The Grass is Singing

Chapter Nine

And so the days passed, through August and September, hot hazy days with slow winds blowing in sultry, dusty gusts from the encircling granite kopjes. Mary moved about her work like a woman in a dream, taking hours to accomplish what would formerly have taken her a few minutes. Hatless under the blazing sun, with the thick cruel rays pouring on to her back and shoulders, numbing and dulling her, she sometimes felt as if she were bruised all over, as if the sun had bruised her flesh to a tender swollen covering for aching bones. She would turn giddy as she stood, and send the boy for her hat. Then, with relief, as if she had been doing hard physical labour for hours, instead of wandering aimlessly among the chickens without seeing them, she would collapse into a chair, and sit unmoving, thinking of nothing; but the knowledge of that man alone in the house with her lay like a weight at the back of her mind. She was tight and controlled in his presence; she kept him working as long as she could, relentless over every speck of dust and every misplaced glass or plate – that she noticed. The thought of Dick's exasperation, and his warning that he could stand no more changes of servants, a challenge which she had not the vitality to face, caused her to hold herself like a taut-drawn thread, stretched between two immovable weights: that was how she felt, as if she were poised, a battleground for two contending forces. Yet what the forces were, and how she contained them, she could not have said. Moses was indifferent and calm against her as if she did not exist, except in so far as he obeyed her orders; Dick, formerly so good-natured and easy to please, now complained continually over her had management; for she would nag at the boy in that high nervous voice of hers over a chair that was two inches out of its right place, and fail to notice that the ceiling was shrouded in cobwebs.

She was letting everything slide, except what was forced on her attention. Her horizon had been narrowed to the house. The chickens began to die; she murmured something about disease; and then understood that she had forgotten to feed them for a week. Yet she had wandered, as usual, through the runs, with a basket of grain in her hand. As they died, the scrawny fowls were cooked and eaten. For a short while, shocked at herself, she made an effort and tried to keep her mind on what she was doing. Yet, not long after, the same thing happened: she had not noticed the drinking troughs were empty. Fowls were lying over the baked earth, twitching feebly in death for lack of water. And then she could no longer be troubled.

For weeks they lived on chicken, till the big wire runs were empty. And now there were no eggs. She did not order them from the store, because they were so expensive. Her mind, nine-tenths of the time, was a soft aching blank. She would begin a sentence and forget to finish it. Dick became accustomed to the way she would say three words, and then, her face becoming suddenly null and empty, lapse into silence. What she had been going to say had gone clean out of her head. If he gently prompted her to continue, she looked up, not seeing him, and did not answer. It grieved him so that he could not protest over the abandonment of her chickens, which had kept them going with a little ready money up till now.

I But as far as the native was concerned, she was still responsive. This was the small part of her mind that was awake. All those scenes she would have liked to stage, but did not dare, for fear of the boy's leaving and Dick's anger, she acted out in her mind. Once she was roused by a noise, and realized it was herself, talking out loud in the living-room in a low angry voice. In her fantasy, the native had forgotten to clean the bedroom that morning, and she was raging at him, thinking up cruel cutting phrases in her own language that he could not possibly have understood, even if she had said them to him. The sound of that soft, disjointed, crazy voice was as terrifying as the sight of herself in the mirror had been. She was afraid, jerked back into herself, shrinking from the vision of herself talking like a mad woman in the corner of the sofa.

She got up softly and went to the door between the living-room and the kitchen, looking through to see if the boy was near and could have heard. There he stood, as always, leaning against the outer wall; and she could see only his big shoulder bulging underneath the thin cloth, and his hand hanging idly down, the fingers curled softly inwards over the pinkish-brown palm. And he did not move. She told herself he could not have heard; and pushed the thought of the two open doors between herself and him out of her mind. She avoided him all that day, moving restlessly about the rooms as if she had forgotten how to remain still. She wept all that afternoon lying on the bed, with a hopeless convulsive sobbing; so that she was worn out when Dick came home. But this time he noticed nothing; he was worn out himself, wanting only sleep.

