The Dragon Lady

by Louisa Treger

  ‘Afternoon, Missus Ginie.’ Mary kept her eyes lowered.

  ‘Is everything well with you, Mary?’

  ‘Everything is well, thank you.’

  ‘Who was that man?’

  Mary turned into the low sun, squinting. ‘Eliot’s cousin. He is visiting.’ The sunlight showed droplets of sweat on her upper lip.

  At that moment, something caught Ginie’s eye: a strip of cloth caught on a thorn bush, fluttering in the light breeze. Her eyes flashed to Mary. As they carried on their way, she reached out a hand and slipped it into her pocket. Had Mark seen it? If he had, he’d given no sign. She hoped that he was too distracted by what had just passed between them.

  Suddenly, she couldn’t wait to get rid of him. They walked back to the house and said goodbye in the courtyard. ‘When can I see you again?’ he asked.

  She shrugged, unsure what to say. ‘Uh. . . we have houseguests arriving from Salisbury tomorrow. Perhaps after they’ve gone?’ It was a white lie, she was trying to let him down gently but his disappointment was clear.

  She stayed in the courtyard, waiting until she could no longer hear the sound of his truck. Only then did she take the piece of red-and-white-striped calico out of her pocket. She fetched her cigarette lighter, struck a flame and held it to the fabric. As it took light, she let it fall to the ground, watching as the fire flared, swallowing the cloth and burning itself out, until all that was left was a heap of ash.

  31

  The Courtaulds, Rhodesia, 1950s

  Stephen stood at the window of his study and watched Mark and Ginie wander across the lawn. Their demeanour was relaxed, as though they had all the time in the world. They looked perfectly comfortable together. Mark said something and Ginie put her hand on his arm and smiled up into his eyes. Pain sank its hooks in Stephen and his heart began to beat faster.

  His gaze followed them up to the Dell where they were hidden by the trees. He knew what it cost Ginie to enter the Dell, and was incredulous and angry that she had done it with Mark and not with him. He sat down at his desk, but the words in front of him had turned into a series of dark squiggles that looked like stick insects dancing and sliding on the page.

  When Mark had gone, the Courtaulds ate their usual Sunday supper of cold meats and salad. Ginie was unusually quiet and preoccupied and Stephen felt rebuffed by her reserve. Doubt had stolen into his heart and spread.

  ‘Mark told me that Eric found two of the escapees in his kitchen last night, helping themselves to dinner,’ she said, eventually. She was picking at a tomato. She gazed up at him, lamplight flickering in her eyes. He had never seen her look more beautiful. ‘I hope we don’t get a visit.’

  ‘If you choose to live in this damned country, you have to be prepared for the consequences,’ he said irritably.

  He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth, but Ginie simply raised her brows and said, ‘Let’s double check that everything’s locked before we go to bed, shall we?’ She glanced uneasily at the windows, as though she fancied that a convict’s eyes might appear on the other side of the glass. She began to say something, but changed her mind and pushed her plate away.

  It was a clear night, with a full moon. Trees moaned in the wind and a hyena’s laugh echoed in the bush.

  ‘Did you know that according to Shona legend, witches can be seen flying through the night on hyenas’ backs when the moon is full?’ Ginie said.

  Stephen couldn’t think of a sensible answer, so they fell back into silence. He wanted to ask about her walk with Mark, but the words had calcified in his mouth.

  He struggled to sleep that night. He tried not to think about them together, but every time he closed his eyes, the image of Ginie smiling up at Mark played and replayed in his head. Why is it the painful thoughts we cling to like magnets? he wondered.

  The wind was gaining strength. It wailed around the house, moaning in the chimney, making the doors shudder in their frames. Stephen’s last thought, as he drifted into an uneasy doze, was that he hoped that none of the escaped prisoners took refuge from the storm at La Rochelle.

  Stephen was woken by Ginie calling his name. The dogs were barking. He started up, knowing that something was dreadfully wrong.

  ‘Stephen, quickly – the Thompsons’ farm is on fire!’ Ginie cried.

  Rubbing his eyes, he got out of bed and went to the window to look. In the distance, the hills were illuminated by a flickering glare.

