Doris Lessing - The Sun Between Their Feet - Collected African Stories Volume Two

‘Don’t fidget, there’s good kids,’ he said.

Mrs Thompson was asking to be shown the old house. We understood, from the insistent sound of her voice, that she had been talking about nothing else all afternoon; or that, at any rate, if she had, it was only with the intention of getting round to the house as soon as she could. She kept saying, smiling ferociously at Mr Thompson: ‘I have heard such interesting things about that old place. I really must see for myself where it was that my husband lived before I came out …’ And she looked at Mother for approval.

But Mother said dubiously: ‘It will soon be dark. And there is no path.’

As for Father, he said bluntly: ‘There’s nothing to be seen. There’s nothing left.’

‘Yes, I heard it had been burnt down,’ said Mrs Thompson with another look at her husband.

‘It was a hurricane lamp…’ he muttered.

‘I want to see for myself.’

At this point my sister slipped off the arm of my Father’s chair, and said, with a bright, false smile at Mrs Thompson, ‘We know where it is. We’ll take you.’ She dug me in the ribs and sped off before anyone could speak.

At last they all decided to come. I took them the hardest, longest way I knew. We had made a path of our own long ago, but that would have been too quick. I made Mrs Thompson climb over rocks, push through grass, bend under bushes. I made her scramble down the gully so that she fell on her knees in the sharp pebbles and the dust. I walked her so fast, finally, in a wide circle through the thorn trees that I could hear her panting behind me. But she wasn’t complaining: she wanted to see the place too badly.

When we came to where the house had been it was nearly dark and the tufts of long grass were shivering in the night breeze, and the pawpaw trees were silhouetted high and dark against a red sky. Guinea-fowl were clinking softly all around us.

My sister leaned against a tree, breathing hard, trying to look natural. Mrs Thompson had lost her confidence. She stood quite still, looking about her, and we knew the silence and the desolation had got her, as it got us that first morning.

‘But where is the house?’ she asked at last, unconsciously softening her voice, staring as if she expected to see it rise out of the ground in front of her.

‘I told you, it was burnt down. Now will you believe me?’ said Mr Thompson.

‘I know it was burnt down … Well, where was it then?’ She sounded as if she were going to cry. This was not at all what she had expected.

Mr Thompson pointed at the bricks on the ground. He did not move. He stood staring over the fence down to the vlei, where the mist was gathering in long white folds. The light faded out of the sky, and it began to get cold. For a while no one spoke.

‘What a god-forsaken place for a house,’ said Mrs Thompson, very irritably, at last. ‘Just as well it was burnt down. Do you mean to say you kids play here?’

That was our cue. ‘We like it,’ we said dutifully, knowing very well that the two of us standing on the bricks, hand in hand, beside the ghostly rosebush, made a picture that took all the harm out of the place for her. ‘We play here all day,’ we lied.

‘Odd taste you’ve got,’ she said, speaking at us, but meaning Mr Thompson.

Mr Thompson did not hear her. He was looking around with a lost, remembering expression. ‘Ten years,’ he said at last. ‘Ten years I was here.’

‘More fool you,’ she snapped. And that closed the subject as far as she was concerned.

We began to trail home. Now the two women went in front; then came Father and Mr Thompson; we followed at the back. As we passed a small donga under a cactus tree, my sister called in a whisper, ‘Mr Thompson, Mr Thompson, look here.’

Father and Mr Thompson came back. ‘Look,’ we said, pointing to the hole that was filled to the brim with empty bottles.

‘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.’