African Stories

by Doris Lessing

  Paul was sitting still, head dropped a little, looking at the floor. Maggie waited for him to smile with her at this child who was Alec. She was arranging the small, humorous smile on her lips that would take the sting out of the scene, when Paul slowly rose, and said quietly: “Well, that’s the end.”

  “No, Paul,” cried Maggie, “you shouldn’t take any notice; you can’t take it seriously . . .”

  “Can’t I?” said Paul, bitterly. “I’ve had enough.”

  “Where are you going? What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You can’t leave,” Maggie found herself saying. “You haven’t got the education to . . .” She stopped herself, but not in time. Paul’s face was so hurt and abandoned that she cried out to herself: What’s the matter with me? Why did I say it? Paul said: “Well, that’s that.” And he went out of the room after his father.

  Paul went over to the mine, found James sitting on his verandah, and said at once: “James, can I come as a partner with you?”

  James’s face did not change. He looked patiently at the boy and said, “Sit down.” Then, when Paul had sat, and was leaning forward waiting, he said: “There isn’t enough profit for a partner here, you know that. Otherwise I’d like to have you. Besides, it looks as if the reef is finished.” He waited and asked: “What’s gone wrong?”

  Paul made an impatient movement, dismissing his parents, the farm, and his past, and said: “Why is your reef finished?”

  “I told you that a long time ago.”

  He had, but Paul had not taken it in. “What are you going to do?” he enquired.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said James, comfortably, lighting a cigarette. “I’ll get along.”

  “Yes, but . . .” Paul was very irritated. This laxness was like his father. “You’ve got to do something,” he insisted.

  “Well, what do you suggest?” asked James, humorously, with the intention of loosening the lad up. But Paul gripped his hands together and shouted: “Why should I suggest anything? Why does everyone expect me to suggest things?”

  “Hey, take it easy,” soothed James. “Sorry,” said Paul. He relaxed and said: “Give me a cigarette.” He lit it clumsily and asked: “Yes, but if there’s no reef, there’s no profit, so how are you going to live?”

  “Oh, I’ll get a job, or find another reef or something,” said James, quite untroubled.

  Paul could not help laughing. “Do you mean to say you’ve known the reef was finished and you’ve been sitting here without a care in the world?”

  “I didn’t say it was finished. It’s just dwindling away. I’m not losing money and I’m not making any. But I’ll pull out in a week or so, I’ve been thinking,” said James, puffing clouds of lazy smoke.

  “Going prospecting?” asked the boy, persistently.

  “Why not?”

  “Can I come with you?”

  “What do you mean by prospecting?” temporised James. “If you think I’m going to wander around with a pan and a hammer, romantic-like, you’re wrong. I like my comfort. I’ll take my time and see what I can find.”

  Paul laughed again at James’s idea of comfort. He glanced into the two little rooms behind the verandah, hardly furnished at all, with the kitchen behind where the slovenly and good-natured African woman cooked meat and potatoes, potatoes and boiled fowl, with an occasional plate of raw tomatoes as relish.

  James said: “I met an old pal of mine at the station last week. He found a reef half a mile from here last month. He’s starting up when he can get the machinery from town. The country’s lousy with gold, don’t worry.”

  And with this slapdash promise of a future Paul was content. But before they started prospecting James deliberately arranged a drinking session. “About time I had a holiday,” he said, quite seriously. James went through four bottles of whisky in two days. He drank, slowly, and persistently, until he became maudlin and sentimental, a phase which embarrassed the boy. Then he became hectoring and noisy, and complained about his wife, the mine owners of the Rand, and his parents, who had taken him from school at fifteen to make his way as he could. Then, having worked that out of his system, nicely judging his condition, he took a final half-glass of neat whisky, lay comfortably down on the bed and passed out. Paul sat beside his friend and waited for him to wake, which he did, in five or six hours, quite sober and very depressed. Then the process was repeated.

