‘Yes, I know,’ said Major Gale. Then they both laughed. The laughter was of a quite different quality from the sober responsibility of their tone a moment before: and Mrs Gale found herself sitting up in bed, muttering: ‘How dare he?’
She got up and dressed herself. She was filled with premonitions of unpleasantness. In the main room her husband was sitting reading, and since he seldom read, it seemed he was also worried. Neither of them spoke. When she looked at the clock, she found it was just past nine o’clock.
After an hour of tension, they heard the footsteps they had been waiting for. There stood De Wet, angry, worried sick, his face white, his eyes burning.
‘We must get the boys out,’ he said, speaking directly to Major Gale, and ignoring Mrs Gale.
‘I am coming too,’ she said.
‘No, my dear,’ said the Major cajolingly. ‘You stay here.’
‘You can’t go running over the veld at this time of night,’ said De Wet to Mrs Gale, very blunt and rude.
‘I shall do as I please,’ she returned.
The three of them stood on the veranda, waiting for the natives. Everything was drenched in moonlight. Soon they heard a growing clamour of voices from over a ridge, and a little while later the darkness there was lighted by flaring torches held high by invisible hands: it seemed as if the night were scattered with torches advancing of their own accord. Then a crowd of dark figures took shape under the broken lights. The farm natives, excited by the prospect of a night’s chasing over the veld, were yelling as if they were after a small buck or hare.
Mrs Gale sickened. ‘Is it necessary to have all these natives in it?’ she asked. ‘After all, have we even considered the possibilities? Where can a girl run to on a place like this?’
‘That is the point,’ said Major Gale frigidly.
‘I can’t bear to think of her being – pursued, like this, by a crowd of natives. It’s horrible.’
‘More horrible still if she has hurt herself and is waiting for help,’ said De Wet. He ran off down the path, shouting to the natives and waving his arms. The Gales saw them separate into three bands, and soon there were three groups of lights jerking away in different directions through the hazy dark, and the yells and shouting came back to them on the wind.
Mrs Gale thought: She could have taken the road back to the station, in which case she could be caught by car, even now.
She commanded her husband: ‘Take the car along the road and see.’
‘That’s an idea,’ said the Major, and went off to the garage. She heard the car start off, and watched the rear light dwindle redly into the night.
But that was the least ugly of the possibilities. What if she had been so blind with anger, grief, or whatever emotion it was that had driven her away, that she had simply run off into the veld not knowing where she went? There were thousands of acres of trees, thick grass, gullies, kopjes. She might at this moment be lying with a broken arm or leg; she might be pushing her way through grass higher than her head, stumbling over roots and rocks. She might be screaming for help somewhere for fear of wild animals, for if she crossed the valley into the hills there were leopards, lions, wild dogs. Mrs Gale suddenly caught her breath in an agony of fear: the valley! What if she had mistaken her direction and walked over the edge of the escarpment in the dark? What if she had forded the river and been taken by a crocodile? There were so many things: she might even be caught in a game trap. Once, taking her walk, Mrs Gale herself had come across a tall sapling by the path where the spine and ribs of a large buck dangled, and on the ground were the pelvis and legs, fine eroded bones of an animal trapped and forgotten by its trapper. Anything might have happened. And worse than any of the actual physical dangers was the danger of falling a victim to fear: being alone on the veld, at night, knowing oneself lost: this was enough to send anyone off balance.
The silly little fool, the silly little fool: anger and pity and terror confused in Mrs Gale until she was walking crazily up and down her garden through the bushes, tearing blossoms and foliage to pieces in trembling fingers. She had no idea how time was passing; until Major Gale returned and said that he had taken the ten miles to the station at seven miles an hour, turning his lights into the bush this way and that. At the station everyone was in bed; but the police were standing on the alert for news.
It was long after twelve. As for De Wet and the bands of searching natives, there was no sign of them. They would be miles away by this time.
‘Go to bed,’ said Major Gale at last.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. After a while she held out her hand to him, and said: ‘One feels so helpless.’
