‘Oh, yes,’ said Ginie, ‘There were difficulties getting him into Rhodesia, but we managed to work them out. He comes with us on all our travels and house moves, packed in a special suitcase we call the Valise de Surprise.’
The corners of Stephen’s mouth twitched as he remembered the astonished faces of customs officials in ports and airports all over the world as the Valise de Surprise was opened.
‘You’re part of the family, aren’t you sweetheart?’ Ginie bent down to pet Jongy, but he was too excited to stay still and darted away from her hand.
‘Does he run into problems with the indigenous monkeys?’ Mark asked.
‘No, Jongy is frightfully wary of them. He stays close to us and the house.’ Suddenly, Eric yelped and kicked out under the table.
‘The damn thing’s biting me!’ He turned to Stephen, ‘Get it off me! Please!’
There were concerned exclamations from the women, except for Ginie, who shot Stephen an amused but guilty look. Suppressing the urge to smile back, Stephen lured Jongy away with a piece of banana and Ginie called Dixon to take him to the kitchen.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ she said to Eric, who had pulled up his trouser leg and was examining the damage, ‘can we get you iodine and a bandage?’
‘No need,’ replied Eric, through gritted teeth.
‘You should have iodine,’ said Jill, frowning. ‘That animal might carry a disease.’
Ginie dismissed this with a wave of her hand. Nevertheless, Stephen rose to his feet and went to fetch cotton wool and a bottle of iodine.
‘Here,’ he said, handing them to Eric. ‘Put some on, just to be on the safe side.’ Eric tended to his ankle, while the others studied the menu, drawn up in perfect French by Ginie earlier in the day. Dixon came in with a magnum of Dom Perignon and began to fill their glasses. Ginie stirred three lumps of sugar into her champagne and waited for the fizzing to stop before raising her glass.
‘I hope our badly behaved boy hasn’t put you off,’ she said gracefully. ‘It’s a real treat for Stephen and I to have you here. Thank you for coming and for giving us the chance to get to know you better.’
‘Thank you for having us.’
‘Cheers.’
They lifted their glasses and drank, glad of the distraction and enjoying the fine champagne. Stephen began talking to Mark about the orchids at La Rochelle. He was passionate about orchids, and had built four heated greenhouses for his collection. He kept journals and made an entry every time an orchid was planted, flowered, or died.
‘I had some Ansellia shipped from Mombasa,’ he said. ‘Very fine cuttings – one of them flowered today. They were the most beautiful I’ve seen; yellow with chocolate-brown patches.’
As he talked, he watched Mark’s attention drift to Ginie, who was stealing a moment to write in the gold-cased notebook she kept by her side during meals to tell the cook later what she was and wasn’t happy about. Mark’s eyes lingered on her smooth, bare arms and unease stirred in Stephen’s gut.
Ginie was very much in control of the dinner, ringing the bell so Dixon would come and take away their plates, or making sure everybody’s glass was topped up. Despite her critique, the food really was sublime: risotto with tomatoes from the garden, cotoletta milanese, tiramisu. A reflection of Ginie’s Italian influence. When Stephen and Mark had exhausted orchids, the whole table was quiet. The guests seemed inhibited, though they knew each other well and the party wasn’t taking off, in spite of all the drink.
Anne broke the lull by saying that when she was first married, she had a go at making jam with pineapples because they grew everywhere. But despite several tries, she couldn’t get it to set.
‘Yes, I tried too, it doesn’t set,’ said Diana and she described the revolting, jelly-like substance that had oozed from her saucepan and made a mess of the stove.
Eric, bored by the topic, then launched into telling everyone about his skill in handling his labour. He thought it amusing to burst into a room and startle his servants, or pretend ‘for a laugh’ to run down one of his farm workers in his car. It kept them in line, he said. He’d had a lot to drink over the course of the evening and it was starting to show. While Eric spoke, he watched the others for their reactions. He saw Ginie’s discomfort and his lips curled back in an ugly smirk. Stephen felt himself bristle. Many of the farmers were known to be hard task-masters, but Eric was more vicious than most.
