Mayenga Farm (11 page)

write stuff that sells?"

"He has enthusiasm and an object."

"Is he nice, Ren?"

"Why not get to know him and find out?"

"I would if . . . Oh, dear. Here's Kent coming back already. Please don't say anything more about it."

They met him at the door, and all three walked together, past the borrowed car and out on to the grass verge, where Kent's car was parked.

"You two had better get in the back. Rennie can use this rug, as she hasn't a coat. We'll call at Mayenga and drop her first, and then go on to town." Was there a malicious note in his voice as he concluded: "If your mother is fully recovered, Jackie, we might slip along to the Pinetree for an hour or so?"

Rennie gathered the rug about her and got well down into her corner. She felt cold and hot and uncertain in the head, as if she were in for a bout of fever ... or something even more devastating.

THE rain came, sheets of it, hammering at the iron roof like a million furies, tumbling about the house and turning the garden into a lake, from which Rennie's rockery emerged like numerous small islands draped with seaweed. Prized plants floated away with the drifting twigs, and a valuable layer of topsoil washed down the paths and out to the track. Between storms, when the water vanished into the thirsting land and the paths dried, the garden had a panting, scraggy look, as if it were gulping air before the next onslaught.

There was hardly time to view the wreckage in the vicinity of the house before fresh purple billows came up and discharged their burdens to the mighty fireworks of tropical thunder and lightning. The drought had broken with a vengeance.

The two men were writing happily, Michael breathing life into his characters and creating situations to develop his theme, and Adrian setting down the historical and economic facts upon which the story was to be based. Michael said he was able to lift whole long paragraphs from Adrian's beautifully-written notes, which greatly pleased the older man. Rennie knew that her father was writing as much to satisfy an inner need as to hasten the novel into print.

She was glad for him and overjoyed to hear at every meal about the steady progress both men were making, but she was more lonely than at any time since the void period just after her mother’s death when the world had assumed a blank unreality. Events conspired to harass her, too.

At seven o’clock one morning she came into the kitchen to find the stove cold and still containing yesterday's ashes. Something must have happened to George. At once Rennie lit the primus and set the tin kettle to boil, and for breakfast she served fruit, steamed eggs and coffee. Rye biscuits had to take the place of toast.

George's hut, when she hurried there, was empty, the bed made and the piccaninnies’ mattresses neatly stacked against the wall with the two grey blankets on top. It smelled too clean to have been used overnight, and she had a horrid suspicion that George, on whom she relied for so much, and Sophie, who did the laundry, had succumbed to the call of the bush. They had lived at Mayenga without break for fifteen months, which was something of a record for pure natives.

George and Sophie would not be so easily replaced, and with

Adrian absorbed, Rennie would have plenty to do outside the house. For three days she cooked and cleaned, did the dairy chores, gave the boys their jobs and rode round periodically to ensure that they were not slacking. This last was the most thankless task of all, for she had no doubt that the moment she was out of sight the work diminished.

Then George came back, doleful and half-hearted about staying. Sophie had been complaining for some time that she would be ill if she remained much longer away from her native village. It was not good for a young woman to be distant from her people; it made her a bad wife. So he had taken her and the piccaninnies to her father’s house. Oh, yes, missus, he would work at Mayenga and go home once a month, but he must have wages. He had never paid Sophie’s father the full lobola for his wife, and now the old man demanded it. . . salt and mealies every month for a year, and two she-goats into the bargain. George shrugged and sadly dipped his head. It seemed that Rennie was to lose her wash-girl and George would cost her three pounds a month and his food. A depressing blow.

She and George did the household washing between them, but he could not be induced to wield the heavy, old-fashioned flatirons. Once, for a few weeks, he had been laundry-boy in an hotel, and he knew such implements as streamlined electric irons existed. The flat-irons, heated on the wood stove and needing to be wiped carefully and held with a pad, he eyed with loathing and distrust So Rennie added ironing to her tasks, and battled with an hysterical desire to rip some of the countless shirts to shreds. Two men, wearing at least one clean shirt every day! What could possibly happen next?

