From his angry rants, Beatrice understands that Thomas Milner was a pastor in a big church in London. His popularity grew the congregation and the bishop was happy but became scared of Thomas Milner’s growing power. It was that fear that created ‘the scandal’ which brought him to Africa. Fabricated, according to Thomas Milner. The bishop would see his punishment, as it would be coming from God; Thomas Milner was sure of it. Though it was not said out loud, Beatrice knows it was a scandal that no one should hear of, a shame-filled incident of some sort. Thomas Milner cursed the bishop for imagining such things and attributing them to him. Beatrice is sure that it was no imagined story taken from the bishop’s mind. She knows enough of Thomas Milner already to know that the story, whatever it is, is true.
Although Thomas Milner’s frustrations at his situation often lead to beatings for Beatrice or being dragged to the bedroom where beatings of another sort take place, she doesn’t mind. She’ll not fight back. She also waits, with a patience Thomas Milner cannot dent. She waits to get away from Cape Town. She cannot escape in the city; she would be lost in its falsity. She needs the natural world where she knows how to navigate.
Reverend Williamson tells Thomas Milner that within the next six months the missionary at the station on the north-east coast will be returning to Germany. Thomas Milner will take his place. This improves his mood considerably until Beatrice realises that she is pregnant. She tries her best to hide it. It is Reverend Williamson’s wife who notices it and asks Beatrice. It could no longer be hidden. When it is discovered that Beatrice will give birth the very month they were meant to travel north, Reverend Williamson tells Thomas Milner that they will need to wait for the next opening at a mission station. Someone else will be posted to the station Thomas Milner had been meant to go to.
The day he’s told this, Thomas Milner arrives at the small house red with fury. He picks Beatrice up and throws her to the ground. He punches her face. He screams at her.
‘You black whore!’ he bellows. ‘You have ruined everything.’
Beatrice can’t hide her surprise. No one knew the truth except Reverend Williamson and the two maids who had taunted her that day, Hannah and Yolanda, who have since left the mission.
‘Oh, you thought you could keep your dirty secret? No, Hannah told me. She told me you are not really white, that you’re like a wild animal, one of the wild Koranna from up north. Posing as white to trap me. And now this. God knows what will come out from between your legs.’
He comes at her again and she kicks him hard in his most vulnerable place. He falls and holds on to himself, shouting obscenities at her, unable to move.
A shift has occurred. If he thought he knew who she was, then it’s all right now to show him as well. She has allowed him his time; now it is over.
She stands up. ‘So now you know me, know me completely. Let’s hope you remember.’
She leaves him lying in the corner of the room.
Chapter Twelve
Today might be the end of everything, Nthebolang thinks. If the Johnsons leave, as they’ve been ordered to by the king, where will she and her mother go? Nthebolang is afraid. She’s mostly afraid for her mother. When last they had to move she got lost in the trauma of it all. Nthebolang never wants that to happen again.
The night before, her mother had rushed into their room. ‘I heard them talking. They must leave,’ her mother had said excitedly.
‘Who?’
‘The Johnsons. He was drunk again. He grabbed a girl in Ntloedibe, pulled her into the bush. I don’t know how a reverend … a Christian … can do such things.’
Ever since they’d arrived in Ntsweng, her mother has followed everything King Sechele has asked of his people. She reads the Bible. She is baptised. She believes in their Jesus. Witchcraft cannot touch a Christian; they’re immune because witchcraft does not exist in Christianity. Nthebolang wonders if things disappear if you close your eyes to them, but her experience has shown her that this is not the case.
‘So now?’ Nthebolang asks.
‘Now King Sechele says they must leave. He never liked Dr Johnson. Mmapitse told me he thinks Dr Johnson is a fraud.’
Nthebolang doesn’t like hearing that her mother spoke with Mmapitse, a known herbalist. Nthebolang wonders how Christians interacted with these types of people. Although she doesn’t say it out loud; she knows the Bakwena are Christians to the extent that it doesn’t trouble their traditional beliefs. Even her mother, who clung to Christianity like a lifeboat, went to Mmapitse for medicine and once or twice for divining with the bones. But Nthebolang doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like Mmapitse; she never has.
