The Missionary's Wife

by Tim Jeal

  Soon after the trooper had been dragged sobbing to the MO’s tent, a hussar approached Clara with a note. Still shaken by the summary justice, she did her best to behave normally towards this young messenger, who was often to be seen waiting for orders outside Francis’s tent. His sandy hair was closely cropped, and his face was pleasing in spite of crooked teeth. Clara read the message.

  ‘Is there any answer, madam?’

  ‘You can tell Captain Vaughan I’m happy to dine with him.’ The hussar was leaving, when Clara surrendered to an impulse to question him. ‘Does the captain always send you as his postman?’ She smiled apologetically. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know your name.’

  ‘Corporal Winter. I’m the captain’s orderly … a bit like being an errand boy.’

  ‘It’s that bad?’

  ‘I shouldn’t really say, madam.’

  Clara lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘I won’t give you away.’

  ‘I stopped a bullet in Ashanti, so the captain’s kept me in cotton wool ever since.’

  ‘You like him, then?’

  ‘He’s a real good’un. But he still won’t let me join the scouts. They’re the cream: the column’s ears and eyes.’

  She nodded, then asked abruptly, ‘Would you have flogged that man?’

  Winter looked amazed. ‘Would I, hell! Till the bastard begged. Men can’t go blasting off their guns every time a nigger sneezes. There’s got to be discipline.’

  When Corporal Winter had gone, Clara splashed her face with rainwater from a bucket. Whatever anyone said, the trooper’s punishment had been barbaric. What could be gained by lashing a man already tormented by guilt? And why burn a village when the perpetrators of an outrage were sure to be miles away? Yet Francis was no ogre. Whenever Clara spoke to him, his eyes conveyed kindness. But would he turn brutal, as Robert had predicted? She could not think so.

  Clara’s thick walking boots were hidden by her long skirt. She put on a white shirt that Simon had just ironed, and then she knotted a necktie. It made her look like a governess, but this austere garb suited her. At first she pinned up her hair, but then she let it hang freely to her shoulders, in striking contrast to her prim costume.

  On entering the mess marquee, Clara was redirected to Captain Vaughan’s tent. Corporal Winter ushered her in. Everything was more informal than when she and Robert had dined with all the officers. This evening, only three men welcomed her, and none was in uniform. Francis sported a dilapidated tweed coat and flannel trousers, and the other two were similarly dressed.

  Francis rose at once, and in a friendly and cheerful way reintroduced her to his colleagues. Although Clara would have been very surprised to hear it, he had been dismayed by their last meeting. Now he noticed with misgiving that her lovely face expressed the same emotional fervour. Her clothes made him think of a village schoolmistress. But what a strange one! She was so vividly alive that her moods showed as clearly in her face as squalls on water. He found the slight hoarseness of her voice enchanting. She was made for pleasure, so by what streak of perversity had she chosen Haslam and his self-denying creed?

  Francis listened with a glassy smile as his red-haired colleague, Carew, mumbled flatteringly about ‘the selfless devotion of missionaries’ and how wonderful it was that ‘there are still men and women today, ready to face years of disappointment without expecting any reward’.

  Francis chose that precise moment to offer Clara a glass of wine. He caught her eye as she hesitated to reach out for it. ‘Will Mr Carew be disillusioned if I accept?’ Her stage whisper delighted Francis.

  Carew blushed, fearing he had been gauche. ‘I’ll turn a blind eye.’

  ‘Good lad!’ Francis laughed, handing over the glass.

  While they ate roast antelope with tinned peas, Francis’s friend Matthew Arnot asked Clara about herself. Arnot had swarthy good looks and a sardonic manner that many people mistook for mockery. Clara refused to be nettled and answered his questions straightforwardly. Her father, she said, owned a pottery that produced crockery; nothing like Minton or Chelsea – cheap stuff but profitable enough for a provincial business. Francis enjoyed her ironic tone.

  ‘By Jove! An heiress!’ gasped Carew.

  ‘Nothing to spend it on here.’ Arnot sighed.

  ‘It’s all bosh anyway.’ She laughed. ‘I might have a dozen brothers and sisters, for all you know.’