It was Michael who noticed that the dog was off-color. He had formed the habit of taking a quick walk into the veld each evening before bed, and Rufus, who had annexed Michael without question, invariably trotted out with him and sedately kept a yard ahead all the way. He was not a particularly adventurous hound.

That night, Michael was back in ten minutes, leading Rufus by the collar into the light of the lounge.

"The old fellow’s got no life in him and he seems to stagger," he said. "I looked out at the back and his dinner's untouched. I wonder what's got into him?"

Rennie forgot her aching limbs and slipped on to the floor beside the recumbent ridgeback.

"He didn't eat much yesterday. I meant to give him a powder this morning, and forgot. Poor Rufus" — she stroked his ears — "I wish you could tell us what's wrong."

"He may have got hold of an old bone," suggested her father. "Or perhaps it’s the heat"

"But it isn’t so not now the storms are finished, and anyway, he's never minded the heat before."

"He can have a powder tonight and if he’s no better in the morning, we'll run him in to the vet."

Next morning Rufus looked more normal. He drank milk and waved his tail and slowly walked wherever Rennie went. So she petted him, dosed him again, and left him to rest in the shade.

It was a day full of upsets. The boy she occasionally used in the dairy spoilt several pounds of butter; a note came from the provision merchant in town cancelling his standing order for eggs; after lunch one of the boys hacked a slice of flesh from his thigh with a scythe and had to be driven to the native hospital the other side of Gravenburg. When Rennie got back there was the meat to cut up and dole oat, the mealie meal to be weighed and distributed, and the usual Friday evening round of the outhouses.

She cooked steak for dinner, but was too tired to eat any. "You're worrying over the dog," Adrian said severely, "He’s had three condition powders at four-hourly intervals. We can’t do more for him."

Remorsefully, for she had again forgotten poor Rufus, Rennie took out the scraps, and found the dog lying outstretched, the corrugations of his ribs horribly visible, his tongue drooping in the dust. Frightened, she called her father and Michael, and raised the dog's head for them to see his swollen eyesockets.

Adrian spoke heavily. "Something uncanny is having a go at him. The vet ought to have seen him today. The morning may be too late."

"Go indoors, Rennie," said Michael. "We can’t let the old boy suffer."

"We’ll take him to the vet now," she whispered.

"It won’t do any good."

"It may." She was desperately eager. "I’ll get out the car while you wrap him in his rug and carry him down. We must do this for him."

So much for their decision to use the car only once a week, on business. First the injured native and now a dying dog. But Rennie didn’t think of that as they raced into town. The beloved animal was still breathing, and she had great faith in modern animal medicine. When the car stopped Adrian slipped out first, to make sure that the vet was free. Shortly, he returned.

"He’s there, and willing to examine Rufus right away. Bring him, will you, Michael? Perhaps you’d better stay where you are, Rennie."

Too spent to argue, even had she preferred to accompany them, Rennie agreed. There was a nightmarish quality in the interval between their taking the dog and returning without him. An outsize moon — the same one that was young on the night of her visit to Elands Ridge — whitened the roads and buildings, and tipped with silver-gilt the date palms which lined this wide, residential thoroughfare. It created a lovely, eerie daylight, with clear- cut shadows.

She could hear natives singing just as they did in the kraal at Mayenga to the pulsing of a drum.

Soon, the men came. Michael sat wordless in the back of the car, and Adrian opened Rennie’s door.

"Move over, my dear," he said gently, "I’ll drive."

"What was it?" she asked tonelessly.

"A fever of some kind, through a germ which he probably picked up down by the river. He wouldn't have got over it. We might have carried him home again, but I thought it best to pay the two guineas."

Rennie nodded, and turned to look out of the window. People dubbed the English mad because they fussed over dogs and mourned their passing. She must try not to grieve, but she would miss Rufus, his silly stiff tail rotating, and his ecstatic grunts as he made himself comfortable on a lounge rug of an evening. He had become a dear member of the family.

The week-end dragged. The men collaborated on Sunday morning and decided to take the rest of the day off, though Rennie knew they would be at it again after supper. The novel was becoming an obsession with both of them.

