tenth time? That was the question the farmer saw on their faces in front of him; polite faces turning this way and that over impatient bodies and shifting feet. They were thinking only of the huts and the warm meal waiting for them. The philosophic politeness, almost condescension, with which he was being treated infuriated the farmer; and he stopped in the middle of a sentence, banging on the table with his fist, so that the faces centred on him and the feet stilled.
‘Jonas,’ said the fanner. Out on to the lit space stepped a tall elderly man with a mild face. But now he looked sombre. The farmer saw that look and braced himself for a fight. This man had been on the farm for several years. An old scoundrel, the farmer called him, but affectionately: he was fond of him, for they had been together for so long. Jonas did odd jobs for half the year; he drew water for the garden, cured hides, cut grass. But when the growing season came he was an important man.
‘Come here, Jonas,’ the farmer said again; and picked up the. 33 rifle that he had been leaning against his chair until now. During the rainy season, Jonas slept out his days in his hut, and spent his nights till the cold dawns came guarding the fields from the buck and the pigs that attacked the young plants. They could lay waste whole acres in one night, a herd of pigs. He took the rifle, greeting it, feeling its familiar weight on his arm. But he looked reluctant nevertheless.
‘This year, Jonas, you will shoot everything you see -understand?’
‘Yes, baas.’
‘Everything, buck, baboons, pig. And everything you hear. You will not stop to look. If you hear a noise, you will shoot.’
There was a movement among the listening people, and soft protesting noises.
‘And if it turns out to be a human pig, then so much the worse. My lands are no place for pigs of any kind.’
Jonas said nothing, but he turned towards the others, holding the rifle uncomfortably on his arm, appealing that they should not judge him.
‘You can go,’ said the farmer. After a moment the space in front of him was empty, and he could hear the sound of bare feet feeling their way along dark paths, the sound of loudening angry talk. Jonas remained beside him.
‘Well, Jonas?’
‘I do not want to shoot this year.’
The farmer waited for an explanation. He was not disturbed at the order he had given. In all the years he had worked this farm no one had been shot, although every season the thieves moved at night along the mealie rows, and every night Jonas was out with a gun. For he would shout, or fire the gun into the air, to frighten intruders. It was only when dawn came that he fired at something he could see. All this was a bluff. The threat might scare off a few of the more timid; but both sides knew, as usual, that it was a bluff. The cobs would disappear; nothing could prevent it.
‘And why not?’ asked the farmer at last.
‘It’s my wife. I wanted to see you about it before,’ said Jonas, in dialect.
‘Oh, your wife!’ The farmer had remembered. Jonas was old-fashioned. He had two wives, an old one who had borne him several children, and a young one who gave him a good deal of trouble. Last year, when this wife was new, he had not wanted to take on this job which meant being out all night.
‘And what is the matter with the day-time?’ asked the farmer with waggish good-humour, exactly as he had the year before. He got up, and prepared to go inside.
Jonas did not reply. He did not like being appointed official guardian against theft by his own people, but even that did not matter so much, for it never once occurred to him to take the order literally. This was only the last straw. He was getting on in years now, and he wanted to spend his nights in peace in his own hut, instead of roaming the bush. He had disliked it very much last year, but now it was even worse. A younger man visited his pretty young wife when he was away.
Once he had snatched up a stick, in despair, to beat her with; then he had thrown it down. He was old, and the other man was young, and beating her could not cure his heartache. Once he had come up to his master to talk over the situation, as man to man; but the farmer had refused to do anything. And, indeed, what could he do? Now, repeating what he had said then, the farmer spoke from the kitchen steps, holding the lamp high in one hand above his shoulder as he turned to go in, so that it sent beams of light swinging across the bush: ‘I don’t want to hear anything about your wife, Jonas. You should look after her yourself. And if you are not too old to take a young wife, then you aren’t too old to shoot. You will take the gun as usual this year. Good night.’ And he went inside, leaving the garden black and pathless. Jonas stood quite still, waiting for his eyes to accustom themselves to the dark; then he started off down the path, finding his way by the feel of the loose stones under his feet.
He had not yet eaten, but when he came to within sight of the compound, he felt he could not go farther. He halted, looking at the little huts silhouetted black against cooking fires that sent up great drifting clouds of illuminated smoke. There was his hut, he could see it, a small conical shape. There his wives were, waiting with his food prepared and ready.
But he did not want to eat. He felt he could not bear to go in and face his old wife, who mocked him with her tongue, and his young wife, who answered him submissively but mocked him with her actions. He was sick and tormented, cut off from his friends who were preparing for an evening by the fires, because he could see the knowledge of his betrayal in their eyes. The cold pain of jealousy that had been gnawing at him for so long, felt now like an old wound, aching as an old wound aches before the rains set in.
He did not want to go into the fields, either to perch until he was stiff in one of the little cabins on high stilts that were built at the corners of each land as shooting platforms, or to walk in the dark through the hostile bush. But that night, without going for his food, he set off as usual on his long vigil.
The next night, however, he did not go; nor the next, nor the nights following. He lay all day dozing in the sun on his blanket, turning himself over and over in the sun, as if its rays could cauterize the ache from his heart. When evening came, he ate his meal early before going off with the gun. And then he stood with his back to a tree, within sight of the compound; indeed, within a stone’s throw of his own hut, for hours, watching silently. He felt numb and heavy. He was there without purpose. It was as if his legs had refused an order to march away from the place. All that week the lands lay unguarded, and if the wild animals were raiding the young plants, he did not care. He seemed to exist only in order to stand at night watching his hut. He did not allow himself to think of what was happening inside. He merely watched; until the fires burned down, and the bush grew cold and he was so stiff that when he went home, at sunrise, he had the appearance of one exhausted after a night’s walking.
The following Saturday there was a beer drink. He could have got leave to attend it, had he wanted; but at sundown he took himself off as usual and saw that his wife was pleased when he left.
As he leaned his back to the tree trunk that gave him its support each night, and held the rifle lengthwise to his chest, he fixed his eyes steadily on the dark shape that was his hut, and remembered that look on his young wife’s face. He allowed himself to think steadily of it, and of many similar things. He remembered the young man, as he had seen him only a few days before, bending over the girl as she knelt to grind meal, laughing with her; then the way they both looked up, startled, at his approach, their faces growing blank.
He could feel his muscles tautening against the rifle as he pictured that scene, so that he set it down on the ground, for relief, letting his arms fall. But in spite of the pain, he continued to think; for tonight things were changed in him, and he no longer felt numb and purposeless. He stood erect and vigilant, letting the long cold barrel slide between his fingers, the hardness of the tree at his back like a second spine. And as he thought of the young man another picture crept into his mind again and again, that of a young waterhuck he had shot last year, lying soft at his feet, its tongue slipping out into the dust as he picked it up, so newly dead that he imagined he felt the blood still pulsing under the warm skin. And from the small wet place under its neck a few sticky drops rolled over glistening fur. Suddenly, as he stood there thinking of the blood, and the limp body of the buck, and the young man laughing with his wife, his mind grew clear and cool and the oppression on him lifted.
He sighed deeply, and picked up the rifle again, holding it close, like a friend, against him, while he gazed in through the trees at the compound.
It was early, and the flush from sunset had not yet quite gone from the sky, although where he stood among the undergrowth it was night. In the clear spaces between the huts groups of figures took shape, talking and laughing and getting ready for the dance. Small cooking fires were being lit; and a big central fire blazed, sending up showers of sparks into the clouds of smoke. The tom-toms were beating softly; soon the dance would begin. Visitors were coming in through the bush from the other compounds miles away: it would be a long wait.
Three times he heard steps along the path close to him before he drew back and turned his head to watch the young man pass, as he had passed every night that week, with a jaunty eager tread and eyes directed towards Jonas’s hut. Jonas stood as quiet as a tree struck by lightning, holding his breath, although he could not be seen, because the thick shadows from the trees were black around him. He watched the young man thread his way through the huts into the circle of firelight, and pass cautiously to one side of the groups of waiting people, like someone uncertain of his welcome, before going in through the door of his own hut.
Hours passed, and he watched the leaping dancing people, and listened to the drums as the stars swung over his head and the night birds talked in the bush around him. He thought steadily now, as he had not previously allowed himself to think, of what was happening inside the small dark hut that gradually became invisible as the fires died and the dancers went to their blankets. When the moon was small and high and cold behind his back, and the trees threw sharp black windows on the path, and he could smell morning on the wind, he saw the young man coming towards him again. Now Jonas shifted his feet a little, to ease the stiffness out of them, and moved the rifle along his arm, feeling for the curve of the trigger on his finger.
As the young man lurched past, for he was tired, and moved carelessly, Jonas slipped out into the smooth dusty path a few paces behind, shrinking back as the released branches swung wet into his face and scattered large drops of dew on to his legs. It was cold; his breath misted into a thin pearly steam dissolving into the moonlight.
He was so close to the man in front that he could have touched him with the raised rifle; had he turned there would have been no concealment; but Jonas walked confidently, though carefully, and thought all the time of how he had shot down from ten paces away that swift young buck as it started with a crash out of a bush into a cold moony field.
When they reached the edge of the land where acres of mealies sloped away, dimly green under a dome of stars, Jonas began to walk like a cat. He wanted now to be sure; and he was only fifty yards from the shooting platform in the corner of the field, that looked in this light like a crazy fowl-house on stilts. The young man was staggering with tiredness and drink, making a crashing noise at each step as he snapped the sap-full mealies under heavy feet.
But the buck had shot like a spear from the bush, had caught the lead in its chest as it leaped, had fallen as a spear curves to earth; it had not blundered and lurched and swayed. Jonas began to feel a disgust for this man, and the admiration and fascination he felt for his young rival vanished. The tall slim youth who had laughed down at his wife had nothing to do with the ungainly figure crashing along before him, making so much noise that there could be no game left unstartled for miles.
When they reached the shooting platform, Jonas stopped dead, and let the youth move on. He lifted the rifle to his cheek and saw the long barrel slant against the stars, which sent a glint of light back down the steel. He waited, quite still, watching the man’s back sway above the mealies. Then, at the right moment, he squeezed his finger close, holding the rifle steady to fire again.
As the sound of the shot reverberated, the round dark head jerked oddly, blotting out fields of stars; the body seemed to crouch, one hand went out as if he were going to lean sideways to the ground. Then he disappeared into the mealies with a startled thick cry. Jonas lowered the rifle and listened. There was a threshing noise, a horrible grunting, and half-words muttered, like someone talking in sleep.
Jonas picked his way along the rows, feeling the sharp leaf edges scything his legs, until he stood above the body that now jerked softly among the stems. He waited until it stilled, then bent to look, parting the chilled, moon-green leaves so that he could see clearly.
It was no clean small hole: raw flesh gaped, blood poured black to the earth, the limbs were huddled together shapeless and without beauty, the face was pressed into the soil.
‘A pig,’ said Jonas aloud to the listening moon, as he kicked the side gently with his foot, ‘nothing but a pig.’
He wanted to hear how it would sound when he said it again, telling how he had shot blind into the grunting, invisible herd.
Traitors (#ulink_834ef656-9ed4-5d0d-bd70-a70f37f608e4)
We had discovered the Thompsons’ old house long before their first visit.
At the back of our house the ground sloped up to where the bush began, an acre of trailing pumpkin vines, ash-heaps where pawpaw trees sprouted, and lines draped with washing where the wind slapped and jiggled. The bush was dense and frightening, and the grass there higher than a tall man. There were not even paths.
When we had tired of our familiar acre we explored the rest of the farm: but this particular stretch of bush was avoided. Sometimes we stood at its edge, and peered in at the tangled granite outcrops and great ant-heaps curtained with Christmas fern. Sometimes we pushed our way a few feet, till the grass closed behind us, leaving overhead a small space of blue. Then we lost our heads and ran back again.
Later, when we were given our first rifle and a new sense of bravery, we realized we had to challenge that bush. For several days we hesitated, listening to the guinea-fowl calling only a hundred yards away, and making excuses for cowardice. Then, one morning, at sunrise, when the trees were pink and gold, and the grass-stems were running bright drops of dew, we looked at each other, smiling weakly, and slipped into the bushes with our hearts beating.
At once we were alone, closed in by grass, and we had to reach out for the other’s dress and cling together. Slowly, heads down, eyes half-closed against the sharp grass-seeds, two small girls pushed their way past ant-heap and outcrop, past thorn and gully and thick clumps of cactus where any wild animal might lurk.
Suddenly, after only five minutes of terror, we emerged in a space where the red earth was scored with cattle tracks. The guinea-fowl were clinking ahead of us in the grass, and we caught a glimpse of a shapely dark bird speeding along a path. We followed, shouting with joy because the forbidding patch of bush was as easily conquered and made our own as the rest of the farm.
We were stopped again where the ground dropped suddenly to the vlei, a twenty-foot shelf of flattened grass where the cattle went to water. Sitting, we lifted our dresses and coasted down-hill on the slippery swathes, landing with torn knickers and scratched knees in a donga of red dust scattered with dried cow-pats and bits of glistening quartz. The guinea-fowl stood in a file and watched us, their heads tilted with apprehension; but my sister said with bravado: ‘I am going to shoot a buck!’
She waved her arms at the birds and they scuttled off. We looked at each other and laughed, feeling too grown-up for guinea-fowl now.
Here, down on the verges of the vlei, it was a different kind of bush. The grass was thinned by cattle, and red dust spurted as we walked. There were sparse thorn trees, and everywhere the poison-apple bush, covered with small fruit like yellow plums. Patches of wild marigold filled the air with a rank, hot smell.
Moving with exaggerated care, our bodies tensed, our eyes fixed half a mile off, we did not notice that a duiker stood watching us, ten paces away. We yelled with excitement and the buck vanished. Then we ran like maniacs, screaming at the tops of our voices, while the bushes whipped our faces and the thorns tore our legs.
Ten minutes later we came slap up against a barbed fence. ‘The boundary,’ we whispered, awed. This was a legend; we had imagined it as a sort of Wall of China, for beyond were thousands and thousands of miles of unused Government land where there were leopards and baboons and herds of koodoo. But we were disappointed; even the famous boundary was only a bit of wire after all, and the duiker was nowhere in sight.
Whistling casually to show we didn’t care, we marched along by the wire, twanging it so that it reverberated half a mile away down in the vlei. Around us the bush was strange; this part of the farm was quite new to us. There was still nothing but thorn trees and grass; and fat wood-pigeons cooed from every branch. We swung on the fence stanchions and wished that Father would suddenly appear and take us home to breakfast. We were hopelessly lost.
It was then that I saw the pawpaw tree. I must have been staring at it for some minutes before it grew in on my sight; for it was such an odd place for a pawpaw tree to be. On it were three heavy yellow pawpaws.
‘There’s our breakfast,’ I said.
We shook them down, sat on the ground, and ate. The insipid creamy flesh soon filled us, and we lay down, staring at the sky, half asleep. The sun blared down; we were melted through with heat and tiredness. But it was very hard. Turning over, staring, we saw worn bricks set into the ground. All round us were stretches of brick, stretches of cement.
‘The old Thompson house,’ we whispered.
And all at once the pigeons seemed to grow still and the bush became hostile. We sat up, frightened. How was it we hadn’t noticed it before? There was a double file of pawpaws among the thorns; a purple bougainvillaea tumbled over the bushes; a rose tree scattered white petals at our feet; and our shoes were scrunching in broken glass.
