This Was the Old Chief's Country (14 page)

There she undressed and went to bed. She tried to read, found she was not following the sense of the words, put down the book, and blew out the light. Light streamed into the room from the moon; she could see the trees along the fence banked black against stars. From next door came the clatter of her husband's solitary meal.

Later she heard voices from the veranda. Soon her husband came into the room and said: ‘De Wet is asking whether his wife has been here.'

‘What!' exclaimed Mrs Gale, slowly assimilating the implications of this. ‘Why, has she gone off somewhere?'

‘She's not at home,' said the Major uncomfortably. For he always became uncomfortable and very polite when he had to deal with situations like this.

Mrs Gale sank back luxuriously on her pillow. ‘Tell that fine young man that his wife often goes for long walks by herself when he's asleep. He probably hasn't noticed it.' Here she gave a deadly look at her husband. ‘Just as I used to,' she could not prevent herself adding.

Major Gale fiddled with his moustache, and gave her a look which seemed to say: ‘Oh lord, don't say we are going back to all that business again?' He went out, and she heard him saying: ‘Your wife might have gone for a walk, perhaps?' Then the young man's voice: ‘I know she does sometimes. I don't like her being out at night, but she just walks around the house. And she takes the dogs with her. Maybe she's gone farther this time – being upset, you know.'

‘Yes, I know,' said Major Gale. Then they both laughed. The laughter was of a quite different quality from the sober responsibility of their tone a moment before: and Mrs Gale found herself sitting up in bed, muttering: ‘How
dare
he?'

She got up and dressed herself. She was filled with premonitions of unpleasantness. In the main room her husband was sitting reading, and since he seldom read, it seemed he was also worried. Neither of them spoke. When she looked at the clock, she found it was just past nine o'clock.

After an hour of tension, they heard the footsteps they had been waiting for. There stood De Wet, angry, worried sick, his face white, his eyes burning.

‘We must get the boys out,' he said, speaking directly to Major Gale, and ignoring Mrs Gale.

‘I am coming too,' she said.

‘No, my dear,' said the Major cajolingly. ‘You stay here.'

‘You can't go running over the veld at this time of night,' said De Wet to Mrs Gale, very blunt and rude.

‘I shall do as I please,' she returned.

The three of them stood on the veranda, waiting for the natives. Everything was drenched in moonlight. Soon they heard a growing clamour of voices from over a ridge, and a little while later the darkness there was lighted by flaring
torches held high by invisible hands: it seemed as if the night were scattered with torches advancing of their own accord. Then a crowd of dark figures took shape under the broken lights. The farm natives, excited by the prospect of a night's chasing over the veld, were yelling as if they were after a small buck or hare.

Mrs Gale sickened. ‘Is it necessary to have all these natives in it?' she asked. ‘After all, have we even considered the possibilities? Where can a girl run
to
on a place like this?'

‘That is the point,' said Major Gale frigidly.

‘I can't bear to think of her being – pursued, like this, by a crowd of natives. It's horrible.'

‘More horrible still if she has hurt herself and is waiting for help,' said De Wet. He ran off down the path, shouting to the natives and waving his arms. The Gales saw them separate into three bands, and soon there were three groups of lights jerking away in different directions through the hazy dark, and the yells and shouting came back to them on the wind.

Mrs Gale thought: She could have taken the road back to the station, in which case she could be caught by car, even now.

She commanded her husband: ‘Take the car along the road and see.'

‘That's an idea,' said the Major, and went off to the garage. She heard the car start off, and watched the rear light dwindle redly into the night.

But that was the least ugly of the possibilities. What if she had been so blind with anger, grief, or whatever emotion it was that had driven her away, that she had simply run off into the veld not knowing where she went? There were thousands of acres of trees, thick grass, gullies, kopjes. She might at this moment be lying with a broken arm or leg; she might be pushing her way through grass higher than her head, stumbling over roots and rocks. She might be screaming for help somewhere for fear of wild animals, for if she crossed the valley into the hills there were leopards, lions, wild dogs. Mrs Gale suddenly caught her breath in an agony of fear: the valley! What if she had mistaken her direction and walked over the edge of the escarpment in the dark? What if she had forded the river and been taken by a crocodile? There were so many
things: she might even be caught in a game trap. Once, taking her walk, Mrs Gale herself had come across a tall sapling by the path where the spine and ribs of a large buck dangled, and on the ground were the pelvis and legs, fine eroded bones of an animal trapped and forgotten by its trapper. Anything might have happened. And worse than any of the actual physical dangers was the danger of falling a victim to fear: being alone on the veld, at night, knowing oneself lost: this was enough to send anyone off balance.

