The Fever Tree (35 page)

W
hen Frances came in one morning from the henhouse, she found the kitchen quiet. The cook had his back turned, sweating onions for the soup. She put the basket of eggs down on the table, brushed the wisps of straw from her skirt, and went through to the dining room to clear breakfast. The family had left the room, and the table was its usual muddle of spilt tea, yolk-smeared plates, and scraps of meat. It wasn’t until she turned to the sideboard that she saw it: a carcass ripped open and spread-eagled, front legs stretched out in front of it. She thought at first that it was a rat, but it was too large. It took her a moment to see the pink ears, the fingers, and the tiny, wrinkled toes, and then she felt sick to her stomach.

“Does he know?” she asked the cook, walking back into the kitchen. He nodded sorrowfully.

Mijnheer Reitz had killed the baboon at the breakfast table with a knife when it clambered onto the sideboard and took a fistful of porridge. Piet had watched it happen. It’s a drought, his father had said apologetically, and we’ve no room for hangers-on. The boy had run out of the room, and no one had seen him since. The general opinion was that he would reappear in time for lunch.

Frances was kept busy all morning beating dust out of the mattresses and hanging out the sheets to air, because they couldn’t spare the water to wash them. The air was hotter than usual, humid and close. There was no sign of Piet at lunch, and it wasn’t until Frances walked into the kitchen laden with dirty dishes and was scraping the greasy remains of roast lamb into the bin with her fingers that Maria nudged her. The girl pointed outside. Low on the horizon, so far off they were still translucent, she could see clouds. They were banking in the distance. Even as she watched they moved closer, gathering in height and substance.

By the time the dishes were washed, the clouds were purpling. The sun illuminated them from beneath so that the plains glowed, iridescent, as if lit by a lamp. There was a flurry of movement outside. Men ran past the kitchen door, and the barn doors swung open with a clatter. They were bringing in the sheep. Frances looked at Maria, and saw the woman was grinning.

“Will it rain?” she asked, even though she didn’t need to.

Jantjie appeared. “They should find the boy,” he said to them both, “before the storm breaks.”

Mevrouw Reitz burst into the kitchen. Frances had never seen her look so frantic. “Have you seen Piet?”

Frances shook her head.

“Isn’t it your responsibility to be watching him?” she demanded.

“But he’s been gone since breakfast,” Frances said, confused suddenly. Ordinarily, he was her responsibility, but the whole family had known he was missing, and no one had suggested they were worried or had asked her to look for him.

Maria was dispatched to look for Piet in the outhouses, barns, and
kraals
. Frances searched the house with Mevrouw Reitz, turning over every inch of space. She was aware of the sky darkening outside. By four o’clock there was still no sign of the boy. The expectation of rain had infected the whole household with a kind of fever. Everyone wanted to know if the dam would hold, and what they would do if it burst. Outside, the men were herding the sheep off the plains into the barns and battening down the roofs. Mevrouw Reitz went out to find her husband, to ask him to help in the search. Frances was left alone in the kitchen. The air which blew in off the veldt was icy cold, filleting the humidity. It smelt of melting snow. The wire door on the kitchen suddenly swung back on its hinges and clanged shut.

It occurred to her where Piet might be. Was it possible he had gone there by himself? If she was right, then it was her fault. There wasn’t time to fetch her shawl. She had to leave before the storm broke. She ran back into the hall, down the
stoep
, and out onto the plain. The temperature had plummeted. It was freezing out here, unnaturally cold. A gust of wind carried the smell of wet earth, and a streak of lightning flickered across the bruised sky. She paused for a second listening, transfixed. It felt like the prelude to something on a huge scale. There was a clang of metal and the shrill whistle of a horse as it kicked against the iron bolts on the stable door. A loose shutter banged against its hinges—then a door slammed shut. In the distance, a wind pump was turning a manic circle. She saw one of the Reitzes’ collies cowering under the
stoep
, whining, and all the time the wind was in her ears, threatening to bowl her over, bringing weather so cold it felt arctic. Could she get to the cottage before it broke?