  ‘But do you?’ demanded Arnot.

  She put down her knife and fork and leaned across the folding table. ‘Do tell me about your expectations, Mr Arnot.’

  ‘Matthew’s going to be revoltingly rich,’ said Francis gloomily.

  ‘But will it spoil his character?’ asked Clara.

  Arnot grinned at her. ‘You mean camels through needles’ eyes and all that biblical stuff?’

  Clara said with mocking severity, ‘Is that any way to talk to a missionary’s wife?’

  ‘I’d say it calls for a whipping,’ cried Carew.

  Clara’s mood changed in an instant. ‘How long will it take that poor man’s back to heal?’

  Francis felt his cheeks glowing. ‘A week or two,’ he replied, aware that it would take twice that time.

  She was staring at him with a knowing wisdom he disliked. ‘It’s not as if his suffering will bring that child to life again.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Francis, ‘but it should rule out similar accidents.’

  Clara regarded him sadly. ‘You can’t be sure of that.’

  ‘Not unless we all leave the country, and I mean missionaries too.’

  ‘Missionaries don’t go round killing people.’

  ‘They do worse,’ he said, at once regretting his words. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ she said softly. ‘Just finish what you started to say.’

  Francis could not read her mind at all. Was she furiously angry and controlling it, or was she genuinely curious? He said, ‘I’m no expert on the natives, but their warriors seem totally bound up with their customs. Not just on Sundays but seven days a week … So to tell them they’ll burn in hell if they don’t wear trousers and come to chapel seems cruel. I was going to say it might be kinder to kill them, but it was more than I really meant.’

  ‘Well, thank you for telling me.’

  ‘You’re not angry?’

  She looked at him gravely, then smiled. ‘Do you really expect me to share all my husband’s views?’ She took a sip of wine and turned to the others. ‘Is that what you’ll all expect from your good little wives?’

  ‘Unless I marry a bluestocking,’ muttered Carew, winking at Arnot.

  Clara noticed. ‘I bet you were all beastly children.’

  ‘That’s a bit stiff,’ objected Arnot.

  ‘Admit you bullied boys who funked their fences in the hunting field.’

  ‘Don’t look at me.’ Francis laughed. ‘I was brought up in London and only rode at my uncle’s place.’

  ‘And what about practical jokes?’

  Francis could not help grinning. Arnot would certainly have made life a misery for sensitive boys at Eton. Clara announced that as a tradesman’s daughter, she had been ostracized by the local landowners’ children on the only occasion when she had followed the local hunt.

  ‘Some of my best female friends are members of the lower orders,’ muttered Arnot.

  ‘Let’s draw a veil over that,’ said Francis.

  Clara then told them about her mother’s generosity to fallen women, gazing at Arnot while she did. Later, she made amends by laughing about the unsuitable presents her mother had sent out to Africa: winter gloves, silk dresses, and sporting blazers.

  Francis clapped his hands. ‘Good for her! Africans look much better in stuff like that than in their dreary mission clobber.’

  ‘You’re certainly right there.’ As Clara smiled at him, Francis felt caught up in a strange spell of intimacy.

  When he escorted Clara back to her Cape cart through the moonlit lines,
Francis sensed that she was tense and wondered whether she was worried about Haslam. He couldn’t help hoping that she wasn’t. Around them, frogs throbbed and croaked endlessly. ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know you well enough to say.’ Francis had posted a sentry near the cart, and tonight the man was on duty for the first time. As Clara caught sight of him, she asked, ‘Surely I’m perfectly safe? Your men see me as a sort of nun, don’t they? The missionary’s wife.’

  Francis studied the ground. ‘Let’s just say that their eyesight’s fine.’

  Clara blushed fiercely, and Francis could think of nothing to say. So at length he murmured a polite ‘Good night’ and walked away towards his tent. Almost at once he wished he had stayed, but he had always found intimate silences – especially the unexpected ones – unendurable.

