The Complete Short Stories (10 page)

‘Oh, rather.’

‘Sure?’

‘Oh yes, quite sure.’

The old man was not
going to be caught again. ‘I hope you really want the job. There are a good
many excellent applicants and we want a keen —’Yes, I want the job.’

Sonia said, ‘Well, have
it,’ and I thought, then, she had really done for the whole thing and outrun
her influence.

But the old man beamed
up at her, took both her prettily restored hands in his, and I nearly saw his
slack mouth water.

Other people were pressing
round for a word with this Medical Board man. Sonia was treating Richard with
ostentatious neglect. Frank was leaning against the wall, now, talking to her.
Suddenly I did not want to lose Frank. I looked round the company and wondered
what I was doing there, and said to Richard, ‘Let’s go.’

Richard was looking at
Sonia’s back. ‘Why do you want to go?’ Richard said. ‘It’s early yet. Why?’

Because the curtain was fluttering at the
open window, letting in wafts of the savage territory beyond the absurd
drawing-room. The people were getting excited; I thought soon they might
scream, once or twice like the birds, and then be silent. I thought, even, that
Richard might change his mind again about the job, and tell Sonia so, and leave
it to her to sort it out for him. It was the pull of Sonia that made him
reluctant to leave. She was adjusting Frank’s tie and telling him he needed
looking after, for all the world as if she had been brought up to that old
line; we must tell her, I thought, not to do that sort of thing in public. And
I would gladly have stayed on till sundowner time in order to jerk Frank back
into a sense of my personality; but there was a storm coming, and it was no fun
driving home through a storm.

Richard is
stronger-willed than I am. After this party he kept away from Sonia’s and stuck
in to his work. I broke off my engagement. It was impossible to know whether
Frank was relieved or not. There were still three months before he was to take
up his appointment in the north. He spent most of his time with Sonia. I was
not sure how things stood between them. I still drove over to Sonia’s sometimes
and found Frank there. I was dissatisfied and attracted by both of them and by
their situation. In the dry spells they would often be down the river in the
punt when I arrived, and I would wait for the sight of the returning pink
parasol, and be glad of the sight. Once or twice when we met at the clinic
Frank said to me, factually, ‘We could still be married.’ Once he said, ‘Old
Sonia’s only a joke, you know.’ But I thought he was afraid I might take him at
his word, or might do so too soon.

Sonia spoke again of
travelling. She was learning to study road maps. She told one of the nurses, ‘When
Frank’s settled up at the north I’ll go up and settle him down nicer.’ She told
another of the nurses, ‘My old husband’s coming from gaol this month, next
month, I don’t know, man. He’ll see some changes. He get used to them.

One afternoon I drove
over to the farm; I had not seen Sonia for six weeks because her children had
been home for the holidays and I loathed her children. I had missed her, she
was never boring. The house-boy said she was down the river with Dr Frank. I
wandered down the path, but they were not in sight. I waited for about eight
minutes and walked back. All the natives except the house-boy had gone to sleep
in their huts. I did not see the house-boy for some time, and when I did I was
frightened by the fear on his face.

I was coming round by
the old ox-stalls, now deserted — since Sonia had abandoned farming, even with
a tractor, far less a span of oxen. The house-boy appeared then, and whispered
to me. ‘Baas Van der Merwe is come. He looking in the window.

I walked quietly round
the stalls till I had a view of the house, and saw a man of about fifty,
undernourished-looking, in khaki shorts and shirt. He was standing on a box by
the drawing-room window. He had his hand on the curtain, parting it, and was
looking steadily into the empty room.

‘Go down to the river
and warn them,’ I said to the boy.

He turned to go, but ‘Boy!’
shouted the man. The house-boy in his green-and-white clothes rapidly went
towards the voice.

I got down to the river
just as they were landing. Sonia was dressed in pale blue. Her new parasol was
blue. She looked specially fabulous and I noticed her very white teeth, her
round brown eyes and her story-book pose, as she stood dressed up in the middle
of Africa under the blazing sun with the thick-leaved plants at her feet.
Frank, looking nice in tropical suiting, was tying up the punt. ‘Your husband
has returned,’ I said, and ran fearfully back to my car. I started it up and
made off, and as I sped past the house over the gravel I saw Jannie Van der
Merwe about to enter the house, followed by the servant. He turned to watch my
car and spoke to the native, evidently asking who I was.

