The Complete Short Stories Read online

  ‘How old are you, now?’ Donald said.

  ‘Nearly thirteen.’

  ‘It was two years before you were born — that would make it fifteen years ago, when Old Tuys…’

  Old Tuys had already been married for some time to a Dutch girl from Pretoria. Long before he took the job at Chakata’s he knew of her infidelities. They had one peculiarity: her taste was exclusively for Englishmen. The young English settlers whom she met in the various establishments where Tuys was employed were, guilty or not, invariably accosted by Tuys: ‘You committed adultery with my wife, you swine.’ There might be a fight, or Tuys would threaten his gun. However it might be, and whether or not these young men were his wife’s lovers, Tuys was usually turned off the job.

  It was said he was going to shoot his wife and arrange it to look like an accident. Simply because this intention was widely reported, he could not have carried out the plan successfully, even if he did, in fact, contemplate the deed. Certainly he beat her up from time to time.

  Tuys hoped eventually to get a farm of his own. Chakata, who knew of his troubles, took Tuys on to learn the tobacco sheds. Tuys and his wife moved into a small house on Chakata’s land. ‘Any trouble with the lady, Tuys,’ said Chakata, ‘come to me, for in a young country like this, with four white men to every one white woman, there is bound to be trouble.’

  There was trouble the first week with a trooper.

  ‘Look here, Tuys,’ said Chakata, ‘I’ll talk to her.’ He had frequently in his life had the painful duty of giving his servants a talking-to on sex. At the Pattersons’ home in England it had been a routine affair.

  Hatty Tuys was not beautiful: in fact she was dark and scraggy. However, Chakata not only failed to reform her, he succumbed to her. She wept. She said she hated Tuys.

  Donald paused in his story to remark to Daphne, ‘Mind you, this sort of thing doesn’t happen in England.’

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ said Daphne.

  ‘Oh well, there are love affairs but they take time. You have to sort of build them up with a woman. In England, a man of Chakata’s importance might feel sorry for a slut if she started to cry, but he wouldn’t just make love to her on the spot. The climate’s cooler there, you see, and there are a lot more girls.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Daphne. ‘What did Uncle Chakata do next?’

  ‘Well, as soon as he had played the fool with Mrs Tuys he felt sorry. He told her it was a moment of weakness and it would never occur again. But it did.’

  ‘Did Tuys find out?’

  ‘Tuys found out. He went to Mrs Chakata and tried to rape her.’

  ‘Didn’t it come off?’

  ‘No, it didn’t come off.’

  ‘It must have been the whisky in her breath. It must have put him off,’ said Daphne.

  ‘In England,’ said Donald, ‘girls your age don’t know very much about these things.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Daphne.

  ‘It’s all different there. Well, Mrs Chakata complained to Chakata, and wanted him to shoot Tuys. He refused, of course, and he gave Tuys a rise and made him manager. And from that day he wouldn’t look at Mrs Tuys, wouldn’t even look at her. Whenever he caught sight of her about the farm, he looked the other way. In the end she wrote to Chakata to say she was mad in love with him and if she couldn’t have him she would shoot herself. The note was written in block letters, in Afrikaans.’

  ‘Chakata would never answer it, then,’ Daphne said.

  ‘You are right,’ said Donald. ‘And Mrs Tuys shot herself. Old Tuys has sworn to be revenged on Chakata some day. That’s why Mrs Chakata has a gun at her bedside. She has implored Chakata to get rid of Old Tuys. So he should, of course.’

  ‘He can’t, very well, when you think of it,’ said Daphne.

  ‘It’s only his remorse,’ said Donald, ‘and his English honour. If Old Tuys was an Englishman, Daphne, he would have cleared off the farm long ago. But no, he remains, he has sworn on the Bible to be revenged.’

  ‘It must be our climate,’ said Daphne. ‘I have never liked the way Old Tuys looks at me.’

  ‘The Colony is a savage place,’ he said. He rose and poured himself a whisky. ‘I grant you,’ he said, ‘we have the natives under control. I grant you we have the leopards under control —’

  ‘Oh, remember Moses,’ said Daphne. Her former playmate, Moses, had been got by a leopard two years ago.

