This Was the Old Chief's Country

  Paul thought it over and said: ‘But you didn’t have a wife?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I had a wife all right,’ said James, grim and humorous. ‘I had a fine wife, but only while I was underground raking in the shekels. When I decided it wasn’t good enough and I wanted to save my lungs, and I went on surface work at less money, she transferred to one of the can’t-happen-to-me boys. She left him when the doctor told him he was fit for the scrapheap, and then she used her brains and married a man on the stock exchange.’

  Paul was silent, because this bitter note against women was not confirmed by what he felt about his mother. ‘Do you ever want to go back?’ he asked.

  ‘Sometimes,’ conceded James, grudgingly, ‘Johannesburg’s a mad house, but it’s got something – but when I get the hankering I remember I’m still alive and kicking when my crowd’s mostly dead or put out to grass.’ He was speaking of the city as men do of the sea, or travel, or of drugs; and it gripped Paul’s imagination. But James looked sharply at him and said: ‘Hey, sonnie, if you’ve got any ideas about going south to the golden city, then think again. You don’t want to get any ideas about getting rich quick. If you want to mix yourself up in that racket, then you buy yourself an education and stay on the surface bossing the others, and not underground being bossed. You take it from me, son.’

  And Paul took it from him, though he did not want to. The golden city was shimmering in his head like a mirage. But what was the alternative? To stay on this shabby little farm? In comparison, James’s life seemed daring and wonderful and dangerous. It seemed to him that James was telling him everything but what was essential; he was leaving something out and soon he came back again for another dose of the astringent common sense that left him unfed, acknowledging it with his mind but not his imagination.

  He found James sitting on a heap of shale at the shaft-head, rolling cigarettes, his back to the evening sun. Paul stepped over the long, black shadow and seated himself on the shale. It was loose and shifted under him to form a warm and comfortable hollow. He asked for a cigarette and James good-humouredly gave him one. ‘Are you glad you became a small-worker?’ he asked at once.

  There was a shrewd look and the slow reply: ‘No complaints, there’s a living as long as the seam lasts – looks as if it won’t last much longer at that.’ Paul ignored that last remark and persisted: ‘If you had your life again, how would you change it?’

  James grimaced and asked: ‘Who’s offering me my life again?’

  The boy’s face was strained with disappointment. ‘I want to know,’ he said, stubbornly, like a child.

  ‘Listen, sonnie,’ said James, quietly, ‘I’m no person to ask for advice. I’ve nothing much to show. All I’ve got to pat myself on the back for is I had the sense to pull out of the big money in time to save my lungs.’ Paul let these words go past him and he looked up at the big man, who seemed so kindly and solid and sensible, and asked: ‘Are you happy?’ At last the question was out. James positively started: then he gave that small, humorous grimace and put back his head and laughed. It was painful. Then he slapped Paul’s knee and said, tolerantly, still laughing: ‘Sonnie, you’re a nice kid, don’t let any of them get you down.’

  Paul sat there, shamefaced, trying to smile, feeling badly let down. He felt as if James, too, had rejected him. But he clung to the man, since there was no one else; he came over in the evenings to talk, while he decided to put his mind to the farm. There was nothing else to do.

  Yet while he worked he was daydreaming. He imagined himself travelling south, to the Rand, and working as James had done, saving unheard-of sums of money and then leaving, a rich man, in time to save his health. Or did not leave, but was carried out on a stretcher, with his mother and James as sorrowing witnesses of this victim of the gold industry. Or he saw himself as the greatest mine expert of the continent, strolling casually among the mine-dumps and headgear of the Reef, calmly shedding his pearls of wisdom before awed financiers. Or he bought a large tobacco farm, made fifty thousand the first season and settled vast sums on James and his parents.

  Then he took himself in hand, refusing himself even the relief of daydreams, and forced himself to concentrate on the work. He would come back full of hopeful enthusiasm to Maggie, telling her that he was dividing the big field for a proper rotation of crops and that soon it would show strips of colour, from the rich, dark green of maize to the blazing yellow of the sunflower. She listened kindly, but without responding as he wanted. So he ceased to tell her what he was doing – particularly as half the time he felt uneasily that it was wrong, he simply did not know. He set his teeth over his anger and went to Alec and said: ‘Now listen, you’ve got to answer a question.’ Alec, divining rod in hand, turned and said: ‘What now?’ ‘I want to know, should I harrow the field now or wait until the rains?’ Alec hesitated and said: ‘What do you think?’ Paul shouted: ‘I want to know what you think – you’ve had the experience, haven’t you?’ And then Alec lost his temper and said: ‘Can’t you see I’m working this thing out? Go and ask – well go and ask one of the neighbours.’

  Paul would not give in. He waited until Alec had finished, and then said: ‘Now come on, father, you’re coming with me to the field. I want to know.’ Reluctantly, Alec went. Day after day, Paul fought with his father; he learned not to ask for general advice, he presented Alec with a definite problem and insisted until he got an answer. He was beginning to find his way among the complexities of the place, when Maggie appealed to him: ‘Paul, I know you’ll think I’m hard, but I want you to leave your father alone.’

