For a few days we didn’t go back to the house. When we did we stopped playing Mr Thompson. We no longer knew him: that laugh, that slow, insulting stare had meant something outside our knowledge and experience. The house was not ours now. It was some broken bricks on the ground marked out with bottles. We couldn’t pretend to ourselves we were not afraid of the place; and we continually glanced over our shoulders to see if the old black woman was standing silently there, watching us.
Idling along the fence, we threw stones at the pawpaws fifteen feet over our heads till they squashed at our feet. Then we kicked them into the bush.
‘Why have you stopped going to the old house?’ asked Mother cautiously, thinking that we didn’t know how pleased she was. She had instinctively disliked our being there so much.
‘Oh, I dunno …’
A few days later we heard that the Thompsons were coming to see us; and we knew, without anyone saying, that this was no ordinary visit. It was the first time; they wouldn’t be coming after all these years without some reason. Besides, our parents didn’t like them coming. They were at odds with each other over it.
Mr Thompson had lived on our farm for ten years before we had it, when there was no one else near for miles and miles. Then, suddenly, he went home to England and brought a wife back with him. The wife never came to this farm. Mr Thompson sold the farm to us and bought another one. People said:
‘Poor girl! Just out from home, too.’ She was angry about the house burning down, because it meant she had to live with friends for nearly a year while Mr Thompson built a new house on his new farm.
The night before they came, Mother said several times in a strange, sorrowful voice, ‘Poor little thing; poor, poor little thing.’
Father said: ‘Oh, I don’t know. After all, be just. He was here alone all those years.’
It was no good; she disliked not only Mr Thompson but Father too, that evening; and we were on her side. She put her arms round us, and looked accusingly at Father. ‘Women get all the worst of everything,’ she said.
He said angrily: ‘Look here, it’s not my fault these people are coming.’
‘Who said it was?’ she answered.
Next day, when the car came in sight, we vanished into the bush. We felt guilty, not because we were running away, a thing we often did when visitors came we didn’t like, but because we had made Mr Thompson’s house our own, and because we were afraid if he saw our faces he would know we were letting Mother down by going.
We climbed into the tree that was our refuge on these occasions, and lay along branches twenty feet from the ground, and played at Mowgli, thinking all the time about the Thompsons.
As usual, we lost all sense of time; and when we eventually returned, thinking the coast must be clear, the car was still there. Curiosity got the better of us.
We slunk on to the veranda, smiling bashfully, while Mother gave us a reproachful look. Then, at last, we lifted our heads and looked at Mrs Thompson. I don’t know how we had imagined her; but we had felt for her a passionate, protective pity.
She was a large, blonde, brilliantly coloured lady with a voice like a go-away bird’s. It was a horrible voice. Father, who could not stand loud voices, was holding the arms of his chair, and gazing at her with exasperated dislike.
As for Mr Thompson, that villain whom we had hated and feared, he was a shaggy and shambling man, who looked at the ground while his wife talked, with a small apologetic smile. He was not in the least as we had pictured him. He looked like our old dog. For a moment we were confused; then, in a rush, our allegiance shifted. The profound and dangerous pity, aroused in us earlier than we could remember by the worlds of loneliness inhabited by our parents, which they could not share with each other but which each shared with us, settled now on Mr Thompson. Now we hated Mrs Thompson. The outward sign of it was that we left Mother’s chair and went to Father’s.
‘Don’t fidget, there’s good kids,’ he said.
Mrs Thompson was asking to be shown the old house. We understood, from the insistent sound of her voice, that she had been talking about nothing else all afternoon; or that, at any rate, if she had, it was only with the intention of getting round to the house as soon as she could. She kept saying, smiling ferociously at Mr Thompson: ‘I have heard such interesting things about that old place. I really must see for myself where it was that my husband lived before I came out …’ And she looked at Mother for approval.
But Mother said dubiously: ‘It will soon be dark. And there is no path.’
