Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms (7 page)

“
Ja
,” said Will. Her father tugged at her arm, and she bent forward. He planted one single long kiss on her forehead.

“
Ja
,” said William Silver.

After that, neither spoke. There was nothing they needed to say. Will knelt by the head of the bed, one hand on her father's bare chest, feeling the beating of his heart for hours and hours. Or perhaps only minutes. It was odd, she thought, but she couldn't feel time. Maybe the timelessness of death was here, in the room. But eventually, her dad's eyes closed, in sleep, or because he was dead, she wasn't sure, and she got up, and shut the door behind her, and picked up the rucksack she had packed with dried beef and flatbread and raw mealie, and, coming to the kitchen door, climbed over it, so that it would not squeak—she could not have borne that squeak—and without stopping for a saddle, she mounted Shumba and rode out into the bush.

W
ILL RETURNED A WEEK LATER
. She was hot and dry and resolved to new goodnesses, in her father's memory.

She was also newly thin, so bony she could almost smell her own marrow, and very hungry.

She stroked Kezia, who had scampered, shrieking with excitement, to greet her. “
Food
, Kezi!” she said as they ran up the path. “Let's get us some food. What shall we have? Raisins? Bread? Cheese . . . ?”

But everything had changed. Will stopped and stared. The house shone with a coat of yellow paint, and there were lace curtains at the windows, and the bushes of gooseberries that clustered round the kitchen door had been hacked into
a neat, subdued line. And worst of all, when Will reached the storeroom and pushed against the heavy metal door, she found it locked. Which meant she would have to ask for the key, she knew, and that would mean going into that newly curtained main room, which, before, uncurtained, had been her own sitting room, where she had taken refuge during the rains. She had played there with her father, the two of them throwing gooseberries and grapes at each other, catching them in their mouths—and once, marvelously, she had been upside down in a headstand, and her father had dropped a raisin down her nose. Will's nose swelled now with love at the memory; and her empty stomach felt drier, and the house stranger.

As Will approached the room—the room where, in the past, she had gone to make herself happy—she heard voices, high and sharp. She hesitated at the door, her long brown fingers hovering over the handle. It was carved silver, where before it had been a brass knob that fell off if you turned it too hard. She felt her skin quiver—it was all so
new
—and instead of going in she dropped to the floor and peered under the crack.

“Oh, help. Oh, help me,” whispered Will Silver.

Twenty feet in twenty heeled shoes were elegantly crossed at the ankle, and forty chair legs were ranged in a semicircle around the empty fire grate.

She would have to go in. Will had eaten nothing all day, and her stomach was beating in time with her heart, flapping against her insides, and it was too dark now to climb the banana tree by the kennels. Will had a proper respect for darkness, and for night snakes.

The door handle was stiff. Twenty eyes turned toward her. Will was suddenly all legs and joints and was aware, as she had never been in her life before, that her hair was matted in a knot at the back of her head, and her nails were mud encrusted.

She glanced around from lowered eyes. The room had become strange. It was painfully clean. Will looked in the far corner for her cobweb collection. It was gone. The chairs had been re-covered in a dull greenish satin. It was horrible. She would get the key, and get out.

“Miss Vincy?”

“Will.” Miss Vincy looked neither happy nor angry—just bored. “What have you got to say for yourself?”

“I—the storeroom's locked. Ma'am.”

There was a pause. Cynthia waited, pursed lips and raised eyebrows—

“And . . . ?”

“And so I've not eaten all day.”

“And?”

“And so I'm very hungry.”

“And?” Was she waiting for Will to go down on her knees and beg? “I don't—I don't understand. . . .”

“I'm waiting for you to apologize, young woman, for your disappearing act. Where do you think you've been?”

Will blinked. Riding in the bush wasn't an
apologizing
sort of thing, was it? It hadn't been before.

A bony woman rose from her chair and held out a plate of crust-cut-off sandwiches. “Here, dearie.”

She had meant for Will to graciously take one, but Will took hold of the plate, and would have bolted, had not an enormous woman been standing in the doorway, calling shrilly for the staff. Lazarus had gone from Sekuru Lazarus, Uncle Lazarus, friend, to “staff” overnight.

Will retreated, still clutching the plate, into the corner of the room, sliding behind the new curtains. They smelled of chemicals and some indefinable newness, which, Will reckoned, was the smell of money. She crouched, wolfing down the sandwiches, dropping bits of cucumber down her chin, ravenous.

The women had apparently decided to ignore her, and the high voices moved on. Will caught only words, but even that was cruel enough, hearing her father's life pecked into fragments by women like coarse-colored hens.

“William Silver . . . you knew him?”

“. . . no money, of course . . .”

“And not much to look at . . .”

“Oh, Jackie, don't!”

“I heard different . . . and lovely manners . . .”

“Half-witted. No loss.” That was Cynthia's voice.

“Mmmm. . . . But your Browne, dearie . . . a real catch, he is. . . .”

“Farm valued at more than a million.”

“No!” That was several voices at once.

“Yes! They lived like savages because they
liked
it, he said.”

“Cynthia'll put a stop to that.”

“And the little girl?”

“Impossible creature, I've heard.” (This in a whisper.)