  Maggie was angry when Paul came home after three days’ absence, saying that James had had malaria and needed a nurse. At the same time she was pleased that her son could sit up three nights with a sick man and then come walking quietly home across the veld, without any fuss or claim for attention, to demand a meal and eat it and then take himself off to bed; all very calm and sensible, like a grown person.

  She wanted to ask him if he intended to run the farm, but did not dare. She could not blame him for feeling as he did, but she could not approve his running away either. In the end it was Alec who said to Maggie, in his son’s presence: “Your precious Paul. He runs off the farm and leaves it standing while he drinks himself under the table.” He had heard that James was in a drinking bout from one of the Africans.

  “Paul doesn’t drink,” said Maggie finally, telling Alec with her eyes that she was not going to sit there and hear him run down his son. Alec looked away. But he said derisively to Paul: “Been beaten by the farm already? You can’t stick it more than one season?”

  Paul replied, calmly: “As you like.”

  “What are you going to do now?” asked Maggie, and Paul said: “You’ll know in good time.” To his father he could not resist saying : “You’ll know soon enough for your peace of mind!”

  When he had gone, Maggie sat thinking for a long time: if he was with James it meant he was going mining; he was as bad as his father, in fact. Worse, he was challenging his father. With the tired thought that she hoped at least Alec would not understand his son was challenging him, she walked down to the fields to tell her husband that he should spend a little of his time keeping the farm going. She found him at work beside his new shaft, and sat quietly on a big stone while he explained some new idea to her. She said nothing about the farm.

  As for Paul, he said to James: “Let’s start prospecting.” James said: “There’s no hurry.” “Yes, there is, there is,” insisted the boy, and with a shrug James went to find his hammer.

  Together they spent some days working over the nearer parts of the bush. At this stage they did not go near the Barneses’ farm, but kept on the neighbouring farm. This neighbour was friendly because he hoped that a really big reef would be found and then he could sell his land for what he chose to ask for it. Sometimes he sent a native to tell them that there was a likely reef in such and such a place, and the man and the boy went over to test it. Nothing came of these suggestions. Mostly Paul slept in James’s house. Once or twice, for the sake of peace, he went home, looking defiant. But Maggie greeted him pleasantly. She had gone beyond caring. She was listless and ironic. All she feared was that Alec would find out that Paul was prospecting. Once she said, trying to joke: “What’d you do if Paul found gold?” Alex responded, magnificently: “Any fool can find gold. It takes intelligence to use the divining rod properly.” Maggie smiled and shrugged. Then she found another worry: that if Paul knew that his father did not think enough of him to care, he might give up the search; and she felt it better for him to be absorbed in prospecting than in running away down South, or simply drinking his time away. She thought sadly that Paul had made for himself an image of a cruel and heartless father, whereas he was more like a shadow. To fight Alec was shadow-boxing, and she remembered what she had felt over the wedding rings. He had lost her ring, she felt as if the bottom had dropped out of their marriage, and all he said was: “Send to town for another one, what’s in a ring, after all?” And what was in a ring? He was right. With Alec, any emotion always ended in a shrug of the shoulders.

  And then, for a time, th
ere was excitement. Alec found a reef that carried gold; not much, but almost as much as the mine on the ridge. And of course he wanted to work it. Maggie would not agree. She said it was too risky; and anyway, where would they find the capital? Alec said, calmly, that money could be borrowed. Maggie said it would be hanging a millstone around their necks . . . and so on. At last experts came from town and gave a verdict: it was under the workable minimum. The experts went back again, but oddly enough, Alec seemed encouraged rather than depressed. “There you are,” he said, “I always said there was gold, didn’t I?” Maggie soothed him, and he went off to try another reef.

  Paul, who had not been home for a couple of weeks, got wind of this discovery and came striding over with a fevered look to demand: “Is it true that Father’s found gold?”