As for Father, he said bluntly: ‘There’s nothing to be seen. There’s nothing left.’
‘Yes, I heard it had been burnt down,’ said Mrs Thompson with another look at her husband.
‘It was a hurricane lamp…’ he muttered.
‘I want to see for myself.’
At this point my sister slipped off the arm of my Father’s chair, and said, with a bright, false smile at Mrs Thompson, ‘We know where it is. We’ll take you.’ She dug me in the ribs and sped off before anyone could speak.
At last they all decided to come. I took them the hardest, longest way I knew. We had made a path of our own long ago, but that would have been too quick. I made Mrs Thompson climb over rocks, push through grass, bend under bushes. I made her scramble down the gully so that she fell on her knees in the sharp pebbles and the dust. I walked her so fast, finally, in a wide circle through the thorn trees that I could hear her panting behind me. But she wasn’t complaining: she wanted to see the place too badly.
When we came to where the house had been it was nearly dark and the tufts of long grass were shivering in the night breeze, and the pawpaw trees were silhouetted high and dark against a red sky. Guinea-fowl were clinking softly all around us.
My sister leaned against a tree, breathing hard, trying to look natural. Mrs Thompson had lost her confidence. She stood quite still, looking about her, and we knew the silence and the desolation had got her, as it got us that first morning.
‘But where is the house?’ she asked at last, unconsciously softening her voice, staring as if she expected to see it rise out of the ground in front of her.
‘I told you, it was burnt down. Now will you believe me?’ said Mr Thompson.
‘I know it was burnt down … Well, where was it then?’ She sounded as if she were going to cry. This was not at all what she had expected.
Mr Thompson pointed at the bricks on the ground. He did not move. He stood staring over the fence down to the vlei, where the mist was gathering in long white folds. The light faded out of the sky, and it began to get cold. For a while no one spoke.
‘What a god-forsaken place for a house,’ said Mrs Thompson, very irritably, at last. ‘Just as well it was burnt down. Do you mean to say you kids play here?’
That was our cue. ‘We like it,’ we said dutifully, knowing very well that the two of us standing on the bricks, hand in hand, beside the ghostly rosebush, made a picture that took all the harm out of the place for her. ‘We play here all day,’ we lied.
‘Odd taste you’ve got,’ she said, speaking at us, but meaning Mr Thompson.
Mr Thompson did not hear her. He was looking around with a lost, remembering expression. ‘Ten years,’ he said at last. ‘Ten years I was here.’
‘More fool you,’ she snapped. And that closed the subject as far as she was concerned.
We began to trail home. Now the two women went in front; then came Father and Mr Thompson; we followed at the back. As we passed a small donga under a cactus tree, my sister called in a whisper, ‘Mr Thompson, Mr Thompson, look here.’
Father and Mr Thompson came back. ‘Look,’ we said, pointing to the hole that was filled to the brim with empty bottles.
‘I came quickly by a way of my own and hid them,’ said my sister proudly, looking at the two men like a conspirator.
Father was very uncomfortable. ‘I wonder how they got down here?’ he said politely at last.
‘We found them. They
were at the house. We hid them for you,’ said my sister, dancing with excitement.
Mr Thompson looked at us sharply and uneasily. ‘You are an odd pair of kids,’ he said.
That was all the thanks we got from him; for then we heard Mother calling from ahead: ‘What are you all doing there?’ And at once we went forward.
After the Thompsons had left we hung around Father, waiting for him to say something.
At last, when Mother wasn’t there, he scratched his head in an irritable way and said: ‘What in the world did you do that for?’
We were bitterly hurt. ‘She might have seen them.’ I said. ‘Nothing would make much difference to that lady,’ he said at last. ‘Still, I suppose you meant well.’
In the corner of the veranda, in the dark, sat Mother, gazing into the dark bush. On her face was a grim look of disapproval, and distaste and unhappiness. We were included in it, we knew that.
She looked at us crossly and said, ‘I don’t like you wandering over the farm the way you do. Even with a gun.’
