Keepers of the House

by JH Fletcher

  He had told Pieter himself that he had driven it from one end of the valley to the other, very slowly, with his hand on the horn, while all the coloured folk — and some white ones, too — had come out to gape at him.

  Pieter had always liked that tale; it seemed to him to demonstrate so clearly his grandfather’s lust for life.

  Deneys Wolmarans had always said he would live to be a hundred, but that he didn’t manage. One day in 1950, when he was seventy-three, he went for a stroll and didn’t come back.

  They found him between the vines. Killed by a heart attack, the doctors said, with his face in the dirt that had been his passion all his life. Elizabeth, his wife of fifty-two years, died two days later, quietly, in her room at Oudekraal.

  Wedded in death as in life; a good way to live out your days, Pieter thought.

  His own father had been a bookish man, more interested in study than in vines and, when he died, Oudekraal was much as it had been when he had inherited it.

  Again Pieter ferreted out Deneys’s flask and had another mouthful of brandy. It seemed a shame to have so few memories of the man who had been his father, but the fact was that he had made little impression on the world while he lived or, indeed, after he had gone out of it. He had been a good man, though, well liked, and not all could claim as much.

  Pieter’s mother had died of typhoid when he was very small, and he remembered nothing of her.

  Now, sitting with his back against the tree, feeling its sturdy presence behind him, he thought how, finally, he had come in his turn to hold the land that had been in his family for over two hundred years. Unlike those before him, he had not married and now supposed he never would. Sometimes he worried about what would happen after he had joined his predecessors in the graveyard behind the house. He knew there were some who would say he was a fool to care what happened after he was dead, but he could not help it. Whatever the law might say, the land had never been his. It was in his care for a few years only. He had to do what would be right for it after he was gone.

  As to what that should be …

  He had always intended to leave it to Johannes Verster, his friend and neighbour. He was not of Wolmarans stock, but a good man who would care for the land properly. Then Anna Riordan had come from Australia and, for the first time, he had discovered that a descendant of the Wolmarans still lived. He had liked her, still liked her, but she was not of the country nor of the land. At first she had shown little more than polite interest in Oudekraal or the family history. This had changed; she had come to see him often, almost every day, he remembered, and he had begun to entertain hopes of her. Yet in the end she had gone away, as foreigners always do, and had never come back. In the circumstances it would not be right to will Oudekraal to her. So Johannes Verster it would have to be, although — good friend though he was — the idea did not sit quietly within Pieter’s mind.

  Wolmarans land, Wolmarans blood …

  And now this man, with his offer to buy what would never, as long as he had breath, be for sale. For how could one sell one’s past? How could he sell the foresight and vision of Colin Stephen Walmer, the work and joy and heartache of himself and his descendants? How could he sell his grandfather’s memories of Christiaan and Sara, invite bids for Deneys and Elizabeth, whose marriage had caused such excitement in the valley? For Anneliese herself, that lost soul who had lived in the house for a much shorter time than any of the others, yet whose spirit seemed to him to haunt it still?

  Only one thing troubled him, his discourtesy in not offering his visitor a glass of wine. He will think I am as boorish as he is, he thought, but there had been no help for it. The wine, a bottle of the 1982 pinotage, the best of the recent vintages, had been ready for the corkscrew but as soon as Harcourt had opened his mouth he had known that it would be completely out of the question to drink with him.

  He would never sell, never. Let the future fall as it would.

  TWENTY-SIX

  In 1921, while they were out in the cattle yards, Dominic and Sean had a bad row that almost came to blows and changed everything in their lives. It began over something Sean was supposed to have done and had not, but that was not where it ended. For a long time, Dominic had been itching to speak to him about the way Sylvia Macdonald was playing the boys off against each other. Now he dragged her into the argument and Sean, almost seventeen years old and never one to tolerate interference in his affairs, told him to go to hell.

  It was terrible. Accusations flew like hail. At the end Sean raised his big fists; would have used them had Dominic not backed off, but Dominic was too old for fighting, and both of them knew it.

  ‘Better be careful, old man,’ Sean warned him, ‘or one of these days, after I’ve married Sylvia, I might just chuck you off the place altogether.’

  The idea of leaving would not have troubled Dominic but being chucked off, without any choice in the matter, was a different business entirely. He went into Anneliese with a look on his face as though a sword had stricken him. It took her a while to uncover what had been said, but she managed it in the end.

  ‘Marry Sylvia?’ she repeated. ‘Dermot may have something to say about that, I suppose.’

  ‘Dermot will never stand up to Sean,’ Dominic said. ‘You know that as well as I do.’

  ‘It’s not for Sean to say what happens. Scott Macdonald will never put us out on the road.’

  ‘Maybe he won’t. But Sean will get Sylvia, and Paradise Downs, which is what he’s been after from the first. With that under his belt, he’ll do what he likes.’

  ‘And Dermot?’

  ‘Dermot will end up with the hind tit, like he always does.’

  He paced about the room, up and back, up and back, his swooping shadow keeping pace with him along the walls.