It was desolate, lonely, despairing; and we remembered the way our parents had talked about Mr Thompson who had lived here for years before he married. Their hushed, disapproving voices seemed to echo out of the trees; and in a violent panic we picked up the gun and fled back in the direction of the house. We had imagined we were lost; but we were back in the gully in no time, climbed up it, half sobbing with breathlessness, and fled through that barrier of bush so fast we hardly noticed it was there.
It was not even breakfast-time.
‘We found the Thompsons’ old house,’ we said at last, feeling hurt that no one had noticed from our proud faces that we had found a whole new world that morning. ‘Did you?’ said Father absently. ‘Can’t be much left of it now.’
Our fear vanished. We hardly dared look at each other for shame. And later that day we went back and counted the pawpaws and trailed the bougainvillaea over a tree and staked the white rosebush.
In a week we had made the place entirely our own. We were there all day, sweeping the debris from the floor and carrying away loose bricks into the bush. We were not surprised to find dozens of empty bottles scattered in the grass. We washed them in a pothole in the vlei, dried them in the wind, and marked out the rooms of the house with them, making walls of shining bottles. In our imagination the Thompson house was built again, a small brick-walled place with a thatched roof.
We sat under a blazing sun, and said in our Mother’s voice: ‘It is always cool under thatch, no matter how hot it is outside.’ And then, when the walls and the roof had grown into our minds and we took them for granted, we played other games, taking it in turn to be Mr Thompson.
Whoever was Mr Thompson had to stagger in from the bush, with a bottle in her hand, tripping over the lintel and falling on the floor. There she lay and groaned, while the other fanned her and put handkerchiefs soaked in vlei water on her head. Or she reeled about among the bottles, shouting abusive gibberish at an invisible audience of natives.
It was while we were engaged thus, one day, that a black woman came out of the thorn trees and stood watching us. We waited for her to go, drawing together; but she came close and stared in a way that made us afraid. She was old and fat, and she wore a red print dress from the store. She said in a soft, wheedling voice: ‘When is Boss Thompson coming back?’
‘Go away!’ we shouted. And then she began to laugh. She sauntered off into the bush, swinging her hips and looking back over her shoulder and laughing. We heard that taunting laugh away among the trees; and that was the second time we ran away from the ruined house, though we made ourselves walk slowly and with dignity until we knew she could no longer see us.
For a few days we didn’t go back to the house. When we did we stopped playing Mr Thompson. We no longer knew him: that laugh, that slow, insulting stare had meant something outside our knowledge and experience. The house was not ours now. It was some broken bricks on the ground marked out with bottles. We couldn’t pretend to ourselves we were not afraid of the place; and we continually glanced over our shoulders to see if the old black woman was standing silently there, watching us.
Idling along the fence, we threw stones at the pawpaws fifteen feet over our heads till they squashed at our feet. Then we kicked them into the bush.
‘Why have you stopped going to the old house?’ asked Mother cautiously, thinking that we didn’t know how pleased she was. She had instinctively disliked our being there so much.
‘Oh, I dunno …’
A few days later we heard that the Thompsons were coming to see us; and we knew, without anyone saying, that this was no ordinary visit. It was the first time; they wouldn’t be coming after all these years without some reason. Besides, our parents didn’t like them coming. They were at odds with each other over it.
Mr Thompson had lived on our farm for ten years before we had it, when there was no one else near for miles and miles. Then, suddenly, he went home to England and brought a wife back with him. The wife never came to this farm. Mr Thompson sold the farm to us and bought another one. People said:
‘Poor girl! Just out from home, too.’ She was angry about the house burning down, because it meant she had to live with friends for nearly a year while Mr Thompson built a new house on his new farm.
The night before they came, Mother said several times in a strange, sorrowful voice, ‘Poor little thing; poor, poor little thing.’
Father said: ‘Oh, I don’t know. After all, be just. He was here alone all those years.’
It was no good; she disliked not only Mr Thompson but Father too, that evening; and we were on her side. She put her arms round us, and looked accusingly at Father. ‘Women get all the worst of everything,’ she said.
He said angrily: ‘Look here, it’s not my fault these people are coming.’
‘Who said it was?’ she answered.
Next day, when the car came in sight, we vanished into the bush. We felt guilty, not because we were running away, a thing we often did when visitors came we didn’t like, but because we had made Mr Thompson’s house our own, and because we were afraid if he saw our faces he would know we were letting Mother down by going.
We climbed into the tree that was our refuge on these occasions, and lay along branches twenty feet from the ground, and played at Mowgli, thinking all the time about the Thompsons.
As usual, we lost all sense of time; and when we eventually returned, thinking the coast must be clear, the car was still there. Curiosity got the better of us.
We slunk on to the veranda, smiling bashfully, while Mother gave us a reproachful look. Then, at last, we lifted our heads and looked at Mrs Thompson. I don’t know how we had imagined her; but we had felt for her a passionate, protective pity.
She was a large, blonde, brilliantly coloured lady with a voice like a go-away bird’s. It was a horrible voice. Father, who could not stand loud voices, was holding the arms of his chair, and gazing at her with exasperated dislike.
As for Mr Thompson, that villain whom we had hated and feared, he was a shaggy and shambling man, who looked at the ground while his wife talked, with a small apologetic smile. He was not in the least as we had pictured him. He looked like our old dog. For a moment we were confused; then, in a rush, our allegiance shifted. The profound and dangerous pity, aroused in us earlier than we could remember by the worlds of loneliness inhabited by our parents, which they could not share with each other but which each shared with us, settled now on Mr Thompson. Now we hated Mrs Thompson. The outward sign of it was that we left Mother’s chair and went to Father’s.
‘Don’t fidget, there’s good kids,’ he said.
Mrs Thompson was asking to be shown the old house. We understood, from the insistent sound of her voice, that she had been talking about nothing else all afternoon; or that, at any rate, if she had, it was only with the intention of getting round to the house as soon as she could. She kept saying, smiling ferociously at Mr Thompson: ‘I have heard such interesting things about that old place. I really must see for myself where it was that my husband lived before I came out …’ And she looked at Mother for approval.
But Mother said dubiously: ‘It will soon be dark. And there is no path.’
As for Father, he said bluntly: ‘There’s nothing to be seen. There’s nothing left.’
‘Yes, I heard it had been burnt down,’ said Mrs Thompson with another look at her husband.
‘It was a hurricane lamp…’ he muttered.
‘I want to see for myself.’
At this point my sister slipped off the arm of my Father’s chair, and said, with a bright, false smile at Mrs Thompson, ‘We know where it is. We’ll take you.’ She dug me in the ribs and sped off before anyone could speak.
At last they all decided to come. I took them the hardest, longest way I knew. We had made a path of our own long ago, but that would have been too quick. I made Mrs Thompson climb over rocks, push through grass, bend under bushes. I made her scramble down the gully so that she fell on her knees in the sharp pebbles and the dust. I walked her so fast, finally, in a wide circle through the thorn trees that I could hear her panting behind me. But she wasn’t complaining: she wanted to see the place too badly.
When we came to where the house had been it was nearly dark and the tufts of long grass were shivering in the night breeze, and the pawpaw trees were silhouetted high and dark against a red sky. Guinea-fowl were clinking softly all around us.
My sister leaned against a tree, breathing hard, trying to look natural. Mrs Thompson had lost her confidence. She stood quite still, looking about her, and we knew the silence and the desolation had got her, as it got us that first morning.
‘But where is the house?’ she asked at last, unconsciously softening her voice, staring as if she expected to see it rise out of the ground in front of her.
‘I told you, it was burnt down. Now will you believe me?’ said Mr Thompson.
‘I know it was burnt down … Well, where was it then?’ She sounded as if she were going to cry. This was not at all what she had expected.
Mr Thompson pointed at the bricks on the ground. He did not move. He stood staring over the fence down to the vlei, where the mist was gathering in long white folds. The light faded out of the sky, and it began to get cold. For a while no one spoke.
‘What a god-forsaken place for a house,’ said Mrs Thompson, very irritably, at last. ‘Just as well it was burnt down. Do you mean to say you kids play here?’
That was our cue. ‘We like it,’ we said dutifully, knowing very well that the two of us standing on the bricks, hand in hand, beside the ghostly rosebush, made a picture that took all the harm out of the place for her. ‘We play here all day,’ we lied.
‘Odd taste you’ve got,’ she said, speaking at us, but meaning Mr Thompson.
Mr Thompson did not hear her. He was looking around with a lost, remembering expression. ‘Ten years,’ he said at last. ‘Ten years I was here.’
‘More fool you,’ she snapped. And that closed the subject as far as she was concerned.
We began to trail home. Now the two women went in front; then came Father and Mr Thompson; we followed at the back. As we passed a small donga under a cactus tree, my sister called in a whisper, ‘Mr Thompson, Mr Thompson, look here.’
Father and Mr Thompson came back. ‘Look,’ we said, pointing to the hole that was filled to the brim with empty bottles.
‘I came quickly by a way of my own and hid them,’ said my sister proudly, looking at the two men like a conspirator.
Father was very uncomfortable. ‘I wonder how they got down here?’ he said politely at last.
‘We found them. They were at the house. We hid them for you,’ said my sister, dancing with excitement.
Mr Thompson looked at us sharply and uneasily. ‘You are an odd pair of kids,’ he said.
That was all the thanks we got from him; for then we heard Mother calling from ahead: ‘What are you all doing there?’ And at once we went forward.
After the Thompsons had left we hung around Father, waiting for him to say something.
At last, when Mother wasn’t there, he scratched his head in an irritable way and said: ‘What in the world did you do that for?’
We were bitterly hurt. ‘She might have seen them.’ I said. ‘Nothing would make much difference to that lady,’ he said at last. ‘Still, I suppose you meant well.’
In the corner of the veranda, in the dark, sat Mother, gazing into the dark bush. On her face was a grim look of disapproval, and distaste and unhappiness. We were included in it, we knew that.
She looked at us crossly and said, ‘I don’t like you wandering over the farm the way you do. Even with a gun.’
But she had said that so often, and it wasn’t what we were waiting for. At last it came.
‘My two little girls,’ she said, ‘out in the bush by themselves, with no one to play with …’
It wasn’t the bush she minded. We flung ourselves on her. Once again we were swung dizzily from one camp to the other. ‘Poor Mother,’ we said. ‘Poor, poor Mother.’
That was what she needed. ‘It’s no life for a woman, this,’ she said, her voice breaking, gathering us close.
But she sounded comforted.
The Words He Said (#ulink_0d999fb9-a090-5ccb-9e0c-977526448b93)
On the morning of the braavleis, Dad kept saying to Moira, as if he thought it was a joke, ‘Moy, it’s going to rain.’ First she did not hear him, then she turned her head slow and deliberate and looked at him so that he remembered what she said the day before, and he got red in the face and went indoors out of her way. The day before, he said to her, speaking to me, ‘What’s Moy got into her head? Is the braavleis for her engagement or what?’
It was because Moira spent all morning cooking her lemon cake for braavleis, and she went over to Sam the butcher’s to order the best ribs of beef and best rump steak.
All the cold season she was not cooking, she was not helping Mom in the house at all, she was not taking an interest in life, and Dad was saying to Mom: ‘Oh get the girl to town or something, don’t let her moon about here, who does she think she is?’
Mom just said, quiet and calm, the way she was with Dad when they did not agree: ‘Oh let her alone, Dickson.’ When Mom and Dad were agreeing, they called each other Mom and Dad; when they were against each other, it was Marion and Dickson, and that is how it was for the whole of the dry season, and Moira was pale and moony and would not talk to me, and it was no fun for me, I can tell you.
‘What’s this for?’ Dad said once about half-way through the season, when Moira stayed in bed three days and Mom let her. ‘Has he said anything to her or hasn’t he?’
Mom just said: ‘She’s sick, Dickson.’
But I could see what he said had gone into her, because I was in our bedroom when Mom came to Moira.
Mom sat down on the bed, but at the bottom of it, and she was worried. ‘Listen, girl,’ said Mom, ‘I don’t want to interfere, I don’t want to do that, but what did Greg say?’
Moira was not properly in bed, but in her old pink dressing-gown that used to be Mom’s, and she was lying under the quilt. She lay there, not reading anything, watching out of the window over at the big water-tanks across the railway lines. Her face looked bad, and she said: ‘Oh, leave me alone, Mom.’
Mom said: ‘Listen, girlie, just let me say something, you don’t have to follow what I say, do you?’
But Moira said nothing.
‘Sometimes boys say a thing, and they don’t mean it the way we think. They feel they have to say it. It’s not they don’t mean it, but they mean it different.’
‘He didn’t say anything at all,’ said Moira. ‘Why should he?’
‘Why don’t you go into town and stay with Auntie Nora a while? You can come back for the holidays when Greg comes back.’
‘Oh let me alone,’ said Moira, and she began to cry. That was the first time she cried. At least, in front of Mom. I used to hear her cry at night when she thought I was asleep.
Mom’s face was tight and patient, and she put her hand on Moira’s shoulder, and she was worried I could see. I was sitting on my bed pretending to do my stamps, and she looked over at me, and seemed to be thinking hard.
‘He didn’t say anything, Mom,’ I said. ‘But I know what happened.’
Moira jerked her head up and she said: ‘Get that kid away from me.’
They could not get me away from Moira, because there were only two bedrooms, and I always slept with Moira. But she would not speak to me that night at all; and Mom said to me, ‘Little pitchers have big ears.’
It was the last year’s braavleis it happened. Moira was not keen on Greg then, I know for a fact, because she was sweet on Jordan. Greg was mostly at the Cape in college, but he came back for the first time in a year, and I saw him looking at Moira. She was pretty then, because she had finished her matric and spent all her time making herself pretty. She was eighteen, and her hair was wavy, because the rains had started. Greg was on the other side of the bonfire, and he came walking around it through the sparks and the white smoke, and up to Moira. Moira smiled out of politeness, because she wanted Jordan to sit by her, and she was afraid he wouldn’t if he saw her occupied by Greg.
‘Moira Hughes?’ he said. Moira smiled, and he said: ‘I wouldn’t have known you.’
‘Go on,’ I said, ‘you’ve known us always.’
They did not hear me. They were just looking. It was peculiar. I knew it was one of the peculiar moments of life because my skin was tingling all over, and that is how I always know.
Because of how she was looking at him, I looked at him too, but I did not think he was handsome. The holidays before, when I was sweet on Greg Jackson, I naturally thought he was handsome, but now he was just ordinary. He was very thin, always, and his hair was ginger, and his freckles were thick, because naturally the sun is no good for people with white skin and freckles.
But he wasn’t bad, particularly because he was in his sensible mood. Since he went to college he had two moods, one noisy and sarcastic; and then Moira used to say, all lofty and superior: ‘Medical students are always rowdy, it stands to reason because of the hard life they have afterwards.’ His other mood was when he was quiet and grown-up, and some of the gang didn’t like it, because he was better than us, he was the only one of the gang to go to university at the Cape.
After they had finished looking, he just sat down in the grass in the place Moira was keeping for Jordan, and Moira did not once look around for Jordan. They did not say anything else, just went on sitting, and when the big dance began holding hands around the bonfire, they stood at one side watching.
That was all that happened at the braavleis, and that was all the words he said. Next day, Greg went on a shooting trip with his father who was the man at the garage, and they went right up the Zambesi valley, and Greg did not come back to our station that holidays or the holidays after.
