‘Thank you for the lemonade.’ Julian came over. ‘We’re heading Hex River way.’
‘Hotter there,’ she remarked, taking in my flushed face. ‘Good luck.’
Worcester, our next stop, appeared like a mirage surrounded by mountains and bisected by a broad, mostly dry riverbed. As we drove down the main street I could see the tarmac melting on the margins.
‘Keep the windows and curtains closed,’ advised our host. ‘Cooler that way.’
‘Why don’t you rest?’ I said to my husband. ‘I’ll go downstairs. See if they have any ice.’
But there was no one in the bar so I went outside and down the road, keeping to the shade of overhanging trees. Most people were speaking Afrikaans. The only words I knew came from the conversations I’d overheard between Alfius and Violet.
I seem only able to think in short sentences …
‘Are you lost, ma’am?’ A brown lady stopped beside me as I hesitated on a street corner.
‘No,’ I glanced back at the way I’d come, ‘I don’t think so. But thank you for asking.’
She nodded. A thin child ran up and hid in her skirt.
‘You got change, ma’am?’
I looked at her more closely. Her cotton dress was torn. Her eyes were not the brazen or affectedly piteous kind that marked the professional beggar. I could tell she was ashamed to ask. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my purse and gave her all the shillings I possessed.
She clutched them, thanked me and walked away. The thin child followed.
In haste, and then I will tuck this away:
Julian is sleeping. The drive over Bain’s Kloof Pass was terrifying and yet, in hindsight, exhilarating.
Then the silence when we stopped at the top, the wildness of the place.
I feel a sense of being adrift, cast away from all that’s familiar.
It’s to be expected, I suppose. It will be better when we arrive and there is some certainty.
I wonder if he’s noticed that I have yet to mention the name of where we’re going.
Aloe Glen.
Named by a Scotsman like the one who designed the pass and who saw a resemblance with his beloved homeland. It’s too small to be on a map, Julian explained to my parents, when Father searched for it in vain in his atlas. But they weren’t to worry. After all, Matjiesfontein is more remote and widely known.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Worcester was cooler the following morning but I still chose my lightest frock, a short-sleeved cream low-waister. Mother and I had clearly miscalculated when putting together a simple trousseau for me, centred around unadorned dresses that would not require excessive ironing – but with sleeves for modesty. I would have to unpick those if I was to survive the summer.
‘There’s a severe drought at the moment,’ Julian said as we drove past scores of men at the side of the road, hoping to be picked up for casual work. ‘Poverty is rife.’
‘I gave all my coins to a poor woman on the street yesterday.’
‘Be sensible, my dear. You can’t save everyone you pass by.’
‘I suppose not.’
This is a different country from what I know.
‘Look at the mountains,’ I pointed, to distract myself, ‘they’re a strange shape, not so much peaks as slabs. Could it be from lava that’s flowed in waves?’
Julian smiled across at me. ‘You have a geologist’s eye, Frances.’
The vegetation, too, was altered. No lush Cape flora but a low understorey, in brown and grey, tinged with dusty green. How would I mix such cryptic shades? What would Mr Cadwaller advise? Yet if I only painted the vividness that lay in my memory, I’d be forever looking backwards. A lone car passed us from time to time but the road was mostly empty, a ribbon of grey stretching ever onwards. The sun climbed higher. The heat beat down on the dark metal of the motor car until it felt as if we were in a furnace. There were wine farms but they were dustier, less lavish. I could not conceive of the kind of place that might lie at the end of our journey. We climbed out of the valley and into a new one bounded by slanting, grey mountains on both sides. I tried to evoke interest in the huge vista but the scale was too great and the heat too intense, and after a while we both lapsed into silence. The only relief came from a meandering line of vegetation marking a stream, flanked by sharp green vineyards. Water was the only thing that stood between riches and ruin, life and death.
I thought of Muizenberg and the cool, deep sea. And I thought of Mark.
