Mafeking Road (10 page)

But I didn't mention Annie's letter to Neels. He might have wanted to know more than I was willing to tell him. More, even, perhaps, than Martha was willing to tell him – Martha of the wild heart.

 

Then, at last, the war ended, and over the Transvaal the Vierkleur waved again. And the commandos went home by their different ways. And our leaders revived their old quarrels as to who should be president. And, everywhere, except for a number of lonely graves on hillside and vlakte, things were as they had been before Shepstone came.

It was getting on towards evening when our small band rode over the bult again, and once more came to a halt at the veldkornet's house. A messenger had been sent on in advance to announce our coming, and from far around the women and children and old men had gathered to welcome their victorious burghers back from the war. And there were tears in many eyes when we sang, “Hef, Burghers, Hef.”

And the moepels were ripe and yellow on the trees.

And in the dusk Neels Potgieter found Martha Rossouw and kissed her. At sundown, as the witch-doctor had said. But there was one important thing that the witch-doctor had not told. It was something that Neels Potgieter did not know, either, just then. And that was that Martha did not want him any more.

When I last saw Lenie Venter – Oom Schalk Lourens said – she was sitting in the voorkamer of her parents' farmhouse at Koedoesrand, drawing small circles on the blotting-paper. And I didn't know whether I had to be sorry for Lenie. Or for Johnny de Clerk. Or for Gert Oosthuizen. Or perhaps for the kaffir schoolmaster at Ramoutsa.

Of course, Lenie had learnt this trick of drawing circles from Johnny de Clerk, the young insurance agent. She had watched him, very intently, the first time he had called on Piet Venter. He had been in the Marico for some time, but this was his first visit to Koedoesrand. Johnny de Clerk looked very elegant, in his blue suit with the short jacket and the wide trousers, and while he sat with a lot of printed documents in front of him, talking about the advantages of being insured, he drew lots of small circles on the blotting-paper.

I was going by mule-cart to the Bechuanaland Protectorate, and on my way I had stopped at Piet Venter's house for a cup of coffee, and to ask him if there was anything I could order for him from the Indian store at Ramoutsa. But he said there wasn't.

“What about a drum of cattle-dip?” I hinted, remembering that Piet still owed me five gallons of dip.

“No,” he answered. “I don't need cattle-dip now.”

“Perhaps I can order you a few rolls of barbed wire,” I suggested. This time I was thinking of the wire he had borrowed from me for his new sheep-camp.

“No, thank you,” he said politely, “I don't need barbed wire, either.”

Piet Venter was funny, that way.

I was on the point of leaving, when Johnny de Clerk came in, very smart in his blue suit and his light felt hat and his pointed shoes. He introduced himself, and we all sat down and chatted very affably for a while. Afterwards Johnny took out a number of insurance forms, and said things to Piet Venter about a thousand pound policy, speaking very fast. From the way Johnny de Clerk kept on looking sideways at me, while he talked, I gathered that my presence was disturbing him, and that he couldn't talk his best while there was a third party listening.

So I lit my pipe and stayed longer.

I noticed that Lenie kept flitting in and out of the voorkamer, with bright eyes and red cheeks. I also noticed that, soon after Johnny de Clerk's arrival, she had gone into the bedroom for a
few minutes and had come out wearing a new pink frock. Lenie was pretty enough to make any man feel flattered if he knew that she had gone into the bedroom and put on a new pink frock just because he was there. She had dark hair and dark eyes, and when she smiled you could see that her teeth were very white.

Her sudden interest in this young insurance agent struck me as being all the more singular, because everybody in the Marico knew that Lenie was being courted by Gert Oosthuizen.

But it seemed that Johnny de Clerk had not noticed Lenie's blushes and her new frock. He appeared very unobservant about these things. It did not seem right that a young girl's efforts at attracting a man should be wasted in that fashion. That was another reason why I went on sitting there while the insurance agent talked to Piet Venter. I even went so far as to cough, once or twice, when Johnny de Clerk mentioned the amount of the policy that he thought Piet Venter should take out.

When he had filled the whole sheet of blotting-paper with small circles, Johnny de Clerk stopped talking and put the printed documents in order.

“I have proved to you why you should be insured for a thousand pounds, Oom Piet,” he said, “so just sign your name here.”

Piet Venter shook his head.

“Oh no,” he replied, “I don't want to.”

“But you must,” Johnny de Clerk went on, waving his hand towards Lenie, without looking up, “for the sake of your wife, here, you must.”

“That is not my wife,” Piet Venter replied, “that's my daughter, Lenie. My wife has gone to Zeerust to visit her sister.”

“Well, then, for the sake of your wife and daughter, Lenie,” Johnny de Clerk said, “and what's more, I've already spent an hour talking to you. If I spend another hour I shall have to insure you for two thousand pounds.”

Piet Venter got frightened then, and took off his jacket and signed the application form without any more fuss. By the way he passed his hand over his forehead I could see he was pleased to have got out of it so easily. I thought it was very considerate of Johnny de Clerk to have warned him in time. A more dishonest insurance agent, I felt, would just have gone on sitting there for the full two hours, and would then have filled in the documents, very coolly, for two thousand pounds. It was a pleasure for me to see an honest insurance agent at work, after I had come across so many of what you can call the dishonest kind.

Johnny de Clerk went out then, with the papers, saying that he would call again.

