This Was the Old Chief's Country (54 page)

Mrs Clarke gently forced the jaws open and poured down milk until the buck choked. Tommy knelt beside it all morning, suffering as he had never suffered before. The tears ran steadily down his face and he wished he could die too, and Mrs Clarke wished very much she could catch Dirk and give him a good beating, which would be unjust, but might do something to relieve her feelings. ‘Besides,' she said to her husband, ‘it's nothing but cruelty, taking a tiny thing like that from its mother.'

Late that afternoon the buck died, and Mr Clarke, who had not seen his son's misery over it, casually threw the dry, stiff corpse to the cook boy and told him to bury it. Tommy stood on the veranda, his face tight and angry, and watched the cookboy shovel his little buck hastily under some bushes, and return whistling.

Then he went into the room where his mother and father were sitting and said: ‘Why is Dirk yellow and not dark brown like the other kaffirs?'

Silence. Mr Clarke and Annie Clarke looked at each other. Then Mr Clarke said: ‘They come different colours.'

Tommy looked forcefully at his mother, who said: ‘He's a half-caste.'

‘What's a half-caste?'

‘You'll understand when you grow up.'

Tommy looked from his father, who was filling his pipe, his
eyes lowered to the work, then at his mother, whose cheekbones held that proud, bright flush.

‘I understand now,' he said, defiantly.

‘Then why do you ask?' said Mrs Clarke, with anger. Why, she was saying, do you infringe the rule of silence?

Tommy went out, and to the brink of the great pit. There he lay, wondering why he had said he understood when he did not. Though in a sense he did. He was remembering, though he had not noticed it before, that among the gang of children in the compound were two yellow children. Dirk was one, and Dirk's sister another. She was a tiny child, who came toddling on the fringe of the older children's games. But Dirk's mother was black, or rather, dark-brown like the others. And Dirk was not really yellow, but light copper colour. The colour of this earth, were it a little darker. Tommy's fingers were fiddling with the damp clay. He looked at the little figures he had made, Betty and Freddy. Idly, he smashed them. Then he picked up Dirk and flung him down. But he must have flung him down too carefully, for he did not break, and so he set the figure against the stalk of a weed. He took a lump of clay, and as his fingers experimentally pushed and kneaded it, the shape grew into the shape of a little duiker. But not a sick duiker, which had died because it had been taken from its mother. Not at all, it was a fine strong duiker, standing with one hoof raised and its head listening, ears pricked forward.

Tommy knelt on the verge of the great pit, absorbed, while the duiker grew into its proper form. He became dissatisfied it was too small. He impatiently smashed what he had done, and taking a big heap of the yellowish, dense soil, shook water on it from an old rusty railway sleeper that had collected rainwater, and made the mass soft and workable. Then he began again. The duiker would be half life-size.

And so his hands worked and his mind worried along its path of questions: Why? Why? Why? And finally: If Dirk is half black, or rather half white and half dark-brown, then who is his father?

For a long time his mind hovered on the edge of the answer, but did not finally reach it. But from time to time he looked across the gulf to where Mr Macintosh was strolling, swinging
his big cudgel, and he thought: There are only two white men on this mine.

The buck was now finished, and he wetted his fingers in rusty rainwater, and smoothed down the soft clay to make it glisten like the surfaces of fur, but at once it dried and dulled, and as he knelt there he thought how the sun would crack it and it would fall to pieces, and an angry dissatisfaction filled him and he hung his head and wanted very much to cry. And just as the first tears were coming he heard a soft whistle from behind him, and he turned, and there was Dirk, kneeling behind a bush and looking out through the parted leaves.

‘Is the buck all right?' asked Dirk.

Tommy said: ‘It's dead,' and he kicked his foot at his model duiker so that the thick clay fell apart in lumps.

Dirk said: ‘Don't do that, it's nice,' and he sprang forward and tried to fit the pieces together.

‘It's no good, the sun'll crack it,' said Tommy, and he began to cry, although he was so ashamed to cry in front of Dirk. ‘The buck's dead,' he wept, ‘it's dead.'

‘I can get you another,' said Dirk, looking at Tommy rather surprised. ‘I killed its mother with a stone. It's easy.'

