The Sun Between Their Feet (12 page)

‘I came quickly by a way of my own and hid them,' said my sister proudly, looking at the two men like a conspirator.

Father was very uncomfortable. ‘I wonder how they got down here?' he said politely at last.

‘We found them. They were at the house. We hid them for you,' said my sister, dancing with excitement.

Mr Thompson looked at us sharply and uneasily. ‘You are an odd pair of kids,' he said.

That was all the thanks we got from him; for then we heard Mother calling from ahead: ‘What are you all doing there?' And at once we went forward.

After the Thompsons had left we hung around Father, waiting for him to say something.

At last, when Mother wasn't there, he scratched his head
in an irritable way and said: ‘What in the world did you do that for?'

We were bitterly hurt.
‘She
might have seen them.' I said. ‘Nothing would make much difference to that lady,' he said at last. ‘Still, I suppose you meant well.'

In the corner of the veranda, in the dark, sat Mother, gazing into the dark bush. On her face was a grim look of disapproval, and distaste and unhappiness. We were included in it, we knew that.

She looked at us crossly and said, ‘I don't like you wandering over the farm the way you do. Even with a gun.'

But she had said that so often, and it wasn't what we were waiting for. At last it came.

‘My two little girls,' she said, ‘out in the bush by themselves, with no one to play with …'

It wasn't the bush she minded. We flung ourselves on her. Once again we were swung dizzily from one camp to the other. ‘Poor Mother,' we said. ‘Poor, poor Mother.'

That was what she needed. ‘It's no life for a woman, this,' she said, her voice breaking, gathering us close.

But she sounded comforted.

On the morning of the braavleis, Dad kept saying to Moira, as if he thought it was a joke, ‘Moy, it's going to rain.' First she did not hear him, then she turned her head slow and deliberate and looked at him so that he remembered what she said the day before, and he got red in the face and went indoors out of her way. The day before, he said to her, speaking to me, ‘What's Moy got into her head? Is the braavleis for her engagement or what?'

It was because Moira spent all morning cooking her lemon cake for braavleis, and she went over to Sam the butcher's to order the best ribs of beef and best rump steak.

All the cold season she was not cooking, she was not helping Mom in the house at all, she was not taking an interest in life, and Dad was saying to Mom: ‘Oh get the girl to town or something, don't let her moon about here, who does she think she is?'

Mom just said, quiet and calm, the way she was with Dad when they did not agree: ‘Oh let her alone, Dickson.' When Mom and Dad were agreeing, they called each other Mom and Dad; when they were against each other, it was Marion and Dickson, and that is how it was for the whole of the dry season, and Moira was pale and moony and would not talk to me, and it was no fun for me, I can tell you.

‘What's this
for?'
Dad said once about half-way through the season, when Moira stayed in bed three days and Mom let her. ‘Has he said anything to her or hasn't he?'

Mom just said: ‘She's sick, Dickson.'

But I could see what he said had gone into her, because I was in our bedroom when Mom came to Moira.

Mom sat down on the bed, but at the bottom of it, and she
was worried. ‘Listen, girl,' said Mom, ‘I don't want to interfere, I don't want to do that, but what did Greg say?'

Moira was not properly in bed, but in her old pink dressing-gown that used to be Mom's, and she was lying under the quilt. She lay there, not reading anything, watching out of the window over at the big water-tanks across the railway lines. Her face looked bad, and she said: ‘Oh, leave me alone, Mom.'

Mom said: ‘Listen, girlie, just let me say something, you don't have to follow what I say, do you?'

But Moira said nothing.

‘Sometimes boys say a thing, and they don't mean it the way we think. They feel they have to say it. It's not they don't mean it, but they mean it different.'

‘He didn't say anything at all,' said Moira. ‘Why should he?'

‘Why don't you go into town and stay with Auntie Nora a while? You can come back for the holidays when Greg comes back.'

‘Oh let me alone,' said Moira, and she began to cry. That was the first time she cried. At least, in front of Mom. I used to hear her cry at night when she thought I was asleep.

