For a few weeks Major Carruthers was almost happy. The fear of having to apply for another loan to his brother – worse, asking for the passage money to England and a job, thus justifying his family’s belief in him as a failure, was pushed away; for while taking on a manager did not in itself improve things, it was an action, a decision, and there was nothing that he found more dismaying than decisions. The thought of his family in England, and particularly his elder brother, pricked him into slow burning passions of resentment. His brother’s letters galled him so that he had grown to hate mail-days. They were crisp, affectionate letters, without condescension, but about money, bank-drafts, and insurance policies. Major Carruthers did not see life like that. He had not written to his brother for over a year. His wife, when she was well, wrote once a week, in the spirit of one propitiating fate.
Even she seemed cheered by the manager’s coming; she sensed her husband’s irrational lightness of spirit during that short time. She stirred herself to ask about the farm; and he began to see that her interest in living would revive quickly if her sort of life came within reach again.
But some two months after Van Heerden’s coming, Major Carruthers was walking along the farm road towards his lands, when he was astonished to see, disappearing into the bushes, a small flaxen-haired boy. He called, but the child froze as an animal freezes, flattening himself against the foliage. At last, since he could get no reply, Major Carruthers approached the child, who dissolved backwards through the trees, and followed him up the path to the hut. He was very angry, for he knew what he would see.
He had not been to the hut since he handed it over to Van Heerden. Now there was a clearing, and amongst the stumps of trees and the flattened grass, were half a dozen children, each as tow-headed as the first, with that bleached sapless look common to white children in the tropics who have been subjected to too much sun.
A lean-to had been built against the hut. It was merely a roof of beaten petrol tins, patched together like cloth with wire and nails and supported on two unpeeled sticks. There, holding a cooking pot over an open fire that was dangerously close to the thatch, stood a vast slatternly woman. She reminded him of a sow among her litter, as she lifted her head, the children crowding about her, and stared at him suspiciously from pale and white-lashed eyes.
‘Where is your husband?’ he demanded.
She did not answer. Her suspicion deepened into a glare of hate: clearly she knew no English.
Striding furiously to the door of the hut, he saw that it was crowded with two enormous native-style beds: strips of hide stretched over wooden poles embedded in the mud of the floor. What was left of the space was heaped with the stained and broken belongings of the family. Major Carruthers strode off in search of Van Heerden. His anger was now mingled with the shamed discomfort of trying to imagine what it must be to live in such squalor.
Fear rose high in him. For a few moments he inhabited the landscape of his dreams, a grey country full of sucking menace, where he suffered what he would not allow himself to think of while awake: the grim poverty that could overtake him if his luck did not turn, and if he refused to submit to his brother and return to England.
Walking through the fields, where the maize was now waving over his head, pale gold with a froth of white, the sharp dead leaves scything crisply against the wind, he could see nothing but that black foetid hut and the pathetic futureless children. That was the lowest he could bring his own children to! He felt moorless, helpless, afraid: his sweat ran cold on him. And he did not hesitate in his mind; driven by fear and anger, he told himself to be hard; he was searching in his mind for the words with which he would dismiss the Dutchman who had brought his worst nightmares to life, on his own farm, in glaring daylight, where they were inescapable.
He found him with a screaming rearing young ox that was being broken to the plough, handling it with his sure understanding of animals. At a cautious distance stood the natives who were assisting; but Van Heerden, fearless and purposeful, was fighting the beast at close range. He saw Major Carruthers, let go the plunging horn he held, and the ox shot away backwards, roaring with anger, into the crowd of natives, who gathered loosely about it with sticks and stones to prevent it running away altogether.
Van Heerden stood still, wiping the sweat off his face, still grinning with the satisfaction of the fight, waiting for his employer to speak.
‘Van Heerden,’ said Major Carruthers, without preliminaries, ‘why didn’t you tell me you had a family?’
As he spoke the Dutchman’s face changed, first flushing into guilt, then setting hard and stubborn. ‘Because I’ve been out of work for a year, and I knew you would not take me if I told you.’
The two men faced each other, Major Carruthers tall, fly-away, shambling, bent with responsibility; Van Heerden stiff and defiant. The natives remained about the ox, to prevent its escape – for them this was a brief intermission in the real work of the farm – and their shouts mingled with the incessant bellowing. It was a hot day; Van Heerden wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand.
‘You can’t keep a wife and all those children here – how many children?’
‘Nine.’
Major Carruthers thought of his own two, and his perpetual dull ache of worry over them; and his heart became grieved for Van Heerden. Two children, with all the trouble over everything they ate and wore and thought, and what would become of them, were too great a burden; how did this man, with nine, manage to look so young?
‘How old are you?’ he asked abruptly, in a different tone.
‘Thirty-four,’ said Van Heerden suspiciously, unable to understand the direction Major Carruthers followed.
The only marks on his face were sun-creases; it was impossible to think of him as the father of nine children and the husband of that terrible broken-down woman. As Major Carruthers gazed at him, he became conscious of the strained lines on his own face, and tried to loosen himself, because he took so badly what this man bore so well.
‘You can’t keep a wife and children in such conditions.’
‘We were living in a tent in the bush on mealie meal and what I shot for nine months, and that was through the wet season,’ said Van Heerden drily.
Major Carruthers knew he was beaten. ‘You’ve put me in a false position, Van Heerden,’ he said angrily. ‘You know I can’t afford to give you more money. I don’t know where I’m going to find my own children’s school fees, as it is. I told you the position when you came. I can’t afford to keep a man with such a family.’
‘Nobody can afford to have me either,’ said Van Heerden sullenly.
‘How can I have you living on my place in such a fashion? Nine children! They should be at school. Didn’t you know there is a law to make them go to school? Hasn’t anybody been to see you about them?’
‘They haven’t got me yet. They won’t get me unless someone tells them.’
Against this challenge, which was also an unwilling appeal, Major Carruthers remained silent, until he said brusquely: ‘Remember, I’m not responsible.’ And he walked off, with all the appearance of anger.
Van Heerden looked after him, his face puzzled. He did not know whether or not he had been dismissed. After a few moments he moistened his dry lips with his tongue, wiped his hand again over his eyes, and turned back to the ox. Looking over his shoulder from the edge of the field, Major Carruthers could see his wiry stocky figure leaping and bending about the ox whose bellowing made the whole farm ring with anger.
Major Carruthers decided, once and