Dirk was seven, like Tommy. He was tall and strong, like Tommy. His eyes were dark and full, but his mouth was not full and soft, but long and narrow, clenched in the middle. His hair was very black and soft and long, falling uncut around his face, and his skin was a smooth, yellowish copper. Tommy stopped crying and looked at Dirk. He said: ‘It's cruel to kill a buck's mother with a stone.' Dirk's mouth parted in surprised laughter over his big white teeth. Tommy watched him laugh, and he thought: Well, now I know who his father is.

He looked away to his home, which was two hundred yards off, exposed to the sun's glare among low bushes of hibiscus and poinsettia. He looked at Mr Macintosh's house, which was a few hundred yards farther off. Then he looked at Dirk. He was full of anger, which he did not understand, but he did understand that he was also defiant, and this was a moment of decision. After a long time he said: ‘They can see us from here,' and the decision was made.

They got up, but as Dirk rose he saw the little clay figure laid
against a stem, and he picked it up. ‘This is me,' he said at once. For crude as the thing was, it was unmistakably Dirk, who smiled with pleasure. ‘Can I have it?' he asked, and Tommy nodded, equally proud and pleased.

They went off into the bush between the two houses, and then on for perhaps half a mile. This was the deserted part of the hollow in the mountains, no one came here, all the bustle and noise was on the other side. In front of them rose a sharp peak, and low at its foot was a high anthill, draped with Christmas fern and thick with shrub.

The two boys went inside the curtains of fern and sat down. No one could see them here. Dirk carefully put the little clay figure of himself inside a hole in the roots of a tree. Then he said: ‘Make the buck again.' Tommy took his knife and knelt beside a fallen tree, and tried to carve the buck from it. The wood was soft and rotten, and was easily carved, and by night there was the clumsy shape of the buck coming out of the trunk. Dirk said: ‘Now we've both got something.'

The next day the two boys made their way separately to the antheap and played there together, and so it was every day.

Then one evening Mrs Clarke said to Tommy just as he was going to bed: ‘I thought I told you not to play with the kaffirs?'

Tommy stood very still. Then he lifted his head and said to her, with a strong look across at his father: ‘Why shouldn't I play with Mr Macintosh's son?'

Mrs Clarke stopped breathing for a moment, and closed her eyes. She opened them in appeal at her husband. But Mr Clarke was filling his pipe. Tommy waited and then said good night and went to his room.

There he undressed slowly and climbed into the narrow iron bed and lay quietly, listening to the thud, thud, gold, gold, thud, thud, of the mine-stamps. Over in the compound they were dancing, and the tom-toms were beating fast, like the quick beat of the buck's heart that night as it lay on his chest. They were yelling like the wind coming through gaps in a mountain and through the window he could see the high, flaring light of the fires, and the black figures of the dancing people were wild and active against it.

Mrs Clarke came quickly in. She was crying. ‘Tommy,' she said, sitting on the edge of his bed in the dark.

‘Yes?' he said, cautiously.

‘You mustn't say that again. Not ever.'

He said nothing. His mother's hand was urgently pressing his arm. ‘Your father might lose his job,' said Mrs Clarke, wildly. ‘We'd never get this money anywhere else. Never. You must understand. Tommy.'

‘I do understand,' said Tommy, stiffly, very sorry for his mother, but hating her at the same time. ‘Just don't say it, Tommy, don't ever say it.' Then she kissed him in a way that was both fond and appealing, and went out, shutting the door. To her husband she said it was time Tommy went to school, and next day she wrote to make the arrangements.

And so now Tommy made the long journey by car and train into the city four times a year, and four times a year he came back for the holidays. Mr Macintosh always drove him to the station and gave him ten shillings pocket money, and he came to fetch him in the car with his parents, and he always said: ‘Well, laddie, and how's school?' And Tommy said: ‘Fine, Mr Macintosh.' And Mr Macintosh said: ‘We'll make a college man of you yet.'

