Keepers of the House

by JH Fletcher

  He could feel blood and pain, not much else. His eyes were tight shut, his nose a mash. He was still holding out his fists but there was no strength in them and his knees were giving up under him.

  And still he wouldn’t go down.

  Then Bull slung his left to set him up and slammed in the right so that Dominic’s feet left the floor and he fell forward on his face. And lay there.

  For a minute he must have been out of it entirely, then slowly the world came back. Voices.

  ‘Thought Bull had killed him, for Christ’s sake.’

  A sudden jab of pain as the Bull shoved him with his boot.

  ‘Giddup,’ he said.

  No way Dominic could move.

  Again the tip of the boot jabbed.

  ‘Giddup.’

  Another voice said, ‘Take it easy …’

  ‘Keep out of it,’ the Bull said, his voice coming and going through a blur of pain.

  ‘No, I won’t. He needed a lesson, fair enough, but I ain’t going to put up with this.’

  Dominic tried to open his eyes but couldn’t. And still the voices came, booming and dying away, like noises in a cave.

  ‘Lanky Smiles,’ the Bull said. ‘Wipe your boots on him, Lanky.’

  Lanky was one of the cutters, a good bloke, a few years older than the rest, normally happy to do what the Bull wanted. Not this time.

  ‘Not me, mate,’ Lanky said. ‘I gonna see how he is.’

  ‘Touch him, I’ll settle for you, too.’

  ‘Do what you gotta do. But I’m going to see to this bloke.’

  Dominic felt him kneel at his side. The Bull did nothing to stop him. Dominic hear him say, ‘God, what a mess …’

  There was a slosh of water as someone brought a bucket. Dominic groaned as Lanky turned him. Every inch of him was agony and he sensed it would get a lot worse before it was better, but he was still too far away for the thought to worry him. They were dabbing away at him with a cloth while he lay there, the pain worrying him with steel teeth.

  Slowly the world came back.

  ‘Let’s get him up …’

  Somehow, swaying, he was on his feet, blokes holding him on either side. They were leading him, pulling him with gentle hands. His feet were dragging; in his broken nose the air seethed like molten lead; somewhere beyond the pain, cane frogs were croaking in the darkness.

  Eventually they came to a standstill. He could hear someone fumbling with a door. They guided him inside, helped him onto his bunk. Left him there. He heard the diminishing murmur of low voices. Silence at last.

  Ambrose Fairclough was working in his office when he heard from his field supervisor that two of his cutters had been involved in a fight the previous evening.

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘Bullen and Riordan. The new bloke.’ In case the boss had forgotten.

  ‘What started it?’

  Bill Dodd had been with Fairclough for eight years; all the same, was not about to dob in another worker. Not even Bull Bullen, who was no mate of his.

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘How badly is Riordan hurt?’

  ‘Pretty crook. He’ll be right, though, give ’im a day or two.’

  Ambrose had not wanted this Riordan in the first place. An extra pair of hands was always useful, but the way Gertrude had engaged the wife, without even asking permission … He wasn’t going to put up with that. At the same time, he did not intend giving her the chance to accuse him of harshness.

  ‘Fighting gives all of us a bad name. Let him have a week to get over it, then get rid of him.’

  ‘What about Bullen?’

  Fairclough flashed a glance at Bill Dodd’s stubborn face. From which he knew better than to expect confidences. ‘Tell him I wouldn’t want to lose him.’

  ‘No!’ Mrs Fairclough said. Her voice, normally as dead as the stagnant air, was shrill. ‘I shall not permit it!’

  ‘The man picked a fight with the gang boss —’

  ‘I do not care about the man.’

  He did not bother to hide his exasperation. ‘What are you talking about, then?’

  ‘Mrs Riordan, of course. And her baby. The child is two days old. I shall not permit you to turn them out onto the road.’

  For his part, Fairclough would permit no insubordination from his wife or anyone. Yet felt a twinge of uneasiness at talk of babies.

