Shaken out of his comparatively comfortable existence, he grew sulky There were several rows in the kitchen, and once Dick found Mary in tears. She knew there had been enough raisins put out for the pudding, but when they came to eat it, there were hardly any. And the boy denied stealing them…
'Good heavens,' said Dick, amused, 'I thought there was something really wrong.'
'But I know he took them,' sobbed Mary.
'He probably did, but he's a good old swine on the whole.'
'I am going to take it out of his wages.'
Dick, puzzled at her emotional state, said: 'If you think it is really necessary.' He reflected that this was the first time he had seen her cry.
So Samson, who earned a pound a month, was docked two shillings. He accepted the information with a shut sullen face, saying nothing to her, but appealing to Dick, who told him that he was to take orders from Mary. Samson gave notice that evening, on the grounds that he was needed in his kraal. Mary began to question him closely as to why he was needed; but Dick touched her arm warningly and shook his head.
'Why shouldn't I ask him?' she demanded. `He's lying, isn't he?
'Of course he's lying,' said Dick irritably. `Of course. That is not the point. You can't keep him against his will.' `Why should I accept a lie?' said Mary. 'Why should I? Why can't he say straight out that he doesn't like working for me, instead of lying about his kraal?'
Dick shrugged, looking at her with impatience; he could not understand her unreasonable insistence: he knew how to get on with natives; dealing with them was a sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying game in which both sides followed certain unwritten rules.
`You would he angry if he did say so,' he remarked ruefully; but with affection still; he could not take her seriously, she seemed to him a child when she behaved like this. And he was genuinely grieved that this old native, who had worked for him all these years, was going now. `Well,' he said at last, philosophically, `I should have expected it. I should have got a new boy right from the beginning. There's always trouble with a change of management.'
Mary watched the farewell scene, that took place on the back steps, from the doorway. She was filled with wonder, and even repulsion. Dick was really sorry to see the end of this nigger! She could not understand any white person feeling anything personal about a native; it made Dick seem really horrible to her. She heard him say, "When your work in the kraal is finished, you will come back and work for us again?' The native answered, `Yes, baas,' but he was already turned to go; and Dick came back into the house silent and glum. `He won't come back,' he said.
`There are plenty of other munts, aren't there?' she asked snappily, disliking him.
`Yes,' he assented, `oh yes.'
It was several days before a new cook offered himself for work, and Mary did the house herself. She found it unexpectedly heavy, although there was not, really, so much to do. Yet she liked the feeling of being alone there all day, responsible for it. She scrubbed and swept and polished; housework was quite a new thing to her; all her life natives had done the work for her, as silently and as unobtrusively as fairies. Because it was new, she really enjoyed it. But when everything was clean and polished, and the pantry was full of food, she used to sit on the old greasy sofa in the front room, suddenly collapsing on it as if her legs had been drained of strength. It was so hot! She had never imagined it could be so hot. The sweat poured off her all day; she could feel it running down her ribs and thighs under her dress, as if ants were crawling over her. She used to sit quite, quite still, her eyes closed, and feel the heat beating down from the iron over her head. Really, it was so bad she should wear a hat even in the house. If Dick had ever really lived in this house, she thought, instead of being down on the lands all day, he would have put in ceilings. Surely they did not cost so much? As the days passed, she found herself thinking fretfully that she had been foolish to spend her little store of money on curtains rather than on ceilings, If she asked Dick again, and explained to him what it meant to her, perhaps he would relent and
the money? But she knew she could not easily ask, and bring that heavy tormented look on his face. For by now she had become used to that look. Though really, she liked it: deep down, she liked it very much. When he took her hand endearingly, and kissed it submissively, and said pleadingly, 'Darling, do you hate me for bringing you here?' she replied, 'No dear, you know I don't.' It was the only time she could bring herself to use endearments to him, when she was feeling victorious and forgiving. His craving for forgiveness, and his abasement before her was the greatest satisfaction she knew, although she despised him for it.
So she used to sit on that sofa, her eyes shut, suffering because of the heat, and feeling at the same time tenderly sorrowful and queenly… because of her willingness to suffer.
And then, suddenly, the heat became intolerable. Outside in the bush the cicadas shrilled incessantly, and her head ached; her limbs were heavy and tense. She would get up and go into the bedroom, and examine her clothes, to see if there was nothing she could do: no bit of embroidery, or an alteration. She looked through Dick's things for darning and mending; but he wore nothing but shirts and shorts, and if she sometimes found a button off she was lucky. With nothing to do, she would wander on to the verandah, to sit watching the lights change on the distant blue kopjes; or she would go to the back of the house where the little kopje stood, a rough heap of giant boulders, and watch the heat-waves beat up out of the hot stone, where the heat-lizards, vivid red and blue and emerald; darted over the rocks like flames. Until at last her head began to swim, and she had to go back to the house to get a glass of water.
Then came a native to the back door, asking for work. He wanted seventeen shillings a month. She beat him down by two, feeling pleased with herself because of her victory over him. He was a native straight from his kraal, a youth, probably not out of his 'teens, thin with the long, long walk through the bush from his home in Nyasaland, hundreds of miles away. He was unable to understand her, and very nervous. He carried himself stiffly, his shoulders rigid, in a hunched attentive attitude, never taking his eyes off her, afraid to miss her slightest look. She was irritated by this subservience and her voice was hard. She showed him all over the house, corner by corner, cupboard by cupboard, explaining to him how things should be done in her by now fluent kitchen kaffir. He followed her like a scared dog. He had never seen forks and knives and plates before, though he had heard legends of these extraordinary objects from friends returning from service in the white men's houses. He did not know what to do with them; and she expected him to know the difference between a pudding plate and a dinner plate. She stood over him while he laid the table; and all the afternoon she kept him at it, explaining, exhorting and spurring him on. That night, at supper, he laid the table badly, and she flew at him, in a frenzy of annoyance, while Dick sat and watched her uneasily. When the native had gone out, he said: 'You have to take things easy, you know, with a new boy.'
'But I told him! If I have told him once I have told him fifty times!'
'But this is probably the first time he has ever been in a white man's house!'
'I don't care. I told him what to do. Why doesn't he do it?,
He looked at her attentively, his forehead contracted, his lips tight. She seemed possessed by irritation, not herself at all.
'Mary, listen to me for a moment. If you get yourself into a state over your boys, then you are finished. You will have to let go your standards a little. You must go easy.'
'I won't let go my standards. I won't! Why should I? It's bad enough…' She stopped herself. She had been going to say, 'It is bad enough living in a pigsty like this…'
He sensed that was what she had been going to say, and he dropped his head and stared at his plate. But this time he did not appeal to her. He was angry; he did not feel submissive and in the wrong; and when she went on: 'I told him how to lay this table,' speaking in a hot, blind, tired voice, he got up from the meal and went outside-, and she could see the spurt of a match and the rapid glowing of a cigarette. So! He was annoyed, was he? So annoyed that he broke his rule about never smoking until after dinner! Well, let him be annoyed.