by Muriel Spark
I wanted to return to England. I had been thinking of nothing else. ‘We can’t stay here,’ I said, as if it were a part in a play. ‘Shall we pack up and go?’ he said, and I felt a huge relief. ‘No,’ I said.
He said, ‘It would be a pity to pack it all in when we’ve both gone so far in tropical diseases.
In fact I left the following week. Since then, Richard has gone far in tropical diseases. ‘It’s a pity,’ he said before I left, ‘to let what’s happened come between us.’
I packed up my things and departed for dear life, before the dry season should set in, and the rainy season should follow, and all things be predictable.
Bang-Bang You’re Dead
At that time many of the men looked like Rupert Brooke, whose portrait still hung in everyone’s imagination. It was that dear-cut, ‘typically English’ face which is seldom seen on the actual soil of England but proliferates in the African Colonies.
‘I must say,’ said Sybil’s hostess, ‘the men look charming.’ These men were all charming, Sybil had decided at the time, until you got to know them. She sat in the dark room watching the eighteen-year-old film unrolling on the screen as if the particular memory had solidified under the effect of some intense heat coming out of the projector. She told herself, I was young, I demanded nothing short of perfection. But then, she thought, that is not quite the case. But it comes to the same thing; to me, the men were not charming for long.
The first reel came to an end. Someone switched on the light. Her host picked the next film out of its tropical packing.
‘It must be an interesting experience,’ said her hostess, ‘seeing yourself after all those years.
‘Hasn’t Sybil seen these films before?’ said a latecomer.
‘No, never — have you, Sybil?’
‘No, never.’
‘If they had been my films,’ said her hostess, ‘my curiosity could not have waited eighteen years.
The Kodachrome reels had lain in their boxes in the dark of Sybil’s cabin trunk. Why bother, when one’s memory was clear?
‘Sybil didn’t know anyone who had a projector,’ said her hostess, ‘until we got ours.
‘It was delightful,’ said the latecomer, an elderly lady, ‘what I saw of it. Are the others as good?’
Sybil thought for a moment. ‘The photography is probably good,’ she said. ‘There was a cook behind the camera.
‘A cook! How priceless; whatever do you mean?’ said her hostess.
‘The cook-boy,’ said Sybil, ‘was trained up to use the camera.
‘He managed it well,’ said her host, who was adjusting the new reel.
‘Wonderful colours,’ said her hostess. ‘Oh, I’m so glad you dug them out. How healthy and tanned and open-necked everyone looks. And those adorable shiny natives all over the place.’
The elderly lady said, ‘I liked the bit where you came out on the veranda in your shorts carrying the gun.’
‘Ready?’ said Sybil’s host. The new reel was fixed. ‘Put out the lights,’ he said.
It was the stoep again. Through the french windows came a dark girl in shorts followed by a frisky young Alsatian.
‘Lovely dog,’ commented Sybil’s host. ‘He seems to be asking Sybil for a game.
‘That is someone else,’ Sybil said very quickly.
‘The girl there, with the dog?’
‘Yes, of course. Don’t you see me walking across the lawn by the trees?’
‘Oh, of course, of course. She did look like you, Sybil, that girl with the dog. Wasn’t she like Sybil? I mean, just as she came out on the veranda.’
‘Yes, I thought it was Sybil for a moment until I saw Sybil in the background. But you can see the difference now. See, as she turns round. That girl isn’t really like Sybil, it must be the shorts.’
‘There was a slight resemblance between us,’ Sybil remarked. The projector purred on.
‘Look, there’s a little girl rather like you, Sybil.’ Sybil, walking between her mother and father, one hand in each, had already craned round. The other child, likewise being walked along, had looked back too.