The next day, when she was giving out supplies from the cupboard in the kitchen (which she tried to remember to keep locked, but which, more often than not, remained open without her noticing it, so that this business of putting out the amounts needed for the day was really futile), Moses, who was standing beside her with the tray, said he wanted to leave at the end of the month. He spoke quietly and directly, but with a trace of hesitation, as if he were setting himself to face opposition. She was familiar with this note of nervousness, for whenever a boy gave notice, although she always felt a sharp relief because the tensions that were created between herself and every servant would be dissolved by his going, she also felt indignant, as if it were an insult to herself. She never let one go without long argument and expostulation. And now, she opened her mouth to remonstrate, but became silent; her hand dropped from the door of the cupboard, and she found herself thinking of Dick's anger. She could not face it. She simply could not go through scenes with Dick. And it was not her fault this time; had she not done everything she could to keep this boy, whom she hated, who frightened her? To her horror she discovered she was shaking with sobs again, there, in front of the native! Helpless and weak, she stood beside the table, her back towards him, sobbing. For some time neither of them moved; then he came round where he could see her face, looking at her curiously, his brows contracted in speculation and wonder. She said at last, wild with panic: `You mustn't go!' And she wept on, repeating over and over again, `You must stay! You must stay!' And all the time she was filled with shame and mortification because he was seeing her cry.

After a while she saw him go across to the shelf where the water-filter stood to fill a glass. The slow deliberation of his movements galled her, because of her own lost control; and when he handed the glass to her she did not lift her hand to take it, feeling that his action was an impertinence which she should choose to ignore. But in spite of the attitude of dignity she was striving to assume, she sobbed out again, `You mustn't go,' and her voice was an entreaty. He held the glass to her lips, so that she had to put up her hand to hold it, and with the tears running down her face she took a gulp. She looked at him pleadingly over the glass, and with renewed fear saw an indulgence for her weakness in his eyes.

`Drink,' he said simply, as if he were speaking to one of his own women; and she drank.

Then he carefully took the glass from her, put it on the table, and, seeing that she stood there dazed, not knowing what to do, said: `Madame lie down on the bed.' She did not move. He put out his hand reluctantly, loathe to touch her, the sacrosanct white woman, and pushed her by the shoulder; she felt herself gently propelled across the room towards the bedroom. It was like a nightmare where one is powerless against horror: the touch of this black man's hand on her shoulder filled her with nausea; she had never, not once in her whole life, touched the flesh of a native.

As they approached the bed, the soft touch still on her shoulder, she felt her head beginning to swim and her bones going soft. `Madame lie down,' he said again, and his voice was gentle this time, almost fatherly. When she dropped to a sitting position on the bedside, he gently held her shoulder and pushed her down. Then he took her coat off the door where it hung, and placed it over her feet. He went out, and the horror retreated; she lay there numbed and silent, unable to consider the implications of the incident.

After a while she slept, and it was late afternoon when she woke. She could see the sky outside the square of window, banked with thunderous blue clouds, and lit with orange light from the sinking sun. For a moment she could not remember what had happened; but when she did the fear engulfed her again, a terrible dark fear. She thought of herself weeping helplessly, unable to stop; of drinking at that black man's command; of the way he had pushed her across the two rooms to the bed; of the way he had made her lie down and then tucked the coat in round her legs. She shrank into the pillow with loathing, moaning out loud, as if she had been touched by excrement. And through her torment she could hear his voice, firm and kind, like a father commanding her.

After a while, when the room was quite dark, and only the pale walls glimmered, reflecting the light that still glowed in the tops of the trees, though their lower boughs held the shadows of dusk, she got up, and put a match to the lamp. It flared up, steadied, glowed quietly: The room was now a shell of amber light and shadows, hollowed out of the wide tree-filled night. She powdered her face, and sat a long tune before the mirror, feeling unable to move. She was not thinking, only afraid, and of what she did not know. She felt she could not go out till Dick returned and supported her against the presence of the native. When Dick came, he said, looking at her with dismay, that he had not woken her at lunch-time, and that he hoped she was not ill. `Oh no,' she said. `Only tired. I am feeling,..' Her voice tailed off, the blank look settled on her face.

They were sitting in the dim arc of light from the swinging lamp, the boy quietly moving about the table. For a long time she kept her eyes lowered, though an alertness came back to her features with his entrance. When she made herself look up, and peer hurriedly into his face, she was reassured, for there was nothing new in his attitude. As always, he behaved as if he were an abstraction, not really there, a machine without a soul.

