Keepers of the House

by JH Fletcher

He told her about Henning, how he had seen him at the hospital in the uniform of Cronje’s Scouts.

  ‘And you’ve done nothing about it?’

  ‘I told your brother.’

  She refused to believe. ‘Deneys would have killed him long ago.’

  Dominic Riordan shook his head. ‘He knows.’

  A blade pierced Anneliese’s heart. To know and do nothing … It put him on the side of the killers of her children.

  ‘I shall ask him,’ she threatened.

  Riordan nodded as though he had expected nothing else. ‘Do that. Then we’ll be talking again.’

  She returned to the house, her body shaking with fury.

  Deneys saw her expression. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’

  ‘I have been talking to your friend Riordan, that’s what’s the matter. He claims one of Cronje’s Scouts is living in the valley. He says you know about it.’

  She watched him closely, saw the flicker on his face.

  ‘You do know!’

  He would admit nothing. ‘I know Riordan claims that Henning was a Scout. That doesn’t make it true.’

  ‘And you haven’t tried to find out?’

  ‘I have not.’

  ‘I don’t believe it! A Scout, for God’s sake!’

  ‘The war is over.’

  ‘For some of us it will never be over.’

  ‘What do you plan to do, then? Start fighting all over again?’

  ‘Some of us remember how, even if you don’t.’

  Coward. She did not say it, but the word lay heavy on the air between them.

  ‘I absolutely forbid it.’

  As soon as the words were out, he knew he had made a mistake.

  Rekindled hatred smiled within her smile. ‘Forbid it as much as you like, brother.’

  ‘Sarel Henning is a neighbour. A good man. A brave man.’

  ‘A Scout. That’s all I care about.’

  ‘May have been a Scout. Now he’s just a neighbour. With a wife and children of his own.’ Which compounded the mistake. ‘You can’t be sure he was in the Scouts,’ Deneys insisted. ‘Dominic may be wrong.’

  ‘I shall have to find out, shan’t I?’

  Two days later she came to him again, hatred triumphant in her face. ‘Dominic was right,’ she said.

  He looked at her, heavy. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I went to the shop and asked.’

  ‘You spoke to Sarel Henning?’

  ‘I spoke to his wife. I said there was talk her husband had been in the Scouts, and was it true?’

  ‘And she said it was?’

  ‘She said it was a lie.’ Hate sparkled; he remembered how once her face had been open and laughing and filled with love. ‘I saw how she looked in all the corners of the shop, as though she would have liked to run and hide.’

  She smiled. In her eyes he saw the sulphur pits of hell, with the damned writhing in them. ‘I told her how lucky she was that her children had survived the war.’

  Dominic had heard that the Cape was beautiful and so it was, totally unscarred by the fighting that had taken place a thousand miles away. Too unscarred, if such a thing were possible. He had expected that the land would be undamaged but had never imagined that the people themselves would have remained so unmarked. Their kin had fought and died in the north yet he would never have known it. Everywhere he could sense a willingness to place their necks under the heels of the conqueror and it made him sick.

  Given the choice he would have moved on but, with nowhere on God’s earth to welcome him, he thought he’d better stay where he was. At least he had work. The foreman of the farm Amsterdam had left the valley in a hurry — something to do with a black woman, Dominic never heard the full story — and he was offered the job.

  It wasn’t a bad billet. The cottage wasn’t much, but he’d lived in worse. There were other benefits, too. One of the hands had a daughter. Miriam was a pretty little thing, despite being several shades darker than any woman he’d known before. Fifteen years old, he guessed; high cheekbones and eyes that knew more about the world than they should have at that age. Of course, the native girls grew up much earlier than white women.

