Mayenga Farm (2 page)

Her back had stiffened, her small chin gone firm. "You'll get mosquitoes in your lounge," she remarked coolly.

"That's the idea of it," he answered carelessly. "Rather there, where they can be seen and massacred, than in the bedrooms." Pointedly, he inclined his head, indicating her hand. "Does that adhesive dressing on your wrist hide a bite?"

Rennie hoped that the pink mantling her cheeks was invisible at twenty-five feet.

"I expect I got it down here by the river."

"Possibly, but even so your house faces the way it shouldn't. Pity you didn't seek advice before you built. Any South African" — with nicely-balanced satire — "could have told you that the Transvaal is south of the Equator, and that it's more comfortable to face the tropics if you can."

Rennie knew herself at a disadvantage but scorned to make the obvious rejoinder to the beastly sarcasm. She began to prepare for a stately retreat.

"By the way," he added offhandedly, "your irrigation channels need widening and to be kept fairly moist, and that cotton you've planted should be flooded between rains; it’s not looking over-bright. What made you go in for cotton?"

"Why not?" she demanded shortly. "There’s no charge for experimenting on one's own land."

"Quite. But cotton-growing on a commercial scale in South Africa is a headache to experts. Women make poor planters, and if they are bitten with the farming bug they should concentrate on dairy cattle and poultry."

Carefully and with dignity, Rennie got down from her log. Her face was burning and a definite little ball of anger had gathered in her throat.

"We’re not in farming to make a fortune," she retorted. "And ultimately we shall profit by our mistakes."

"Ultimately is a long time," he observed calmly. "Far more comfortable to take advantage of other people's errors and start from there. It's the usual procedure with farming. Still," with a dismissive shrug, "it's no business of mine if you decide to tip out your capital on dud crops. I've never yet met the woman who'd listen to advice and act upon it. What, going?" in mock surprise. "Goodbye, then."

The car had to jib, of course, and Rennie had to spend a few mortifying moments sorting the gears. And it wasn’t too easy to reverse, either, on the rutted track. She didn’t glance across the river again, and by the time she had reached home her fury had cooled, though her pride still throbbed from the encounter.

An insufferable man. One of those who considers men gods and women unnecessary; for whom everything came right because he planned and commanded it that way. Fortunately, the river lay between his land and theirs, and she was certain his arrogance would not permit him to seek their friendship uninvited.

Rennie bought her two pieces of Gouda, a tall flower jar and a fat bowl with a lid. They showed up beautifully against the white wall, and once they were set upon the light varnished top of Adrian’s bookshelves, she seldom entered the room without seeing them before everything else, five guineas worth of quiet enjoyment. A dreadful extravagance, but she spent little on clothes, and Adrian had maintained that as a mental stimulant the ornaments were worth twice the price.

"You're too fond of spending the spare shillings for my comfort," he contended. "This home is half yours, my dear, and as far as possible, I want you to s urround yourself with things you like. It can’t be much fun for you, living at Mayenga with a bookish parent, and little chance of a change."

"But it is fun, and if we have a good harvest it will be more so. We'll be able to employ Fourie as a permanent foreman. He knows everything about farming, so that you'll have heaps of leisure. You might even have time to make the lecture tour that was offered you through the agent in Cape Town, and, of course, I'd go with you."

"Everything depends on our getting plenty of rain. You know, Rennie, I'm afraid our irrigation isn't good enough. We ought to have improved it before the spring planting."

Rennie remembered that Kent Bradfield had implied the same. "The rain came just after we'd planted. That's a good omen, according to the boys. The Farming journal is publishing record prices."

"We won't worry," he said easily. "Maize is our main crop. If it fails us again we'll switch to something else. At least we can grow our own food, and with plenty of dairy products on hand we shall never go hungry."

