Who Killed Piet Barol?

by Richard Mason

  When he had gone, Nosakhe sat, listening to the supernatural whispers of the wooden box he had left behind. To be a mortal who hears the spirits! She accepted it as the great privilege it was. When she had sat for some time, she switched off the radio and blew out the lantern. She crossed the yard and went to the hut where she did her magic. Among her many possessions was a padlock. She had bartered it from a traveller in the year of Ntsina’s birth. It had no key, but it was open. What it locked it would lock forever, and she had saved it carefully, wondering why Ma had sent it.

  Now she knew.

  She went to Sukude’s hut and slipped the padlock into the bolt. Then she closed it, tested it and found its resistance was total. She smiled. For many years Sukude had thought he had the only lock in the whole of Gwadana.

  She went to her own hut, in which a brazier still smoked. She folded her best blanket several times and put two coals in it. Immediately the blanket began to singe. She hurried across the yard. Sukude’s snores came balefully through his door. She thanked Ma for her assistance, and threw the coals onto his roof.

  Nosakhe sat on the sheep trough as the coals found resting places in the dry thatch. The wind caressed them. Smoke twisted towards the stars. She watched intently, urging them to action. Flames began to creep between the stalks of the thatch, and the air was sweet with its scent.

  Sukude’s snoring stopped. For the time it takes a wave to break there was silence. Then terrible screams broke it. The burning of the hut was magnificent. Even from the opposite side of the yard, sweat ran down Nosakhe’s face, so hot it was. She heard a key scraping in a lock, then desperate bangs on the door. Her padlock held true. The flames rose higher. She sat, back straight. There was fury in the screams as well as terror. She heard her own name, and bowed in acknowledgement of her authority. The noise brought Bela to her door. At the collapse of the central joist of the roof there was one mighty scream, then no more.

  Nosakhe shifted along the sheep trough, and patted the space beside her. Her granddaughter-in-law sat down.

  “It is time for us to start afresh,” said Nosakhe Zini.

  12

  In Johannesburg, Stacey Barol was behaving like a woman with a substantial private income, and good God she loved it. Having no pressing need to charm Percy Shabrill allowed her to be commanding with him. This was just the right line for a stylish woman to take. The furniture was a magnificent success. Even Percy, who had prepared many speeches on this subject, stopped spluttering about how long it had taken to make—especially when Stacey told him that Piet had fought gloriously in France, and been injured and invalided home to supervise its creation.

  “Capital, capital,” said Percy, who had no intention of going anywhere to fight.

  In the vast, spare rooms Herbert Baker had designed, the furniture Piet had made added enchantment and originality. Each piece, conceived in the melting lava of an artist’s inspiration and fashioned by gifted, highly competitive craftsmen, had the stature an object of beauty acquires on its own terms. Added to which, how comfortable they were! In the months of waiting Dorothy had grown anxious over the eccentric designs she had approved. She knew that whatever was delivered she must live with for the rest of her life. There could be no pretense of sending it back.

  She had rifled Percy’s desk one morning and found the bill of sale. Such a sum could not be wasted—it was many times higher than the original Hepplewhite’s bill, and they had chosen the best of everything at Hepplewhite’s. She had feared that the chairs would be as uncomfortable as the splendid pieces in the hall of Warrington Manor, the residence of the man who had given her father his Living. She had been obliged to spend many hours on those chairs as a child. She could still feel the ache in her buttocks. Piet’s chairs—what a revelation they were. As soon as she sat she was welcomed by the lines of the wood. They did not permit slouching. One could not sit in them in any attitude that was not as elegant and graceful as they were—but they made the preservation of an upright posture a pleasure, not an imposition.

  Stacey arranged them wonderfully. She had brought the contents of Percy’s study, the dining room and everything in the library save the bookcases. “The bookcases you are going to adore,” she said. “I am not going to tell you a word about them.”