‘If they go, what happens to us?’ Nthebolang says. ‘We’ve lived here for a long time. It’s our home.’ They’d been in Ntsweng for eleven years.
‘Nothing.’ Her mother’s face is set firm, a thin shell of resolve over a mass of fear.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean this is our home. We stay put.’
‘With no missionaries to take care of?’ Nthebolang says.
‘Yes. We’ll keep the place tidy, ready for the next missionary. The king will surely bring another.’
It seems an uncertain plan. As long as they are not pushed out of the village and forced to roam the land again, Nthebolang will cling to even this whiff of a plan.
The next morning the Johnsons are packing up the wagon to leave and Nthebolang slips away. Except for the uncertainty of their living arrangements, Nthebolang is glad to see the Johnsons leave. She’s tired of Rachel and the way she treats her. And Dr Johnson is beginning to see Nthebolang, now developing into a woman, as someone he could take during one of his drunken midnight escapades. Twice already she has escaped from his grip; the last time only a hard shove against his unstable big body enabled her to get away. Let them go, she thinks. It’s better.
She steals one of Rachel’s books and hides it under her dress. She takes it out once she arrives at her secret place. Slipping through the small opening between the two biggest rocks, she sits down in the middle of the small room created there. A camelthorn growing next to the largest boulder provides a sort of makeshift roof to her hidden room.
She sits back and opens the book. It’s one of her favourites, Gulliver’s Travels. Lost in the book, at the part where the Lilliputians turn against Gulliver and he’s trying to escape, she only notices someone is there when the light from the small opening is blocked. She looks up to see Motsumi.
‘I knew I’d find you here. I might have guessed you stole one of those creatures’ books too.’
Nthebolang laughs. ‘I told my mother to try to convince them that the books are far too heavy and take up too much space to take with them. I hope she wins.’
‘I hope this doesn’t mean you’re leaving.’
‘I hope so too. My mother thinks we can stay until the next missionary arrives.’
Motsumi smiles. ‘I can’t let my future wife get away just when she’s coming of age.’
‘I’ve told you time and again I will not marry you,’ Nthebolang says.
‘Who will you marry then? You don’t know anyone else. No one talks to you but me.’
‘Maybe I’ll leave Ntsweng and marry someone from Lilliput.’ Nthebolang smiles, knowing Motsumi doesn’t read and knows nothing of the magical places inside books.
‘What is this Lilliput? I’ll fight any man from that place. You know you will marry me and only me.’
‘We’ll see.’
They play this game all the time. They’ve been secret friends for many years now, since that day when he told her she should learn to lose. They liked meeting out here away from others. In the village there are too many judgemental eyes. Motsumi is royalty; they would not like him spending time with someone tainted by witchcraft.
He takes something from the leather bag hanging across his chest. It’s wrapped in a cloth.
‘What’s that?’ Nthebolang asks.
He opens the cloth. Nthebol
ang screams – it looks like the hand of a child. Motsumi tries to calm her. ‘It’s only a baboon hand. My brother Baatweng and I caught a baboon in our trap yesterday.’
‘It’s hideous. What do you want with such a thing?’
‘Mmapitse will give me money for it. I think I can get two or three shillings. I’ll finally have enough for my own gun. Next trip to Griqualand with my father I’m getting one.’
‘What does she want with that?’
‘She uses it to make powerful medicines; a baboon hand is very magical.’ He pushes it at her. ‘Touch it.’
‘I will not. I’m a Christian, not a barbarian like you.’
Motsumi laughs. ‘Fine, call me all the names you want. My ancestors protect me; all you have is a starving white man hanging on a cross.’
‘You should stay away from all of that … from Mmapitse,’ Nthebolang warns. She looks up at the sky; the rain clouds are developing in the afternoon heat. If the Johnsons’ departure is blessed with rain, Nthebolang will feel better about everything. And if the books are left behind.