Afterwards the native
deposed that Jannie went all through the house examining the changes and the
new furniture. He used the lavatory and pulled the chain. He tried the taps in
both bathrooms. In Sonia’s room he put straight a pair of her shoes which were
lying askew. He then tested all the furniture for dust, all through the house,
touching the furniture with the middle finger of his right hand and turning up
his finger to see if it showed any dust. The house-boy followed, and when
Jannie came to an old oak Dutch chest which was set away in a corner of one of
the children’s rooms — since Sonia had taken against all her father’s old
furniture — he found a little dust on it. He ordered the native to fetch a
duster and remove the dust. When this was done Jannie proceeded on his tour,
and when he had tried everything for dust he went out and down the path towards
the river. He found Sonia and Frank at the ox-stalls arguing about what to do
and where to go, and taking a revolver from his pocket, shot them. Sonia died
immediately. Frank lingered for ten hours. This was a serious crime and Jannie
was hanged.

I waited all the weeks
ahead for Richard to make the first suggestion that we should move away. I was
afraid to suggest it first lest he should resent the move all his life. Our
long leave was not due for another year. Our annual leave was not due for some
months. At last he said, ‘I can’t stand it here.’

I wanted to return to
England. I had been thinking of nothing else. ‘We can’t stay here,’ I said, as
if it were a part in a play. ‘Shall we pack up and go?’ he said, and I felt a
huge relief. ‘No,’ I said.

He said, ‘It would be a
pity to pack it all in when we’ve both gone so far in tropical diseases.

In fact I left the
following week. Since then, Richard has gone far in tropical diseases. ‘It’s a
pity,’ he said before I left, ‘to let what’s happened come between us.’

I packed up my things
and departed for dear life, before the dry season should set in, and the rainy
season should follow, and all things be predictable.

Bang-Bang You’re
Dead

At that time many of the men looked like
Rupert Brooke, whose portrait still hung in everyone’s imagination. It was that
dear-cut, ‘typically English’ face which is seldom seen on the actual soil of
England but proliferates in the African Colonies.

‘I must say,’ said Sybil’s
hostess, ‘the men look charming.’ These men were all charming, Sybil had
decided at the time, until you got to know them. She sat in the dark room watching
the eighteen-year-old film unrolling on the screen as if the particular memory
had solidified under the effect of some intense heat coming out of the
projector. She told herself, I was young, I demanded nothing short of
perfection. But then, she thought, that is not quite the case. But it comes to
the same thing; to me, the men were not charming for long.

The first reel came to
an end. Someone switched on the light. Her host picked the next film out of its
tropical packing.

‘It must be an interesting
experience,’ said her hostess, ‘seeing yourself after all those years.

‘Hasn’t Sybil seen these
films before?’ said a latecomer.

‘No, never — have you,
Sybil?’

‘No, never.’

‘If they had been my
films,’ said her hostess, ‘my curiosity could not have waited eighteen years.

The Kodachrome reels had
lain in their boxes in the dark of Sybil’s cabin trunk. Why bother, when one’s
memory was clear?

‘Sybil didn’t know
anyone who had a projector,’ said her hostess, ‘until we got ours.

‘It was delightful,’
said the latecomer, an elderly lady, ‘what I saw of it. Are the others as good?’

Sybil thought for a
moment. ‘The photography is probably good,’ she said. ‘There was a cook behind
the camera.

‘A cook! How priceless;
whatever do you mean?’ said her hostess.

‘The cook-boy,’ said
Sybil, ‘was trained up to use the camera.

‘He managed it well,’
said her host, who was adjusting the new reel.

‘Wonderful colours,’
said her hostess. ‘Oh, I’m so glad you dug them out. How healthy and tanned and
open-necked everyone looks. And those adorable shiny natives all over the
place.’

The elderly lady said, ‘I
liked the bit where you came out on the veranda in your shorts carrying the
gun.’

‘Ready?’ said Sybil’s
host. The new reel was fixed. ‘Put out the lights,’ he said.

It was the stoep again.
Through the french windows came a dark girl in shorts followed by a frisky
young Alsatian.

‘Lovely dog,’ commented
Sybil’s host. ‘He seems to be asking Sybil for a game.

