The Fever Tree (16 page)

E
dwin picked his way across the veldt towards the house. When he saw her he gave a half wave then dropped down onto his knees in the scrub. He must have found an insect or a lizard. Frances stifled a yawn, padded into the house, and poured herself a glass of water. She glanced in the shard of mirror which hung over the counter in the kitchen and wiped a smudge of dirt off her forehead. She had only been here a couple of months, and already she looked so different: younger and less sophisticated. Her nose and cheeks were brown with freckles. She had given up wearing powder—her face grew too damp in the heat, and besides, there were no visitors to impress—and she had taken to wearing her hair in a single plait, rolled and pinned at the nape of her neck, as she had done as a child.

When she came outside again he was still on all fours, searching in the grass. His canvas knapsack lay open, and a selection of jars stood ready. She sipped at the warm water and felt the sweat from the summer’s heat drying against her skin. After a few moments he pulled something from the ground and dropped it into a glass jar. She wandered over to see what he had caught. A beetle lay spinning on its back.

Edwin shook the jar until the beetle righted itself. She realized the hot climate suited him. His face had taken on color, his hair had grown out and turned blond, and his gray eyes, when he glanced up at her, were clear. Living on the veldt liberated something in him. He didn’t seem as guarded as he had in London.

“Why do you do it?” she asked.

He squatted back on his heels and looked at her, pushing the hair off his forehead. “Where I grew up, there wasn’t any nature. Perhaps I’m compensating.”

“Wouldn’t it be more rewarding to go hunting?”

“For sport?”

She thought about William. There was a certain nobility in hunting at least. “Why not?”

“I wouldn’t enjoy it.”

“Because it’s dangerous?”

“Because I hate to see such waste.”

“Isn’t that wasteful?” she asked, gesturing at the beetle, which was paddling at the sides of the glass.

“There are millions of these beetles. One will make no difference to the species.”

“But killing a kudu will?”

He buttoned his knapsack and stood up, holding the jar loosely in one hand. They began to walk towards the house. “I think so, yes. There are so few kudu left in South Africa it seems a crime to kill any for the sake of a trophy on a wall.”

She laughed. “But that’s ridiculous. There must be thousands of them.”

“That’s what they said about the quagga, before they declared it extinct. Look at America. Just fifty years ago the plains were heaving with buffalo. Now you’d be hard pushed to find one in a zoo.”

•   •   •

O
NE
EVENING
, Edwin encouraged her to join him on a walk; there was something he wanted to show her, he said. She was restless, tired of being cooped up in the house every day by herself, so she agreed. They set out just after sunrise on Sunday to climb the
kopje
which swelled up out of the plains at the back of the house. She wore the leather walking boots he had told her to bring and a white cotton dress which Sarah had hemmed shorter the previous evening so it wouldn’t trail on the ground.

The
kopje
was a difficult cluster of rocks and shifting earth. After half an hour she could feel her feet beginning to blister in the new boots, and she had to pause to catch her breath. “It’s the altitude,” he said, stopping beside her. “We’re at four thousand feet here.” It was hard to remember, under the searing heat of the sun, that when darkness fell they would be lighting a fire for warmth. The nights were so cool that when Frances came to bed in the evenings, with the casement window thrown open, she fell almost instantly into a deep and dreamless sleep.

When they arrived at the top of the
kopje
she saw a small, hollow cave about as high as her waist. “This is what I wanted to show you,” Edwin said, stooping to peer inside. “It belonged to Bushmen.”

“It can’t have done,” she said, genuinely amazed. “It’s too small.”

“Their women were only four feet tall, often smaller.” His voice echoed off the wall of the cave as he crawled inside. He lit a candle, and she scrambled in after him, over the old remains of a fire. He showed her the walls on which the Bushmen had painted subtle, faded pictures of men holding spears, dancing around fires, disguised as ostrich, lions, impala, and elephant. She thought how empty the veldt looked now, and how sad it was that the Bushmen’s world had changed so utterly. Edwin read her thoughts. “Not so long ago the plains were full of these animals—eland, gemsbok, blesbok, ostrich, wildebeest, even elephants.”