I knew Moira was thinking of a letter, because she bought some of Croxley’s best blue at the store, and she always went herself to the post office on mail days. But there was no letter. But after that she said to Jordan, ‘No thanks, I don’t feel like it,’ when he asked her to go into town to the flicks.
She did not take any notice of any of the gang after that, though before she was leader of the gang, even over the boys.
That was when she stopped being pretty again; she looked as she did before she left school and was working hard for her matric. She was too thin, and the curl went out of her hair, and she didn’t bother to curl it either.
All that dry season she did nothing, and hardly spoke, and did not sing; and I knew it was because of that minute when Greg and she looked at each other; that was all; and when I thought of it, I could feel the cold-hot down my back.
Well, on the day before the braavleis, like I said, Moira was on the veranda, and she had on her the dress she wore last year to the braavleis. Greg had come back for the holidays the night before, we knew he had, because his mother said so when Mom met her at the store. But he did not come to our house. I did not like to see Moira’s face, but I had to keep on looking at it, it was so sad, and her eyes were sore. Mom kissed her, putting both her arms around her, but Moira gave a hitch of her shoulders like a horse with a fly bothering it.
Mom sighed, and then I saw Dad looking at her, and the look they gave each other was most peculiar, it made me feel very peculiar again. And then Moira started in on the lemon cake, and went to the butcher’s, and that was when Dad said that about the braavleis being for the engagement. Moira looked at him, with her eyes all black and sad, and said: ‘Why have you got it in for me, Dad, what have I done?’
Dad said: ‘Greg’s not going to marry you. Now he’s got to college, and going to be a doctor, he won’t be after you.’
Moira was smiling, her lips small and angry.
Mom said: ‘Why Dickson, Moira’s got her matric and she’s educated, what’s got into your head?’
Dad said: ‘I’m telling you, that’s all.’
Moira said, very grown-up and quiet: ‘Why are you trying to spoil it for me, Dad? I haven’t said anything about marrying, have I? And what have I done to you, anyway?’
Dad didn’t like that. He went red, and he laughed, but he didn’t like it. And he was quiet for a bit at least.
After lunch, when she’d finished with the cake, she was sitting on the veranda when Jordan went past across to the store, and she called out: ‘Hi, Jordan, come and talk to me.’
Now I know for a fact that Jordan wasn’t sweet on Moira any more, he was sweet on Beth from the store, because I know for a fact he kissed her at the last station dance, I saw him. And he shouted out, ‘Thanks, Moy, but I’m on my way.’
‘Oh, please yourself then,’ said Moira, friendly and nice, but I knew she was cross, because she was set on it.
Anyway, he came in, and I’ve never seen Moira so nice to anyone, not even when she was sweet on him, and certainly never to Greg. Well, and Jordan was embarrassed, because Moira was not pretty that season, and all the station was saying she had gone off. She took Jordan into the kitchen to see the lemon cake and dough all folded ready for the sausage rolls, and she said slow and surprised, ‘But we haven’t got enough bread for the sandwiches, Mom, what are you thinking of?’
Mom said, quick and cross, because she was proud of her kitchen. ‘What do you mean? And no one’s going to eat sandwiches with all that meat you’ve ordered. And it’ll be stale by tomorrow.’
‘I think we need more bread,’ said Moira. And she said to me in the same voice, slow and lazy, ‘Just run over to the Jacksons’ and see if they can let us have some bread.’
At this I didn’t say anything, and Mom did not say anything either, and it was lucky Dad didn’t hear. I looked at Mom, and she made no sign, so I went out across the railway lines to the garage, and at the back of the garage was the Jacksons’ house, and there was Greg Jackson reading a book about the body because he was going to be a doctor.
‘Mom says,’ I said, ‘can you let us have some bread for the braavleis?’
He put down the book, and said, ‘Oh, hullo, Betty.’
‘Hullo,’ I said.
‘But the store will be open tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Isn’t the braavleis tomorrow?’
‘It’s Sunday tomorrow,’ I said.
‘But the store’s open now.’
‘We want some stale bread,’ I said. ‘Moy’s making some stuffing for the chicken, our bread’s all fresh.’
‘Mom’s at the store,’ he said, ‘but help yourself.’
So I went into the pantry and got half a stale loaf, and came out and said ‘Thanks,’ and walked past him.
He said, ‘Don’t mench.’ Then, when I was nearly gone, he said, ‘And how’s Moy?’ And I said, ‘Fine, thanks, but I haven’t seen much of her this hols because she’s busy with Jordan.’ And I went away, and I could feel my back tingling, and sure enough there he was coming up behind me, and then he was beside me, and my side was tingling.
‘I’ll drop over and say hullo,’ said Greg, and I felt peculiar I can tell you, because what I was thinking was: Well! If this is love.
When we got near our house, Moira and Jordan were side by side on the veranda wall, and Moy was laughing, and I knew she had seen Greg coming because of the way she laughed.
Dad was not on the veranda, so I could see Mom had got him to stay indoors.
‘I’ve brought you the bread, Moy,’ I said, and with this I went into the kitchen, and there was Mom, and she was looking more peculiar than I’ve ever seen her. I could have bet she wanted to laugh; but she was sighing all the time. Because of the sighing I knew she had quarrelled with Dad. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said, and she threw the bread I’d fetched into the waste-bucket.
There sat Mom and I in the kitchen, smiling at each other off and on in a peculiar way, and Dad was rattling his paper in the bedroom where she had made him go. He was not at the station that day, because the train had come at nine o’clock and there wasn’t another one coming. When we looked out on the veranda in about half an hour Jordan was gone, and Greg and Moira were sitting on the veranda wall. And I can tell you she looked so pretty again, it was peculiar her getting pretty like that so sudden.
That was about five, and Greg went back to supper at home, and Moira did not eat anything, she was in our room curling her hair, because she and Greg were going for a walk.
‘Don’t go too far, it’s going to rain,’ Mom said, but Moira said, sweet and dainty, ‘Don’t worry, Mom, I can look after myself.’
Mom and Dad said nothing to each other all the evening.
I went to bed early for a change, so I’d be there when Moy got in, although I was thirteen that season and now my bedtime was up to ten o’clock.
Mom and Dad went to bed, although I could see Mom was worried, because there was a storm blowing up, the dry season was due to end, and the lightning kept spurting all over the sky.
And I lay awake saying to myself, Sleep sleep go away, come again another day, but I went to sleep, and when I woke up, the room was full of the smell of rain, of the earth wet with rain, the light was on and Moira was in the room.
‘Have the rains come?’ I said, and then I woke right up and saw of course they hadn’t, because the air was as dry as sand, and Moira said, ‘Oh shut up and go to sleep.’
She did not look pretty as much as being different from how I’d seen her, her face was soft and smiling, and her eyes were different. She had blue eyes most of the time, but now they seemed quite black. And now her hair was all curled and brushed, it looked pretty, like golden syrup. And she even looked a bit fatter. Usually when she wasn’t too thin, she was rather fat, and when she was one of the gang we used to call her Pudding. That is, until she passed her J.C., and then she fought everyone, and the boys too, so that she could be called Moy. So no one had called her Pudding for years now except Dad to make her cross. He used to say, ‘You’re going to make a fine figure of a woman like your mother.’ That always made Moy cross, I can tell you, because Mom was very fat, and she wore proper corsets these days, except just before the rains when it was so hot. I remember the first time the corsets came from the store, and she put them on, Moy had to lace her in, and Mom laughed so much Moy couldn’t do the laces, and anyway she was cross because Mom laughed, and she said to me afterwards, ‘It’s disgusting, letting yourself go – I’m not going to let myself go.’
So it would have been more than my life was worth to tell her she was looking a bit fatter already, or to tell her anything at all, because she sat smiling on the edge of her bed, and when I said, ‘What did he say, Moy?’ she just turned her head and made her eyes thin and black at me, and I saw I’d better go to sleep. But I knew something she didn’t know I knew, because she had some dead jacaranda flowers in her hair, so that meant she and Greg were at the water-tanks. There were only two jacaranda trees at our station, and they were at the big water-tanks for the engines, so if they were at the water-tanks, they must have been kissing, because it was romantic at the tanks. It was the end of October, and the jacarandas were shedding, and the tanks looked as if they were standing in pools of blue water.
Well next morning Moy was already up when I woke, and she was singing, and she began ironing her muslin dress that she made for last Christmas, even before breakfast.
Mom said nothing; Dad kept rustling his newspaper; and I wouldn’t have dared open my mouth. Besides, I wanted to find out what Greg said. After breakfast, we sat around, because of its being Sunday, and Dad didn’t have to be at the station office because there weren’t any trains on Sundays. And Dad kept grinning at Moira and saying: ‘I think it’s going to rain,’ and she pretended she didn’t know what he meant, until at last she jumped when he said it and turned herself and looked at him just the way she did the day before, and that was when he got red in the face, and said: ‘Can’t you take a joke these days?’ and Moira looked away from him with her eyebrows up, and Mom sighed, and then he said, very cross, ‘I’ll leave you all to it, just tell me when you’re in a better temper,’ and with this he took the newspaper inside to the bedroom.
Anybody could see it wasn’t going to rain properly that day, because the clouds weren’t thunder-heads, but great big white ones, all silver and hardly any black in them.
Moy didn’t eat any dinner, but went on sitting on the veranda, wearing her dress that was muslin, white with red spots, and big puffed sleeves, and a red sash around her waist.
After dinner, time was very slow, and it was a long time before Greg came down off the Jacksons’ veranda, and came walking slowly along the gum-tree avenue. I was watching Moy’s face, and she couldn’t keep the smile off it. She got paler and paler until he got underneath our veranda, and she looking at him so that I had goose-flesh all over.
Then he gave a jump up our steps to the veranda, and said: ‘Hoy, Moy, how’s it?’ I thought she was going to fall right off the veranda wall, and her face had gone all different again.
‘How are you, Gregory?’ said Moira, all calm and proud.
‘Oh, skidding along,’ he said, and I could see he felt awkward, because he hadn’t looked at her once, and his skin was all red around the freckles. And she didn’t say anything, and she was looking at him as if she couldn’t believe it was him.
‘I hope the rain will keep off for the braavleis,’ said Mom, in her visiting voice, and she looked hard at me, and I had to get up and go inside with her. But I could see Greg didn’t want us to go at all, and I could see Moy knew it; her eyes were blue again, a pale thin blue, and her mouth was small.
Well Mom went into the kitchen to finally make the sausage rolls, and I went into our bedroom, because I could see what went on on the veranda from behind the curtains.
Greg sat on the veranda wall, and whistled, he was whistling, I love you, yes I do; and Moira was gazing at him as if he were a Christmas beetle she had just noticed; and then he began whistling. Three little words, and suddenly Moira got down off the wall, and stretched herself like a cat when it’s going to walk off somewhere, and Greg said, ‘Skinny!’
At this she made her eyebrows go up, and I’ve never seen such a look.
And he was getting redder in the face, and he said: ‘You’d better not wear that dress to the braavleis, it’s going to rain.’
Moira didn’t say a word for what seemed about half an hour, and then she said, in that lazy sort of voice, ‘Well, Greg Jackson, if you’ve changed your mind it’s okay with me.’
‘Changed my mind?’ he said, very quick, and he looked scared; and she looked scared, and she asked: ‘What did you say all those things for last night?’
‘Say what?’ he asked, scareder than ever, and I could see he was trying to remember what he’d said.
Moira was just looking at him, and I wouldn’t have liked to be Greg Jackson just then, I can tell you. Then she walked off the veranda, letting her skirts swish slowly, and through the kitchen, and into our room, and then she sat on the bed.
‘I’m not going to the braavleis, Mom,’ she said, in that sweet slow voice like Mom when she’s got visitors and she wishes they’d go.
Mom just sighed, and slapped the dough about on the kitchen table. Dad made the springs of the bed creak, and he said half aloud: ‘Oh my God preserve me!’
Mom left the pastry, and gave a glare through the door of their bedroom at Dad, and then came into our room. There was Moira sitting all lumped up on her bed as if she’d got the stitch, and her face was like pastry dough. Mom said nothing to Moira, but went on to the veranda Greg was still sitting there looking sick.
‘Well, son,’ Mom said, in her easy voice, the voice she had when she was tired of everything, but keeping up, ‘Well, son, I think Moy’s got a bit of a headache from the heat.’
As I’ve said, I wasn’t sweet on Greg that holidays but if I was Moy I would have been, the way he looked just then, all sad but grown-up, like a man, when he said: ‘Mrs Hughes, I don’t know what I’ve done.’ Mom just smiled, and sighed. ‘I can’t marry, Mrs Hughes, I’ve got five years’ training ahead of me.’
Mom smiled and said, ‘Of course, son, of course.’
I was lying on my bed with my stamps, and Moira was on her bed, listening, and the way she smiled gave me a bad shiver.
‘Listen to him,’ she said, in a loud voice, ‘Marry? Why does everyone go on about marrying? They’re nuts. I wouldn’t marry Greg Jackson anyway if he was the last man on a desert island.’
Outside, I could hear Mom sigh hard, then her voice quick and low, and then the sound of Greg’s feet crunching off over the cinders of the path.
Then Mom came back into our room, and Moira said, all despairing, ‘Mom, what made you say that about marrying?’
‘He said it, my girl, I didn’t.’
‘Marrying!’ said Moira, laughing hard.
Mom said: ‘What did he say then, you talked about him saying something?’
‘Oh you all make me sick,’ said Moira, and lay down on her bed, turned away from us. Mom hitched her head at me, and we went out. By then it was five in the afternoon and the cars would be leaving at six, so Mom finished the sausage rolls in the oven, and packed the food, and then she took off her apron and went across to Jordan’s house. Moira did not see her go, because she was still lost to the world in her pillow.
Soon Mom came back and put the food into the car. Then Jordan came over with Beth from the store and said to me, ‘Betty, my Mom says, will you and Moy come in our car to the braavleis, because your car’s full of food.’
‘I will,’ I said, ‘but Moira’s got a headache.’
But at this moment Moira called out from our room, ‘Thanks, Jordan, I’d like to come.’
So Mom called to Pop, and they went off in our car together and I could see she was talking to him all the time, and he was just pulling the gears about and looking resigned to life.
I and Moira went with Jordan and Beth in their car. I could see Jordan was cross because he wanted to be with Beth, and Beth kept smiling at Moira with her eyebrows up, to tell her she knew what was going on, and Moira smiled back, and talked a lot in her visiting voice.
At the braavleis it was a high place at the end of a vlei, where it rose into a small hill full of big boulders. The grass had been cut that morning by natives of the farmer who always let us use his farm for the braavleis. It was pretty, with the hill behind and the moon coming up over it, and then the cleared space, and the vlei sweeping down to the river, and the trees on either side. The moon was just over the trees when we got there, so the trees looked black and big, and the boulders were big and looked as if they might topple over, and the grass was silvery, but the great bonfire was roaring up twenty feet, and in the space around the fire it was all hot and red. The trench of embers where the spits were for the meat was on one side, and Moira went there as soon as she arrived, and helped with the cooking.
Greg was not there, and I thought he wouldn’t come, but much later, when we were all earing the meat, and laughing because it burned our fingers it was so hot, I saw him on the other side of the fire talking to Mom. Moira saw him talking, and she didn’t like it, but she pretended not to see.