But she had said that so often, and it wasn’t what we were waiting for. At last it came.
‘My two little girls,’ she said, ‘out in the bush by themselves, with no one to play with …’
It wasn’t the bush she minded. We flung ourselves on her. Once again we were swung dizzily from one camp to the other. ‘Poor Mother,’ we said. ‘Poor, poor Mother.’
That was what she needed. ‘It’s no life for a woman, this,’ she said, her voice breaking, gathering us close.
But she sounded comforted.
The Words He Said
On the morning of the braavleis, Dad kept saying to Moira, as if he thought it was a joke, ‘Moy, it’s going to rain.’ First she did not hear him, then she turned her head slow and deliberate and looked at him so that he remembered what she said the day before, and he got red in the face and went indoors out of her way. The day before, he said to her, speaking to me, ‘What’s Moy got into her head? Is the braavleis for her engagement or what?’
It was because Moira spent all morning cooking her lemon cake for braavleis, and she went over to Sam the butcher’s to order the best ribs of beef and best rump steak.
All the cold season she was not cooking, she was not helping Mom in the house at all, she was not taking an interest in life, and Dad was saying to Mom: ‘Oh get the girl to town or something, don’t let her moon about here, who does she think she is?’
Mom just said, quiet and calm, the way she was with Dad when they did not agree: ‘Oh let her alone, Dickson.’ When Mom and Dad were agreeing, they called each other Mom and Dad; when they were against each other, it was Marion and Dickson, and that is how it was for the whole of the dry season, and Moira was pale and moony and would not talk to me, and it was no fun for me, I can tell you.
‘What’s this for?’ Dad said once about half-way through the season, when Moira stayed in bed three days and Mom let her. ‘Has he said anything to her or hasn’t he?’
Mom just said: ‘She’s sick, Dickson.’
But I could see what he said had gone into her, because I was in our bedroom when Mom came to Moira.
Mom sat down on the bed, but at the bottom of it, and she was worried. ‘Listen, girl,’ said Mom, ‘I don’t want to interfere, I don’t want to do that, but what did Greg say?’
Moira was not properly in bed, but in her old pink dressing-gown that used to be Mom’s, and she was lying under the quilt. She lay there, not reading anything, watching out of the window over at the big water-tanks across the railway lines. Her face looked bad, and she said: ‘Oh, leave me alone, Mom.’
Mom said: ‘Listen, girlie, just let me say something, you don’t have to follow what I say, do you?’
But Moira said nothing.
‘Sometimes boys say a thing, and they don’t mean it the way we think. They feel they have to say it. It’s not they don’t mean it, but they mean it different.’
‘He didn’t say anything at all,’ said Moira. ‘Why should he?’
‘Why don’t you go into town and stay with Auntie Nora a while? You can come back for the holidays when Greg comes back.’
‘Oh let me alone,’ said Moira, and she began to cry. That was the first time she cried. At least, in front of Mom. I used to hear her cry at night when she thought I was asleep.
Mom’s face was tight and patient, and she put her hand on Moira’s shoulder, and she was worried I could see. I was sitting on my bed pretending to do my stamps, and she looked over at me, and seemed to be thinking hard.
‘He didn’t say anything, Mom,’ I said. ‘But I know what happened.’
Moira jerked her head up and she said: ‘Get that kid away from me.’
They could not get me away from Moira, because there were only two bedrooms, and I always slept with Moira. But she would not speak to me that night at all; and Mom said to me, ‘Little pitchers have big ears.’
It was the last year’s braavleis it happened. Moira was not keen on Greg then, I know for a fact, because she was sweet on Jordan. Greg was mostly at the Cape in college, but he came back for the first time in a year, and I saw him looking at Moira. She was pretty then, because she had finished her matric and spent all her time making herself pretty. She was eighteen, and her hair was wavy, because the rains had started. Greg was on the other side of the bonfire, and he came walking around it through the sparks and the white smoke, and up to Moira. Moira smiled out of politeness, because she wanted Jordan to sit by her, and she was afraid he wouldn’t if he saw her occupied by Greg.
