The Complete Short Stories. Muriel Spark
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of her. He’s forgotten what it was all about.”
“Death has cheated Old Tuys,” said Daphne.
“Very melodramatic,” he commented.
Ralph began to disappear for days and weeks without warning. In a panic, Daphne would telephone to his mother. “I don’t know where he is,” Mrs Mercer would say. “Really, dear, he’s like that. It’s very trying.”
Much later, his mother was to tell Daphne, “I love my son, but quite honestly I don’t like him.” Mrs Mercer was an intensely religious woman. Ralph loved his mother but did not like her. He was frequently seized by nervy compulsions and superstitions.
“I must,” said Ralph, “write. I need solitude to write. That is why I go away.”
“Oh, I see,” said Daphne.
“If you say that again I’ll hit you.” And though she did not repeat the words, he did, just then, hit her.
Afterwards she said, “If only you would say goodbye before you leave I wouldn’t mind so much. It’s the suddenness that upsets me.”
“All right then. I’m going away tonight.”
“Where are you going? Where?”
“Why,” he said, “don’t you go back to Africa?”
“I don’t want to.” Her obsession with Ralph had made Africa seem a remote completed thing.
His next book was more successful than any he had written. The film was in preparation. He told Daphne he adored her really, and he quite saw that he led her a hell of a life. That was what it meant to be tied up with an artist, he was afraid.
“It’s worth it,” Daphne said, “and I think I can help you in some ways.”
He thought so too just at that moment, for it occurred to him that his latest book was all of it written during his association with Daphne. “I think we should get married,” he said.
Next day he left the flat and went abroad. Now, after two years her passion for him was not diminished, neither were her misery and dread.
Three weeks later he wrote from his mother’s address to suggest that she moved out of the flat. He would make a settlement.
She telephoned to his mother’s house. “He won’t speak to you,” his mother said. “I’m ashamed of him, to tell the truth.”
Daphne took a taxi to the house.
“He’s upstairs writing,” his mother said. “He’s going away somewhere else tomorrow. I hope he stays away, to tell the truth.”
“I must see him,” said Daphne.
His mother said, “He makes me literally ill. I’m too old for this sort of thing, my dear. God bless you.”
She went and called upstairs, “Ralph, come down a moment, please.” She waited till she heard his footsteps on the stairs, then she disappeared quickly.
“Go away,” said Ralph to Daphne. “Go away and leave me in peace.”
3
Daphne arrived in the Colony during the rainy season. The rains made Chakata’s rheumatism bad. He talked a lot about his rheumatism, would question her about England without listening to her replies.
“The West End is badly bombed,” she said.
“It gets me in the groin when I turn in bed,” he answered.
Various neighbours looked in to see Daphne. The young had married, and some who called were new to her.
“There’s a chap out from England farming over at the south, says he knows you,” said Chakata. “Name Cash, I think.”
“Casse,” said Daphne, “Michael Casse. Is that the name?”
“This stuff the doctor gives me’s no good. In fact it makes me worse.”
Another tobacco manager was living in the house Old Tuys had occupied. Old Tuys was at the farmhouse with Chakata. He sat in his corner of the stoep, talking nonsense to himself, or ambled about the farm. Chakata was annoyed when Old Tuys walked about, for he himself could barely hobble. “A pathetic case,” he would say as Old Tuys strolled by, “he’s got his limbs, but he hasn’t got his faculties. I at least have my faculties.” He preferred to see Old Tuys in his chair on the stoep. Then Chakata would say, “You know, after all these years, I have a soft spot for Old Tuys.”
Old Tuys ate noisily. Chakata did not seem to mind. It struck Daphne that she was useless to Chakata now that she was no longer a goad for Old Tuys. She decided to stay at the farm no longer than a month. She would get a job in the Capital.
The third day after her arrival there was a break in the rains. She wandered round the sunny farm all morning, and after lunch set off northward for Makata’s kraal. The new tobacco manager agreed very happily to come with his car and fetch her later on.
She had become unused to trekking any distance. Her energy ebbed after the first mile. A cloud of locusts caught her attention and automatically she stopped to watch anxiously whether the swarm would settle on Chakata’s mealies or miss them. It passed over. She sat to rest on a stone, disturbing a baby lizard. “Go’way. Go’way,” she heard.
Daphne called aloud, “God help me. Life is unbearable.”
A house-boy came running to Chakata who was round by the tobacco shed resting on two sticks.
“Baas Tuys is gone to shoot buck. The piccanin say he take a gun to shoot buck.”
“Who? What?”
“Baas Tuys with gun.”
“Where? Which way?”
“Is gone by north. The piccanin have seen him. Was after lunch piccanin say, he talk that he go to shoot buck.”
A few more natives had gathered round.
“Run, quick, all of you. Get that gun off Old Tuys. Fetch him back.”
They looked at him hesitantly. It was not every day that a native was instructed to wrest a gun from the hands of a white man.
“Go, you fools. Run.”
They returned slowly and fearfully half an hour later. Chakata had hobbled to the end of the paddock to meet them.
“Where’s Tuys? Did you get him?”
They did not answer at first. Then one of them pointed to the path through the maize where Old Tuys was staggering home, exhausted, dragging something behind him.
“Go and pick her up,” ordered Chakata.
“I got me a buck,” said Old Tuys, looking with pride at the company. “Man, there’s life in the old dog yet. I got us a buck.”
He looked closely at Chakata. He could not understand why Chakata was not impressed.
“We have buck for dinner, man Chakata,” he said.
Burials follow quickly after death in the Colony, for the temperature does not allow of delay. The inquest was held and Daphne was buried next day. Michael Casse came over for the funeral to the cemetery outside the dorp.
“I knew her quite well, you know. She stayed with my mother,” he said to Chakata. “My mother gave her a bird, or something like that.” He giggled. Chakata looked at him curiously and saw that the man was not smiling.
Chakata was being helped into the car. “I must see a specialist,” he said.
Ralph Mercer was moved when he heard the news. It was like the confirmation of something one knew already. Daphne had begun to live