She had ordered tea on the stoep and was hurriedly getting into fresh clothes when a commotion at the front of the house drew her to the dining-room window.

Jackie, in a tan silk suit with a white collar and short sleeves that enhanced her rounded arms, was chatting animatedly with Adrian while Michael led Adela to a seat in the shade. Rennie's first reaction was purely the housewife's: thank heaven she had baked this morning. She flew to her room, smoothed her hair and

powdered her nose; after which she flashed an amended order to George, in the kitchen, and got out the best cups.

When she came out, Jackie exclaimed and hugged her.

"You're going to forgive us for not calling before, aren't you Ren? We did want to so much. Adela's got over her indisposition, and we're both back in circulation. Darling, it's wonderful to see you again."

For all the world as if she had a further favor to beg, thought Rennie wryly. But Jac couldn't help being that way. It was her nature.

"Come into the stoep and have some tea," she said. "We're all English, so we won't object to facing south."

Michael brought out extra chairs and arranged all five in a semicircle round the table, which was pushed against the stoep wall. Adela had an end seat, then came Rennie, Jackie, Michael and Adrian.

"Your simply gorgeous view," cooed Jackie. "Those big trees and the green slopes of veld! I do love the country this side of Gravenburg. It's so lush."

"And not nearly so monotonous as one would imagine," submitted Adela with approval. "I confess that the summer heat is somewhat overpowering for me, but you young people stand up to it splendidly."

"I don't know," said Michael, assiduously passing cups and offering biscuits. "I perspire buckets just sitting indoors and doing nothing more energetic than pushing a pen. It’s almost demoralizing. I wouldn't mind so much if one could fit in a bathe now and then."

"But can't you? Don't you dip in the river?" enquired Jackie blandly, for all the world as if she had never, at any time, put the same question to Rennie.

"It’s full of weevils and things," he explained carefully.

"Oh, yes," brightly. "Kent told me the same. He doesn't swim in the river, either. He's lucky. He has a marvellous natural pool on his land, which is to be cleared and made safe for bathing."

My pool, thought Rennie, a prickling sensation behind her eyelids. It was sacred no longer. He had taken Jackie there.

"Have you seen it?" she was driven to ask.

"Not the pool itself, darling — you have to climb and I wasn't shod for it."

Michael was watching Jackie.

"Kent Bradfield's quite a noise in these parts, isn't he?" he said. "A man of property, devilish handsome, great shakes on a horse and, it goes without saying, fatal to women. Makes a fellow like me feel cheap."

"I don't know," observed Adrian with that humorous little smile of his. "Kent has literary taste but he hasn't much imagination — he believes only in tangible commodities. He couldn't write a novel."

Obscurely, Rennie was glad that Kent couldn't write a novel. He wasn't fictitious romance and rose-water, he was of the earth and pungent-smelling horses; he was big and lean and brown, and incredibly strong; to him, literature was recreation, nothing more.

Jackie allowed Michael a brief, dazzling glance from widened eyes.

"I've heard about your book from Rennie. I do hope it will be a simply staggering success."

"So do I," he said, with quiet emphasis.

Jackie talked of the polo and dancing, and of a perfect treasure of an Indian tailor who completed clothes to one's own design within forty-eight hours. She had also discovered the duckiest store, kept by a Malay, where one could purchase dress and hair ornaments in beaten gold and silver. Michael, it seemed, caused scarcely a ripple in the gay tenor of her life. After tea, when he casually suggested a walk in the garden, Jackie instantly jumped up, but she slipped her hand into Adrian's arm and toted him along, too.

Left alone with Adela, Rennie relaxed. Now that her attitude had forced Michael to comprehend precisely where he stood, Jackie was eminently capable of managing him. She would be cool and friendly, as though he were indeed a connection of Rennie's to whom she was graciously extending her acquaintanceship.

Daintily, Adela used her napkin.

"You have a good cook-boy, Rennie. This question of native servants worries me. How am I going to cope with them if we set up house in Cape Town?"

"You won't have to. The servants there are trained Cape Coloreds, and I've heard that you get them from a registry office, complete with testimonials. They have no native language or customs — they're like half-caste white folk, and quite easy to deal with."