Next morning she made herself go into the kitchen and speak normally; and waited fearfully for him to say again that he wanted to leave. But he did not. For a week things went on until she realized he was not going; he had responded to her tears and appeal. She could not bear to think she had got her way by these methods; and because she did not want to remember it, she slowly recovered. Relieved, released from the torturing thought of Dick's anger, with the memory of her shameful collapse gone from her mind, she began again to use that cold biting voice, to make sarcastic comments on the native's work. One day he turned to her in 'the kitchen, looked at her straight in the face and said in a voice that was disconcertingly hot and reproachful: `Madame asked me to stay. I stay to help Madame. If Madame cross, I go.'

The note of finality checked her; she felt helpless. Particularly as she had been forced to remember why he was here at all. And then, the resentful heat of his voice said that he considered she was unjust. Unjust! She did not see it like that.

He was standing beside the stove, waiting for something to finish cooking. She did not know what to say. He moved over to the table, while he waited for her reply, he picked up a cloth with which to grasp the hot iron of the oven door-handle. Without looking at her, he said: `I do the work well, yes?' He spoke in English, which as a rule she would have flamed into temper over; she thought it impertinence. But she answered in English, `Yes.'

`Then why Madame always cross?'

He spoke, this time, easily, almost familiarly, good humouredly, as if he were humouring a child. He bent to open the oven, with his back to her, and took out a tray of the crisp light scones, that were so much better than she could make herself. He began turning them out, one by one, on to a wire tray to cool. She felt as if she should go at once, but did not move. She was held, helpless, watching his big hands flip those little scones on to the tray. And she said nothing. She felt the usual anger rise within her, at the tone he used to her; at the same time she was fascinated, and out of her depth; she did not know what to do with this personal relation. So, after a while, since he did not look at her, and moved quietly about his work, she went away without replying.

When the rains broke in late October, after six weeks Of destroying heat, Dick, as always at this time of the year, stayed away for the midday meal because of the pressure of work. He left about six in the morning and returned at six at night, so there was only one meal to be cooked: breakfast and lunch were sent to him on the fields. As she had done before, in previous years, Mary told Moses that she would not take lunch, and that he could bring her tea: she felt she could not be troubled to eat. On the first day of Dick's long absences, instead of the tray of tea, Moses brought her eggs, jam and toast. These he set carefully down on the small table beside her.

'I told you I only wanted tea,' she said sharply.

He answered quietly: 'Madame ate no breakfast, she must eat' On the tray there was even a handle-less cup with flowers in it: crude yellows and pinks and reds, bush flowers, thrust together clumsily, but making a strong burst of colour on the old stained cloth.

As she sat there, her eyes bent down, and he straightened himself after setting down the tray, what troubled her most was this evidence of his desire to please her, the propitiation of the flowers. He was waiting for a word of approval and pleasure from her. She could not give it; but the rebuke &at sprang to her lips remained unspoken, and she pulled the day to for and began to eat, without ~ word.

There was now a new relation between them. For she felt helplessly in his power. Yet there was no reason why she should. Never ceasing for one moment to be conscious of his presence about the house, or standing silently at the back against the wall in the sun, her feeling was one of a strong and irrational fear, a deep uneasiness, and even – though this she did not know, would have died rather than acknowledge – of some dark attraction. It was as though the act of weeping before him had been an act of resignation – resignation of her authority; and he had refused to hand it back. Several times the quick rebukes had come to her lips, and she had seen him look at her deliberately, not accepting it, but challenging her. Only once, when he had really forgotten to do something and was in the wrong, had he worn his old attitude of blank submissiveness. Then he accepted, because he was at fault. And now she began to avoid him. Whereas before she had made herself follow up his work, and had inspected everything he did, now she hardly went to the kitchen, and left the care of the house to him. Even the keys she left on a shelf in the storeroom, where he could find them to open the grocery cupboard as he needed. And she was held in balance, not knowing what this new tension was that she could not break down.

Twice he asked her questions, in that new familiar friendly voice of his.

Once it was about the war. 'Did Madame think it would be over soon?' She was startled. To her, living out of contact with everything, not even reading the weekly newspaper, the war was a rumour, something taking place in another world. But she had seen him poring over the old newsprint spread on the kitchen table as covering. She answered stiffly that she did not know. And again, some days later, as if he had been thinking in the interval, he asked: `Did Jesus think it right that people should kill each other?' This time she was angry at the implied criticism, and she answered coldly that Jesus was an the side of the good people. But all day she burned with her old

resentment, and at night asked Dick: 'Where does Moses come from?