  ‘That was exceptional. We are getting control over malaria. But we haven’t got the savage in ourselves under control. This place brings out the savage in ourselves.’ He finished his drink and poured another. ‘If you go to England,’ he said, ‘don’t come back.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Daphne.

  She was ten minutes late when she arrived at the car. The party had been anxious about her.

  ‘Where did you get to? You slipped away … we asked everywhere … John Coates said in a mock-girlish tone, ‘Oh, she’s been listening to the go-away bird out on the lone wide veldt.’

  ‘Five more years and then I go to England. Four years … three … Meanwhile, life in the Colony seemed to become more exciting every year. In fact, it went on as usual, but Daphne’s capacity for excitement developed as she grew into her teens.

  She had a trip to Kenya to stay with a married cousin, another trip to Johannesburg with Mrs Coates to buy clothes.

  ‘Typical English beauty Daphne’s turning out to be,’ said Chakata. In reality she was too blonde to be typically English; she took after her father’s family, the Cape du Toits, who were a mixture of Dutch and Huguenot stock.

  At sixteen she passed her matric and her name was entered for a teachers’ training college in the Capital. During the holidays she flirted with John Coates, who would drive her round the countryside in the little German Volkswagen which his father had obtained for him. They would go on Sunday afternoons to the Williams Hotel on the great main road for tea and a swim in the bathing-pool with all the district who converged there weekly from farms and towns.

  ‘In England,’ Daphne would tell him, ‘you can bathe in the rivers. No bilharzia there, no crocs.

  ‘There’s going to be a war in Europe,’ said John.

  Daphne would sit on the hotel stoep in her smart new linen slacks, sipping her gin and lime, delighted and amazed to be grown-up, to be greeted by her farming neighbours.

  “Lo, Daphne, how are your mealies?’

  ‘Not too bad, how are yours?’

  ‘Halo, Daphne, how’s the tobacco?’

  ‘Rotten, Old Tuys says.’

  ‘I hear Chakata’s sold La Flèche.’

  ‘Well, he’s had an offer, actually.’

  She had been twice to a dance at Williams Hotel. Young Billy Williams, who was studying medicine at Cape Town, proposed marriage to her, but as everyone knew, she was to go to college in the Capital and then to England to stay with the English Pattersons for a couple of years before she could decide about marriage.

  War broke out at the beginning of her first term at the training college. All her old young men, as well as her new, became important and interesting in their uniforms and brief appearances on leave.

  She took up golf. Sometimes, after a hole, when she was following her companions to the next tee, she would lag behind or even stop in her tracks.

  ‘Feeling all right, Daphne?’

  ‘Oh, I was only listening to the go-away bird.’

  ‘Interested in ornithology?’

  ‘Oh yes, fairly, you know.’

  When she returned to the farm after her first term at the college Chakata gave her a revolver.

  ‘Keep it beside your bed,’ he said.

  She took it without comment.

  Next day, he said, ‘Where did you go yesterday afternoon?’

  ‘Oh, for a trek across the veldt, you know.’

  ‘Anywhere special?’

  ‘Only to Makata’s kraal. He’s quite determined to hang on to that land the Beresfords are after. He’s got a wife for
his son, he paid five head.’ Makata was the local chief. Daphne enjoyed squatting in the shade of his great mud hut drinking the tea specially prepared for her, and though the rest of the Colony looked with disfavour on such visits, it was something which Chakata and his children had always done, and no one felt inclined to take up the question with Chakata. Chakata wasn’t just anyone.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Chakata to Daphne, ‘you always carry a gun?’

  ‘Well, yesterday,’ said Daphne, ‘I didn’t actually.’

  ‘Always,’ said Chakata, ‘take a gun when you go out on the veldt. It’s a golden rule. There’s nothing more exasperating than to see a buck dancing about in the bush and to find yourself standing like a fool without a gun.

  Since she was eight and had first learnt to shoot, this had been a golden rule of Chakata’s. Many a time she had been out on her own, weighed down with the gun, and had seen dozens of buck and simply had not bothered to shoot. She hated venison, in any case. Tinned salmon was her favourite dish.

