African Stories

by Doris Lessing

  She said sharply, cutting into the men’s conversation: “Mr. De Wet, did you know your wife spends her mornings at the river?”

  The man looked at her vaguely, while he tried to gather the sense of her words: his mind was on the farm. “Sure,” he said at last. “Why not?”

  “Aren’t you afraid of bilharzia?”

  He said laconically: “If we were going to get it, we would have got it long ago. A drop of water can infect you, touching the skin.”

  “Wouldn’t it be wiser not to let the water touch you in the first place?” she enquired with deceptive mildness.

  “Well, I told her. She wouldn’t listen. It is too late now. Let her enjoy it.”

  “But . . .”

  “About that red heifer,” said Major Gale, who had not been aware of any interruption.

  “No,” said Mrs. Gale sharply. “You are not going to dismiss it like that.” She saw the three of them look at her in astonishment. “Mr. De Wet, have you ever thought what it means to a woman being alone all day, with not enough to do. It’s enough to drive anyone crazy.”

  Major Gale raised his eyebrows; he had not heard his wife speak like that for so long. As for De Wet, he said with a slack good-humour that sounded brutal: “And what do you expect me to do about it.”

  “You don’t realize,” said Mrs. Gale futilely, knowing perfectly well there was nothing he could do about it. “You don’t understand how it is.”

  “She’ll have a kid soon,” said De Wet. “I hope so, at any rate. That will give her something to do.”

  Anger raced through Mrs. Gale like a flame along petrol. She was trembling. “She might be that red heifer,” she said at last.

  “What’s the matter with having kids?” asked De Wet. “Any objection?”

  “You might ask me first,” said the girl bitterly.

  Her husband blinked at her, comically bewildered. “Hey, what is this?” he enquired. “What have I done? You said you wanted to have kids. Wouldn’t have married you otherwise.”

  “I never said I didn’t.”

  “Talking about her as if she were . . .”

  “When, then?” Mrs. Gale and the man were glaring at each other.

  “There’s more to women than having children,” said Mrs. Gale at last, and flushed because of the ridiculousness of her words.

  De Wet looked her up and down, up and down. “I want kids,” he said at last. “I want a large family. Make no mistake about that. And when I married her”—he jerked his head at his wife—“I told her I wanted them. She can’t turn round now and say I didn’t.”

  “Who is turning round and saying anything?” asked the girl, fine and haughty, staring away over the trees.

  “Well, if no one is blaming anyone for anything,” asked Major Gale, jauntily twirling his little moustache, “what is all this about?”

  “God knows, I don’t,” said De Wet angrily. He glanced sullenly at Mrs. Gale. “I didn’t start it.”

  Mrs. Gale sat silent, trembling, feeling foolish, but so angry she could not speak. After a while she said to the girl: “Shall we go inside, my dear?” The girl, reluctantly, and with a lingering backward look at her husband, rose and followed Mrs. Gale. “He didn’t mean anything,” she said awkwardly, apologizing for her husband to her husband’s employer’s wife. This room, with its fine old furniture, always made her apologetic. At this moment, De Wet stooped into the doorway and said: “Come on, I am going home.”

  “Is that an order?” asked the girl quickly, backing so that she came side by side with Mrs. Gale: she even reached for the older woman’s hand. Mrs. Gale did not take it: this was going too far.

  “What’s got into you?” he said, exasperated. “Are you coming, or are you not?”

  “I can’t do anything else, can I?” she replied, and followed him from the house like a queen who has been insulted.

  Major Gale came in after a few moments. “Lovers’ quarrel,” he said, laughing awkwardly. This phrase irritated Mrs. Gale. “That man!” she exclaimed. “That man!”

  “Why, what is wrong with him?” She remained silent, pretending to arrange her flowers. This silly scene, with its hinterlands of emotion, made her furious. She was angry with herself, angry with her husband, and furious at that foolish couple who had succeeded in upsetting her and destroying her peace. At last she said: “I am going to bed. I’ve such a headache I can’t think.”

  “I’ll bring you a tray, my dear,” said Major Gale, with a touch of exaggeration in his courtesy that annoyed her even more. “I don’t want anything, thank you,” she said, like a child, and marched off to the bedroom.

