Women Are Bloody Marvellous! And Other Stories

by Betty Burton

  Presently Altheus came into the shack with a stores requisition form to be signed. Eddie tried to make his remark casual as he applied his signature.

  'That girl — she's still hanging about then.'

  'Yes, I see this too.'

  'Look, Altheus, it's none of my business if she stands where she is till the crack of doom, but if it's got any connection with the site or anybody on it — then it is my business.'

  Altheus concentrated on folding the requisition form into a precise square, running each fold between thumb and fingernail, and said nothing.

  'Is this a holy place or something? Does a spirit live here?'

  'It is not that, Baas.'

  'Not what?'

  'Not a holy place.'

  'Nothing to do with the site?'

  'No, it is not that.'

  Eddie could tell that if he was not careful he would become involved in one of those question and answer sessions that were always fruitless when Africans wanted to keep their own counsel, but Eddie was sure that the Zulu girl had something to do with his site, or somebody on it. Altheus knew it too. He left the office politely and correctly. Eddie continued to sit and gaze out of the window. The woman had moved now and gone back to her original position beside the thorn bushes. He sat on in the shack all day doing odd bits of paper-work and checking drawings, time and again looking out at the still, red figure on the rise.

  Eddie was about to pack up for the day when he saw the woman suddenly leave her post and walk purposefully down to where a group of Africans were assembling a piece of equipment; they were huddled together, not aware that she was approaching. When she was within some yards of them she threw back her cloak in a dramatic gesture. He half expected to hear her shout, or wail, or cry. Her movements registered in detail. Frame by frame. She had a gun in her hand. A gun. He watched. She raised the weapon. Bracelets moved. Her arm jerked. Her body began to go off balance. She checked herself, he saw her anklebone whited as she brought herself upright once more. A man made a movement. Head back and arms reaching out he fell. Slowly, slowly.

  Then Eddie flung open the shack door and raced across the yard. The Africans, too, had been momentarily stunned into inaction and silence, then as Eddie reached them they began shouting and flailing their arms at one another. Other men left their work and ran to see what had happened.

  By the time Eddie reached the scene there were about twenty men staring down at the dead man. The girl was again still and impassive. A few notes of a song repeated themselves, '...drew a gun and...' He felt embarrassed at the association of ideas, but had a strong desire to whistle the line aloud, '...drew a gun and shot...' Suddenly some men started towards her aggressively.

  'Leave her!' Eddie shouted with all the authority of a white boss and the men automatically obeyed, then stood together in small groups watching.

  Eddie went to the girl and, clutching her arm, led her to the office shack. She went, her back straight, her chin raised. He took her inside.

  'Stop there!' He pointed to the stool.

  She had no intention of moving, any more than she had done for the past few days, but not knowing what the men might do, he locked her in and went back to the men.

  The dead man lay on his side, his mouth half open, his eyes wide. A quick way to go. One moment tightening steel bolts, the next floored. Where the bullet had entered his chest was a neat disc, a third nipple. His back was a mess. There was a wide pool of blood in the yellow dust and already insects had been drawn to it.

  'Get something to cover him.'

  'What, Baas? What to cover him?'

  'Anything. Just get him covered up.' Nobody moved.

  'Move! One of you fetch a blanket, sack or something, from my car.' Still nobody moved.

  'Well, what are you waiting for?'

  One of the older men asked, 'Who shall go, Baas?'

  'Does it...? Never mind.' He went himself and fetched a rough blanket and threw it over the dead man.

  'Better get the police now.'

  'Yes, Baas.'

  'Otherwise we shall be here all night.'

  'Yes, Baas.'

  Eddie glanced in the direction of the shack but the reflected sky was a cataract on the eye of the window, '...and from under her velvet gown...' Momentarily the men followed his gaze then turned back to the feet in thick-soled sandals that protruded from the blanket.

  'Well? Hasn't anybody got anything to say before I go and phone them?' The men looked at the ground about a yard in front of their feet.

  Flies buzzed around the body.