The silly little fool, the silly little fool: anger and pity and terror confused in Mrs Gale until she was walking crazily up and down her garden through the bushes, tearing blossoms and foliage to pieces in trembling fingers. She had no idea how time was passing; until Major Gale returned and said that he had taken the ten miles to the station at seven miles an hour, turning his lights into the bush this way and that. At the station everyone was in bed; but the police were standing on the alert for news.

It was long after twelve. As for De Wet and the bands of searching natives, there was no sign of them. They would be miles away by this time.

‘Go to bed,' said Major Gale at last.

‘Don't be ridiculous,' she said. After a while she held out her hand to him, and said: ‘One feels so helpless.'

There was nothing to say; they walked together under the stars, their minds filled with horrors. Later she made some tea and they drank it standing; to sit would have seemed heartless. They were so tired they could hardly move. Then they got their second wind and continued walking. That night Mrs Gale hated her garden, that highly-cultivated patch of luxuriant growth, stuck in the middle of a country that could do this sort of thing to you suddenly. It was all the fault of the country! In a civilized sort of place, the girl would have caught the train to her mother, and a wire would have put everything right. Here, she might have killed herself, simply because of a passing fit of despair. Mrs Gale began to get hysterical. She was weeping softly in the circle of her husband's arm by the time the sky lightened and the redness of dawn spread over the sky.

As the sun rose, De Wet returned over the veld. He said he
had sent the natives back to their huts to sleep. They had found nothing. He stated that he also intended to sleep for an hour, and that he would be back on the job by eight. Major Gale nodded: he recognized this as a necessary discipline against collapse. But after the young man walked off across the veld towards his house, the two older people looked at each other and began to move after him. ‘He must not be alone,' said Mrs Gale sensibly. ‘I shall make him some tea and see that he drinks it.'

‘He wants sleep,' said Major Gale. His own eyes were red and heavy.

‘I'll put something in his tea,' said Mrs Gale. ‘He won't know it is there.' Now she had something to do, she was much more cheerful. Planning De Wet's comfort, she watched him turn in at his gate and vanish inside the house: they were some two hundred yards behind.

Suddenly there was a shout, and then a commotion of screams and yelling. The Gales ran fast along the remaining distance and burst into the front room, white-faced and expecting the worst, in whatever form it might choose to present itself.

There was De Wet, his face livid with rage, bending over his wife, who was huddled on the floor and shielding her head with her arms, while he beat her shoulders with his closed fists.

Mrs Gale exclaimed: ‘Beating your wife!'

De Wet flung the girl away from him, and staggered to his feet. ‘She was here all the time,' he said, half in temper, half in sheer wonder. ‘She was hiding under the bed. She told me. When I came in she was sitting on the bed and laughing at me.'

The girl beat her hands on the floor and said, laughing and crying together: ‘Now you have to take some notice of me. Looking for me all night over the veld with your silly natives! You looked so stupid, running about like ants, looking for me.'

‘My God,' said De Wet simply, giving up. He collapsed backwards into a chair and lay there, his eyes shut, his face twitching.

‘So now you have to notice me,' she said defiantly, but beginning to look scared, 'I have to pretend to run away, but then you sit up and take notice.'

‘Be quiet,' said De Wet, breathing heavily. ‘Be quiet, if you don't want to get hurt bad.'

‘Beating your wife,' said Mrs Gale. ‘Savages behave better.'

‘Caroline, my dear,' said Major Gale awkwardly. He moved towards the door.

‘Take that woman out of here if you don't want me to beat her too,' said De Wet to Major Gale.

Mrs Gale was by now crying with fury. ‘I'm not going,' she said. ‘I'm not going. This poor child isn't safe with you.'