Mom's face was tight and patient, and she put her hand on Moira's shoulder, and she was worried I could see. I was sitting on my bed pretending to do my stamps, and she looked over at me, and seemed to be thinking hard.

‘He didn't say anything, Mom,' I said. ‘But I know what happened.'

Moira jerked her head up and she said: ‘Get that kid
away
from me.'

They could not get me away from Moira, because there were only two bedrooms, and I always slept with Moira. But she would not speak to me that night at all; and Mom said to me, ‘Little pitchers have big ears.'

It was the last year's braavleis it happened. Moira was not keen on Greg then, I know for a fact, because she was sweet on Jordan. Greg was mostly at the Cape in college, but he came back for the first time in a year, and I saw him looking at Moira. She was pretty then, because she had finished her matric and
spent all her time making herself pretty. She was eighteen, and her hair was wavy, because the rains had started. Greg was on the other side of the bonfire, and he came walking around it through the sparks and the white smoke, and up to Moira. Moira smiled out of politeness, because she wanted Jordan to sit by her, and she was afraid he wouldn't if he saw her occupied by Greg.

‘Moira Hughes?' he said. Moira smiled, and he said: ‘I wouldn't have known you.'

‘Go on,' I said, ‘you've known us always.'

They did not hear me. They were just looking. It was peculiar. I knew it was one of the peculiar moments of life because my skin was tingling all over, and that is how I always know.

Because of how she was looking at him, I looked at him too, but I did not think he was handsome. The holidays before, when I was sweet on Greg Jackson, I naturally thought he was handsome, but now he was just ordinary. He was very thin, always, and his hair was ginger, and his freckles were thick, because naturally the sun is no good for people with white skin and freckles.

But he wasn't bad, particularly because he was in his sensible mood. Since he went to college he had two moods, one noisy and sarcastic; and then Moira used to say, all lofty and superior: ‘Medical students are always rowdy, it stands to reason because of the hard life they have afterwards.' His other mood was when he was quiet and grown-up, and some of the gang didn't like it, because he was better than us, he was the only one of the gang to go to university at the Cape.

After they had finished looking, he just sat down in the grass in the place Moira was keeping for Jordan, and Moira did not once look around for Jordan. They did not say anything else, just went on sitting, and when the big dance began holding hands around the bonfire, they stood at one side watching.

That was all that happened at the braavleis, and that was all the words he said. Next day, Greg went on a shooting trip with his father who was the man at the garage, and they went right up the Zambesi valley, and Greg did not come
back to our station that holidays or the holidays after.

I knew Moira was thinking of a letter, because she bought some of Croxley's best blue at the store, and she always went herself to the post office on mail days. But there was no letter. But after that she said to Jordan, ‘No thanks, I don't feel like it,' when he asked her to go into town to the flicks.

She did not take any notice of any of the gang after that, though before she was leader of the gang, even over the boys.

That was when she stopped being pretty again; she looked as she did before she left school and was working hard for her matric. She was too thin, and the curl went out of her hair, and she didn't bother to curl it either.

All that dry season she did nothing, and hardly spoke, and did not sing; and I knew it was because of that minute when Greg and she looked at each other; that was all; and when I thought of it, I could feel the cold-hot down my back.

Well, on the day before the braavleis, like I said, Moira was on the veranda, and she had on her the dress she wore last year to the braavleis. Greg had come back for the holidays the night before, we knew he had, because his mother said so when Mom met her at the store. But he did not come to our house. I did not like to see Moira's face, but I had to keep on looking at it, it was so sad, and her eyes were sore. Mom kissed her, putting both her arms around her, but Moira gave a hitch of her shoulders like a horse with a fly bothering it.

Mom sighed, and then I saw Dad looking at her, and the look they gave each other was most peculiar, it made me feel very peculiar again. And then Moira started in on the lemon cake, and went to the butcher's, and that was when Dad said that about the braavleis being for the engagement. Moira looked at him, with her eyes all black and sad, and said: ‘Why have you got it in for me, Dad, what have I done?'

Dad said: ‘Greg's not going to marry you. Now he's got to college, and going to be a doctor, he won't be after you.'

