African Stories

by Doris Lessing

  That done, she accompanied Mrs. Lacey to the nursery, where the cup and the spoon and the measuring-glass were boiled for germs and set to cool under a glass bell. The baby’s rooms had a cool, ordered freshness; when the curtains blew out into the room, Kate looked instinctively at Mrs. Lacey to see if she would check such undisciplined behaviour, but she was looking at the time-table which hung on the inside of the baize door. This time-table began with: “Six A.M., orange juice”; continued through “Six-thirty, rusk and teething ring, seven, wash and dress”; and ended at “five P.M., mothering hour and bed.” Somewhere inside of Kate bubbled a disloyal and incredulous laughter, which astonished her; the face she turned towards Mrs. Lacey was suddenly so guilty that it was met with a speculative lift of the smooth wide brows. “What is wrong with you now, Kate?” said Mrs. Lacey.

  Soon after, the men appeared, in their breeches and trailing their whips behind them across the polished floors. They smiled at Kate, but for a moment their pupils narrowed as Mrs. Lacey’s had done. Then they all sat on the verandah, not at the sewing end, but at the social part, where the big grass chairs were. The servant wheeled out a table stacked with drinks; Kate could not think of any other house where gin and vermouth were served as a routine, before meals. The men were discussing a gymkhana that was due shortly; Mrs. Lacey did not interrupt. When they moved indoors to the dining-room, Kate again felt the incongruity between the orderly charm created by Mrs. Lacey and the casual way the men took it, even destroying it by refusing to fit in. Lunch was a cool, lazy affair, with jugs of frosted drinks and quantities of chilled salads. Mr. Lacey and Mr. Hackett were scribbling figures on pieces of paper and talking together all through the meal; and it was not until it was over that Kate understood that the scene had been like a painted background to the gymkhana which to the men was far more real than anything Mrs. Lacey said or did.

  As soon as it was over, they offered their wide, lazy good-humoured grins, and slouched off again to the paddock. Kate could have smiled; but she knew there would be no answering smile from Mrs. Lacey.

  In silence they took their places at the sewing-table; and at two o’clock to the minute Mrs. Lacey looked at the clock and brought the baby in for his nap, leaving the nanny crouched on the floor to guard him.

  Afterwards Kate’s discomfort grew acute. In the district “coming over for the day” meant either one of two things: something was arranged, like tennis or swimming, with plenty to eat and drink; or the women came by themselves to sew and cook and knit, and this sharing of activity implied a deeper sharing. Kate used to think that her mother came back from a day with one of her women friends wearing the same relaxed softened expression as she did after a church service.

  But Kate was at a hopelessly loose end, and Mrs. Lacey did not show it only because it suited her book better not to. She offered to sew, and did not insist when Mrs. Lacey rather uncomfortably protested. Mrs. Lacey sewed exquisitely, and anything she could do would be bungling in comparison.

  At last the baby woke. Kate knew the time-table said: “Three to five: walk or playpen,” and offered to push the pram. Again she had to face up to the shrewd, impatient look, while Mrs. Lacey warned: “Remember, babies don’t like being messed about.” “I know,” said Kate consciously, colouring. When the baby was strapped in and arranged, Kate was allowed to take the handles of the pram. Leading away from the house in the opposite direction from the river was a long avenue of trees where the shade lay cool and deep. “You mustn’t go away from the trees,” directed Mrs. Lacey; and Kate saw her return to the house, her step quickening with relief; whatever her life was, the delicious, devoted, secret life that Kate imagined, she was free to resume it now that Kate was gone: it seemed impossible this lovely and secret thing should not exist: for it was the necessary complement to the gross practicality of her husband and Mr. Hackett. But when Kate returned at five o’clock, after two hours of steady walking up and down the avenue, pushing the pram and suppressing her passionate desire to cuddle the indifferent baby, Mrs. Lacey was baking tarts in the kitchen.

  If she was to be back home before it grew darker, she must leave immediately. She lingered, however, till five past five: during those two hours she had, in fact, been waiting for the moment when Mrs. Lacey would “mother” the baby. But Mrs. Lacey seated herself with a book and left the child to crawl on a rug at her feet. Kate set off on the road home; and this time the eyes she felt follow her were irritated and calculating.

