The Fever Tree (21 page)

“Having never seen a case of smallpox, I don’t feel absolutely qualified to say.”

“But you signed the slip regardless.”

“We’ve all signed it,” he said, draining his glass. “There isn’t a doctor in Kimberley who refused.”

“But you don’t believe it?” Edwin persisted.

The man gave a rattling cough and stood up to phlegm outside. When he came back he said, “Have you been to Ebden Street? To the new stock market?” He picked up the bottle from the chest and poured out another fistful. “You should go down and take a look. Kimberley has changed since you’ve been away. More than thirty joint stock companies floated in the last two months, and a handful more every day. There isn’t a man in Kimberley who isn’t invested. They can’t get in fast enough.” He waved his glass of whiskey. “Lawyers, servants, dentists, barbers, magistrates, farriers, gun runners—they’re all at it. Every man a diamond digger!” he said with a flourish, then pulled something out of his pocket and thrust it at Edwin. “Look here. One hundred shares at one pound apiece bought a week ago. If I sold them tomorrow they’d go for thirty percent more than I bought them for. I’m telling you,” he said, gesturing with his glass at them both, “more money has changed hands in Kimberley in the last few months than over the last ten years put together.”

“And your point is?”

“You should invest.”

“Thank you, but it’s not my game.”

“You don’t need money, you fool. The Standard Bank is lending! But that’s not the point.” He ran a hand over his face, as if trying to clear it from a fug of alcohol. “There’s an awful lot riding on the stock market. Too much perhaps.”

The floorboards creaked as the man walked across the tent to set down his glass. “Think about it, Matthews. We’re all sucking from the same teat here.”

Then he tipped his hat at Frances, and picked his way across the yard in the dark, singing a rolling tune to himself under his breath.

“Who was he?” Frances asked, when he had gone.

“Dr. Robinson—he’s a friend of Baier’s.”

They sat in silence, until eventually Frances said, “It can’t be smallpox, Edwin. One of the doctors would have spotted it.”

“Not if Baier was putting pressure on them.”

“Those signatures on the slip—they’d all be prepared to lie just because he tells them to?”

“You saw how determined he was to keep smallpox out of Kimberley. He can’t afford an epidemic. Anyway,” he said, standing up, “there’s no point worrying about it now. I’ll know tomorrow one way or another.”

•   •   •

W
HEN
F
RANCES
WOKE
she thought it was still the middle of the night. Despite the blankets Edwin had insisted on bringing, she had been chilled to the bone, and she was shivering. Edwin had lit a lamp and was already half dressed, pulling on his shirt. A baby was wailing close by, and there was the sound of a man racking up phlegm. The tent was full of smoke, and it stung her eyes. She propped herself carefully up on one elbow, trying to stop the cold air getting into the sheets.

“What time is it?”

“Five o’clock.” Edwin smoothed his hair down, and pulled on a jacket. “There’s food in the box and drinking water in the jug. And money”—he nodded his head in the direction of the ledge above the bed—“should you need it. Everything in Kimberley is double the price it should be. Particularly fuel. So spend carefully.”

A few minutes later he was gone, taking the lamp with him. Her water had turned to icy slush in the glass. She lay looking up at the holes in the canvas, turning pale and cold in the dawn light.

She slept and woke again to a drone of flies which batted against the walls of the tent and crawled across her skin. There was a foul, cloying smell which she couldn’t locate in any one place, but seemed to seep out of the pores of the canvas. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, pulled her hair into a rough knot, and sorted through her trunk. Folded at the top was her black woolen bodice; too warm to wear during the day. She pulled out her gloves and turned them over. They had holes where the fingers ought to be, and she put them to one side. She would go without gloves for the time being. At the bottom of the trunk were her two cotton dresses. They had just about survived the last six months intact, and Sarah had dyed them both brown to hide the dust stains on the fabric. She chose the cleaner of the two, but when she put it on she saw with dismay that the cotton had begun to wear through at the sleeves. She would have to talk to Edwin about having some new dresses made.