Moira was smiling, her lips small and angry.

Mom said: ‘Why Dickson, Moira's got her matric and she's educated, what's got into your head?'

Dad said: ‘I'm telling you, that's all.'

Moira said, very grown-up and quiet: ‘Why are you trying to spoil it for me, Dad? I haven't said anything about marrying, have I? And what have I done to you, anyway?'

Dad didn't like that. He went red, and he laughed, but he didn't like it. And he was quiet for a bit at least.

After lunch, when she'd finished with the cake, she was sitting on the veranda when Jordan went past across to the store, and she called out: ‘Hi, Jordan, come and talk to me.'

Now I know for a fact that Jordan wasn't sweet on Moira any more, he was sweet on Beth from the store, because I know for a fact he kissed her at the last station dance, I saw him. And he shouted out, ‘Thanks, Moy, but I'm on my way.'

‘Oh, please yourself then,' said Moira, friendly and nice, but I knew she was cross, because she was set on it.

Anyway, he came in, and I've never seen Moira so nice to anyone, not even when she was sweet on him, and certainly never to Greg. Well, and Jordan was embarrassed, because Moira was not pretty that season, and all the station was saying she had gone off. She took Jordan into the kitchen to see the lemon cake and dough all folded ready for the sausage rolls, and she said slow and surprised, ‘But we haven't got enough bread for the sandwiches, Mom, what are you thinking of?'

Mom said, quick and cross, because she was proud of her kitchen. ‘What do you mean? And no one's going to eat sandwiches with all that meat you've ordered. And it'll be stale by tomorrow.'

‘I think we need more bread,' said Moira. And she said to me in the same voice, slow and lazy, ‘Just run over to the Jacksons' and see if they can let us have some bread.'

At this I didn't say anything, and Mom did not say anything either, and it was lucky Dad didn't hear. I looked at Mom, and she made no sign, so I went out across the railway lines to the garage, and at the back of the garage was the Jacksons' house, and there was Greg Jackson reading a book about the body because he was going to be a doctor.

‘Mom says,' I said, ‘can you let us have some bread for the braavleis?'

He put down the book, and said, ‘Oh, hullo, Betty.'

‘Hullo,' I said.

‘But the store will be open tomorrow,' he said. ‘Isn't the braavleis tomorrow?'

‘It's Sunday tomorrow,' I said.

‘But the store's open now.'

‘We want some stale bread,' I said. ‘Moy's making some stuffing for the chicken, our bread's all fresh.'

‘Mom's at the store,' he said, ‘but help yourself.'

So I went into the pantry and got half a stale loaf, and came out and said ‘Thanks,' and walked past him.

He said, ‘Don't mench.' Then, when I was nearly gone, he said, ‘And how's Moy?' And I said, ‘Fine, thanks, but I haven't seen much of her this hols because she's busy with Jordan.' And I went away, and I could feel my back tingling, and sure enough there he was coming up behind me, and then he was beside me, and my side was tingling.

‘I'll drop over and say hullo,' said Greg, and I felt peculiar I can tell you, because what I was thinking was:
Well!
If
this
is
love.

When we got near our house, Moira and Jordan were side by side on the veranda wall, and Moy was laughing, and I knew she had seen Greg coming because of the way she laughed.

Dad was not on the veranda, so I could see Mom had got him to stay indoors.

‘I've brought you the bread, Moy,' I said, and with this I went into the kitchen, and there was Mom, and she was looking more peculiar than I've ever seen her. I could have bet she wanted to laugh; but she was sighing all the time. Because of the sighing I knew she had quarrelled with Dad. ‘Well, I don't
know,'
she said, and she threw the bread I'd fetched into the waste-bucket.

There sat Mom and I in the kitchen, smiling at each other off and on in a peculiar way, and Dad was rattling his paper in the bedroom where she had made him go. He was not at the station that day, because the train had come at nine o'clock and there wasn't another one coming. When we
looked out on the veranda in about half an hour Jordan was gone, and Greg and Moira were sitting on the veranda wall. And I can tell you she looked so pretty again, it was peculiar her getting pretty like that so sudden.