  ‘The Irish are always fighting, you know that.’ He repeated what he had said to Bill Dodd. ‘Brawling in pubs gives all of us a bad name.’

  His wife stared at him with an unfamiliar boldness. ‘Tell him to behave himself, then. Because his wife is staying.’

  Her defiance infuriated him, flying in the face of what he considered the proper order of domestic life. Yet there was a hint of desperation in her voice, of hysteria, almost. It certainly had nothing to do with the baby or indeed anything outside herself. About to slap her down, Ambrose hesitated.

  ‘What will she do if she does stay?’ he wondered cautiously.

  ‘She will assist me. About the house. In the garden.’

  ‘That’s Polly’s job.’

  ‘Polly …’

  Who would have been mortified had she heard the tone in which her mistress disposed of her.

  Ambrose sighed. In the sugar business one had to deal with all sorts — kanaka and white; even, occasionally, people of one’s own class — and he had not built a flourishing plantation without an instinct for handling others. He had seen his wife become increasingly neurotic in recent months — the tropics did that to some people — and wished her to be cured, if it could be done. She seemed to have taken a fancy to the strange woman. Perhaps, if he humoured her, things between themselves might improve. There was a need: their relationship had developed such jagged edges that it was no longer possible for them to get close to each other. And a man, in the tropics as elsewhere, became resentful when denied the comforts that marriage was supposed to bring.

  ‘I couldn’t put Riordan back in Bullen’s gang,’ he said. ‘We’d have to find him something else to do.’

  Sensing victory, Mrs Fairclough was wise enough to take no advantage.

  ‘Mrs Riordan was saying her husband is good with horses. Let him look after them. If you think that would be best.’

  Carefully she deferred to her husband’s greater wisdom, of which Ambrose, at least, had no doubt.

  Looking after the horses had always been a problem; yet for the sake of domestic discipline he could not be expected to accede too readily.

  ‘Horses,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  That evening, after giving Dominic a few hours to get over his battering, Anneliese went to see how he was.

  ‘Ag man …’

  She stared at him, appalled. His face was reworked so comprehensively that she doubted he would ever look the same again.

  ‘What was it about?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He spoke with difficulty through torn lips.

  She had no patience with such nonsense. ‘That is impossible —’

  ‘Soon’s I’m on my feet, we’re out of here,’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Whaddya mean?’ Glaring at her.

  ‘Mr Fairclough was going to discharge you because of what happened. Mrs Fairclough talked him out of it.’

  He was resentful of any woman intruding upon male territory. Even the boss’s wife — particularly her, perhaps.

  ‘Tell her to keep her beak out of it.’

  ‘She did not do it for you! She did it for the baby. For Sean.’

  She had discovered how helpless men were when confronted by the threat of a child.

  ‘We owe it to Sean to stay. For the time being, anyway.’

  He attempted ferocity, for his pride’s sake. ‘I get back to that gang, there’ll be murder done.’

  ‘They need someone to look after the horses.’

  The battered lips twisted scornfully. ‘And have everyone say I’m afraid to face him?
That’ll be the day!’

  Anneliese stared at him. She had learned to understand him well. Bullen had beaten him almost to death; now, to restore his idiot pride, he would run headfirst into a brick wall rather than accept help from anyone. She had no patience with such nonsense. They were destitute; now, out of the blue, they had been offered a measure of security after months on the road. She would not let Dominic walk away from it simply because some oaf had blackened his eyes for him.

  ‘I have told her you’ll do it.’

  Rage, no less potent for his body’s weakness. ‘And I’m telling you I won’t!’

  ‘You walk out of here, you go alone.’

  To emphasise her words, she slammed the door behind her as she left. Yet in truth was not much concerned. Dominic would be off his feet for a day or two. By then she thought he would understand she meant what she said. He had better; she would abandon him, if it came to it. Baby Sean, now, was her priority.

  And remained so.

