The big kitchen table was covered with cold roast chickens, salads and trifles. These were the traditional party foods of the district; and Mrs Sinclair provided them; though at that first party, two years before, the food had been exotic.
‘If I give you a knife, Kate, you won’t cut yourself?’ she enquired; and then said hastily, seeing the child’s face, which protested, as it had all evening, that such consideration was not necessary: ‘Of course you won’t. Then help me joint these chickens … not that the cook couldn’t do it perfectly well, I suppose.’
While they carved, Mrs Sinclair chatted determinedly; and only once said anything that came anywhere near to what they were both thinking, when she remarked briskly: ‘It is a shame. Really, arrangements should be made for you. Having you about is unfair to you and to the grown-ups.’
‘What could they do with me?’ enquired Kate reasonably.
‘Heaven knows,’ acknowledged Mrs Sinclair. She patted Kate’s shoulder encouragingly, and said in a gruff and friendly voice: ‘Well, I can’t say anything helpful, except that you are bound to grow up. It’s an awful age, being neither one thing or the other.’ Kate was thirteen; and it was an age for which no social provision was made. She was thankful to have the excuse to be here, in the kitchen, with at least an appearance of something to do. After a while Mrs Sinclair left her, saying without any attempt at disguising her boredom, even though Kate’s parents were among those who bored her: ‘I’ve got to go back, I suppose.’
Kate sat on a hard kitchen chair, and waited for something to happen, though she knew she could expect nothing in the way of amusement save those odd dropped remarks which for the past year or so had formed her chief education.
In the meantime she watched the cook pile the pieces of chicken on platters, and hand trays and jugs and plates to the waiters, who were now hurrying between this room and the veranda. The sound of voices was rising steadily: Kate judged that the party must be moving towards its second phase, in which case she must certainly stay where she was, for fear of the third.
During the second phase the men and women mingled, pulling their chairs together in a wide circle; and it was likely that some would dance, calling for music, when the host would wind up an old portable gramophone. It was at this stage that the change in the atmosphere took place which Kate acknowledged by the phrase: ‘It is breaking up.’ The sharply-defined family units began to dissolve, and they dissolved always in the same way, so that during the last part of each evening, from about twelve o’clock, the same couples could be seen together dancing, talking, or even moving discreetly off into dark rooms or the night outside. This pattern was to Kate as if a veil had been gently removed from the daytime life of the district, revealing another truth, and one that was bare and brutal. Also quite irrevocable, and this was acknowledged by the betrayed themselves (who were also, in their own times and seasons, betrayers) for nothing was more startling than the patient discretion with which the whole thing was treated.
Mrs Wheatley, for instance, a middle-aged lady who played the piano at church services and ran the Women’s Institute, known as a wonderful mother and prize cook, seemed on these occasions not to notice how her husband always sought out Mrs Fowler (her own best friend) and how this partnership seemed to strike sparks out of the eyes of everyone present. When Andrew Wheatley emerged from the dark with Nan Fowler, their eyes heavy, their sides pressed close together, Mrs Wheatley would simply avert her eyes and remark patiently (her lips tightened a little, perhaps): ‘We ought to be going quite soon.’ And so it was with everyone else. There was something recognized as dangerous, that had to be given latitude, emerging at these parties, and existing only because if it were forbidden it would be even more dangerous.
Kate, after many such parties, had learned that after a certain time, no matter how bored she might be, she must take herself out of sight. This was consideration for the grown-ups, not for her; since she did not have to be present in order to understand. There was a fourth stage, reached very rarely, when there was an explosion of raised voices, quarrels and ugliness. It seemed to her that the host and hostess were always acting as sentinels in order to prevent this fourth stage being reached: no matter how much the others drank, or how husbands and wives played false for the moment, they had to remain on guard: at all costs Mrs Wheatley must be kept tolerant, for everything depended on her tolerance.
Kate had not been in the kitchen alone for long, before she heard the shrill thin scraping of the gramophone; and only a few minutes passed before both Mr and Mrs Sinclair came in. The degree of Kate’s social education could have been judged by her startled look when she saw that neither were on guard and that anything might happen. Then she understood from what they said that tonight things were safe.