  Quickly, he pulled on a shirt and a pair of trousers. With Ginie following, he hurried along the corridor and out into the night. The blackness of the sky had begun to lose its intensity, dawn was not far off. Sharp gusts brushed Stephen’s face, tinged with the smell of smoke – and roses. Blood thumped in his temples. He called for the dogs. They didn’t appear, they had gone off on some mission of their own.

  He could hear a car approaching at speed. It screeched to a stop by the courtyard and Jill got out and ran towards them, stumbling, almost falling. Her face was grimed with smoke, her eyes showing startlingly clear against her blackened skin.

  ‘The pig houses are on fire,’ she gasped. Tears soaked down her cheeks, forming pale channels in the soot. ‘We don’t know how it started, but because of the wind, it’s ripping over the whole place. Please come.’ She paused, drawing deep, ragged breaths. ‘Eric and the boys are trying to fight it, but there aren’t enough of them. The phone lines are down and we can’t reach the fire brigade. We couldn’t get the pigs out – they were making the most terrible screaming sounds. . .’

  She began to sob hard. Stephen gave her his handkerchief and she wiped her face, leaving dark smears on the white cotton.

  ‘I’ll wake my staff and come with as many as I can fit in the car,’ he told her. He turned to Ginie. ‘You stay here. See if you can get a line to the fire brigade.’

  Minutes later, he was on his way with Dixon in the passenger seat, John Mutasa and three of the gardeners squeezed into the back. The sky was hazy with smoke. Hills and the dim shapes of trees rose up on either side of them. The road was littered with snapped branches and once or twice they had to drive onto the fields to get past fallen trees. They had a flask of water, which they shared between them.

  ‘I wonder how the fire started,’ said Stephen.

  ‘Yes. . .’

  ‘With the wind, it must have spread in no time.’

  ‘I’ve never seen such a wind,’ remarked John. ‘It’s a miracle our buildings weren’t harmed.’

  The men shook their heads and clicked their tongues.

  ‘Yes, yes. And another thing. . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nkosi Thompson is always angry.’

  ‘That is so,’ agreed Dixon. ‘He has plenty of enemies.’

  Stephen gave him a sharp look. ‘You should tell that to the police, Dixon.’

  There was silence. A long silence. The sky was brightening and the grey-blue light of dawn was stark, yet strangely beautiful.

  As Stephen turned in at the Thompsons’ gates, they could see curling wisps of smoke rising from where the pig houses had once stood. ‘It looks as if the fire’s already out,’ he said. ‘They’re lucky it didn’t reach the farmhouse.’

  He parked beside Jill’s car and they all got out. He joined Jill, who was standing completely still, gazing at the pile of smoking debris. The staff waited behind at a respectful distance. The burned out pig houses looked desolate and decrepit. On one side, the trees were blackened, their leaves hanging brittle and scorched. The soil was hot underfoot. Coils of smoke hung in the air and there was a terrible smell of charred flesh.

  ‘We’re too late,’ Jill said hoarsely. ‘That’s our livelihood – gone.’ Her face was flushed and desperate.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ Stephen’s eyes smarted from the smoke. He was trying to take shallow breaths, so as not to inhale too much of it.

  She shrugged. ‘It looks like the boys have run off. They’re hopeless.’ Her voice rose. ‘No loyalty at all, no gratitude
for what we’ve done for them.’

  Stephen disagreed, but as Jill was in such shock, he decided not to challenge her. A large flake of soot landed on his arm, hot through his shirtsleeve, leaving a greasy stain.

  They walked closer to the piggeries. ‘And where has Eric got to?’ inquired Jill. ‘It would be nice if he came to check if I was alright.’ There was a smudge of soot beneath the corner of her eye and her cheeks glistened with fresh tears. The sun was coming up, casting shadows; the light was turning hazy rose and gold. In African folklore, the shooting rays of the rising sun held healing powers, but this morning, they did nothing but illuminate a dismal sight.

  The pigs lay in grotesque poses in deep, black ash among the detritus of burnt timber and blackened feeding troughs. Some were so badly burned that they were hardly recognisable as animals. Others looked as though they had been boiled; their feet drawn up and purple entrails burst out of their carcasses. Some had died with their snouts pressed against the wire netting, obviously trying to escape.