When he said this, the flush came bright and proud on Annie Clarke's cheeks, and she looked quickly at Mr Clarke, who was smiling and embarrassed. But Mr Macintosh laid his hand on Tommy's shoulder and said: ‘There's my laddie, there's my laddie,' and Tommy kept his shoulders stiff and still. Afterwards, Mrs Clarke would say, nervously: ‘He's fond of you, Tommy, he'll do right by you.' And once she said: ‘It's natural, he's got no children of his own.' But Tommy scowled at her and she flushed and said: ‘There's things you don't understand yet, Tommy, and you'll regret it if you throw away your chances.' Tommy turned away with an impatient movement. Yet it was not clear at all, for it was almost as if he were a rich man's son, with all that pocket money, and the parcels of biscuits and sweets that Mr Macintosh sent into school during the term, and being fetched in the great rich car. And underneath it all he felt as if he were dragged along by the nose. He felt as if he were part of a conspiracy of some kind that no one
ever spoke about. Silence. His real feelings were growing up slow and complicated and obstinate underneath that silence.

At school it was not at all complicated, it was the other world. There Tommy did his lessons and played with his friends and did not think of Dirk. Or rather, his thoughts of him were proper for that world. A half-caste, ignorant, living in the kaffir location – he felt ashamed that he played with Dirk in the holidays, and he told no one. Even on the train coming home he would think like that of Dirk, but the nearer he reached home the more his thoughts wavered and darkened. On the first evening at home he would speak of the school, and how he was the first in the class, and he played with this boy or that, or went to such fine houses in the city as a guest. The very first morning he would be standing on the veranda looking at the big pit and at the compound away beyond it, and his mother watched him, smiling in nervous supplication. And then he walked down the steps, away from the pit, and into the bush to the antheap. There Dirk was waiting for him. So it was every holiday. Neither of the boys spoke at first of what divided them. But, on the eve of Tommy's return to school after he had been there a year, Dirk said: ‘You're getting educated, but I've nothing to learn.' Tommy said: ‘I'll bring back books and teach you.' He said this in a quick voice, as if ashamed, and Dirk's eyes were accusing and angry. He gave his sarcastic laugh and said: ‘That's what you say, white boy.'

It was not pleasant, but what Tommy said was not pleasant either, like a favour wrung out of a condescending person.

The two boys were sitting on the antheap under the fine lacy curtains of Christmas fern, looking at the rocky peak soaring into the smoky yellowish sky. There was the most unpleasant sort of annoyance in Tommy, and he felt ashamed of it. And on Dirk's face there was an aggressive but ashamed look. They continued to sit there, a little apart, full of dislike for each other, and knowing that the dislike came from the pressure of the outside world. ‘I said I'd teach you, didn't I?' said Tommy, grandly, shying a stone at a bush so that the leaves flew off in all directions. ‘You white bastard,' said Dirk, in a low voice, and he let out that sudden ugly laugh, showing his white teeth. ‘What did you say?' said Tommy, going pale and jumping to
his feet. ‘You heard,' said Dirk, still laughing. He too got up. Then Tommy flung himself on Dirk and they overbalanced and rolled off into the bushes, kicking and scratching. They rolled apart and began fighting properly, with fists. Tommy was better-fed and more healthy. Dirk was tougher. They were a match, and they stopped when they were too tired and battered to go on. They staggered over to the antheap and sat there side by side, panting, wiping the blood off their faces. At last they lay on their backs on the rough slant of the anthill and looked up at the sky. Every trace of dislike had vanished, and they felt easy and quiet. When the sun went down they walked together through the bush to a point where they could not be seen from the houses, and there they said, as always: ‘See you tomorrow.'

When Mr Macintosh gave him the usual ten shillings, he put them into his pocket thinking he would buy a football, but he did not. The ten shillings stayed unspent until it was nearly the end of term, and then he went to the shops and bought a reader and some exercise books and pencils, and an arithmetic. He hid these at the bottom of his trunk and whipped them out before his mother could see them.

He took them to the antheap next morning, but before he could reach it he saw there was a little shed built on it, and the Christmas fern had been draped like a veil across the roof of the shed. The bushes had been cut on the top of the anthill, but left on the sides, so that the shed looked as if it rose from the tops of the bushes. The shed was of unbarked poles pushed into the earth, the roof was of thatch, and the upper half of the front was left open. Inside there was a bench of poles and a table of planks on poles. There sat Dirk, waiting hungrily, and Tommy went and sat beside him, putting the books and pencils on the table.