Mrs Sinclair said casually: ‘Have something to eat, Kate?’ and seemed to forget her. ‘My God, they are a sticky lot,’ she remarked to her husband.
‘Oh, I don’t know, they get around in their own way.’
‘Yes, but what a way!’ This was a burst of exasperated despair. ‘They don’t get going tonight, thank heavens. But one expects …’ Here Mrs Sinclair’s eyes fell on Kate, and she lowered her voice. ‘What I can’t understand is the sameness of it all. You press a button – that’s sufficient alcohol – and then the machinery begins to turn. The same things happen, the same people, never a word said – it’s awful.’ She filled her glass liberally from a bottle that stood among the denuded chicken carcases. ‘I needed that,’ she remarked, setting the glass down. ‘If I lived here much longer I’d begin to feel that I couldn’t enjoy myself unless I were drunk.’
‘Well, my dear, we are off tomorrow.’
‘How did I stick two years of it? It really is awful,’ she pursued petulantly. ‘I don’t know why I should get so cross about it. After all,’ she added reasonably, ‘I’m no puritan.’
‘No, dear, you are not,’ said Mr Sinclair dryly; and the two looked at each other with precisely that brand of discretion which Kate had imagined Mrs Sinclair was protesting against. The words opened a vista with such suddenness that the child was staring in speculation at this plain, practical lady whose bread and butter air seemed to leave even less room for the romance which it was hard enough to associate with people like the Wheatleys and the Fowlers.
‘Perhaps it is that I like a little more – what? – grace? with my sin?’ enquired Mrs Sinclair, neatly expressing Kate’s own thought; and Mr Sinclair drove it home by saying, still very dry-voiced: ‘Perhaps at our age we ought not to be so demanding?’
Mrs Sinclair coloured and said quickly: ‘Oh, you know what I mean.’ For a moment this couple’s demeanour towards each other was unfriendly; then they overcame it in a gulp of laughter. ‘Cat,’ commented Mrs Sinclair, wryly appreciative; and her husband slid a kiss on her cheek.
‘You know perfectly well,’ said Mrs Sinclair, slipping her arm through her husband’s, ‘that what I meant was …’
‘Well, we’ll be gone tomorrow,’ Mr Sinclair repeated.
‘I think, on the whole,’ said Mrs Sinclair after a moment, ‘that I prefer worthies like the Copes to the others, they at any rate have the discrimination to know what wouldn’t become them … except that one knows it is sheer, innate dullness …’
Mr Sinclair made a quick warning movement; Mrs Sinclair coloured, looked confused, and gave Kate an irritated glance, which meant: that child here again!
To hear her parents described as ‘worthies’ Kate took, defiantly, as a compliment; but the look caused the tears to suffuse her eyes, and she turned away.
‘I am sorry, my dear,’ said kindhearted Mrs Sinclair penitently. ‘You dislike being your age as much as I do being mine, I daresay. We must make allowances for each other.’
With her hand still resting on Kate’s shoulder, she remarked to her husband: ‘I wonder what Rosalind Lacey will make of all this?’ She laughed, with pleasurable maliciousness.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if they di
dn’t do very well.’ His dryness now was astringent enough to sting.
‘How could they?’ asked Mrs Sinclair, really surprised. ‘I shall be really astonished if they last six months. After all, she’s not the type – I mean, she has at least some idea.’
‘Which idea?’ enquired Mr Sinclair blandly, grinning spitefully; and though Mrs Sinclair exclaimed: ‘You are horrid, darling,’ Kate saw that she grinned no less spitefully.
While Kate was wondering how much more ‘different’ (the word in her mind to distinguish the Sinclairs from the rest of the district) the coming Laceys would be from the Sinclairs, they all became aware that the music had stopped, and with it the sounds of scraping feet.
‘Oh dear,’ exclaimed Mrs Sinclair, ‘you had better take out another case of whisky. What is the matter with them tonight? Say what you like, but it is exactly like standing beside a machine with an oil-can waiting for it to make grinding noises.’
‘No, let them go. We’ve done what we should.’
