1972 - A Story Like the Wind (47 page)

Luciana, however, was not back in a jiffy. Sir James and François had nearly finished their coffee and rusks before she appeared again, fully dressed, her hair once more plaited, and looking very much as when François had first seen her. But she still looked frustrated and resentful of Amelia who, following her own broad, full bosom like a great ship’s mainsail swollen with wind, moved in ahead of her and made straight for the kitchen and Ousie-Johanna. When the door shut behind her, Luciana spoke to her father in a voice bright with anger, which oddly enough made François remember from far back in the past something that Ouwa had once said to Lammie, ‘If little girls had the power as they have the will, they would rule the world.’

—‘You must really speak to Amelia, Fa,’ she told, one is tempted to say ordered Sir James, who like the whole of adult-dom had no idea how much the young resent being treated as such in front of their peers, even when they are prepared to accept such treatment in private. ‘She
must
stop treating me like a child. The way she carried on in the kitchen just now, you might have thought I was a dancer about to do a striptease.’

The fact that the expression
dancer
and
striptease
suggested access on the part of Luciana to what not only Amelia but Sir James also would have regarded as a world of forbidden knowledge for a young girl, did not seem to strike him at all. Typically he noticed only what he took as reprehensible and characteristically feminine disregard of logic in Luciana’s protest. In his authoritarian voice, dangerously close to sarcasm he observed, ‘Despite my not inconsiderable experience of the world, I have not yet heard of children doing striptease acts. I would have thought it an occupation reserved for much older women. The obvious conclusion surely is that Amelia was giving you the credit of being far older than you really are.’

‘Oh, there you go again, Fa. You never understand how tire-somely old·fashioned Amelia can be.’

‘Perhaps I don’t,’ Sir James observed with a certain affectionate condescension, then gave way to a reproof of his own. ‘You have not said good morning either to me or your host.’

It seemed to François that the way in which she then held up her cheek to be kissed by her father was more dutiful than spontaneous. When she turned to face him he thought for a moment that she was about to give him a similar salutation and was rather alarmed as to how he should respond.

Luciana herself did not know exactly how to greet him, either, so she chose a proxy for the solution of her conflict. She went to Hintza sitting beside Franjois’s chair, saying as she did so, ‘Of course, we’ve already said good morning.’ She then knelt down by Hintza and put her arms round his neck and rubbed her head against his, saying in an oddly maternal little voice. ‘But you, darling Hin, I’ve not thanked you yet for the nice way you wished me good morning.’

Could Franjois have read Luciana’s innermost mind just then, he would have been amazed that she, too, was involved in the discovery of an unsuspected aspect of herself. She had become aware of a capacity for concealing her real feelings of which, till that moment, she had been ignorant. What is more, she found a certain enjoyment as well as sense of reassurance in this capacity for holding, as it were, her natural hand, despite her usual impulsiveness. Thrilled, as if the discovery had armed her more than ever for future relationships with the men of her world, she fondled Hintza warmly and exulted secretly over the dawning of a feeling of greater power over herself.

Meanwhile, Hintza’s responses were so immediate and warm that Luciana was at once restored to her quick, changing self. François thought that he had seldom known a happier early morning coffee. He would have liked it to go on much longer, but was forced to break off when Ousie-Johanna suddenly entered the room to announce that !#grave;Bamuthi was coming to see him.

François, during dinner the night before, had sent a message to !#grave;Bamuthi to ask him to come to the house first thing in the morning. This was because while talking over dinner, Sir James had extracted from François a fairly detailed account of the basis on which the Jouberts had organized Hunter’s Drift, and of how Ouwa made it a project of partnership between themselves and their Matabele neighbours. Although there were things about the scheme Sir James obviously disliked, it interested him sufficiently for him to want to know more about it. He too wanted the Matabele linked in some way to what he proposed doing on his own vast tract of land. But he thought that making them partners was going a little too far.

In his heart of hearts, much as he had liked, indeed loved them as a young District Commissioner, he did not think the Matabele mature enough for so sophisticated a relationship. He proposed paying them generous wages with an annual bonus but he thought that these must be determined entirelybyhis own judgement. Anything else, he felt, in view of his experience as the last of the great colonial governors in Africa, would be, to say the least, highly irresponsible, if not damaging to the people he employed.