' Mission boy,' he replied. 'The only decent one I've ever had.' Like most South Africans, Dick did not like mission boys, they 'knew too much’ in any case they should not be taught to read and write: they should be taught the dignity of labour and general usefulness to the white man.

'Why? he asked suspiciously. 'No trouble again, I hope?'

'No.'

'Has he been cheeky?' 'No.'

But the mission background explained a lot: that irritatingly well-articulated 'Madame', for instance, instead of the usual 'missus', which was somehow in better keeping with his station in life.

That 'Madame' annoyed her. She would have liked to ask him to drop it. But there was nothing disrespectful in it: it was only what he had been taught by some missionary with foolish ideas. And there was nothing in his attitude towards her she could take hold of. But although he was never disrespectful, he forced her now to treat him as a human being; it was impossible for her to thrust him out of her mind like something unclean, as she had done with all the others in the past. She was being forced into contact, and she never ceased to be aware of him. She realized, daily, that there was something in it that was dangerous, but what it was she was unable to define.

Now she dreamed through her broken nights, horrible, frightening dreams. Her sleep, once an instantaneous dropping of a black curtain, had become more real than her waking. Twice she dreamed directly of the native, and on each occasion she woke in terror as he touched her. On each occasion in her dream he had stood over her, powerful and commanding, yet kind, but forcing her into a position where she had to touch him. And there were other dreams, where he did not enter directly, but which were confused, terrifying, horrible, from which she woke sweating in fear, trying to put them out of her mind. She became afraid to go to sleep. She would lie in the dark, tense beside Dick's relaxed sleeping body, forcing herself to remain awake.

Often, during the day, she watched him covertly, not like a mistress watching a servant work, but with a fearful curiosity, remembering those dreams. And every day he looked after her, seeing what she ate, bringing her meals without her ordering them, bringing her little gifts of a handful of eggs from the compound fowls, or a twist of flowers from the bush.

Once, when it was long past sundown and Dick had not returned, she said to Moses, `Keep the dinner ijot. I am going to see what has happened to the boss.'

When she was in the bedroom fetching her coat, Moses knocked at the door, and said that he would go and find out; Madame should not walk around in the dark bush by herself.

`All right,' she said helplessly, and took her coat off. But there was nothing wrong with Dick. He had been held up over an ox that had broken its leg. And when, a week later, he was again long after his time in coming, and she was worried, she made no effort to find out what was wrong, fearing that the native might again, quite simply and naturally, take the responsibility for her welfare. It had come to this: that she watched her actions from one point of view only; would they allow Moses to strengthen that new human relationship between them, in a way she could not counter, and which she could only try to avoid.

In February, Dick fell ill again with malaria. As before, it was a short, sudden attack, and bad while it lasted. As before, she reluctantly sent a note by bearer to Mrs Slatter, asking them to fetch the doctor. It was the same doctor. He looked at the slatternly little house with raised eyebrows, and asked Mary why she had taken no notice of his former prescriptions. She did not answer. "Why have you not cut down the bush round the house where mosquitoes can breed?

'My husband could not spare the boys.'

`But he can spare the time to be ill, eh?' The doctor's manner was bluff, easy, but at bottom indifferent; he had learned, after years in a farming district, when to cut his losses as a doctor. Not his money, which he knew he would never see, but the patients themselves. These people were hopeless.

The window-curtains faded by the sun to a dingy grey, torn and not mended, proclaimed it. Everywhere there was evidence of breakdown in will. It was a waste of time even coming. But from habit he stood over the shivering, burning Dick and prescribed. He said Dick was worn out, a shell of a man, liable to get any disease going. He spoke as strongly as he could, trying to frighten Mary into action. But her attitude said listlessly, `What is the use.' He left at last with Charlie Slatter, who was sardonically disapproving; but unable to prevent himself from thinking that when he took over this place he would remove the wire from the chicken runs for his own, and that the corrugated iron of the house and buildings might come in useful some time.

Mary sat up with Dick the first two nights of his illness, on a hard chair, to keep herself awake, holding the blankets close over the restless limbs. But Dick was not as bad as the last time; he was not afraid now, knowing that the attack would run its course.

Mary made no effort to supervise the farm work; but twice a day, so as to calm him, she drove herself round the farm on a formal and useless inspection. The boys were in the compound loafing. She knew it, and did not care. She hardly looked at the fields: the farm had become something that did not concern her.