The other child wore a black velour hat turned up all round, a fawn coat of covert-coating, and at her neck a narrow white ermine tie. She wore white silk gloves. Sybil was dressed identically, and though this in itself was nothing to marvel at, since numerous small girls wore this ensemble when they were walked out in the parks and public gardens of cathedral towns in 1923, it did fortify the striking resemblance in features, build, and height, between the two children. Sybil suddenly felt she was walking past her own reflection in the long looking-glass. There was her peak chin, her black bobbed hair under her hat, with its fringe almost touching her eyebrows. Her wide-spaced eyes, her nose very small like a cat’s. ‘Stop staring, Sybil,’ whispered her mother. Sybil had time to snatch the gleam of white socks and black patent leather button shoes. Her own socks were white but her shoes were brown, with laces. At first she felt this one discrepancy was wrong, in the sense that it was wrong to step on one of the cracks in the pavement. Then she felt it was right that there should be a difference.
‘The Colemans,’ Sybil’s mother remarked to her father. ‘They keep that hotel at Hillend. The child must be about Sybil’s age. Very alike, aren’t they? And I suppose,’ she continued for Sybil’s benefit, ‘she’s a good little girl like Sybil.’ Quick-witted Sybil thought poorly of the last remark with its subtle counsel of perfection.
On other occasions, too, they passed the Coleman child on a Sunday walk. In summer time the children wore panama hats and tussore silk frocks discreetly adorned with drawn-thread work. Sometimes the Coleman child was accompanied by a young mad-servant in grey dress and black stockings. Sybil noted this one difference between her own entourage and the other girl’s. ‘Don’t turn round and stare,’ whispered her mother.
It was not till she went to school that she found Désirée Coleman to be a year older than herself. Désirée was in a higher class but sometimes, when the whole school was assembled on the lawn or in the gym, Sybil would be, for a few moments, mistaken for Désirée. In the late warm spring the classes sat in separate groups under the plane trees until, as by simultaneous instinct, the teachers would indicate time for break. The groups would mingle, and ‘Sybil, dear, your shoe-lace,’ a teacher might call out; and then, as Sybil regarded her neat-laced shoes, ‘Oh no, not Sybil, I mean Désirée.’ In the percussion band Sybil banged her triangle triumphantly when the teacher declared, ‘Much better than yesterday, Sybil.’ But she added, ‘I mean Désirée.’
Only the grown-ups mistook one child for another at odd moments. None of her small companions made this mistake. After the school concert Sybil’s mother said, ‘For a second I thought you were Désirée in the choir. It’s strange you are so alike. I’m not a bit like Mrs Coleman and your daddy doesn’t resemble him in the least.’
Sybil found Désirée unsatisfactory as a playmate. Sybil was precocious, her brain was like a blade. She had discovered that dull children were apt to be spiteful. Désirée would sit innocently cross-legged beside you at a party, watching the conjurer, then suddenly, for no apparent reason, jab at you viciously with her elbow.
By the time Sybil was eight and Désirée nine it was seldom that anyone, even strangers and new teachers, mixed them up. Sybil’s nose became more sharp and pronounced while Désirée’s seemed to sink into her plump cheeks like a painted-on nose. Only on a few occasions, and only on dark winter afternoons between the last of three o’clock daylight and the coming on of lights all over the school, was Sybil mistaken for Désirée.
Between Sybil’s ninth year and her tenth Désirée’s family came to live in her square. The residents’ children were taken to the gardens of the square after school by mothers and nursemaids, and were bidden to play with each other nicely. Sybil regarded the intrusion of Désirée sulkily, and said she preferred her book. She cheered up, however, when a few weeks later the Dobell boys came to live in the sq
uare. The two Dobells had dusky-rose skins and fine dark eyes. It appeared the father was half Indian.
How Sybil adored the Dobells! They were a new type of playmate in her experience, so jumping and agile, and yet so gentle, so unusually courteous. Their dark skins were never dirty, a fact which Sybil obscurely approved. She did not then mind Désirée joining in their games; the Dobell boys were a kind of charm against despair, for they did not understand stupidity and so did not notice Désirée’s.
The girl lacked mental stamina, could not keep up an imaginative game for long, was shrill and apt to kick her playmates unaccountably and on the sly; the Dobells reacted to this with a simple resignation. Perhaps the lack of opposition was the reason that Désirée continually shot Sybil dead, contrary to the rules, whenever she felt like it.