  They stayed, as Anneliese had been determined they would. Dominic tended the horses, as arranged. He had always had a way with them and now spent hours in the stables, seeking the company that was no longer available elsewhere. He had been spoiled; until Sean’s birth Anneliese had been there for him always. Even after the row over Dermot and the ferryman, he had still had priority in her life and had come to expect it. No longer. Sean was the first thing she had owned since the death of the children in Africa and she focused all her attention on him.

  She took the baby everywhere, did everything for him. Gertrude Fairclough and Polly (won over by the baby as never by the mother) would have helped, had Anneliese permitted, but she did not. She would allow no one to come between her and the child. It was unreasonable; she knew it and did not care. She was fulfilled as never since Oudekraal. For hours she chattered to Sean in Dutch, entertained fantasies of raising him to speak the language so they could converse secretly together. Even Dermot had to take second place to her son.

  Her obsession made Dominic uneasy. ‘You’ll be ruining the boy.’

  She took no notice, knowing that he, too, was jealous in his way.

  One day Dominic said, ‘I’ll not be having Dermot brought up in a houseful of women.’ And bore him off to the horses, where he was spending more and more of his time.

  He taught the boy to ride, frightening him half to death. In his own childhood Jack had taught him by chucking him on top of a horse; when he fell off, he had clambered back on, again and again, until at last, miraculously, his body had learned what it had to do. He was never a natural horseman but had learned enough to fall off only occasionally. He hadn’t minded; when at last he managed it, had laughed with his father, each as triumphant as the other.

  Dermot was different. When he fell, he was not interested in renewing the challenge; when Dominic forced him back into the saddle, he fell off again at once. And again; until man and horse and child were dizzy, desperate with frustration.

  ‘I’ll swear he does it deliberately,’ Dominic said. But persevered until Dermot could ride, after a fashion, then lost interest. Instead took to going down the road to the pub. Never on Saturdays, because then the cutters would be there. He went during the week, slipping away from the stables when his work was done, to down a pot or two in the solitude of the bar.

  A pot or two or three or four. Until the moon swung overhead as full and boastful as himself, and it was all he could do not to go looking for the Bull with a cane-cutter’s blade in his hand.

  Must have retained some vestige of sanity because he never did. Never went to the room that Anneliese shared with the children at the back of the house, either. Instead, he returned to the stables. Whence he emerged, red-eyed and frowsty, stinking of liquor, in the morning. Yet did his work properly, despite all. Which saved him and them.

  Ambrose Fairclough did not care how much his employee drank, provided he caused no trouble and did his work. It was a small price to pay for the transformation that his wife had undergone since the coming of the woman. He didn’t know or care what she did to earn her keep. As far as Ambrose was concerned, she was worth every penny he paid her, simply by being there.

  In fact Anneliese had become Mrs Fairclough’s companion. Her employer forgave her even the baby, and wanted her with her always, questioning her unceasingly. About Africa. About herself. About how she thought and felt. About the seconds and minutes and hours of her life.

  Until, after tea, Anneliese had to escape to the mosquito-singing darkness, the stagnant air of the canefields, and walk and walk. She could have screamed at having to reveal so much of herself to this woman. Who meant well, she knew, yet who took it for granted that Anneliese was her property, to be used as she wished, to talk, to reveal, to provide the dimension of living that Mrs Fairclough had never known. It was what she was paid for, after all.

  Blerry English, Anneliese thought, they leave nothing and no one in the world alone.

  Looking for a fight, she went to the stables, where she found Dominic asleep and snoring in the straw. She woke him without pity for his fuddled senses, the red eyes that stared with little comprehension. With Mrs Fairclough she was compelled to bite her tongue, but had no intention of doing so with this boozed-up oaf whose conduct endangered the future of them all.

  ‘Carry on like this, Mr Fairclough will put us out on the road.’

  Dominic indignant. ‘I do my work and well you know it. ’Tis all he cares about. No harm in a little drink.’

  ‘A little drink?’ She scorned him, no longer prepared to tolerate his version of the truth. ‘More than one, I think.’

  He glared belligerently, raking his whiskers with dirty fingernails. ‘Payin’ my way, aren’t I?’

  ‘Are you? When you drink all your wages?’