All she needed to feel half human was a cup of tea. At the front of the tent was the wooden box full of their provisions, lined with lead. The sun caught the edge of it, and the metal corners were already warm to touch. Inside was a box of tea leaves, a jar of coffee, sugar, a few cans of meat, a bag stuffed with biltong, and some powdered milk.

Tea, she thought again. There was a blackened kettle, but the fire had gone out. After a few minutes spent trying to light it, she had used up all the matches. She gave a cry of frustration. Her body craved something hot to drink. Her eyes were tired and dry, and her head throbbed. It was already too warm, and a thin, hot breeze blew sand in under the side of the canvas. She looked at the tins of meat, but had no notion how to open them. There was a chunk of yesterday’s bread in the box, which splintered like wood when she broke it open, but she moistened it with some water and dried milk, and ate.

The water carts obviously didn’t come out this far to dampen the earth, and when she stepped into the yard, a fine red dust sifted through the hot air and furred her tongue, dried her throat, and caught in her eyelashes. Mangwa, tethered outside, had been watered and was munching at a pile of hay under the shade of a piece of tarpaulin. A pile of rubbish was heaped up outside, spilling over the fence into their yard. There were rags, rusted tins and sardine boxes, broken wine crates, paper shirt collars, and one old boot. Flies sucked in and out of brandy bottles, their labels faded and peeling in the sun. A dog of nondescript breeding with a coat tufted with mange lay on its side on a spread of paper. It was a bitch, with swollen bags of red skin and a narrow rib cage which heaved up and down with alarming speed. Somewhere in the distance a building was being constructed, and there was the sound of a hammer, and the knocking of iron poles.

Two tents were visible, not twenty feet away. In the yard of the first she could see a thin, naked black child scratching in the soil, and a native woman holding a baby. The canvas roof bulged in under the heavy weight of dust. A donkey, with hobbled front legs and withers as sharp as a mountain range, ran his muzzle hopefully through the dirt. They had a smoking fire which the woman prodded now and then with an iron. When she did, the smoke would billow into Frances’s tent, making her eyes water.

In the yard of the other tent, a man dressed in overalls was rinsing a cup and pouring out coffee with bachelor efficiency. She could smell the warm, bitter deliciousness of it, and she had to force herself to look away. She stepped up to Mangwa and ran her hands over his ears, one by one. He nodded his head irritably, not wanting to be bothered while he ate. The boy in the yard opposite stood up, moaned, and squatted over a bowl.

She rested one hand on the zebra’s withers and swatted away a fly. Another came to rest on her arm, and another crawled across her nose. The boy squatted over the bowl again, whimpering. When his mother shouted at him, he picked it up in both hands and walked out of the yard towards a small iron shed not far from where Frances was standing. He yanked open the door. There was a whining noise, and a thick black cloud of flies blew out into the sun. The smell hit her like a punch, and she doubled over, coughing. That was where the stench came from then.

She found a metal beaker in the tent and dipped it into the barrel of water outside. It was warm and tasted dank and slimy, but she dipped again and drank more, washing away the smell of the place and the filth. All the debris of twenty thousand people seemed to be festering here, out in the sun. She had thought Kimberley might have a kind of romantic charm. She had read the diary of a girl who had lived on the gold fields in California, but their camps had been clean and orderly, and the diggers shared a common purpose. In Kimberley, people seemed to be barely surviving.

Later, she forced herself to visit the outhouse, pulling open the metal door and stepping into a storm of flies. There were black flies, green flies, blue flies. They settled on her face and buzzed in her ears. A pit had been dug in the soil, but newspaper and feces had clogged it up, spilling over onto the floor. Flies crawled inside the paper, gorging themselves. She stumbled outside, retching from the smell. It was too foul to stay in there for more than a second, so she went back into the tent and squatted over the chamber pot, then emptied it in the outhouse, just like the native boy had done. But it would have to be washed out. She found soap, but it wouldn’t dissolve in the cold water. She used a rag to clean the bowl then couldn’t get the smell off her hands. She wondered how she would ever wash in this place, or whether she would ever feel clean.