  Stacey and Dorothy went shopping together, and filled the Shabrills’ Packard to the brim on each occasion. After twelve weeks in a forest, bombarded by every kind of inconvenience, human and animal, nothing could be more amusing than shopping for silk lampshades, china, eiderdowns of goose feathers, cashmere blankets, satin for curtains—and then dresses. There was a sweetness in Dorothy Shabrill’s nature that Stacey Barol’s megawatt charm brought out. Dorothy was so ready to play the lesser role, so eager to give way to Stacey on every question of style, so happy to pay any bill Stacey considered necessary, that Stacey’s affectionate nature was engaged. She missed her son and had lived too long without a woman friend. To have one again was marvellous. She determined to give Dorothy and Percy a house beyond their imaginings—and as it took shape she remembered why she loved her husband.

  She cabled to Piet, instructing him to chop down more of the wonderful trees that were making such an impression. When Percy learned that the Barols intended to sell this wood to other men, his competitive spirit was aroused and Stacey made great use of it. She agreed not to sell any pieces in Ancestor wood for twelve months, so that Percy might have full boasting rights. The night she struck this deal, which involved the payment of a considerable sum, she drank a whole bottle of champagne in her bath at the Carlton Hotel. Percy’s boastfulness was better than any sales force. She encouraged him to give a party. The drawing-room furniture not having arrived, she filled this room with divans and silk cushions, and called it the Grand Vizier’s Chamber. No one in Johannesburg had ever heard of a Grand Vizier’s Chamber, nor seen a room furnished with such theatrical panache. It was a hit. Under the pretext of praising Percy’s marvellous taste, she drew attention to the subtleties of her husband’s.

  The next day, she received six telegrams and three telephone calls: new clients, with new houses to furnish. Her promise to Percy not to sell the Ancestor Tree to anyone else had the unintended consequence of creating a waiting list. The mere existence of a waiting list provoked a further nine telegrams that afternoon, and the next morning when she returned to the Carlton after a delightful few hours at the couturier’s with Dorothy, she found that twelve women had telephoned to her, and eight men.

  Her experiences in Cape Town had taught Stacey that verbal agreements count for nothing. She engaged a lawyer. This man drew up contracts, and anyone who wished to be on the waiting list had to sign one. The contracts committed them to the up-front payment of a third of the total commission, and to swift settling of the rest upon receipt of the furniture. Tardiness in paying the bill led to extravagant rates of interest, and she made these clear to her new clients. They were all flushed with money pouring from the ground in this time of great demand for ammunitions and gold, so fortuitously facilitated by limitless Bantu labour that cost, in real terms, per person, rather less than the first white settlers had had to spend on the upkeep of their slaves.

  A booming economy, a sense of unspeakable horrors across the sea, fused with glorious weather to put white Johannesburg in party spirits. These spirits chimed so well with Stacey’s that she found herself with invitations to dine or dance every night of the week. This required, of course, more clothes, and now she had so much cash that she abandoned all attempts at moderation. She had never had real jewels. None save the single diamond on the ring Piet had given her on their engagement. She had always thought that those who spent money on gems were foolish, since convincing replicas could be had at a fraction of the cost. Now, under the influence of certain velvet-voiced salesmen, she began to see that precious stones were an excellent investment in view of the, ahem, uncertainty of the international situation. They were easy to transport, easy to sell. The salesmen assured her they wou
ld never lose their value. Impulsively, she bought a necklace of brilliant cut pink diamonds, and earrings to match. These gave her the confidence to demand ever-more-exorbitant prices. The swagger with which she did so persuaded many clients to accept them.

  The ancient Greeks might have told Stacey Barol what the Xhosas also know: that it is when one is soaring at the heights that a sharp shock is coming. She had done so well in Johannesburg, was so buoyed up on the currents of her own audacity, that her drastic error, when it came, caught her quite unawares.

  —

  STACEY HAD BOUGHT a gorgeous desk set of green alligator skin for Percy’s study, and taken it back to the Carlton. She could not resist arranging it on the writing table in her suite, and found its impact so alluring she wrote a love letter to her husband. In this letter, she described her many victories over Percy Shabrill. She blotted the letter and took a bath and went out, telling her maid to pack the set and send it round to its owners. Percy opened it at his new desk, in his comfortable new chair, feeling on top of the world. He was surprised to find the blotter had been used, and his eye was drawn to a series of shapes that was clearly his own name in mirror writing. He took the page to the mirror above the fireplace, and, holding it up, read the following unfortunate phrase: “Percy Shabrill—what a booby!”