  'They will want to question all of us,' Eddie said.

  'Why all, Baas?'

  'We have done nothing.'

  'Yes, we have done nothing.'

  'It was the woman. All have seen that.'

  'But she must have ... You must...' There was an explanation. They knew why she had stood beside the thorn bushes. They had fallen silent that morning when they passed her. They must know.

  Suddenly Eddie remembered the baby. It must be somewhere on the kopie. The girl had not moved all day since taking up her position beside the thorn bushes. He had forgotten the baby.

  'The baby, Altheus! Go and find the baby.'

  'The baby, Baas?'

  Rare anger flushed Eddie's face.

  'Christ, man, go! Find the baby!'

  As he said 'find the baby' he felt panic. He had forgotten the baby. In his obsession with the girl he had forgotten the baby. It must have been out on the kopie all day, yet he had not heard a cry. Altheus took half a dozen men and scrambled up the rocky slope. The rest of the men wandered off to the cook-boy's shed. Eddie went back to the office shack.

  The girl was just as he had left her. He picked up the telephone, dialled and said he wanted to report a fatal accident. He pushed the stool towards the girl and pressed her down on to it. She did not protest but sat upright and calm. '...Lifted up her lovely head and...' Any moment he would have to hum out loud. It was the kind of thing people did in shock. There was a hip-flask in his briefcase. He poured a tot into the cap, offered it to the girl who ignored him, then tossed off the warm throat-scorching local spirit.

  Altheus and the men were returning. When they reached the blanket, Altheus raised one corner and put down a small cloth-wrapped bundle.

  'The baby?'

  'Yes, Baas.'

  'Dead?'

  'Dead, Baas.'

  'Has it been dead long?'

  'Long, Baas.'

  'Did she...? How did it die?' Altheus stared into Eddie's eyes for a few seconds, then looked along the track over the veldt. '...But last evening down in Lovers' Lane she strayed...' A few miles away the approaching police van raised a cloud of red dust. Altheus returned his gaze to Eddie and hunched his shoulders high.

  'Who knows, Baas.'

  THE NATIVE AIR

  THE NATIVE AIR

  I was nine when we went on that last picnic.

  It was the time of year when swifts are having a last fling before settling down to raise their double broods, when the sun rises earlier than farm-labourers — and that's saying something — when cuckoos send their first indelible signals on Hampshire air. My family went on its last picnic.

  My family. My family. Archards as old as the hills (perhaps going back to that Archard who was champion to Thomas, Earl of Warwick, who held his estates by payment of twelve broad arrows ... then again, perhaps not). Radicals down the ages, arguing politics — even on picnics.

  'Make the most of it.'

  'It'll be over by Christmas.'

  'Never.'

  'See if you see if I an't right.'

  'Like you was about Spain?'

  Mothers and aunts have heard it all before.

  'Must you keep on about it?'

  Archards — good as They, probably better — leave their homes, which are all in the same small market-town, and gather in a flock of about twenty-five near Mountbatten's lodge gates.

  'Battenburg!'

  Gran
dfather never allows us to forget Their origins, never allows us to forget Queen Victoria, or who she married, and all her children. Who all the rest of That Lot married, and the Kaiser, and the Battenburgs.

  Grandfather's a Republican, born and educated in a family with money. Now he's a blacksmith, an old Red. Somebody is always warning him.

  'Thee's had better watch out, George. If we has this here war they'll shut up all old Bolshies like thee.'

  My mother stops Uncle Harry with a look. She always does that when people start talking about Germany and war. I think we shall be bombed in trenches and gassed and I won't ever reach double figures next May. Please God, don't let us be bombed. Amen.

  We leave the town on foot, pass the mill-race where we shall gather ritually in autumn to see salmon leap, take a cut across Green Hill and ramble along beside the River Test.

  Even the littlest of us knows what 'going over Squab' means. An experience like no other, and the Archard family have been going over Squab summer after summer throughout time, taking our baskets and bags and bats and bottles, and memories of past picnics.