  The boy said, in amazement: ‘What do you mean? I don’t ask him things oftener than once or twice a day. He’s got all the rest of the time to play with his toys.’

  Maggie said: ‘He should be left. I know you won’t understand, but I’m right, Paul.’ For several days she had been watching Alec; she could see that cloud of fear in his eyes that she had seen before. When he was forced to look outside him and his private world, when he was made to look at the havoc he had created by his negligence, then he could not bear it. He lay tossing at night, complaining endlessly: ‘What does he want? What more can I do? He goes on and on, and he knows I’m on to the big thing. I’ll have it soon, Maggie, I know I will. This new reef’ll be full of gold, I am sure …’ It made her heart ache with pity for him. She had decided, firmly, to support her husband against her son. After all, Paul was young, he’d his life in front of him. She said, quietly: ‘Leave him, Paul. You don’t understand. When a person’s a failure, it’s cruel to make them see it.’

  ‘I’m not making him see anything,’ said Paul, bitterly. ‘I’m only asking for advice, that’s all, that’s all!’ And the big boy of sixteen burst into tears of rage; and after a helpless, wild look at his mother, ran off into the bush, stumbling as he ran. He was saying to himself: I’ve had enough, I’m going to run away. I’m going south … But after a while he quietened and went back to work. He left Alec alone. But it was not so easy. Again he said to Maggie: ‘He’s dug a trench right across my new contour ridges; he didn’t even ask me …’ And later: ‘He’s put a shaft clean in the middle of the sunflowers, he’s ruined half an acre – can’t you talk to him, mother?’ Maggie promised to talk to her husband, and when it came to the point, lost her courage. Alec was like a child, what was the use of talking?

  Later still, Paul came and said: ‘Do you realize what he’s spent this last year on his nonsense?’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ sighed Maggie.

  ‘Well, he can’t spend so much, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ said Maggie. And then quickly: ‘Be gentle with him, Paul. Please …’

  Paul insisted one evening that Alec ‘should listen to him for a moment’. He made his father sit at one end of the table while he placed books of accounts before him and stood over him while he looked through them. ‘You can’t do it, father,’ said Paul, reasonably, patiently; ‘you’ve got to cut it down a bi
t.’

  It hurt Maggie to see them. It hurt Paul, too – it was like pensioning off his own father. For he was simply making conditions, and Alec had to accept them. He was like a petitioner, saying: ‘You’re not going to take it all away from me, are you? You can’t do that?’ His face was sagging with disappointment, and in the end it brightened pathetically at the concession that he might keep four labourers for his own use and spend fifty pounds a year. ‘Not a penny more,’ said Paul. ‘And you’ve got to fill in all the abandoned diggings and shafts. You can’t walk a step over the farm now without risking your neck.’

  Maggie was tender with Alec afterwards, when he came to her and said: ‘That young know-all, turning everything upside down, all theories and no experience!’ Then he went off to fill in the trenches and shafts, and afterwards to a distant part of the farm where he had found a new reef.

  But now he tended to make sarcastic remarks to Paul; and Maggie had to be careful to keep the peace between them, feeling a traitor to both, for she would agree first with one man, then with the other – Paul was a man now, and it hurt her to see it. Sixteen, thin as a plank, sunburn dark on a strained face, much too patient with her. For Paul would look at the tired old woman who was his mother and think that by rights she should still be a young one, and he shut his teeth over the reproaches he wanted to make: Why do you support him in this craziness; why do you agree to everything he says? And so he worried through that first season; and there came the time to balance the farm books; and there happened something that no one expected.

  When all the figuring and accounting was over, Alec, who had apparently not even noticed the work, went into the office and spent an evening with the books. He came out with a triumphant smile and said to Paul: ‘Well, you haven’t done much better than I did, in spite of all your talk.’

  Paul glanced at his mother, who was making urgent signals at him to keep his temper. He kept it. He was white, but he was making an effort to smile. But Alec continued: ‘You go on at me, both of you, but when it comes to the point you haven’t made any profit either.’ It was so unfair … that Paul could no longer remain silent. ‘You let the farm go to pieces,’ he said, bitterly, ‘you won’t even give me advice when I ask for it, and then you accuse me …’

  ‘Paul,’ said Maggie, urgently.

  ‘And when I find a goldmine,’ said Alec, magnificently, ‘and it won’t be long now, you’ll come running to me, you’ll be sorry then! You can’t run a farm and you haven’t got the sense to learn elementary geology from me. You’ve been with me all these years and you don’t even know one sort of reef from another. You’re too damned lazy to live.’ And with this he walked out of the room.

  Paul was sitting still, head dropped a little, looking at the floor. Maggie waited for him to smile with her at this child who was Alec. She was arranging the small, humorous smile on her lips that would take the sting out of the scene, when Paul slowly rose, and said quietly: ‘Well, that’s the end.’

  ‘No, Paul,’ cried Maggie, ‘you shouldn’t take any notice; you can’t take it seriously …’

  ‘Can’t I?’ said Paul, bitterly. ‘I’ve had enough.’