  It was a long time since anyone had articulated his greatest fear to Percy. Assiduous cultivation of contacts, and a useful patent, had allowed him to make the sums of money that shield a man from unpopularity. As more people had reason to make nice to him, he had begun to lose the social anxieties of his boyhood. Now they returned, in full force. He had cried bitterly in the boot room at his minor public school, when cleverer boys who were better at games had made him feel less than them. He had learned to cover his unease with bluster. This bluster had sustained him on a three-week voyage to South Africa, sharing a cabin with a man as endowed with natural advantages as Piet Barol. Dorothy’s love had calmed him, and his brutality to the middle managers in his cooling concern allowed him to feel powerful. Reading Stacey Barol’s opinion of him sent him hurtling back to the boot rooms of his youth.

  Except this time he did not feel sad.

  He was angry.

  The ladies arrived half an hour later, gossiping and laughing, and when she saw the desk set, Stacey had an inkling of what had happened and felt a pricking of panic. Her eyes sought Percy’s, and when his did not meet hers she knew deep within that one of the unflattering things she had written about him had come to his attention. The suspicion was confirmed when Percy, who until now had thrived on her attention, did not ask her to stay to lunch. When Dorothy did she excused herself and hurried away. On her way out she popped into the study and saw that the top sheet of the blotter had gone.

  That afternoon, she received a short note at her hotel. “If I do not have my furniture, every last stick of it, within a month, I will cancel the order and return it all. In such circumstances a full refund will be required and pursued. Shabrill.”

  —

  THE FIRST PIET KNEW of this was a telegram announcing that Stacey had engaged twelve cabinetmakers and that they were already on the train to East London. With them was coming the equipment of a furniture manufactory Stacey had found that was closing down, as well as its foreman. He made his way thoughtfully back to the wagon and spurred his horses to a quick trot. He knew he should be happy, but he was not.

  In the weeks since Stacey’s departure, Piet had known the happiness of the artist who at last has everything he needs to make good work. The quietness of his forest life, the companionability of his men, the way they had grown used to one another: all this had combined to put Piet in a state of heightened, energetic tranquility. He had set himself up in a corner of the workshop, and thrown himself into exploring the mysteries of the woods he had found in Gwadana. He had learned, and come to love, their eccentricities—the pliability of lime wood, the resistance of another Ntsina called luyolo, the differences in their grains and inclinations. With each passing day, his designs for the Shabrills’ bed grew more elaborate. He had come to understand that nothing short of an enchanted bower would suffice, a woodland glade in which magic happened. He had worked on the single block of Ancestor wood, fashioning posts and a canopy, but had cast aside the model of the European four-poster. His posts curved sinuously, reached the canopy at different heights, created when one lay on the base—how much better this effect would be when there was a mattress and fine linen!—the sensation of having entered a world apart.

  He had intended to carve the wood of the Ancestor Tree, but it was too hard to take extra-fine detailing, and he was fearful of making a mistake and spoiling the whole. Instead, he embellished it with many different woods, each the right one for the object it represented, and these were discreetly nailed into the main frame. It was these embellishments that took infinite time, for he took infinite pains with them. He had thrown away half a tree’s worth of lime wood, because the trumpet-shaped flowers he made with it had not come out quite right. Now the foliage was nearly complete, and he was adding the dramas of forest life—frogs climbing the tendrils of a vine, on the lookout for mates, monkeys scrapping in the leaves. It had a mischievous atmosphere, this bed, and he took care to make the creatures friendly, not frightening. While Ierephaan and Mohammed made the rest of the furniture, he spent his days and most of his nights with this bed, while Arthur roamed the forest with Ntsina and learned the ways of the wild.