  From Mountbatten's, Squab is about four miles, though such a walk can hardly be estimated in distance, better measured in time — perhaps time-standing-still. For us it is a distance of certain games, old jokes, feet in cow-pats and swills-off in the Test, a distance of mothers jumping at sudden bull bellows — it works every time.

  'You blooming fool our Lennis! Frightening me like that.'

  And fathers, used to working a fifty-hour week in the railway works, deposit a few of their years at each vaulted-over stile, to be collected on the homeward journey. It is a walk measured in excitement, fun and tightening family bonds.

  We leave the open fields, over another stile and into the shadow of oaks. Into violets and primroses — or rhododendrons, or cowslips, billy-buttons, dog-roses or bitter green, bitter sharp hazels, or unripe blackberries — according to time of year. Up an incline where nature has never been able to compete with labourers' boots, and there is bare gravel.

  The Butts. Halfway. The same notice is always here, always newly painted: 'WHEN THE RED FLAG SHOWS-BEWARE FIRING IN PROGRESS.'

  'The People's Flag is deepest red

  It shrouded oft our martyred dead.'

  Uncle Tom is the first proper Labour councillor in our town. Shop-steward for the Boilermakers, official of the Ancient Order of the Foresters, boy-scout captain, owner of the only camera in the family, hypochondriac, great believer in cascara sagrada for inner cleanliness and Imps for the chest. He knows only two songs, both about revolution; he sings them at parties, then puts his shoes on the wrong feet for a laugh — but only we know about that. A railwayman, the first elected working-class councillor in our town. He despises the fur-trimmed cloak and tasselled hat, but will wear it because people need to see we are as good as the other lot. When he was young he bought a revolver and was going to Russia, or was it Spain? He is my mother's brother, married to my father's sister. A second father to me.

  'With heads uncovered swear we all

  To bear it onwards till we fall.'

  Mothers and aunts raise their eyes to heaven.

  'He's off again!'

  'Our Tom — he don't change.'

  'Can't take him nowhere!'

  'They'll have him on the list too. Conchie.'

  Uncle Harry's wrong, Uncle Tom will be one of the first to join the Local Defence Volunteers — you can't take him nowhere!

  Up another slope and suddenly — always unexpectedly no matter how many times you've been before — a rough and saggy bit of chicken-wire fence, some sort of beaten pathway where rabbits have been, and stones disguised as tussocks lay in wait to stub our sandalled toes; suddenly — civilization! Well hardly that, yet somebody has touched the countryside, but not to disadvantage.

  'We're here!'

  'There's the swings.'

  'We're here, we're here, we're here.'

  At last we are over Squab. And over Squab lives Miss Biddlecombe.

  Miss Biddlecombe. Fixed in our lives like Christmas and new socks at Easter. She had been married, but only for a day — not even the night. Miss Biddlecombe Uves alone here in a clearing in Squab Wood. She grows every sort of fruit and vegetable, she keeps goats and pigs and assorted fowls.

  Her home is a cottage — we call it that — it is roomy, probably ugly (but not to us), built of corrugated-iron and painted green. The door seems to be always open. Outside, the ground slopes gently into dense woods where rhododendrons grow in uncultivated grandeur.

  Scattered about the clearing are benches, stools, old tree-stumps and assorted wavy-edged tables which have been left to the elements to distort, mellow and become so enlichened that they are as much part of the vegetation as when they were growing trees. There are gnarled and ancient medlars, quinces, costards, cherries and merries, and from their lower branches hang ropes for us to swing on.

  'Beat you to the swing!'

  'Not so fast.'

  'Wait for me, wait for me.'

  There is a general gallop of children. The older and more experienced among us get a head start because we have noticed the signs — the change from wildness to cultivation, saw the chicken-wire, knew we had arrived.

  There is a general calling of mothers.

  'Let the little ones have a chance.'

  'Don't rush like that.'

  'You big boys ... careful!'

  'Mind you don't fall!'