  ‘Where are you going? What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You can’t leave,’ Maggie found herself saying. ‘You haven’t got the education to …’ She stopped herself, but not in time. Paul’s face was so hurt and abandoned that she cried out to herself: What’s the matter with me? Why did I say it? Paul said: ‘Well, that’s that.’ And he went out of the room after his father.

  Paul went over to the mine, found James sitting on his veranda, and said at once: ‘James, can I come as a partner with you?’

  James’s face did not change. He looked patiently at the boy and said, ‘Sit down.’ Then, when Paul had sat, and was leaning forward waiting, he said: ‘There isn’t enough profit for a partner here, you know that. Otherwise I’d like to have you. Besides, it looks as if the reef is finished.’ He waited and asked: ‘What’s gone wrong?’

  Paul made an impatient movement, dismissing his parents, the farm, and his past, and said: ‘Why is your reef finished?’

  ‘I told you that a long time ago.’

  He had, but Paul had not taken it in. ‘What are you going to do?’ he enquired.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said James, comfortably, lighting a cigarette. ‘I’ll get along.’

  ‘Yes, but …’ Paul was very irritated. This laxness was like his father. ‘You’ve got to do something,’ he insisted.

  ‘Well, what do you suggest?’ asked James, humorously, with the intention of loosening the lad up. But Paul gripped his hands together and shouted: ‘Why should I suggest anything? Why does everyone expect me to suggest things?’

  ‘Hey, take it easy,’ soothed James. ‘Sorry,’ said Paul. He relaxed and said: ‘Give me a cigarette.’ He lit it clumsily and asked: ‘Yes, but if there’s no reef, there’s no profit, so how are you going to live?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll get a job, or find another reef or something,’ said James, quite untroubled.

  Paul could not help laughing. ‘Do you mean to say you’ve known the reef was finished and you’ve been sitting here without a care in the world?’

  ‘I didn’t say it was finished. It’s just dwindling away. I’m not losing money and I’m not making any. But I’ll pull out in a week or so, I’ve been thinking,’ said James, puffing clouds of lazy smoke.

  ‘Going prospecting?’ asked the boy, persistently.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘What do you mean by prospecting?’ temporized James, ‘If you think I’m going to wander around with a pan and a hammer, romantic-like, you’re wrong. I like my comfort. I’ll take my time and see what I can find.’

  Paul laughed again at James’s idea of comfort. He glanced into the two little rooms behind the veranda, hardly furnished at all, with the kitchen behind where the slovenly and good-natured African woman cooked meat and potatoes, potatoes and boiled fowl, with an occasional plate of raw tomatoes as relish.

  James said: ‘I met an old pal of mine at the station last week. He found a reef half a mile from here last month. He’s starting up when he can get the machinery from town. The country’s lousy with gold, don’t worry.’

  And with this slapdash promise of a future Paul was content. But before they started prospecting James deliberately arranged a drinking session. ‘About time I had a holiday,’ he said, quite seriously. James went through four bottles of whisky in two days. He drank, slowly, and persistently, until he became maudlin and sentimental, a phase which embarrassed the boy. Then he became hectoring and noisy, and complained about his wife, the mine owners of the Rand, and his parents, who had taken him from school at fifteen to make his way as he could. Then, having worked that out of his system, nicely judging his condition, he took a final half-glass of neat whisky, lay comfortably down on the bed and passed out. Paul sat beside his friend and waited for him to wake, which he did, in five or six hours, quite sober and very depressed. Then the process was repeated.

  Maggie was angry when Paul came home after three days’ absence, saying that James had had malaria and needed a nurse. At the same time she was pleased that her son could sit up three nights with a sick man and then come walking quietly home across the veld, without any fuss or claim for attention, to demand a meal and eat it and then take himself off to bed; all very calm and sensible, like a grown person.

  She wanted to ask him if he intended to run the farm, but did not dare. She could not blame him for feeling as he did, but she could not approve his running away either. In the end it was Alec who said to Maggie, in his son’s presence: ‘Your precious Paul. He runs off the farm and leaves it standing while he drinks himself under the table.’ He had heard that James was in a drinking bout from one of the Africans.

  ‘Paul doesn’t drink,’ said Maggie finally, telling Alec with her eyes that she was not going to sit there
and hear him run down his son. Alec looked away. But he said derisively to Paul: ‘Been beaten by the farm already? You can’t stick it more than one season?’

  Paul replied, calmly: ‘As you like.’

  ‘What are you going to do now?’ asked Maggie, and Paul said: ‘You’ll know in good time.’ To his father he could not resist saying: ‘You’ll know soon enough for your peace of mind!’

  When he had gone, Maggie sat thinking for a long time: if he was with James it meant he was going mining; he was as bad as his father, in fact. Worse, he was challenging his father. With the tired thought that she hoped at least Alec would not understand his son was challenging him, she walked down to the fields to tell her husband that he should spend a little of his time keeping the farm going. She found him at work beside his new shaft, and sat quietly on a big stone while he explained some new idea to her. She said nothing about the farm.