There was nothing to say; they walked together under the stars, their minds filled with horrors. Later she made some tea and they drank it standing; to sit would have seemed heartless. They were so tired they could hardly move. Then they got their second wind and continued walking. That night Mrs Gale hated her garden, that highly-cultivated patch of luxuriant growth, stuck in the middle of a country that could do this sort of thing to you suddenly. It was all the fault of the country! In a civilized sort of place, the girl would have caught the train to her mother, and a wire would have put everything right. Here, she might have killed herself, simply because of a passing fit of despair. Mrs Gale began to get hysterical. She was weeping softly in the circle of her husband’s arm by the time the sky lightened and the redness of dawn spread over the sky.
As the sun rose, De Wet returned over the veld. He said he had sent the natives back to their huts to sleep. They had found nothing. He stated that he also intended to sleep for an hour, and that he would be back on the job by eight. Major Gale nodded: he recognized this as a necessary discipline against collapse. But after the young man walked off across the veld towards his house, the two older people looked at each other and began to move after him. ‘He must not be alone,’ said Mrs Gale sensibly. ‘I shall make him some tea and see that he drinks it.’
‘He wants sleep,’ said Major Gale. His own eyes were red and heavy.
‘I’ll put something in his tea,’ said Mrs Gale. ‘He won’t know it is there.’ Now she had something to do, she was much more cheerful. Planning De Wet’s comfort, she watched him turn in at his gate and vanish inside the house: they were some two hundred yards behind.
Suddenly there was a shout, and then a commotion of screams and yelling. The Gales ran fast along the remaining distance and burst into the front room, white-faced and expecting the worst, in whatever form it might choose to present itself.
There was De Wet, his face livid with rage, bending over his wife, who was huddled on the floor and shielding her head with her arms, while he beat her shoulders with his closed fists.
Mrs Gale exclaimed: ‘Beating your wife!’
De Wet flung the girl away from him, and staggered to his feet. ‘She was here all the time,’ he said, half in temper, half in sheer wonder. ‘She was hiding under the bed. She told me. When I came in she was sitting on the bed and laughing at me.’
The girl beat her hands on the floor and said, laughing and crying together: ‘Now you have to take some notice of me. Looking for me all night over the veld with your silly natives! You looked so stupid, running about like ants, looking for me.’
‘My God,’ said De Wet simply, giving up. He collapsed backwards into a chair and lay there, his eyes shut, his face twitching.
‘So now you have to notice me,’ she said defiantly, but beginning to look scared, ’I have to pretend to run away, but then you sit up and take notice.’
‘Be quiet,’ said De Wet, breathing heavily. ‘Be quiet, if you don’t want to get hurt bad.’
‘Beating your wife,’ said Mrs Gale. ‘Savages behave better.’
‘Caroline, my dear,’ said Major Gale awkwardly. He moved towards the door.
‘Take that woman out of here if you don’t want me to beat her too,’ said De Wet to Major Gale.
Mrs Gale was by now crying with fury. ‘I’m not g
oing,’ she said. ‘I’m not going. This poor child isn’t safe with you.’
‘But what was it all about?’ said Major Gale, laying his hand kindly on the girl’s shoulder. ‘What was it, my dear? What did you have to do it for, and make us all so worried?’
She began to cry. ‘Major Gale, I am sorry. I forgot myself. I got mad. I told him I was going to have a baby. I told him when I got back from your place. And all he said was: that’s fine. That’s the first of them, he said. He didn’t love me, or say he was pleased, or nothing.’
‘Dear Christ in hell,’ said De Wet wearily, with the exasperation strong in his voice, ‘what do you make me do these things for? Do you think I want to beat you? Did you think I wasn’t pleased: I keep telling you I want kids, I love kids.’
‘But you don’t care about me,’ she said, sobbing bitterly.
‘Don’t I?’ he said helplessly.