  There she undressed and went to bed. She tried to read, found she was not following the sense of the words, put down the book, and blew out the light. Light streamed into the room from the moon; she could see the trees along the fence banked black against stars. From next door came the clatter of her husband’s solitary meal.

  Later she heard voices from the verandah. Soon her husband came into the room and said: “De Wet is asking whether his wife has been here.”

  “What!” exclaimed Mrs. Gale, slowly assimilating the implications of this. “Why, has she gone off somewhere?”

  “She’s not at home,” said the Major uncomfortably. For he always became uncomfortable and very polite when he had to deal with situations like this.

  Mrs. Gale sank back luxuriously on her pillows. “Tell that fine young man that his wife often goes for long walks by herself when he’s asleep. He probably hasn’t noticed it.” Here she gave a deadly look at her husband. “Just as I used to,” she could not prevent herself adding.

  Major Gale fiddled with his moustache, and gave her a look which seemed to say: “Oh lord, don’t say we are going back to all that business again?” He went out, and she heard him saying: “Your wife might have gone for a walk, perhaps?” Then the young man’s voice: “I know she does sometimes. I don’t like her being out at night, but she just walks around the house. And she takes the dogs with her. Maybe she’s gone further this time—being upset, you know.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Major Gale. Then they both laughed. The laughter was of a quite different quality from the sober responsibility of their tone a moment before: and Mrs. Gale found herself sitting up in bed, muttering: “How dare he?”

  She got up and dressed herself. She was filled with premonitions of unpleasantness. In the main room her husband was sitting reading, and since he seldom read, it seemed he was also worried. Neither of them spoke. When she looked at the clock, she found it was just past nine o’clock.

  After an hour of tension, they heard the footsteps they had been waiting for. There stood De Wet, angry, worried sick, his face white, his eyes burning.

  “We must get the boys out,” he said, speaking directly to Major Gale, and ignoring Mrs. Gale.

  “I am coming too,” she said.

  “No, my dear,” said the Major cajolingly. “You stay here.”

  “You can’t go running over the veld at this time of night,” said De Wet to Mrs. Gale, very blunt and rude.

  “I shall do as I please,” she returned.

  The three of them stood on the verandah, waiting for the natives. Everything was drenched in moonlight. Soon they heard a growing clamour of voices from over the ridge, and a little later the darkness there was lightened by flaring torches held high by invisible hands: it seemed as if the night were scattered with torches advancing of their own accord. Then a crowd of dark figures took shape under the broken lights. The farm natives, excited by the prospect of a night’s chasing over the veld, were yelling as if they were after a small buck or a hare.

  Mrs. Gale sickened. “Is it necessary to have all these natives in it?” she asked. “After all, have we even considered the possibilities? Where can a girl run to on a place like this?”

  “That is the point,” said Major Gale frigidly.

  “I can’t bear to think of her being—pursued, like this, by a crowd of natives. It’s
horrible.”

  “More horrible still if she has hurt herself and is waiting for help,” said De Wet. He ran off down the path, shouting to the natives and waving his arms. The Gales saw them separate into three bands, and soon there were three groups of lights jerking away in different directions through the hazy dark, and the yells and shouting came back to them on the wind.

  Mrs. Gale thought: “She could have taken the road back to the station, in which case she could be caught by car, even now.”

  She commanded her husband: “Take the car along the road and see.”

  “That’s an idea,” said the Major, and went off to the garage. She heard the car start off, and watched the rear light dwindle redly into the night.

  But that was the least ugly of the possibilities. What if she had been so blind with anger, grief, or whatever emotion it was that had driven her away, that she had simply run off into the veld not knowing where she went? There were thousands of acres of trees, thick grass, gullies, kopjes. She might at this moment be lying with a broken arm or leg; she might be pushing her way through grass higher than her head, stumbling over roots and rocks. She might be screaming for help somewhere for fear of wild animals, for if she crossed the valley into the hills there were leopards, lions, wild dogs. Mrs. Gale suddenly caught her breath in an agony of fear: the valley! What if she had mistaken her direction and walked over the edge of the escarpment in the dark? What if she had forded the river and been taken by a crocodile? There were so many things: she might even be caught in a game trap. Once, taking her walk, Mrs. Gale herself had come across a tall sapling by the path where the spine and ribs of a large buck dangled, and on the ground were the pelvis and legs, fine eroded bones of an animal trapped and forgotten by its trapper. Anything might have happened. And worse than any of the actual physical dangers was the danger of falling a victim to fear: being alone on the veld, at night, knowing oneself lost: this was enough to send anyone off balance.

