Tales of the New World: Stories

by Sabina Murray

  “But that’s hardly true,” says the Right Honorable Joseph Chamberlain, who happens to be the colonial secretary.

  “Nor is it false. Why don’t you raise the taxes on goods—salt and tobacco. Leave the native his hut. Do we really need to tax that? The very term ‘hut tax’ has a predatory ring to it, as if we colonizers were capable of no human compassion nor kindness—”

  “But the tax is a civilizing influence,” says Chamberlain.

  “How is it civilizing?”

  “Civilized countries have taxes,” says her host with a chuckle. He seems to think that this is helping Mary, a little sand to put out an awkward fire.

  “So we’re some sort of missionaries—missionaries for profit. We take their money and in return for being taxed they’re civilized?”

  “Surely order is a good thing,” says Chamberlain.

  Mary knows that now they are attributing her obstinacy to female lack of understanding. She is reminded of that nasty drawing-room suffragette (what was her name?) from last Saturday and wishes she were here to see what happens when women and their intellects come together with men. “The hut tax is a mistake. There are better and more peaceful ways to raise money—more money—and your adherence to this foolish policy shows your complete blindness to the reality of the situation.”

  “And I suppose that’s all you have to say on the matter!” says Lieutenant Colonel Nathan.

  “There you’re wrong, sir,” says Mary. “I have much to say around tables like this, in drawing rooms, across fancy desks in government offices, and I’ve been known to put pen to paper.”

  “I’ve seen your views in the Spectator,” says the previously silent Lady Enfield. She stuffs an oyster into her mouth. “You think we should bring liquor to the native.”

  “As a trader of liquor in Africa, I see its value. I have not introduced liquor to the Africans. They have their own. And I’ve seen more drunks in one hour on the Vauxhall Road than in all the time I spent in West Africa.”

  “And,” says Lady Enfield, “you also support polygamy.”

  “It comes as a result of a village wanting to be responsible for all its people, all the children, all the women who lose their husbands at an appalling rate. The African woman is never lonely; she never wonders who will feed her children should something happen to her.” Mary’s voice is quavering. “And all these blessings are vilified by the notion of one man having many wives. This—let’s call it the polygamy aspect—overshadows all the goodness, and generosity, and love that exist within the native village.” She’d be happy to be back with those savages and not explaining the wrong-mindedness of the hut tax to people who define wrong-mindedness as that which they do not think.

  “You have very strong feelings, Miss Kingsley,” says Lieutenant Colonel Nathan.

  “They’re actually thoughts—not feelings—just like you have.” She smiles bravely, but she thinks herself an idiot. She is attracted to this man—such a rare sensation that at first she had not identified it, but thought herself frightened of him—and now she has rolled out all the old eccentric beliefs in her usual inelegant manner. Her face—splotched red with emotion—is reflected back to her in the lens of Lady Enfield’s lorgnette.

  Mary decides to walk the four miles to Alice Stopford Green’s house. She knows that this will make her late, and she’s fine with it. Alice, widowed for some time, writes books on English history. She likes to have people over to talk about “things,” people like Winston Churchill (a young war correspondent), John St Loe Strachey (the editor of the Spectator), Henry James (an American author), and others even more famous than that. Sometimes Florence Nightingale makes an appearance and that’s good with Mary: she and Mary can talk nursing and, if nothing else, Mary is an accomplished nurse.

