This Was the Old Chief's Country

by Doris Lessing

  She found herself watching the road for Willie’s return. If Willie had been there, she could have put the responsibility on to him and felt safe: Jane was a woman who depended very much on that invisible support a husband gives. She had not known, before that afternoon, just how much she depended on him; and this knowledge – which it seemed the thief shared – made her unhappy and restless. She felt that she should be able to manage this thing by herself, instead of waiting helplessly for her husband. I must do something, I must do something, she kept repeating.

  It was a long, warm, sunny afternoon. Jane, with all her nerves standing to attention, waited on the veranda, shading her eyes as she gazed along the road for Willie’s car. The waiting preyed on her. She could not prevent her eyes from returning again and again to the bush immediately in front of the house, which stretched for mile on mile, a low, dark scrubby green, darker because of the lengthening shadows of approaching evening. An impulse pulled her to her feet, and she marched towards the bush through the garden. At its edge she stopped, peering everywhere for those dark and urgent eyes, and called, ‘Tembi, Tembi.’ There was no sound. ‘I won’t punish you, Tembi,’ she implored. ‘Come here to me.’ She waited, listening delicately, for the slightest movement of branch or dislodged pebble. But the bush was silent under the sun; even the birds were drugged by the heat; and the leaves hung without trembling. ‘Tembi!’ she called again; at first peremptorily, and then with a quaver in her voice. She knew very well that he was there, flattening himself behind some tree or bush, waiting for her to say the right word, to find the right things to say, so that he could trust her. It maddened her to think he was so close, and she could no more reach him than she could lay her hands on a shadow. Lowering her voice persuasively she said: ‘Tembi, I know you are there. Come here and talk to me. I won’t tell the police. Can’t you trust me, Tembi?’

  Not a sound, not a whisper of a reply. She tried to make her mind soft and blank, so that the words she needed would appear there, ready for using. The grass was beginning to shake a little in the evening breeze, and the hanging leaves tremored once or twice; there was a warm mellowing of the light that meant the sun would soon sink; a red glow showed on the foliage, and the sky was flaring high with light. Jane was trembling so she could not control her limbs; it was a deep internal trembling, welling up from inside, like a wound bleeding invisibly. She tried to steady herself. She said: This is silly, I can’t be afraid of little Tembi! How could I be? She made her voice firm and loud and said: ‘Tembi, you are being very foolish. What’s the use of stealing things like a stupid child? You can be clever about stealing for a little while, but sooner or later the police will catch you and you will go to prison. You don’t want that, do you? Listen to me, now. You come out now and let me see you; and when the boss comes I’ll explain to him, and I’ll say you are sorry, and you can come back and work for me in the vegetable garden. I don’t like to think of you as a thief, Tembi. Thieves are bad people.’ She stopped. The silence settled around her; she felt the silence like a coldness, as when a cloud passes overhead. She saw that the shadows were thick about her and the light had gone from the leaves, that had a cold grey look. She knew Tembi would not come out to her now. She had not found the right things to say. ‘You are a silly little boy,’ she announced to the still listening bush. ‘You make me very angry, Tembi.’ And she walked very slowly back to the house, holding herself calm and dignified, knowing that Tembi was watching her, with some plan in his mind she could not conjecture.

  When Willie returned from town, tired and irritable as he always was after a day of traffic, and interviewing people, and shopping, she told him carefully, choosing her words, what had happened. When she told how she had called to Tembi from the verges of the bush, Willie looked gently at her and said: ‘My dear, what good do you think that’s going to do?’ ‘But Willie, it’s all so awful …’ Her lips began to tremble luxuriously, and she allowed herself to weep comfortably on his shoulder. ‘You don’t know it is Tembi,’ said Willie. ‘Of course it’s Tembi. Who else could it be? The silly little boy. My silly little Tembi …’

  She could not eat. After supper she said suddenly: ‘He’ll come here tonight. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Do you think he will?’ said Willie seriously, for he had a great respect for Jane’s irrational knowledge. ‘Well, don’t worry, we’ll be ready for him.’ ‘If he’d only let me talk to him,’ said Jane. ‘Talk to him!’ said Willie. ‘Like hell! I’ll have him in prison. That’s the only place for him.’ ‘But, Willie …’ Jane protested, knowing perfectly well that Tembi must go to prison.