“What happened to them all?”

“The Boers and game hunters shot most of them into extinction.”

“For trophies?”

“In some cases. But, for the Boers, it was really about resources. They needed the grazing for themselves.”

“I can’t believe anyone would want this land. It’s little more than a desert.”

“That’s what they thought at first, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. These Karoo bushes are more nutritious than they look.” He picked the leaves of a few shrubs that grew at the entrance to the cave and handed them to her. They were short, tough, and sapless.

“When Reitz’s grandfather first grazed flocks here, there was no dam. His sheep survived for months without ever drinking. They drew their moisture entirely from the succulents and grasses. Virgin grazing. Now, of course, the soil is too dry. They couldn’t survive a week without water from the dam.”

The cave was eerie. It was full of ghosts, and a desperate sadness. The Bushmen must have seen the arrival of the Boers and the slaughtering of animals and known that they were being hunted to extinction just as surely as the quagga.

They emerged blinking into the light. The plain stretched out below them to the far horizon, its undulating smoothness broken only by the occasional swelling of
kopjes
. All the moisture had been burnt up out of the earth. The grasses, scorched, had turned the color of parchment. The light was so clear that you could see for what seemed like thousands of miles.

“Millions of years ago, the whole plateau—three hundred miles from end to end—was a vast lake.”

“Were there ever lions here?”

“Reitz’s father shot the last one thirty years ago. There are still leopard in the mountains, and the odd hyena is lurking about.”

“Hyena?” Frances wasn’t sure. “Is that what I’ve heard at night?” She was thinking of the spine-tingling wails which sounded like lunatics calling to each other across the plains.

“I saw one the other morning, near the river.” He bent down to pick up a fist-sized rock and turned it over in his hand. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and the tendons tightened on his forearm as he moved the weight of it around his palm. “It ran off when it saw me.”

“Aren’t they dangerous?” She was amazed that he hadn’t told her.

He gave her a slow smile. “You think it would have eaten me?”

“I don’t know.” She laughed. “Haven’t they been known to attack people?”

“Perhaps. But I shouldn’t think they would unless they were provoked.”

He handed her the rock, and she saw the white, fossilized skeleton of a reptile frozen into its surface. It occurred to her that permanence was an illusion; everything on earth was in a state of change. Flesh to soil, skeleton to stone; transformation was a fact of life. Even her cousins, who seemed so secure in London, wouldn’t escape the force of it, and she suddenly felt less desperate being out here, so far from home. She handed the rock back to Edwin, and he said, “Frances, you’re very welcome to visit the quarantine station.” She didn’t answer immediately, trying to make out what he meant, and he said, “I thought you might be interested to see what I do.”

“Of course,” she said, thinking that she should have been the one to ask, but it hadn’t occurred to her. He nodded, pleased.

That evening, Edwin showed her the two tiny arrowheads which he had found in the Bushmen’s cave. They didn’t need to be large, he said, because the Bushmen were expert toxicologists. They tipped their arrows with poison taken from the venom of a cobra and ground it down with poisonous bulbs.

T
he Reitzes had a driver called Jantjie, who took Frances in a mule cart through Jacobsdal to the junction between the Modder and Riet Rivers, where the main transport roads from the Cape converged. He was an ancient man with a face whose skin had crumpled into the deepest shade of brown. A fuzz of white hair was cropped close to his head, and his eyes were milky with cataracts, but his body was tough, wiry, and immensely strong. Once, when they were reinforcing the dam at the farm, she saw him carrying a steel as long as his body across his back to the water’s edge.