Eric continued, ‘The other day, I deliberately left money out in a bedroom where the houseboy, Eliot, was about to clean. Then I watched through the keyhole while he struggled with himself about whether or not to steal the coins.’
‘Did he take them?’ asked Mark.
‘Of course he did, the miserable bastard. He doesn’t even have the moral fibre of that dog.’ He nodded towards Max, who had come into the room and was being petted by Ginie. Ginie met Eric’s gaze with a clear, level look.
‘We know Eliot, actually. He’s our cook’s brother. What did you do to him?’
‘I burst into the room and yelled, “Caught you then, you pig!” He jumped three feet in the air; almost soiled himself. I threatened to call the police out. It was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.’ He gave a narrow-mouthed smile.
‘I think that’s a cruel trick. When faced with temptation, we’re all susceptible,’ Stephen replied. He kept his voice calm, though he could feel rage churning in his stomach.
‘Oh come on, the blacks are born thieves and liars,’ answered Eric. ‘No offence, but you haven’t been here long enough to see what we see.’
‘Well then, why don’t you describe it to me?’
Their gaze locked through a haze of cigarette smoke. A faint smell of sweat had imprinted itself on the air.
‘It’s like this,’ Eric began, grinding out his cigarette on his plate. ‘They’re a lazy race, so they have no pride in their work. You can’t trust them to get a job done – they need constant supervision if you don’t want them to sit around or steal from you.’
‘But isn’t it true that if you want to get good work out of any man, you must give him decent conditions?’ queried Stephen. ‘If they are unproductive, I expect it’s because they feel they aren’t properly looked after or fairly paid.’
‘Stephen’s right, you know,’ said Guthrie. He smiled, which deepened the laughter lines around his eyes, though his tone was serious. ‘The average worker can barely feed his family on what he earns, and their living arrangements are often dreadfully overcrowded and unsanitary.’
Eric was looking angrily from one to the other.
‘There should be a minimum wage,’ continued Stephen. ‘How can we possibly advance, as a society, while the majority of the population lives in abject poverty?’ He turned his gaze onto the men around the table. From the expressions on Eric and Bob Michael’s faces, he could see that his words held the power of an incendiary speech.
‘The system may be imperfect, but it keeps this country running,’ said Bob, smiling through gritted teeth.
‘And anyway, the natives aren’t like us,’ Jill interjected, archly. ‘It says in the Bible that they’re the hewers of stone and the drawers of water – they’re not as highly developed as we are. They don’t have the same expectations.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Guthrie, ‘our hopes and fears are exactly the same.’ Eric gave a derisive snort, but Guthrie ignored him and carried on. ‘We all want stability and dignity and good health for ourselves and our children. We’re all equally afraid of losing our livelihoods, being unloved and dying.’
Eric’s jaw clenched; he opened his mouth to speak, but Ginie cut him off. ‘Well said, Guthrie. They’re people, just like us. They want the same opportunities to work to provide healthy and prosperous lives for their families.’
‘Goodness, I didn’t realise you were such a liberal,’ said Anne, giving Ginie a hard look masquerading as surprise. Her cigarette rested on her lower lip while smoke drifted over her face.
Gini
e pushed her chair back and stood up. ‘Ladies, I think it’s time for us to move to the parlour for coffee.’
The men stayed on in the dining room, drinking port, smoking cigars and carefully avoiding the race issue. They stuck to safe topics: crops, livestock, and weather. When they joined the women, tempers had calmed and Mark presented a slide show of his recent trip to the Bua River in Nyasaland, which he visited in search of the succulent plants he was studying.
‘We camped among the trees with Puku and Waterbuck grazing nearby, taking no notice of us at all. . . The next evening, we were treated to beer and tribal dancing at a nearby village. The party lasted all night, with tremendous drumming, singing, and ululating.’ They looked in awe at the scenery, the wildflowers, the animals, the birds, the rock art and the local people he had encountered. While Mark talked in his quiet and measured voice, Stephen marvelled at the double standards of his guests, who were so eager to saturate themselves in every pleasure the country had to offer, but treated its people so poorly.
