Not Yet Drown'd

by Peg Kingman

  Everyone else did their best to take no notice. Mrs Todd conducted herself as though nothing had happened, but hints reached Catherine, through Anibaddh and Sharada, that she had implored her husband by turns sternly, prayerfully, and tearfully, to apologise to the doctor.

  The principals became impatient with their seconds, even angry. The seconds, who had never agreed to serve as seconds at all but only as conciliators, became disgusted with the principals. Finally, one evening Hector, in yet another private conference with Mr Sinclair, said, “I am convinced that false vanity and dangerous amour propre are more concerned in this affair than wounded honour; or we should have been able to effect a reconciliation by this time. I intend to express my opinion to Mr Todd and to withdraw from any further involvement in this matter.”

  “I am of the same opinion,” said Mr Sinclair, “and I am on the very point of tendering my resignation to Dr Macpherson. It is time for an end to this.”

  The diplomats accordingly withdrew from any further involvement in the dispute. Dr Macpherson looked black and implied that it was most irregular. Mr Todd, breathing brandy from some store of his own, reserved apparently for private morning use, muttered a few words about a thrashing being good enough for a man who will not fight. Then nothing more was said about the matter, but the mutual ill-will of the two antagonists continued to poison the atmosphere in general.

  “What? Mrs Todd’s black maidservant to remain in Cape Town? But she certainly will not find any of her aboriginal people there! Oh, no, I should say not!” said Dr Macpherson positively. He was speaking with Catherine and Hector at dinner. “They are Hottentots at Cape Town, but it is apparent that she is not of that Hottentot race, not at all. But of course I can be quite certain. First of all there is her height; she must be five feet nine inches tall at the least, and perhaps has not even yet attained her full height, for I have the impression that she is young still. The Hottentots, however, are of excessively small stature. And then there is her anatomy, her conformation. The Hottentot females—well. Of course there has been no occasion, no opportunity for an actual examination. Nevertheless I feel confident in asserting that your Annie does not exhibit the—the anatomical peculiarities so typical, so notable, in Hottentot females. I have had occasion to observe the so-called ‘Hottentot Venus,’ sir. Perhaps you recall that female aborigine from Cape Town who was brought to Britain and taken about for viewing?”

  “It was a Marine surgeon who brought her from the Cape some ten or twelve years ago, as I recall,” said Captain Mainwaring.

  “Yes, about then. A surgeon by the name of Dunlop, William Dunlop. I saw her in Manchester. Then those abolitionists brought an action to have her released from her patrons. Do you not recall? But in court she said she had come of her own accord and stayed of her own free will, so that was the end of that. But I did have an opportunity, as I said, of observing for myself her very peculiar anatomy, which, I may add, manifests itself only in the females of the race; the males are formed in accordance with the normal appearance. Yes, astonishing—the steatopygian buttocks being of course the most striking and obvious feature. There is another peculiarity as well, which I shall not describe. Nevertheless, I feel entirely confident in asserting that your Annie is certainly not of Hottentot descent. Of course there may be other races at Cape Town as well; I do not know what they are called, nor what might be their anatomical peculiarities. Perhaps your Annie may be one of those.”

  Within two hours of Increase’s coming to anchor in Table Bay below Cape Town, two of the governor’s personal servants came aboard: his land agent and the head groom of his stud. They came to inspect the Flemish mares and to supervise their being taken off—one by one, each borne up by a wide sling under her round belly, a blindfold tied over her head, her strong heavy-boned legs safely hobbled. The mares were unloaded and taken away without mishap. Before two more hours had passed, there came a general invitation to the ship’s officers and passengers to spend two or three days at the governor’s hunting lodge. The officers and gentlemen would drive out for the shooting; and any ladies and children were welcome to see the vineyards, the kennels, the tame ostriches and zebras. Apparently the Flemish mares exceeded all expectations.

  Captain Mainwaring declined for himself and his officers due to the press of ship’s business, but Mr Fleming and the other passengers were prompt to accept this flattering mark of attention.