  At the gate stood her mother. “You shouldn’t have gone off without telling me!” she exclaimed reproachfully. Now, Kate was free to roam as she willed over the farm, so this was unjust, and both sides knew it to be so. “I left a message,” said Kate, avoiding her mother’s eyes.

  Next morning she was loitering about the gate looking out over the coloured slopes to the Laceys’ house, when her mother came up behind her, apparently cutting zinnias, but in fact looking for an opportunity to express her grievance. “You would live there, if you could, wouldn’t you, dear?” she said, smiling painfully. “All those fashions and new clothes and things, we can’t compete, can we?” Kate’s smile was as twistingly jealous as hers; but she did not go to the Laceys’ that day. After all, she couldn’t very well: there were limits. She remained in that part of the farm which lay beside the Laceys’, and looked across at the trees whose heavy greenness seemed to shed a perfume that was more than the scent of sun-heated leaves, and where the grass beckoned endlessly as the wind moved along it. Love, still unrecognized, still unaccepted in her, flooded this way and that, leaving her limp with hatred or exalted with remembrance. And through it all she thought of the baby while resentment grew in her. Whether she stood with the binoculars stuck to her eyes, hour after hour, hoping for a glimpse of Mrs. Lacey on the verandah, or watching the men lean against the fence as the horses moved about them, the baby was in the back of her mind; and the idea of it was not merely the angry pit that is identification with suffering, but also a reflection of what other people were thinking. Kate knew, from a certain tone in her mother’s voice when she mentioned that child, that she was not wholly convinced by time-tables and hygiene.

  The ferment of the last party had not settled before Mrs. Lacey issued invitations for another; there had only been a fortnight’s interval. Mr. Cope said, looking helplessly across at his wife: “I suppose we ought to go?” and Mrs. Cope replied guardedly: “We can’t very well not, when they are our nearest neighbours, can we?” “Oh Lord!” exclaimed Mr. Cope, moving irritably in his chair. Then Kate felt her parents’ eyes come to rest on her; she was not surprised when Mr. Cope asked: “When does Kate go back to school?” “The holidays don’t end for another three weeks.”

  So the Copes all went Mrs. Lacey’s second party, which began exactly as the first had done: everything was the same. The women whisked their children into the improvised dormitory without showing even a formal uneasiness. One of them said: “It is nice to be free of them for once, isn’t it?” and Kate saw Mrs. Lacey looking humorous before she turned away her face. That evening Mrs. Lacey wore a dress of dim green transparent stuff, as innocent and billowing, though as subtly indiscreet as the white one. And the women—save for Mrs. Cope—were in attempts at evening dress.

  Mrs. Lacey saw Kate standing uncertainly in the passage, grasped her by the shoulder, and pushed her gently into the room where all the people were. “I shall find you a boy friend,” she stated gaily; and Kate looked apprehensively towards her parents, who were regarding her, and everyone else, with helpless disapproval. Things had gone beyond their censure already: Mrs. Lacey was so sure of herself that she could defy them about their own daughter before their eyes. But Kate found herself seated next to a young assistant recently come to the district, who at eighteen was less likely to be tolerant of little girls than an older man might have been. Mrs. Lacey had shown none of her usual shrewdness in the choice. After a few painful remarks, Kate saw this young man turn away from her, and soon she tried to slip away.
Mr. Hackett, noticing her, put his arm round her and said, “Don’t run away, my dear,” but the thought of her watching parents stiffened her to an agony of protest. He dropped his arm, remarked humorously to the rest of the room—for everyone was looking over at them and laughing: “These girlish giggles!” and turned his attention to the bottle he was holding. Kate ran to the kitchens. Soon she fled from there, as people came in. She crept furtively to the baby’s cot, but he was asleep; and it was not long before Mrs. Lacey glanced in and said: “Do leave him alone, Kate,” before vanishing again. Kate took herself to that set of rooms that Mrs. Lacey had not touched at all. They were still roughly whitewashed, and the cement floors, though polished, were bare. Saddles of various patterns hung in rows in one room; another was filled with beautifully patterned belts with heavy silver buckles and engraved holsters. There were, too, rows and rows of guns of all kinds, carved, stamped, twisted into strange shapes. They came from every part of the world, and were worth a fortune, so people said.