‘Beating your wife when she is pregnant,’ said Mrs Gale. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’ She advanced on the young man with her own fists clenched, unconscious of what she was doing. ‘You ought to be beaten yourself, that’s what you need.’
Mrs De Wet heaved herself off the floor, rushed on Mrs Gale, pulled her back so that she nearly lost balance, and then flung herself on her husband. ‘Jack,’ she said, clinging to him desperately, ‘I am so sorry, I am so sorry, Jack.’
He put his arms round her. ‘There,’ he said simply, his voice thick with tiredness, ‘don’t cry. We got mixed up, that’s all.’
Major Gale, who had caught and steadied his wife as she staggered back, said to her in a low voice: ‘Come, Caroline. Come. Leave them to sort it out.’
‘And what if he loses his temper again and decides to kill her this time?’ demanded Mrs Gale, her voice shrill.
De Wet got to his feet, lifting his wife with him. ‘Go away now. Mrs Major,’ he said. ‘Get out of here. You’ve done enough damage.’
‘I’ve done enough damage?’ she gasped. ‘And what have I done?’
‘Oh nothing, nothing at all,’ he said with ugly sarcasm. ‘Nothing at all. But please go and leave my wife alone in future, Mrs Major.’
‘Come, Caroline, please.’ said Major Gale.
She allowed herself to be drawn out of the room. Her head was aching so that the vivid morning light invaded her eyes in a wave of pain. She swayed a little as she walked.
‘Mrs Major,’ she said, ‘Mrs Major!’
‘He was upset,’ said her husband judiciously.
She snorted. Then, after a silence: ‘So, it was all my fault.’
‘He didn’t say so.’
‘I thought that was what he was saying. He behaves like a brute and then says it is my fault.’
‘It was no one’s fault,’ said Major Gale, patting her vaguely on shoulders and back as they stumbled back home.
They reached the gate, and entered the garden, which was now musical with birds.
‘A lovely morning,’ remarked Major Gale.
‘Next time you get an assistant,’ she said finally, ‘get people of our kind. These might be savages, the way they behave.’
And that was the last word she would ever say on the subject.
Little Tembi
Jane McCluster, who had been a nurse before she married, started a clinic on the farm within a month of arriving. Though she had been born and brought up in town, her experience of natives was wide, for she had been a sister in the native wards of the city hospital, by choice, for years; she liked nursing natives, and explained her feeling in the words: ‘They are just like children, and appreciate what you do for them.’ So, when she had taken a thorough, diagnosing kind of look at the farm natives, she exclaimed, ‘Poor things!’ and set about turning an old dairy into a dispensary. Her husband was pleased; it would save money in the long run by cutting down illness in the compound.
Willie McCluster, who had also been born and raised in South Africa, was nevertheless unmistakably and determinedly Scottish. His accent might be emphasized for loyalty’s sake, but he had kept all the fine qualities of his people unimpaired by a slowing and relaxing climate. He was shrewd, vigorous, earthy, practical and kind. In appearance he was largely built, with a square bony face, a tight mouth, and eyes whose fierce blue glance was tempered by the laughter wrinkles about them. He became a farmer young, having planned the step for years: he was not one of those who drift on to the land because of discontent with an office, or because of failure, or vague yearnings towards ‘freedom’. Jane, a cheerful and competent girl who knew what she wanted, trifled with her numerous suitors with one eye on Willie, who wrote her weekly letters from the farming college in the Transvaal. As soon as his four years’ training were completed, they married.
They were then twenty-seven, and felt themselves well-equipped for a useful and enjoyable life. Their house was planned for a family. They would have been delighted if a baby had been born the old-fashioned nine months after marriage. As it was, a baby did not come; and when two years had passed Jane took a journey into the city to see a doctor. She was not so much unhappy as indignant to find she needed an operation before she could have children. She did not associate illness with herself, and felt as if the whole thing were out of character. But she submitted to the operation, and to waiting a further two years before starting a family, with her usual practical good sense. But it subdued her a little. The uncertainty preyed on her, in spite of herself; and it was because of her rather wistful, disappointed frame of mind at this time that her work in the clinic became so important to her. Whereas, in the beginning, she had dispensed medicines and good advice as a routine, every morning for a couple of hours after breakfast, she now threw herself into it, working hard, keeping herself at full stretch, trying to attack causes rather than symptoms.
