The Fever Tree (31 page)

The officers took the saddles off the horses, feeling round the corners of the leather. Finally, with studied calm, the sergeant removed the saddlebag and unbuckled the three straps. He dipped his hand inside and pulled out a handful of something which glinted in the sun. He pushed them round in his palm. His shoulders relaxed, and his face seemed to lose its tension. This was it. He must have found the diamonds. But a second later he let the contents fall through his fingers into the sand, and she saw that what she had thought were stones were in fact nothing more than cartridges.

The sergeant scraped the sweat from his forehead, and William turned his head and gave a gruff laugh. “You didn’t think they were diamonds, did you, Sergeant?”

The sergeant turned to his officers. “Search the boys.”

The two native boys offered themselves up. She knew the routine, and though she had turned her back when they were stripped, she heard the glucking of open mouths as the officers slipped in their fingers, feeling round the inside of the boys’ cheeks and down the backs of their throats until they retched and coughed. They would probe the boys’ ears and run hands down their bodies, checking for small slices in the flesh which could be turned into pockets. There was a clinking noise—the unbuckling of belts—and protesting grunts as they were bent forward so the officers could slide their hands round the boys’ buttocks.

“Nothing, Sir. What should we do?” The sergeant’s men shuffled nervously in their pockets for cigarettes and looked at him accusingly. Their brash confidence was dissolving fast. Now that they had lost the possibility of bringing down a great diamond trader, they were ashamed, disowning the enthusiasm for scandal that had gripped them just a few moments before. And there was an undercurrent of fear rippling through the group. Baier would protect his cousin, and he had a reputation for reprisal.

The sergeant paused. The veins in his neck were swollen, and a thin trickle of sweat ran into his shirt. “Mr. Westbrook,” he called to William, “you’re free to go. Thank you for your patience.”

“Didn’t find what you were looking for, Sergeant?”

The officers swung up into their saddles, turned their horses east, and rode back to Kimberley.

•   •   •

T
HEY
RODE
ON
UNDER
the searing midday sun. Frances’s shawl was too hot, and she let it slip back onto the saddle. The soft, red hairs that ran up the backs of her arms began to singe and curl. Her lips were dry, and her tongue, thick with dust, kept flicking moisture into the corners of her mouth.

In a supple movement, William swung round in the saddle to look at her. She blinked at him through the heat. He watched her carefully, unsmiling. He hadn’t forgiven her. Her blood stopped, then returned with a rapid pulse. One hand fluttered nervously at her throat.

“Water,” he called to one of the boys, who dug his heels into his mule and trotted up alongside, holding out a flask. He looked straight at her while he drank, liquid spilling down his chin, mingling with the sweat that stained his shirt dark. When he pushed the flask away from him, his face creased and his lips stretched. It was a smile of stealth, and though she was so thirsty her tongue had sealed itself to the roof of her mouth, she couldn’t bring herself to ask for water.

When they arrived at the straggle of corrugated-iron shacks that marked the end of British territory, William pulled up his horse and waited for her to ride alongside. He took her hand. “They frightened you? Frances, surely you didn’t imagine I would hide the diamonds where they could find them?”

A laugh spilled out of her, and he smiled back. She was relieved that they had made it. And William seemed conciliatory. He swung himself off his horse, his rifle hanging loosely across his back, and helped her dismount, holding Mangwa’s lead rope in one hand while he supported her with the other.

Then he pulled Mangwa towards him, grasping his head tightly in one hand. She watched him run his hands down the zebra’s muscled flank. The stripes rippled under his fingers. Sweat, like froth on a shore, had smudged the perfect lines of his coat, leaving a wave of salt. Mangwa moved nervously under his touch, ears flicking back, stamping his back legs and crossing them away from him.

He handed the zebra to a boy, who led him to the
kraal
. Mangwa nudged his pockets, sensing he was about to be fed. The boy slipped off his halter, and the zebra trotted past him to the manger, snatching at the hay in greedy mouthfuls.

William walked towards the
kraal
and in a swift movement swung the rifle off his back. She realized, suddenly, what was about to happen, and cried out to Mangwa. The zebra jerked his head up and looked over at her. She was running towards William when the shot rang out. The zebra leapt into the air, jerking awkwardly like a puppet on strings. A tremor ran through his body. He groaned, and his hind legs collapsed against the fence of the
kraal
. It buckled under him with a sharp crack. She reached him just as he fell. There wasn’t any blood, but the eye that faced her was white and sightless.

She managed to lift his head and untwist it so that the weight of it was in her lap. A soft mucus oozed from his mouth, flecked with blood, and his lips were drawn back, clenched round his teeth. She heard William talking behind her, and one of the boys came into the
kraal
carrying a panga
.