In the daytime, when she had finished preparing Dick's cool drinks, which were all that he took, she sat idly by the bed and sank into her usual apathetic state. Her mind wandered incoherently, dwelling on any scene from her past life that might push itself to the surface. But now it was without nostalgia or desire. And she had lost all sense of time. She set the alarm clock in front of her, to remind her of the regular intervals at which she must go and fetch Dick his drinks. Moses brought her the usual trays of food at the usual tames, and she ate mechanically, not noticing what she ate, not noticing, even, that she sometimes put down her knife and fork after a couple of mouthfuls and forgot to finish what was before her.

It was on the third morning that he asked, as she whisked an egg he had brought from the compound as a gift, into milk: `Did Madame go to bed last night?' He spoke with that simple directness that always left her disarmed, not knowing how to reply.

She answered, looking down at the frothing milk, avoiding his eyes: `I must stay up with the boss,'

`Did Madame stay up the other night??

'Yes,' she answered, and quickly went into the bedroom with the drink.

Dick lay still, half delirious with fever, in an uncomfortable doze. His temperature had not dropped. He was taking this bout very hard. The sweat poured off him; and then his skin became dry and harsh and burning hot. Every afternoon the slender rod of quicksilver mounted in a trice up the frail glass tube, so she had hardly to keep it in his mouth at all, higher every time she looked at it, until by six in the evening it stood at 105. There it stayed until about midnight, while he tossed and muttered and groaned. In the early hours it dropped rapidly below normal, and he complained he was cold and needed more blankets. But he had all the blankets in the place piled over him. She heated bricks in the oven and wrapped them in cloth and put them by his feet.

That night Moses came to the bedroom door and knocked on the wood frame as he always did. She confronted him through the parted folds of the embroidered Hessian curtain.

`Yes?' she asked.

`Madame stay in this room tonight. I stay with boss.' `No,' she said, thinking of the long night spent in intimate vigil with this native. 'No, you go back to the compound and sleep. I will stay with the boss.'

He came forward through the curtain, so that she shrank back a little, he was so close to her. She saw that he held a folded mealie sack in one hand, presumably his preparation for the night. `Madame must sleep,' he said. `She is tired, yes?' She could feel the skin round her eyes drawn tight with strain and weariness; but she insisted in a hard nervous voice: `No, Moses. I must stay.' He moved to the wall where he placed his sack carefully in a space between two cupboards. Then he stood up and said, sounding wounded, even reproachful: `Madame not thinks I look after boss right, huh? I too sick sometimes. I keep blankets over boss, yes?' He moved to the bed, but not too close, and looked down at Dick's flushed face. `I give him this drink when he wakes, yes?' And the half-humorous, half reproachful voice left her disarmed against him. She looked at his face once, quickly, avoiding the eyes, then away. But it would not do to seem afraid to look at him; she glanced down at his hand, the big hand with the lighter palm hanging loosely at his side. He insisted again: `Madame think I not look after boss well?'

She hesitated, and then said nervously, `Yes, but I must stay.'

As if her nervousness and hesitation had been answer enough, the man stooped and straightened out the blankets over the sleeping man. `If boss is very sick, I call Madame,' he said.

She saw him standing by the window, blocking the square of star-strewn, bough-crossed sky, waiting for her to go. `Madame will be sick too, if she does not sleep,' he said.

She went to her cupboard, where she took out her big coat. Before she left the roam, she said, in order to assert her authority: `You will call me if he wakes.'

She went instinctively to her refuge, the sofa, next door, where she spent so many of her waking hours, and sat helplessly, squeezed into one corner. She could not bear to think of the black man there all night, next door, so close to her, with nothing but the thin brick wall separating them.