  A few of the smaller animals had managed to squeeze out. They lay on the ground, pitiful bundles of raw scorched flesh, their eyes dulling, their limbs twitching feebly.

  ‘Eric should shoot them,’ Stephen mumbled.

  ‘Must I remind you that his guns have been confiscated?’ Jill gave him a hard look.

  ‘Where is he?’

  They found him lying behind the pig houses, his neck gruesomely twisted. He had thrown up all over his face and the back of his skull was smashed in. Brain matter had leaked into a puddle under his head; greyish, marbled with blood and splinters of bone.

  An animal-like sound escaped from Jill’s mouth. Her face turned crimson, then white. Her body shuddered and heaved and she slipped to the ground in a dead faint. Stephen, who had never once vomited in the trenches, doubled up and was copiously sick on the withered ground.

  Ginie made her way to the vegetable garden with a large, empty basket, pausing at the gate to snuff the fragrant air. The vegetables were surrounded by fencing to keep animals out, but every now and then baboons broke in, threw tomatoes and peppers around and dug up potatoes. She approached the long row of plum trees that were heavy with verdant leaves and firm fruit. They gave off a scent so strong it made her giddy. She set about picking the plums and let her thoughts unspool.

  Three weeks on, she was still struggling to accept that the Thompsons’ piggeries had been deliberately burned to the ground, with Eric slaughtered like one of his animals. She kept expecting to wake up and discover it had all been a bad dream. Perhaps there was a parallel reality in which Eric was still alive, the pig houses were intact and the poor animals whole and healthy.

  The police had found petrol cans near the scene. They had fingerprints too, but wouldn’t say whether or not they’d identified them. It appeared that Eric’s skull had been crushed by repeated and savage blows from a large blunt instrument, likely a knobkerrie.

  When Ginie’s basket was full, she left the vegetable garden, carefully locking the gate behind her. She walked slowly back to the house, feeling the sun on her uncovered head and back. She and Stephen had both given statements to the police. She told them how she’d woken in the night to see the sky lit by the blaze, how she went to fetch Stephen, and everything else that followed. But she hadn’t said a word about finding the strip of cloth and burning it, not even to Stephen. He was so straight and open, he would want to tell the police.

  She felt guilty about her silence, for it seemed likely that the escapees were responsible for Eric’s death. She suspected that Mary was somehow involved and wanted to protect her. Ginie hadn’t confronted her, and the less Mary told her, the better.

  The police had also tried to talk to Jill, who was in hospital being treated for shock, but she had closed herself off to everyone and everything, and hadn’t uttered a word since the tragedy.

  In the kitchen, Gideon took the basket from Ginie and she drank several glasses of water.

  ‘I would like to make some jam,’ she told him.

  ‘Yes, nkosikazi.’ He lit the stove, rinsed the plums and emptied them into an enormous saucepan, which went on top of the stove to simmer.

  Ginie walked to the veranda and watched the sunlight flood her garden, letting the heat dispel her troubling thoughts and drug her into warm, sleepy contentment. A gardener was dragging the sprinkler over to the roses. Jets of water shot up and small rainbows appeared.

  Taking a pair of secateurs from a shelf on the veranda, Ginie went to the rose garden and started cutting a large bunch of blooms. The sprinkler cast fine, deliciously cool spray over her. Droplets sparkled like tiny sequins on her dress before soaking into the fabric. She carried the flowers back to the house and the pain of the prickly stems in her hands felt like a warning, but she shook off her unease and concentrated on trimming them. She arranged the cream-coloured heads into a tumbling fan shape in a bowl of water.

  She then took the flowers through to the parlour and set them on the table, stepping back for a moment to admire her work. Their full perfume spread through the warm room.

  She went back to the kitchen. The saucepan was filled with a lightly simmering pulp and Gideon stood fishing out the fruit stones with a large slotted spoon. Ginie added cupfuls of sugar and they left the jam to boil, its aroma slowly seeping through the house. In the parlour, Dixon brought her two letters. The first was from Mark, a single line that read: I have to see you. There’s something urgent I must explain.