  Mary has seriously considered begging off from this salon because her mind is in such disorder. Matthew Nathan’s latest letter is in her pocket, already disintegrating at the seams: she’s memorized it. She can play it in her head, dictated by Matthew Nathan’s voice, and this fact both embarrasses her and makes her giddy. He’s written, “It was your personality rather than your work that engaged my attention,” in his fine, although somewhat cramped handwriting. He’s written that he wants to understand her. No one has ever wanted to understand Mary. She would have been happy enough to stay in her apartment composing her reply to Matthew Nathan, a letter that is now over twenty pages long, but Alice has insisted that she come. Roddie Casement is back from Africa, but not for long, and has asked after her. Edward Morel, a Welsh journalist who has been very positive about both her books, Travels in West Africa and now West African Studies, has indicated that he might show up. All these people whom she now knows and who know her! She likes the lecturing well enough and the lecture fees in particular, but being a celebrity puts you in the same circle as other well-known people, and what could be more inconvenient? But she’ll be happy to see Alice, who has just finished another book. And she missed the last gathering at Alice’s because she was nursing an aunt back from a cold: all these people falling ill, invaliding themselves, and seldom dying. Duty. Duty. Duty. Sounds like a death march to Mary and she’s happy to be escaping it—not to be needed—for a few hours. Alice has indicated that the conversation should be lively and of the variety where Mary’s views are valued and entertaining. And hadn’t Mary said for Alice to invite her when Casement returned to London?

  So the walk is a compromise and she hopes that by the time she reaches Alice’s house, her long trudge through the streets of London will account for the disorder in her appearance and manner, her general flightiness, her difficulty in stringing an argument—a sentence!—together.

  Mary hands her hat and coat to the maid and notices the maid’s dismissive look at her poor garments, the mud on her boots.

  “Here’s Mary,” says Alice, appearing in the hallway.

  “Am I late?” Mary asks, hopefully.

  “Not at all. It’s just Roddie and me. Come have a smoke before the proper folk show up.”

  “How many proper folk are coming?”

  “Don’t sound so terrified,” says Alice.

  “Anyone but Sarah Bernhardt,” says Mary.

  Casement is standing by the drawing room window. He looks thin and aged, and Mary wonders how his health has been. “There you are, Mr. Casement. Pleased to make your acquaintance again.”

  “As am I. And call me Roddie. May I call you Mary?”

  “Why not?”

  “What have you been up to, Mary?” Casement asks. “I hear you’re causing all kinds of trouble with the hut tax.”

  “All you need to do is ask and you get my opinion. There’s a rumor that Governor Cardew is going to be recalled from Sierra Leone, and I hope he’ll take his foolish hut tax with him.”

  “But if they recall Cardew,” says Casement, “they will install Nathan. And he supports the hut tax.”

  “No he doesn’t,” says Mary.

  “Yes he does,” says Casement.

  “Who’d you hear that from?” asks Mary.

  “The Right Honorable Joseph Chamberlain, colonial secretary,” says Casement.

  “Well, you can’t trust everything he says,” says Alice. She’s being facetious.

  “I think Lieutenant Colonel Nathan is still gathering information,” says Mary.

  “Has he consulted you?” asks Casement.

  “As a matter of fact—”

  “If he wasn’t a Jew, he’d be one of the most eligible bachelors in London,” says Alice.

  “I sense our fine conversation descending into gossip!” Casement waggles his eyebrows dramatically.

  Mary, holding tightly to her cigarette, watches Alice cast about for the matches.

  “Are you all right, Mary?” Alice asks. “You’ve gone red all of a sudden.”

  “I’m quite well,” Mary responds, tight-lipped. “It’s just the warm air after my walk.”

  “Well, the hut tax will be forgotten soon,” says Casement
.

  “What do you know, Roddie?” asks Alice. The match flares—a light for Mary.

  “Just rumors. But if you really want to be au courant, you should start looking at Natal.”

  “Natal, Transvaal, that’s hardly news,” says Alice.

  “What do you think, Mary?” asks Casement.

  “About what?”

  “About the Boers!” says Alice. She is about to light Mary’s cigarette but holds back. She gives Mary a frank and searching look. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

  Mary is not feeling all right. She has sent her letter off to Matthew Nathan and now wonders if she has lost her mind. If she has, is it important? Is there anyone to notice and really care? Probably. All these dizzying dinner eaters going from one fancy trough to another, making “conversation,” making it out of her! And who cares about any of them? What do they know? What have they accomplished in their lives, other than to make money, have children, cheat and lie and destroy?