‘Have you noticed the railway?’ Julian pointed to one of the few signs, apart from the sweating tarmac, the dusty vines and a telephone line, that man had passed this way. ‘We’ll follow it all the way home.’
I struggled not to weep.
An animal came out of the scrub, invisible until the moment of impact. One moment Julian was steering the car in a straight line, the next he was wrenching the wheel and there was a glancing blow against my door and I was falling forward and crying and the tyres were screaming and then we were skidding to a halt on the gravel.
‘Frances!’ I heard Julian shout. ‘Frances!’
The engine cut out. Silence crashed about us. The hot wind died and in its place came a whiff of burning rubber mixed with heat and sweat.
I lifted a hand to my head but there was no blood, just a dull ache beneath my trembling fingers. ‘My head,’ I heard myself mutter. My head. Again. I became aware that the door was being wrenched open and Julian was helping me out. He was panting.
‘Frances? My dear, are you hurt?’
Why does he call me my dear?
‘Why don’t you call me darling? Mark called me darling—’
‘What?’ He gathered me against him. ‘Are you hurt?’ He pushed away my hair and probed my skull. ‘No, thank God,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘just a bruise.’
I tried to walk away but my legs didn’t seem to want to obey my brain and crumpled beneath me.
‘Careful!’ He lifted me in his arms and carried me to the side of the road.
We stayed there, me cradled in his arms, my cheek against his neck, the broiling veld enveloping us. The banging of his heart was the only movement I could sense.
‘The car?’ I cried out, after a while. ‘How will we go on?’
I don’t want to go on! I want to turn back, cross the isthmus of the Cape Flats and go home.
‘Hush,’ he rocked me gently, ‘just rest. The car will be fine. We’ll be fine.’
His words registered. I’d said those words, they were mine not his—
‘That’s what I told my father.’
‘What do you mean?’
A piping came from the scrub. A robin perhaps.
‘I said I’d be fine, marrying you.’
He bent his head and kissed me. Properly. His lips searched mine, mine opened under his.
And then he went back to the car, took the undamaged canvas water bag from the bonnet and let me have a drink. The sun was directly overhead and the heat was radiating off the gravel with a shimmering intensity that was making my eyes water. The scrubby bush offered no shade. There wasn’t a tree in sight. We couldn’t stay here in the open, not for much longer.
‘What happened? What hit us?’
He gestured a little way back. ‘An animal. A buck. I’ll see if the car will start.’
I stared down the road. A tangle of fur and legs lay on the tarmac. Julian opened the bonnet of the car. I got to my feet slowly, steadied myself, then walked towards the body.
My brother ran away from me through the garden, beckoning me to follow …
It was a tiny antelope, a springbok, surely no more than a week old. Its fur was the colour of milky cocoa, its ears were lined with pink skin, and its eyes were huge and terrified, scarred with the memory of the collision.
‘Frances?’ Julian called from the direction of the car. ‘Don’t go there!’
There was a dent in its flank and a small amount of blood. Perhaps the damage was worse inside
, crushing those delicate organs, stopping its heart. Or perhaps the little creature simply died of fright.
‘Frances!’ Julian ran up to me and tried to lead me away.
‘No.’ I twisted away from him. ‘Let me look. He’s beautiful. I want to remember what he looks like.’
‘But it’s dead, my dear. Please,’ he took my hand, ‘come away now. Staying won’t do any good.’
I knelt down and examined the soft nostrils, the curling eyelashes, the hooves so shiny they might have been polished that morning. I never imagined that death could be so beautiful.
‘What will happen to him?’
‘There’ll be nothing left by tomorrow.’ He gestured up into the sky. ‘Vultures, birds of prey. Maybe jackals from the veld. They’ll be here soon. Every death serves a purpose in Africa.’
I looked up at him. I knew so little about this side of him. Or the hard country I’d entered.
‘Do you think he suffered?’
‘The little buck? No. It happened too quickly. Come, Frances.’ He took my hand. ‘We’ve been fortunate. The car will start. And we can get the door panel repaired. If we’d hit a bigger animal, we’d be in a lot more trouble.’