‘We must join them, nevertheless.’ Mrs Sinclair hastily swallowed some more whisky, and sighing heavily, moved to the door. Kate could see through a vista of several open doors to the veranda, where people were sitting about with bored expressions which suggested surreptitious glances at the clock. Among them were her own parents, sitting side by side, their solidity a comment (which was not meant) on the way the others had split up. Mr Cope, who was described as The Puritan by his neighbours, a name he considered a great compliment, managed to enjoy his parties because it was quite possible to shut one’s eyes to what went on at them. He was now smiling at Andrew Wheatley and Nan Fowler, as if the way they were interlaced was no more than roguish good fun. I like to see everyone enjoying themselves, his expression said, defiant of the gloom which was in fact settling over everyone.
Kate heard Mrs Sinclair say to her husband, this time impatiently: ‘I suppose those Lacey people are going to spoil everything we have done here?’ and this remark was sufficient food for thought to occupy her during the time she knew must elapse before she would be called to the car.
What had the Sinclairs, in fact, done here? Nothing – at least, to the mind of the district.
Kate supposed it might be something in the house; but, in fact, nothing had been built on, nothing improved; the place had not even been painted. She began to wander through the rooms, cautious of the sleeping children whose soft breathing could be heard from every darkened corner. The Sinclairs had brought in a great deal of heavy dark furniture, which everyone knew had to be polished by Mrs Sinclair herself, as the servants were not to be trusted with it. There was silver, solid and cumbersome stuff. There were brass trays and fenders and coal scuttles which were displayed for use even in the warm weather. And there were inordinate quantities of water-colours, engravings and oils whose common factor was a pervading heaviness, a sort of brownish sigh in paint. All these things were now in their packing-cases, and when the lorries came in the morning, nothing would be left of the Sinclairs. Yet the Sinclairs grieved for the destruction of something they imagined they had contributed. This paradox slowly cleared in Kate’s mind as she associated it with that suggestion in the Sinclairs’ manner that everything they did or said referred in some way to a standard that other people could not be expected to understand, a standard that had nothing to do with beauty, ugliness, evil or goodness. Looked at in this light, the couple’s attitude became clear. Their clothes, their furniture, even their own persons, all shared that same attribute, which was a kind of expensive and solid ugliness that could not be classified in any terms that had yet been introduced to Kate.
So the child shelved that problem and considered the Laceys, who were to arrive next week. They, presumably, would be even more expensive and ugly, yet kind and satisfactory, than the Sinclairs themselves.
But she did not have time to think of the Laceys for long; for the house began to stir into life as the parents came to rouse their children, and the family units separated themselves off in the dark outside the house, where the cars were parked. For this time, that other pattern was finished with, for now ordinary life must go on.
In the back of the car, heavily covered by blankets, for the night was cold, Kate lay half asleep, and heard her father say: ‘I wonder who we’ll get this time?’
‘More successful, I hope,’ said Mrs Cope.
‘Horses, I heard.’ Mr Cope tested the word.
Mrs Cope confirmed the doubt in his voice by saying decisively: ‘Just as bad as the rest, I suppose. This isn’t the place for horses on that scale.’
Kate gained an idea of something unrespectable. Not only the horses were wrong; what her parents said was clearly a continuation of other conversations, held earlier in the evening. So it was that long before they arrived the Laceys were judged, and judged as vagrants.
Mr Cope would have preferred to have the kind of neighbours who become a kind of second branch of one’s own family, with the children growing up together, and a continual borrowing back and forth of farm implements and books and so forth. But he was a gentle soul, and accepted each new set of people with a courtesy that only his wife and Kate understood was becoming an effort … it was astonishing the way all the people who came to Old John’s Place were so much not the kind that the Copes would have liked.
Old John’s House was three miles away, a comparatively short distance, and the boundary between the farms was a vlei which was described for the sake of grandness as a river, though most of the year there was nothing but a string of potholes caked with cracked mud. The two houses exchanged glances, as it were, from opposite ridges. The slope on the Copes’ side was all ploughed land, of a dull yellow colour which deepened to glowing orange after rain. On the other side was a fenced expanse that had once been a cultivated field, and which was now greening over as the young trees spread and strengthened.