The veldt around the quarantine station had been worn to dust under the tramp of so many feet, and there was now just a flat area of sand and gravel, with no vegetation, over which men and women of all classes were milling. A stench of rotten eggs permeated the whole place. Two large canvas tents had been set up beside an old wattle-and-daub barn, and men in uniform carrying rifles strolled between them. A queue of people snaked out of one of the tents, shielding their faces with hats and shawls against the sun. They had the same resigned look as Mijnheer Reitz’s sheep, waiting their turn to be watered at the dam. Along the side of the road was a motley collection of wagons and carts and a carriage, the sun glinting off fresh paint. A team of oxen had been outspanned, and a few horses, unharnessed, cropped at the parched shrubs. Their coats had hardened into dry, chalky reefs of sweat, and they shook their heads periodically to keep off flies.

It was a huge operation stopping everyone from the Cape, and Frances thought Edwin must have enjoyed the responsibility of being the man in charge. She asked an officer in khaki where she might find him, and was pointed in the direction of one of the large tents. As she approached, she saw Edwin emerging, walking quickly. He was followed by an older, stout-looking gentleman who was shouting at him. A lady ran behind them, clutching at her bonnet and tripping over her dress. She looked like a rare butterfly blown across the veldt in her fine yellow silks.

“God damn you, Sir, you’ll look at me when I talk to you.” The man was hot and angry, and squeezed both his fists as if he was itching to use them. The people in the queue turned to watch.

Edwin stopped and faced him. They were only a couple of yards from Frances.

“You will forgive me, my Lord.” His voice was perfectly contained. “I understand your delicacy in this matter, but I cannot sympathize with it. You and your wife must be vaccinated.”

The man’s voice broke into a scream, and a fine spray of spittle shot over Edwin. “And I tell you we will not.” He shouted to his coachman. “Harness the horses. We’re leaving.”

“Sir, what is it you are afraid of?” Edwin asked. “Perhaps I can reassure you.”

“I’ll not be called a coward!”

Edwin looked fixedly at him, and the man seemed compelled to justify himself. He lowered his voice. “I have it from a good source that vaccines carry certain diseases.”

“You mean syphilis?” Edwin gave a bark of laughter. The lady put a hand to her mouth, and the man’s face turned purple. Frances had heard this rumor. “If you break out in the pox, Sir, I can assure you it won’t be from my vaccine.”

“But it is unnatural!” the man cried out. “It is utterly contrary to nature. It’s an abhorrence on the human body.”

“So is wearing clothes, and yet none of us choose to go around naked.”

The man took his wife’s hand. “Come, Elizabeth!” He marched her past Edwin, towards his carriage.

“Sir,” Edwin called after him, “the choice is yours. Either you and your wife must be vaccinated, or you will remain with us for six weeks’ quarantine.”

The man turned and, walking quickly back to Edwin, swung at him with his fist. Edwin sidestepped and the man’s knuckles glanced across his cheek. When he swung again Edwin caught his wrist and held it, and Frances was surprised at the ease with which he held the other man back.

“Cullen! Tom!” he shouted. Two men came running forward. “Please see that Lord Rothermere is shown to the vaccination tent.”

“On whose authority, you trumped-up jackass?” the man called over his shoulder at Edwin, trying to throw off the arms of the men who were leading him away. “How dare you put your hands on me. I’ll see to it you appear in court!”

Edwin looked after him, seemingly unmoved, only the toe of his boot digging into the sand. Then he turned and glanced at Frances with a tight, tired smile. He had known she was there all along. This was a dirty job, she realized, and she pitied him. He might be in charge of a dozen or so men armed with guns, but he was a social pariah, disliked by the people who rode through on their way to Kimberley. It was lonely, isolated work, and she suspected that most doctors would have turned it down. She wondered again why he had agreed to come here.

“But he’s a powerful man, Lord Rothermere,” she said to him later, when he was showing her around the site. A bruise was already purpling on his cheek. “He could bring a suit against you.”