“Get out,” she shouted at him, but the boy just stopped and stared at her with his mouth half open. William ducked under the
kraal
fence, and her voice broke into a hoarse scream. “What do you want with him? Leave him alone!” She stood up and threw her fists at him, hitting him on his chest, on his shoulders, digging her nails into his neck. He grasped her hands and held her off. Arms were wrapping themselves around her waist, pulling her away. It was Leger, dragging her backwards. William crouched down beside the boy and put a hand on Mangwa’s withers. Frances kicked out at Leger’s legs, screaming with rage, and threw her head back against him, hoping to connect with his jaw. She missed, and his hand clasped her open throat. His fingers tightened their grip until she could scarcely breathe, then he slowly twisted one of her arms behind her back. Her shoulder socket locked in a sickening, overwhelming lurch of pain, and she stopped shouting.

“That’s it,” Leger said, his breath moist against her ear. He pushed her up against the fence, his weight crushing the air out of her lungs. Something slid down her neck, and she saw out of the corner of her eye the gold chain William had given her uncoil itself and land in the dust at her feet. She struggled again, but he held her down and gave a slow, satisfied chuckle. “I didn’t think you’d have so much fight in you.”

She couldn’t move her body, but she could turn her head. The boy was in the
kraal
. He took out his panga and slit the zebra open from chest to sheath. It was a neat incision. The stomach sac spilled out onto the ground, swollen and white and shiny, like a deformed fetus; then the guts, in a purple trail. The boy ran the tip of the knife down the smooth white membrane of the stomach, and it split under the gentle pressure of the blade. There was a sigh of exhalation, and a green-brown chaff pushed out onto the dirt of the
kraal
floor. William leant forward, his head resting on the ribs of the zebra, and thrust his hand inside the stomach. He grunted and worked his arm in further, until his elbow disappeared and then his shoulder. Finally, he gave a cry of triumph. His hand sucked out, and with it came a small package wrapped up in a tight ball. Then a second, and then a few moments later, a third. She knew what they contained.

F
rances didn’t speak for three days. They stayed in a grotty boarding house waiting for their luggage to catch up with them, and she watched with gritted teeth as two natives heaved Mangwa’s body onto a cart and took it away for meat. It was her fault that he was dead. She had brought him here, and she had failed to protect him.

William treated her silence as he would the spoilt willfulness of a child, barely acknowledging her. He spent every waking minute with Leger, coming to bed at dawn and snoring heavily through the hours when she lay in bed, trapped between him and the peeling plaster wall, wondering how she could have got it all so wrong.

On the third morning, she woke hot-headed and thick with sleep. The muscles in her body were tight and sore, and when she bent to lace her boots the blood beat heavily in her head. William came in and began packing his things.

“We’re leaving,” he said, glancing at her sitting on the bed.

“I’m not going,” she said quietly.

“She speaks,” he exclaimed, in mock wonder. “Look, the wagon is packed. We’ve got to be out of here in half an hour if we’re to leave today. I suggest you hurry up and start getting your things together, or you’ll be running after us.” He spoke in a light, practical voice, as if nothing had changed between them. He even smiled at her, passing a hand through his hair, which was very slightly damp with sweat. “And I don’t advise running in this heat.” He turned to leave, then paused at the door. Perhaps he was disconcerted by her continued silence. When he spoke, it was in a serious, conciliatory voice. “Frances, we’ve got money now. We can do anything we please. I’ll buy up gold fields in the north. We’ll have everything we could ever want in Johannesburg. You’ll feel better once you get there.”

She didn’t say anything, and taking her silence as progress he came and sat on the end of the bed, next to her. She didn’t like to have him sitting so close. “You’ll think I should have told you, but how could I have done?” he asked tenderly, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “You would never have let me. And besides, we were lucky I did. It was pretty close with those officers. Other men might have been caught.” He took her hand and she let him hold it, and he took this as a positive sign.

“Really, you should be thanking me,” he said. She felt as if she didn’t belong to her body, as if she were listening to him from far off. She could feel the touch of his hand on her skin but couldn’t relate it in any way to herself. “Don’t you see?” He kissed her knuckles. His lips were cold. “This is our ticket to freedom.”

“At what cost?”

“Frances, be practical. I know you liked the zebra, but there were more important things at stake.”

“You let Leger touch me.”

“You were hysterical,” he said in a soothing voice. “You needed calming down.”

There was silence for a moment. William, looking as if he thought the conversation was over, stood up. She realized that the whole thing bored him. He had no instinct for the change that had taken place in her.