Sybil resented with the utmost passion the repeated daily massacre of herself before the time was ripe. It was useless for Jon Dobell to explain, ‘Not yet, Désirée. Wait, wait, Désirée. She’s not to be shot down yet. She hasn’t crossed the bridge yet, and you can’t shoot her from there, anyway — there’s a big boulder between you and her. You have to creep round it, and Hugh has a shot at you first, and he thinks he’s got you, but only your hat. And …’
It was no use. Each day before the game started the four sat in conference on the short dry prickly grass. The proceedings were agreed. The game was on. ‘Got it all clear, Désirée?’
‘Yes,’ she said, every day. Désirée shouted and got herself excited, she made foolish sounds even when supposed to be stalking the bandits through the silent forest. A few high screams and then, ‘Bang-bang,’ she yelled, aiming at Sybil, ‘you’re dead.’ Sybil obediently rolled over, protesting none the less that the game had only begun, while the Dobells sighed, ‘Oh, Désirée!’
Sybil vowed to herself each night, I will do the same to her. Next time — tomorrow if it isn’t raining — I will bang-bang her before she has a chance to hang her panama on the bough as a decoy. I will say bang-bang on her out of turn, and I will do her dead before her time.
But on no succeeding tomorrow did Sybil bring herself to do this. Her pride before the Dobells was more valuable than the success of the game. Instead, with her cleverness, Sybil set herself to avoid Désirée’s range for as long as possible. She dodged behind the laurels and threw out a running commentary as if to a mental defective, such as, ‘I’m in disguise, all in green, and no one can see me among the trees.’ But still Désirée saw her. Désirée’s eyes insisted on penetrating solid mountains. ‘I’m half a mile away from everyone,’ Sybil cried as Désirée’s gun swivelled relentlessly upon her.
I shall refuse to be dead, Sybil promised herself. I’ll break the rule. If it doesn’t count with her why should it count with me? I won’t roll over any more when she bangs you’re dead to me. Next time, tomorrow if it isn’t raining …
But Sybil simply did roll over. When Join and Hugh Dobell called out to her that Désirée’s bang-bang did not count she started hopefully to resurrect herself; but ‘It does count, it does. That’s the rule,’ Désirée counter-screeched. And Sybil dropped back flat, knowing utterly that this was final.
And so the girl continued to deal premature death to Sybil, losing her head, but never so much that she aimed at one of the boys. For some reason which Sybil did not consider until she was years and years older, it was always herself who had to die.
One day, when Désirée was late in arriving for play, Sybil put it to the boys that Désirée should be left out of the game in future. ‘She only spoils it.’
‘But,’ said Jon, ‘you need four people for the game.’
‘You need four,’ said Hugh.
‘No, you can do it with three.’ As she spoke she was inventing the game with three. She explained to them what was in her mind’s eye. But neither boy could grasp the idea, having got used to Bandits and Riders with two on each side. ‘I am the lone Rider, you see,’ said Sybil. ‘Or,’ she wheedled, ‘the cherry tree can be a Rider.’ She was talking to stone, inoffensive but uncomprehending. All at once she realized, without articulating the idea, that her intelligence was superior to theirs, and she felt lonely.
‘Could we play rounders instead?’ ventured Jon.
Sybil brought a book every day after that, and sat reading beside her mother, who was glad, on the whole, that Sybil had grown tired of rowdy games.
‘They were preparing,’ said Sybil, ‘to go on a shoot.’ Sybil’s host was changing the reel.
‘I get quite a new vision of Sybil,’ said her hostess, ‘seeing her in such a … such a social environment. Were any of these people intellectuals, Sybil?’
‘No, but lots of poets.’
‘Oh, no. Did they all write poetry?’
‘Quite a lot of them,’ said Sybil, ‘did.’
‘Who were they all? Who was that blond fellow who was standing by the van with you?’
‘He was the manager of the estate. They grew passion-fruit and manufactured the juice.’
‘Passion-fruit — how killing. Did he write poetry?’
‘Oh, yes.
‘And who was the girl, the one I thought was you?’
‘Oh, I had known her as a child and we met again in the Colony. The short man was her husband.’