  *

  With a little coaching from Arthur Winter, Clara could soon recognize most of the soldiers’ trumpet calls. After hearing ‘Horses In’, she would go and watch the horses being driven in by the grazing guards. On one particular afternoon, she watched each man catch his own mount and tie him to the lines stretched between wagon wheels. Every trooper stood by his horse’s head while the animal ate – touching proof, she imagined, of the bond between horse and man. But when she made this observation to Matthew Arnot, he laughed.

  ‘If your life depended on the speed of your horse, Mrs Haslam, wouldn’t you make sure he got the whole of his corn ration?’

  ‘So they don’t care a jot for their horses?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Then why were you teasing me, Mr Arnot?’

  He made a show of being contrite. ‘You do tend to be rather serious about everything, ma’am.’

  ‘Is there much to laugh about just now?’

  ‘Plenty.’ He raised a black eyebrow. ‘What about the gallant captain’s drooling glances?’

  Blood rushed to Clara’s cheeks. ‘That’s a lie.’

  He threw up his hands as if on the stage. ‘I beg you not to upset yourself. I thought you’d be flattered.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  Arnot snapped his fingers. ‘Goddammit! I keep forgetting who you’re married to. So does my brave commander.’

  Clara began to walk away. Not long before, she would have thought Matthew Arnot witty, but now she found herself imagining him joking after he’d heard that Robert had been killed.

  *

  Early the next morning, Francis told Clara that he and Mark Carew intended to take a picnic up on to the nearby hill, which shielded the camp’s northern aspect. Would she care to come too? Apparently there were some rock paintings up there and an ancient ruin at the summit.

  ‘Is Mr Arnot coming?’ she asked, blushing at the memory of what he had told her.

  ‘No; I’m afraid he’ll be on duty in the camp.’

  ‘What a shame.’

  For a moment Francis appeared to have taken her seriously, but then he smiled. ‘He’s not that bad, is he?’

  ‘Worse.’

  ‘Poor old Mart’s not half as cynical as he pretends to be.’

  ‘That still makes him twice as cynical as anyone I know.’

  As Francis applauded her, Clara felt pleasantly elated. With Robert away, she was discovering that her old self still existed.

  A good-natured mare was produced, and Clara and the two officers rode forth, with three troopers and two pack mules bringing up the rear. In single file, they picked their way through the granite boulders at the foot of the hill and then began to climb fairly steeply through long grass that brushed the flanks of their horses. Mixed in with the new growth were dried seed pods and prickly stalks, which, since Clara was riding sidesaddle, made her regret not choosing a thicker skirt. The hillside was uncannily silent, since no voices of herdboys or women floated up from the fields. All the local people had fled when the column first arrived.

  The sun was hot enough to make Clara glad to reach the chequered shade of a few misasa trees. To her right were some soldiers’ observation posts where the cliff plunged sharply, almost at the men’s feet, affording an endless vista of tawny scrub. Somewhere out there in the haze, cattle and herdsmen would be moving away to avoid the white men. And beyond them, perhaps, a sight that every hussar dreaded: a well-armed impi, sweeping south.

  As Francis came up beside her, Clara asked how many men he had on the hill.

  ‘Not many. About forty in all; but they can see for miles, so they won’t be surprised.’

  The party rode on at a leisurely pace, climbing gradually to a natural amphitheatre walled in by rocky crags. From the plain, these tiered ledges had looked as if built with massive hewn stones. Now it was clear that the rocks had been carved by natural forces, and that the anticipated ‘ruin’ was chimerical. Francis was admitting this to his companions, when screams rang out and heads appeared on the skyline. Carew and the troopers drew their carbines. Clara was too surprised to feel fear as she scrambled from her horse.

  ‘Don’t fire till they move,’ whispered Francis.

  The heads moved in unison. Carbines were raised and then rapidly lowered. A troop of baboons came loping down the slope. A grizzled veteran led, while mothers with infants on their backs brought up the rear. Enraged to find trespassers in their stronghold, they shrieked and jabbered as they shambled away.