He headed towards the door, and she spoke to his back in a low voice. “A man came to my husband when we were in Kimberley. It was the middle of the night. He was a native and he was hurt, bleeding. Do you know what it was about?”

He turned to face her. The laziness had gone from his face. She had caught his attention. “How should I know about every wounded kaffir in Kimberley?”

“Because he had a number pinned to his shirt. He was one of Baier’s men.”

“Baier has hundreds of natives working for him. I can’t tell one from another most of the time.”

“Number sixty-four,” she said. “He died in my lap. His injuries were horrific. Surely you would have heard about it?”

He swore under his breath. “Is this some game of yours? Always trying to pen me into a corner?”

“You knew?”

He looked steadily at her, his jaw set to one side, his face solidifying into an expression of brutality. “Yes, I knew.”

She was beyond being scared. She needed the truth. “What happened?”

“He was caught with a diamond sewn into his thigh. Baier wanted him punished.”

“Who did he ask to do it?”

He turned his back on her and opened the door. “We’re leaving in ten minutes. If you intend to come with us, you should get a move on.”

“There was a leather strap on his wrist,” she persisted. “What was it for?”

“I don’t know. They probably dragged him about a bit.”

“On horses?”

“Yes, on horses. Christ, the man was a thief, Frances. He knew full well what risks he was taking.”

She paused. Something had occurred to her which she hadn’t seen before. “Was he one of your boys?”

“Meaning what?” he asked, in a voice that was flat with a dangerous sarcasm, shutting the door again.

“Were you paying the man to steal diamonds from Baier’s claims?”

William didn’t say anything.

“What would Baier have said if the man had told him?”

“The boy was a consummate liar. He was trying to play me off against Baier.”

“So you had him punished?”

“Are you coming or not?” he snarled.

“Why am I here?” she asked, seeing everything clearly for the first time. “I mean, it’s obvious you don’t love me. So why have you brought me along?”

He gazed at her, anger battling with something that looked like sheepishness. He looked caught out. “Don’t be a fool. Of course I love you.”

She stared at him in amazement. “Is this just you doing Baier’s bidding again? Bringing me here? Because it suits him, doesn’t it? You taking Dr. Matthews’s wife away from him.”

“Of course this isn’t about Baier,” he said in a gentler voice. “It’s about us. What do we care if it suits him? As long as we are together.”

Realization. Like the sky clearing after a dust storm, the truth was visible to her in perfect clarity. She felt nothing for him. Everything had been a fantasy. He might care for her financially, as long as it suited him, as long as it was a victory of sorts for him to have her, as long as Baier said that it was all right. But there would be no love, no compassion, no trust. He was a brute and a coward, and she wanted to get away from him as quickly as possible.

“Frances,” he was saying, “I’ll make it up to you later, I promise. But now we have to go.”

“Please leave. I don’t want anything more to do with you.”

“Do you understand what you’re asking?” he said, sparking into anger again. “I won’t take you in when you come crawling back to me.” She stayed silent, turning her face towards the wall. He didn’t move for a moment, and she could feel him watching her, waiting for her to relent. Eventually he swore, wheeled round, and walked quickly out of the room.

The door swung back on its hinges, and she got up and shut it, then sat down on the bed and put her hands over her face. She had been wrong, utterly wrong. How could she ever have thought that she loved him? A man who cared about nothing but himself and his own ambitions, who hung on the shirttails of his cousin and was afraid to breathe without his say-so? She dug her nails into her forehead. There was a time when she had thought he had courage because he lived impulsively. But in fact he was riddled with fears, a pantomime Romeo whose indolent restlessness needed a constant variety to satisfy itself. She had loved him because he had so convincingly loved himself, and now—too late—she saw him for what he was: an overgrown, willful child, dangerous in his determination to get his own way.

She waited until William and Leger had ridden out of town, then packed up her things. There wasn’t much, not more than would fit into the small portmanteau which had come with her from England all those months ago. Her trunk was on the wagon with William. She sent the boarding house boy down to get her pony ready, but he came back up shaking his head. William had taken the pony. She gave a cry of frustration. She had no money, no way of getting back to Kimberley, and she was desperate to see Edwin. Nothing else mattered. She needed to hear him say that he had forgiven her. And yet, why would he? She had gone to bed with a man he despised, betrayed their marriage, misjudged him in every respect, and refused to believe in the smallpox epidemic, simply because the implications of him being right had terrified her. She wanted to tell him—if he would listen—that she had been scared in Kimberley, daunted by the strength of his resolve, but she knew it wasn’t enough. She needed to convince him that she had changed.