“Bonny, though.”

“
Bony
, more like.”

“And the captain. He must be getting on, surely? Eighty?”

“Well, Cynthia's just cut out to be a widow. . . .”

“People die early in the bush, sweetie!” And laughter.

There was a crash. The door burst open, hit the wall, and rebounded onto the fat woman, who jumped aside. A dark-haired woman in the doorway. Will peered from under the curtain. The woman was beautiful. She had to be some relation of Miss Vincy's; the same strong legs were there, and the wide jaw.

A hush fell. The newcomer ignored the bevy of women
and spoke across the room, addressing only Miss Vincy. Her voice was soft. It commanded total silence.

“Well, Cynthia . . . it's settled. The letter came just now. Your little brat's off to England. If she ever comes out of the bush, that is. It's in London. Very helpful people at the agency in Harare; nobody could possibly complain. The fees are astronomical, my dear; money puts a stop to gossip.” She laughed, a purring little laugh. “And after that, my sweet sister, . . . everything will be perfectly delightful.”

But instead of rapture or relief, the room was filling up with awkward silence. One of the women let out a single nervous laugh, cut short, like a twig snapping.

Miss Vincy gave a sigh. “She's behind the curtain.”

The dark-haired woman crossed the room in three paces. Will saw the feet approaching and strained away as the woman snatched back the drapes. Will froze, crouched, still clutching the plate. Such utter desolation had flooded her body that it was forcing its way out in a single, shameful tear.
Let it not be true
, she thought. It mustn't be true. What was going on? England! England was a mythic place, a huge space to make up stories about, but not to live in, not
now
. Not now that Dad wasn't with her, Dad who had hated it, said it was cold and full of money and cars. And
leave
! Leave the farm and the trees and the grass and Africa!

The woman's lip lifted half an inch in a sneer. “Out.”

Will rose, the skin on the back of her thigh sticking to her calves. The woman's face was hard. Was this, then, what all women were like, after the intoxicating gruffness of men? Will tried to shut her nose against the sharp, synthetic perfume.

“The plate.”

Will had reached the door by the time the woman had spoken again. Will looked at the plate, surprised it was still there; at Cynthia Vincy; at the dark-haired woman. “I won't!” she whispered. She was Will, afraid of nothing; Will of the bush and Will of the wind; Will who jumped down waterfalls and swam faster than Simon; Simon's best friend; and Will, daughter of Lilibet and William. She straightened her back and knees. Unconsciously, she had been moving toward the door in a cramped crouch. Hot, stormy anger seized hold of her arms, and she hurled the plate to the floor, inches from the woman's feet, and it smashed into twelve pieces that flew across the room like scattering birds.

W
ITHIN A WEEK OF WILL'S
return, Captain Browne and Cynthia Vincy were married. It happened with the unstoppable smoothness of the inevitable. Everyone expected it.

Everyone, that is, except Will. It was too horrible to expect. But even worse, since that woman had spoken of that something—that
what
?—in England, Will had been unable to think clearly. She didn't dare ask the captain, in case it turned out to be true. The idea of it scratched round her head, searching for a way out. Will, who was never ill, began to get headaches at night; it was, she supposed, the idea, trying to escape.

•  •  •

Captain Browne did not break the news of the wedding as well as he had intended to. He was flustered and his shirt was dark with sweat patches.

“Hello, little Wildcat,” he said, and then they both flinched, because that was her father's name for her. Browne hastily amended his mistake.

“Will, my girl. You like Miss Vincy, don't you?”

The time had passed for lying. Will felt sure Cynthia Vincy had used the death of her father to worm her way into the house. Why, after all, was she still here, weeks later? She's
false
, Will thought fiercely, false as “dammit.” And she sucked in her lips and bit them together.

There was something so profoundly young about the gesture that Captain Browne was forced to close his eyes in a long blink of pain.

“Come, Will. Let's walk.”

The path led them past the rockery, past the huge aloes, past the bold colors of the strelitzias, to the bed of flame lilies. Will squatted to sniff at their growing smell, but the captain stood rigid, staring sightlessly at the red flowers, which were curling brown at the edges. He felt unaccountably nervous.

“Will . . . chooky, I've got some . . . ah, some news, my girl. . . .”

“Yes, Captain?” Will spoke very quietly.
“Ja?”
She held
her tongue between her teeth. It was the best way to keep the wrong words from getting out.

Browne didn't seem to hear. “The thing is, Will—Will, my girl, are you listening, hey?—Cynthia Vincy will be joining us here. Miss Vincy has said she will be my . . . wife.”

Will choked on her tongue.

“Well? What do you think of that, chook?”

“Oh,” said Will. “Oh.” She could barely hear herself. “Your
wife
.”

To Will the word sounded with the clang of catastrophe. And it was
ridiculous
, she cried inside, because beneath the gloss of Cynthia Vincy's nylon stockings (themselves
ridiculous
in the heat) the woman was shoddy, tawdry, empty. Will screwed up her eyes. She wondered how it was possible the captain had not seen it. He was slow, sometimes, and cantankerous and strict, but he was generous and honest.
Wife!
She wanted to roar, to spit at him. How could he not see?