After a while she pushed a cushion to the head of the sofa, and lay down, covering her feet with the coat. It was a close night, and the air in the little room hardly stirred. The dull flame in the hanging lamp burned low, making a little intimate glimmer of light that sent up broken arcs of light into the darkness under the roof, illuminating a slope of corrugated metal, and a beam. In the room itself there was only a small yellow circle on the table beneath. Everything else was dark, there were only vague elongated shapes. She turned her head slightly to see the curtains at the window; they hung quite still; and, listening intently, the tiny night noises from the bush outside sounded suddenly as loud as her own thudding heart. From the trees a few yards away a bird called once, and insects creaked. She heard the movement of branches, as if something heavy were pushing its way through them; and thought with fear of the low crouching trees all about. She had never become used to the bush, never felt at home in it. Still, after all this time, she felt a stirring of alarm when she realized the strangeness of the encircling veld where little animals moved, and unfamiliar birds talked. Often in the night she woke and thought of the small brick house, like a frail shell that might crush inwards under the presence of the hostile bush. Often she thought how, if they left this place, one wet fermenting season would swallow the small cleared space, and send the young trees thrusting up from the floor, pushing aside brick and cement, so that in a few months there would be nothing left but heaps of rubble about the trunks of trees.

She lay tense on the sofa, every sense alert, her mind quivering like a small hunted animal turned to. face its pursuers. She ached all over with the strain: She listened to the night outside; to her own heart, and for sounds from the room next door. She heard the dry sound of horny feet moving over thin matting, a clink of glasses being moved, a low mutter from the sick man. Then she heard the feet move close, and a sliding movement as the native settled himself down on the sack between the cupboards. He was there, just through the thin wall, so close that if it had not been there his back would have been six inches from her face! Vividly she pictured the broad muscular back, and shuddered. So clear was her vision of the native that she imagined she smelled the hot acrid scent of native bodies. She could smell it, lying there in the dark. She turned her head over, and buried her face in a cushion.

For a long time she could hear nothing, only the soft noise of steady breathing. She wondered, was it Dick? But then he muttered again, and as the native rose to adjust the coverings, the sound of breathing ceased. Moses returned, and again she heard the sliding of his back down the wall; and the regular breathing began again: it was he! Several times she heard Dick stir and call out, in that thick voice which was not his, but which came from his sick delirium, and each time the native roused himself to cross to the bed. In between she listened intently for the soft breathing which seemed, as she turned restlessly, to come from all over the room, first from just near her beside the sofa, then from a dark corner opposite. It was only when she turned and faced the wall that she could localize the sound. She fell asleep in that position, bent against the wall as if listening to a keyhole.

It was a troubled, un-restful sleep, visited by dreams. Once she started awake at a movement, and saw the dark bulk of the man part the curtains. She held her breath, but at the sound of her movement he turned his eyes quickly towards her, and away; then he passed soundlessly out of the other door into the kitchen. He was only going out for a few minutes on his own business. Her mind followed him as he crossed the kitchen, opened the door and vanished into the dark alone. Then she turned her head to the cushion again, shuddering, as she had when she imagined that native smell. She thought: soon he will be coming back. She lay still, so as to seem asleep. But he did not come immediately, and after a few minutes' waiting she went to the dim bedroom where Dick lay motionless, in a tormented jumble of limbs. She felt his forehead: it was damp and cold, so she knew it must be well after midnight. The native had taken all the blankets off a chair, and heaped them over the sick man. Now the curtains moved behind her, and a cool breeze struck her neck. She shut the pane nearest the bed, and stood still, listening to the suddenly loud ticking of the clock. Leaning down to gaze at its faintly illuminated dial, she saw it was not yet two o'clock, but she felt that the night had been continuing for a very long time. She heard a noise from the back and quickly, as if guilty, went to lie down. Then she heard again the hard feet on the floor as Moses passed her to his station on the other side of the wall, and saw him looking at her to see if she was asleep. Now she felt she was wide awake, and could not sleep. She was chilly, but did not want to rise to look for further covering. Again she imagined she smelt the warm odour, and to dispel the sensation turned her head softly to see the curtains blowing as the fresh night air poured in. Dick was quite still now; there was no sound from the other room except that faint rhythm of breathing.

She drifted off to sleep, and this time dreamed immediately, horribly.

She was a child again, playing in the small dusty garden in front of the raised wood-and-iron house, with playmates who in her dream were faceless. She was first in the game, a leader, and they called her name and asked her how they should play. She stood by the dry-smelling geranium plants, in the sun, with the children all about her. She heard her mother's sharp voice call for her to come in, and went slowly out of the garden up on to the verandah. She was afraid. Her mother was not there, so she went to the room inside. At the bedroom door she stopped, sickened. There was her father, the little man with the plump juicy stomach, beer-smelling and jocular, whom she hated, holding her mother in his arms as they stood by the window. Her mother was struggling in mock protest, playfully expostulating. Her father bent over her mother, and at the sight, Mary ran away.