  He seemed to know her thoughts. ‘We’re always short of buck for the dogs. Remember there’s a war on. Remember always,’ said Chakata, ‘to take a gun. I hear on the wireless,’ he added, ‘that there’s a leopard over in the Temwe valley. The mate has young. It’s got two men, so far.’

  ‘Uncle Chakata, that’s a long way off,’ Daphne said explosively.

  ‘Leopards can travel,’ said Chakata. He looked horribly put out.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Daphne.

  ‘And you ought to ride more,’ he said, ‘it’s far better exercise than walking.’

  She saw that he was not really afraid of her meeting the leopard, nor did he need meat for the dogs; and she thought of how, yesterday afternoon, she had been followed all the way to the kraal by Old Tuys. He had kept to the bush, and seemed not to know he had been observed. She had been glad that several parties of natives had passed her on the way. Afterwards, when she was taking leave of Makata, he had offered to send his nephew to accompany her home. This was a customary offer: she usually declined it. This time, however, she had accepted the escort, who plodded along behind her until she dismissed him at the edge of the farm. Daphne did not mention this incident to Chakata.

  That afternoon when she set off for tea at the Mission, she was armed. Next day Chakata gave her the old Mercedes for herself ‘You walk too much,’ he said.

  It was no use now, checking off the years before she should go to England. She climbed Donald Cloete’s kopje: ‘Are you sober, Donald, or —?’

  ‘I’m drunk, go away.

  Towards the end of her course at the training college, when she was home for the Christmas holidays, she rode her horse along the main wide road to the dorp. She did some shopping; she stopped to talk to the Cypriot tailor who supplied the district with drill shorts, and to the Sephardic Jew who kept the largest Kaffir store.

  ‘Live and let live,’ said Chakata. But these people were never at the farm, and this was Daphne’s only chance of telling them of her college life.

  She called in at the Indian laundry to leave a bottle of hair oil which, for some unfathomable reason, Chakata had promised to give to the Indian.

  She had tea with the chemist’s wife, then returned to the police station where she had left the horse. Here she stopped for about an hour chatting with two troopers whom she had known since her childhood. It was late when she set off up the steep main road, keeping well to the side of the tarmac strips on which an occasional car would pass, or a native on a bicycle. She knew all the occupants of the cars, and as they slowed down to pass her they would call a greeting. She had gone about five miles when she came to a winding section of the road with dense bush on either side. This part was notorious for accidents. The light was failing rapidly, and as she heard a car approaching round the bend ahead of her she reined in to the side. Immediately the car appeared its lights were switched on, but before they dazzled her she had recognized Old Tuys at the wheel of the shooting-brake. As he approached he gave no sign of slowing down. Not only did Old Tuys keep up his speed, he brought the car off the strips and passed within a few inches of the animal.

  Daphne had once heard a trooper say that for a human being to fall in the bush at sundown or after was like a naked main appearing in class at a girl’s school. As she landed in the dark thicket every living thing screeched, rustled, fled, and flapped in a feminine sort of panic. The horse was away along the road, its hooves beating frantic diminishing signals in the dusk. Daphne’s right shin was giving her intense pain. She was fairly sure Old Tuys had stopped the car. She rose and limped a few steps, pushing her way through the vegetation and branches, to the verge of the road. Here she stopped, for she heard footsteps on the road a few feet away. Old Tuys was waiting for her. She looked round her and quickly saw there was no chance of penetrating further into the bush with safety. The sky was nearly dark now, and the pain in her leg was threatening to overcome her. Daphne had never fainted, even when, once, she had wanted to, during an emergency operation for a snake-bite, the sharp blade cutting into her unanaesthetized flesh. Now, it seemed that she would faint, and this alarmed her, for she could hear Old Tuys among the crackling branches at the side of the road, and presently could discern his outline. The sound of a native shouting farther up the road intruded upon her desire to faint, and, to resist closing her eyes in oblivion she opened them wide, wider, staring into the darkness.