  “Who, Mary,” say the fairies, “who cheats and lies and destroys?”

  Has Mary been speaking? She must have been muttering out loud in her fevered state. She’ll crawl back into bed, realize an hour later that she hasn’t moved—hasn’t noticed the passing of time—but her jaw has fallen open and her mouth is dry.

  “Still in bed?” says Charley.

  “Still feeling poorly?” says Charley.

  “You know what? I’ve decided that the next time you go digging around Africa, I’m going with you,” says Charley.

  “Why should you have all the fun?” says Charley.

  And then one day, “Matthew Nathan left his calling card. You should pull yourself together. He’s visiting this afternoon.”

  Has Matthew Nathan relented? Does he now wish to understand her? Does he find her personality engaging once more? The fairies sit at the end of her bed, chattering away.

  “Turned into her mother, this one has.”

  “But her mother had Mary.”

  “And Mary has no one.”

  No one. No one. She should take a draft of something. What kills people? Arsenic? That would entail making her way to the chemist. Her mirror announces that although she’s thirty-six, she looks ten years older. Would powder help? A hairbrush? Hairpins?

  But Matthew Nathan never shows up. He sends his regrets on another cream-colored card.

  The bell is ringing downstairs. Where’s the girl? Surely she’s back from the shopping. And would it kill Charley to check it himself? Doesn’t Mary have enough to handle with the packing? Problem is, it’s a small trunk and has proven quite stubborn, refusing half her things.

  The bell rings again.

  Mary is down to deciding between books and clothes. She has a hard time believing that there will be no time to read; the three-week journey alone makes books a necessity, and surely they have clothes in Cape Town. Besides, she’ll have to wear a nurse uniform the vast majority of the time, regardless. And if she leaves all these ridiculous letters of introduction behind, no one will invite her to dinner anyway and she can leave the topless muslin thing here in London, where it belongs.

  And there’s the bell again.

  “Get the door, Mary,” say the fairies. “Get it. Get it. Get it.”

  “Shut up, you lot!” says Mary. And she adds, “I’ll be rid of you soon enough.”

  The bell rings and rings.

  Mary turns to the trunk, then to the door, beyond which are the stairs, the street, the world. Who would be so persistent to be ringing all this time? Then she hears a key in the lock and she knows the girl’s back from the market, bringing the mysterious bell ringer (whom Mary’s already nicknamed Quasimodo) into her house.

  “I’ve been out there five minutes at least,” comes the voice. It’s Alice and she’s angry. “Has everyone gone mad?”

  “Absolutely,” says Mary, allowing herself to appear at the top of the stairs.

  “There you are,” says Alice. “Why have you been hiding?”

  “For the precise reason you’ve been looking for me,” says Mary.

  “I’ve been looking for you because you need a voice of reason. There’s no point in acting like a jilted—”

  “Rather you didn’t announce such sentiments up the stairs.” Mary jerks her head toward her room in invitation.

  Alice looks at the trunk, looks at the emptying closet, looks at the stack of books.

  “Now, what did you need to say to me?” asks Mary.

  “You’re acting like a jilted schoolgirl.”

  “Is this what schoolgirls do? Because I’ve never heard of any schoolgirl, jilted or otherwise, leaving for South Africa. I’m an able nurse and an expert in African infectious diseases. I can be most useful in one of the field hospitals.”

  “Did Matthew Nathan make any promises?”

  “You’re more fixated on him than I am.” Mary smiles, coaxing a smile out of Alice in the process. “No one made any promises.” Mary shrugs. “I might have said a couple of things, and I won’t lie to you. There are other scenarios I would have accepted into my life, but I do want to be in Africa—”

  “But as a scholar! A naturalist and anthropologist!”

  Mary lowers her voice. “These are my choices, Alice. Either I go to South Africa as a nurse and go alone, or I return to West Africa and take Charley with me.”

  “You need different choices,” says Alice.