  “No,” said Maggie. And then, with sad irony: “Wouldn’t you be pleased for his sake if he did?” At that look he coloured, but he could not bring himself to say he would be pleased. Suddenly Maggie asked: “Are you drinking, Paul?” He did not look well, but that was due to the intensity of his search for gold, not to drink. James would not let him drink: “You can do what you like when you’re twenty-one,” he said, just like a father. “But you’re not drinking when you’re with me till then.”

  Paul did not want to tell his mother that he allowed James to order him about, and he said: “You’ve got such a prejudice against drink.”

  “Plenty of people’d be pleased if they’d been brought up with that prejudice,” she said, drily. “Look how many ruin themselves in this country with drink.”

  He said, obstinately: “James is all right, isn’t he? There’s nothing wrong with him—and he drinks off and on.”

  “Can’t you be ‘all right’ without drinking off and on?” enquired Maggie, with that listless irony that upset Paul because it was not like her. He kissed her and said: “Don’t worry about me, I’m doing fine.” And back he went to James.

  For now he and James spent every spare moment prospecting. It was quite different from Alec’s attitude. James seemed to assume that since this was gold country, gold could be found; it was merely a question of persistence. Quite calmly, he closed down his mine, and dismissed his labour force, and set himself to find another. It had a convincing ring to Paul; it was not nearly as thrilling as with Alec, who was always on the verge of a discovery that must shake the world, no less; but it was more sensible. Perhaps, too, Paul was convinced because it was necessary; and what is necessary has its own logic.

  When they had covered the neighbour’s farm they hesitated before crossing the boundary on to Alec’s. But one evening they straddled over the barbed fence, while Paul lagged behind, feeling unaccountably guilty. James wanted to go to the quartz reef. He glanced enquiringly back at the boy, who slowly followed him, persuading himself there was no need to feel guilty. Prospecting was legal, and he had a right to it. They slowly made their way to the reef. The trenches had been roughly filled in, and the places where the stone had been hammered and blasted were already weathering over. They worked on the reef for several days, and sometimes James said, humorously: “When your father does a thing he does it thoroughly . . .” For there was hardly a piece of that mile-long reef which had not been examined. Soon they left it, and worked their way along the ridge. The ground was broken by jutting reefs, outcrops, boulders, but here, it seemed, Alec had not been.

  “Well, sonnie,” said James, “this looks likely, hey?”

  There was no reason why it should be any more likely than any other place, but Paul was trusting to the old miner’s instinct. He liked to watch him move slowly over the ground, pondering over a slant of rock, a sudden scattering of sparkling white pebbles. It seemed like a kind of magic, as ways of thinking do that have not yet been given names and classified. Yet it was based on years of experience of rock and minerals and soil; although James did not consciously know why he paused beside this outcrop and not the next; and to Paul it appeared an arbitrary process.

  One morning they met Alec. At first Paul hung back; then he defiantly strode forward. Alec’s face was hostile and he demanded: “What are you two doing here?”

  “It’s legal to prospect, Mr. Barnes,” said James.

  Alec frowned and said: “You didn’t have the common decency to ask.” He was looking at Paul and not at James. Then, when Paul could not find words, he seemed to lose interest and began moving away. They were astounded to hear him remark: “You’re quite right to try here, though. It always did seem a likely spot. Might have another shot here myself one day.” Then he walked slowly off.

  Paul felt bad; he had been imagining his father as an antagonist. So strong was his reaction that he almost lost interest in the thing; he might even have gone back to the farm if James had not been there to keep him to it. For James was not the sort of man to give up a job once he had started.

  Now he glanced at Paul and said: “Don’t you worry, son. Your dad’s a decent chap, when all’s said. He was right, we should have asked, just out of politeness.”

  “It’s all very well,” said Paul, hugging his old resentment. “He sounds all right now, but you should have heard the things he said.”

  “Well, well, we all lose our tempers,” said James, tolerantly.

