“Why don’t you offer Theresa’s father some money?” she suggested, glancing down at Charlie’s garters which were, this morning, of cherry-coloured silk.
“He wants cattle, not money. He wants Theresa not to marry, he wants her to work for him.” Charlie rapidly finished sweeping the verandah and moved off, with relief, tucking the broom under his arm, with an apologetic smile which said: I know you mean well, but I’m glad to end this conversation.
But Marina was not at all inclined to drop the thing. She interviewed Theresa who, amid floods of tears, said Yes, she wanted to marry Charlie, but her father wanted too much lobola. The problem was quite simple to her, merely a question of lobola; Charlie’s other wife did not concern her; nor did she, apparently, share Charlie’s view that a proper wife in the kraal was one thing, while the women of the town were another.
Marina said: “Shall I come down to the location and talk to your father?”
Theresa hung her head shyly, allowed the last big tears to roll glistening down her cheeks and go splashing to the dust. “Yes, madam,” she said gratefully.
Marina returned to Charlie and said she would interview the old man. He appeared restive at this suggestion. “I’ll advance you some of your wages and you can pay for Theresa in instalments,” she said. He glanced down at his fine shirt, his gay socks, and sighed. If he were going to spend years of life paying five shillings a month, which was all he could afford, for Theresa, then his life as a dandy was over.
Marina said crossly: “Yes, it’s all very well, but you can’t have it both ways.”
He said hastily: “I’ll go down and see the father of Theresa, madam. I go soon.”
“I think you’d better,” she said sternly.
When she told Philip this story he became vigorously indignant. It presented in little, he said, the whole problem of this society. The Government couldn’t see an inch in front of its nose. In the first place, by allowing the lobola system to continue, this emotional attitude towards cattle was perpetuated. In the second, by making no proper arrangements for these men to have their families in the towns it made the existence of prostitutes like Theresa inevitable.
“Theresa isn’t a prostitute,” said Marina indignantly. “It isn’t her fault.”
“Of course it isn’t her fault, that’s what I’m saying. But she will be a prostitute, it’s inevitable. When Charlie’s fed up with her she’ll find herself another man and have a child or two by him, and so on . . .”
“You talk about Theresa as if she were a vital statistic,” said Marina, and Philip shrugged. That shrug expressed an attitude of mind which Marina would very soon find herself sharing, but she did not yet know that. She was still very worried about Theresa, and after some days she asked Charlie: “Well, and did you see Theresa’s father? What did he say?”
“He wants cattle.”
“Well, he can’t have cattle.”
“No,” said Charlie, brightening. “My own wife, she cost six catties. I paid three last year. I pay three more this year, when I go home.”
“When are you going home?”
“When Mrs. Skinner comes back. She no good. Not like you, madam, you are my father and mother,” he said, giving her his touching, grateful smile.
“And what will happen to Theresa?”
“She stay here.” After a long, troubled silence, he said: “She my town wife. I come back to Theresa.” This idea seemed to cheer him up.
And it seemed he was genuinely fond of the girl. Looking out of the kitchen window, Marina could see the pair of them, during lulls in the work, seated side by side on the big log under the tree—charming! A charming picture! “It’s all very well . . .” said Marina to herself, uneasily.
Some mornings later she found Charlie in the front room, under the picture, and looking at it this time, not with reverent admiration, but rather nervously. As she came in he quickly returned to his work, but Marina could see he wanted to say something to her.
“Madam . . .”
“Well, what is it?”
“This picture costs plenty money?”
“I suppose it did, once.”
“Catties cost plenty money, madam.”
“Yes so they do, Charlie.”
“If you sell this picture, how much?”
“But it is Mrs. Skinner’s picture.”
His body drooped with disappointment. “Yes, madam,” he said politely, turning away.
“But wait, Charlie—what do you want the picture for?”
“It’s all right, madam.” He was going out of the room.