  It was then not eight o’clock. ‘I’ll have my gun beside the bed,’ planned Willie. ‘He stole a gun, didn’t he, from the farm over the river? He might be dangerous.’ Willie’s blue eyes were alight; he was walking up and down the room, his hands in his pockets, alert and excited: he seemed to be enjoying the idea of capturing Tembi, and because of this Jane felt herself go cold against him. It was at this moment that there was a sound from the bedroom next door. They sprang up, and reached the entrance together. There stood Tembi, facing them, his hands dangling empty at his sides. He had grown taller, but still seemed the same lithe, narrow child, with the thin face and great eloquent eyes. At the sight of those eyes Jane said weakly: ‘Willie …’

  Willie, however, marched across to Tembi and took that unresisting criminal by the arm. ‘You young rascal,’ he said angrily, but in a voice appropriate, not to a dangerous thief, who had robbed many houses, but rather to a naughty child caught pilfering fruit. Tembi did not reply to Willie: his eyes were fixed on Jane. He was trembling; he looked no more than a boy.

  ‘Why didn’t you come when I called you?’ asked Jane. ‘You are so foolish, Tembi.’

  ‘I was afraid, missus,’ said Tembi, in a voice just above a whisper. ‘But I said I wouldn’t tell the police,’ said Jane.

  ‘Be quiet, Jane,’ ordered Willie. ‘Of course we’re calling the police. What are you thinking of?’ As if feeling the need to remind himself of this important fact, he said: ‘After all, the lad’s a criminal.’

  ‘I’m not a bad boy,’ whispered Tembi imploringly to Jane. ‘Missus, my missus, I’m not a bad boy.’

  But the thing was out of Jane’s hands; she had relinquished it to Willie.

  Willie seemed uncertain what to do. Finally he strode purposefully to the wardrobe, and took his rifle from it, and handed it to Jane. ‘You stay here,’ he ordered. ‘I’m calling the police on the telephone.’ He went out, leaving the door open, while Jane stood there holding the big gun, and waiting for the sound of the telephone.

  She looked helplessly down at the rifle, set it against the bed, and said in a whisper: ‘Tembi, why do you steal?’

  Tembi hung his head and said: ‘I don’t know, missus.’ ‘But you must know.’ There was no reply. The tears poured down Tembi’s cheeks.

  ‘Tembi, did you like Johannesburg?’ There was no reply. ‘How long were you there?’ ‘Three years, missus.’ ‘Why did you come back?’ ‘They put me in prison, missus.’ ‘What for?’ ‘I didn’t have a pass.’ ‘Did you get out of prison?’ ‘No, I was there one month and they let me go.’ ‘Was it you who stole all the things from the houses around here?’ Tembi nodded, his eyes cast down to the floor.

  Jane did not know what to do. She repeated firmly to herself: ‘This is a dangerous boy, who is quite unscrupulous, and very clever,’ and picked up the rifle again. But the weight of it, a cold hostile thing, made her feel sorry. She set it down sharply. ‘Look at me, Tembi,’ she whispered. Outside, in the passage, Willie was saying in a firm confident voice: ‘Yes, Sergeant, we’ve got him here. He used to work for us, years ago. Yes.’

  ‘Look, Tembi,’ whispered Jane quickly. ‘I’m going out of the room. You must run away quickly. How did you get in?’ This thought came to her for the first time. Tembi looked at the window. Jane could see how the bars had been forced apart, so that a very slight person could squeeze in, s
ideways. ‘You must be strong,’ she said. ‘Now, there isn’t any need to go out that way. Just walk out of that door,’ she pointed at the door to the living-room, ‘and go through into the veranda, and run into the bush. Go to another district and get yourself an honest job and stop being a thief. I’ll talk to the baas. I’ll tell him to tell the police we made a mistake. Now then, Tembi…’ she concluded urgently, and went into the passage, where Willie was at the telephone, with his back to her.