  “Well, I could add to that staying in London and nursing every hypochondriac my family can throw at me, doing the occasional lecture—”

  “Seeing me whenever you want to.”

  “Alice,” Mary says. “Don’t think you’re not important to me. But you have to see it my way: South Africa brings me closer to the Congo. I’ll work my way up north eventually.”

  Alice spins the globe on Mary’s desk. She stops it in her hands. “Are you sure Cape Town is actually closer? It doesn’t really look much nearer than London.”

  “Stay, Alice,” says Mary. “Stay for lunch. Take the train with me to Southampton tomorrow. See me off. It might be a while before we get a chance to chat.”

  VI.

  Hard to believe that here she’s actually heeding the call of duty. How could there be anything noble at all in walking through this pleasant park, the sun shining generously, the grass trimmed back to an unnatural flatness, the paths laid out neat as lines on a chessboard, that cake-like mountain thrown up against the shock of blue sky with a frill of cloud spilling down from it. And then Lion’s Head with its paws pulled coyly in, looking out over the ocean to the south and the Antarctic.

  There’s a guinea hen ducking in and out of the roses, no doubt lost, as is Mary.

  Where is the war? Mary orients herself to Table Mountain. Natal and Pretoria are over to her right, somewhere to the north. That’s where Mary’s going, where everything converges: Boers, English, Rhodes, Kruger, soldiers, farmers, cholera, gangrene, enteric fever, bayonets, and, of course, gold. The guinea hen pecks and pecks, full of purpose in the dirt, accomplishing, to Mary’s untrained eye, nothing. Sometimes—in states of abstracted simplicity that feel like enlightenment—Mary finds it absurd that the English should have a war in Africa, and with the Dutch. Something about it reeks of drawing-room blueprints and false bravado: a sort of heavily armed and highly dangerous picnic. A good game for men to play at, located in a place where it can’t offend the women with its outrageous stench. But of course, in her moments of reason, she knows that these Europeans want to be in Africa and there’s nothing for them to do once here but to kill every African who wanders into their sights, and, on occasion, each other.

  Hard to think about all that death in this bath of sunshine, where, if she moves her head a little to the left so as not to see the drunken black passed out facedown beside the hedge, all is lovely: the best of England (roses) joined together with the best of Africa (light), although she’s caught herself doing it again: abstracted simplicity doesn’t enlighten—it just makes you simple. Any fo
ol knows that the bastard child of this union is the war.

  At the other side of the rose garden, she sees a couple of nurses hurrying along in their little white caps and capes. Mary breaks into a run to catch up with them, because they’re walking, in the manner of nurses, very quickly.

  “Hello,” says Mary, struggling to catch her breath. “Could you point me in the direction of the Nursing Administration?”

  “That building there,” says the older one, pointing with a clean and cracked-looking hand, the knuckles rubbed red and tender. “Go to the third floor. And quick. The office closes in a half hour for lunch.”

  The younger nurse, bobbing her head like the guinea hen, gives an eager nod of agreement and encouragement. And Mary’s off—up the pathway, up the stairs. These practical nurses are her kind of women: short on conversation, big on action, functional, plain, and tidy. She raps at the door with an efficient, nurse-like knock.

  “In,” says the voice.

  Mary enters. She sees a very small man sitting behind an enormous desk. Two tall stacks of papers rise on either side of him with an architectural intensity. He sits there: a man framed by his work.

  “Sit,” he says.

  Mary obeys.

  “Volunteer?” he asks.

  “Yes, that’s right,” she says.

  “Papers?”

  “I have my passport.”

  “No,” says the man. He’s been forced to use a word that, apparently, he was saving for some other, more worthy occasion. “Assignment papers, from London.”

  “No.” Now she’s started hoarding her words. There’s a standoff. Mary looks at him, blinking.

  “Anyone know you were coming?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “They said not to.”

  “Why?”

  “They didn’t give me a good reason, which is why I’m here.”