‘Moira Hughes?’ he said. Moira smiled, and he said: ‘I wouldn’t have known you.’
‘Go on,’ I said, ‘you’ve known us always.’
They did not hear me. They were just looking. It was peculiar. I knew it was one of the peculiar moments of life because my skin was tingling all over, and that is how I always know.
Because of how she was looking at him, I looked at him too, but I did not think he was handsome. The holidays before, when I was sweet on Greg Jackson, I naturally thought he was handsome, but now he was just ordinary. He was very thin, always, and his hair was ginger, and his freckles were thick, because naturally the sun is no good for people with white skin and freckles.
But he wasn’t bad, particularly because he was in his sensible mood. Since he went to college he had two moods, one noisy and sarcastic; and then Moira used to say, all lofty and superior: ‘Medical students are always rowdy, it stands to reason because of the hard life they have afterwards.’ His other mood was when he was quiet and grown-up, and some of the gang didn’t like it, because he was better than us, he was the only one of the gang to go to university at the Cape.
After they had finished looking, he just sat down in the grass in the place Moira was keeping for Jordan, and Moira did not once look around for Jordan. They did not say anything else, just went on sitting, and when the big dance began holding hands around the bonfire, they stood at one side watching.
That was all that happened at the braavleis, and that was all the words he said. Next day, Greg went on a shooting trip with his father who was the man at the garage, and they went right up the Zambesi valley, and Greg did not come back to our station that holidays or the holidays after.
I knew Moira was thinking of a letter, because she bought some of Croxley’s best blue at the store, and she always went herself to the post office on mail days. But there was no letter. But after that she said to Jordan, ‘No thanks, I don’t feel like it,’ when he asked her to go into town to the flicks.
She did not take any notice of any of the gang after that, though before she was leader of the gang, even over the boys.
That was when she stopped being pretty again; she looked as she did before she left school and was working hard for her matric. She was too thin, and the curl went out of her hair, and she didn’t bother to curl it either.
All that dry season she did nothing, and hardly spoke, and did not sing; and I knew it was because of t
hat minute when Greg and she looked at each other; that was all; and when I thought of it, I could feel the cold-hot down my back.
Well, on the day before the braavleis, like I said, Moira was on the veranda, and she had on her the dress she wore last year to the braavleis. Greg had come back for the holidays the night before, we knew he had, because his mother said so when Mom met her at the store. But he did not come to our house. I did not like to see Moira’s face, but I had to keep on looking at it, it was so sad, and her eyes were sore. Mom kissed her, putting both her arms around her, but Moira gave a hitch of her shoulders like a horse with a fly bothering it.
Mom sighed, and then I saw Dad looking at her, and the look they gave each other was most peculiar, it made me feel very peculiar again. And then Moira started in on the lemon cake, and went to the butcher’s, and that was when Dad said that about the braavleis being for the engagement. Moira looked at him, with her eyes all black and sad, and said: ‘Why have you got it in for me, Dad, what have I done?’
Dad said: ‘Greg’s not going to marry you. Now he’s got to college, and going to be a doctor, he won’t be after you.’
Moira was smiling, her lips small and angry.
Mom said: ‘Why Dickson, Moira’s got her matric and she’s educated, what’s got into your head?’
Dad said: ‘I’m telling you, that’s all.’
Moira said, very grown-up and quiet: ‘Why are you trying to spoil it for me, Dad? I haven’t said anything about marrying, have I? And what have I done to you, anyway?’
Dad didn’t like that. He went red, and he laughed, but he didn’t like it. And he was quiet for a bit at least.
After lunch, when she’d finished with the cake, she was sitting on the veranda when Jordan went past across to the store, and she called out: ‘Hi, Jordan, come and talk to me.’
The Sun Between Their Feet Page 9