  He lifted his head, looked at her incredulously, and said: ‘Jane, you’re crazy.’ Into the telephone he said: ‘Yes, come quickly.’ He set down the receiver, turned to Jane and said: ‘You know he’ll do it again, don’t you?’ He ran back to the bedroom.

  But there had been no need to run. There stood Tembi, exactly where they had left him, his fists in his eyes, like a small child.

  ‘I told you to run away,’ said Jane angrily.

  ‘He’s nuts,’ said Willie.

  And now, just as Jane had done, Willie picked up the rifle, seemed to feel foolish holding it, and set it down again.

  Willie sat on the bed and looked at Tembi with the look of one who has been outwitted. ‘Well, I’m damned,’ he said. ‘It’s got me beat, this has.’

  Tembi continued to stand there in the centre of the floor, hanging his head and crying. Jane was crying too. Willie was getting angrier, more and more irritable. Finally he left the room, slamming the door, and saying: ‘God damn it, everyone is mad.’

  Soon the police came, and there was no doubt about what should be done. Tembi nodded at every question: he admitted everything. The handcuffs were put on him, and he was taken away in the police car.

  At last Willie came back into the bedroom, where Jane lay crying on the bed. He patted her on the shoulder and said: ‘Now stop it. The thing is over. We can’t do anything.’

  Jane sobbed out: ‘He’s only alive because of me. That’s what’s so awful. And now he’s going to prison.’

  ‘They don’t think anything of prison. It isn’t a disgrace as it is for us.’

  ‘But he’s going to be one of those natives who spend all their lives in and out of prison.’

  ‘Well, what of it?’ said Willie. With the gentle, controlled exasperation of a husband, he lifted Jane and offered her his handkerchief. ‘Now stop it, old girl,’ he reasoned. ‘Do stop it. I’m tired. I want to go to bed. I’ve had hell up and down those damned pavements all day, and I’ve got a heavy day tomorrow with the tobacco.’ He began pulling off his boots.

  Jane stopped crying, and also undressed. ‘There’s something horrible about it all,’ she said restlessly. ‘I can’t forget it.’ And finally, ‘What did he want, Willie? What is it he was wanting, all this time?’

  Old John’s Place

  The people of the district, mostly solidly established farmers who intended to live and die on their land, had become used to a certain kind of person buying a farm, settling on it with a vagabond excitement, but with one eye always on the attractions of the nearest town, and then flying off again after a year or so, leaving behind them a sense of puzzled failure, a desolation even worse than usual, for the reason that they had taken no more than a vagabond’s interest in homestead and stock and land.

  It soon became recognized that the Sinclairs were just such persons in spite of, even because of, their protestations of love for the soil and their relief at the simple life. Their idea of the simple was not shared by their neighbours, who felt they were expected to measure up to standards which were all very well when they had the glamour of distance, but which made life uncomfortably complicated if brought too close.

  The Sinclairs bought Old John’s Farm, and that was an unlucky place, with no more chance of acquiring a permanent owner than a restless dog has. Although this part of the district had not been settled for more than forty years, the farm had changed hands so often no one could remember how it had got its name. Old John, if he had ever existed, had become merely a place, as famous people may do.

  Mr Sinclair had been a magistrate before he retired, and was known to have private means. Even if this had not been known – he referred to himself humorously as ‘another of these damned cheque-book farmers’ – his dilettante’s attitude towards farming would have proved the fact: he made no attempt at all to make money and did not so much as plough a field all the time he was there. Mrs Sinclair gardened and gave parties. Her very first party became a legend, remembered with admiration, certainly, but also with that grudging tolerance that is accorded to spendthrifts who can afford to think of extravagance as a necessity. It was a weekend affair, very highly organized, beginning with tennis on Saturday morning and ending on Sunday night with a lengthy formal dinner for forty people. It was not that the district did not enjoy parties, or give plenty of their own; rather it was, again, that they were expected to enjoy themselves in a way that was foreign to them. Mrs Sinclair was a realist. Her parties, after that, followed a more familiar routine. But it became clear, from her manner, that in settling here she had seen herself chiefly as a hostess, and now felt that she had not chosen her guests with discrimination. She took to spending two or three days of each week in town; and went for prolonged visits to farms in other parts of the country. Mr Sinclair, too, was seen in the offices of estate agents. He did not mention these visits; Mrs Sinclair was reticent when she returned from these other farms.