  ‘I’ll not give Sean the chance to put me down,’ he said eventually. ‘A man’s got his pride or he’s got nothing. We’ll not be staying.’

  After Gavin’s death, Dominic’s restlessness had returned like a plague to curse them all. Anneliese had known for a long time that he would like to move on; now Sean had given him his excuse. She saw a future in which the pair of them once again wandered across an infinite landscape, going nowhere. She could not bear it.

  ‘I’d sooner be dead than go through all that again.’

  He turned, snake-quick, a scowl like a black storm across his face. ‘Take your pick. Stay here, if you’d rather, or come along with me. Either way, it’ll not kill you.’

  It was a form of boasting, no more than that. Do what you like; I don’t need you. It would have made her life seem even more futile, had it been true, but it was not. Dominic was right in one thing, though; it was not Anneliese who died.

  The following morning, Dominic had to take a party of men to round up cattle on the far side of the station and Anneliese, frightened what he might get up to after the traumas of the previous night, decided to go with him.

  It was so beautiful; that she always remembered. Open country patched with forest, towering limestone ridges, the river fringed with water lilies flowing deep and silent beside them.

  She had hoped that Dominic would have forgotten what he had said about moving on, but he had not.

  ‘Last time we’ll be doing this,’ he said. And laughed, as though the prospect delighted him.

  Towards evening they made camp at the head of a valley opening upon the plain. Sun-flecked bush surrounded them; beyond, the open country was an azure haze. Bird song, the lowing of cattle, golden ladders of light falling from the summits of the trees. Everything at peace.

  After the sun had gone they wrapped themselves in their blankets and lay down to sleep, saddles beneath their heads. Anneliese stayed awake, watching the dying embers of the fire, remembering Dominic’s words and contemplating the door to ruin that had once again opened before them. Last time we’ll be doing this …

  In the darkness she spoke aloud. ‘I shall not permit it.’

  The shifting of coals in the d
ying fire was her only answer. She could have wept; she knew Dominic’s infernal pride too well to think he might go back on his word now that he had wound himself up to the point of saying it.

  She was lying apart from the rest, as always. She could see the huddled shapes of the men scattered here and there, the dwindling firelight casting its orange shadows over them. She could not distinguish Dominic from the others, but knew he was on the far side of the clearing beneath the great tree whose ghostly outline she could just make out against the darkness.

  ‘I shall not permit you to do this to me,’ she told him.

  Then she felt it. From the first, she had heard the voices of this land more clearly than most of those who had been born here. There was no rumble of thunder, no breath of air to stir the leaves, yet she knew that a storm, still below the horizon but unmistakable, was on its way.

  She watched the darkness, waiting until she felt the first gusts through the trees, brightening the fire’s embers. That old tree was rotten; she had seen the cracks in its trunk herself. She knew she should go to Dominic, warn him to move into the open before the storm came. She did not. Something said, let him be. If God wills, he will survive.

  Instead, she told herself she could be mistaken. She knew she was not, but did nothing.

  So God stayed my hand and the storm came as I had known it would. It took the tree and brought it crashing down, crushing Dominic Riordan to death beneath its great trunk. As I had known it would.

  So we are parted, after all.

  The bushfires in this country are a terror to see, mile upon mile of country ablaze. You can hear the trees screaming as the fire takes them. It was a fall of timber that killed him, yet fire would have been more appropriate; I shall always believe it was the fire we lit in Henning’s store that started him on his road to ruin.

  Deneys, who had gone through the whole war with him, told me that Dominic had always laughed at fear yet, as we boarded the steamer in Cape Town, the stench of his fear was like a nine-day corpse in summer.

  I have always believed that it was his memory of the fire that opened the door to drink; and drink, now, has brought him sober to his death. Jack, his father, may have been the cause of our first going out on the land, but it was drink that kept us there. Drink blighted our lives with futility, creating in Dominic the restlessness that would once again have destroyed us, had fate permitted.

  I have to believe that, or I shall be unable to live with myself. Because I heard the gathering storm and did nothing.

  I am free. Free of having to wander the empty tracks again. Free of memory, of the gulf between what is and what might have been. Free to forget what I no longer wish to remember.

  I tell myself that none of the past matters. It will be hard to forget but by the power of my will, God permitting, I shall do it. For the rest … I am alone, forever. Let that be my judgement.

  May God forgive me.

  After the funeral, the scrape of shovels in the thin soil, the meaningless words, Anneliese sat with the images that would remain forever seared upon her mind.

  An explosion of dust and leaves, the wind bellowing in the darkness; the great tree bending, the crack and groan of the toppling trunk, so slow and then so fast, rushing earthwards. The crash and bounce of the fallen timber upon the ground. A hail of twigs and leaves, settling slowly. A diminishing roar as the storm raced away through the hills.

  The stillness.

  She had sworn to banish the past; now, for the last time, she chose to recall the good things.

  The day she had first met him. The Cape cart, the peach trees heavy with blossom, the freshness of the vines, Dominic Riordan walking towards her down the green lanes of her youth. How they had talked, his face aflame with his passion for revenge. She never loved him but, even at that first meeting, he set her blood racing.

