The Fever Tree (25 page)

He had finished the hay and was dozing, but when she approached he nudged her pockets and nickered softly. Frances ran her hand around the line of congealed blood, and the zebra shivered. There had been too much violence in the last few days. She wondered whether there was somewhere else for her to go, but she knew it was hopeless. The only person who could protect her was Edwin.

W
hat you need, Frances, is something to take your mind off things. What about a trip?”

Mariella stood in their yard, dressed in a smart, white cotton jacket with a pretty sailor’s hat, looking a picture of health and cleanliness. She had arrived in Kimberley two weeks ago, and finding out from Anne that Frances was in town, she had visited, but Frances had been in the depths of her fever. Now she had returned to see how she was recovering.

“What kind of trip?”

“You know, a
voyage
,” she said, throwing open her arms and lengthening the vowels into a mockery of French. “We have to get you out of this dreadful place.” Mariella, curls bouncing and belly swelling with her baby, looked disdainfully at the patch of dust they called the yard. “Why ever did you agree to let him come to Kimberley?” she asked. “It was a terrible idea.”

“Yes, and not mine,” Frances said. She had been cleaning her boots, and now she was running a file under her blackened fingernails.

“No,” said Mariella admonishingly, “but you’re a pretty girl, Frances. You must have influence over him. Why didn’t you use it?”

Frances didn’t reply, and after a moment Mariella leapt up. “There’s a new bathing house in town. They’ve been advertising in the
Diamond News
. Towels as white as the driven snow, or so they claim. Let’s go together.”

Frances wiped her hands on a cloth and looked in the shard of mirror that had been hung up above the basin. Her skin was red and dry from the hot days and cold nights. Her lips were peeling and her nails felt brittle. She hadn’t washed properly since she had come to Kimberley almost a month ago, and everything smelt of her sickness; of vomit and sweat. Grease and dirt had gathered in dark wrinkles in her elbows and in the creases of her groin, and her hair was matted into a ball of frizz.

“Perhaps another day,” she said uncomfortably.

“Don’t be silly. I’m paying,” Mariella said, handing Frances her hat. “Now can we please get out of here?”

The baths were en route to the better side of town. They passed a few red brick houses amidst the iron huts. Mariella said they weren’t far from the Kimberley Club, where the wealthiest residents spent their time smoking, playing billiards, and gambling away their fortunes. Three women, spotlessly dressed, walked past them, and Mariella whispered, “The croquet and badminton set. More money than they know what to do with. They come all the way out here to see the mine, and realize too late that there’s nothing else to do. The real highlight is being waited on by a man who is just as poor as the ones at home but has black skin instead of white.”

The baths were in a corrugated-iron building, with linen not quite as white as snow but clean nonetheless. Mariella paid the attendant for two towels, and they were led into pine cubicles, each containing a cast-iron bath full of water. Frances stripped off her clothes and stepped in. The water was deliciously warm, hot enough to get slick and soapy and wash the dirt from her skin. She had lost weight, her stomach was concave, and her hips jutted out in sharp points. She leant back and shut her eyes, her head throbbing as the aching tiredness seeped out of her joints. The cloth came away from her face black with grime, and she scrubbed and scrubbed to get clean, then washed her hair and combed through oil.

“You married a good man, Mariella,” Frances said, when they had changed back into their clothes. They were the only women in the room. She was curling her wet hair into a bun and pinning it up.

“And look what a state he got me into.” Mariella laughed, pointing at her rounding stomach. She looked happy. George Fairley had spent six months managing a farm in the fertile valleys of Stellenbosch, and they had raised enough capital to come to Kimberley. He was hoping to find work with one of the mining companies, and Mariella had told Frances that he had already made some significant investments in diamonds.

Frances caught her eye in the mirror. “Mariella, I don’t want to always be poor.”

“You won’t be. Edwin will abandon his zeal, you’ll move to Cape Town, and he’ll start a practice. Life will be so boring you’ll wish this moment back again.”

“Will I? Sometimes he seems so determined.”

“Is he right about there being smallpox?”

Frances shrugged. “I’m not sure what to believe.”

“Be patient, Frances. Perhaps you ought to trust him. He might know what he’s doing better than you think.”