By then we were seated in a half-circle on the side of the fire the wind was blowing, so that the red flames were sweeping off away from us. There were about fifty people from the station and some farmers from round about. Moira sat by me, quiet, eating grilled ribs and sausage rolls, and she was pleased I was there for once, so that she wouldn’t seem to be by herself. She had changed her dress back again, and it was the dress she had last year for the braavleis, it was blue with pleats, and it was the dress she had for best the last year at school, so it wasn’t very modern any more. Across the fire, I could see Greg. He did not look at Moira and she did not look at him. Except that this year Jordan did not want to sit by Moira but by Beth, I kept feeling peculiar, as if this year was really last year, and in a minute Greg would walk across past the fire, and say: ‘Moira Hughes? I wouldn’t have known you.’
But he stayed where he was. He was sitting on his legs, with his hands on his knees. I could see his legs and knees and his big hands all red from the fire and the yellow hair glinting on the red. His face was red too and wet with the heat.
Then everyone began singing. We were singing Sarie Marais, and Sugar Bush, and Henrietta’s Wedding and We don’t want to go home. Moira and Greg were both singing as hard as they could.
It began to get late. The natives were damping down the cooking trench with earth, and looking for scraps of meat and bits of sausage roll, and the big fire was sinking down. It would be time in a minute for the big dance in a circle around the fire.
Moira was just sitting. Her legs were tucked under sideways, and they had got scratched from the grass. I could see the white dry scratches across the sunburn, and I can tell you it was a good thing she didn’t wear her best muslin because there wouldn’t have been much left of it. Her hair, that she had curled yesterday, was tied back in a ribbon, so that her face looked small and thin.
I said: ‘Here, Moy, don’t look like your own funeral,’ and she said: ‘I will if I like.’ Then she gave me a bit of a grin, and she said: ‘Let me give you a word of warning for when you’re grown-up, don’t believe a word men say, I’m telling you.’
But I could see she was feeling better just then.
At that very moment the red light of the fire on the grass just in front of us went out, and someone sat down, and I hoped it was Greg and it was. They were looking at each other again, but my skin didn’t tingle at all, so I looked at his face and at her face, and they were both quiet and sensible.
Then Moira reached out for a piece of grass, pulled it clean and neat out of the socket, and began nibbling at the soft piece at the end; and it was just the way Mom reached out for her knitting when she was against Dad. But of course Greg did not know the resemblance.
‘Moy,’ he said, ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘My name is Moira,’ said Moira, looking him in the eyes.
‘Oh heck, Moira,’ he said, sounding exasperated just like Dad.
I wriggled back away from the two of them into the crowd that was still singing softly Sarie Marais, and looking at the way the fire was glowing low and soft, ebbing red and then dark as the wind came up from the river. The moon was half-covered with the big soft silvery clouds, and the red light was strong on our faces.
I could just hear what they said, I wasn’t going to move too far off, I can tell you.
‘I don’t know what I’ve said,’ said Greg.
‘It doesn’t matter in the slightest,’ said Moira.
‘Moira, for crying out aloud!’
‘Why did you say that about marrying?’ said Moira, and her voice was shaky. She was going to cry if she didn’t watch out. ‘I thought you thought I meant …’
‘You think too much,’ said Moira, tossing her head carefully so that her long tail of hair should come forward and lie on her shoulder. She put up her hand, and stroked the curls smooth.
‘Moira, I’ve got another five years at university. I couldn’t say to you, let’s get engaged for five years.’
‘I never said you should,’ said Moira, calm and lofty, examining the scratches on her legs.
The way she was sitting, curled up sideways, with her hair lying forward like syrup on her shoulder, it was pretty, it was as pretty as I’ve ever seen, and I could see his face, sad and almost sick.
‘You’re so pretty, Moy,’ he said, jerking it out.
Moira seemed not to be able to move. Then she turned her head slowly and looked at him. I could see the beginning of something terrible on her face. The shiver had begun under my hair at the back of my neck, and was slowly moving down to the small of my back.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said, sounding angry, leaning right forward with his eyes almost into her face.
And now she looked the way she had last night, when I was not awake and said, was it raining outside.
‘When you look like that,’ he said, quite desperate about everything, ‘it makes me feel …’
People were getting up now all around us, the fire had burned right down, it was a low wave of red heat coming out at us. The redness was on our shoulders and legs, but our faces were having a chance to cool off. The moon had come out again full and bright, and the cloud had rolled on, and it was funny the way the light was red to their shoulders, and the white of the moon on their faces, and their eyes glistening. I didn’t like it; I was shivering; it was the most peculiar moment of all my life.
‘Well,’ said Moira, and she sounded just too tired even to try to understand, ‘that’s what you said last night, wasn’t it?’
‘Don’t you see,’ he said, trying to explain, his tongue all mixed up, ‘I can’t help – I love you, I don’t know …’
Now she smiled, and I knew the smile at once, it was the way Mom smiled at Dad when if he had any sense he’d shut up. It was sweet and loving, but it was sad, and as if she was saying, Lord, you’re a fool, Dickson Hughes!
Moira went on smiling like that at Greg, and he was sick and angry and not understanding a thing.
‘I love you,’ he said again.
‘Well I love you and what of it?’ said Moira.
‘But it will be five years.’
‘And what has that got to do with anything?’ At this she began to laugh.
‘But Moy …’
‘My name is Moira,’ she said, once and for all.
For a moment they were both white and angry, their eyes glimmering with the big white moon over them.
There was a shout and a hustle, and suddenly all the people were in the big circle around the big low heap of fire, and they were whirling around and around, yelling and screaming. Greg and Moira stayed where they were, just outside the range of the feet, and they didn’t hear a thing.
‘You’re so pretty,’ he was saying, in that rough, cross, helpless voice. ‘I love you, Moira, there couldn’t ever be anyone but you.’
She was smiling, and he went on saying: ‘I love you, I see your face all the time, I see your hair and your face and your eyes.’
And I wished he’d go on, the poor sap, just saying it, for every minute, it was more like last night when I woke up and I thought it had rained, the feeling of the dry earth with the rain just on it, that was how she was, and she looked as if she would sit there and listen for ever to the words he said, and she didn’t want to hear him saying. Why don’t you say something Moy, you don’t say anything, you do understand don’t you? – it’s not fair, it isn’t right to bind you when we’re so young. But he started on saying it in just a minute, and then she smiled her visiting smile, and she said: Gregory Jackson, you’re a fool.
Then she got herself off the grass and went across to Mom to help load the car up, and she never once looked at Greg again, not for the rest of the holidays.
Lucy Grange (#ulink_bcb7a68c-6e36-58d1-b143-93f491858e2a)
The farm was fifty miles from the nearest town, in a maize-growing district. The mealie lands began at a stone’s throw from the front door of the farm house. At the back were several acres of energetic and colourful domestic growth: chicken runs, vegetables, pumpkins. Even on the veranda were sacks of grain and bundles of hoes. The life on the farm, her husband’s life, washed around the house leaving old scraps of iron on the front step where the children played wagon-and-driver, or a bottle of medicine for a sick animal on her dressing-table among the bottles of Elizabeth Arden.
One walked straight from the veranda of this gaunt, iron-roofed, brick-barracks of a house into a wide drawing-room that was shaded in green and orange Liberty linens.
‘Stylish?’ said the farmers’ wives, when they came on formal calls, asking questions of themselves while they discussed with Lucy Grange the price of butter and servants’ aprons and their husbands discussed the farm with George Grange. They never ‘dropped over’ to see Lucy Grange; they never rang her up with invitations to ‘spend the day’. They would finger the books on child psychology, politics, art; gaze guiltily at the pictures on her walls, which they felt they ought to be able to recognize, and say: ‘I can see you are a great reader, Mrs Grange.’
There were years of discussing her among themselves before their voices held the good-natured amusement of acceptance: ‘I found Lucy in the vegetable patch wearing gloves full of cold cream.’ ‘Lucy has ordered another dress pattern from town.’ And later still, with self-consciously straightened shoulders, eyes directed primly before them, discreet non-committal voices: ‘Lucy is very attractive to men.’
One can imagine her, when they left at the end of those mercifully so-short visits, standing on the veranda and smiling bitterly after the satisfactory solid women with their straight ‘tailored’ dresses, made by the Dutchwoman at the store at seven-and-six a time, buttoned loosely across their well-used breasts, with their untidy hair permed every six months in town, with their femininity which was asserted once and for all by a clumsy scrawl of red across the mouth. One can imagine her clenching her fists and saying fiercely to the mealie fields which rippled greenly all around her, cream-topped like the sea: ‘I won’t. I simply won’t. He needn’t imagine that I will!’
‘Do you like my new dress, George?’
‘You’re the best-looking woman in the district, Lucy.’ So it seemed, on the face of it, that he didn’t expect, or even want, that she should …
Meanwhile she continued to order cook-books from town, made new recipes of pumpkin and green mealies and chicken, put skin-food on her face at night; constructed attractive nursery furniture out of packing cases enamelled white – the farm wasn’t doing too well; and discussed with George how little Betty’s cough was probably psychological.
‘I’m sure you’re right, my dear.’
Then the rich, over-controlled voice: ‘Yes, darling. No, my sweetheart. Yes, of course, I’ll play bricks with you, but you must have your lunch first.’ Then it broke, hard and shrill: ‘Don’t make all that noise, darling. I can’t stand it. Go on, go and play in the garden and leave me in peace.’
Sometimes, storms of tears. Afterwards: ‘Really, George, didn’t your mother ever tell you that all women cry sometimes? It’s as good as a tonic. Or a holiday.’ And a lot of high laughter and gay explanations at which George hastened to guffaw. He liked her gay. She usually was. For instance, she was a good mimic. She would ‘take off, deliberately trying to relieve his mind of farm worries, the visiting policemen, who toured the district once a month to see if the natives were behaving themselves, or the Government agricultural officials.
‘Do you want to see my husband?’
That was what they had come for, but they seldom pressed the point. They sat far longer than they had intended, drinking tea, talking about themselves. They would go away and say at the bar in the village: ‘Mrs Grange is a smart woman, isn’t she?’
And Lucy would be acting for George’s benefit, how a khaki-clad, sun-raw youth had bent into her room, looking around him with comical surprise, had taken a cup of tea thanking her three times, had knocked over an ashtray, stayed for lunch and afternoon tea, and left saying with awkward gallantry: ‘It’s a real treat to meet a lady like you who is interested in things.’
‘You shouldn’t be so hard on us poor Colonials, Lucy.’
Finally one can imagine how one day, when the house-boy came to her in the chicken-runs to say that there was a baas waiting to see her at the house, it was no sweating policeman, thirsty after fifteen dusty miles on a motor-cycle, to whom she must be gracious.
He was a city man, of perhaps forty or forty-five, dressed in city clothes. At first glance she felt a shudder of repulsion. It was a coarse face, and sensual; and he looked like a patient vulture as the keen heavy-lidded eyes travelled up and down her body.
‘Are you looking for my husband perhaps? He’s in the cow-sheds this morning.’
‘No, I don’t think I am. I was.’
She laughed. It was as if he had started playing a record she had not heard for a long time, and which began her feet tapping. It was years since she had played this game. ‘I’ll get you some tea,’ she said hurriedly and left him in her pretty drawing-room.
Collecting the cups, her hands were clumsy. ‘Why, Lucy!’ she said to herself, archly. She came back very serious and responsible to find him standing in front of the picture which filled half the wall at one end of the room. ‘I should have thought you had sunflowers enough here,’ he said, in his heavy over-emphasized voice, which made her listen for meanings behind his words. And when he turned away from the wall and came to sit down, leaning forward, examining her, she suppressed an impulse to apologize for the picture: ‘Van Gogh is obvious, but he’s rather effective,’ she might have said; and felt that the whole room was that: effective but obvious. But she was pleasantly conscious of how she looked: graceful and cool in her green linen dress, with her corn-coloured hair knotted demurely in her neck. She lifted wide serious eyes to his face and asked: ‘Milk? Sugar?’ and knew that the corners of her mouth were tight with self-consciousness.
When he left, three hours later, he turned her hand over and lightly kissed the palm. She looked down at the greasy dark head, the red folded neck, and stood rigid, thinking of the raw creased necks of vultures.
Then he straightened up and said with simple kindliness: ‘You must be lonely here, my dear,’ and she was astounded to find her eyes full of tears.
‘One does what one can to make a show of it,’ She kept her lids lowered and her voice light. Inside she was weeping with gratitude. Embarrassed, she said quickly: ‘You know, you haven’t yet said what you came for.’
‘I sell insurance. And besides, I’ve heard people talk of you.’
She imagined the talk and smiled stiffly. ‘You don’t seem to take your work very seriously.’
‘If I may I’ll come back another time and try again?’
She did not reply. He said: ‘My dear, I’ll tell you a secret: one of the reasons I chose this district was because of you. Surely there aren’t so many people in this country one can really talk to that we can afford not to take each other seriously?’
He touched her cheek with his hand, smiled, and went. She heard the last thing he had said like a parody of the things she often said and felt a violent revulsion.
She went to her bedroom, where she found herself in front of the mirror. Her hands went to her cheeks and she drew in her breath with the shock. ‘Why, Lucy, whatever is the matter with you?’ Her eyes were dancing, her mouth smiled irresistibly. Yet she heard the archness of her Why, Lucy and thought: I’m going to pieces. I must have gone to pieces without knowing it.
Later she found herself singing in the pantry as she made a cake, stopped herself; made herself look at the insurance salesman’s face against her closed eyelids, and instinctively wiped the palms of her hands against her skirt.
He came three days later. Again, in the first shock of seeing him stand at the door, smiling familiarly, she thought: ‘It’s the face of an old animal. He probably chose this kind of work because of the opportunities it gives him.’
He talked of London, where he had lately been on leave; about the art galleries and the theatres.
She could not help warming, because of her hunger for this kind of talk. She could not help an apologetic note in her voice, because she knew that after so many years in this exile she must seem provincial. She liked him because he associated himself with her abdication from her standards by saying: ‘Yes, yes, my dear, in a country like this we all learn to accept the second rate.’
While he talked his eyes were roving. He was listening. Outside the window in the dust the turkeys were scraping and gobbling. In the next room the houseboy was moving; then there was silence because he had gone to get his midday meal. The children had had their lunch and gone off to the garden with the nurse.
No, she said to herself. No, no, no.
‘Does your husband come back for lunch?’
‘He takes it on the lands at this time of the year, he’s so busy.’
He came over and sat beside her. ‘Well, shall we console each other?’ She was crying in his arms. She could feel their impatient and irritable tightening.
In the bedroom, she kept her eyes shut. His hand travelled up and down her back. ‘What’s the matter, little one? What’s the matter?’
His voice was a sedative. She could have fallen asleep and lain there for a week inside the anonymous comforting arms. But he was looking at his watch over her shoulder. ‘We’d better get dressed, hadn’t we?’
‘Of course.’
She sat naked on the bed, covering herself with her arms, looking at his white hairy body in loathing, and then at the creased red neck. She became extremely gay, and in the living-room they sat side by side on the big sofa, being ironical. Then he put his arm around her, and she curled up inside it, and cried again. She clung to him and felt him going away from her, and in a few minutes he stood up saying: ‘Wouldn’t do for your old man to come in and find us like this, would it?’ Even while she was hating him for the ‘old man’ she put her arms around him and said: ‘You’ll come back soon.’