  To have his little boy with him, to have him close but to be freed of his constant presence so he could work, was perfection for Piet Barol. He spent an hour every day with Arthur when he returned from the forest, and bathed him and listened with total attention to the child’s tales of what he had seen. His own father had been gruff with him. He could not remember a single hug, much less a cuddle, and he took his inspiration from the way his mother had loved him. The boy was daily more fluent in isiXhosa and the calls of forest creatures. It delighted Piet that his son could summon a Lula bird, or make a howler monkey appear in the trees. He delegated the teaching of counting and writing to Luvo, who was a strict but gentle master, and when Arthur got all his sums right he was allowed to stay up with the men by the fire. This was a far more powerful incentive than the sweeties the Barols had bribed Arthur with in Cape Town.

  In Stacey’s absence, Piet’s anger with her cooled and he began to miss her. But the prospect of having his purposeful life disturbed by the arrival of a crowd of strangers nevertheless depressed him. He could see no way to resist. They had come to Gwadana to make money. Stacey had gone to Johannesburg to win orders. She had done so. It was now his duty to fulfill them.

  He stopped to water his horses in Idutywa and noticed that the woman with the direct gaze was not there. Instead a child, perhaps eight years old, was standing by the roadside with a pail, his hands outstretched for a coin. Piet got down from the box, and said: “Good day. My name is Piet Barol. What’s yours?”

  The child, whose name was Zuko, had gathered every last ounce of his courage to approach a Strange One in this manner. He had not known what to expect from this mythical animal. Certainly it was not to be spoken to in his own tongue. Without a word, without even remembering to take a coin, he dashed away from Piet and into the house, where he sent his mother to deal with the creature outside.

  “You have a fine son,” said Piet to this lady, as the horses drank.

  “So do you,” she said.

  “We are lucky.”

  “Where is his mother?”

  “In Johannesburg. She will return shortly.” Piet had never seen a man here. “Where is his father?”

  “At the mines. He may never return.” She shrugged as she said this, as though it would not cause her much hardship if she never saw him again.

  “May he come back safe and sound.” Piet got back onto the wagon, paid her and drove off up the hill towards the forest. He could not afterwards explain to himself quite why he turned just before the bend in the road, but
he did turn.

  And she was watching him.

  —

  “SHE IS COMING BACK,” said Luvo to Ntsina, “and bringing more workmen.” The night was chilly. He edged closer to the fire. At dinner, Piet had made everyone roar with laughter describing certain misadventures of his youth.

  “Now we will know the truth,” said Ntsina.

  Luvo had the uncomfortable sensation of believing many things at once, not all of which could be true. The man he had dined with that night, who understood the injustice of the Natives Land Act, who had made him laugh, and rescued him from the employ of Percy Shabrill: he liked him. He could not deny it. He made friends rarely, but when he did he kept them. He only liked honourable men. He liked Piet. Therefore…But no matter how many times he ran the equation in his head, it produced the same, jarring answer. “He would be honourable to us on his own,” he said. “But she won’t let him. And he won’t stand up to her for us.”

  It made him feel worse to say it, as though the articulation of this thought made it more likely to be true. “I could be wrong,” he added.

  “You are not wrong, my brother.”

  They gazed at the coals.

  “He will certainly give us something. Probably enough to set us up.”

  “He owes us three hundred pounds each. Without us, none of this would have happened.”

  They talked on, reinforcing each other’s sense of grievance.

  “So what do you propose?” said Ntsina, some time later. His voice was cold with anger.

  “I do not know.”

  “I know.”

  “Tell me, brother.”

  “If it is justly ours, then taking it cannot be thieving.”

  —

  STACEY BAROL HAD NO INTENTION of confessing the mistake she had made with Percy Shabrill, but this did not reduce her mortification. Her return to East London, which should have been triumphant, was spoiled by self-recrimination. She had learned a great deal from the way the leading ladies of the Opéra Comique handled their patrons. To puncture a man’s vanity is rarely wise. When he is rich, it is catastrophic. Her subtle mind examined the situation from every angle. She knew she had lost Percy’s future patronage. This was not fatal, so long as they got him his furniture on time and he paid what he owed. She had enough orders to keep Barol & Co. in production for months. But she feared Percy’s vengeance. Would he campaign against them in her absence? She could not be sure, and dozed fitfully as she tried to convince herself that he wouldn’t. Turning against the Barols would require disowning his furniture, which would undermine his new status as a connoisseur. Surely Percy wouldn’t do that?