  When people began to say that the Sinclairs were leaving, and for the most familiar reason, that Mrs Sinclair was not cut out for farm life, their neighbours nodded and smiled, very politely. And they made a point of agreeing earnestly with Mrs Sinclair when she said town life was after all essential to her.

  The Sinclairs’ farewell party was attended by perhaps fifty people who responded with beautiful tact to what the Sinclairs expected of them. The men’s manner towards Mr Sinclair suggested a sympathy which the women, for once, regarded with indulgence. In the past many young men, angry and frustrated, had been dragged back to offices in town by their wives; and there had been farewell parties that left hostility between husbands and wives for days. The wives were unable to condemn a girl who was genuinely unable ‘to take the life’, as the men condemned her. They championed her, and something always happened then which was what those farmers perhaps dreaded most; for dig deep enough into any one of those wives, and one would find a willing martyr alarmingly apt to expose a bleeding heart in an effort to win sympathy from a husband supposed – for the purposes of this argument – not to have one at all.

  But this substratum of feeling was not reached that evening. Here was no tragedy. Mrs Sinclair might choose to repeat, sadly, that she was not cut out for the life; Mr Sinclair could sigh with humorous resignation as much as he liked; but the whole thing was regarded as a nicely acted play. In corners people were saying tolerantly: ‘Yes, they’ll be much happier there.’ Everyone knew the Sinclairs had bought another farm in a district full of cheque-book farmers, where they would be at home. The fact that they kept this secret – or thought they had – was yet another evidence of unnecessary niceness of feeling. Also, it implied that the Sinclairs thought them fools.

  In short, because of the guards on everyone’s tongue, the party could not take wings, in spite of all the drink and good food.

  It began at sundown, on Old John’s veranda, which might have been designed for parties. It ran two sides of the house, and was twenty feet deep.

  Old John’s house had been built on to and extended so often, by so many people with differing tastes and needs, that of all the houses in the district it was the most fascinating for children. It had rambling creeper-covered wings, a staircase climbing to the roof, a couple of rooms raised up a flight of steps here, another set of rooms sunk low, there; and through all these the children ran wild till they began to grow tired and fretful. They then gathered round their parents’ chairs, where they were a nuisance, and the women roused themselves unwillingly from conversation, and began to look for places where they might sleep
. By eight o’clock it was impossible to move anywhere without watching one’s feet – children were bedded down on floors, in the bath, on sofas, any place, in fact, that had room for a child.

  That done, the party was free to start properly, if it could. But there was always a stage when the women sat at one end of the veranda and the men at the other. The host would set bottles of whisky freely on window-ledges and on tables among them. As for the women, it was necessary, in order to satisfy convention, to rally them playfully so that they could expostulate, cover their glasses, and exclaim that really, they couldn’t drink another mouthful. The bottles were then left unobtrusively near them, and they helped themselves, drinking no less than the men.

  During this stage Mrs Sinclair played the game and sat with the women, but it was clear that she felt defeated because she had been unable to dissolve the ancient convention of the segregation of the sexes. She frequently rose, when it was quite unnecessary, to attend to the food and to the servants who were handing it round; and each time she did so, glances followed her which were as ambiguous as she was careful to keep her own.

  Between the two separate groups wandered a miserable child, who was too old to be put to bed with the infants, and too young to join the party; unable to read because that was considered rude; unable to do anything but loiter on the edge of each group in turn, until an impatient look warned her that something was being suppressed for her benefit that would otherwise add to the gaiety of the occasion. As the evening advanced and the liquor fell in the bottles, these looks became more frequent. Seeing the waif’s discomfort, Mrs Sinclair took her hand and said: ‘Come and help me with the supper,’ thus giving herself a philanthropic appearance in removing herself and the child altogether.