The Complete Short Stories. Muriel Spark

cricketer or the RFC pilot. He had been in hundreds of jobs, had married and lost his wife to a younger and more energetic man. The past eight years had been the most settled in his life, for he was Town Clerk of the dorp, a job which made few demands on punctuality, industry, smartness of appearance, and concentration, which qualities Donald lacked. Sometimes when the Council held its monthly meeting, and Donald happened to stagger in late and drunk, the Chairman would ask Donald to leave the meeting, and in his absence propose his dismissal. Sometimes they unanimously dismissed him and after the meeting he was informed of the decision. However, next day Donald would dress himself cleanly and call in to see the butcher with a yarn about the RFC; he would call on the headmaster who had been to Cambridge some years later than Donald; and after doing a round of the Council members he would busy himself in the district, would ride for miles on his bicycle seeing that fences were up where they should be, and sign-posts which had fallen in the rains set upright and prominent. Within a week, Donald’s dismissal would be ignored by everyone. He would relax then, and if he entered up a birth or a death during the week, it was a good week’s work.

      “Who brought you from the farm?” said Donald.

      “Ticky Talbot,” said Daphne.

      “Nice to see you,” said Donald. And he called to his servant for tea.

      “Five more years and then I go to England,” said Daphne, for this was the usual subject between them, and she did not feel it right to come to the real purpose of her visit so soon.

      “That will be the time,” said Donald. “When you go to England, that will be the time.” And he told her all over again about the water meadows at Cambridge, the country pubs, the hedging and ditching, the pink-coated riders.

      Donald’s ragged native brought in tea in two big cups, holding one in each hand. One he gave to Daphne and the other to Donald.

      How small, Donald said, were the English streams which never dried up. How small the fields, little bits of acreage, and none of the cottage women bitchy for they did their own housework and had no time to bitch. And then, of course, the better classes taking tea in their long galleries throughout the land, in springtime, with the pale sunlight dripping through the mullioned windows on to the mellow Old Windsor chairs, and the smell of hyacinths …

      “Oh, I see. Now tell me about London, Donald. Tell me about the theatres and bioscopes.”

      “They don’t say ‘bioscope’ there, they say ‘cinema’ or ‘the pictures’.”

      “I say, Donald,” she said, for she noticed it was twenty-past four, “I want you to tell me something straight.”

      “Fire ahead,” said Donald.

      “Why does Uncle Chakata keep on Old Tuys?”

      “I don’t want to lose my job,” he said.

      “Upon my honour,” she said, “if you tell me about Old Tuys I shan’t betray you.”

      “The whole Colony knows the story,” said Donald, “but the first one to tell it to you is bound to come up against Chakata.”

      “May I drop dead on this floor,” she said, “if I tell my Uncle Chakata on you.”

      “How old are you, now?” Donald said.

      “Nearly thirteen.”

      “It was two years before you were born – that would make it fifteen years ago, when Old Tuys …”

      Old Tuys had already been married for some time to a Dutch girl from Pretoria. Long before he took the job at Chakata’s he knew of her infidelities. They had one peculiarity: her taste was exclusively for Englishmen. The young English settlers whom she met in the various establishments where Tuys was employed were, guilty or not, invariably accosted by Tuys: “You committed adultery with my wife, you swine.” There might be a fight, or Tuys would threaten his gun. However it might be, and whether or not these young men were his wife’s lovers, Tuys was usually turned off the job.

      It was said he was going to shoot his wife and arrange it to look like an accident. Simply because this intention was widely reported, he could not have carried out the plan successfully, even if he did, in fact, contemplate the deed. Certainly he beat her up from time to time.

      Tuys hoped eventually to get a farm of his own. Chakata, who knew of his troubles, took Tuys on to learn the tobacco sheds. Tuys and his wife moved into a small house on Chakata’s land. “Any trouble with the lady, Tuys,” said Chakata, “come to me, for in a young country like this, with four white men to every one white woman, there is bound to be trouble.”

      There was trouble the first week with a trooper.

      “Look here, Tuys,” said Chakata, “I’ll talk to her.” He had frequently in his life had the painful duty of giving his servants a talking-to on sex. At the Pattersons’ home in England it had been a routine affair.

      Hatty Tuys was not beautiful: in fact she was dark and scraggy. However, Chakata not only failed to reform her, he succumbed to her. She wept. She said she hated Tuys.

      Donald paused in his story to remark to Daphne, “Mind you, this sort of thing doesn’t happen in England.”

      “Doesn’t it?” said Daphne.

      “Oh well, there are love affairs but they take time. You have to sort of build them up with a woman. In England, a man of Chakata’s importance might feel sorry for a slut if she started to cry, but he wouldn’t just make love to her on the spot. The climate’s cooler there, you see, and there are a lot more girls.”

      “Oh, I see,” said Daphne. “What did Uncle Chakata do next?”

      “Well, as soon as he had played the fool with Mrs Tuys he felt sorry. He told her it was a moment of weakness and it would never occur again. But it did.”

      “Did Tuys find out?”

      “Tuys found out. He went to Mrs Chakata and tried to rape her.”

      “Didn’t it come off?”

      “No, it didn’t come off.”

      “It must have been the whisky in her breath. It must have put him off,” said Daphne.

      “In England,” said Donald, “girls your age don’t know very much about these things.”

      “Oh, I see,” said Daphne.

      “It’s all different there. Well, Mrs Chakata complained to Chakata, and wanted him to shoot Tuys. He refused, of course, and he gave Tuys a rise and made him manager. And from that day he wouldn’t look at Mrs Tuys, wouldn’t even look at her. Whenever he caught sight of her about the farm, he looked the other way. In the end she wrote to Chakata to say she was mad in love with him and if she couldn’t have him she would shoot herself. The note was written in block letters, in Afrikaans.”

      “Chakata would never answer it, then,” Daphne said.

      “You are right,” said Donald. “And Mrs Tuys shot herself. Old Tuys has sworn to be revenged on Chakata some day. That’s why Mrs Chakata has a gun at her bedside. She has implored Chakata to get rid of Old Tuys. So he should, of course.”

      “He can’t, very well, when you think of it,” said Daphne.

      “It’s only his remorse,” said Donald, “and his English honour. If Old Tuys was an Englishman, Daphne, he would have cleared off the farm long ago. But no, he remains, he has sworn on the Bible to be revenged.”

      “It must be our climate,” said Daphne. “I have never liked the way Old Tuys looks at me.”

      “The Colony is a savage place,” he said. He rose and poured himself a whisky. “I grant you,” he said, “we have the natives under control. I grant you we have the leopards under control –”

      “Oh, remember Moses,”