  ‘The season’s nearly over,’ he told her. ‘Week or two, they’ll be off south for the lay-off. Then things’ll be right, you’ll see.’

  ‘I hope so.’ For the hundredth time she willed herself to show patience, to smile. ‘You’ll try? Yes?’

  ‘Course I will.’ He licked dry lips, favouring her with his stinking breath. ‘Come to keep me company?’ he asked, attempting roguishness.

  She evaded him.

  ‘Sean’s crying. I must get back.’

  Perhaps he’s right, she hoped. When Bullen had gone, perhaps things would improve.

  The men went south, the stripped paddocks lay empty. Fallow ground was ploughed, the black soil readied for planting. As for Dominic’s drinking, nothing changed.

  Anneliese was at her wits’ end. For his own wife’s sake Fairclough might continue to tolerate the situation so long as Dominic made no serious mistakes but, drinking the way he was, something was bound to go wrong eventually. It would mean the ruin of them all; Fairclough was not a forgiving man where work was concerned. Gertrude had talked her husband into keeping Dominic once; she would never manage it a second time.

  ‘Why do you do it? Why?’

  He would not tell her why, could not put into words the resentment he felt at life for granting him a job only through the intervention of a woman. Of being a man who had disgraced himself by failing to stand up for himself in a fight.

  Instead lifted her skirt, winking. She could not bear it, pushed him away.

  His response appalled her. Weeping and raving, he threw himself down amid the clop and clatter of uneasy hooves, shouting about Bullen and fire and dead children, the man his father was and he never would be.

  Frightened, she scolded him. ‘Nee man. You’re talking rubbish.’

  He turned. Stared with hatred as she bent over him.

  ‘You know what I’m savin’. You mind well what kinda man my Da is. Who better?’ He raked spittle into his mouth and spat full in her face. ‘You think I didn’t know?’

  ‘You can’t,’ Mrs Fairclough said, eyes panicking. ‘I won’t let you.’

  Anneliese’s expression remained frozen, as though her employer had not spoken. Desperately Mrs Faircloug
h’s voice beat at that icy façade, determined somehow to reach her, to demonstrate her pain.

  ‘It’s because of your husband’s drinking, isn’t it? My husband has spoken. But you needn’t be ashamed. Really. It’s not your fault. There are men — some men — who are like that. It is not our fault. Don’t you see?’

  The jumble of words forced its way into the light. Her eyes implored amid the tangled sounds.

  Anneliese’s expression did not change.

  ‘You are my friend.’ Now Mrs Fairclough was reduced to pleading. ‘My salvation, even. I shall not permit you to leave me.’

  Desperation had forced her to speak; now she found she could not stop. Stammering, close to incoherence, she said, ‘Even if my husband is forced to dismiss him. It doesn’t mean you. You can stay. Let him go. It’ll be better that way. He’s no good for you. Think of yourself. Think of your children.’ Hysteria stained the hot air amid the spray of jumbled, pleading words. ‘Where will you go? If you leave here — what will you do?’

  All the time you, you; what will you do? how will you survive? — when Anneliese knew that she was really saying something different:

  What about me? How shall I manage, alone for the remainder of my life, exposed to the scorn of my husband, of Polly, myself? How shall I survive? Haven’t we been friends? Haven’t I taken care of you? I took you in off the road. I helped you when you needed help. Have you forgotten?

  Mrs Fairclough’s face was wet and blubbering, soft as marshmallow. As always when terror overwhelmed her, her skin was flushed, her eyes flushed, tears leaking. Despicable. Weak. Unworthy of love.

  Cravenly she begged pity. At last she succeeded in penetrating the icy stillness that Anneliese had erected to protect herself from her employer’s ignominy.

  Like a dark flame within her, Anneliese felt fury and distaste ignite. ‘You know nothing! Nothing!’ she cried. ‘We are going together, as we came. You English think you own the world. Did you really imagine I would abandon him after everything we have been through together? We have fought the English all our lives. We shall go on fighting them. We shall go, now.’