‘That is someone else,’
Sybil said very quickly.

‘The girl there, with
the dog?’

‘Yes, of course. Don’t
you see me walking across the lawn by the trees?’

‘Oh, of course, of
course. She did look like you, Sybil, that girl with the dog. Wasn’t she like
Sybil? I mean, just as she came out on the veranda.’

‘Yes,
I
thought
it was Sybil for a moment until I saw Sybil in the background. But you can see
the difference now. See, as she turns round. That girl isn’t really like Sybil,
it must be the shorts.’

‘There was a slight
resemblance between us,’ Sybil remarked. The projector purred on.

‘Look, there’s a little girl rather like
you, Sybil.’ Sybil, walking between her mother and father, one hand in each,
had already craned round. The other child, likewise being walked along, had
looked back too.

The other child wore a
black velour hat turned up all round, a fawn coat of covert-coating, and at her
neck a narrow white ermine tie. She wore white silk gloves. Sybil was dressed
identically, and though this in itself was nothing to marvel at, since numerous
small girls wore this ensemble when they were walked out in the parks and
public gardens of cathedral towns in 1923, it did fortify the striking
resemblance in features, build, and height, between the two children. Sybil
suddenly felt she was walking past her own reflection in the long looking-glass.
There was her peak chin, her black bobbed hair under her hat, with its fringe
almost touching her eyebrows. Her wide-spaced eyes, her nose very small like a
cat’s. ‘Stop staring, Sybil,’ whispered her mother. Sybil had time to snatch
the gleam of white socks and black patent leather button shoes. Her own socks
were white but her shoes were brown, with laces. At first she felt this one
discrepancy was wrong, in the sense that it was wrong to step on one of the
cracks in the pavement. Then she felt it was right that there should be a
difference.

‘The Colemans,’ Sybil’s
mother remarked to her father. ‘They keep that hotel at Hillend. The child must
be about Sybil’s age. Very alike, aren’t they? And I suppose,’ she continued
for Sybil’s benefit, ‘she’s a good little girl like Sybil.’ Quick-witted Sybil
thought poorly of the last remark with its subtle counsel of perfection.

On other occasions, too,
they passed the Coleman child on a Sunday walk. In summer time the children
wore panama hats and tussore silk frocks discreetly adorned with drawn-thread
work. Sometimes the Coleman child was accompanied by a young mad-servant in
grey dress and black stockings. Sybil noted this one difference between her own
entourage and the other girl’s. ‘Don’t turn round and stare,’ whispered her
mother.

It was not till she went
to school that she found Désirée Coleman to be a year older than herself.
Désirée was in a higher class but sometimes, when the whole school was
assembled on the lawn or in the gym, Sybil would be, for a few moments,
mistaken for Désirée. In the late warm spring the classes sat in separate
groups under the plane trees until, as by simultaneous instinct, the teachers
would indicate time for break. The groups would mingle, and ‘Sybil, dear, your
shoe-lace,’ a teacher might call out; and then, as Sybil regarded her
neat-laced shoes, ‘Oh no, not Sybil, I mean Désirée.’ In the percussion band
Sybil banged her triangle triumphantly when the teacher declared, ‘Much better
than yesterday, Sybil.’ But she added, ‘I mean Désirée.’

Only the grown-ups
mistook one child for another at odd moments. None of her small companions made
this mistake. After the school concert Sybil’s mother said, ‘For a second I
thought you were Désirée in the choir. It’s strange you are so alike. I’m not a
bit like Mrs Coleman and your daddy doesn’t resemble
him
in the least.’

Sybil found Désirée
unsatisfactory as a playmate. Sybil was precocious, her brain was like a blade.
She had discovered that dull children were apt to be spiteful. Désirée would
sit innocently cross-legged beside you at a party, watching the conjurer, then
suddenly, for no apparent reason, jab at you viciously with her elbow.

By the time Sybil was
eight and Désirée nine it was seldom that anyone, even strangers and new teachers,
mixed them up. Sybil’s nose became more sharp and pronounced while Désirée’s
seemed to sink into her plump cheeks like a painted-on nose. Only on a few
occasions, and only on dark winter afternoons between the last of three o’clock
daylight and the coming on of lights all over the school, was Sybil mistaken
for Désirée.