  One day, coming back from the fields, Miriam gave Dominic the eye. No one ever needed to do that twice. He gave her a kiss, squeezed her tits and the next thing she’d moved in with him. Not permanently, of course; he wasn’t going to have that, but she dropped in two or three times a week, and very pleasant it was. His rations were part of his pay; there was plenty of wine; from time to time, Miriam helped herself to some of her father’s mampoer, a home-made brandy strong enough to kick a hole in your head. Comfortable enough, then, and to begin with he was happy with the way things had worked out. Then came the business of Sarel Henning, and his feelings changed.

  The men who had ridden with Cronje were lower than vermin. In the Transvaal the Boers would speak neither to them nor their families; no store would serve them, even the churches would not admit them. They were cut off, totally and forever. Quite right, too. Dominic told himself that hell was full of people like Sarel Henning, hoping to find comfort in the thought.

  He warned Deneys about him. Afterwards, told himself he should have known better; the Irish might like to keep their hatreds hot but Deneys was a different animal entirely. Not only would he do nothing — he warned Dominic off Henning in no uncertain terms.

  ‘Leave him alone!’

  One word to his boss could have seen Dominic out on his ear, so he bit his tongue and let things lie.

  Once again he wondered why he bothered to stay. The comfort of Miriam’s thighs and the brandy were part of it, of course, but neither was the real reason. He was waiting, with no idea what for.

  Then Anneliese, and he knew.

  ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ Dominee de Wit’s voice rang across the field above the sound of the breeze, the voices of the birds. ‘No man cometh unto the Father but by me.’

  Nagmaal. Wagons outspanned under the trees at the side of the field, the canvas canopies dappled with sunlight.

  ‘Judge not, that you be not judged.’

  The people stood with heads bowed, the smell of the fresh grass about them and the sunlight kindly on their necks.

  ‘The devil is come into this valley. I have heard talk of vengeance. Vengeance is the Lord’s. Christ himself prayed to the Father to forgive the men who had crucified him. Make yourself like Christ. Put the past behind you and go forward with forgiveness in your hearts and trust in God.’ He raised supplicating hands to the bright sky. ‘Oh Lord, grant us your brightness so that together we may fulfil your purpose in this place and in our lives. Amen and amen.’

  After the service, the Wolmarans walked back to Oudekraal together.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Christiaan grumbled as they went up the steps and into the house.

  ‘Deneys was sending me a message,’ Anneliese said sweetly.

  Christiaan hated riddles. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Anneliese believes that Sarel Henning rode with Cronje’s Scouts,’ Deneys said. ‘The dominee heard about it and preached a sermon about forgiveness. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Except that you told him what to say.’

  ‘No one tells Dominee de Wit what to say.’

  She smiled sceptically; she did not believe and was right.

  Christiaan’s blue eye measured his daughter coldly. ‘The war is over. We want no settling of debts in this valley, just because a man fought on the other side.’

  ‘The war is not over,’ Anneliese said. ‘And debts should be paid.’

  In her room, the door closed securely behind her, she looked out through the window at the sunlit evening, the leaves of the great oak shimmering in the breeze.

  Peace, she thought. How I hate it.

  Guilt’s red claws savaged her. Look at me. Well dressed, well fed. That is the true crime, to survive when my children are dead. Evil is not violent, she thought. It is stil
l. It is deadly. It is forever.

  This valley had been home once. No longer; home now was a broken building staring across a weed-filled valley cropped by goats. Not even that, she thought. It is the place where the dead lie.

  Now the grave at Koffiekraal would be no more than a mound of earth returning slowly to grass, but she remembered how it had been, a gaping mouth in the red soil. She remembered everything: the white faces and staring eyes of the children, the women’s apathy, the stench.

  The memory of what was done to us, she thought. That is my home.

  She could hear sounds from the nagmaalvlakte: voices, the creak of wheels, whips cracking like gunshots as the wagons headed home. Slowly the shadows lengthened. The sun disappeared behind the mountains and darkness settled upon the valley. She lay fully dressed upon the bed. In the darkness her open eyes observed images: the voiceless faces of the lost, the cleansing and triumphant fire.