  Before the raid on Henning’s store she had gone to him deliberately, determined to create a sacrament from what she knew now had been no more than a lust for vengeance. He had thought she was mad — how clearly she had read him — but had not kicked her out. Oh no.

  That naked girl skittering, breasts bouncing, mouth startled. After Dominic got rid of her, they fell upon each other. How much had been sacrament, how much simple lust, she neither knew nor cared. She remembered still how her body had responded to his touch.

  His words, too, had enchanted her. Together we shall conquer the world.

  He had told her that. She had permitted herself to believe him; knew now, with bitter resignation, that every syllable had been a lie. What in God’s name had they achieved? They had outfoxed the great English Empire, that much was true, but what was that to show for two lives?

  Raise our kids to stick their fingers in the King of England’s eye.

  He had said that, too. Well.

  Wandering, drinking, held together despite all by a shared dream of vengeance and triumph. That had been their life. Instead of love, she had known only the stale memory of a dead and objectless hatred. Her entire existence had been built upon such things; now she could hardly credit the futility of it all.

  The business with Dominic’s father should have wrecked them but had only heightened her determination to keep them together, as though success in that would justify all else. They would stay as one, even if they came to hate each other in the process. They had to; the past was all there was.

  And so the drink hollowed him out, dissolving the fire and pride, leaving nothing.

  Those years of drift. That time with the Faircloughs; a dozen other occasions when the family would have fallen apart but had not, because she had not permitted it to happen. Despite Dominic’s constant irresponsibility and drunkenness, his refusal to face life, she had held on.

  And now? she thought. She had to put the past away, as she had told herself she would. Put it away.

  Whether that would be possible was another question.

  When he heard the news, Dermot felt as though his world had fallen part with the falling tree. He lived in a daze, doing what had to be done without thinking too much about anything.

  ‘You are the man of the family now,’ Anneliese told him.

  Man of the family. His mind rejected it, instinctively. He was conscious only of emptiness where before had been warmth, a sense of sharing.

  Once again he was alone.

  Dominic had never really done much for him, yet in the years before they came to Paradise Downs, he had been the only one who had seemed to understand how he felt. The stories he had told had always been so much more than just stories; they had been a picture of what life should be like. It was Dominic’s stories that had impelled him to say what he had about going to Ireland to help kick the English out.

  Romantic nonsense yet, at the time, he had liked to believe he meant it.

  Too late now; from what the papers were saying, it wouldn’t be long before Ireland was free, anyway. At last; it should have thrilled him, but did not. All he could think was how he’d had the chance to hitch a ride in glory’s chariot and had once again missed out. All he could do now was watch from afar as the golden wheels bore it away into history.

  Dominic had known how he had felt. That was an article of faith; they had never talked about it, but he had known. With Dominic dead, it was more important than ever that he should believe that. There was nothing he could do about it now, in any case; his life was here, in this land so far from everywhere.

  All his life Dermot had longed for glory. He had always known it was stupid — glory was not for people like him, who had never had the knack of bossing even his own small world about — yet the longing had remained.

  There were still things he could do; perhaps now would be the time.

  ‘Now Dominic’s gone, I’ve changed my mind,’ he told Sylvia. ‘I don’t feel like sticking around any longer. You want to take off, I’m game.’

  She eyed him. ‘You promised my dad you’d stay. Three years, you said. That still leaves a year to go.’

/>   ‘There’s no point. Face it, Sylvie, I’ll never be able to run Paradise Downs the way your Dad wants.’

  It seemed so, certainly; only a week earlier, Scott Macdonald had given him a blasting that had left him quaking in his socks.

  ‘You’re hopeless,’ he had said. ‘Absolutely hopeless.’ And had stamped away, dusting his hands as though to rid himself of Dermot altogether.

  Sylvia said, ‘He’ll need you more than ever now your dad’s been killed.’

  ‘He’ll find someone.’

  She looked at him as though he were dirt on the ground. ‘So you’ll just chuck it? That it?’

  He hadn’t expected her to turn on him like this. ‘I thought you’d jump at it.’

  ‘Two years ago I told you I wanted us to clear out. You gave me your word and then went back on it. Didn’t even discuss it with me first. Now your Dad’s dead, and all of a sudden you change your tune. It’s not good enough.’

  He could see he would have to sweet-talk her.

  ‘We’ll head south,’ he said. ‘Go to one of the cities, if that’s what you want. All the bright lights …’ As though he knew any more about cities and bright lights than she did. ‘You’ll like that,’ he told her. He’d no idea whether she would or wouldn’t; would have promised anything to get her to say yes.

  She wouldn’t. He kept on and on, but could get her to promise nothing. She didn’t have much to say about anything at all.

  That night, after dark, Sean found Macdonald in his office. In the lamplight their eyes squared up to each other.

  Macdonald spoke first. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Reckon I’ll be moving on.’

  ‘You’re choosing a damned awkward time, you know that?’

  Yet he did not seem too bothered. Sean thought, He knows what I’m telling him. All this is just going through the motions.

  The thought encouraged him. ‘Got to think of my future, don’t I?’

  ‘You’ve got a future here.’