The man from the tent opposite came by later, carrying his bedding rolled up under one arm. He stood at the entrance to her yard and nodded his hat at her. He was dressed in corduroy, with hands and face dark brown and worn like the leather on a saddle, and he had a heavy, untrimmed beard. He looked worn-out but tough, his face full of small nicks and scars.

“You’ve just arrived?”

She nodded.

“I’ve got something here for you,” he said, in a burring Cornish accent.

“What is it?” she called out, glad to talk to someone who was English.

“You’ll have to come and get it.”

She walked over, and he handed her a tin of condensed milk.

“Why?” she asked, unsure whether to take it.

“Because you look like you could do with it.” His face broke open into a warm smile.

“What’s a Cornishman doing here?”

“The magnates spent a fortune bringing over fancy machinery, but once they got it here they realized they hadn’t a clue how to work it. So they shipped a bunch of us over to help.”

“You’re an engineer?”

“Not exactly, but I’m used to working underground.” He winked at her and walked off, whistling softly.

Later, she found a rock and beat away at the tin until she had burst a small hole in its lid, then raised it to her lips and sucked out the sweetness. The dense sugar tasted very faintly of the metal from the tin. Occasionally she stopped to lick at the edges, cleaning the stickiness from its surface with her tongue. It wasn’t until she put it down that she noticed William Westbrook watching her. He stood on the other side of the fence, stroking Mangwa’s head, dressed in buckskin breeches and leather riding boots. She thought she could hear them creak as he walked into the yard. Her heart pounded and her blood beat thickly in her head. She tugged at her dress and pushed her hair behind her ears. How long had he been standing there?

His white shirt was unbuttoned a little way, and she could see a triangle of his chest covered in tight, black hair. He walked towards her, and her spine tightened. She had imagined him so many times, but it was nothing like seeing him standing in front of her, real and unpredictable. She stood up, wiping her hands against the sides of her skirts and clasping them behind her back, acutely conscious of her fingernails caked with grime and her brown, fraying dress, which looked so much worse next to the starched brightness of his shirt.

“You don’t look very pleased to see me,” he said, smiling.

Her mouth was dry, and she licked her lips. Why hadn’t she at least plaited her hair this morning? The knot had worked itself loose, and she scraped the cloud of red curls off her shoulders. “I’m surprised, that’s all. We’ve only just arrived.” She looked around the desolate yard with its stench of raw sewage and had an image of herself as a crow perched on top of a heap of rubbish. She willed him to turn around and go, but there was no stopping him. He was already walking into the yard with the louche grace she remembered only too well, his boots stirring up small eddies of dust. He looked in rude health. His skin had turned the color of walnut in the sun, and when he smiled at her his teeth flashed white through his beard. He looked older, darker, and more solid than she remembered, not quite the same as she had thought he would be. This strangeness, coupled with the memory of his hands on her body, molding it into the shape of his desire, unnerved her, and she couldn’t speak.

“Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

She colored, and as if reading her mind, he said, “You should see the way some of the diggers live. It makes this yard look like a palace.”

She gave him a grateful smile. “How did you know where to find me?”

“Edwin Matthews is building something of a reputation for himself. You’re not difficult to find.” When she didn’t say anything, he said, “Frances, if you’re not sure what to say to me, you could always offer me a coffee.”

Her blush deepened, and she felt suddenly as if he was exposing her, coming here. She turned away from him, kneeling down and opening the box to look for coffee, but instead pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. The floorboards creaked behind her, and after a moment she felt the weight of his hand on her neck—thumb on spine, palm on shoulder—and she made a gulping sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “It’s so silly,” she said, “but I haven’t a clue how to make coffee.” She stood up, turning round to face him, clutching the jar of coffee. “I’m hopeless. I can’t even light a fire.”

“Hasn’t he shown you?” William asked, his eyebrows raised in disapproval.

She shrugged. “We only arrived yesterday. It probably never occurred to him that I didn’t know how.”

He looked as though he was going to say something disparaging about Edwin, but thought better of it. He picked up a contraption that stood by the ashes of their fire, made of two tins sealed one on top of the other. She hadn’t noticed it before.

“You don’t need to light the fire for coffee. That’s what this boiler’s for.”