This Was the Old Chief's Country (22 page)

For a moment Kate's sleep-dazed eyes could find nothing to hold them, for the big room was quite empty; so, it seemed, was the veranda. Then she saw Mrs Lacey, dancing by herself down the dim shadowed space, weaving her arms and bending her body, and leaning her head to watch her white reflection move on the polished floor beside her. ‘Who is going to dance with me?' she crooned. ‘Who is going to dance?'

‘You've worn us out,' said a man's voice from Kate's feet; and looking hazily round she saw that couples were sitting around the edges of the space, with their arms about each other. Another voice, a woman's this time, said: ‘Oh what a beautiful dress, what a beautiful dress,' repeating it with drunken intensity; and someone answered in a low tone: ‘Yes, and not much beneath it, either, I bet.'

Suddenly Kate's world was restored for her by her father's comment at her shoulder: ‘So unnecessary!' And she felt herself pushed across the veranda in the path of the dancing Mrs Lacey, whose dim white skirts flung out and across her legs in a crisp caress. But she took no notice of Kate at all; nor did she answer Mr Cope when he said stiffly: ‘Good-bye, Mrs Lacey. I am afraid we must take this child to bed.' She continued to dance, humming to herself, a drowsy happy look on her face.

In the car Kate lay wrapped in blankets and looked through
the windows at the sky moving past. There was a white blaze of moonlight and the stars were full and bright. It could not be so very late after all, for the night still had the solemn intensity of midnight; that feeling of glacial withdrawal that comes into the sky towards dawn was not yet there. But in the hollow of the veld, where the cold lay congealed, she shivered and sat up. Her parents' heads showed against the stars, and they were being quite silent for her benefit. She was waiting for them to say something; she wanted her confused, conflicting impressions sorted and labelled by them. In her mind she was floating with Mrs Lacey down the polished floor; she was also in the nursery with the fat and lovable baby; she could feel the grip of Mr Lacey's hand on her shoulder. But not a word was said, not a word; though she could almost feel her mother thinking: ‘She has to learn for herself,' and her father answering it with a ‘Yes, but how unpleasant!'

The next day Kate waited until her father had gone down to the lands in order to watch his labourers at their work, and her mother was in the vegetable garden. Then she said to the cook: ‘Tell the missus I have gone to Old John's Place.' She walked away from her home and down to the river with the feeling that large accusing eyes were fixed on her back, but it was essential that she should see Mrs Lacey that day: she was feverish with terror that Mr Lacey had given her away – worse, that the baby had caught cold from lying on the floor beside her, and was ill. She walked slowly, as if dragged by invisible chains: if she left behind her unspoken disapproval, in front of her she sensed cruel laughter and anger.

Guilt, knowledge of having behaved ridiculously, and defiance churned through her; above the tumult another emotion rose like a full moon over a sky of storm. She was possessed by love; she was in love with the Laceys, with the house and its new luxuries, with Mrs Lacey and the baby – even with Mr Lacey and Mr Hackett, who took lustre from Mrs Lacey. By the time she neared the place, fear had subsided in her to a small wariness, lurking like a small trapped animal, with bared teeth; she could think of nothing but that in a moment she would again have entered the magical circle. The drowsy warmth of a September morning, the cooing of the pigeons in
the trees all about, the dry smell of sun-scorched foliage – all these familiar scents and sounds bathed her, sifted through her new sensitiveness and were reissued, as it were, in a fresh currency: around Mrs Lacey's house the bush was necessarily more exciting than it could be anywhere else.

The picture in her mind of the veranda and the room behind it, as she had seen them the night before, dissolved like the dream it had appeared to be as she stepped through the screen door. Already at ten in the morning, there was not a sign of the party. The long space of floor had been polished anew to a dull gleaming red; the chairs were in their usual circle at one end, against a bank of ferns, and at the other Mrs Lacey sat sewing, the big circular table beside her heaped with materials and neatly-folded patterns. For a moment she did not notice Kate, who was free to stand and gaze in devoted wonder. Mrs Lacey was in fresh green linen, and her head was bent over the white stuff in her lap in a charming womanly pose. This, surely, could never have been that wild creature who danced down this same veranda last night? She lifted her head and looked towards Kate; her long eyes narrowed, and something hardened behind them until, for a brief second, Kate was petrified by a vision of a boredom so intense that it was as if Mrs Lacey had actually said: ‘What! Not you again?' Then down dropped those lids, so that her face wore the insufferable blank piety of a primitive Madonna. Then she smiled. Even that forced smile won Kate; and she moved towards Mrs Lacey with what she knew was an uncertain and apprehensive grin. ‘Sit down,' said Mrs Lacey cordially, and spoiled the effect by adding immediately: ‘Do your parents know you are here?' She watched Kate obliquely as she put the question. ‘No,' said Kate honestly, and saw the lids drop smoothly downwards.