  “The native horses here at the Cape were not a bad type at all,” explained Mr Fleming in the boat which carried their party ashore the next morning. “They were of oriental lines originally, Arabic and Turkish. But the breed has been much improved these last ten years or so by his lordship’s introduction of the finest English bloodstock—a dozen or so of the best Thoroughbred stallions that money could buy. Crossed with the native oriental mares, they have produced a really superior stock, excellently suited for racing, hunting, polo and such sports, so dear to Lord Charles Somerset’s heart. But I suppose that, as cavalry mounts, they were found perhaps a little lacking in size and bone. Thus the Flemish mares, of course—so notable for their size, substance, bone, girth. Heavy dragoons require heavy mounts, you may be sure.”

  “It is surprising to hear of any great demand for cavalry in so maritime a setting as this, at the tip of the continent,” commented Dr Macpherson.

  “It is a vast continent, though, doctor, and there is always trouble with the tribes. Oh, yes, indeed, several invasions by the Zulus; and the Xhosa to contend with; and trouble between the Bantu and Suto and Chuana, not to mention the Bataung, the Griquas and the Korannas. Well, you will understand that a larger, heavier cavalry type is wanted along the eastern frontier. You remember the settlers coming out two years ago, do you not? It made a splash at the time. Oh, yes! Five thousand British men, women and children made their way to the interior to carve out new farms. Virgin river valleys, for wheat, mostly. But we are beginning to see quite a lot of other trade too: everything from ostrich feathers to ivory—many tons of ivory each year—and of course the famous sweet wine. You shall be offered some, make no doubt.”

  Mr Todd brightened slightly at the mention of wine, sweet wine. He had been silent and sulky, out of sorts, and his brow was pinched and drawn, as though the brilliant November midsummer sun glancing off the bright water pained him. He frowned and squinted at the peculiar-shaped, aptly named Table Mountain, which hung above the town. Mrs Todd had tucked herself in close to his side, solicitous—annoyingly solicitous—of his comfort.

  A couple of old-fashioned open carriages, like wagons, driven by silent Dutch farmers, met their party at the landing place. When Mr Fleming addressed them quietly in their own language, these Boers brightened perceptibly and became willing to help arrange parcels and hand up the passengers. By some invisible force, it happened that Mr Todd and Dr Macpherson found places on separate conveyances. At last the convoy drove off. They passed through the old Dutch-built town with its distinctive baroque curved fronts. Soon they left the town behind and ascended gradually, hugging one edge of a wide valley whose center was graced by a broad tame leisurely river. There were vineyards and wheat fields, pastures and orchards, strange fat-tailed sheep that looked as if they might tip over backward as they grazed, so heavy were their tails.

  “I should so like to see a hippopotamus!” declared Mrs Todd. “I should like it above all things.”

  “No, lady, you would not,” said the driver unexpectedly. “Very dangerous.”

  “Oh! Are they dangerous? What do they do?”

  “They kill peoples. Do not worry, all are dead now. No hippopotamus in this river, no more. All dead. All shooted.”

  “Oh! Oh!”

  “Many crocodiles still.”

  “I should so like to see a crocodile!”

  And eventually Mrs Todd got her wish. From a high vantage point where their horses drew up to recover their wind, the driver pointed out logs lying on the riverbank below, screened by towering grasses. Picking up a stone, he lobbed
it accurately into the river beyond them—and the logs plunged into the river, a half dozen of them instantly converging upon the splash of the stone, their sudden animation astonishing.

  Lord Charles Somerset’s hunting lodge was called Newlands. It was not rustic in the least, no more rustic than Lord Charles himself. Nor was his lady rustic. They, and all their belongings, were in the very best, newest and most admirable English style. Never had Catherine felt so provincial, so Scottish. The house was handsome and modern, set in a large park tastefully and expensively planted. Its furnishings, too—the tables, the plate, the napery, the china, the enormous dark Turkey carpets—expressed refined taste and ample means. Yet because it was a hunting lodge, zebra skins lay on the floor, overspreading the Turkey carpets, and mounted heads hung on the walls amid the family portraits. There were heads of antelopes and wildebeest and lions; and on each mantel, over each fireplace in each handsome room, was a pair of vast elephant tusks, purest gleaming ivory. Catherine could not help stroking one when no one was looking. Oh the smooth, warm curve of it! Oh the colour of it! The exquisitely tapered tip of it, both sharp and blunt!