Sir James accordingly was highly delighted when François translated Ousie-Johanna’s message that !#grave;Bamuthi, who knew all, had come. He was about to get to his feet to go out to meet !#grave;Bamuthi, when to his amazement, the kitchen door opened and !#grave;Bamuthi, according to the Hunter’s Drift custom, stepped quite unself-consciously into the room.

Sir James had hardly time to tell himself that he would never allow such slackness in his own establishment when !#grave;Bamuthi raised his hand above his head in the royal Matabele salute and called out in a loud voice: ‘
Bayete nKosi, isi-Vuba, bayete!
’

François realized that !#grave;Bamuthi must have met Sir James before, presumably when he had toured the district as a commissioner before the war, when !#grave;Bamuthi himself was a young man. His greeting implied a recognition of Sir James’s official status and he also had ready on his lips the Matabele name ‘isi-Vuba’, which was that of the Great Kingfisher.

Sir James stared at !#grave;Bamuthi in astonishment until the memory which all good governors, like royalty, have to cultivate, came to his rescue. His rather fine administerial face suddenly became young with a smile straight out of the period with which his recollection was concerned, the period when neither Sir James nor the great natural world along the Amanzim-tetse had yet lost their innocence. Sir James even forgot himself to the extent of snapping his fingers, and then said impulsively, ‘Wait…wait…it was at Osebeni, was it not? Yes, it must have been. Let me see. Yes, you must be !#grave;Bamuthi, the first of the sons of the Keeper of the Ford.’

!#grave;Bamuthi’s delight at being recognized was as great as François’s astonishment that Sir James still spoke, however haltingly, a Sindabele both recognizable and correct.

Sir James, caught up in an exceptionally unguarded mood, might have plunged straight away into a world of reminiscence but he was briefly jerked back into the present by !#grave;Bamuthi. !#grave;Bamuthi, as François knew, was one of the most observant of men, and had not failed to notice Sir James’s daughter and the interest, if not undisguised admiration with which she was watching him.

Certainly he looked most impressive at that moment. He had obviously come straight from his early morning round of inspection of the lion traps and unlike Ousie-Johanna and the other African members of the household was still not in European dress. Except for a loin cloth of impala skin and a portion of leopard skin round his middle and divided in front, he wore no clothes. The skin of his body was smooth and shining from the lion-fat he rubbed into it every night before going to sleep. On his chest dangled a necklace of beads, woven in the black, white and green pattern of his tribe. On his right wrist he had two broad ivory bangles; on his left one made of plaited elephant hair with a clasp of copper. One broad hand gripped firmly together both his favourite assegai He-Who-Digs-For-My-Children, and the knobkerrie The-Eater-in-the-Dark.

Although later in the day he would be dressed in khaki slacks, safari jacket and bush hat, just as Ouwa and Mopani always were, this traditional battle dress was the one he chose for doing his dangerous rounds of Hunter’s Drift defences in the dim hour between night and day, and no one could have designed a more effective camouflage. Dressed in this fashion he might have stepped straight out of the Africa of the great Rider Haggard.

François was delighted that the girl obviously thought him the creature of wonder that !#grave;Bamuthi had never ceased to be for him, despite the fact that he had known him for so many years and more intimately than any other member of his household.

It was !#grave;Bamuthi who now reminded Sir James that he was, in his estimation, committing a breach of good manners by not introducing him to the girl. !#grave;Bamuthi, politely placing assegai and knobkerrie down against the wall in the corner of the breakfast room and a smile flashing on his dark features, exclaimed in his deep voice: ‘And this ‘
nKosanyana
, this little princess,
n’Kosil
This little mother-to-be of a thousand generations? Surely she can only be another feather of your wing?’

Sir James, for a moment was somewhat taken aback. He could not approve of !#grave;Bamuthi walking into the house of his employers, still less doing so fully armed and practically naked. Much as he enjoyed meeting !#grave;Bamuthi again, it was not in keeping with his concept of a civilized establishment. So formally he announced her name to !#grave;Bamuthi who immediately stepped forward and holding out both his broad hands, took Luciana’s in them.

Sir James had no option but to look on helplessly while !#grave;Bamuthi exclaimed: ‘
Auck, ‘nKosi!
Beyond all doubt, before many years you will get a thousand and one brindled heifers for her.’