‘I couldn’t keep away.’ The voice purred caressingly over her head, and she said: ‘You know, I’m very lonely.’
‘Darling, I’ll come as soon as I can. I’ve a living to make, you know.’
She let her arms drop, and smiled, and watched him drive away down the rutted red-dust farm road, between the rippling sea-coloured mealies.
She knew he would come again, and next time she would not cry; she would stand again like this watching him go, hating him, thinking of how he had said: In this country we learn to accept the second-rate; and he would come again and again and again; and she would stand here, watching him go and hating him.
A Mild Attack of Locusts (#ulink_38c875e1-9d8a-5235-8d29-6c5c48f01dff)
The rains that year were good, they were coming nicely just as the crops needed them – or so Margaret gathered when the men said they were not too bad. She never had an opinion of her own on matters like the weather, because even to know about what seems a simple thing like the weather needs experience. Which Margaret had not got. The men were Richard her husband, and old Stephen, Richard’s father, a farmer from way back, and these two might argue for hours whether the rains were ruinous, or just ordinarily exasperating. Margaret had been on the farm three years. She still did not understand how they did not go bankrupt altogether, when the men never had a good word for the weather, or the soil, or the Government. But she was getting to learn the language. Farmer’s language. And they neither went bankrupt nor got very rich. They jogged along, doing comfortably.
Their crop was maize. Their farm was three thousand acres on the ridges that rise up towards the Zambesi escarpment, high, dry windswept country, cold and dusty in winter, but now, being the wet season, steamy with the heat rising in wet soft waves off miles of green foliage. Beautiful it was, with the sky blue and brilliant halls of air, and the bright green folds and hollows of country beneath, and the mountains lying sharp and bare twenty miles off across the river. The sky made her eyes ache, she was not used to it. One does not look so much at the sky in the city she came from. So that evening when Richard said: ‘The Government is sending out warnings that locusts are expected, coming down from the breeding grounds up North,’ her instinct was to look about her at the trees. Insects – swarms of them – horrible! But Richard and the old man had raised their eyes and were looking up over the mountains. ‘We haven’t had locusts in seven years,’ they said. ‘They go in cycles, locusts do.’ And then: ‘There goes our crop for this season!’
But they went on with the work of the farm just as usual, until one day they were coming up the road to the homestead for the midday break, when old Stephen stopped, raised his finger and pointed: ‘Look, look, there they are!’
Out ran Margaret to join them, looking at the hills. Out came the servants from the kitchen. They all stood and gazed. Over the rocky levels of the mountain was a streak of rust-coloured air. Locusts. There they came.
At once Richard shouted at the cook-boy. Old Stephen yelled at the house-boy. The cook-boy ran to beat the old ploughshare hanging from a tree-branch, which was used to summon the labourers at moments of crisis. The house-boy ran off to the store to collect tin cans, any old bit of metal. The farm was ringing with the clamour of the gong, and they could see the labourers come pouring out of the compound, pointing at the hills and shouting excitedly. Soon they had all come up to the house, and Richard and old Stephen were giving them orders – Hurry, hurry, hurry.
And off they ran again, the two white men with them, and in a few minutes Margaret could see the smoke of fires rising from all around the farm-lands. Piles of wood and grass had been prepared there. There were seven patches of bared soil, yellow and ox-blood colour, and pink, where the new mealies were just showing, making a film of bright green, and around each drifted up thick clouds of smoke. They were throwing wet leaves on to the fires now, to make it acrid and black. Margaret was watching the hills. Now there was a long low cloud advancing, rust-colour still, swelling forwards and out as she looked. The telephone was ringing. Neighbours – quick, quick, there come the locusts. Old Smith had had his crop eaten to the ground. Quick, get your fires started. For of course, while every farmer hoped the locusts would overlook his farm and go on to the next, it was only fair to warn each other, one must play fair. Everywhere, fifty miles over the countryside, the smoke was rising from myriads of fires, Margaret answered the telephone calls, and between stood watching the locusts. The air was darkening. A strange darkness, for the sun was blazing – it was like the darkness of a veld fire, when the air gets thick with smoke. The sunlight comes down distorted, a thick hot orange. Oppressive it was, too, with the heaviness of a storm. The locusts were coming fast. Now half the sky was darkened. Behind the reddish veils in front which were the advance guard of the swarm, the main swarm showed in dense black cloud, reaching almost to the sun itself.
Margaret was wondering what she could do to help. She did not know. Then up came old Stephen from the lands. ‘We’re finished! These beggars can eat every leaf and blade off the farm in half an hour! And it is only early afternoon – if we can make enough smoke, make enough noise till the sun goes down, they’ll settle somewhere else perhaps …’ And then: ‘Get the kettle going. It’s thirsty work, this.’
So Margaret went to the kitchen, and stoked up the fire, and boiled the water. Now, on the tin roof of the kitchen she could hear the thuds of falling locusts, or a scratching slither as one skidded down. Here were the first of them. From down on the lands came the beating and banging and clanging of a hundred petrol tins and bits of metal. Stephen impatiently waited while one petrol tin was filled with tea, hot, sweet and orange-coloured, and the other with water. In the meantime, he told Margaret about how twenty years back he was eaten out, made bankrupt by the locust armies. And then, still talking, he hoisted up the petrol cans, one in each hand, by the wood pieces set corner-wise each, and jogged off down to the road to the thirsty labourers. By now the locusts were falling like hail on to the roof of the kitchen. It sounded like a heavy storm. Margaret looked out and saw the air dark with a criss-cross of the insects, and she set her teeth and ran out into it – what men could do, she could. Overhead the air was thick, locusts everywhere. The locusts were flopping against her, and she brushed them off, heavy red brown creatures, looking at her with their beady old-men’s eyes while they clung with hard serrated legs. She held her breath with disgust and ran into the house. There it was even more like being in a heavy storm. The iron roof was reverberating, and the clamour of iron from the lands was like thunder. Looking out, all the trees were queer and still, clotted with insects, their boughs weighed to the ground. The earth seemed to be moving, locusts crawling everywhere, she could not see the lands at all, so thick was the swarm. Towards the mountains it was like looking into driving rain -even as she watched, the sun was blotted out with a fresh onrush of them. It was a half-night, a perverted blackness. Then came a sharp crack from the bush – a branch had snapped off. Then another. A tree down the slope leaned over and settled heavily to the ground. Through the hail of insects a man came running. More tea, more water was needed. She supplied them. She kept the fires stoked and filled tins with liquid, and then it was four in the afternoon, and the locusts had been pouring across overhead for a couple of hours. Up came old Stephen again, crunching locusts underfoot with every step, locusts clinging all over him, cursing and swearing, banging with his old hat at the air. At the doorway he stopped briefly, hastily pulling at the clinging insects and throwing them off, then he plunged into the locust-free living-room.
‘All the crops finished. Nothing left,’ he said.
But the gongs were still beating, the men still shouting, and Margaret asked: ‘Why do you go on with it, then?’
‘The main swarm isn’t settling. They are heavy with eggs. They are looking for a place to settle and lay. If we can stop the main body settling on our farm, that’s everything. If they get a chance to lay their eggs, we are going to have everything eaten flat with hoppers later on.’ He picked a stray locust off his shirt, and split it down his thumbnail – it was clotted inside with eggs. ‘Imagine that multiplied by millions. You ever see a hopper swarm on the march? Well, you’re lucky.’
Margaret thought an adult swarm was bad enough. Outside now the light on the earth was a pale thin yellow, clotted with moving shadow, the clouds of moving insects thickened and lightened like driving rain. Old Stephen said: ‘They’ve got the wind behind them, that’s something.’
‘Is it very bad?’ asked Margaret fearfully, and the old man said emphatically: ‘We’re finished. This swarm may pass over, but once they’ve started, they’ll be coming down from the North now one after another. And then there are the hoppers – it might go on for two or three years.’
Margaret sat down helplessly, and thought: Well, if it’s the end, it’s the end. What now? We’ll all three have to go back to town … But at this, she took a quick look at Stephen, the old man who had farmed forty years in this country, been bankrupt twice, and she knew nothing would make him go and become a clerk in the city. Yet her heart ached for him; he looked so tired, the worry-lines deep from nose to mouth. Poor old man … He had lifted up a locust that had got itself somehow into his pocket, holding it in the air by one leg. ‘You’ve got the strength of a steel-spring in those legs of yours,’ he was telling the locust, good-humouredly. Then, although he had been fighting locusts, squashing locusts, yelling at locusts, sweeping them in great mounds into the fires to burn for the last three hours, nevertheless he took this one to the door, and carefully threw it out to join its fellows as if he would rather not harm a hair of its head. This comforted Margaret, all at once she felt irrationally cheered. She remembered it was not the first time in the last three years the men had announced their final and irremediable ruin.
‘Get me a drink, lass,’ he then said, and she set the bottle of whisky by him.
In the meantime, out in the pelting storm of insects, her husband was banging the gong, feeding the fires with leaves, the insects clinging to him all over – she shuddered. ‘How can you bear to let them touch you?’ she asked. He looked at her, disapproving. She felt suitably humble – just as she had when he had first taken a good look at her city self, hair waved and golden, nails red and pointed. Now she was a proper farmer’s wife, in sensible shoes and a solid skirt. She might even get to letting locusts settle on her – in time.
Having tossed back a whisky or two, old Stephen went back into the battle, wading now through glistening brown waves of locusts.
Five o’clock. The sun would set in an hour. Then the swarm would settle. It was as thick overhead as ever. The trees were ragged mounds of glistening brown.
Margaret began to cry. It was all so hopeless – if it wasn’t a bad season, it was locusts, if it wasn’t locusts, it was army-worm, or veld fires. Always something. The rustling of the locust armies was like a big forest in the storm, their settling on the roof was like the beating of the rain, the ground was invisible in a sleek brown surging tide – it was like being drowned in locusts, submerged by the loathsome brown flood. It seemed as if the roof might sink in under the weight of them, as if the door might give in under their pressure and these rooms fill with them – and it was getting so dark … she looked up. The air was thinner, gaps of blue showed in the dark moving clouds. The blue spaces were cold and thin: the sun must be setting. Through the fog of insects she saw figures approaching. First old Stephen, marching bravely along, then her husband, drawn and haggard with weariness. Behind them the servants. All were crawling all over with insects. The sound of the gongs had stopped. She could hear nothing but the ceaseless rustle of a myriad of wings.
The two men slapped off the insects and came in.
‘Well,’ said Richard, kissing her on the cheek, ‘the main swarm has gone over.’
‘For the Lord’s sake,’ said Margaret angrily, still half-crying, ‘what’s here is bad enough, isn’t it?’ For although the evening air was no longer black and thick, but a clear blue, with a pattern of insects whizzing this way and that across it, everything else – trees, buildings, bushes, earth, was gone under the moving brown masses.
‘If it doesn’t rain in the night and keep them here – if it doesn’t rain and weight them down with water, they’ll be off in the morning at sunrise.’
‘We’re bound to have some hoppers. But not the main swarm, that’s something.’
Margaret roused herself, wiped her eyes, pretended she had not been crying, and fetched them some supper, for the servants were too exhausted to move. She sent them down to the compound to rest.
She served the supper and sat listening. There is not one maize-plant left, she heard. Not one. The men would get the planters out the moment the locusts had gone. They must start all over again.
‘But what’s the use of that?’ Margaret wondered, if the whole farm was going to be crawling with hoppers? But she listened while they discussed the new Government pamphlet which said how to defeat the hoppers. You must have men out all the time moving over the farm to watch for movement in the grass. When you find a patch of hoppers, small lively black things, like crickets, then you dig trenches around the patch, or spray them with poison from pumps supplied by the Government. The Government wanted them to cooperate in a world plan for eliminating this plague for ever. You should attack locusts at the source. Hoppers, in short. The men were talking as if they were planning a war, and Margaret listened, amazed.
In the night it was quiet, no sign of the settled armies outside, except sometimes a branch snapped, or a tree could be heard crashing down.
Margaret slept badly in the bed beside Richard, who was sleeping like the dead, exhausted with the afternoon’s fight. In the morning she woke to yellow sunshine lying across the bed, clear sunshine, with an occasional blotch of shadow moving over it. She went to the window. Old Stephen was ahead of her. There he stood outside, gazing down over the bush. And she gazed, astounded – and entranced, much against her will. For it looked as if every tree, every bush, all the earth, were lit with pale flames. The locusts were fanning their wings to free them of the night dews. There was a shimmer of red-tinged gold light everywhere.
She went out to join the old man, stepping carefully among the insects. They stood and watched. Overhead the sky was blue, blue and clear.
‘Pretty,’ said old Stephen, with satisfaction.
Well, thought Margaret, we may be ruined, we may be bankrupt, but not everyone has seen an army of locusts fanning their wings at dawn.
Over the slopes, in the distance, a faint red smear showed in the sky, thickened and spread. ‘There they go,’ said old Stephen. ‘There goes the main army, off South.’
And now from the trees, from the earth all round them, the locusts were taking wing. They were like small aircraft, manoeuvring for the take-off, trying their wings to see if they were dry enough. Off they went. A reddish-brown steam was rising off the miles of bush, off the lands, the earth. Again the sunlight darkened.
And as the clotted branches lifted, the weight on them lightening, there was nothing but the black spines of branches, trees. No green left, nothing. All morning they watched, the three of them, as the brown crust thinned and broke and dissolved, flying up to mass with the main army, now a brownish-red smear in the Southern sky. The lands which had been filmed with green, the new tender mealie plants, were stark and bare. All the trees stripped. A devastated landscape. No green, no green anywhere.
By midday the reddish cloud had gone. Only an occasional locust flopped down. On the ground were the corpses and the wounded. The African labourers were sweeping these up with branches and collecting them in tins.
‘Ever eaten sun-dried locust?’ asked old Stephen. ‘That time twenty years ago, when I went broke, I lived on mealiemeal and dried locusts for three months. They aren’t bad at all – rather like smoked fish, if you come to think of it.’
But Margaret preferred not even to think of it.
After the midday meal the men went off to the lands. Everything was to be replanted. With a bit of luck another swarm would not come travelling down just this way. But they hoped it would rain very soon, to spring some new grass, because the cattle would die otherwise – there was not a blade of grass left on the farm. As for Margaret, she was trying to get used to the idea of three or four years of locusts. Locusts were going to be like bad weather, from now on, always imminent. She felt like a survivor after the war – if this devastated and mangled countryside was not ruin, well, what then was ruin?
But the men ate their supper with good appetites.
‘It could have been worse,’ was what they said. ‘It could be much worse.’
Flavours of Exile (#ulink_1e21cb16-78e4-5190-951c-148545d84f5c)
At the foot of the hill, near the well, was the vegetable garden, an acre fenced off from the Big Field whose earth was so rich that mealies grew there year after year ten feet tall. Nursed from that fabulous soil, carrots, lettuces, beets, tasting as I have never found vegetables taste since, loaded our table and the tables of our neighbours. Sometimes, if the garden boy was late with the supply for lunch, I would run down the steep pebbly path through the trees at the back of the hill, and along the red dust of the wagon road until I could see the windlass under its shed of thatch. There I stopped. The smell of manure, of sun on foliage, of evaporating water, rose to my head: two steps farther, and I could look down into the vegetable garden enclosed within its tall pale of reeds, rich chocolate earth studded emerald green, frothed with the white of cauliflowers, jewelled with the purple globes of eggplant and the scarlet wealth of tomatoes. Around the fence grew lemons, pawpaws, bananas, shapes of gold and yellow in their patterns of green.