  “And you, Mrs MacDonald?”

  “I beg your pardon, Lady Charles; I did not hear you,” admitted Catherine to her hostess. It was after dinner; the ladies had withdrawn to a pretty little sitting room belonging to Lady Charles, where tea was brought in to them by servants.

  “I was asking whether you and your daughter would like to see the farm tomorrow while the men are out shooting.”

  “Yes indeed,” Catherine answered. That sounded most delightful, and she would like it above all things. While Mrs Todd chatted with Lady Charles, Catherine had been observing the stony, silent black servants. Such various physiognomies! One female servant of very low stature, hardly taller than Grace, brought food for Lady Charles’s little dog. This servant had the widest mouth Catherine had ever seen on any human being, extending almost from ear to ear, though there was nothing smiling or cheerful about that mouth. Her body was thick and bulky. Another maid, carrying the heavy tea tray, was remarkably tall and thin; there was a loose, slack marionette look to the way she moved her lanky limbs, and a drugged dullness in her heavy-lidded eyes. The nurse who brought Lady Charles’s baby for their inspection and admiration was extremely fat; she waddled painfully, great pads of flesh wobbling about her vast hips and thighs. Her lips protruded a considerable distance from her face. Lady Charles spoke English to these servants, who presumably understood, although they did not betray the slightest understanding by any expression of feature or in their glittering black eyes.

  Catherine found these servants frightening and appalling, but she reminded herself how startled she had been at first by Anibaddh’s blackness. Yet when Catherine looked now at Anibaddh, she saw not blackness but the bold, silent, critical intellect gazing out from those dark eyes. Catherine recalled also the various types of Scottish faces she was accustomed to seeing at home: red and florid; sandy; pale as straw; Spaniard dark; broad, sonsy, freckle-speckled. The tall and lanky, the short and stout, old, young, bent, and occasionally, the handsome, beautifully formed, the tall and broad chested. Sadly rare.

  When all the servants had left the room, Catherine said, “I hope you will advise us, Lady Charles. A black ladies’ maid, formerly a slave in America, who has been traveling with us—waiting upon Mrs Todd, in fact—thinks of remaining in Africa. I will be sorry to lose her, for she has been entirely satisfactory, and I will give her a good character.”

  “Oh, yes, she is very clean and nice,” said Mrs Todd.

  “But is there any likelihood of her finding a good place here as a ladies’ maid?” asked Catherine.

  “As a free servant? Indeed, no, Mrs MacDonald. That would be exceedingly unlikely,” said Lady Charles. “And then it is so disturbing to the rest of one’s people to mix free servants among them.”

  “Do you tell me that yours are not free servants?”

  “Oh, my! All our servants are slaves here. Did you not know?”

  Catherine certainly had not known.

  “Of course you will think very ill of us. But it is a painful legacy here, a dilemma left us by the Dutch. When the old masters go away, what are the new masters to do? An emancipation plan will be devised very soon, Lord Charles says; and in the meantime we must just go on as before, keeping custody of these people entrusted to us. It is not a problem that lends itself to drastic solutions, you know. These people cannot be simply turned out to starve, any more than one can turn out one’s little dog to earn his own living. But it is no place for a free black ladies’ maid—not here, certainly not just now. I could not recommend it at all.”

  “I heard something of an African settlement of free blacks, an effort undertaken by the Americans,” said Catherine. “Is that anywhere nearby?”

  “Oh! There is a disaster! Some reports have reached us here. Yes, a couple of years ago the Americans landed a shipload of freed slaves—a great distance north of here, on a miserable, low Portuguese part of the Ivory Coast, near a place called Freetown. All swamp, a most unhealthy situation. They could hardly have chosen worse. About ninety souls, and at least a third of them died of fever within the first three weeks! That region is still much preyed upon by slavers too. The local kings and chiefs along that part of the coast have always derived the greater part of their revenue from selling their enemies into slavery, you know—any captives they could get.