  Laughing with relief, everyone helped to unload the pack mules. The troopers set up a small folding table and camp stools under the purple shade of a fig tree. Wine bottles, glasses, a preserved ham, curried prawns, rice, and tinned fruit were all extracted from the mules’ panniers. After laying the table, the men re-mounted and rode away. The other horses were left to graze on the far side of the plateau. While Carew struggled to free a camera from the straps around his neck, Francis joked about his habit of festooning himself with water bottles, binoculars, compasses, and map cases, regardless of the length of his journey.

  As they were finishing their meal, some marauding bees attacked. Nobody was stung, but in batting them away with his hand, Mark Carew knocked his glass from the table. He bent down and retrieved it from the ground, then let out a cry. His first thought was a snake, but he could see no fang marks.

  ‘Was it a bee?’ asked Francis.

  ‘I can’t see a sting.’

  Francis studied Carew’s hand. ‘Probably a scorpion.’

  Thinking this likely, Carew decided to return to camp to see the medical officer.

  As soon as she was alone with Francis, Clara’s recollection of Arnot’s remarks made her feel jittery. But Francis himself remained perfectly calm, finishing his plate of tinned fruit. Indeed, his tone was almost offhand when, after wiping his fingers, he asked, ‘Were you always religious, Mrs Haslam?’

  The question was disconcerting. She said briskly, ‘I lost my faith after my mother’s death.’

  ‘You aren’t a believer?’ He was dumbfounded.

  ‘Later, my husband – of course, he wasn’t that then – came and preached in my town, and I found that … that I was after all.’

  ‘You’d mislaid your faith rather than lost it?’

  ‘It seemed to have been there all the time.’

  ‘What a lucky thing.’ Francis spoke so solemnly that she couldn’t believe he was mocking her, as Arnot certainly would have done in the same situation.

  She murmured, ‘I’d rather talk about something else. Religious feelings are so personal … especially for someone like me.’ She tried to lighten her tone. ‘You wouldn’t like me to ask you whether you’re frightened when fighting … or whether you’re as brave as you used to be a year ago.’

  He folded his arms. ‘I wouldn’t mind, actually.’

  ‘Then tell me,’ she challenged.

  ‘I feel more frightened these days, but I hide it better.’ He smiled confidingly. ‘Don’t tell the men. Could wreck their morale.’

  ‘That wouldn’t do,’ she responded, wondering why his face gave her such pleasure. Was it t
he way his lips met so firmly under his fair moustache? Or simply how he looked at her? She could not believe that with such kindly eyes, he could be anything but honourable. And as she thought this, she felt ashamed for having been less than honest herself. Unaccountably, she felt tearful.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’

  ‘No, really, I’m fine. It’s just that I should have trusted you. Things happened out here – horrible things – and God was no help to me. He still isn’t.’ She felt delicious relief to have confessed.

  His eyes were full of concern. ‘That’s awful … I mean, for anyone in your position.’ He placed a hand on hers for several seconds. Even when he stood up and moved away, she felt the pressure of his palm. He clapped on his slouch hat and smiled. ‘Let’s find those rock paintings, Mrs Haslam.’

  She nodded, thinking how much nicer it would have been if he were in his tweed coat again and not in a khaki uniform and Sam Browne belt. He fed their horses some bread and took a rifle from a leather case attached to his saddle.

  ‘Could be leopards up in the rocks. They’re very partial to young baboons.’

  As they clambered over the rocks, heat radiated from them as if from a giant’s oven. They paused to regain their breath on a narrow shelf-like terrace. Already their horses looked very small. The rocks became steeper and the handholds farther apart. Francis offered Clara his hand, and she was glad to take it. They reached a grassy ledge and froze. On the ground, just yards away, was an empty calabash and some spilled grain. Among the Venda, hills were often reputed to be holy places. Clara gazed at the grain. Was this a priest’s offering? She was about to speak, when Francis pressed a hand to her mouth so rapidly that he hurt her lips.

  The ledge they were on went back farther than the others, being more like a small plateau than a terrace. In the centre, a large rock stood alone. Twenty yards behind it, the cliff surged upward to its topmost ridge. The rocks resembled a mighty drystone wall, the gaps between them opening out into caves and fissures. Clara’s legs were trembling. Could men be hiding in those recesses?