She was stiff with dislike; she could not help but want to accept this parody of welcome as real; but not when the illusion was destroyed afresh every time Mrs Lacey spoke. She asked timidly: ‘How is the baby?' This time Mrs Lacey's look could not possibly be misinterpreted: she had been told by her husband; she had chosen, for reasons of her own, to say nothing. ‘The baby's very well,' she said neutrally, adding after a moment: ‘Why did you come without telling your mother?'

Kate could not give any comfort. ‘They would be angry if they knew I was here. I left a message.' Mrs Lacey frowned, laughed with brave, trembling gaiety, and then reached over and touched the bell behind her. Far away in the kitchens of that vast house there was a shrill peal; and soon a padding of bare feet announced the coming of the servant. ‘Tea,' ordered Mrs Lacey. ‘And bring some cakes for the little missus.' She rearranged her sewing, put her hand to her eyes, laughed ruefully and said: ‘I've got such a hangover I won't be able to eat for a week. But it was worth it.' Kate could not reply. She sat fingering the materials heaped on the table; and wondered if any of these were what Mrs Lacey had intended to give her; she even felt a preliminary gratitude, as it were. But Mrs Lacey seemed to have forgotten her promise. The white stuff was for the baby. They discussed suitable patterns for children's vests: it went without saying that Mrs Lacey's pattern was one Kate had never seen before, combining all kinds of advantages, so that it appeared that not a binding, a tape or a fastener had escaped the most far-sighted planning.

The long hot morning had to pass at last; at twelve Mrs Lacey glanced at the folding clock which always stood beside her, and fetched the baby from where he lay in the shade under a big tree. She fed him orange juice, spoon by spoon, without taking him from the pram, while Kate watched him with all the nervousness of one who has betrayed emotion and is afraid it may be unkindly remembered. But the baby ignored her. He was a truly fine child, fat, firm, dimpled. When the orange juice was finished he allowed himself to be wheeled back to the tree without expostulating, and no one could have divined, from his placid look, the baffled affection that Kate was projecting into him.

That done, she accompanied Mrs Lacey to the nursery, where the cup and the spoon and the measuring-glass were boiled for germs and set to cool under a glass bell. The baby's rooms had a cool, ordered freshness; when the curtains blew out into the room, Kate looked instinctively at Mrs Lacey to see if she would check such undisciplined behaviour, but she was looking at the time-table which hung on the inside of the baize door. This time-table began with: ‘Six
a.m
., orange juice';
continued through ‘Six-thirty, rusk and teething ring, seven, wash and dress'; and ended at ‘five
p.m
., mothering hour and bed'. Somewhere inside of Kate bubbled a disloyal and incredulous laughter, which astonished her; the face she turned towards Mrs Lacey was suddenly so guilty that it was met with a speculative lift of the smooth wide brows. ‘What is wrong with you now, Kate?' said Mrs Lacey.

Soon after, the men appeared, in their breeches and trailing their whips behind them across the polished floors. They smiled at Kate, but for a moment their pupils narrowed as Mrs Lacey's had done. Then they all sat on the veranda, not at the sewing end, but at the social part, where the big grass chairs were. The servant wheeled out a table stacked with drinks; Kate could not think of any other house where gin and vermouth were served as a routine, before meals. The men were discussing a gymkhana that was due shortly; Mrs Lacey did not interrupt. When they moved indoors to the dining-room, Kate again felt the incongruity between the orderly charm created by Mrs Lacey and the casual way the men took it, even destroying it by refusing to fit in. Lunch was a cool, lazy affair, with jugs of frosted drinks and quantities of chilled salads. Mr Lacey and Mr Hackett were scribbling figures on pieces of paper and talking together all through the meal; and it was not until it was over that Kate understood that the scene had been like a painted background to the gymkhana which to the men was far more real than anything Mrs Lacey said or did.