“Stop a moment—why do you want it? You do want it, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, his face lit with pleasure. He clasped his hands tight, looking at it. “Oh, yes, yes, madam!”
“What would you do with it? Keep it in your room?”
“I give it to Theresa’s father.”
“Wha-a-a-t?” said Marina. Slowly she absorbed this idea. “I see.” she said. And then, after a pause: “I see . . .” She looked at his hopeful face, thought of Mrs. Skinner, and said suddenly, filled with an undeniably spiteful delight: “I’ll give it to you, Charlie.”
“Madam!” exclaimed Charlie. He even gave a couple of involuntary little steps, like a dance. “Madam, thank you, thank you.”
She was as pleased as he. For a moment they stood smiling delightedly at each other. “I’ll tell Mrs. Skinner that I broke it,” she said. He went to the picture and lifted his hands gently to the great carved frame. “You must be careful not to break it before you get it to her father.” He was staggering as he lifted it down. “Wait!” said Marina suddenly. Checking himself, he stood politely: she saw he expected her to change her mind and take back the gift. “You can’t carry that great thing all the way to the location. I’ll take it for you in the car!”
“Madam,” he said. “Madam . . .” Then, looking helplessly around him for something, someone he could share his joy with, he said: “I’ll tell Theresa now . . .” And he ran from the room like a schoolboy.
Marina went to Mrs. Black and asked that Theresa might have the afternoon off. “She had her afternoon off yesterday,” said that lady sharply.
“She’s going to marry Charlie,” said Marina.
“She can marry him next Thursday, can’t she?”
“No, because I’m taking them both down in the car to the location, to her father, and . . .”
Mrs. Black said resentfully: “She should have asked me herself.”
“It seems to me,” said Marina in that high, acid voice, replying not to the words Mrs. Black had used, but to what she had meant: “It seems to me that if one employs a child of fifteen, and under such conditions, the very least one can do is to assume the responsibility for her; and it seems to me quite extraordinary that you never have the slightest idea what she does, where she lives, or even that she is going to get married.”
“You swallowed the dictionary?” said Mrs. Black, with an ingratiating smile. “I’m not saying she shouldn’t get married; she should have got married before, that’s what I’m saying.”
Marina returned to her flat, feeling Mrs. Black’s resentful eyes on her back: Who the hell does she think she is, anyway?
When Marina and Philip reached the lorry that afternoon that was waiting outside the gate, Theresa and Charlie were already sitting in the back, carefully balancing the picture on their knees. The two white people got in the front and Marina glanced anxiously through the window and said to Philip: “Do drive carefully, dear, Theresa shouldn’t be bumped around.”
“I’d be doing her a favour if I did bump her,” said Philip grimly. He was accompanying Marina unwillingly. “Well, I don’t know what you think you’re going to achieve by it . . .” he had said. However, here he was, looking rather cross.
They drove down the tree-lined, shady streets, through the business area that was all concrete and modernity, past the slums where the half-caste people lived, past the factory sites,
where smoke poured and hung, past the cemetery where angels and crosses gleamed white through the trees—they drove five miles, which was the distance Theresa had been expected to walk every morning and evening to her work. They turned off the main road into the location, and at once everything was quite different. No tarmac road, no avenues of beautiful trees here. Dust roads, dust paths, led from all directions inwards to the centre, where the housing area was. Dust lay thick and brown on the veld trees, the great blue sky was seen through a rust-coloured haze, dust gritted on the lips and tongue, and at once the lorry began to jolt and bounce. Marina looked back and saw Charlie and Theresa jerking and sliding with the lorry, under the great picture, clinging to each other for support, and laughing because of the joy-ride. It was the first time Theresa had ridden in a white man’s car; and she was waving and calling shrill greetings to the groups of black children who ran after them.