‘But what was it all about?' said Major Gale, laying his hand kindly on the girl's shoulder. ‘What was it, my dear? What did you have to do it for, and make us all so worried?'

She began to cry. ‘Major Gale, I am sorry. I forgot myself. I got mad. I told him I was going to have a baby. I told him when I got back from your place. And all he said was: that's fine. That's the first of them, he said. He didn't love me, or say he was pleased, or nothing.'

‘Dear Christ in hell,' said De Wet wearily, with the exasperation strong in his voice, ‘what do you make me do these things for? Do you think I want to beat you? Did you think I wasn't pleased: I keep telling you I want kids, I love kids.'

‘But you don't care about me,' she said, sobbing bitterly.

‘Don't I?' he said helplessly.

‘Beating your wife when she is pregnant,' said Mrs Gale. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself.' She advanced on the young man with her own fists clenched, unconscious of what she was doing. ‘You ought to be beaten yourself, that's what you need.'

Mrs De Wet heaved herself off the floor, rushed on Mrs Gale, pulled her back so that she nearly lost balance, and then flung herself on her husband. ‘Jack,' she said, clinging to him desperately, ‘I am so sorry, I am so sorry, Jack.'

He put his arms round her. ‘There,' he said simply, his voice thick with tiredness, ‘don't cry. We got mixed up, that's all.'

Major Gale, who had caught and steadied his wife as she staggered back, said to her in a low voice: ‘Come, Caroline. Come. Leave them to sort it out.'

‘And what if he loses his temper again and decides to kill her this time?' demanded Mrs Gale, her voice shrill.

De Wet got to his feet, lifting his wife with him. ‘Go away now. Mrs Major,' he said. ‘Get out of here. You've done enough damage.'

‘I've done enough damage?' she gasped. ‘And what have I done?'

‘Oh nothing, nothing at all,' he said with ugly sarcasm. ‘Nothing at all. But please go and leave my wife alone in future, Mrs Major.'

‘Come, Caroline,
please
.' said Major Gale.

She allowed herself to be drawn out of the room. Her head was aching so that the vivid morning light invaded her eyes in a wave of pain. She swayed a little as she walked.

‘Mrs Major,' she said, ‘Mrs Major!'

‘He was upset,' said her husband judiciously.

She snorted. Then, after a silence: ‘So, it was all my fault.'

‘He didn't say so.'

‘I thought that was what he was saying. He behaves like a brute and then says it is my fault.'

‘It was no one's fault,' said Major Gale, patting her vaguely on shoulders and back as they stumbled back home.

They reached the gate, and entered the garden, which was now musical with birds.

‘A lovely morning,' remarked Major Gale.

‘Next time you get an assistant,' she said finally, ‘get people of our kind. These might be savages, the way they behave.'

And that was the last word she would ever say on the subject.

Jane McCluster, who had been a nurse before she married, started a clinic on the farm within a month of arriving. Though she had been born and brought up in town, her experience of natives was wide, for she had been a sister in the native wards of the city hospital, by choice, for years; she liked nursing natives, and explained her feeling in the words: ‘They are just like children, and appreciate what you do for them.' So, when she had taken a thorough, diagnosing kind of look at the farm natives, she exclaimed, ‘Poor things!' and set about turning an old dairy into a dispensary. Her husband was pleased; it would save money in the long run by cutting down illness in the compound.

Willie McCluster, who had also been born and raised in South Africa, was nevertheless unmistakably and determinedly Scottish. His accent might be emphasized for loyalty's sake, but he had kept all the fine qualities of his people unimpaired by a slowing and relaxing climate. He was shrewd, vigorous, earthy, practical and kind. In appearance he was largely built, with a square bony face, a tight mouth, and eyes whose fierce blue glance was tempered by the laughter wrinkles about them. He became a farmer young, having planned the step for years: he was not one of those who drift on to the land because of discontent with an office, or because of failure, or vague yearnings towards ‘freedom'. Jane, a cheerful and competent girl who knew what she wanted, trifled with her numerous suitors with one eye on Willie, who wrote her weekly letters from the farming college in the Transvaal. As soon as his four years' training were completed, they married.