“Maybe you’re right,” she said, thinking that Mariella didn’t know Edwin. She wasn’t sure she was capable of trusting him. His motives were obscure, and they didn’t seem to include protecting her.

After the baths, they walked down to the Big Hole. It was the largest diamond mine in the world, and Mariella was shocked that Frances hadn’t visited it. “After all, you’ve been here almost a month, and it’s the only thing in Kimberley worth seeing.”

She took them along a road between clusters of low, small dwellings. Frances glanced behind her occasionally to make sure they weren’t being followed. She hadn’t told Mariella about the men who had accosted her. She didn’t want her to worry. They heard the rumble of steam engines and walked past mountains of debris which dwarfed the tents that were pitched in their shadow.

“Should you really be walking around like this?” Frances asked, looking at Mariella’s pale face reddening with exertion. She was panting slightly as they walked, and Frances felt a rush of affection for her. She made life simpler, like an experienced knitter unraveling a knotted ball of yarn. When you were with her, your problems seemed to lose their intensity. She had been lonely, she realized, and it was good to have company.

“I’m fine. It just takes the breath out of you. And I can’t bear lounging around in the chair at home all day. Those rooms get horribly hot.” Frances suspected Mariella was just being kind. She knew George had taken rooms at the hotel on Market Square where she had wanted to stay their first night in Kimberley. It would have been more than comfortable.

The dwellings grew closer together, pressing in on one another, and there was a swell of noise. The earth shook with the vibration of huge engines. All of a sudden, the huts stopped. As if stepping through a dense forest into a clearing, they found themselves in a wide-open space, on the brink of an immense canyon. It was infinitely larger than Frances had imagined—a giant hole, at least half a mile across, bored down into the center of the earth. Its vastness stopped her in her tracks. She had never envisaged a place on this scale. Mariella, gratified by her reaction, took her by the hand, and they walked closer to the precipice.

“Have they really dug this entirely themselves?” Frances asked. It was a dizzying experience, standing at the edge, the mine as deep below as it seemed to the clouds above; a whole world carved out of the bowels of the earth, falling hundreds of feet below them. It was so huge that the natives swarming over the surface looked like ants erupting out of a ruined nest. She remembered Edwin’s description of the pits of hell.

“Yes, they dug it in a little under ten years. The problem is there are over five hundred claims and they’ve all been mined at different speeds. Which is why some are so much deeper than others.” It was true. The ground at the bottom had no level. There were hundreds of strips of earth, each a separate claim, all at different heights. Turrets and platforms had emerged between them, with ropes and ladders linking one section to another. It had the look of a ruined underground city in the midst of being excavated.

A network of wires spun over the top of the mine like a dense spiderweb. There were thousands of threads, and you looked down at the cavernous hole through the gauzy shimmer of quivering metal. It was an aerial tramway, Frances realized, with each wire attached to a pulley system: horse-driven whims or hand-turned winches secured to scaffolding, perched precariously on the edge of the mine. An infinite number of iron pails, crates, and sacks full of soil were being hauled to the surface. The noise was deafening: the screech of wires, the shouts of the men, the bellowing of mules, the thousand tiny blows of pickaxes striking the earth in the depths of the mine.

A tram chugged its load up the wall on the far side. There was a muffled explosion from somewhere below, throwing up a thick, billowing cloud of dust. The air smelt of burning metal. When the dust cleared, a pattern began to emerge out of the chaos. In the labyrinth of ditches at the bottom of the mine, half-naked, black-skinned laborers carried wooden stretchers of soil to the pulleys that would haul them to the surface. The claims were too far beneath them to make out the faces of the men who were working there. All she could see was the flickering of their bodies as they moved. Once at the top, the earth was carried away by Scotch carts drawn by mules, their wheels plowing heavily through the deep sand. Men with wheelbarrows heaped with debris steered a path between them.

Just in front of the girls stood a tall wooden structure with a huge iron pulley system embedded into it. The scaffold was weighted down by a small mountain of sandbags. Natives climbed over it, some signaling to the men below and others, dripping with exertion, helping to turn the great handle of a windlass which was bringing a wooden crate, heavy with debris, shuddering along one of the wires. They were dressed in a ragged selection of torn shirts and rolled-up trousers, and their faces were lean and hollow.