  No doubt he wanted to talk about what had happened in the Dell. Ginie sighed. She had slipped into this situation so easily, it was like trying on a shoe. Getting out of it was another matter entirely. The night after the fire, Stephen had come to her room and made love to her in a way he never had before. He did it wordlessly, with a kind of deep, blind hunger, tracing the contours of her face with his fingertips, as though he were trying to read her soul. Her heart had cracked open and a deep spring of love and tenderness flowed out, feelings she feared had been lost for good.

  The landscape of Ginie’s emotions could change as quickly as the light and shadows moved over her beloved hills. She was deeply fond of Mark and sorry about the feelings she had aroused in him. Turning her attention to the second letter, she felt the ground slide from under her. The handwriting on the envelope was small and square; it was writing she’d hoped she would never see again.

  MY PATIENCE IS RUNNING OUT. LEAVE RHODESIA.

  YOU ARE NOT WANTED HERE.

  NO MORE CHANCES.

  Ginie stared at the words in fear and confusion. She and Stephen had long ago concluded that one of the Thompsons must have written the anonymous letters, but Eric was dead and Jill was in hospital. She struggled to think clearly. If the letters hadn’t come from the Thompsons, then who had sent them?

  Some of the petals from her roses had already dropped on to the table wilting around the edges. Whoever had written the letters, he was angry. And he was probably perfectly capable of carrying out his threats.

  32

  The Courtaulds, Rhodesia, 1950s

  ‘I have a favour to ask you,’ said Mary.

  She hovered at the threshold of the parlour. Ginie glanced up from a book she was reading.

  ‘Yes?’ she encouraged. Mary had never asked her for anything. Surprise was quickly followed by apprehension; was she going to bring up the escaped prisoners or Eric’s murder? Ginie put the book down, feeling her stomach begin to knot up. It had been a month since the anonymous letter and they hadn’t heard anything since, yet her nerves were ragged and the slightest thing made her jumpy.

  Mary came fully into the room, her hands thrust into the pockets of her apron.

  ‘My friends would like to meet Mr Stephen,’ she said carefully.

  ‘Oh, really? Who are they?’

  ‘Politicians. Their names are Ndabaningi Sithole, Herbert Chitepo and Robert Mugabe. They know about your work for our people.’

  Ginie felt relief. ‘I didn’t realise you were interest
ed in politics, Mary.’ She remembered coming home early from a trip to town to find Mary in the parlour, listening to crackling voices on a muted short-wave radio station. Mary had snapped the radio off as soon as she saw Ginie.

  ‘Yes I used to go to meetings with Eliot. We learned about many things.’

  ‘I’m fascinated. What sort of things?’

  Mary fixed Ginie with thoughtful eyes. ‘Well, capitalism and socialism and equal rights. We talked about the injustices of white supremacy. I mean, I grew up with it – it was always there. I knew it when I left school and left my family to get married, but I didn’t really know it until those meetings.’

  Mary’s eyes travelled to the heave of the hills beyond the open window. The breeze coming through was warm and smelled of freshly cut grass.

  ‘I think that we should be our own leaders,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t know how we are going to get there, but I want to be part of it.’

  ‘You never cease to amaze me. Why don’t you ask your friends to come for supper, say next Tuesday?’

  Mary brought her gaze back to Ginie. ‘No, they can’t do that. The police are watching them, you see. I’ll think of a way to bring them here without being seen.’

  Stephen sat at his desk working on a new project: the development of the National Gallery in Salisbury, which had begun to consume a great deal of his time and effort. To get a brand-new gallery going involved much prodding of slow-moving ministers and officials, but he was making progress. The first permanent Board of Trustees had been established, with Stephen as Chairman. He was working to raise funds, having got the ball rolling with a sizeable donation.

  He had helped recruit Frank McEwen as the first Director. Frank had previously been Fine Arts Officer at the British Council and he was well known for his skill in organising large, significant exhibitions, notably the first Picasso-Matisse Exhibition in London. He reminded Stephen of Sam, for they shared a passionate belief that art nourishes the human spirit and uplifts both maker and viewer. Open-minded and open-hearted, Frank was a breath of fresh air in the narrow and provincial atmosphere of Salisbury.