Muriel Spark - The Complete Short Stories

“Lo, Daphne, how are your mealies?’

‘Not too bad, how are yours?’

‘Halo, Daphne, how’s the tobacco?’

‘Rotten, Old Tuys says.’

‘I hear Chakata’s sold La Flèche.’

‘Well, he’s had an offer, actually.’

She had been twice to a dance at Williams Hotel. Young Billy Williams, who was studying medicine at Cape Town, proposed marriage to her, but as everyone knew, she was to go to college in the Capital and then to England to stay with the English Pattersons for a couple of years before she could decide about marriage.

War broke out at the beginning of her first term at the training college. All her old young men, as well as her new, became important and interesting in their uniforms and brief appearances on leave.

She took up golf. Sometimes, after a hole, when she was following her companions to the next tee, she would lag behind or even stop in her tracks.

‘Feeling all right, Daphne?’

‘Oh, I was only listening to the go-away bird.’

‘Interested in ornithology?’

‘Oh yes, fairly, you know.’

When she returned to the farm after her first term at the college Chakata gave her a revolver.

‘Keep it beside your bed,’ he said.

She took it without comment.

Next day, he said, ‘Where did you go yesterday afternoon?’

‘Oh, for a trek across the veldt, you know.’

‘Anywhere special?’

‘Only to Makata’s kraal. He’s quite determined to hang on to that land the Beresfords are after. He’s got a wife for his son, he paid five head.’ Makata was the local chief. Daphne enjoyed squatting in the shade of his great mud hut drinking the tea specially prepared for her, and though the rest of the Colony looked with disfavour on such visits, it was something which Chakata and his children had always done, and no one felt inclined to take up the question with Chakata. Chakata wasn’t just anyone.

‘I suppose,’ said Chakata to Daphne, ‘you always carry a gun?’

‘Well, yesterday,’ said Daphne, ‘I didn’t actually.’

‘Always,’ said Chakata, ‘take a gun when you go out on the veldt. It’s a golden rule. There’s nothing more exasperating than to see a buck dancing about in the bush and to find yourself standing like a fool without a gun.

Since she was eight and had first learnt to shoot, this had been a golden rule of Chakata’s. Many a time she had been out on her own, weighed down with the gun, and had seen dozens of buck and simply had not bothered to shoot. She hated venison, in any case. Tinned salmon was her favourite dish.

He seemed to know her thoughts. ‘We’re always short of buck for the dogs. Remember there’s a war on. Remember always,’ said Chakata, ‘to take a gun. I hear on the wireless,’ he added, ‘that there’s a leopard over in the Temwe valley. The mate has young. It’s got two men, so far.’

‘Uncle Chakata, that’s a long way off,’ Daphne said explosively.

‘Leopards can travel,’ said Chakata. He looked horribly put out.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Daphne.

‘And you ought to ride more,’ he said, ‘it’s far better exercise than walking.’

She saw that he was not really afraid of her meeting the leopard, nor did he need meat for the dogs; and she thought of how, yesterday afternoon, she had been followed all the way to the kraal by Old Tuys. He had kept to the bush, and seemed not to know he had been observed. She had been glad that several parties of natives had passed her on the way. Afterwards, when she was taking leave of Makata, he had offered to send his nephew to accompany her home. This was a customary offer: she usually declined it. This time, however, she had accepted the escort, who plodded along behind her until she dismissed him at the edge of the farm. Daphne did not mention this incident to Chakata.

That afternoon when she set off for tea at the Mission, she was armed. Next day Chakata gave her the old Mercedes for herself ‘You walk too much,’ he said.

It was no use now, checking off the years before she should go to England. She climbed Donald Cloete’s kopje: ‘Are you sober, Donald, or —?’

‘I’m drunk, go away.

Towards the end of her course at the training college, when she was home for the Christmas holidays, she rode her horse along the main wide road to the dorp. She did some shopping; she stopped to talk to the Cypriot tailor who supplied the district with drill shorts, and to the Sephardic Jew who kept the largest Kaffir store.

‘Live and let live,’ said Chakata. But these people were never at the farm, and this was Daphne’s only chance of telling them of her college life.

She called in at the Indian laundry to leave a bottle of hair oil which, for some unfathomable reason, Chakata had promised to give to the Indian.

She had tea with the chemist’s wife, then returned to the police station where she had left the horse. Here she stopped for about an hour chatting with two troopers whom she had known since her childhood. It was late when she set off up the steep main road, keeping well to the side of the tarmac strips on which an occasional car would pass, or a native on a bicycle. She knew all the occupants of the cars, and as they slowed down to pass her they would call a greeting. She had gone about five miles when she came to a winding section of the road with dense bush on either side. This part was notorious for accidents. The light was failing rapidly, and as she heard a car approaching round the bend ahead of her she reined in to the side. Immediately the car appeared its lights were switched on, but before they dazzled her she had recognized Old Tuys at the wheel of the shooting-brake. As he approached he gave no sign of slowing down. Not only did Old Tuys keep up his speed, he brought the car off the strips and passed within a few inches of the animal.

Daphne had once heard a trooper say that for a human being to fall in the bush at sundown or after was like a naked main appearing in class at a girl’s school. As she landed in the dark thicket every living thing screeched, rustled, fled, and flapped in a feminine sort of panic. The horse was away along the road, its hooves beating frantic diminishing signals in the dusk. Daphne’s right shin was giving her intense pain. She was fairly sure Old Tuys had stopped the car. She rose and limped a few steps, pushing her way through the vegetation and branches, to the verge of the road. Here she stopped, for she heard footsteps on the road a few feet away. Old Tuys was waiting for her. She looked round her and quickly saw there was no chance of penetrating further into the bush with safety. The sky was nearly dark now, and the pain in her leg was threatening to overcome her. Daphne had never fainted, even when, once, she had wanted to, during an emergency operation for a snake-bite, the sharp blade cutting into her unanaesthetized flesh. Now, it seemed that she would faint, and this alarmed her, for she could hear Old Tuys among the crackling branches at the side of the road, and presently could discern his outline. The sound of a native shouting farther up the road intruded upon her desire to faint, and, to resist closing her eyes in oblivion she opened them wide, wider, staring into the darkness.

Old Tuys got hold of her. He did not speak, but he gripped her arm and dragged her out of the bush and threw her on the ground at the side of the road out of the glare of the headlamps. Daphne screamed and kicked out with her good leg. Old Tuys stood up, listening. A horse was approaching. Suddenly round the bend came a native leading Daphne’s horse. It shied at the sight of the van’s headlights, but the native held it firmly while Old Tuys went to take it.

‘Clear off,’ said Tuys to the boy in kitchen Kaffir.

‘Don’t go,’ shouted Daphne. The native stood where he was.