Again, she was playing, this time with her parents and her brother and sister, before she went to bed. It was a game of hide-and-seek, and it was her turn to cover her eyes while her mother hid herself. She knew that the two older children were standing on one side watching; the game was too childish for them, and they were losing interest. They were laughing at her, who took the game so seriously. Her father caught her head and held it in his lap with his small hairy hands, to cover up her eyes, laughing and joking loudly about her mother hiding. She smelt the sickly odour of beer, and through it she smelt too – her head held down in the thick stuff of his trousers – the unwashed masculine smell she always associated with him. She struggled to get her head free, for she was half suffocating, and her father held it down, laughing at her panic. And the other children laughed too. Screaming in her sleep she half-woke, fighting off the weight of sleep on her eyes, filled with the terror of the dream.

She thought she was still awake and lying stiffly on the sofa listening intently for the breathing next door. It continued for a long time, while she waited for each soft expulsion of breath. Then there was silence. She gazed in growing terror round the room, hardly daring to move her head for fear of disturbing the native through the wall, seeing the dull light fall in a circle on the table, illuminating its rough surface. In her dream the conviction grew that Dick was dead – that Dick was dead, and that the black man was waiting next door for her coming. Slowly she sat up, disentangling her feet from the clinging weight of the coat, trying to control her terror. She repeated to herself that there was nothing to fear. At last she gathered her legs close, and let them down over the edge of the sofa, very quietly, not daring to make a sound.

Again she sat trembling, trying to calm herself, until she forced her body to raise itself and stand in the middle of the room, measuring

the distance between herself and the bedroom, seeing the shadows in the skins on the floor with terror, because they seemed to move up at her in the swaying of the lamplight. The skin of a leopard near the door seemed to take shape and till out, its little glassy eyes staring at her. She fled to the door to escape it. She stood cautiously, putting out a hand to part the heavy curtain. Slowly she peered through. All she could see was the shape of Dick lying still under the blankets. She could not see the African, but she knew he was waiting for her there in the shadow.

She parted the curtains a little more. Now she saw one leg stretching from the wall into the room, an enormous, more than life-size leg, the limb of a giant. She went forward a little: now she could see him properly. Dreaming, she felt irritated and let down, for the native was asleep, crouched against the wall, exhausted after long wakefulness. He sat as she had seen him sit sometimes in the sun, with one knee up, his arm resting on it loosely, so that the palm turned over and the fingers curled limply. The other leg, the one she had first seen, stretched almost to where she stood, and at her feet she saw the thick skin of the sole, cracked and horny. His head was bent forward on his chest, showing his thick neck. She felt as she sometimes did when, awake, she expected to find that he had left undone something he was paid to do, and taking herself to look, found everything in order. Her annoyance with herself turned into anger against the native; and now she looked towards the bed again where Dick lay stretched and motionless. She stepped over the giant leg lying over the floor, and moved silently round the bed with her back to the window. Bending over Dick she felt the night air blow coolly on her shoulders, and with sharp anger said to herself that the native had opened the window again, and had caused Dick's death through chill. Dick looked ugly. He was dead, yellow-faced, his mouth fallen open and his eyes staring. In her dream she put out her hand to touch his skin. It was cold, and she felt only relief and exultation. At the same time she felt guilty because of her gladness, and tried to arouse in herself the sorrow she ought to feel.

As she stood, bending forward over Dick's stillness, she knew the native had silently awakened and was watching her. Without turning her head, she saw at the edge of her vision the great leg softly withdrawn, and she knew he was standing in the shadow. Then he was coming towards her. It seemed as if the room were very big, and he was approaching her slowly from an immense distance. She stood rigid with fear, the chill sweat running down her body, waiting. He approached slowly, obscene and powerful, and it was not only he, but her father who was threatening her. They advanced together, one person, and she could smell, not the native smell, but the unwashed smell of her father. It filled the room, musty, like animals; and her knees went liquid as her nostrils distended to find clean air and her head became giddy.

Half-conscious, she leaned back against the wall for support, and nearly fell through the open window. He came near and put his hand on her arm. It was the voice of the African she heard. He was comforting her because of Dick's death, consoling her protectively; but at the same time it was her father menacing and horrible, who touched her in desire.