In another five minutes I would be dragging from the earth carrots ten inches long, and so succulent they snapped between two fingers. I ate my allowance of these before the cook could boil them and drown them in the white flour sauce without which – and unless they were served in the large china vegetable dishes brought from that old house in London – they were not carrots to my mother.
For her, that garden represented a defeat.
When the family first came to the farm, she built vegetable beds on the kopje near the house. She had in her mind, perhaps, a vision of the farmhouse surrounded by out buildings and gardens like a hen sheltering its chicks.
The kopje was all stone. As soon as the grass was cleared off its crown where the house stood, the fierce rains beat the soil away. Those first vegetable beds were thin sifted earth walled by pebbles. The water was brought up from the well in the water-cart.
‘Water is gold,’ grumbled my father, eating peas which he reckoned must cost a shilling a mouthful. ‘Water is gold!’ he came to shout at last, as my mother toiled and bent over those reluctant beds. But she got more pleasure from them than she ever did from the exhaustless plenty of the garden under the hill.
At last, the spaces in the bush where the old beds had been were seeded by wild or vagrant plants, and we children played there. Someone must have thrown away gooseberries, for soon the low-spreading bushes covered the earth. We used to creep under them, William MacGregor and I, lie flat on our backs, and look through the leaves at the brilliant sky, reaching around us for the tiny sharp-sweet yellow fruits in their jackets of papery white. The smell of the leaves was spicy. It intoxicated us. We would laugh and shout, then quarrel; and William, to make up, shelled a double handful of the fruit and poured it into my skirt, and we ate together, pressing the biggest berries on each other. When we could eat no more, we filled baskets and took them to the kitchen to be made into that rich jam which – if allowed to burn just the right amount on the pan – is the best jam in the world, clear sweet amber, with lumps of sticky sharpness in it, as if the stings of bees were preserved in honey.
But my mother did not like it. ‘Cape gooseberries!’ she said bitterly. ‘They aren’t gooseberries at all. Oh, if I could let you taste a pie made of real English gooseberries.’
In due course, the marvels of civilization made this possible; she found a tin of gooseberries in the Greek store at the station, and made us a pie.
My parents and William’s ate the pie with a truly religious emotion.
It was this experience with the gooseberries that made me cautious when it came to brussels sprouts. Year after year my mother yearned for brussels sprouts, whose name came to represent to me something exotic and for ever unattainable. When at last she managed to grow half a dozen spikes of this plant, in one cold winter which offered us sufficient frost, she of course sent a note to the MacGregors, so that they might share the treat. They came from Glasgow, they came from Home, and they could share the language of nostalgia. At the table the four grown-ups ate the bitter little cabbages and agreed that the soil of Africa was unable to grow food that had any taste at all. I said scornfully that I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. But William, three years older than myself, passed his plate up and said he found them delicious. It was like a betrayal; and afterwards I demanded how he could like such flavourless stuff. He smiled at me and said it cost us nothing to pretend, did it?
That smile, so gentle, a little whimsical, was a lesson to me and I remembered it when it came to the affair of the cherries. She found a tin of cherries at the store, we ate them with cream; and while she sighed over memories of barrows loaded with cherries in the streets of London, I sighed with her, ate fervently, and was careful not to meet her eyes.
And when she said: ‘The pomegranates will be fruiting soon,’ I would offer to run down and see how they progressed; and returned from the examination saying: ‘It won’t be long now, really it won’t – perhaps next year.’
The truth was, my emotion over the pomegranates was not entirely due to the beautiful lesson in courtesy given me by William. Brussels sprouts, cherries, English gooseberries -they were my mother’s; they recurred in her talk as often as ‘a real London pea-souper’, or ‘chestnuts by the fire’, or ‘cherry blossom at Kew’. I no longer grudged these to her; I listened and was careful not to show that my thoughts were on my own inheritance of veld and sun. But pomegranates were an exotic for my mother; and therefore more easily shared with her. She had been in Persia, where, one understood, pomegranate juice ran in rivers. The wife of a minor official, she had lived in a vast stone house cooled by water trickling down a thousand stone channels from the mountains, she had lived among roses and jasmine, walnut trees and pomegranates. But, unfortunately, for too short a time.
Why not pomegranates here, in Africa? Why not?
The four trees had been planted at the same time as the first vegetable beds; and almost at once two of them died. A third lingered on for a couple of seasons and then succumbed to the white ants. The fourth stood lonely among the Cape gooseberry bushes, bore no fruit, and at last was forgotten.
Then one day my mother was showing Mrs MacGregor her chickens and as they returned through tangles of grass and weed, their skirts lifted high in both hands, my mother exclaimed: ‘Why, I do believe the pomegranate is fruiting at last. Look, look, it is!’ She called to us, the children, and we went running, and stood around a small thorny tree, and looked at a rusty-red fruit the size of a child’s fist. ‘It’s ripe,’ said my mother, and pulled it off.
Inside the house we were each given a dozen seeds on saucers. They were bitter, but we did not like to ask for sugar. Mrs MacGregor said gently: ‘It’s wonderful. How you must miss all that!’
‘The roses!’ said my mother. ‘And sacks of walnuts … and we used to drink pomegranate juice with the melted snow water … nothing here tastes like that. The soil is no good.’
I looked at William, sitting opposite me. He turned his head and smiled. I fell in love.
He was then fifteen, home for the holidays. He was a silent boy, thoughtful; and the quietness in his deep grey eyes seemed to me like a promise of warmth and understanding I had never known. There was a tightness in my chest, because it hurt to be shut out from the world of simple kindness he lived in. I sat there, opposite him, and said to myself that I had known him all my life and yet until this moment had never understood what he was. I looked at those extraordinarily clear eyes, that were like water over grey pebbles, I gazed and gazed, until he gave me a slow direct look which showed he knew I had been staring. It was like a warning, as if a door had been shut.
After the MacGregors had gone, I went through the bushes to the pomegranate tree. It was about my height, a tough, obstinate-looking thing; and there was a round yellow ball the size of a walnut hanging from a twig.
I looked at the ugly little tree and thought Pomegranates! Breasts like pomegranates and a belly like a heap of wheat! The golden pomegranates of the sun, I thought … pomegranates like the red of blood.
I was in a fever, more than a little mad. The space of thick grass and gooseberry bushes between the trees was haunted by William, and his deep grey eyes looked at me across the pomegranate tree.
Next day I sat under the tree. It gave no shade, but the acrid sunlight was barred and splotched under it. There was hard cracked red earth beneath a covering of silvery dead grass. Under the grass I saw grains of red, and half a hard brown shell. It seemed that a fruit had ripened and burst without our knowing – yes, everywhere in the soft old grass lay the tiny crimson seeds. I tasted one; warm sweet juice flooded my tongue. I gathered them up and ate them until my mouth was full of dry seeds. I spat them out and thought that a score of pomegranate trees would grow from that mouthful.
As I watched, tiny black ants came scurrying along the roots of the grass, scrambling over the fissures in the earch, to snatch away the seeds. I lay on my elbow and watched. A dozen of them were levering at a still unbroken seed. Suddenly the frail tissue split as they bumped it over a splinter, and they were caught in a sticky red ooze.
The ants would carry these seeds for hundreds of yards; there would be an orchard of pomegranates. William MacGregor would come visiting with his parents, and find me among the pomegranate trees; I could hear the sound of his grave voice, mingled with the tinkle of camel bells and the splashing of falling water.
I went to the tree every day and lay under it, watching the single yellow fruit ripening on its twig. There would come a moment when it must burst and scatter crimson seeds; I must be there when it did; it seemed as if my whole life was concentrated, and ripening with that single fruit.
It was very hot under the tree. My head ached. My flesh was painful with the sun. Yet there I sat all day, watching the tiny ants at their work, letting them run over my legs, waiting for the pomegranate fruit to ripen. It swelled slowly; it seemed set on reaching perfection, for when it was the size that the other had been picked, it was still a bronzing yellow, and the rind was soft. It was going to be a big fruit, the size of both my fists.
Then something terrifying happened. One day I saw that the twig it hung from was splitting off the branch. The wizened, dry little tree could not sustain the weight of the fruit it had produced. I went to the house, brought down bandages from the medicine chest, and strapped the twig firm and tight to the branch, in such a way that the weight was supported. Then I wet the bandage, tenderly, and thought of William, William, William. I wet the bandage daily, and thought of him.
What I thought of William had become a world, stronger than anything around me. Yet, since I was mad, so weak, it vanished at a touch. Once, for instance, I saw him driving with his father on the wagon along the road to the station. I remember I was ashamed that that marvellous feverish world should depend on a half-grown boy in dusty khaki, gripping a piece of grass between his teeth as he stared ahead of him. It came to this – that in order to preserve the dream, I must not see William. And it seemed he felt something of the sort himself, for in all those weeks he never came near me, whereas once he used to come every day. And yet I was convinced it must happen that William and the moment when the pomegranate split open would coincide.
I imagined it in a thousand ways, as the fruit continued to grow. Now, it was a clear bronze yellow with faint rust-coloured streaks. The rind was thin, so soft that the swelling seeds within were shaping it. The fruit looked lumpy and veined, like a nursing breast. The small crown where the stem fastened on it, which had been the sheath of the flower, was still green. It began to harden and turn back into iron-grey thorns.
Soon, soon, it would be ripe. Very swiftly, the skin lost its smooth thinness. It took on a tough pored look, like the skin of an old weatherbeaten countryman. It was a ruddy scarlet now, and hot to the touch. A small crack appeared, which in a day had widened so that the packed red seeds within were visible, almost bursting out. I did not dare leave the tree. I was there from six in the morning until the sun went down. I even crept down with the candle at night, although I argued it could not burst at night, not in the cool of the night, it must be the final unbearable thrust of the hot sun which would break it.
For three days nothing happened. The crack remained the same. Ants swarmed up the trunk, along the branches and into the fruit. The scar oozed red juice in which black ants swam and struggled. At any moment it might happen. And William did not come. I was sure he would: I watched the empty road helplessly, watching for him to come striding along, a piece of grass between his teeth, to me and the pomegranate tree. Yet he did not. In one night, the crack split another half-inch, I saw a red seed push itself out of the crack and fall. Instantly it was borne off by the ants into the grass.
I went up to the house and asked my mother when the MacGregors were coming to tea.
‘I don’t know, dear. Why?’
‘Because. I just thought …’
She looked at me. Her eyes were critical. In one moment, she would say the name William. I struck first. To have William and the moment together, I must pay fee to the family gods. ‘There’s a pomegranate nearly ripe, and you know how interested Mrs MacGregor is …’
She looked sharply at me. ‘Pick it, and we’ll make a drink of it.’
‘Oh no, it’s not quite ready. Not altogether …’
‘Silly child,’ she said at last. She went to the telephone and said: ‘Mrs MacGregor, this daughter of mine, she’s got it into her head – you know how children are.’
I did not care. At four that afternoon I was waiting by the pomegranate tree. Their car came thrusting up the steep road to the crown of the hill. There was Mr MacGregor in his khaki, Mrs MacGregor in her best afternoon dress – and William. The adults shook hands, kissed. William did not turn round and look at me. It was not possible, it was monstrous, that the force of my dream should not have had the power to touch him at all, that he knew nothing of what he must do.
Then he slowly turned his head and looked down the slope to where I stood. He did not smile. It seemed he had not seen me, for his eyes travelled past me, and back to the grownups. He stood to one side while they exchanged their news and greetings; and then all four laughed, and turned to look at me and my tree. It seemed for a moment they were all coming. At once, however, they went into the house, William trailing after them, frowning.
In a moment he would have gone in; the space in front of the old house would be empty. I called ‘William!’ I had not known I would call. My voice sounded small in the wide afternoon sunlight.
He went on as if he had not heard. Then he stopped, seemed to think, and came down the hill towards me while I anxiously examined his face. The low tangle of the gooseberry bushes was around his legs, and he swore sharply.
‘Look at the pomegranate,’ I said. He came to a halt beside the tree, and looked. I was searching those clear grey eyes now for a trace of that indulgence they had shown my mother over the brussels sprouts, over that first unripe pomegranate.
Now all I wanted was indulgence; I abandoned everything else.
‘It’s full of ants,’ he said at last.
‘Only a little, only where it’s cracked.’
He stood, frowning, chewing at his piece of grass. His lips were full and thick-skinned; and I could see the blood, dull and dark around the pale groove where the grass-stem pressed.
The pomegranate hung there, swarming with ants.
Now, I thought wildly. Now – crack now.
There was not a sound. The sun pouring down, hot and yellow, drawing up the smell of the grasses. There was, too, a faint sour smell from the fermenting juice of the pomegranate.
‘It’s bad,’ said William, in that uncomfortable, angry voice. ‘And what’s that bit of dirty rag for?’
‘It was breaking, the twig was breaking off – I tied it up.’
‘Mad,’ he remarked, aside, to the afternoon. ‘Quite mad,’ He was looking about him in the grass. He reached down and picked up a stick.
‘No,’ I cried out, as he hit at the tree. The pomegranate flew into the air and exploded in a scatter of crimson seeds, fermenting juice and black ants.
The cracked empty skin, with its white clean-looking inner skin faintly stained with juice, lay in two fragments at my feet.
He was poking sulkily with the stick at the little scarlet seeds that lay everywhere on the earth.
Then he did look at me. Those clear eyes were grave again, thoughtful, and judging. They held that warning I had seen in them before.
‘That’s your pomegranate,’ he said at last.
‘Yes.’ I said.
He smiled. ‘We’d better go up, if we want any tea.’ We went together up the hill to the house, and as we entered the room where the grown-ups sat over the teacups, I spoke quickly, before he could. In a bright careless voice I said: ‘It was bad, after all, the ants had got at it. It should have been picked before.’
Getting off the Altitude (#ulink_3ac1505a-14e1-5dc8-9418-08593b81d34a)
That night of the dance, years later, when I saw Mrs Slatter come into the bedroom at midnight, not seeing me because the circle of lamplight was focused low, with a cold and terrible face I never would have believed could be hers after knowing her so long during the day-times and the visits -that night, when she had dragged herself out of the room again, still not knowing I was there, I went to the mirror to see my own face. I held the lamp as close as I could and looked into my face. For I had not known before that a person’s face could be smooth and comfortable, though often sorrowful, like Molly Slatter’s had been all those years, and then hard-set, in the solitude away from the dance and the people (that night they had drunk a great deal and the voices of the singing reminded me of when dogs howl at the full moon), into an old and patient stone. Yes, her face looked like white stone that the rain has trickled over and worn through the wet seasons.
My face, that night in the mirror, dusted yellow from the lamplight, with the dark watery spaces of the glass behind, was smooth and enquiring, with the pert flattered look of a girl in her first long dress and dancing with the young people for the first time. There was nothing in it, a girl’s face, empty. Yet I had been crying just before, and I wished then I could go away into the dark and stay there for ever. Yet Molly Slatter’s terrible face was familiar to me, as if it were her own face, her real one. I seemed to know it. And that meant that the years I had known her comfortable and warm in spite of all her troubles had been saying something else to me about her. But only now I was prepared to listen.
I left the mirror, set the lamp down on the dressing-table, and went out into the passage and looked for her among the people, and there she was in her red satin dress looking just as usual, talking to my father, her hand on the back of his chair, smiling down at him.