They drove fast, bumping, so as to escape from the rivers of dust that spurted up from the wheels, making a whirling red cloud behind them, from which crowds of loitering Africans ran, cursing and angry. Soon they were in an area that was like a cheap copy of the white man’s town; small houses stood in blocks, intersected by dust streets. They were two-roomed shacks with tin roofs, the sun blistering off them; and Marina said angrily: “Isn’t it awful, isn’t it terrible?”
Had she known that these same houses represented years of campaigning by the liberals of the city, against white public opinion, which obstinately held that houses for natives were merely another manifestation of that Fabian spirit from England which was spoiling the fine and uncorrupted savage, she might have been more respectful. Soon they left this new area and were among the sheds and barns that housed dozens of workers each, a state of affairs which caused Marina the acutest indignation. Another glance over her shoulder showed Theresa and Charlie giggling together like a couple of children as they tried to hold the picture still on their knees, for it slid this way and that as if it had a spiteful life of its own. “Ask Charlie where we must go,” said Philip; and Marina tapped on the glass till Charlie turned his head and watched her gestures till he understood and pointed onwards with his thumb. More of these brick shacks, with throngs of Africans at their doors, who watched the car indifferently until they saw it was a Government car, and then their eyes grew wary, suspicious. And now, blocking their way, was a wire fence, and Marina looked back at Charlie for instructions, and he indicated they should stop. Philip pulled the lorry up against the fence and Charlie and Theresa jumped down from the back, came forwards, and Charlie said apologetically: “Now we must walk, madam.” The four went through a gap in the fence and saw a slope of soiled and matted grass that ended in a huddle of buildings on the banks of a small river.
Charlie pointed at it, and went ahead with Theresa. He held the picture on his shoulders, walking bent under it. They passed through the grass, which smelled unpleasant and was covered by a haze of flies, and came to another expanse of dust, in which were scattered buildings—no, not buildings, shacks, extraordinary huts thrown together out of every conceivable substance, with walls perhaps of sacking, or of petrol boxes, roofs of beaten tin, or bits of scrap iron.
“And what happens when it rains?” said Marina, as they wound in and out of these dwellings, among scratching chickens and snarling native mongrels. She found herself profoundly dispirited, as if something inside her said: What’s the use? For this area, officially, did not exist. The law was that all the workers, the servants should live inside the location, or in one of the similar townships. But there was never enough room. People overflowed into such makeshift villages everywhere, but as they were not supposed to be there the police might at any moment swoop down and arrest them. Admittedly the police did not often swoop, as the white man must have servants, the servants must live somewhere—and so it all went on, year after year. The Government, from time to time, planned a new housing estate. On paper, all around the white man’s city, were fine new townships for the blacks. One had even been built, and to this critical visitors (usually those Fabians from overseas) were taken, and came away impressed. They never saw these slums. And so all the time, every day, the black people came from their reserves, their kraals, drawn to the white man’s city, to the glitter of money, cinemas, fine clothes; they came in their thousands, no one knew how many, making their own life, as they could, in such hovels. It was all hopeless, as long as Mrs. Black, Mr. Black, Mrs. Pond were the voters with the power; as long as the experts and administrators such as Philip had to work behind Mrs. Pond’s back—for nothing is more remarkable than that democratic phenomenon, so clearly shown in this continent, where members of Parliament, civil servants (experts, in short) spend half their time and energy earnestly exhorting Mrs. Pond: For heaven’s sake have some sense before it is too late; if you don’t let us use enough money to house and feed these people, they’ll rise and cut your throats. To which reasonable plea for self-preservation, Mrs. Pond merely turns a sullen and angry stare, muttering: They’re getting out of hand, that’s what it is, they’re getting spoilt.
In a mood of grim despair. Marina found herself standing with Philip in front of a small shack that consisted of sheets of corrugated iron laid loosely together, resting in the dust, like a child’s card castle. It was bound at the corners with string, and big stones held the sheet of iron that served as roof from flying away in the first gust of wind.