  These rooms were where Mr. Lacey and Mr. Hackett liked to sit; and they had heavy leather armchairs, and a cupboard with a private supply of whisky and syphons. Kate sat stiffly on the edge of one of the chairs, and looked at the rows of weapons: she was afraid the men might be angry to find her there. And in fact it was not long before Mr. Lacey appeared in the doorway, gave an exclamation, and withdrew. He had not been alone. Kate, wondering who the lady was, and whether Mrs. Lacey would mind, left the house altogether and sat in the back of their car. Half asleep, she watched the couples dancing along the verandah, and saw how at one end a crowd of natives gathered outside in the dark, pressing their noses to the wire gauze, in curious admiration at the white people enjoying themselves. Sometimes a man and a woman would come down the steps, their arms about each other, and disappear under the trees; or into the cars. She shrank back invisibly, for in the very next car were a couple who were often visitors at their house, though as members of their own families; and she did not want them to have the embarrassment of knowing she was there. Soon she stuck her fingers in her ears; she felt sick, and she was also very hungry.

  But it was not long before she heard shouts from the house, and the shouts were angry. Peering through the back window of the car she could see people standing around two men who were fighting. She saw legs in riding breeches, and then Mrs. Lacey came and stood between them. “What nonsense,” Kate heard her exclaim, her voice still high and gay, though strained. Almost immediately Kate heard her name called, and her mother appeared, outlined against the light. Kate slipped from the car so that the couple in the next car might not see her and ran to tug at her mother’s arm.

  “So there you are!” exclaimed Mrs. Cope in a relieved voice. “We are going home now. Your father is tired.”

  In the car Kate asked: “What were Mr. Hackett and Mr. Lacey fighting about?” There was a pause before Mrs. Cope replied: “I don’t know, dear.” “Who won?” insisted Kate. Then, when she got no answer, she said: “It’s funny, isn’t it, when in the day-time they are such friends?” In the silence the sound of her own words tingled in her ears, and Kate watched something unexpected, yet familiar, emerge. Here it was again, the other pattern. It was of Mr. Hackett that she thought as the car nosed its way through the trees to their own farm, and her wonder crystallised at last into exclamation: “But they are so much alike!” She felt as she would have done if she had seen a little girl, offered a doll, burst into tears because she had not been given another that was identical in every way. “Don’t bother your head about it,” soothed Mrs. Cope. “They aren’t very nice people. Forget about it.”

  The next Sunday was Church Sunday. The ministers came in rotation: Presbyterian, Church of England, Roman Catholic. Sometimes there was a combined service. The Copes never missed the Church of England Sundays.

  The services were held in the district hall, near the station. The hall was a vast barn of a place, and the small group of worshippers crowded at one end, near the platform, where Nan Fowler perched to play the hymns, like a thin flock of birds in a very large tree. The singing rose meagrely over the banging of the piano and dissolved in the air above their heads: even from the door the music seemed to come from a long way off.

  The Laceys and Mr. Hackett arrived late that day, tiptoeing uncomfortably to the back seats and arranging themselves so that Mrs. Lacey sat between the men. This was the first time they had been to church. Kate twisted her neck and saw that for once the men were not in riding things; released, thus, from their uniform, looking ordinary in brown suits, it was easier to see them as two different people. But even so, they were alike, with the same flat slouching bodies and lean humorous faces. They hummed tunelessly, making a bumblebee noise, and looked towards the roof. Mrs. Lacey, who held the hymn book for all three of them, kept her eyes on the print in a manner which seemed to be directing the men’s attention to it. She looked very neat and sober today, and her voice, a pretty contralto, was stronger than anyone’s, so that in a little while she was leading the singing. Again, irresistibly, the subterranean laughter bubbled in Kate, and she turned away, glancing doubtfully at her mother, who hissed in her ear: “It’s rude to stare.”