  Several days later James remarked: “This bit of rock looks quite good, let’s pan it.” They panned it, and it showed good gold. “Doesn’t prove anything,” said James. “We’d better dig a trench or two.” A trench or two were dug, and James said, casually: “Looks as if this might be it.” It did not immediately come home to Paul that this was James’s way of announcing success. It was too unheroic. He even found himself thinking: If this is all it is, what’s the point of it? To find gold—what a phrase it is! Impossible to hear it without a quickening of the pulse. And so through the rest: I might find gold, you could find gold; they, most certainly, always seem to find gold. But not only was it possible to drop the words, as if they were the most ordinary in the world, it did not occur to James that Paul might be disappointed. “Yes, this is it,” he confirmed himself, some days later, and added immediately: “Let’s get some food, no point in being uncomfortable for nothing.”

  So flat was the scene, just a few untidy diggings in the low greenish scrub, with the low, smokey September sky pressing down, that Paul was making the thing verbally dramatic in his mind, thus: “We have found gold. James and I have found gold. And won’t my father be cross!” But it was no use at all; and he obediently followed James back to the little shack for cold meat and potatoes. It all went on for weeks, while James surveyed the whole area, digging cross trenches, sinking a small shaft. Then he sent some rocks in to the Assay people and their assessment was confirmed. Surely this should be a moment for rejoicing, but all James said was: “We won’t get rich on this lot, but it could be worse.” It seemed as if he might even shrug the whole thing off and start again somewhere else.

  Once again the experts came out, standing over the diggings making their cautious pronouncements; city men, dressed in the crisp khaki they donned for excursions into the veld. “Yes, it was workable. Yes, it might even turn out quite prosperous, with luck.” Paul felt cheated of glory, and there was no one who would understand this feeling. Not even Maggie; he tried to catch her eye and smile ruefully, but her eye would not be caught. For she was there on her son’s invitation. She walked over to see Paul’s triumph without telling Alec. And all the time she watched the experts, watched Paul and James, she was thinking of Alec, who would have to be told. After all these years of work with his divining rods and his theories; after all that patient study of the marsh light, gold, it seemed too cruel that his son should casually walk over the ridge he had himself prospected so thoroughly and find a reef within a matter of weeks. It was so cruel that she could not bring herself to tell him. Why did it have to be there, on that same ridge? Why not anywhere else in the thousands of acres of veld? And she felt even more sad for Alec because she knew quite well that the reef’s being there,
on the ridge, was part of Paul’s triumph. She was afraid that Alec would see that gleam of victory in his son’s eyes.

  In the meantime the important piece of ground lay waiting, guarded by the prescribed pegging notices that were like signboards on which were tacked the printed linen notices listing fines and penalties against any person—even Alec himself—who came near to the still invisible gold without permission. Then out came the businessmen and the lawyers, and there was a long period of signing documents and drinking toasts to everyone concerned.

  Paul came over to supper one evening, and Maggie sat in suspense, waiting for him to tell his father, waiting for the cruel blow to fall. The boy was restless, and several times opened his mouth to speak, fell silent, and in the end said nothing. When Alec had gone to his office to work out some calculations for a new reef, Maggie said: “Well, I suppose you’re very pleased with yourself.”

  Paul grinned and said: “Shouldn’t I be?”

  “Your poor father—can’t you see how he’s going to feel about it?”

  All she could get out of him was: “All right, you tell him then. I won’t say anything.”

  “I’m glad you’ve got some feeling for him.”

  So Paul left and she was faced with the task of telling Alec. She marvelled that he did not know it already. All he had to do was lift his eyes and look close at the ridge. There, among the bare, thinned trees of the September veld, were the trenches, like new scars, and a small black activity of workers.

  Then one day Paul came again and said—and now he sounded apologetic: “You’ll have to tell him, you know. We’re moving the heavy machinery tomorrow. He’ll see for himself.”

  “I really will tell him,” she promised.

  “I don’t want him to feel bad, really I don’t, Mother.” He sounded as insistent as a child who needs to be forgiven.