‘And were you all off on safari that morning? I simply can’t imagine you shooting anything, Sybil, somehow.’
‘On this occasion,’ said Sybil, ‘I didn’t go. I just held the gun for effect.’
Everyone laughed.
‘Do you still keep up with these people? I’ve heard that colonials are great letter-writers, it keeps them in touch with —’
‘No.’ And she added, ‘Three of them are dead. The girl and her husband, and the fair fellow.’
‘Really? What happened to them? Don’t tell me they were mixed up in shooting affairs.’
‘They were mixed up in shooting affairs,’ said Sybil.
‘Oh, these colonials,’ said the elderly woman, ‘and their shooting affairs!’
‘Number three,’ said Sybil’s host. ‘Ready? Lights out, please.’
‘Don’t get eaten by lions. I say, Sybil, don’t get mixed up in a shooting affair.’ The party at the railway station were unaware of the noise they were making for they were inside the noise. As the time of departure drew near Donald’s relatives tended to herd themselves apart while Sybil’s clustered round the couple.
‘Two years — it will be an interesting experience for them.’
‘Mind out for the shooting affairs. Don’t let Donald have a gun.’
There had been an outbreak of popular headlines about the shooting affairs in the Colony. Much had been blared forth about the effect, on the minds of young settlers, of the climate, the hard drinking, the shortage of white women. The Colony was a place where lovers shot husbands, or shot themselves, where husbands shot natives who spied through bedroom windows. Letters to The Times arrived belatedly from respectable colonists, refuting the scandals with sober statistics. The recent incidents, they said, did not represent the habits of the peaceable majority. The Governor told the press that everything had been highly exaggerated. By the time Sybil and Donald left for the Colony the music-hall comics had already exhausted the entertainment value of colonial shooting affairs.
‘Don’t make pets of snakes or crocs. Mind out for the lions. Don’t forget to write.’
It was almost a surprise to them to find that shooting affairs in the Colony were not entirely a music-hall myth. They occurred in waves. For three months at a time the gun-murders and suicides were reported weekly. The old colonists with their very blue eyes sat beside their whisky bottles and remarked that another young rotter had shot himself. Then the rains would break and the shootings would cease for a long season.
Eighteen months after their marriage Donald was mauled by a lioness and died on the long stretcher journey back to the station. He was one of a party of eight. No one could really say how it happened; it was done in a flash. The
natives had lost their wits, and, instead of shooting the beast, had come calling ‘Ah-ah-ah,’ and pointing to the spot. A few strides, shouldering the grass aside, and Donald’s friends got the lioness as she reared from his body.
His friends in the archaeological team to which he belonged urged Sybil to remain in the Colony for the remaining six months, and return to England with them. Still undecided, she went on a sight-seeing tour. But before their time was up the archaeologists had been recalled. War had been declared. Civilians were not permitted to leave the continent, and Sybil was caught, like Donald under the lioness.
She wished he had lived to enjoy a life of his own, as she intended to do. It was plain to her that they must have separated had he lived. There had been no disagreement but, thought Sybil, given another two years there would have been disagreements. Donald had shown signs of becoming a bore. By the last, the twenty-seventh, year of his life, his mind had ceased to inquire. Archaeology, that thrilling subject, had become Donald’s job, merely. He began to talk as if all archaeological methods and theories had ceased to evolve on the day he obtained his degree; it was now only a matter of applying his knowledge to field-work for a limited period. Archaeological papers came out from England. The usual crank literature on roneo foolscap followed them from one postal address to another. ‘Donald, aren’t you going to look through them?’ Sybil said, as the journals and papers piled up. ‘No, really, I don’t see it’s necessary.’ It was not necessary because his future was fixed; two years in the field and then a lectureship. If it were my subject, she thought, these papers would be necessary to me. Even the crackpot ones, rightly read, would be, to me, enlarging.
Sybil lay in bed in the mornings reading the translation of Kierkegaard’s Journals, newly arrived from England in their first, revelatory month of publication. She felt like a desert which had not realized its own aridity till the rain began to fall upon it. When Donald came home in the late afternoons she had less and less to say to him.