‘It hasn’t been a bad season, Mr Farquar,’ she was saying, ‘the rains haven’t done us badly at all.’
Driving home in the car that night, my mother asked: ‘What was Molly saying to you?’
And my father said: ‘Oh I don’t know, I really don’t know.’ His voice was sad and angry.
She said: ‘That dress of hers. Her evening dresses look like a cheap night-club.’
He said, troubled and sorrowful, ‘Yes. Actually I said something to her.’
‘Somebody should.’
‘No,’ he said, quick against the cold criticizing voice. ‘No. It’s a – pretty colour. But I said to her, There’s not much to that dress, is there?’
‘What did she say?’
‘She was hurt. I was sorry I said anything.’
‘H’mm,’ said my mother, with a little laugh.
He turned his head from his driving, so that the car lights swung wild over the rutted track for a moment, and said direct at her: ‘She’s a good woman. She’s a nice woman.’
But she gave another offended gulp of laughter. As a woman insists in an argument because she won’t give in, even when she knows she is wrong.
As for me, I saw that dress again, with its criss-cross of narrow sweat-darkened straps over the ageing white back, and I saw Mrs Slatter’s face when my father criticized her. I might have been there, I saw it so clearly. She coloured, lifted her head, lower her lids so that the tears would not show, and she said: ‘I’m sorry you feel like that, Mr Farquar.’ It was with dignity. Yes. She had put on that dress in order to say something. But my father did not approve. He had said so.
She cared what my father said. They cared very much for each other. She called him Mr Farquar always, and he called her Molly; and when the Slatters came over to tea, and Mr Slatter was being brutal, there was a gentleness and a respect for her in my father’s manner which made even Mr Slatter feel it and even, sometimes, repeat something he had said to his wife in a lower voice, although it was still impatient.
The first time I knew my father felt for Molly Slatter and that my mother grudged it to her was when I was perhaps seven or eight. Their house was six miles away over the veld, but ten by the road. Their house like ours was on a ridge. At the end of the dry season when the trees were low and the leaves thinning, we could see their lights flash out at sundown, low and yellow across the miles of country. My father, after coming back from seeing Mr Slatter about some farm matter, stood by our window looking at their lights, and my mother watched him. Then he said: ‘Perhaps she should stand up to him? No, that’s not it. She does, in her way. But Lord, he’s a tough customer, Slatter.’
My mother said, her head low over her sewing: ‘She married him.’
He let his eyes swing around at her, startled. Then he laughed. ‘That’s right, she married him.’
‘Well?’
‘Oh come off it, old girl,’ he said almost gay, laughing and hard. Then, still laughing angrily he went over and kissed her on the cheek.
‘I like Molly,’ she said, defensive. ‘I like her. She hasn’t got what you might call conversation but I like her.’
‘Living with Slatter, I daresay she’s got used to keeping her mouth shut.’
When Molly Slatter came over to spend the day with my mother the two women talked eagerly for hours about household things. Then, when my father came in for tea or dinner, there was a lock of sympathies and my mother looked ironical while he went to sit by Mrs Slatter, even if only for a minute, saying: ‘Well, Molly? Everything all right with you?’
‘I’m very well, thank you, Mr Farquar, and so are the children.’
Most people were frightened of Mr Slatter. There were four Slatter boys, and when the old man was in a temper and waving the whip he always had with him, they ran off into the bush and stayed there until he had cooled down. All the natives on their farm were afraid of him. Once when he knew their houseboy had stolen some soap he tied him to a tree in the garden without food and water all of one day, and then through the night, and beat him with his whip every time he went past, until the boy confessed. And once, when he had hit a farm-boy, and the boy complained to the police, Mr Slatter tied the boy to his horse and rode it at a gallop to the police station twelve miles off and made the boy run beside, and told him if he complained to the police again he would kill him. Then he paid the ten-shilling fine and made the boy run beside the horse all the way back again.
I was so frightened of him that I could feel myself begin trembling when I saw his car turning to come up the drive from the farm lands.
He was a square fair man, with small sandy-lashed blue eyes, and small puffed cracked lips, and red ugly hands. He used to come up the wide red shining steps of the veranda, grinning slightly, looking at us. Then he would take a handful of tow-hair from the heads of whichever of his sons were nearest, one in each fist, and tighten his fists slowly, not saying a word, while they stood grinning back and their eyes filled slowly. He would grin over their heads at Molly Slatter, while she sat silent, saying nothing. Then, one or other of the boys would let out a sound of pain, and Mr Slatter showed his small discoloured teeth in a grin of triumphant good humour and let them go. Then he stamped off in his big farm boots into the house.
Mrs Slatter would say to her sons: ‘Don’t cry. Your father doesn’t know his own strength. Don’t cry.’ And she went on sewing, composed and pale.
Once at the station, the Slatter car and ours were drawn up side by side outside the store. Mrs Slatter was sitting in the front seat, beside the driver’s seat. In our car my father drove and my mother was beside him. We children were in the back seats. Mr Slatter came out of the bar with Mrs Pritt and stood on the store veranda talking to her. He stood before her, legs apart, in his way of standing, head back on his shoulders, eyes narrowed, grinning, red fists loose at his sides, and talked on for something like half an hour. Meanwhile Mrs Pritt let her weight slump on to one hip and lolled in front of him. She wore a tight shrill green dress, so short it showed the balls of her thin knees.
And my father leaned out of our car window though we had all our stores in and might very well leave for home now, and talked steadily and gently to Mrs Slatter, who was quiet, not looking at her husband, but making conversation with my father and across him to my mother. And so they went on talking until Mr Slatter left Mrs Pritt, and slammed himself into the driver’s seat and started the car.
I did not like Mrs Pritt and I knew neither of my parents did. She was a thin wiry tall woman with black short jumpy hair. She had a sharp knowing face and a sudden laugh like the scream of a hen caught by the leg. Her voice was always loud, and she laughed a great deal.
But seeing Mr Slatter with her was enough to know that they fitted. She was not gentle and kindly like Mrs Slatter. She was as tough in her own way as Mr Slatter. And long before I ever heard it said I knew well enough that, as my mother said primly, they liked each other. I asked her, meaning her to tell the truth, Why does Mr Slatter always go over when Mr Pritt is away, and she said: I expect Mr Slatter likes her.
In our district, with thirty or forty families on the farms spread over a hundred square miles or so, nothing happened privately. That day at the station I must have been ten years old, eleven, but it was not the first or the last time I heard the talk between my parents:
My father: ‘I daresay it could make things easier for Molly.’
She, then: ‘Do you?’
‘But if he’s got to have an affair, he might at least not push it down our throats, for Molly’s sake.’
And she: ‘Does he have to have an affair?’
She said the word, affair, with difficulty. It was not her language. Nor, and that was what she was protesting against, my father’s. For they were both conventional and religious people. Yet at moments of crisis, at moments of scandal and irregularity, my father spoke this other language, cool and detached, as if he were born to it.
‘A man like Slatter,’ he said thoughtfully, as if talking to another man, ‘it’s obvious. And Emmy Pritt. Yes. Obviously, obviously! But it depends on how Molly takes it. Because if she doesn’t take it the right way, she could make it hell for herself.’
‘Take it the right way,’ said my mother, with bright protesting eyes, and my father did not answer.
I used to stay with Mrs Slatter sometimes in the holidays. I went across-country over the kaffir paths, walking or on my bicycle, with some clothes in a small suitcase.
The boys were, from having to stand up to Mr Slatter, tough and indifferent boys, and went about the farm in a closed gang. They did man’s work, driving tractors and superintending the gangs of boys before they were in their ‘teens. I stayed with Mrs Slatter. She cooked a good deal, and sewed and gardened. Most of the day she sat on the veranda sewing. We did not talk much. She used to make her own dresses, cotton prints and pastel linens, like all the women of the district wore. She made Mr Slatter’s khaki farm shirts and the boys’ shirts. Once she made herself a petticoat that was too small for her to get into, and Mr Slatter saw her struggling with it in front of the mirror, and he said: ‘What size do you think you are, Bluebell?’ in the same way he would say, as we sat down to table, ‘What have you been doing with your lily-white hands today, Primrose?’ To which she would reply, pleasantly, as if he had really asked a question: ‘I’ve made some cakes.’ Or: ‘I got some salt meat from the butcher at the station today fresh out of the pickle.’ About the petticoat she said, ‘Yes, I must have been putting on more weight than I knew.’
When I was twelve or thereabouts, I noticed that the boys had turned against their mother, not in the way of being brutal to her, but they spoke to her as their father did, calling her Bluebell, or the Fat Woman at the Fair. It was odd to hear them, because it was as if they said simply, Mum, or Mother. Not once did I hear her lose her temper with them. I could see she had determined to herself not to make them any part of what she had against Mr Slatter. I knew she was pleased to have me there, during that time, with the five men coming in only for meals.
One evening during a long stay, the boys as usual had gone off to their rooms to play when supper was done, and Mr Slatter said to his wife: ‘I’m off. I’ll be back tomorrow for breakfast.’ He went out into the dark and the wet. It was raining hard that night. The window panes were streaked with rain and shaking with the wind. Mrs Slatter looked across at me and said – and this was the first time it had been mentioned how often he went off after dinner, coming back as the sun rose, or sometimes not for two or three days: ‘You must remember something. There are some men, like Mr Slatter, who’ve got more energy than they know what to do with. Do you know how he started? When I met him and we were courting he was a butcher’s boy at the corner. And now he’s worth as much as any man in the district.’
‘Yes,’ I said, understanding for the first time that she was very proud of him.
She waited for me to say something more, and then said: ‘Yes, we have all kinds of ideas when we’re young. But Mr Slatter’s a man that does not know his own strength. There are some things he doesn’t understand, and it all comes from that. He never understands that other people aren’t as strong as he is.’
We were sitting in the big living-room. It had a stone floor with rugs and skins on it. A boot clattered on the stone and we looked up and there was Mr Slatter. His teeth were showing. He wore his big black boots, shining now from the wet, and his black oilskin glistened. ‘The bossboy says the river’s up,’ he said. ‘I won’t get across tonight.’ He took off his oilskin there, scattering wet on Mrs Slatter’s polished stone floor, tugged off his boots, and reached out through the door to hang his oilskin in the passage and set his boots under it, and came back.
There were two rivers between the Slatters’ farm and the Pritts’ farm, twelve miles off, and when the water came down they could be impassable for hours.
‘So I don’t know my own strength?’ he said to her, direct, and it was a soft voice, more frightening than I had ever heard from him, for he bared grinning teeth as usual, and his big fists hung at his sides.
‘No,’ she said steadily, ‘I don’t think you do.’ She did not lift her eyes, but stayed quiet in the corner of the sofa under the lamp. ‘We aren’t alone,’ she added quickly, and now she did look warningly at him.
He turned his head and looked towards me. I made fast for the door. I heard her say, ‘Please, I’m sorry about the river. But leave me alone, please.’
‘So you’re sorry about the river.’
‘Yes.’
‘And I don’t know my own strength?’
I shut the door. But it was a door that was never shut, and it swung open again and I ran down the passage away from it, as he said: ‘So that’s why you keep your bedroom door locked, Lady Godiva, is that it?’
And she screamed out: ‘Ah, leave me alone. I don’t care what you do. I don’t care now. But you aren’t going to make use of me. I won’t let you make use of me.’
It was a big house, rooms sprawling everywhere. The boys had two rooms and a playroom off at one end of a long stone passage. Dairies and larders and kitchen opened off the passage. Then a dining-room and some offices and a study. Then the living-room. And another passage off at an angle, with the room where I slept and beside it Mrs Slatter’s big bedroom with the double bed and after that a room they called the workroom, but it was an ordinary room and Mr Slatter’s things were in it, with a bed.
I had not thought before that they did not share a bedroom. I knew no married people in the district who had separate rooms and that is why I had not thought about the small room where Mr Slatter slept.
Soon after I had shut the door on myself, I heard them come along the passage outside, I heard voices in the room next door. Her voice was pleading, his loud, and he was laughing a lot.
In the morning at breakfast I looked at Mrs Slatter but she was not taking any notice of us children. She was pale. She was helping Mr Slatter to his breakfast. He always had three or four eggs on thick slats of bacon, and then slice after slice of toast, and half a dozen cups of tea as black as it would come out of the pot. She had some toast and a cup of tea and watched him eat. When he went out to the farm work he kissed her, and she blushed.
When we were on the veranda after breakfast, sewing, she said to me, apologetically and pink-cheeked: ‘I hope you won’t think anything about last night. Married people often quarrel. It doesn’t mean anything.’
My parents did not quarrel. At least, I had not thought of them as quarrelling. But because of what she said I tried to remember times when they disagreed and perhaps raised their voices and then afterwards laughed and kissed each other. Yes, I thought, it is true that married people quarrel, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t happy together.
That night after supper when the boys had gone to their room Mr Slatter said, ‘The rivers are down, I’m off.’ Mrs Slatter, sitting quiet under the lamp, kept her eyes down, and said nothing. He stood there staring at her and she said: ‘Well, you know what that means, don’t you?’
He simply went out, and we heard the lorry start up and the headlights swung up against the window-panes a minute, so that they dazzled up gold and hard, and went black again.
Mrs Slatter said nothing, so that my feeling that something awful had happened slowly faded. Then she began talking about her childhood in London. She was a shop assistant before she met Mr Slatter. She often spoke of her family, and the street she lived in, so I wondered if she were homesick, but she never went back to London so perhaps she was not homesick at all.
Soon after that Emmy Pritt got ill. She was not the sort of woman one thought of as being ill. She had some kind of operation, and they all said she needed a holiday, she needed to get off the altitude. Our part of Central Africa was high, nearly four thousand feet, and we all knew that when a person got rundown they needed a rest from the altitude in the air at sea-level. Mrs Pritt went down to the Cape, and soon after Mr and Mrs Slatter went too, with the four children, and they all had a holiday together at the same hotel.
When they came back, the Slatters brought a farm assistant with them. Mr Slatter could not manage the farm-work, he said. I heard my father say that Slatter was taking things a bit far; he was over at the Pritts every weekend from Friday night to Monday morning and nearly every night from after supper until morning. Slatter, he said, might be as strong as a herd of bulls, but no one could go on like that; and in any case, one should have a sense of proportion. Mr Pritt was never mentioned, though it was not for years that I thought to consider what this might mean. We used to see him about the station, or at gymkhanas. He was an ordinary man, not like a farmer, as we knew farmers, men who could do anything; he might have been anybody, or an office person. He was ordinary in height, thinnish, with his pale hair leaving his narrow forehead high and bony. He was an accountant as well. People used to say that Charlie Slatter helped Emmy Pritt run their farm, and most of the time Mr Pritt was off staying at neighbouring farms doing their accounts.
The new assistant was Mr Andrews, and as Mrs Slatter said to my mother when she came over for tea, he was a gentleman. He had been educated at Cambridge in England. He came of a hard-up family, though, for he had only a few hundred pounds of capital of his own. He would be an assistant for two years and then start his own farm.
For a time I did not go to stay with Mrs Slatter. Once or twice I asked if she had said anything to my mother about my coming, and she said in a dry voice, meaning to discourage me, ‘No, she hasn’t said anything.’ I understood when I heard my father say: ‘Well, it might not be such a bad thing. For one thing he’s a nice lad, and for another it might make Slatter see things differently.’ And another time: ‘Perhaps Slatter would give Molly a divorce? After all, he practically lives at the Pritts! And then Molly could have some sort of life at last.’