As soon as it was over, they offered their wide lazy good-humoured grin, and slouched off again to the paddock. Kate could have smiled; but she knew there would be no answering smile from Mrs Lacey.

In silence they took their places at the sewing-table; and at two o'clock to the minute Mrs Lacey looked at the clock and brought the baby in for his nap, leaving the nanny crouched on the floor to guard him.

Afterwards Kate's discomfort grew acute. In the district ‘coming over for the day' meant either one of two things: something was arranged, like tennis or swimming, with plenty to eat and drink: or the women came by themselves to sew and cook and knit, and this sharing of activity implied a deeper
sharing. Kate used to think that her mother came back from a day with one of her women friends wearing the same relaxed softened expression as she did after a church service.

But Kate was at a hopelessly loose end, and Mrs Lacey did not show it only because it suited her book not to. She offered to sew, and did not insist when Mrs Lacey rather uncomfortably protested. Mrs Lacey sewed exquisitely, and anything she could do would be bungling in comparison.

At last the baby woke. Kate knew the time-table said: ‘Three to five: walk or playpen', and offered to push the pram. Again she had to face up to the shrewd, impatient look, while Mrs Lacey warned: ‘Remember, babies don't like being messed about.' ‘I know,' said Kate consciously, colouring. When the baby was strapped in and arranged, Kate was allowed to take the handles of the pram. Leading away from the house in the opposite direction from the river was a long avenue of reeds where the shade lay cool and deep. ‘You mustn't go away from the trees,' directed Mrs Lacey; and Kate saw her return to the house, her step quickening with relief; whatever her life was, the delicious, devoted secret life that Kate imagined, she was free to resume it now that Kate was gone: it seemed impossible this lovely and secret thing should not exist: for it was the necessary complement to the gross practicality of her husband and Mr Hackett. But when Kate returned at five o'clock, after two hours of steady walking up and down the avenue, pushing the pram and suppressing her passionate desire to cuddle the indifferent baby, Mrs Lacey was baking tarts in the kitchen.

If she was to be back home before it grew dark, she must leave immediately. She lingered, however, till five past five: during those two hours she had, in fact, been waiting for the moment when Mrs Lacey would ‘mother' the baby. But Mrs Lacey seated herself with a book and left the child to crawl on a rug at her feet. Kate set off on the road home; and this time the eyes she felt follow her were irritated and calculating.

At the gate stood her mother. ‘You shouldn't have gone off without telling me!' she exclaimed reproachfully. Now, Kate was free to roam as she willed over the farm, so this was unjust, and both sides knew it to be so. ‘I left a message,' said Kate, avoiding her mother's eyes.

Next morning she was loitering about the gate looking out over the coloured slopes to the Laceys' house, when her mother came up behind her, apparently cutting zinnias, but in fact looking for an opportunity to express her grievance. ‘You would live there, if you could, wouldn't you, dear?' she said, smiling painfully. ‘All those fashions and new clothes and things, we can't compete, can we?' Kate's smile was as twistingly jealous as hers; but she did not go to the Laceys that day. After all, she couldn't very well: there were limits. She remained in that part of the farm which lay beside the Laceys', and looked across at the trees whose heavy greenness seemed to shed a perfume that was more than the scent of sunheated leaves, and where the grass beckoned endlessly as the wind moved along it. Love, still unrecognized, still unaccepted in her, flooded this way and that, leaving her limp with hatred or exalted with remembrance. And through it all she thought of the baby while resentment grew in her. Whether she stood with the binoculars stuck to her eyes, hour after hour, hoping for a glimpse of Mrs Lacey on the veranda, or watching the men lean against the fence as the horses moved about them, the baby was in the back of her mind; and the idea of it was not merely the angry pity that is identification with suffering, but also a reflection of what other people were thinking. Kate knew, from a certain tone in her mother's voice when she mentioned that child, that she was not wholly convinced by time-tables and hygiene.

The ferment of the last party had not settled before Mrs Lacey issued invitations for another; there had only been a fortnight's interval. Mr Cope said, looking helplessly across at his wife: ‘I suppose we ought to go?' and Mrs Cope replied guardedly: ‘We can't very well not, when they are our nearest neighbours, can we?' ‘Oh Lord!' exclaimed Mr Cope, moving irritably in his chair. Then Kate felt her parents' eyes come to rest on her; she was not surprised when Mr Cope asked: ‘When does Kate go back to school?' ‘The holidays don't end for another three weeks.'