  When the service was over, Mrs. Lacey came straight to Mrs. Cope and held out her hand. “How are you?” she asked winningly. Mrs. Cope replied stiffly: “It is nice to see you at Church.” Kate saw Mrs. Lacey’s face twitch, and sympathy told her that Mrs. Lacey, too, was suffering from the awful need to laugh. However, her face straightened, and she glanced at Mr. Cope and flushed. She stood quietly by and watched while Mrs. Cope issued invitations to everyone who passed to come home to Sunday lunch. She was expecting an invitation too, but none was offered. Mrs. Cope finally nodded, smiled, and climbed into the car. There was suddenly a look of brave defiance about Mrs. Lacey that tugged at Kate’s heart: if it had not been for the stoic set of her shoulders as she climbed into the car with her two men, Kate would have been able to bear the afternoon better. When lunch was over, things arranged themselves as usual with the men on one side of the room and the women on the other. Kate stood for a while behind her father’s chair; then, with burning cheeks, she moved over to the women who had their heads together around her mother’s chair. They glanced up at her, and then behaved as grown-up people do when they wish to talk and children are in the way; they simply pretend she was not there. In a few moments Kate sped from the house and ran through the bush to her place of refuge, which was a deep hollow over which bushes knotted and tangled. Here she flung herself and wept.

  Nobody mentioned the Laceys at supper. People seemed to have been freed from something. There was a great deal of laughter at the comfortable old jokes at which they had been laughing for years. The air had been cleared: something final had happened, or was going to happen. Later, when these farmers and their wives, carrying their children rolled in blankets, went to find their cars, Kate lifted the curtain and looked over at the cluster of lights on the opposite ridge, and wondered if Mrs. Lacey was watching the headlights of the cars swing down the various roads home, and if so, what it was she was thinking and feeling.

  Next morning a basket arrived at the back door, full of fresh vegetables and roses. There was also a note addressed to Miss Catherine Cope. It said: “If you have nothing better to do, come and spend the day. I have been looking over some of my old dresses for you.” Kate read this note, feeling her mother’s reproachful eyes fixed on her, and reluctantly handed it over. “You are not going, surely!” exclaimed Mrs. Cope. “I might as well, for the last time,” said Kate. When she heard what it was she had said, the tears came into her eyes, so that she could not turn round to wave goodbye to her mother.

  That last day she missed nothing of the four miles’ walk: she felt every step.

  The long descent on their side was through fields which were now ploughed ready for the wet season. A waste of yellow clods stretched away on either side, and over them hung a glinting haze of dust. The road itself was more of a grea
t hog’s-back, for the ditches on either side had eroded into cracked gullies fifteen feet deep. Soon, after the rains, this road would have to be abandoned and another cut, for the water raced turbulently down here during every storm, swirling away the soil and sharpening the ridge. At the vlei, which was now quite dry, the gullies had cut down into a double pothole, so that the drift was unsafe even now. This time next year the old road to the Lacey’s would be a vivid weal down the slope where no one could walk.

  On the other side the soil changed: here it was pale and shining, and the dews of each night hardened it so that each step was a small crusty subsidence. Because the lands had not been farmed for years and were covered with new vegetation, the scars that had been cut down this slope, too, were healing, for the grasses had filmed over them and were gripping the loose soil.

  Before Kate began to ascend this slope she took off her cretonne hat that her mother had made to “go” with her frock, and which stuck up in angles round her face, and hid it in an ant-bear hole, where she could find it on the way home; she could not bear Mrs. Lacey to see her in it.

  Being October, it was very hot, and the top of her head began to feel as if a weight were pressing on it. Soon her shoulders ached too, and her eyes dazzled. She could hardly see the bright swift horses in the bushy paddock for glare, and her tight smile at Mr. Hackett and Mr. Lacey was more like a grimace of pain. When she arrived on the verandah, Mrs. Lacey, who was sewing, gave her a concerned glance, and exclaimed: “What have you done with your hat?” “I forgot it,” said Kate.

  On the sewing table were piles of Mrs. Lacey’s discarded frocks. She said kindly: “Have a look at these and see which you would like.” Kate blinked at the glare outside and slid thankfully into a chair; but she did not touch the frocks. After a while her head cleared and she said: “I can’t take them. My mother wouldn’t like it. Thank you all the same.” Mrs. Lacey glanced at her sharply, and went on sewing for a while in silence. Then she said lightly: “I don’t see why you shouldn’t, do you?” Kate did not reply. Now that she had recovered, and the pressure on her head had gone, she was gazing about her, consciously seeing everything for the last time, and wondering what the next lot of people would be like.