‘It’s too late if you think I won’t bewitch you to make sure you marry only me,’ he teases. ‘I’ve done it already. I know you love me.’
‘Love has nothing to do with it. Your mother will find you a wife. You’re her only son and she would not leave something as unreliable as love to come into it.’
Motsumi moves closer to her. ‘Will you let me at least kiss you today?’
How many times has he asked this question? She will act her role as chaste, upstanding girl, though inside she is always excited and honoured when he says such things. She is not a girl whom a family would want their son to marry. The fact that a handsome well-placed boy likes her matters, even if the reality is that nothing will ever come of it.
‘No, you’ll not kiss me today just like you have not kissed me all the other days that you asked me.’
‘Why? If we kiss, it means you’ll have to be my wife. There will be no turning back.’
She knows that’s nonsense. Perhaps it’s the mood of the day, the uncertainty of her future, or the sound of thunder in the distance; whatever it is, Nthebolang touches his face gently. His cheek is still smooth. Although he’s two years older than her, he’s not started growing a beard, but he’s grown tall and wide across the shoulders. He’s clinging to the last remnants of his boyhood, already almost a memory.
Motsumi smiles and does not ruin the moment by speaking, which Nthebolang is happy about. Instead, he kisses her very gently, surprisingly gently, on the lips. Then he sits back and looks up at the sky. She sees he is smiling.
‘It was nice then?’ she asks.
‘Beyond that. I’ll remember this day always. I know you think I’m a stupid boy who thinks about stupid things. Who doesn’t believe in a civilised god and instead believes in his ancestors. A boy who doesn’t read and can’t speak English. A boy who hunts baboons in the bush to buy guns to shoot at Maburu. But I also have a heart and my heart is full of you. It always has been.’
Nthebolang says nothing. The night before, as she fell asleep, she’d feared this day and what would happen to her and her mother. But, like many things we fear, when we’re finally standing in the middle of it, Nthebolang thinks, it isn’t so bad at all. In fact, as Motsumi has said, it’s a good day – a day to be remembered.
Chapter Thirteen
Beatrice is a month from delivering her baby when the retiring missionary from the station Thomas Milner was meant to have gone to arrives in Cape Town. She’s tired and spends most of her days in the vegetable garden, lying under the wide oak tree planted there by some missionary missing home. That’s where she is when she hears the commotion of the arrival. She stays put; it’s no concern of hers. She only wants to give birth and be on her way. She’s falling asleep when one of the men who works in the garden finds her.
‘They’re calling you. You’re meant to go and meet the reverend.’
Beatrice gets to her feet and walks towards the wagon at the front of the house. There is an old man and an even older woman standing with Reverend Williamson, Mrs Williamson, and Thomas Milner. She joins them.
‘This is Thomas’s wife, Beatrice,’ Mrs Williamson says. ‘She’s expecting a baby any day now.’
Something’s not right and at first Beatrice does not understand. It’s the German Pastor Gustav who reminds her. He and his wife shake her hand and then he says, ‘Do I know you?’
For the first time since arriving in Cape Town, Beatrice is truly frightened.
‘No, how could you?’ she says. ‘I’m very tired. I hope that you will excuse me.’
Beatrice tries her best not to run. She walks slowly to the house and locks the door behind her. She leans against it, her breath coming roughly. She sits on the edge of the bed and calms her mind. He will not remember, she tells herself. He’s an old man. It was long ago. She’s grown up now and looks very different. Pastor Gustav had worked at the orphanage. He was there when she and Kamogelo left. He would know about their ‘kidnapping’, about the murder. Or would he? Would he be able to put everything together? Would he care to? He was leaving Africa; what did it matter to him? No, she tells herself, he’s too old; she’s too different. It is all forgotten now.
When Pastor Gustav leaves and no one speaks of the thing Beatrice fears, she knows it’s fine. It’s all forgotten just as she hoped it would be. Pastor Gustav said nothing as she suspected he would. She’s surprised at how relieved she is, though.
Beatrice delivers her baby two weeks later, an easy delivery with the help of Mrs Williamson.