  'Ah, leave'm be. They can't come to no real harm.'

  We let the little ones have the swings and give them pushes. We prefer to swing by our hands from the branches — the boys in their short trousers swing by their feet, so we tuck our dresses into our knicker-legs not to be outdone. Mother says I shall break my neck.

  The grown-ups have a discussion. It is important, we shall be here for hours, we have got first choice. Not that many people come here, but it is important.

  'Where shall we go, then?'

  'Here?'

  'Bit near the house for the cricket.'

  'Over there?'

  'Be a bit shady when the sun goes down.'

  'Want a bit of shade, though.'

  'Make up your minds.'

  'What about under the old crab tree?'

  Ah, yes. Under him, like we did last year. Yes. Not too far to carry the trays, and you can keep an eye on the swings, and he's old now and not enough leaf to cut out the sun.

  And before we get settled — how many teas?

  'Well don't count the little ones.'

  'Ah no — G.O.A.T.'S milk.'

  'I like gee owe ... that milk.'

  'Ah, all right then, they might's well try it.'

  So that's how many?

  Mabe, Little Mabe and Auntie Mabe, Nella and Reg, Bertha and Nora and Father and you and me and ... let's say three of the largest pots and plenty of milk. And who wants scones? And jam and cream? And fairy cakes and homemade-fresh-crusty-bread and buttercup butter which Miss Biddlecombe produces in her kitchen and honey from her straw hives?

  'Something of everything and sort it out between us.'

  'And fruit cake?'

  'And seedy-cake?'

  'We might's well, we don't come every day.'

  'Might not be any much longer.'

  'Oh, Father!'

  'He's right...'

  'Oh, Tom!'

  'You can leave off that — we're over Squab.'

  Uncles and fathers take care of the ordering. We sidle along with them.

  'You children come away.'

  'Miss Biddlecombe don't want you there.'

  'Just you come on back here.'

  Come away? Away from the mysteries of the dim interior of Miss Biddlecombe's kitchen?

  'Might's well save your voice.'

  'Might's well talk to yourself.'

  'Ah, might's well.'

  Might as well call pins from a magnet.

  Miss Biddlecombe's kitchen draws my child's eyes and gradually the whole
child until I stand by my father as he orders our teas. She is big and bosomy, in a long dress, a print apron and sensible shoes with little D's of fat like pin-cushions where the bar buttons across her large feet. Her cheeks are weathered red and her hair escapes from a rook's nest of a bun — just like my Nan who died.

  She has heard us coming, she is pleased to see us again and greets us at the door with an uncomplicated smile for old friends — which we are. My father has been going over Squab since he was a boy and remembers the drama of her marriage of a few hours. Mother doesn't think he ought to talk about it but Father says it happened didn't it and there's no getting away from that. Dear Jesus, please don't let Miss Biddlecombe be sad. Amen.

  'Well, Mr Archard. My dear Lord, goodness, how time do fly. And you girls, well I don't know! Proper little ladies now. It don't seem no more'n yesterday — and here we are again. What a winter it's been. That gale in March! You seen the old medlar I suppose? Blew down. He was a good old tree that one. Ah well, it comes to all of us. You won't want your tea yet a while. Say I have it ready...'

  She looks above the trees judging the time — Uncle Ted says she's as good as the abbey clock —

  '...in hour and a half? I got to go to the well, and I always does the big teapots for you don't I and I still got a pot of bramble jelly I was keeping for you but I got to get it down first, so it'll be a good hour and a half.'

  Fathers and uncles turn away, sorry about the old medlar — they had scrumped him many a time for his strange fruits that were no good until they had decayed, then their juice dripped and left a strange perfume.

  The cottage open door taunts and vamps. We hang about. On her wood fire a number of huge, black iron kettles steam, and what with them and the burning wood, and the sun on the iron walls, the smells and heat seem to boom out at us. We've known about respecting people's homes since before we could walk, but we would give anything to step inside.

  'It's rude to stare into people's homes.'