Muriel Spark - The Complete Short Stories

She stood by. She had a beautiful shape; we nurses had not provided that, we had only called it forth from the peasant slouch. She said to the old man, ‘Richard yere wants to talk to you, Basil, man,’ and touched Richard’s shoulder. Frank was peering into the abstract distance. It occurred to me that Frank was the administrative type; none of the research workers I had known were dispassionate, they were vulnerable and nervous.

Richard was nervous. He did not look at the man, he was looking up at Sonia’s face with its West End make-up.

‘Applied for the job up north?’ said this Basil to Richard.

‘Yes,’ Richard said, and smiled with relief.

‘Want it?’ said the man, casually, in his great importance.

‘Oh, rather,’ Richard said.

‘Well, have it,’ said the man, flicking away the invisible job with his forefinger as lightly as if it were a ping-pong ball.

‘Well,’ Richard said, ‘no thank you.’

‘What did you say?’ said the man.

‘What that you say?’ said Sonia.

My brother and I are very unlike in most ways, but there are a few radical points of similarity between us. It must be something in the blood.

‘No thank you,’ Richard was saying. ‘After all, I feel I ought to go on with research in tropical diseases.’

Sonia’s fury only made a passing pattern on her face. Her first thought was for the old man, fussed and suddenly groundless as he was. ‘Basil, man,’ she said, bending over him with her breasts about his ears, ‘you got the wrong chap. This yere Frank is the boy I was talking of to you. Frank, may I have the honour to introduce to you this yere distinguished —’

‘Yes, we’ve met,’ said the man, turning to Frank.

Frank returned from the middle distance. ‘I’ve applied for the job,’ he said, ‘and my qualifications are, I think —’

‘Married?’

‘No, but hoping to be.’ He turned duly to me and I smiled back most nastily.

‘Want the job?’

‘Oh, rather.’

‘Sure?’

‘Oh yes, quite sure.’

The old man was not going to be caught again. ‘I hope you really want the job. There are a good many excellent applicants and we want a keen —’Yes, I want the job.’

Sonia said, ‘Well, have it,’ and I thought, then, she had really done for the whole thing and outrun her influence.

But the old man beamed up at her, took both her prettily restored hands in his, and I nearly saw his slack mouth water.

Other people were pressing round for a word with this Medical Board man. Sonia was treating Richard with ostentatious neglect. Frank was leaning against the wall, now, talking to her. Suddenly I did not want to lose Frank. I looked round the company and wondered what I was doing there, and said to Richard, ‘Let’s go.’

Richard was looking at Sonia’s back. ‘Why do you want to go?’ Richard said. ‘It’s early yet. Why?’

Because the curtain was fluttering at the open window, letting in wafts of the savage territory beyond the absurd drawing-room. The people were getting excited; I thought soon they might scream, once or twice like the birds, and then be silent. I thought, even, that Richard might change his mind again about the job, and tell Sonia so, and leave it to her to sort it out for him. It was the pull of Sonia that made him reluctant to leave. She was adjusting Frank’s tie and telling him he needed looking after, for all the world as if she had been brought up to that old line; we must tell her, I thought, not to do that sort of thing in public. And I would gladly have stayed on till sundowner time in order to jerk Frank back into a sense of my personality; but there was a storm coming, and it was no fun driving home through a storm.

Richard is stronger-willed than I am. After this party he kept away from Sonia’s and stuck in to his work. I broke off my engagement. It was impossible to know whether Frank was relieved or not. There were still three months before he was to take up his appointment in the north. He spent most of his time with Sonia. I was not sure how things stood between them. I still drove over to Sonia’s sometimes and found Frank there. I was dissatisfied and attracted by both of them and by their situation. In the dry spells they would often be down the river in the punt when I arrived, and I would wait for the sight of the returning pink parasol, and be glad of the sight. Once or twice when we met at the clinic Frank said to me, factually, ‘We could still be married.’ Once he said, ‘Old Sonia’s only a joke, you know.’ But I thought he was afraid I might take him at his word, or might do so too soon.

Sonia spoke again of travelling. She was learning to study road maps. She told one of the nurses, ‘When Frank’s settled up at the north I’ll go up and settle him down nicer.’ She told another of the nurses, ‘My old husband’s coming from gaol this month, next month, I don’t know, man. He’ll see some changes. He get used to them.

One afternoon I drove over to the farm; I had not seen Sonia for six weeks because her children had been home for the holidays and I loathed her children. I had missed her, she was never boring. The house-boy said she was down the river with Dr Frank. I wandered down the path, but they were not in sight. I waited for about eight minutes and walked back. All the natives except the house-boy had gone to sleep in their huts. I did not see the house-boy for some time, and when I did I was frightened by the fear on his face.

I was coming round by the old ox-stalls, now deserted — since Sonia had abandoned farming, even with a tractor, far less a span of oxen. The house-boy appeared then, and whispered to me. ‘Baas Van der Merwe is come. He looking in the window.

I walked quietly round the stalls till I had a view of the house, and saw a man of about fifty, undernourished-looking, in khaki shorts and shirt. He was standing on a box by the drawing-room window. He had his hand on the curtain, parting it, and was looking steadily into the empty room.

‘Go down to the river and warn them,’ I said to the boy.

He turned to go, but ‘Boy!’ shouted the man. The house-boy in his green-and-white clothes rapidly went towards the voice.

I got down to the river just as they were landing. Sonia was dressed in pale blue. Her new parasol was blue. She looked specially fabulous and I noticed her very white teeth, her round brown eyes and her story-book pose, as she stood dressed up in the middle of Africa under the blazing sun with the thick-leaved plants at her feet. Frank, looking nice in tropical suiting, was tying up the punt. ‘Your husband has returned,’ I said, and ran fearfully back to my car. I started it up and made off, and as I sped past the house over the gravel I saw Jannie Van der Merwe about to enter the house, followed by the servant. He turned to watch my car and spoke to the native, evidently asking who I was.

Afterwards the native deposed that Jannie went all through the house examining the changes and the new furniture. He used the lavatory and pulled the chain. He tried the taps in both bathrooms. In Sonia’s room he put straight a pair of her shoes which were lying askew. He then tested all the furniture for dust, all through the house, touching the furniture with the middle finger of his right hand and turning up his finger to see if it showed any dust. The house-boy followed, and when Jannie came to an old oak Dutch chest which was set away in a corner of one of the children’s rooms — since Sonia had taken against all her father’s old furniture — he found a little dust on it. He ordered the native to fetch a duster and remove the dust. When this was done Jannie proceeded on his tour, and when he had tried everything for dust he went out and down the path towards the river. He found Sonia and Frank at the ox-stalls arguing about what to do and where to go, and taking a revolver from his pocket, shot them. Sonia died immediately. Frank lingered for ten hours. This was a serious crime and Jannie was hanged.