‘But the boy’s not twenty-five,’ said my mother. And she was really shocked, as distinct from her obstinate little voice when she felt him to be wrong-headed or loose in his talk -a threat of some kind. ‘And what about the children? Four children!’
My father said nothing to this, but after some minutes he came off some track of thought with: ‘I hope Molly’s taking it sensibly. I do hope she is. Because she could be laying up merry hell for herself if she’s not.’
I saw George Andrews at a gymkhana standing at the rail with Mrs Slatter. Although he was an Englishman he was already brown, and his clothes were loosened up and easy, as our men’s clothes were. So there was nothing to dislike about him on that score. He was rather short, not fat, but broad, and you could see he would be fat. He was healthy-looking above all, with a clear reddish face the sun had laid a brown glisten over, and very clear blue eyes, and his hair was thick and short, glistening like fur. I wanted to like him and so I did. I saw the way he leaned beside Mrs Slatter, with her dust-coat over his arm, holding out his programme for her to mark. I could understand that she would like a gentleman who would open doors for her and stand up when she came into the room, after Mr Slatter. I could see she was proud to be with him. And so I liked him though I did not like his mouth; his lips were pink and wettish. I did not look at his mouth again for a long time. And because I liked him I was annoyed with my father when he said, after that gymkhana, ‘Well, I don’t know. I don’t think I like it after all. He’s a bit of a young pup, Cambridge or no Cambridge.’
Six months after George Andrews came to the district there was a dance for the young people at the Slatters’. It was the first dance. The older boys were eighteen and seventeen and they had girls. The two younger boys were fifteen and thirteen and they despised girls. I was fifteen then, and all these boys were too young for me, and the girls of the two older boys were nearly twenty. There were about sixteen of us, and the married people thirty or forty, as usual. The married people sat in the living-room and danced in it, and we were on the verandas. Mr Slatter was dancing with Emmy Pritt, and sometimes another woman, and Mrs Slatter was busy being hostess and dancing with George Andrews. I was still in a short dress and unhappy because I was in love with one of the assistants from the farm between the rivers, and I knew very well that until I had a long dress he would not see me. I went into Mrs Slatter’s bedroom latish because it seemed the only room empty, and I looked out of the window at the dark wet night. It was the rainy season and we had driven over the swollen noisy river and all the way the rain-water was sluicing under our tyres. It was still raining and the lamplight gilded streams of rain so that as I turned my head slightly this way and that, the black and the gold rods shifted before me, and I thought (and I had never thought so simply before about these things): ‘How do they manage? With all these big boys in the house? And they never go to bed before eleven or half-past these days, I bet, and with Mr Slatter coming home unexpectedly from Emmy Pritt – it must be difficult. I suppose he has to wait until everyone’s asleep. It must be horrible, wondering all the time if the boys have noticed something …’ I turned from the window and looked from it into the big low-ceilinged comfortable room with its big low bed covered over with pink roses, the pillows propped high in pink frilled covers, and although I had been in that room during visits for years of my life, it seemed strange to me, and ugly. I loved Mrs Slatter. Of all the women in the district she was the kindest, and she had always been good to me. But at that moment I hated her and I despised her.
I started to leave the bedroom, but at the door I stopped, because Mrs Slatter was in the passage, leaning against the wall, and George Andrews had his arms around her, and his face in her neck. She was saying, ‘Please don’t, George, please don’t, please, the boys might see.’ And he was swallowing her neck and saying nothing at all. She was twisting her face and neck away and pushing him off. He staggered back from her, as though she had pushed him hard, but it was because he was drunk and had no balance, and he said: ‘Oh come on into your bedroom a minute. No one will know.’ She said, ‘No, George. Why should we have to snatch five minutes in the middle of a dance, like – ‘
‘Like what?’ he said, grinning. I could see how the light that came down the passage from the big room made his pink lips glisten.
She looked reproachfully at him, and he said: ‘Molly, this thing is getting a bit much, you know. I have to set my alarm clock for one in the morning, and then I’m dead-beat. I drag myself out of my bed, and then you’ve got your clock set for four, and God knows working for your old man doesn’t leave one with much enthusiasm for bouncing about all night.’ He began to walk off towards the big room where the people were dancing. She ran after him and grabbed at his arm. I retreated backwards towards Mr Slatter’s room, but almost at once she had got him and turned him around and was kissing him. The people in the big room could have seen if they had been interested.
That night Mrs Slatter had on an electric blue crêpe dress with diamonds on the straps and in flower patterns on the hips. There was a deep V in front which showed her breasts swinging loose under the crêpe, though usually she wore strong corsets. And the back was cut down to the waist. As the two turned and came along, he put his hand into the front of her dress, and I saw it lift out her left breast, and his mouth was on her neck again. Her face was desperate, but that did not surprise me, because I knew she must be ashamed. I despised her, because her white long breast lying in his hand like a piece of limp floured dough, was not like Mrs Slatter who called men Mister even if she had known them twenty years, and was really very shy, and there was nothing Mr Slatter liked more than to tease her because she blushed when he used bad language. ‘What did you make such a fuss for?’ George Andrews was saying in a drunken sort of way. ‘We can lock the door, can’t we?’
‘Yes, we can lock the door,’ she answered in the same way, laughing.
I went back into the crowd of married people where the small children were, and sat beside my mother, and it was only five minutes before Mrs Slatter came back looking as usual, from one door, and then George Andrews, in at another.
I did not go to the Slatters’ again for some months. For one thing, I was away at school, and for another people were saying that Mrs Slatter was run down and she should get off the altitude for a bit. My father was not mentioning the Slatters by this time, because he had quarrelled with my mother over them. I knew they had, because whenever Molly Slatter was mentioned, my mother tightened her mouth and changed the subject.
And so a year went by. At Christmas they had a dance again, and I had my first long dress, and I went to that dance not caring if it was at the Slatters’ or anywhere else. It was my first dance as one of the young people. And so I was on the veranda dancing most of the evening, though sometimes the rain blew in on us, because it was raining again, being the full of the rainy season, and the skies were heavy and dark, with the moon shining out like a knife from the masses of the clouds and then going in again leaving the veranda with hardly light enough to see each other. Once I went down the steps to say goodbye to some neighbours who were going home early because they had a new baby, and coming back up the steps there was Mr Slatter and he had Mrs Slatter by the arm. ‘Come here, Lady Godiva,’ he said. ‘Give us a kiss.’
‘Oh go along,’ she said, sounding good-humoured. ‘Go along with you and leave me in peace.’
He was quite drunk, but not very. He twisted her arm around. It looked like a slight twist but she came up sudden against him, in a bent-back curve, her hips and legs against him, and he held her there. Her face was sick, and she half-screamed: ‘You don’t know your own strength.’ But he did not slacken the grip, and she stayed there, and the big sky was filtering a little stormy moonlight and I could just see their faces, and I could see his grinning teeth. ‘Your bloody pride, Lady Godiva,’ he said, ‘who do you think you’re doing in, who do you think is the loser over your bloody locked door?’ She said nothing and her eyes were shut. ‘And now you’ve frozen out George, too? What’s the matter, isn’t he good enough for you either?’ He gave her arm a wrench, and she gasped, but then shut her lips again, and he said: ‘So now you’re all alone in your tidy bed, telling yourself fairy stories in the dark, Sister Theresa, the little flower.’
He let her go suddenly, and she staggered, so he put out his other hand to steady her, and held her until she was steady. It seemed odd to me that he should care that she shouldn’t fall to the ground, and that he should put his hand like that to stop her falling.
And so I left them and went back on to the veranda. I was dancing all the night with the assistant from the farm between the rivers. I was right about the long dress. All those months, at the station or at gymkhanas, he had never seen me at all. But that night he saw me, and I was wanting him to kiss me. But when he did I slapped his face. Because then I knew that he was drunk. I had not thought he might be drunk, though it was natural he was, since everybody was. But the way he kissed me was not at all what I had been thinking. ‘I beg your pardon I’m sure,’ he said, and I walked past him into the passage and then into the living-room. But there were so many people and my eyes were stinging, so I went through into the other passage, and there, just like last year, as if the whole year had never happened, were Mrs Slatter and George Andrews. I did not want to see it, not the way I felt.
‘And why not?’ he was saying, biting into her neck.
‘Oh George, that was all ended months ago, months ago!’
‘Oh come on, Moll, I don’t know what I’ve done, you never bothered to explain.’
‘No.’ And then, crying out, ‘Mind my arm.’ ‘What’s the matter with your arm?’ ‘I fell and sprained it.’
So he let go of her, and said: ‘Well, thanks for the nice interlude, thanks anyway, old girl.’ I knew that he had been meaning to hurt her, because I could feel what he said hurting me. He went off into the living-room by himself, and she went off after him, but to talk to someone else, and I went into her bedroom. It was empty. The lamp was on a low table by the bed, turned down, and the sky through the windows was black and wet and hardly any light came from it.
Then Mrs Slatter came in and sat on the bed and put her head in her hands. I did not move.
‘Oh my God!’ she said. ‘Oh my God, my God!’ Her voice was strange to me. The gentleness was not in it, though it was soft, but it was soft from breathlessness.
‘Oh my God!’ she said, after a long long silence. She took up one of the pillows from the bed, and wrapped her arms around it, and laid her head down on it. It was quiet in this room, although from the big room came the sound of singing, a noise like howling, because people were drunk, or part-drunk, and it had the melancholy savage sound of people singing when they are drunk. An awful sound, like animals howling.
Then she put down the pillow, tidily, in its proper place, and swayed backwards and forwards and said: ‘Oh God, make me old soon, make me old. I can’t stand this, I can’t stand this any longer.’
And again the silence, with the howling sound of the singing outside, the footsteps of the people who were dancing scraping on the cement of the veranda.
‘I can’t go on living,’ said Mrs Slatter, into the dark above the small glow of lamplight. She bent herself up again, double, as if she were hurt physically, her hands gripped around her ankles, holding herself together, and she sat crunched up, her face looking straight in front at the wall, level with the lamp-light. So now I could see her face. I did not know that face. It was stone, white stone, but her eyes gleamed out of it black, and with a flicker in them. And her black shining hair that was not grey at all yet had loosened and hung in streaks around the white stone face.
‘I can’t stand it,’ she said again. The voice she used was strange to me. She might have been talking to someone. For a moment I even thought she had seen me and was talking to me, explaining herself to me. And then, slowly, she let herself unclench and she went out into the dance again.
I took up the lamp and held it as close as I could to the mirror and bent in and looked at my face. But there was nothing to my face.
Next day I told my father I had heard Mrs Slatter say she could not go on living. He said, ‘Oh Lord, I hope it’s not because of what I said about her dress,’ but I said no, it was before he said he didn’t like the dress. “Then if she was upset,’ he said, ‘I expect what I said made her feel even worse.’ And then: ‘Oh poor woman, poor woman!’ He went into the house and called my mother and they talked it over. Then he got on to the telephone and I heard him asking Mrs Slatter to drop in next time she was going past to the station. And it seemed she was going in that morning, and before lunchtime she was on our veranda talking to my father. My mother was not there, although my father had not asked her in so many words not to be there. As for me I went to the back of the veranda where I could hear what they said.
‘Look, Molly,’ he said, ‘we are old friends. You’re looking like hell these days. Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong? You can say anything to me, you know.’
After quite a time she said: ‘Mr Farquar, there are some things you can’t say to anybody. Nobody.’
‘Ah, Molly,’ he said, ‘if there’s one thing I’ve learned and I learned it early on, when I was a young man and I had a bad time, it’s this. Everybody’s got something terrible, Molly. Everybody has something awful they have to live with. We all live together and we see each other all the time, and none of us knows what awful thing the other person might be living with.’
And then she said: ‘But, Mr Farquar, I don’t think that’s true. I know people who don’t seem to have anything private to make them unhappy.’
‘How do you know, Molly? How do you know?’
‘Take Mr Slatter,’ she said. ‘He’s a man who does as he likes. But he doesn’t know his own strength. And that’s why he never seems to understand how other people feel.’
‘But how do you know, Molly? You could live next to someone for fifty years and still not know. Perhaps he’s got something that gives him hell when he’s alone, like all the rest of us?’
‘No, I don’t think so, Mr Farquar.’
‘Molly,’ he said, appealing suddenly, and very exasperated. ‘You’re too hard on yourself, Molly.’ She didn’t say anything.
He said: ‘Listen, why don’t you get away for a while, get yourself down to the sea, this altitude drives us all quietly crazy. You get down off the altitude for a bit.’
She still said nothing, and he lowered his voice, and I could imagine how my mother’s face would have gone stiff and cold had she heard what he said: ‘And have a good time while you’re there. Have a good time and let go a bit.’
‘But, Mr Farquar. I don’t want a good time.’ The words, a good time, she used as if they could have nothing to do with her.
‘If we can’t have what we want in this world, then we should take what we can get.’
‘It wouldn’t be right,’ she said at last slowly. ‘I know people have different ideas, and I don’t want to press mine on anyone.’
‘But Molly -’ he began, exasperated, or so it sounded, and then he was silent.
From where I sat I could hear the grass chair creaking: she was getting out of it. ‘I’ll take your advice,’ she said. ‘I’ll get down to the sea and I’ll take the children with me. The two younger ones.’
‘To hell with the kids for once. Take your old man with you and see that Emmy Pritt doesn’t go with you this time.’
‘Mr Farquar,’ she said, ‘if Mr Slatter wants Emmy Pritt, he can have her. He can have either one or the other of us. But not both. If I took him to the sea he would be over at her place ten minutes after we got back.’
‘Ah, Molly, you women can be hell. Have some pity on him for once.’
‘Pity? Mr Slatter’s a man who needs nobody’s pity. But thank you for your good advice, Mr Farquar. You are always very kind, you and Mrs Farquar.’
And she said goodbye to my father, and when I came forward she kissed me and asked me to come and see her soon, and she went to the station to get the stores.
And so Mrs Slatter went on living. George Andrews bought his own farm and married and the wedding was at the Slatters’. Later on Emmy Pritt got sick again and had another operation and died. It was a cancer. Mr Slatter was ill for the first time in his life from grief, and Mrs Slatter took him to the sea, by themselves, leaving the children, because they were grown-up anyway. For this was years later, and Mrs Slatter’s hair had gone grey and she was fat and old, as I had heard her say she wanted to be.
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Дорис Лессинг
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: The second volume of Doris Lessing’s ‘Collected African Stories’, and a classic work from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.‘As for these stories – when I write one, it is as if I open a gate into a landscape which is always there. Time has nothing to do with it. A certain kind of pulse starts beating, and I recognise it: it is time I wrote another story from that landscape, external and internal at the same time, which was once the Old Chief’s Country.’ Doris Lessing, from the PrefaceThis much-acclaimed collection of stories vividly evokes both the grandeur of Africa and the glare of its sun and the wide open space, as well as the great, irresolvable tensions between whites and blacks. Tales of poor white farmers and their lonely wives, of storm air thick with locusts, of ants and pomegranate trees, black servants and the year of hunger in a native village – all combine to present a powerful image of a continent which seems incorruptible in spite of all the people who plough, mine and plunder it to make their living. In Doris Lessing’s own words, ‘Africa gives you the knowledge that man is a small creature, among other creatures, in a large landscape.’