She left the room, clutching her portmanteau, and stepped out into the searing sunlight. Her eyes ached, and her spine felt bruised and tender. It was strange, this feeling, as though her body was succumbing to sickness but her mind was still detached from it. She shivered despite the heat, and a trickle of fear ran down her spine. The carcasses on the side of the road—they had died of smallpox. Did that mean Mariella might have caught the disease? Was it possible she had caught it? Frances pushed her fingers into her eyes to ease away the pain; more than likely she was suffering from a lack of sleep.

The border town was a straggle of houses,
kraals
, and iron sheds. A small acacia tree stood forlornly outside the boarding house, and a group of natives lounged in the shade beneath it. There was a corrugated-iron shack, barely larger than an outhouse, which advertised itself as a diamond buyer. The trader was American—young, cocky, and, by the looks of his shabby dress, not doing particularly well. He eyed the expensive riding habit which William had given her, and she cursed herself for wearing it. She rolled the stone out onto his desk, and he held it up to the light.

“Almost valueless, Madam,” he said, handing it back to her.

“I don’t believe you, Sir.”

“Well, perhaps we can come to some agreement halfway between your disbelief and my needs.”

“What can you give me?”

He named his price.

“You would be robbing me,” she said, thinking that it was barely enough to get her back to Kimberley.

“No, Madam, I would be doing you a favor.” He looked pointedly at her. “You’re in a tight spot, and I can get you out of it. I won’t pay a fortune for the privilege.”

He counted out a handful of banknotes, and she took them, not feeling well enough to argue.

•   •   •

S
HE
HIRED
a Cape cart. It used up most of the money, but she didn’t care; it was the fastest way back to Kimberley. The wheels clattered along the uneven road, and she gripped the wooden armrest to keep her balance. It was difficult to get comfortable, and her tongue was thick and dry in her mouth like cardboard.

A splinter pricked the skin on her palm. She sucked off the small ball of blood, cursing her misguided self-conviction. All this time she had been looking for other people’s protection, refusing to accept the injustice of her father’s death, her uncle’s rejection, the brutal reality of the mines. Now she saw that it was Edwin’s refusal to protect her from the truth which should have given her strength. He hadn’t spelled things out for her. He had wanted her to see for herself. He had waited patiently for her to wake up from her childish infatuation. And finally he had brought her to Kimberley so she could see what corruption really was, and still she had failed to see things as they were.

In his article he had talked about the absurdity of the English girl who looked into the Big Hole and failed to see the suffering of the laborers. That was her, she realized. Her naïveté astounded her. It was as if she had woken from a fairy tale and found herself in a world that was starker and more brutal than she could ever have imagined; a world in which she would be held to account. She had never felt the weight of such responsibility before, and now it pressed heavily on her.

The cart struck a pothole, and she lurched in her seat. Her back ached and her legs felt heavy. She noticed that her skin, where the dust blew in through the window, had broken out in goose bumps. She shifted on the hot leather. The backs of her legs had begun to sweat.

She knew, suddenly, that she wasn’t being honest with herself. She didn’t just want Edwin’s forgiveness. She wanted him to reach out and pull her towards him. She wanted to hear him whisper in her ear that he had loved her at Rietfontein, and that he loved her still. She wanted him to need her, and she knew that it was only through the touch of his hands that she would feel absolved. She remembered the night in the cottage, after the sheep shearing, when the brandy had loosened something in him. He had looked at her with his cool, gray eyes—the night outside pressing in against the window—and she had yearned for him to kiss her.

She loved him. The truth hit her with a small shock. Perhaps she had loved him for a long time but had simply not known it. She bit her lip, terrified that when she got to Kimberley he might refuse to see her, and that if he did she wouldn’t be able to bear it.

The Cape cart let her out at Edwin’s makeshift hospital. Pavilion tents stood stark and motionless in the hot, still air. There were a handful of sanitary police in canvas uniforms carrying rifles, crouched under the shade of a tarpaulin, and a mule cart with a native man offloading stretchers onto the sand. She recognized the smell of sulfur from the quarantine station. There were no other houses here on the outskirts of town, and the place held the quiet of the veldt in the heat of the day. The only sound was the knocking of stretchers as they were piled one on top of another. She walked across the scrub towards the hospital, jumping when a
korhaan
took off into the sky from under her feet with a clattering cry.

“Can I help you, Madam?” A nurse appeared in the shaded porch of the nearest tent.

“I’m looking for Dr. Matthews,” Frances said, peering past her into the gloomy interior.

“I’m afraid he isn’t here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

Frances was clammy and light-headed. She tried to pull herself together, but she didn’t feel quite right. Her head was pounding and her legs felt unsteady. “Where will I be able to find him?”

“I’m afraid I can’t disclose the whereabouts of our doctors.”

“But you must. I’m his wife.”