She began to run, tripping over the scrub. A low rumble of thunder, and the sky glimmered. The wind pushed at her back. A dark shape—an eagle, she thought—wheeled above her, and for a moment she saw herself from his height, being blown across the plains into the storm. If Piet was at the cottage, then he would be frightened. Hopefully too frightened to try to make his way back. A crack of thunder tore through her, and the ground tremored. Then a bolt of lightning, like the lash of a whip, struck the earth twenty yards from where she stood. She had a sudden intimation of the vastness of the sky and the power it could unleash. She ran faster now, her lungs burning, racing against the storm. The cottage loomed up ahead. A moment later she saw him, running down the
stoep
onto the veldt. He stood for a second against the sky turned black, then sprang towards her, his mouth open, arms held wide in joy at the storm, shouting, “I saw it—the blue-headed lizard. And now it’s going to rain.”

There was a roar of thunder, and lightning forked directly overhead, striking the ground between them. A moment of silence, as if the world were holding its breath. Then out of the silence came the hail. A thousand tearing, brutal missiles unleashed from the sky. Rocks, flung down at them, from a thousand feet. Not rocks, she realized scrambling towards Piet, but hailstones, as large as cricket balls, with jagged edges like knives, bouncing over the earth. She threw her arms over her head and staggered forward. Piet was down. A blow struck her on the cheek as hard as a brick might have done and sent her sprawling into the dust. She pulled herself up, clambering on her knees to reach the boy, then lifted him into her arms and staggered forward until she was under the roof of the
stoep
. But the stones sliced in at them, and now the corrugation was being torn down. There was a thundering sound, as the hail ripped through the iron. The noise was immense; louder than the deafening clamor of huge factory machines.

She pulled open the door and pitched inside, dragging the boy into the empty bedroom. The clatter of stones on the roof was overwhelming. She couldn’t hear her shoes moving across the floor or her voice as she shouted to Piet. The force of the hail stepped up a notch. The shutters were being ripped off their hinges. Hailstones tore into the room, skidding across the floor. She carried the boy down the corridor, into the study. It was on the lee side of the storm, and the window here was protected. It was dark in the room, and it took a second for her eyes to adjust. Two crates leant against the wall. Inside them, someone had stuffed some hessian sacks. She lifted Piet onto the crates and pulled his legs into the sacks to keep him warm. He wasn’t moving, and she willed him not to be dead.

There was a gash on his forehead, and blood was seeping down his face, across his mouth. She put her sleeve to the wound to try to wipe the blood away, to see how deep it was, but more blood dripped onto his face. Her hand was soaking. Not with the boy’s blood, but with her own. It was hard to tell in the darkened room where it came from. Her clothes had been shredded; they were wet, and so was her hair, drenched with blood and water. She called Piet’s name, squeezing his hands until he moaned slightly and half opened his eyes; a rush of relief. He was still alive.

Footsteps behind her. She swung round. A figure was standing in the doorway, a saddle slung over one arm. She couldn’t get a clear picture of him, and when she did she didn’t believe it. The hail was like thunder, and her ears roared with the sound of it. She stared, rooted to the spot. Swallowed. A moment of fear. She didn’t trust herself. Edwin was saying something. She couldn’t make out what it was—too much hail. Then she felt the brush of his shoulder against hers as he walked past her into the room, flung the saddle down, and knelt beside Piet. After a few seconds, he opened one of his saddlebags, took out some fabric, and bandaged the boy’s head. There was a crashing inside the house, and the roar of hail grew louder. The roof must have given way over the sitting room. She prayed it would hold over their heads. Then a different sound beneath the hail—a juddering of notes, a clamoring of keys. The piano, she realized. It was being torn apart.

Edwin gave Piet a sip of brandy, took off his jacket, and laid it over him. Then he turned to her and pushed her down so that her back slid along the wall and she was sitting with her knees bent. He crouched beside her. His hands ran over her head, her shoulders, her face, feeling for breaks or cuts. His eyes were flashes of white in the darkening room, and she willed him to look at her. Then, quite suddenly, the hail stopped. There was—for a perfect moment—a complete and profound silence. It seemed to stretch far out across the plains. A second of astonished stillness. She could hear Edwin breathing, the dripping of water and the brush of his shirt against her dress as he moved his hands down over her arms.