Just before they left, they were given the diamond stylus and asked to sign the window, adding the date of their visit. They enjoyed this; it was a novelty that salvaged the appearance of the evening. As Mark took the stylus from Ginie and she indicated which pane of glass he should inscribe, Stephen noticed how deliberately he touched her hand and sought eye contact.
They all said their goodbyes in the courtyard. Eric shook Stephen’s hand and Stephen saw Eric’s resentment still seething below the surface. When he said goodbye to Mark, he wondered if his own resentment was as visible. A chill crept over him, despite the warmth of the evening, and he shivered as he watched the guests climb into their cars and pull away.
That night, they both waited for Ginie’s owl. They sat up till very late, but it did not arrive. That was it, they realised, the owl’s time was up, and they would never know why.
5
Catherine, Rhodesia, 1950s
Our house was not large. Just two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen and living room. The floors were covered with thin, cracked linoleum and the furniture was simple. My parents had a lot of books, mostly about natural history and the classics. They also had display cases for my father’s butterfly collection and plant specimens, and a desk where they wrote letters.
The living room opened on to a veranda, which was supported by brick columns and covered with a tin roof. It looked out over the garden and the birds that came to my father’s bird baths and tables. On a clear day, you could see the forested hills stretching to the blue border of Mozambique. My room was next to my parents’; the walls were thin. During humid nights, it was hard to fall asleep in my narrow, iron bed with the mosquito net tucked tightly down around me. Sometimes, sounds came from their room that I did not want to hear, sounds that made me press my hands over my ears.
On the evening they came back from dinner at the Dragon Lady’s house, I overheard them talking in bed.
‘What’s the matter, Di?’ Dad asked, sounding exhausted.
‘It’s nothing, really.’ My mother’s voice was raw, as though it physically hurt her to speak. ‘It’s just. . . I felt so stupid tonight.’ She sighed. ‘I didn’t know how to talk to them. Stephen was kind. You know where you are with him; I can’t imagine him saying one thing to your face and another behind your back. But I didn’t take to her at all.’
‘I thought she was lovely,’ said my father, with surprising warmth.
Mum carried on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘It’s like I’ve forgotten how to speak to people. You’re gone before I wake up, Cathy’s at school and then you come in late. I know it’s not your fault, with your work and all that, but you have supper and go to bed straight afterwards. I’m alone here all day. . .’
Some nights when I got up to use the toilet, I would see my mother in the living room, writing letters to her friends and family in England by the light of the wheezing lamp, re-reading old letters, thinking her thoughts.
There was a pause so long, I wondered if they had fallen asleep. ‘You don’t realise,’ she said at last, futilely, knowing perfectly well there was nothing he could do about it. ‘It’s no life for me, this.’
Everyone expected the Courtaulds to change their views on the equality of the natives ‘when they had been in the country long enough’. But the Courtaulds did not change their views. Jill came to visit my mother one afternoon, very upset because she had learned of the way the Courtauld servants were indulged.
‘That woman gives them a pound of meat twice a week. And vegetables,’ she said, looking incredulous. ‘She told me that she worries about their diet and makes sure they eat their vegetables.’ They shook their heads over Ginie’s folly.
‘What did you say to her?’ asked my mother, pouring tea for Jill.
Jill reached for the sugar, spooned two lumps into her mug and stirred. There were dark patches of sweat under her arms and the escaped wisps of hair on the back of her neck were damp.
‘Well,’ she began, ‘I tried to make her see sense. I explained that a European diet doesn’t agree with them, that green vegetables only upset their digestion.’
‘What did she say?’
Jill’s cheeks flushed dark red. ‘She laughed at me.’
My mother clicked her tongue. They drank their tea and we listened to the hum of the generator outside and the brass clock ticking away the seconds on the mantelpiece.