“Here, madam,” said Charlie. He thrust Theresa forward. She went shyly to the dark oblong that was the door, leaned inwards, and spoke some words in her own language. After a moment an old man stooped his way out. He was perhaps not so old—impossible to say. He was lean and tall, with a lined and angry face, and eyes that lifted under heavy lids to peer at Marina and Philip. Towards Charlie he directed a long, deadly stare, then turned away. He wore a pair of old khaki trousers, an old, filthy singlet that left his long, sinewed arms bare: all the bones and muscles of his neck and shoulders showed taut and knotted under the skin.
Theresa, smiling bashfully, indicated Philip and Marina; the old man offered some words of greeting; but he was angry, he did not want to see them, so the two white people fell back a little.
Charlie now came forward with the picture and leaned it gently against the iron of the shack in a way which said: “Here you are, and that’s all you are going to get from me.” In these surroundings those fierce Scottish cattle seemed to shrink a little. The picture that had dominated a room with its expanse of shining glass, its heavy carved frame, seemed not so enormous now. The cattle seemed even rather absurd, shaggy creatures standing in their wet sunset, glaring with a false challenge at the group of people. The old man looked at the picture, and then said something angry to Theresa. She seemed afraid, and came forward, unknotting a piece of cloth that had lain in the folds at her waist. She handed over some small change—about three shillings in all. The old man took the money, shaking it contemptuously in his hand before he slid it into his pocket. Then he spat, showing contempt. Again he spoke to Theresa, in short, angry sentences, and at the end he flung out his arms, as if throwing something away; and she began to cry and shrank back to Charlie. Charlie laid his hand on her shoulder and pressed it; then left her standing alone and went forward to his father-in-law. He smiled, spoke persuasively, indicated Philip and Marina. The old man listened without speaking, his eyes lowered. Those eyes slid sideways to the big picture, a gleam came into them; Charlie fell silent and they all looked at the picture.
The old man began to speak, in a different voice, sad, and hopeless. He was telling how he had wooed his second wife, Theresa’s mother. He spoke of the long courting, according to the old customs, how, with many gifts and courtesies between the clans, the marriage had been agreed on, how the cattle had been chosen, ten great cattle, heavy with good grazing; he told how he had driven them to Theresa’s mother’s family, carefully across the country, so that they might not be tired and thinned by the journey. As he spoke to the two young people he was r
eminding them, and himself, of that time when every action had its ritual, its meaning; he was asking them to contrast their graceless behaviour with the dignity of his own marriages, symbolized by the cattle, which were not to be thought of in terms of money, of simply buying a woman—not at all. They meant so much: a sign of good feeling, a token of union between the clans, an earnest that the woman would be looked after, an acknowledgment that she was someone very precious, whose departure would impoverish her family—the cattle were all these things and many more. The old man looked at Charlie and Theresa and seemed to say: “And what about you? What are you in comparison to what we were then?” Finally he spat again, lifted the picture and went into the dark of his hut. They could see him looking at the picture. He liked it: yes, he was pleased, in his way. But soon he left it leaning against the iron and returned to his former pose—he drew a blanket over his head and shoulders and squatted down inside the door, looking out, but not as if he still saw them or intended to make any further sign towards them.
The four were left standing there, in the dust, looking at each other.
Marina was feeling very foolish. Was that all? And Philip answered by saying brusquely, but uncomfortably: “Well, there’s your wedding for you.”
Theresa and Charlie had linked fingers and were together looking rather awkwardly at the white people. It was an awkward moment indeed—this was the end of it, the two were married, and it was Marina who had arranged the thing. What now?
But there was a more immediate problem. It was still early in the afternoon, the sun slanted overhead, with hours of light in it still, and presumably the newly-married couple would want to be together? Marina said: “Do you want to come back with us in the lorry, or would you rather come later?”
Charlie and Theresa spoke together in their own language, then Charlie said apologetically: “Thank you, madam, we stay.”
African Stories Page 37