I took a last look.
‘Shouldn’t we move him off the road? So another car doesn’t hit him?’
‘Not necessary. There’s little traffic and the carcass will be scavenged soon enough.’ He pointed skywards. ‘Look, they’re gathering already.’
There, circling lazily against the burning sky, was a pair of enormous birds, perhaps like the one I’d seen at the top of the pass. Circling and circling. Waiting for us to leave.
Every death serves a purpose in Africa.
I must be careful. Out here, it will be easy to become a victim.
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘You were lucky,’ observed Mr Pretorius, the owner of Doorns Garage and Panel Beaters, down a side street. ‘Could have taken out the whole side.’
‘And me,’ I put in with a bright smile as the dust from our arrival in the forecourt settled on my sandals.
‘It’s no joke, ma’am.’ He folded his arms across his chest.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Just trying to look on the bright side.’
‘Thank you, Mr Pretorius,’ Julian said hastily, extending his hand. ‘I’ll bring the car on Wednesday.’
He hurried me away. As we drove off, I waved to Mr Pretorius who raised a hand.
The land changed again. Individual, fleshy plants studded the scrub. Here and there tall spikes rose from their midst.
‘Aloes,’ said Julian, following my gaze. ‘They were the most distinctive plants the railway workers noticed when they were building the line through to Kimberley and the diamond fields.’
‘Poor souls!’
He glanced across, unsure if I was being flippant or serious – or momentarily deranged from the bang on my head. Julian doesn’t know me yet. He can’t pin me down. One moment I’m lamenting an antelope, the next I seem to be joking. And I hardly know myself in this heat, on this immense plain—
‘There was action nearby during the Boer War, did you know that, Frances?’
‘Was Lord Kitchener involved?’
‘I’ve never asked. It’s best not to get involved.’
‘Not involved? But you live here!’ I laughed, gesturing at the stark hills. ‘Don’t you want to know?’
He lifted his hand where it rested on the gear lever and briefly tapped my arm.
‘You should tread carefully, my dear. People don’t talk to strangers easily. Memories are long.’
‘Because of the war?’
Father had cautioned me all those years ago. He’d said nothing was settled.
‘Look!’ Julian pointed into the distance. ‘There it is! Aloe Glen!’
I craned through the fly-streaked windscreen. At the base of a rearing mountain lay a cluster of houses. Julian slowed down as we approached. A dog sidled across the tarmac. Single-storey houses lined both sides of the road, each property sitting at the back of a fenced plot, curtains drawn against the heat, yellowed squares of lawn out front. One place had a formal bed of red roses, but that was the exception. A flag hung limply above a cafe where a group of men turned to stare at us as we went by. One lifted his hat and Julian acknowledged it with a flick of his finger on the top of the steering wheel. Down a side road named Stasieweg, I saw the railway station. A single platform. A peeling sign for the ticket office.
I should say something. But what?
Julian is waiting for me to say something. I should comment on how neat it looks, how friendly those men seem, how I look forward to meeting my new community …
If he had borne me off to a place that was small but beautiful, or small but lively, or even small but snowbound I could have been intrigued. Even enthusiastic. But this—
‘How charming.’ I forced a smile. ‘Where is our house, Julian?’
‘Just down here, Marico Road,’ he said cheerfully, steering the car off the main thoroughfare. We bumped along a gravel track until he stopped at a fence with a gate inserted into it. He got out and unhooked the gate, and we drove down an earth driveway towards a low, white-painted house with a verandah along its length and a single tree planted in the middle of a brown lawn. There were no flowerbeds, no shrubs, nothing green at all apart from the centrally located tree.
‘You’ll be able to get going on the garden,’ said Julian, pointing to the desolation. I doubted even Alfius could coax anything from such barrenness. Julian opened my door, took me by the hand and led me over the heat-crisped grass towards the house. The red corrugated-iron roof glinted in the sunlight. Gutters led to a downpipe that fed a large green tank mounted on a concrete block by the side of the house. There were no chairs on the verandah.