During the very first week of the Laceys’ occupation this land became a paddock filled with horses. Mr Cope got out his binoculars, gazed across at the other slope, and dropped them after a while, remarking: ‘Well, I suppose it is all right.’ It was a grudging acceptance. ‘Why shouldn’t they have horses?’ asked Kate curiously.
‘Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know. Let’s wait and see.’ Mr Cope had met Mr Lacey at the station on mail day, and his report of the encounter had been brief, because he was a man who hated to be unfair, and he could not help disliking everything he heard about the Laceys. Kate gathered that the Laceys included a Mr Hackett. They were partners, and had been farming in the Argentine, in the Cape, and in England. It was a foursome, for there was also a baby. The first wagon load of furniture had consisted of a complete suite of furniture for the baby’s nurseries, and many cases of saddles and stable equipment; and while they waited for the next load the family camped on the veranda without even so much as a teapot or a table for a meal. This tale was already making people smile. But because there was a baby the women warmed towards Mrs Lacey before they had seen her; and Mrs Cope greeted her with affectionate welcome when she arrived to make friends.
Kate understood at first glance that it was not Mrs Lacey’s similarity to Mrs Sinclair that had caused the latter to accept her, in advance, as a companion in failure.
Mrs Lacey was not like the homely mothers of the district. Nor did she – like Mrs Sinclair – come into that category of leathery-faced and downright women who seemed more their husbands’ partners than their wives. She was a tall, smooth-faced woman, fluidly moving, and bronze hair coiled in her neck with a demureness that seemed a challenge, taken with her grace, and with the way she used her eyes. These were large, grey, and very quick, and Kate thought of the swift glances, retreating immediately behind smooth lowered lids, as spies sent out for information. Kate was charmed, as her mother was; as her father was, too – though against his will; but she could not rid herself of distrust. All this wooing softness was an apology for something of which her parents had a premonition, while she herself was in the dark. She kne
w it was not the fact of the horses, in itself, that created disapproval; just as she knew that it was not merely Mrs Lacey’s caressing manner that was upsetting her father.
When Mrs Lacey left, she drew Kate to her, kissed her on both cheeks, and asked her to come and spend the day. Warmth suddenly enveloped the child, so that she was head over ears in love, but distrusting the thing as a mature person does. Because the gesture was so clearly aimed, not at her, but at her parents, that first moment resentment was born with the love and the passionate admiration; and she understood her father when he said slowly, Mrs Lacey having left: ‘Well, I suppose it is all right, but I can’t say I like it.’
The feeling over the horses was explained quite soon: Mr Lacey and Mr Hackett kept these animals as other people might keep cats. They could not do without them. As with the Sinclairs, there was money somewhere. In this district people did not farm horses; they might keep a few for the races or to ride round the lands. But at Old John’s Place now there were dozens of horses, and if they were bought and sold it was not for the sake of the money, but because these people enjoyed the handling of them, the business of attending sales and the slow, shrewd talk of men as knowledgeable as themselves. There was, in fact, something excessive and outrageous about the Laceys’ attitude towards horses: it was a passionate business to be disapproved of, like gambling or women.
Kate went over to ‘spend the day’ a week after she was first asked; and that week was allowed to elapse only because she was too shy to go sooner. Walking up the road beside the paddock she saw the two men, in riding breeches, their whips looped over their arms, moving among the young animals with the seriousness of passion. They were both lean, tough, thin-flanked men, slow-moving and slow-spoken; and they appeared to be gripping invisible saddles with their knees even when they were walking. They turned their heads to stare at Kate, in the manner of those so deeply engrossed in what they are doing that outside things take a long time to grow in to their sight, but finally their whips cut a greeting in the air, and they shouted across to her. Their voices had a burr to them conveying again the exciting sense of things foreign; it was not the careful English voice of the Sinclairs, nor the lazy South African slur. It was an accent that had taken its timbre from many places and climates, and its effect on Kate was as if she had suddenly smelt the sea or heard a quickening strain of music.
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