Luciana, knowing no Sindabele, of course, understood nothing of this. She felt only that !#grave;Bamuthi was drawn to her as she was to him. Her lively curiosity prompted her at once to ask her father for a translation of what !#grave;Bamuthi had said.

But Sir James, in his state of ambivalence about the encounter, merely said quickly, ‘Will you please leave the room now, Chisai. This man and I have business to discuss. I am certain you and Amelia still have a lot to do. I don’t want to be kept waiting again for the journey ahead of us.’

Luciana knew from experience how futile it was to argue with her father, when he used what her mother had called his ‘end-of-audience’ tone. She would have loved dearly to have stayed and yet immediately, her heart filled with disappointment, she got up and quietly left the room.

She had hardly gone when Sir James and !#grave;Bamuthi plunged back to the past, when first they had met. They did all this so happily and easily that François felt himself rather left out. So, making his excuses, he too went out, followed by Hintza, in order to fetch his rifle from his room before he did his own rounds of the farm.

He was about to make straight for his room when, through the open doorway of the dining-room, he saw Luciana at the far end with her back to him, apparently looking out of the broad, high window into the garden at the side. Her bearing was that of a person who suddenly felt herself unwanted, which François, out of his own experience of these things, could not fail to recognize.

So he changed his plans and went over to join her, so quietly that when he asked suddenly, though in a voice full of concern, ‘Why are you standing here alone?’ she swung round, startled.

Unfortunately for him she did not answer the question directly, but exclaimed in a voice sharp with frustration: ‘I’m sick of men!’

François was rendered speechless by her reply. He thought that if that were indeed her state of mind, the sooner he and Hintza left the room the better.

He may well have done so if she had not recognized his misinterpretation of her remark, and quickly added: ‘Of course I don’t mean you and Hin. I really mean Fa. He’s just like Amelia, always thinking I’m too young to be told anything that matters, and sending me away when things begin to get really interesting.’

François tried to comfort her, saying: ‘You know, !#grave;Bamuthi doesn’t speak a word of English. It wouldn’t have done you much good to stay on there. I myself thought those business things they had to discuss so uninteresting that I left of my own accord to go out and look round the farm. Perhaps you’d like to come with me instead?’

She hesitated before saying: ‘Yes, I think I’d love to.’

There was some faint reservation in her answer which François noticed. ‘Perhaps there’s something else you’d rather do? You’ve only to tell me,’ he said.

‘No…I’d love to see your farm and garden. But apart from the breakfast-room and dining-room, kitchen and my own room, I haven’t seen your home at all and I’d love to see it all before we go…This may be my last chance.’

‘Oh, that’s easy. Let’s do that first,’ François replied, relieved, and at once took her on a tour of the house.

They went over every detail of the establishment, the decoration and the glowing old Cape-Dutch furniture which Lammie kept so lovingly dusted and polished. Luciana showed growing appreciation and delight and not surprisingly, because François’s home was a product of all that was best in the experience of Lammie’s and Ouwa’s two Huguenot families. She had already warmed François’s heart by exclaiming, ‘Oh! I do so hope our new home can be as nice as yours…’ Then she hesitated and added, ‘But…’ she paused.

François had noticed how often the hope in her sentences trailed off into a despondent
but
. Yet out of politeness he had said nothing. But now he could not resist asking, ‘Why the but? Surely there’s no reason why you shouldn’t build something much nicer.’

‘Oh, it will be nice enough,’ Luciana replied, surprisingly realistic. ‘But you see, without Mummy, Fa could easily make it rather like a glorified club full of leather-backed chairs, ashtrays, sporting prints, gun-racks and all the dreary things men seem to like so much.’

Even François, with reservations of his own about Sir James, did not take quite so simplified a view of his tastes. He assumed they would be excellent, even if tainted a little with what Ouwa, whose own taste he trusted implicitly, had always described as ‘P. W.D.’ (Public Works Department). As a result he interpreted Luciana’s remark as a drift of feeling rather than a judgement. With the sense of Ouwa’s death so acute and close in his own mind he fastened on to her reference to her own mother and asked, with instinctive fellow-feeling, ‘What happened to your mother? Do you mind? Has she been dead long?’