‘Here she is,’ she says, handing the cleaned, wrapped baby to Beatrice. ‘What will you call her?’
‘I don’t care. You choose.’
Mrs Williamson believes it’s some sort of honour Beatrice has allowed her for her assistance during the birth and she smiles. ‘My sister is called Elizabeth. I’ve always thought that was a beautiful name.’
‘Then she will be called Elizabeth,’ Beatrice says.
Beatrice looks down at the baby and feels nothing. The baby looks back at her through Thomas Milner’s large eyes and Beatrice can find nothing to love in the child’s face. It’s not fair, she knows – the baby did not choose that face, those eyes. She does what she must, but no more. In any case, she tells herself, she cannot escape with a baby. She shouldn’t get too attached to the girl. She must keep her distance, so that when the time comes she can run away without worry, without regrets.
Two months later and Beatrice is sitting outside their house in the sun with her baby, Elizabeth. They’re once again waiting for a post and Thomas Milner’s moods are worsening. She can hear him inside throwing things about; she pays it no mind. He has mostly stopped beating her. Since she got pregnant, he has wanted nothing to do with her sexually. Beatrice expects he is getting his release with the new maid who spends much time with him in his community work.
The baby falls asleep, and Beatrice gets up and carries her into the house, placing her in the carved wooden cradle Mrs Williamson gave her. The Williamsons, especially Mrs Williamson, have been kind to her since Thomas Milner arrived. She thinks Reverend Williamson feels bad for his mistake, for forcing her to marry the man they have all grown to despise.
Beatrice thinks of Reverend Williamson just then; he has been sick ever since the baby was born. The doctor could find no cause and yet he worsened by the day. This has improved Thomas Milner’s mood considerably, as it means he can now finally take the position he knows he deserves – at the front of the church.
He stands at the pulpit each morning for prayers and a short sermon for the mission residents, but on Sunday he is in his element. He may even talk for two hours with the congregation at his mercy. Beatrice accepts that he’s a gifted speaker. She knows too that Thomas Milner prays for Reverend Williamson’s death and Beatrice wonders if he may not himself be behind the older man’s illness. She would not put such a thing past him.
As Beatrice turns
and tries to leave the house after putting the baby down, she finds the door locked. She looks up and sees Thomas Milner standing to one side. He’s smiling. He has something in his hand. Beatrice sees it is her last two gold sovereigns. She had been saving them. John Anderson’s gold sovereigns. She’d always kept her half of the sovereigns sewn into the hem of her dress.
‘What are these?’ he asks.
Beatrice reaches forward to take them from him but Thomas Milner closes his hand and pushes her away.
‘They’re mine. Give them to me,’ she says.
‘Yours? Really? Oh, Beatrice, you are full of evil. God has sent you to me as a test, is it not? The devil in the body of a girl. These are not yours.’ He smiles. ‘I know what you’ve done.’
‘I’ve done nothing. Give me my property.’ She speaks sternly, evenly.
‘Nothing is your property. You are nothing but a black whore, a thief – a murderer.’
Beatrice remains calm. She’ll not let Thomas Milner see how his words have affected her.
‘Pastor Gustav told me everything. I know that you and your black friend … what was her name? Kamogelo, wasn’t it? You killed that missionary. A godly man who took you in and you repaid him by slitting his throat in the night and stealing his money. Pastor Gustav, the idiot, said it was not you. He was so happy to see that you were alive and doing well. He said that the murderer, whom they never found, must have kidnapped you and your friend. But we know that’s not true, don’t we, Beatrice? These gold sovereigns prove it.’
‘You know nothing,’ Beatrice says, her voice level, her heart racing. She reminds herself that Maangees is under the cradle, hidden in a groove in the carving. She could fetch it easily enough.
‘And I know where your Kamogelo is. Yes. With a single word, I can take them to her. Perhaps they’ll not hang you, you in your so-called white skin, but your Kamogelo will not fare the same, I’m afraid.’
But Deliver Us from Evil Page 7