The compound was the usual farm compound of insanitary mud and grass huts; the diseases she had to deal with were caused by poverty and bad feeding.
Having lived in the country all her life, she did not make the mistake of expecting too much; she had that shrewd, ironical patience that achieves more with backward people than any amount of angry idealism.
First she chose an acre of good soil for vegetables, and saw to the planting and cultivating herself. One cannot overthrow the customs of centuries in a season, and she was patient with the natives who would not at first touch food they were not used to. She persuaded and lectured. She gave the women of the compound lessons in cleanliness and baby care. She drew up diet sheets and ordered sacks of citrus from the big estates; in fact, it was not long before it was Jane who organized the feeding of Willie’s two-hundred-strong labour force, and he was glad to have her help. Neighbours laughed at them; for it is even now customary to feed natives on maize meal only, with an occasional slaughtered ox for a feasting; but there was no doubt Willie’s natives were healthier than most and he got far more work out of them. On cold winter mornings Jane would stand dispensing cans of hot cocoa from a petrol drum with a slow fire burning under it to the natives before they went to the fields; and if a neighbour passed and laughed at her, she set her lips and said good-humouredly: ‘It’s good sound common sense, that’s what it is. Besides – poor things, poor things!’ Since the McClusters were respected in the district, they were humoured in what seemed a ridiculous eccentricity.
But it was not easy, not easy at all. It was of no use to cure hookworm-infested feet that would become reinfected in a week, since none wore shoes; nothing could be done about bilharzia, when all the rivers were full of it; and the natives continued to live in the dark and smoky huts.
But the children could be helped; Jane most particularly loved the little black piccanins. She knew that fewer children died in her compound than in any for miles around, and this was her pride. She would spend whole mornings explaining to the women about dirt and proper feeding; if a child became ill, she would sit up all night with it, and cried bitterly if it died. The name for her among the natives was The Goodhearted One. They trusted her. T
hough mostly they hated and feared the white man’s medicines,1 they let Jane have her way, because they felt she was prompted by kindness; and day by day the crowds of natives waiting for medical attention became larger. This filled Jane with pride; and every morning she made her way to the big stone-floored, thatched building at the back of the house that smelled always of disinfectants and soap, accompanied by the houseboy who helped her, and spent there many hours helping the mothers and the children and the labourers who had hurt themselves at work.
Little Tembi was brought to her for help at the time when she knew she could not hope to have a child of her own for at least two years. He had what the natives call ‘the hot weather sickness’. His mother had not brought him soon enough, and by the time Jane took him in her arms he was a tiny wizened skeleton, loosely covered with harsh greyish skin, the stomach painfully distended. ‘He will die,’ moaned the mother from outside the clinic door, with that fatalistic note that always
1 This story was written in 1950.
annoyed Jane. ‘Nonsense!’ she said briskly – even more briskly because she was so afraid he would.
She laid the child warmly in a lined basket, and the houseboy and she looked grimly into each other’s faces. Jane said sharply to the mother, who was whimpering helplessly from the floor where she squatted with her hands to her face: ‘Stop crying. That doesn’t do any good. Didn’t I cure your first child when he had the same trouble?’ But that other little boy had not been nearly as sick as this one.
When Jane had carried the basket into the kitchen, and set it beside the fire for warmth, she saw the same grim look on the cookboy’s face as she had seen on the houseboy’s – and could feel on her own. ‘This child is not going to die,’ she said to herself, ‘I won’t let it! I won’t let it.’ It seemed to her that if she could pull little Tembi through, the life of the child she herself wanted so badly would be granted her.
This Was the Old Chief's Country Page 11