  Old Tuys got hold of her. He did not speak, but he gripped her arm and dragged her out of the bush and threw her on the ground at the side of the road out of the glare of the headlamps. Daphne screamed and kicked out with her good leg. Old Tuys stood up, listening. A horse was approaching. Suddenly round the bend came a native leading Daphne’s horse. It shied at the sight of the van’s headlights, but the native held it firmly while Old Tuys went to take it.

  ‘Clear off,’ said Tuys to the boy in kitchen Kaffir.

  ‘Don’t go,’ shouted Daphne. The native stood where he was.

  ‘I’ll get you home in the van,’ said Old Tuys. He bent to lift Daphne. She screamed. The native came and stood a little closer.

  Daphne lifted herself to her feet. She was hysterical. ‘Knock him down,’ she ordered the native. He did not move. She realized he would not touch Old Tuys. The Europeans had a name of sticking together, and, whatever the circumstances, to hit a white man would probably lead to prison. However, the native was evidently prepared to wait, and when Old Tuys swore at him and ordered him off, he merely moved a few feet away.

  ‘Get into the van,’ shouted Tuys to Daphne. ‘You been hurt in an accident. I got to take you home.’

  A car came round the bend, and seeing the group by the standing car, stopped. It was Mr Parker the headmaster.

  Old Tuys started the tale about the accident, but Mr Parker was listening to Daphne who limped across to him.

  ‘Take me back to the farm, Mr Parker, for God’s sake.’

  He helped her in and drove off. The native followed with the horse. Old Tuys got into the van and made off in the opposite direction.

  ‘I won’t go into details,’ said Chakata to Daphne next day, ‘but I can’t dismiss Tuys. It goes back to an incident which occurred before you were born. I owe him a debt of honour. Something between men.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Daphne.

  Old Tuys had returned to the farm in the early hours of the morning. Daphne knew that Chakata had waited up for him. She had heard the indeterminate barking of a row between them.

  She sat up in bed with her leg in splints.

  ‘We could be raped and murdered,’ said Mrs Chakata, ‘but Chakata still won’t get rid of the bastard. Chakata would kick his backside out of it if he was a proper man.

  ‘He says it’s because of a debt of honour,’ said Daphne.

  ‘That’s all you get from Chakata. Whatever you do,’ said Mrs Chakata, ‘don’t marry a blerry Englishman. They got no thought for their wives and kids, they only got thought for their blerry honour
.’

  It had always been understood that she was to go to England in 1940, when she was eighteen. But now there was no question of going overseas till the war should end. Daphne had been to see a Colonel, a Judge and a Bishop: she wanted to go to England to join one of the women’s services. They told her there was no hope of an exit permit for England being granted to a civilian. Besides, she was under age: would Chakata give his permission?

  At twenty she took a teaching job in the Capital rather than join any of the women’s services in the Colony, for these seemed to her feeble organizations compared with the real thing.

  She was attracted by the vast new RAF training camps which were being set up. One of them lay just outside the Capital, and most of her free time was spent at sundowners and dances in the mess, or week-end tennis parties at outlying farms where she met dozens of young fighter pilots with their Battle of Britain DFCs. She was in love with them collectively. They were England. Her childhood neighbour, John Coates, was a pilot. He was drafted to England, but his ship and convoy were mined outside the Cape. News of his death reached Daphne just after her twenty-first birthday.

  She drove out to the camp with one of her new English friends to attend a memorial service for John at the RAF chapel. On the way the tyre burst. The car came to a dangerous screeching stop five yards off the road. The young man set about changing the tyre. Daphne stood by.

  He said to her for the third time, ‘OK. All set, Daphne.’ She was craning her head absently.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, bringing her attention back to him. ‘I was listening to the go-away bird.’

  ‘What bird?’

  ‘The grey-crested lourie. You can hear it all over the Colony. You hardly ever see it. It says “Go’way”.’

  He stood listening. ‘I can’t hear a thing.’

  ‘It’s stopped now,’ she said.

  ‘Are there any yellow-hammers here?’ he said.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘They say “a little bit of bread and no cheese”,’ he said.

  ‘D’you find them all over England?’