  “Then last year, not to be chastened by experience, the Americans tried again: two shiploads, or so I heard. They have got themselves settled on a miserable island, which they have named Perseverance, of all things! My husband tells me they have had nothing but disease and fighting ever since. Fever, and fighting amongst themselves and against the local natives, who are Dey and Bassa, and not well pleased to make way for this invasion of strangers. In short, that is no answer for your maid—nor for the freed American blacks either. It will never answer.

  “What is to be done? It is not easy, you see. Clearly something must be done, but what? Well, well. Come, come here, Cato, precious, bad dog; that is my scissors case. Give it me, darling,” she scolded her little dog, who retreated under the sofa with his prize.

  The gentlemen drove out before dawn the next morning for their two days of shooting. The ladies who were left behind breakfasted much later on peaches, coffee, and an enormous omelette made from a single ostrich egg. Then Lady Charles ushered them out, saying they must make their tour early before it grew too hot.

  It was already hot and bright. While the sun dazzled them, then baked them, then stupefied them, they trudged about and saw first the kennels (oh, the noise and the stench!); then the dusty ostriches irritably pacing the fences of their paddocks; then the flocks of newly imported fine-wooled Spanish sheep in their tight-fenced pastures; and finally the neat corrugated dark green tiers of grapevines and the stone-built winery. They entered the winery at last, a cool dim haven smelling of molds and yeasts and dampness, so welcome after the dazzling midday heat outside and the vertical blazing sun. They loosened the ribbons of their bonnets and fanned themselves; and Lady Charles ordered sweet cold wine brought to them in elegant little glasses. Raising the glass to her lips, Catherine closed her eyes to breathe in the scent, and was briefly, gladly, in a tiny private universe of yeasty honeyed sweetness. On the tongue, the wine was treacly and viscous. Though it was cool, it did not quench the thirst but only whetted a desire for more. They drank more.

  “Now you have tasted our famous Constantia, and at its very source,” Lady Charles told them. “It is generally conceded that our Constantia is superior to anything else grown at the Cape. Lord Charles’s father, Lord Beaufort, takes several pipes of it every year. The foxhounds you just saw are from Lord Beaufort’s kennels, you know, and the Beaufort Hunt have always been widely acknowledged to be a really superior bloodline. Lord Beaufort has always been most interested in the breeding of his hounds, and everyone admits they are the best in England—which
is to say, the best anywhere. But he was eager, most delighted, to trade his most promising youngsters to Lord Charles in exchange for a few pipes of our Constantia.”

  “But what do you hunt? Are there foxes?”

  Lady Charles laughed. “Nothing so homely as foxes, I assure you! No, no, we hunt jackals; we are quite plagued by jackals. Won’t you have just a little drop more of the wine, Mrs Todd? Mrs MacDonald? You who are not accustomed to our dry climate must be sure not to get overheated.”

  “Thank you, I will,” said Mrs Todd, and she did.

  “You will certainly want to see the zebras,” said Lady Charles. “But it is too hot now. My poor little Cato, in his fur coat! Is he terribly, terribly thirsty? Let us return to the house to rest. I will take you to see the zebras after sundown.”

  As they walked back to the house, Mrs Todd said confidentially to Catherine, “If it is a daughter, I shall name her Constantia. ‘Constantia!’ A lovely sound, is it not? I never had a wine I liked so well. So refreshing! I should like to urge Mr Todd to lay in a good supply while we are here.”

  After sundown, the ladies ventured out again. The sky was a pale lavender, a dove gray. All the soil and trees and grass and animals seemed to exhale, at last, now that the punishing sun was gone. Heat still radiated up from bare red dirt, from plowed fields, from rocky roads, from stark rocky escarpments in the hills above them; but now the irrigated pastures and the dark green grapes and the groves of fruit trees exhaled a cool damp breath. The airs mixed, turned, blended, settled, rose here, drained there. Catherine could feel warm upwellings and cool downdrafts as she walked.

  The stables were situated some distance from the house. “Downwind, of course,” explained Lady Charles, “but uphill, I am sorry to say.” Grace, wearing her childish laced boots, skipped; the grown ladies stepped gingerly in their little slippers. A cloud of insects gathered ’round them and progressed up the hill with them—no worse than Highland midges, but Catherine was glad for the shawl which covered her arms.