Adrian, steeped in the theory of farming, had no conception of the practical straining and stretching Rennie had to accomplish in order to conjure three meals a day for the two of them. The natives also, satisfied on weekdays with the mealies and yams they grew in their own section of the plantation, expected a ration of good red meat for the week-end. Meat was expensive, and Rennie was forced to take whatever the butcher sent in on Fridays from Gravenburg. Apart from this, their way of living was already down to a minimum. Rennie would even have managed without a houseboy had George demanded wages. As it happened, he was content with the privilege of having his Sophie and the piccaninnies living on the farm and costing him nothing. Whenever Rennie reproached herself over George she took consolation from Sophie's ready smile and the healthy plumpness of the children.

Once, looking at Rennie with a small frown of concern, her father had said: "You're too young to be buried at Mayenga, Rennie. You need friends of your own, and opportunities of meeting men. Girls get married at twenty, don't they?"

"Some of them, darling, but not Rennie . . . not yet. There's plenty of time."

Rennie thought ahead to the lecture tour her father would undoubtedly make at some rosy date in the future. She and Adrian would travel all the cities and towns of the Union, and perhaps one evening, across a roomful of guests in somebody's house, her eyes would meet a man's, and she would know that the stupendous had come to pass; here was her love, her life. She must be more definite about his coloring, though. No black hair and eyebrows for Rennie.

There was never time for lengthy dreams. Invariably they were interrupted by a boy needing medicine, or a summons to one of the outhouses, or a saucepan prosaically boiling over on the wood stove. As soon as they could reckon on fair crops she would call and see Jan Fourie, the temporary foreman, and offer him steady employment. He would work better once he knew that his job was secure.

As it turned out, Fourie himself had plans. One evening Rennie had left George watching a steak pie and a panful of potato chips while she ran out and chased a hen off the dahlias and back into the small poultry enclosure. When she returned to the kitchen. Jan Fourie sat at the deal table, dourly smoking his meerschaum and ignoring the harassed houseboy. Her heart plunged. When Jan took the trouble to seek her out there was generally some sort of catastrophe in the offing. He seldom bothered her otherwise.

She smiled. "Good evening, Jan. Did George bring you some refreshment?"

With deliberation he examined the bowl of his pipe before knocking it out on the ashtray on the table in front of him. Meticulously, he blew ash from the lapel of his jacket.

"I hardly ever drink, Miss Rennie," he said with a hint of sententiousness. "And in any case I would not encourage a houseboy to offer his master's hospitality without permission."

"You're no stranger, Jan — you might have helped yourself. Do you wish to see my father?"

He shook his head. "You will do as well — better, in fact." She had to ignore the slight to Adrian implicit in his manner. "You won't like what I have to say, Miss Rennie. I’ve come to tell you that I want to finish with your farm altogether."

"Oh. I ... I’m sorry, Jan. I suppose it’s money. Is it any good promising you a job and a bonus at harvest time?"

His thick features did not change. "For all you know it may be a meagre harvest. But it isn’t money — it’s security I’m after. With you I shall be on for a season and off for a season. You can’t help it, but it's so. If I could be sure of permanent work I wouldn’t leave Mayenga, but now I have the chance of a small farm, and my wife is anxious for me to take it. I have three children; it is she and they who have to suffer when I earn no wages. You understand?"

"Perfectly." Rennie paused before adding with desperate impulsiveness: "We still have a few virgin acres at the top of the plantation. If my father consents, will you farm them for your own profit as extra payment? You may use our tractor and borrow the ox-team. Won't you consider that, Jan?"

The man shrugged uncomfortably. "You need that land to make the farm pay. Everything your land will produce you need yourselves."

True enough, though she had hoped it was not so patent. They could not yet afford to work the whole of the acreage. As if he were debating aloud, Rennie knew exactly what was passing in the Afrikaner’s mind.

"You consider us bad boers, don't you, Jan?" she said, with an unhappy smile. "You haven’t forgiven us for planting a mixed crop and including cotton. Perhaps we were rather too optimistic, yet you'll admit that most of the fields look green and healthy." Unconvincingly, she tacked on: "It's possible that even the cotton may repay us."

"I doubt it," he returned stolidly. "Cotton is a chancy crop. You will have trouble there for sure. Mr. Bradfield thinks the same."

"Mr. Bradfield!" So the tall brown man was again minding her business. "When did he say that?"