She saw William standing below the windlass talking to a group of natives, and her heart quickened. Thank goodness she looked cleaner and more presentable than the last time they had seen each other. His back was turned towards her. Sweat had soaked through his waistcoat, turning the fawn linen black. A shotgun was slung over his shoulder, and a boy stood nearby holding his horse, a chestnut who had been worked into a lather and was shivering despite the sun. A clutch of partridge hung from the back of his saddle.

William’s hands were folded behind his back, tapping a horsewhip against the leather of his polished boots. He was talking, and the men were listening to him with sullen faces. They each had a small piece of white cloth sewn to their clothes with a number painted on it. She couldn’t hear what he was saying above the noise of the engines. He made a gesture of frustration and turned a little towards her. His face was tight and angry, and in a sudden movement he brought the whip from behind his back and struck the back of one of the men’s naked calves with it in two hard slaps. The group immediately disbanded. William kicked at the dust in frustration, then glanced up and saw her watching him. He broke into a smile and threaded his way through the crowd to where they stood.

“Mrs. George Fairley,” Frances said, introducing Mariella.

“Of course. Don’t I remember you from the
Cambrian
?” William asked, taking Mariella’s gloved hand and kissing it. “Are you impressed by what we’re achieving?”

“What exactly are you achieving?” Mariella gave a flirtatious flick of her curls, but he didn’t answer, instead bringing the back of Frances’s bare hand to his lips. As his beard grazed against her skin, his fingers put a slight pressure on her own. Despite her uneasiness at what she had just seen, she was grateful for this small acknowledgment of their closeness. The bitterness she had felt before was all gone. She was determined to accept his kindness and not look for anything more from him.

He turned to Mariella. “Only the most successful diamond-mining operation in the world.”

Mariella laughed. “So, tell me,” she said to him in a confidential voice. “We’ve bought stock in The London and South African. Am I right in saying it’s one of Joseph Baier’s companies? Is it a good bet?”

“There’s no such thing as a bad bet in this market. When did you buy?”

“A week ago.”

William laughed. “Go to Ebden Street and see for yourself. If they’re not worth twice as much as you paid for them, I’ll buy them from you myself. What about Mrs. Matthews?” he asked, turning to Frances. “Have you been dabbling in our stock market?”

“I’m afraid it isn’t my husband’s style.”

“You mean you don’t insist? Isn’t it every wife’s prerogative to tell her husband how to make money?” He spoke lightly. This was conversation without substance, but a moment later he looked away and pushed his foot through the dust. It was a childish movement. “Christ, what’s the point of sitting it out in this godforsaken place if you’re not going to profit a little from it?”

“Why do they wear those white badges?” Frances asked, looking at the natives turning the windlass.

“It’s impossible to tell them apart. The badges make it easier for us to identify them.”

“And must you hit the men?” she asked, disliking what she had seen.

He held up his horsewhip and gave an amused smile. “What, with this thing? I’d call it more of a tickle than a blow. I use it no more than a jockey does to coax the best out of his steed, not because he wishes to damage it but because he knows it can do better.”

She looked at him, appalled.

“I’m sorry. I was being conceited,” he said. “But the truth is, Kimberley has a strange effect on all of us. If you spend any length of time here you begin to understand that it is absurd to apply the niceties of English law to kaffirs. Don’t get me wrong. I am certainly no advocate of violence, but these are physical men. If you maintain a show of superior strength, they respect you for it. They are used to being ruled by a chief who uses brutality to keep them in check. Take the natives I was speaking to earlier. They all had contracts promising good wages in return for their work, but then some German upstart who doesn’t have a clue how things operate in Kimberley offers them twice the going salary and they throw down their tools and leave. They’re always wanting more—more than they have, more than we can afford to pay them. Given half a chance they would bring us all, themselves included, to the edge of bankruptcy.”

This was the way he had spoken to the reverend on the boat. There was something flippant and self-serving in his attitude towards the Africans, and it made her uncomfortable.

“What about the new native compounds?” she asked. “My husband says that they are little better than prisons. That the natives are forced to live there, that they have no access to education and no way of bettering themselves.”