“It wouldn’t get him anywhere. I’ve had fifteen actions against my operation for various charges, including battery and assault, but they all miraculously disappear.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The word of Mr. Baier is as good as the word of God. And behind him is the Kimberley council.”

“But all this”—she swept a hand across the tents, the men, the officers—“it must cost a fortune. Not even Cape Town is quarantined with such efficiency. Does Baier really have that much money?” Edwin didn’t answer, so she asked, “Why does he care so much?”

“Seven years ago, smallpox broke out in the copper mines in Angola. The natives had such a fear of the disease that, down to the last man, they abandoned the mines. Joseph Baier is concerned that the same thing might happen in Kimberley. To use his words, he thinks that if the natives get wind of smallpox there’ll be a general stampede. And quite possibly he’s right. It might very well bankrupt the mines. So I prevent the entry into Griqualand West of every person coming from the Cape Province without proof of efficient vaccination.”

It seemed like an impossible project. “But there must be other crossing points. Don’t people try to bypass you?”

“Police patrols have occupied all the drifts passable for wheeled traffic on the line of frontier between the border of the Orange Free State and the Kalahari Desert. They have instructions to divert all traffic to cross to this drift. I have a team of thirty officers helping me. Together, we stop, examine, vaccinate, and quarantine at least twenty men, women, and children a day. We have enough beds in the camp to sleep well over five hundred.”

“Has anyone died here?”

He shook his head. “So far we have only seen three true cases of the disease.”

They passed a small shed, and the smell of rotten eggs grew stronger. It was a noxious, choking stink. “Fumigation,” Edwin said apologetically. “Bedding, clothing, anything and anyone quarantined here has to pass through it—three minutes in a closed shed with burning sulfur. It’s a horrible process, but it does seem to reduce the rate of infection.”

“And is the vaccine certain?” she asked.

“Yes and no. It can corrupt in the heat, but we do our best to maintain its efficiency. Vaccination is our only hope of eradicating the disease, and I find it astounding that there are still so many men like Lord Rothermere who don’t believe in it. Smallpox is nothing short of horrific, but people have become complacent.”

There was a squealing noise, and they turned to see a zebra tearing its head away from the control of two men. It was trying to rear, but the men had ropes around its neck and they pulled it down. The zebra bared its lips, showing thick, yellow teeth. Another man ran up behind it and threw water at its back legs, but it wouldn’t budge. Frances noticed something behind it, a furze of brown and white, an ugly little thing with a long neck and gangly legs.

They were trying to separate the mother from her foal, and she was making a sawing, hewing noise. One of the men came up and threw a blanket around her head. She stood very still, confused, her body trembling. When the men began to lead her away, she followed. The foal skittered behind, its legs slipping and sliding in different directions so it looked like a baby giraffe, but a man caught hold of it by the tail and held it back. Then a shot rang out. The mare fell back on her hindquarters, the blanket slipped off her head, and the man let go. She supported herself for a moment on her front legs, sitting like a dog, her mouth open with the huge effort of staying upright. Then she collapsed into the dust.

“Why did they kill her?” Frances asked, breaking out into a sweat. The foal was nuzzling its mother.

“Her leg was rotten. They walked her to death, to get to Kimberley.”

“What about the foal?”

“It might have been worth something if they’d taken better care of the mother. They’re quite a novelty for the English in Kimberley.”

“But what will they do with it?”

“They can’t keep it.”

“You’ll leave it to die?”

The foal pawed at its mother’s body, then stopped and lifted its nose into the air and nickered. It was a desperate noise.

“You can’t kill it.”

“Even if we found a brood mare, it would more than likely die. It’s severely malnourished.”

But Frances was already walking away from him, towards the foal. It was too busy nudging its mother with its nose to notice her. Her body was sprawled in the dirt, blood snaking out from underneath her, congealing in the sand. Her stomach had already begun to swell in the heat. When Frances stroked the foal it pushed a bloody muzzle into her hand, butting it for milk. It couldn’t have been more than a month old.