  The silly little fool, the silly little fool: anger and pity and terror confused in Mrs. Gale until she was walking crazily up and down her garden through the bushes, tearing blossoms and foliage to pieces in trembling fingers. She had no idea how time was passing; until Major Gale returned and said that he had taken the ten miles to the station at seven miles an hour, turning his lights into the bush this way and that. At the station everyone was in bed; but the police were standing on the alert for news.

  It was long after twelve. As for De Wet and the bands of searching natives, there was no sign of them. They would be miles away by this time.

  “Go to bed,” said Major Gale at last.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. After a while she held out her hand to him, and said: “One feels so helpless.”

  There was nothing to say; they walked together under the stars, their minds filled with horrors. Later she made some tea and they drank it standing; to sit would have seemed heartless. They were so tired they could hardly move. Then they got their second wind and continued walking. That night Mrs. Gale hated her garden, that highly-cultivated patch of luxuriant growth, stuck in the middle of a country that could do this sort of thing to you suddenly. It was all the fault of the country! In a civilised sort of place, the girl would have caught the train to her mother, and a wire would have put everything right. Here, she might have killed herself, simply because of a passing fit of despair. Mrs. Gale began to get hysterical. She was weeping softly in the circle of her husband’s arm by the time the sky lightened and the redness of dawn spread over the sky.

  As the sun rose, De Wet returned alone over the veld. He said he had sent the natives back to their huts to sleep. They had found nothing. He stated that he also intended to sleep for an hour, and that he would be back on the job by eight. Major Gale nodded: he recognised this as a necessary discipline against collapse. But after the young man had walked off across the veld towards his house, the two older people looked at each other and began to move after him. “He must not be alone,” said Mrs. Gale sensibly. “I shall make him some tea and see that he drinks it.”

  “He wants sleep,” said Major Gale. His own eyes were red and heavy.

  “I’ll put something in his tea,” said Mrs. Gale. “He won’t know it is there.” Now she had something to do, she was much more cheerful. Planning De Wet’s comfort, she watched him turn in at his gate and vanish inside the house: they were some two hundred yards behind.

  Suddenly there was a shout, and then a commotion of screams and yelling. The Gales ran fast along the remaining distance and burst into the front room, white-faced and expecting the worst, in whatever form it might choose to present itself.

  There was De Wet, his face livid with rage, bending over his wife, who was huddled on the floor and shielding her head with her arms, while he beat her shoulders with his closed fists.

  Mrs. Gale exclaimed: “Beating your wife!”

  De Wet flung the girl away from him, and staggered to his feet. “She was here all the time,” he said, half in temper, half in sheer wonder. “She was hiding under the bed. She told me so. When I came in she was sitting on the bed and laughing at me.”

  The girl beat her hands on the floor and said, laughing and crying together: “Now you have to take some notice of me. Looking for me all night over the veld with your silly natives! You looked so stupid, running about like ants, looking for me.”

  “My God,” said De Wet simply, giving up. He collapsed backwards into a chair and lay there, his eyes shut, his face twitching.

  “So now you have to notice me,” she said defiantly, but beginning to look scared. “I have to pretend to run away, but then you sit up and take notice.”

  “Be quiet,” said De Wet, breathing heavily. “Be quiet, if you don’t want to get hurt bad.”

  “Beating your wife,” said Mrs. Gale. “Savages behave better.”

  “Caroline, my dear,” said Major Gale awkwardly. He moved towards the door.

  “Take that woman out of here if you don’t want me to beat her too,” said De Wet to Major Gale.

  Mrs. Gale was by now crying with fury. “I’m not going,” she said. “I’m not going. This poor child isn’t safe with you.”