I left shortly afterwards.

“By the way,” I said to Piet Venter, as I took up my hat, “perhaps I could order another trek-chain for you at Ramoutsa. It's always useful to have two trek-chains.”

Piet Venter thought deeply for a few moments.

“No, Schalk, it's no good,” he said, slowly. “If a man has got a spare trek-chain, people always want to borrow it.”

I wondered much about Piet Venter as I walked out to the mule-cart.

I had just unfastened the reins from the front wheel, and was getting ready to drive away, when I heard light footsteps running across the grass. I looked round. It was Lenie. She looked very pretty running like that, with her eyes shining and her dark hair flying in the wind.

She had been running fast. The breath came in short gasps from between her parted lips. The sun shone very white on her small teeth.

Lenie was too excited at first to talk. She leant against the side of the cart, panting. I was glad she hadn't taken it into her mind to lean up against one of the mules, instead.

At last she found her voice.

“I have just remembered, Oom Schalk,” she said, “we have run out of blotting-paper. Will you please get me a few sheets from Ramoutsa?”

“Yes, certainly, Lenie,” I replied, “yes, of course. Blotting-paper. Oh, yes, for sure. Blotting-paper.”

I spoke to her in that way, tactfully, to make it appear as though it was quite an ordinary thing she had asked me to get. And I said other things that were even more tactful.

She smiled when I spoke like that. And I remembered her smile for most of the way to Ramoutsa. It was an uneasy sort of smile.

The usual small crowd of farmers from different parts of the Marico were hanging around the Indian store when I got there. After making their purchases they whiled away the time in discussing politics and the mealie-crops and the miltsiekte. They stood there, talking, to give their mules a chance to rest. Sometimes a mule got sunstroke, from resting for such a long time in the sun, while his owner was talking.

I ordered the things I wanted. The Indian wrote them all down in a book, and then got one of his kaffirs to carry them out to my mule-cart.

“By the way,” I said, clearing my throat, and trying to speak as though I had just remembered something, “I also want blotting-paper. Six sheets will do.”

The Indian looked in my eyes and nodded his head up and down, several times, very solemnly. I understood, from that, that the Indian didn't know what blotting-paper was. It took me about half an hour to explain it to him, and in the end he said that he hadn't any in his store, but that if I liked he could order some for me from England. But by that time several of the thoughtful farmers, who were allowing their mules to rest, had heard what I was asking for. And they made remarks which were considered, in the Protectorate, to be funny.

One farmer said that Schalk Lourens was beginning to get very up-to-date, and that the next thing he would be ordering was a collar and tie.

“The last Boer who used blotting-paper,” another man said, “was Piet Retief. When he signed that treaty with Dingaan.”

They were still laughing in their meaningless way when I drove off, feeling very bitter at the thought that a nice girl like Lenie, who was so sensible in other respects, should have got me into that unpleasant situation.

On my way back over the border I had to pass the Bechuana school. And that was where, in the end, I obtained the blotting-paper. I got a few sheets from the kaffir schoolmaster. In exchange for the blotting-paper I gave him half a can of black axle-grease, which he explained that he wanted for rubbing on his hair. I did not think that he was a very highly-educated kaffir schoolmaster.

And when I took the blotting-paper back to Koedoesrand, I did not mention where I had obtained it. Consequently, I did not tell them, either, that the kaffir schoolmaster at Ramoutsa had made many enquiries of me in regard to a Baas Johnny de Clerk. There was no need for me to enlighten them. For I knew that the schoolmaster had told me only the truth, and that, therefore, it would all be found out in time.

In the weeks that followed I saw very little of Piet Venter and Lenie. But I heard that Johnny de Clerk was still travelling about the neighbourhood, selling insurance. I also heard that he was in the habit of calling rather frequently at Piet Venter's house, to the annoyance of Gert Oosthuizen, the young farmer who was betrothed to Lenie.

And so the days passed by, as they do in the Marico, quietly.

Now and again vague stories reached me to the effect that Johnny de Clerk was seeing more and more of Lenie Venter, and that Gert Oosthuizen was viewing the matter with growing dissatisfaction. For these reasons I couldn't go to Koedoesrand. I realised that if I saw Piet Venter it would be my duty to tell him all I knew. And, somehow, there was something that prevented me.

The dry season passed and the rains came, and the dams were full. Then, one day, the whole Marico knew this thing about Johnny de Clerk. And, shortly afterwards, I went again to see Piet Venter at Koedoesrand.

But, in the meantime, Johnny de Clerk had had rather an unpleasant time. For, when they found out that, in his ignorant way, the kaffir schoolmaster was right to look upon the insurance agent as his son-in-law, a number of farmers waited until Johnny de Clerk again went to call on Lenie Venter. And they threw him into the dam, which was full with the rains, and when he came out his blue suit was very bedraggled, and his light hat was still in the water.

And so Johnny de Clerk left the Marico. But nobody could say for sure whether he went back to Pretoria, where he had come from, or to the Bechuana hut in Ramoutsa, where one of the farmers told him to go, when he kicked him.

The last time I saw Lenie Venter in her father's voorkamer was just before she married Gert Oosthuizen. And Gert was talking
sentimental words to her, in a heavy fashion. But most of the time Lenie's face was turned away from Gert's, as she sat, with a far-off look in her dark eyes, drawing small circles on a piece of blotting-paper.