‘I hear their servants have houses with bathrooms and flushing toilets,’ Jill said eventually, ‘but that’s not even the worst of it.’ She took a handkerchief out of her pocket and wiped her forehead. When she started speaking again, she enunciated very slowly and clearly, as though biting down on each syllable: ‘The worst thing is that they pay their servants five shillings a week more than anyone else.’
Mum drew in her breath sharply.
‘Joshua came to me, asking for a pay rise,’ Jill continued. ‘He said the Courtaulds’ boys earn twenty-five shillings a week, so why shouldn’t he?’
Mum shook her head. ‘Oh, for shame.’
‘Of course I refused. And I gave him a scolding for being insolent. Then I went straight over to La Rochelle. It was so hot; I was fairly melting when I got there. “What can I do for you, Jill?” she asked, without offering me so much as a glass of water. That nasty monkey was sitting on her lap and she cuddled it like a baby the whole time we talked.’
Jill’s hand went to her neck, gathered a fold of skin and tugged at it.
‘I told her about my conversation with Joshua and I asked her to stop spoiling the natives. She looked at me, as brazen as you please and said it seemed to her and Stephen that domestic workers were ridiculously underpaid. At that point, I lost my temper. I said, “You may have the money to throw about, but the rest of us don’t. You’ll cause a messy revolt that will affect us all, if you’re not careful.” And with that, I left her house. I’ll never set foot in it again.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ Mum said, soothingly. ‘I’d do the same if I could, I really would, but Mark’s advising them about their garden. We can’t afford to turn down the pay, you see.’ She smiled in nervous supplication.
‘Oh, they make me sick,’ Jill sighed deeply. ‘It’s alright for them, they can afford their liberal views.’
‘It’s true, they’re not like us. If there’s an uprising, they can just pack up and move to another country.’
‘Yes, they don’t care what happens to the rest of us.’
They fell silent. Steam rose from their mugs and dissolved in the sunlit room.
At last Jill said, ‘There must be a way of bringing them to their senses.’
6
Stephen, Rhodesia, 1950s
Once a week, the Courtaulds drove to Umtali to take care of the post and to visit the bank. The road was beautiful and perilous; tarmac strips on a treacherous incline, full of holes and small rocks, red dust spurting up behind the car. It was bordered by low walls of yellowing grass and flowers, a pale yellow ground-creeping f
lower with a spicy smell, red hibiscus and purple foxgloves.
The sky was as blue as the ocean and the hills were veiled with a thin lace of cloud. Sunlight pricked their eyes and warmed their skin. They drove with the windows open so they could feel the wind and smell the foliage.
It was twelve miles to Umtali and they drove six miles each. Ginie drove first. When it was time to change they swapped places on the blind brow of a hill. Ginie drove furiously and with one hand off the wheel, looking at whoever she was talking to. Stephen’s driving was slow and careful, his face puckered in concentration.
They passed the rusted carcass of an abandoned truck and rounded a corner to see a troop of baboons loitering in the road. Stephen slammed on the brakes but the car scarcely slowed. The animals scattered just in time. He waited for his heart to stop pounding.
‘We need new brakes.’
Ginie was powdering her face with a small mother-of-pearl compact. She snapped it shut and put it back in her handbag.
‘Yes. The springs feel worn out, too.’
Stephen frowned, his eyes fixed on the road. His palms were sweating against the steering wheel.
‘We only replaced them a few weeks ago. If the roads were in better condition we wouldn’t have these perpetual problems.’
Umtali was nestled in a basin formed by lush hills. The place itself felt somewhere between a modern city and a pioneer’s settlement; wide streets were banked with flowering trees and there were shops and offices, yet many of the roads tapered off into the scrub and trees of the bush.
Heat beat down from a clear sky, shimmering in waves. The smell of scorched tarmac reached them through the open windows of their car. Stephen parked and they walked through the small, wilted gardens off Main Street. The asphalt felt soft and tacky under their feet and the trees were motionless. As they approached the bank they saw a crowd of about twenty Africans standing in the road, waiting patiently. The bank did not allow them in. They were served from a counter in the wall after all the whites had been seen and had their families asked after.
The Dragon Lady Page 3