  She had spoken to Deneys. Flesh of her flesh, as the Bible said. He had rejected her. She had appealed to the rest of the family; they had rejected her, too. She was alone. Yet perhaps not quite. The Irishman from Australia would help her, she thought.

  There was a time when she would not have chosen to have anything to do with him. He was disreputable, the subject of talk throughout the valley with his coloured woman and his fondness for liquor, but now none of that mattered.

  She went back to him, as he had told her she would. She told him what she planned to do, watching his eyes for fear, revulsion.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good.’

  They made their plans.

  It took time for Anna to accept that her relationship with Mark was dead. Even the jagged resentments that had caused their separation did not destroy them at once, but by slow and agonising inches.

  They continued to write — brief letters, self-consciously matey. They saw each other whenever Mark was in Australia. They avoided speaking of what was better forgotten, but it didn’t help. Their silences skirted the edges of what had or had not happened in Africa.

  The act of love might have healed them. She wanted it so much and believed that Mark did, too. One gesture, one touch, would have been enough. She could not make it. Shongwe would have divided them, even there. Particularly there, perhaps.

  Resentment rather than passion made her breasts ache.

  Back in Canberra, Anna tried to re-assemble her life. Jack Goodie watched her, assessing what, if anything, had happened in Africa. She allowed him to read nothing in her expression, the movements of her body. It was not that he was interested in any physical sense. As far as Jack was concerned, Anna could do what she liked with whomever she liked and be damned. It was the potential for weakness that drew him, a prowling fox scenting carrion. That she would not show him.

  It wasn’t that difficult. Despite everything, she enjoyed being back in Canberra, owner of herself once more. She missed Mark, her flesh enclosing his, the hot throb and thud of another life within her. She hoped it might be no more than that, a hunger for sex.

  It was a theory she tested by going out with Owen Cannon. She had known for months what he wanted. She persuaded herself she was eager; before leaving her unit even changed the sheets on her bed in readiness.

  Within minutes she knew it was hopeless but Owen did not — or would not — accept it. He tried to wheedle his way into her apartment, into her bed, into her body. Was sulky at her refusal. She knew that in his head he was calling her cock-teaser.

  His resentment wearied her; to win peace she even considered letting him have what he wanted, but could not. She, no one else, would decide what her body did and did not do. And with whom.

  On his next visit to Australia, Mark phoned. Anna flew to Sydney. They had lunch together at the Ristorante Venezia. No one else, yet they were not alone. Two images sat beside them. Anna could not help remembering Owen Cannon’s hot fingers, delving painfully, was certain that Mark was tormented by a parallel image, the imagined spectacle of Adam Shongwe breaching her sundered loins. She knew that both of them had hoped to restore what they had shared together; before the meal was over knew it was hopeless. The gulf of anger and bitterness that divided them could not be bridged. When they parted at the end of the meal, it was for good.

  The following day Anna took some leave and went into the Blue Mountains. She must have stayed somewhere; certainly she ate and slept, but afterwards remembered nothing. A single memory remained, of sitting alone on a high point overlooking a densely-forested valley, the tree-covered slopes beyond. The forest was beautiful, silent. It had existed for centuries without her; God and bushfires permitting, would exist for as many centuries to come. The vicissitudes of her life, of everyone’s life, had made no impact.

  She was alone, without bitterness. No pain, even, after months of pain. She was conscious of no feeling whatsoever. Watching the self-sufficient trees, she wondered whether she was there at all. She had the oddest sensation that in isolation, even self-imposed, nothing of herself was real. It was ridiculous — as though her existence depended on anyone other than herself. She denied it vehemently, yet the sense of unreality remained.

  She returned to what the world called civilisation. She got on with her life, although the flavour of that moment lingered.

  She wondered whether it was how Anneliese had felt. When the time came finally for her to turn her back on everything and everyone she had held dear, had she, too, experienced this sense of emptiness, this inability to believe in her own existence?

  ‘The children and their mother,’ Dominic said. ‘We’ve no quarrel with them. You’re sure they’ll be away?’