She screamed, knowing suddenly she was asleep and in nightmare. She screamed and screamed desperately, trying to wake herself from the horror. She thought: my screams must be waking Dick; and she struggled in the sands of sleep. Then she was awake and sitting up, panting. The African was standing beside her, red-eyed and half-asleep, holding out to her a tray with tea. The room was filled with a thick grey light, and the still burning lamp sent a thin beam to the table. Seeing the native, with the terror of the dream still in her, she shrank back into the corner of the sofa, breathing fast and irregularly, watching him in a paroxysm of fright. He put the tray down, clumsily, because of his weariness, and she struggled in her mind to separate dream from reality.

The man said, watching her curiously, `The boss is asleep.' And her knowledge that Dick lay dead next door faded. But still she watched the black man, warily, unable to speak. She saw in his face surprise at her posture of fear, and she watched grow there that look she had so often seen lately, half sardonic, speculative, brutal, as if he were judging her.

Suddenly he said softly: `Madame afraid of me, yes?' It was the voice of the dream, and as she heard it, her body went weak and she trembled. She fought to control her voice, and spoke after a few minutes in a half whisper: `No, no, no. I am not afraid.' And then she was furious with herself for denying something whose possibility should never even be admitted.

She saw him smile, and watched his eyes drop to her hands, which lay on her lap trembling. His eyes travelled up her body slowly to her face, taking in the hunched shoulders, the way her body was pressed into the cushions for support.

He said easily, familiarly, `Why is Madame afraid of me?'

She said half-hysterically, in a high-pitched voice, laughing nervously `. `Don't be ridiculous. I am not afraid of you.' She spoke as she might have done to a white man, with whom she was flirting a little. As she heard the words come from her mouth, and saw the expression on the man's face, she nearly fainted. She saw him give her a long, slow, imponderable look; then turn, and walk out of the room.

When he had gone, she felt released from an inquisition. She sat weak and shaking, thinking of the dream, trying to clear away the fog of horror.

After a while she poured out some tea, spilling it into the saucer. Again, as she had done in her dream, she forced herself to stand up and walk into the room next door. Dick was sleeping quietly, and looked better. Without touching him she left him, passing to the verandah, where she leant forward against the chilly bricks of the balustrade, breathing in drafts of cool morning air. It was not sunrise yet. All the sky was clear and colourless, flushed with rosy streaks of light, but there was darkness still among the silent trees.

She could see faint smoke rising in drifts from the small clustering huts of the compound, and knew that she must go and beat the gong for the day's work to begin.

All that day she sat in the bedroom as usual, watching Dick grow better hourly, although he was very weak still, and not yet well enough to be irritable.

She did not go around the farm at all that day. And she avoided the native; she felt that she was too unsure of. herself, had not the strength to face him. When he had left after lunch for his time off, she went hastily to the kitchen, almost furtively, made cold drinks for Dick, and returned looking behind her as if pursued.

That night she locked all the doors of the house, and went to bed beside Dick, thankful, perhaps for the first time in their marriage, for his closeness.

He was back at work in a week.

Again, falling swiftly, one after the other, the days passed, the long days spent alone in the house while Dick was on the lands, alone with the African. She was fighting against something she did not understand. Dick became to her, as time went by, more and more unreal; while the thought of the African grew obsessive. It was a nightmare, the powerful black man always in the house with her, so that there was no escape from his presence. She was possessed by it, and Dick was hardly there to her.

From the time she woke in the morning to find the native bending over them with the tea, his eyes averted from her bare shoulders, until the time he was out of the house altogether, she could never relax. Fearfully, she did her work in the house, trying to keep out of his way; if he was in one room she went to another. She would not look at him; she knew it would be fatal to meet his eyes, because now there was always the memory of her fear, of the way she had spoken to him that night. She used to give her orders hurriedly, in a strained voice, then hastily leave the kitchen. She dreaded hearing him speak, because now there was a new tone in his voice: familiar, half-insolent, domineering. A dozen times she was on the point of saying to Dick, `He must go.'

But she never dared. Always she stopped herself, unable to bear the anger that would follow. But she felt as if she were in a dark tunnel, nearing something final, something she could not visualize, but which waited for her inexorably, inescapably. And in the attitude of Moses, in the way he moved or spoke, with that easy, confident, bullying insolence, she could see he was waiting too. They were like two antagonists, silently sparring. Only he was powerful and sure of himself, and she was undermined with fear, by her terrible dream-filled nights, her obsession.