“We’d have to sell it when it grows up,” Edwin said, appearing beside her and pulling the foal’s long ears.

“That’s fine,” she said. “But for the moment we can keep it?”

He nodded, and she gave him a quick smile.

•   •   •

T
HE
R
EITZES
LENT
THEM
a brood mare for the zebra, and Frances liked to sit on the
stoep
and watch him suckle. Sarah had shaken her head disapprovingly when she saw him. “
Mangwa
.” Zebra. “It won’t be tamed,” she said in Dutch to Edwin. And the name Mangwa had stuck. Days and weeks passed, and the zebra filled out, growing into his long legs until his withers stood as high as Frances’s waist. The foal was skittish and difficult to control, but over time he got used to the head collar, and after a few weeks he proved Sarah wrong and was docile enough to be walked or tied up against a fence.

Frances lost track of dates and had no notion of time. Once every two or three weeks Jantjie would deliver the post. She received another letter from her cousin Lucille. It was a flippant, breezy thing, and it set her on edge. Father had bought them new horses; they were going to the Alps in the spring; did she remember meeting William Westbrook on the boat? She had become acquainted with a good friend of his, worth £40,000 a year. She had accepted his proposal. He had investments in South Africa; perhaps they would visit.

The thought of Lucille becoming friends with William and his new wife was too awful to contemplate. Frances dropped the letter in her lap and stared listlessly across the veldt. It was Edwin’s habit sometimes to come back late, walking home in the gloom of early evening with the light flattening itself against the sky and the heat retreating as he came towards the house, as if he were dragging the cold air with him. She saw his shadow approaching now and felt a wave of resentment. What kind of life was he giving her here? How could she even reply to her cousin’s letter? What was there to say? That she was living on the veldt like a native? That she washed once a week and had stopped brushing her hair because it was so matted with dust? That some nights the red men swarmed so thickly under the candlelight you had to abandon your supper? That she hated the boredom, the flies, the snakes, and the heat? That always, at the back of her mind, was a longing for another man?

Edwin arrived just as the frogs had begun bellowing in the dam. Dark shapes—bats or swallows—darted and swooped in front of her. It was almost dark, but she could see him moving against the light, and there was the sound of his footsteps grinding over the earth. He went straight to the back of the house to wash and returned a moment later, water dripping from his face. There was a strength—a kind of physical ease—in the way he brushed back his hair and walked up the steps towards her.

“Haven’t you noticed?” she demanded, irritated that he seemed content when she couldn’t be.

He looked at her, and she realized this was another of her frustrations: his constant, querying silences, which made her spell everything out.

“The lamps aren’t lit. We’ve run out of oil.”

“And the candles?”

“The candles are beside the point. It is Sarah’s responsibility to make sure we don’t run out of oil.”

He didn’t say anything, so she kept on. “I don’t see why she can’t be more mindful.”

“I’ll pick some up tomorrow afternoon.”

“Yes, but it’s frustrating.” Sarah appeared at the door, holding a candle, and Edwin took it from her and thanked her.

“Why won’t you ever admonish her?”

Edwin’s face glowed ocher red in the light of the candle. “What should I be admonishing her for?”

“She’s too forgetful.”

“There is a lot for her to remember.” He put the candle down on the small table beside her.

“But that’s what we employ her for.” Frances, exasperated, was losing sight of her point. “Her English is nonexistent. She refuses to starch my dresses, the rooms are permanently dusty, and yesterday she burnt Mevrouw Reitz’s pie to charcoal.”

“A mistake, surely?”

She had the sense that she was entering dangerous territory, but she couldn’t stop herself. “You are too forgiving. You feel sorry for her because you know what it’s like to be her.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

Frances shrugged, wanting to rile him into an argument but not knowing how far she could push him. “At least see her for what she is.”

Edwin was looking at her curiously. There was no anger in his face. She wondered if he was capable of anger. “Which is what?”