  ‘To their cousins in Paarl,’ Anneliese told him.

  ‘You realise we may not be able to stay on in the valley afterwards?’

  Anneliese’s suspicions, razor-sharp, stirred at once. Those who should have loved her had turned their backs; why should she expect any better from this stranger?

  ‘The idea frightens you, does it?’

  He shrugged, turning her anger aside. ‘It’s your home.’

  ‘I don’t care about that.’

  ‘Fine, then.’

  The night when she had told him Henning’s family would be away came at last. Now, before they did what must be done, there remained one further thing that Anneliese was determined to carry out: the consecration to bind them both.

  As soon as it was dark, she slipped away from Oudekraal and walked along the lane to Amsterdam. Only the cicadas and the rows of vines climbing the darkened slopes saw her pass. Their voices spoke to her of her childhood. It was still not too late; if she turned back now, Dominic Riordan could say nothing. Everything would go on as before. The choice — her future in this place against the memory of her murdered children — was gloved in the familiar, once-dear darkness as her spirit, too, was gloved in darkness. Keep her face towards the future that she had chosen or that had chosen her, perhaps, and the days would be dark indeed. Was Deneys right? Should she somehow bludgeon herself into forgetting the past?

  It was impossible. Too late for forgetfulness, for avoiding her lonely destiny. The open grave at Koffiekraal festered in her heart. What she was about to do would not cure her — nothing on earth could do that — but the blood of her children called to her own blood, and she could not remain deaf to it.

  They had agreed that she would meet Dominic at ten; deliberately, she arrived two hours earlier. To do the one more thing that must be done before she could revenge herself upon those who thought, so foolishly, that they had brought her down.

  What they were engaged upon was not so much the killing of a criminal as the celebration of a sacrament. They had to be as one in their performance of that duty; anything less would be sacrilege.

  Candlelight shone through the cloth drawn across the window of the cottage in which Dominic lived. It was little more than a hen coop and, when Anneliese pushed open the door and walked inside, it was as though she had disturbed a hen coop, indeed.

  Miriam, screechi
ng, snatching at dribs and drabs of clothing to cover a nakedness that Anneliese cared nothing about.

  ‘Be silent!’ Dominic shouted. To her he said, ‘You might have knocked …’

  There was a hint of laughter in his voice, and she liked him the better for it. She did not care what he had been doing with that foolish child, cared nothing for the colour of Miriam’s skin, although some, no doubt, would have thought themselves offended. A man was a man, after all, and had a man’s needs. If he were a man.

  Which was what she was about to find out.

  They got rid of Miriam without difficulty. No doubt she was glad enough to go. With the door closed behind her, they looked at each other. He had done nothing to cover himself. Why should he? He had not asked her here; she knew she must take him as she found him. Which she was more than ready to do. The candle flame glinted upon the hairs of his white chest; beneath the skin, the muscles flexed as he turned on one elbow to look at her.

  ‘I thought we said ten o’clock?’

  ‘As well I got here early,’ she told him, ‘or you’d have been wasting your strength on that child.’

  He cared nothing for her words. ‘So I would.’

  But had not; there was no scent of spilled sex in the room.

  Below his ribs his belly was ribbed with muscle.

  ‘Have you come to say you’ve changed your mind?’

  He knew well she had not changed her mind; knew, too, why she had come. He showed no surprise as she made ready, watching with grave eyes until she was as naked as he was.

  She joined him on the bed. He questioned nothing, hand and mouth questing. She felt him planted deep within her, the heat, the slowly-awakening pulse. She looked up into his face.

  ‘One and one make one,’ she said.

  He looked down at her, eyes questioning. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘What we are doing –’

  He moved, a stealthy yet assertive thrust, and Anneliese closed her eyes for a moment. She willed herself to speak calmly while desire, her own quickening breath, frayed the edges of her words.

  ‘— must be more than a killing. A sacrament …’