"Just this afternoon. I had set the boys cutting bamboos near the river and he was supervising some building on the other side. He is erecting some fine sheds, in brick and stucco." Rennie detected in this remark a disparaging comparison with their own wooden structures. "We got talking. He told me the red stainer pest is prevalent again, and you'd better have those kapok trees felled if you don’t want the cotton infested. Kapoks harbor red stainer."

"So ... he advises us to have them down!" Unreasonable rage rose in Rennie. How dare the man stroll up and down his side of the river surveying the Gaynor fields and picking holes wherever he could! "I don’t care what he says. The kapok trees are established and valuable. We got four shillings a pound for the down last year, and it would be mad to throw away certain profits like that."

"It is not good farming to grow cotton near kapok." Again the heavy shoulders came up in a shrug. "Mr. Bradfield thinks it would be wise for you to put a couple of hundred acres under citrus as soon as a strip near the river falls vacant. In the long run it would be less costly, and with citrus, once they bear you have a certain annual crop. He says this farm could be made to yield a fine profit."

Rennie said coolly: "When we need Mr. Bradfield’s help we’ll ask for it. All right, Jan. If you’re determined to leave us____"

The foreman went out and Rennie relieved George at the stove. Enveloped in a continuous billow of heat, her movements jerky with anger intensified by a sort of humiliation, she prepared sweet sauce for the pudding.

It was unfortunate enough that Jan Fourie, farming lore at his fingertips, should be departing because he could see no future for himself and his family at Mayenga. That the Gaynors’ lamentable lack of funds and practical experience should be so obvious to the newcomer across the river cut deeply. How she would like to prove him wrong. Surely there was something one could spray upon kapok trees to deter red stainer? Adrian would know; he was chockful of that kind of knowledge, and he liked experimenting. Together, they'd show Kent Bradfield that even novices . . . and women . . . occasionally possess common sense. The superior, interfering tree-man!

CHAPTER TWO

THE following afternoon a heavy storm broke over the district. It came in from the mountains, an advancing purple wail which split with flame and roared its continuous crescendoes of thunder. Rennie and Adrian watched it for two hours from the lounge window, and rejoiced in the pounding of rain on the iron roof, and the torrents sweeping down the paths, converting them into pink, milky rivers. When at last the clouds were spent, a yellow evening sun slanted over the wet lands, and it was too late to ride round the farm and revel in the fresh green of the fields.

But a day or two later, when Rennie cantered the tracks on Paddy, she was appalled by the abundance and height of the weeds in the fields. She recognized khaki bush and witchweed and remembered that the bulletins had stressed the necessity for destroying them at the earliest stages. Jan Fourie was gone, and there was no one but herself to drive the tractor for harrowing. Not that she minded, so long as her father remained ignorant of her participation in the manual work of the farm.

Casually, that evening, she commented on the phases of cultivation of the various crops, and the startling differences effected by good heavy rains. "Mixed farming is so interesting," she told him. "I’d like to ride through the whole farm tomorrow — take my lunch and make a day of it."

"I'll accompany you," agreed Adrian.

"No, darling, it isn't necessary for the two of us to go. Besides, we can’t both be away from the house the whole day. You won’t object to a cold lunch?"

"Goodness, no. But don’t overtire yourself."

Cheerfully and full of zeal, clad in slacks, a white shirt and a large straw hat, Rennie set out, her picnic meal suspended in a canvas bag from Paddy's saddle. As soon as the house was left behind she spurred the gelding into a gallop, and fifteen minutes later reined in beside the tractor. The six boys were waiting, and she chose from among them an intelligent Basuto as pupil driver. The rest were detailed to other tasks: two to follow the harrow and the others to scythe the weeds around the fields.

There was no breeze. A hard sunshine seared into her bare arms and set up a constant perspiration beneath the straw hat and at her waist. For a while she worked fast, telling the boy at her side to watch what she did. Then she began explaining every turn and twist. The mealies were young and tender, easily snapped; only with great care could they be hoed in this fashion. Oh, yes, missus; the boy understood that very well. He would like to try now, please, missus. He did try and, after wrecking a line of plants, he got the hang of it nicely, though Rennie winced at the sharp, destructive turns he made.