  “But what was it all about?” said Major Gale, laying his hand kindly on the girl’s shoulder. “What was it, my dear? What did you have to do it for, and make us all so worried?”

  She began to cry. “Major Gale, I am so sorry. I forgot myself. I got so mad. I told him I was going to have a baby. I told him when I got back from your place. And all he said was: That’s fine. That’s the first of them, he said. He didn’t love me, or say he was pleased, or nothing.”

  “Dear Christ in hell,” said De Wet wearily, with the exasperation strong in his voice, “what do you make me do these things for? Do you think I want to beat you? Did you think I wasn’t pleased: I keep telling you I want kids, I love kids.”

  “But you don’t care about me,” she said, sobbing bitterly.

  “Don’t I?” he said helplessly.

  “Beating your wife when she is pregnant,” said Mrs. Gale. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” She advanced on the young man with her own fists clenched, unconscious of what she was doing. “You ought to be beaten yourself, that’s what you need.”

  Mrs. De Wet heaved herself off the floor, rushed on Mrs. Gale, pulled her back so that she nearly lost balance, and then flung herself on her husband. “Jack,” she said, clinging to him desperately, “I am so sorry, I am so sorry, Jack.”

  He put his arms round her. “There,” he said simply, his voice thick with tiredness, “don’t cry. We got mixed up, that’s all.”

  Major Gale, who had caught and steadied his wife as she staggered back, said to her in a low voice: “Come, Caroline. Come. Leave them to sort it out.”

  “And what if he loses his temper again and decides to kill her this time?” demanded Mrs. Gale, her voice shrill.

  De Wet got to his feet, lifting his wife with him. “Go away now, Mrs. Major,” he said
. “Get out of here. You’ve done enough damage.”

  “I’ve done enough damage?” she gasped. “And what have I done?”

  “Oh nothing, nothing at all,” he said with ugly sarcasm. “Nothing at all. But please go and leave my wife alone in future, Mrs. Major.”

  “Come, Caroline, please,” said Major Gale.

  She allowed herself to be drawn out of the room. Her head was aching so that the vivid morning light invaded her eyes in a wave of pain. She swayed a little as she walked.

  “Mrs. Major,” she said, “Mrs. Major!”

  “He was upset,” said her husband judiciously.

  She snorted. Then, after a silence: “So, it was all my fault.”

  “He didn’t say so.”

  “I thought that was what he was saying. He behaves like a brute and then says it is my fault.”

  “It was no one’s fault,” said Major Gale, patting her vaguely on shoulders and back as they stumbled back home.

  They reached the gate, and entered the garden, which was now musical with birds.

  “A lovely morning,” remarked Major Gale.

  “Next time you get an assistant,” she said finally, “get people of our kind. These might be savages, the way they behave.”

  And that was the last word she would ever say on the subject.

  Little Tembi

  JANE MCCLUSTER, who had been a nurse before she married, started a clinic on the farm within a month of arriving. Though she had been born and brought up in town, her experience of natives was wide, for she had been a sister in the native wards of the city hospital, by choice, for years; she liked nursing natives, and explained her feeling in the words: “They are just like children, and appreciate what you do for them.” So, when she had taken a thorough, diagnosing kind of look at the farm natives, she exclaimed, “Poor things!” and set about turning an old dairy into a dispensary. Her husband was pleased; it would save money in the long run by cutting down illness in the compound.

  Willie McCluster who had also been born and raised in South Africa was nevertheless unmistakably and determinedly Scottish. His accent might be emphasised for loyalty’s sake, but he had kept all the fine qualities of his people unimpaired by a slowing and relaxing climate. He was shrewd, vigorous, earthy, practical and kind. In appearance he was largely built, with a square bony face, a tight mouth, and eyes whose fierce blue glance was tempered by the laughter wrinkles about them. He became a farmer young, having planned the steps for years: he was not one of those who drift on to the land because of discontent with an office, or because of failure, or vague yearnings towards “freedom.” Jane, a cheerful and competent girl who knew what she wanted, trifled with her numerous suitors with one eye on Willie, who wrote her weekly letters from the farming college in the Transvaal. As soon as his four years training were completed, they married.