‘Do you have chairs? For the verandah?’
I’d want to sit outside. And, whatever the temperature, I’d never allow the curtains to be drawn across the two front windows so that the place appeared blind.
Julian didn’t reply, being too busy unlocking the front door.
I wondered if he would lift me across the threshold as Mark would surely have done, but instead he stood aside and allowed me to go inside first. The interior, at least, was cool and through the dimness I made out dark wood furniture, a bookcase, and a sofa upholstered in green. The curtains were an indeterminate shade of beige – indeed much of the house turned out to be either beige or dark green. The only exception was a maroon rug that covered the floor in front of the sofa.
‘You must arrange the furniture however you wish,’ Julian said.
I nodded. I could even paint it. If I found no real flowers amongst the scrub to copy, I could paint pretend ones onto the furniture in compensation.
No, Frances, I scolded myself. Be grateful.
‘It’s a good size house, as you’ll see,’ went on Julian. ‘More than we need, but perfect for a family—’
‘Middag! Good afternoon!’ came a peremptory voice from behind.
I swung round. A substantially built woman in a sun hat was filling the open front doorway.
‘Ah, Mrs van Deventer.’ Julian went over to her. ‘Come and meet my wife. Frances, may I introduce Mrs Ellie van Deventer?’
‘How do you do,’ I said, offering my hand.
Ellie van Deventer seized it and squeezed hard and stared at me from my uncovered head to my inadequately shod feet. She must have been about sixty, but it was hard to tell. She might have looked the same from the age of thirty, such must be the desiccating effect of the local climate. She wore her hair scraped into a bun beneath the hat.
‘My!’ she addressed Julian. ‘Isn’t she a tiny little thing!’
‘Do you live nearby, Mrs van Deventer?’ I put in, as Julian looked nonplussed. She must have seen us arriving. Or the men outside the cafe had a particularly swift way of passing on news.
‘Just up the road,’ she said. ‘Next to the Vermeulens. I heard you had an accident?’
I caught my breath and glanced at Julian.
‘How did you know?’
She could, of course, have noticed the dent in the side of the car but I soon realised this was my first experience of rural gossip. Perhaps it worked as follows: Mr Pretorius from Doorns Garage and Panel Beaters called up someone in Aloe Glen to say we were arriving and that he’d met the schoolmaster’s new wife, and by the way we’d hit a buck on the road and the new wife was quite sweet but rather silly.
‘Oh,’ Mrs van Deventer took off her hat and fanned herself with it, ‘you know, word gets round.’
‘I’m sure it does. Julian,’ I turned to my husband, ‘we must invite Mrs van Deventer for tea once we’re settled. I hope you will come.’ I edged towards the front door and held out my hand once more. ‘Thank you for calling on us and making me feel so welcome.’
What will you say to your friends, Mrs van Deventer? That I have good manners but will surely be too fragile for this life?
‘No trouble.’ She took my hand again in a vice-like grip. ‘I hope you get that car fixed, Julian.’
I watched her clump down the verandah steps.
‘She means well,’ said Julian, putting a hand on my shoulder.
‘Of course,’ I smiled up at him. ‘Of course she does.’
Despite its relatively small profile, Julian was right about our house: it was a good size. It had a combined lounge and dining room, one bathroom and three bedrooms that looked out onto a yard with a washing line and a view of the particular peak that dominated Aloe Glen. The rooms were high-ceilinged and the floors were wooden throughout. All the windows were curtained in the same shade of beige and I wondered – wickedly – if Julian or the previous owners had taken advantage of a job lot of fabric. The whole place was larger than the cottage Mother and Father now inhabited in Cape Town, with a garden bigger than the original in Embury, although whether the latter feature was a bonus was uncertain. Lack of water would surely limit the cultivation of anything bigger than a postage stamp. The contents of the outside tank were surely for household use.
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