Then, a moment later, it started to rain. She heard the soft, gradual falling of raindrops like fingertips over skin.

He put a wad of cloth in her hand and motioned to her to hold it against her cheek. She felt a sharp, throbbing pain as she put pressure on the wound. The rain began to fall more heavily; a luscious, rushing sound of large, fat raindrops growing every second more forceful until it sounded as if they were standing beneath a waterfall.

Edwin stood up and left the room. A few minutes later, he came back.

“Will he be all right?” she asked in a whisper.

“He should be fine. The important thing is that he doesn’t get cold or wet. We can’t carry him back. The ice is nearly three feet deep. I’ll go for help when the rain stops.” Three feet deep. Was that possible? She had thought the worst was over, but now she felt a tremor of fear. The ice would be halfway up the door of the cottage, and if it didn’t stop raining soon they would be flooded.

He came and sat beside her with his back to the wall. The room was pitch black. Night had come on. They sat with their shoulders a few inches apart. Now she felt the cold, and her body began to shake. She let the bloodied cloth fall into her lap. Her hands were numb, and when she tried to warm her fingers, rubbing them on her skirts, she couldn’t feel them against the fabric. Water ran off the ice into the room, swilling around their feet.

“So,” he asked, “are you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

He didn’t reply, and there was a moment of quiet between them. Then she said, “I couldn’t go back to England.”

“And so?”

“And so I came here. Mevrouw Reitz took me in.”

“Under what pretext?”

“She needed a maid.” A thread of panic was weaving through the seconds that she was with him. The throbbing in her cheek, the freezing water rising over her feet—none of it mattered. Her whole existence had crystallized into the simple pleasure of having him near, and she dreaded him leaving.

“But you don’t speak Dutch.”

“I have learnt.”

“Why is it any better than living in England with your aunt?”

What could she say? That she hadn’t wanted to leave him behind? Instead, she said, “You loved this place, and I wanted to know if I could love it too.”

“And do you?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

Again, a silence, while the rain came down outside. Icy water was soaking through her skirts, and she couldn’t feel the tops of her thighs where they touched the boards. Her teeth began to chatter. A trickle of water, like a tap left running, was pouring from the ceiling.

He sensed her moving. “Half the roof is down,” he said, “and the rain is running straight off the ice.”

A moment passed. “What about you?” she asked eventually.

“I was on my way to Cape Town. The Reitzes are holding some money for me, from the sale of the furniture.”

“But not the piano.”

“No, not the piano.”

Because it was our wedding present, she wanted to say; you asked them to keep it because it was ours. He rubbed his hands together—she could hear it in the dark—and she wished that he would reach out and touch her. “When I got to the farmhouse the storm was blowing in and the boy was missing. They said you had gone after him. We went looking. I wasn’t far off here when the hail came. My horse was making to bolt, but I slipped the saddle off him. The saddle saved me.”

She was shivering, convulsing now with cold, and she pushed her head forward onto her knees, pressing the water out of her clothes, squeezing herself into a ball to keep warm. The room was freezing. They were, to all intents and purposes, encased in a block of ice. The water deepened across the floor, rising over the sides of her shoes. It was filling up the house like a dam. At least Piet was lying on the crates. They would keep him dry. Time seemed to slow down. She heard Edwin moving around the room. When he came back, he slid down the wall, so close that his shirt was touching her arm and she could feel the warmth of his body. When he moved his foot, it made a slight splash in the water. She let herself lean into him.

The rain kept falling. Her arms were numb. She saw the white of her sleeves against her wrists but couldn’t feel them. She had the impression that they were in a sinking boat, the sea pouring in the leaky joints. She wondered if she had been asleep when she felt him tugging at her hands. He was crouched in front of her, massaging her palms with his fingers. They ached with cold, and she winced when he pushed too hard.

“How is the boy?” she asked.

“Sleeping.” Her hands shot with pain as he pressed his thumbs into the joints. “Thanks to you, he is still alive. You were brave coming here.”