Mr Thompson had lived on our farm for ten years before we had it, when there was no one else near for miles and miles. Then, suddenly, he went home to England and brought a wife back with him. The wife never came to this farm. Mr Thompson sold the farm to us and bought another one. People said:
‘Poor girl! Just out from home, too.’ She was angry about the house burning down, because it meant she had to live with friends for nearly a year while Mr Thompson built a new house on his new farm.
The night before they came, Mother said several times in a strange, sorrowful voice, ‘Poor little thing; poor, poor little thing.’
Father said: ‘Oh, I don’t know. After all, be just. He was here alone all those years.’
It was no good; she disliked not only Mr Thompson but Father too, that evening; and we were on her side. She put her arms round us, and looked accusingly at Father. ‘Women get all the worst of everything,’ she said.
He said angrily: ‘Look here, it’s not my fault these people are coming.’
‘Who said it was?’ she answered.
Next day, when the car came in sight, we vanished into the bush. We felt guilty, not because we were running away, a thing we often did when visitors came we didn’t like, but because we had made Mr Thompson’s house our own, and because we were afraid if he saw our faces he would know we were letting Mother down by going.
We climbed into the tree that was our refuge on these occasions, and lay along branches twenty feet from the ground, and played at Mowgli, thinking all the time about the Thompsons.
As usual, we lost all sense of time; and when we eventually returned, thinking the coast must be clear, the car was still there. Curiosity got the better of us.
We slunk on to the veranda, smiling bashfully, while Mother gave us a reproachful look. Then, at last, we lifted our heads and looked at Mrs Thompson. I don’t know how we had imagined her; but we had felt for her a passionate, protective pity.
She was a large, blonde, brilliantly coloured lady with a voice like a go-away bird’s. It was a horrible voice. Father, who could not stand loud voices, was holding the arms of his chair, and gazing at her with exasperated dislike.
As for Mr Thompson, that villain whom we had hated and feared, he was a shaggy and shambling man, who looked at the ground while his wife talked, with a small apologetic smile. He was not in the least as we had pictured him. He looked like our old dog. For a moment we were confused; then, in a rush, our allegiance shifted. The profound and dangerous pity, aroused in us earlier than we could remember by the worlds of loneliness inhabited by our parents, which they could not share with each other but which each shared with us, settled now on Mr Thompson. Now we hated Mrs Thompson. The outward sign of it was that we left Mother’s chair and went to Father’s.
‘Don’t fidget, there’s good kids,’ he said.
Mrs Thompson was asking to be shown the old house. We understood, from the insistent sound of her voice, that she had been talking about nothing else all afternoon; or that, at any rate, if she had, it was only with the intention of getting round to the house as soon as she could. She kept saying, smiling ferociously at Mr Thompson: ‘I have heard such interesting things about that old place. I really must see for myself where it was that my husband lived before I came out …’ And she looked at Mother for approval.
But Mother said dubiously: ‘It will soon be dark. And there is no path.’
As for Father, he said bluntly: ‘There’s nothing to be seen. There’s nothing left.’
‘Yes, I heard it had been burnt down,’ said Mrs Thompson with another look at her husband.
‘It was a hurricane lamp…’ he muttered.
‘I want to see for myself.’
At this point my sister slipped off the arm of my Father’s chair, and said, with a bright, false smile at Mrs Thompson, ‘We know where it is. We’ll take you.’ She dug me in the ribs and sped off before anyone could speak.
At last they all decided to come. I took them the hardest, longest way I knew. We had made a path of our own long ago, but that would have been too quick. I made Mrs Thompson climb over rocks, push through grass, bend under bushes. I made her scramble down the gully so that she fell on her knees in the sharp pebbles and the dust. I walked her so fast, finally, in a wide circle through the thorn trees that I could hear her panting behind me. But she wasn’t complaining: she wanted to see the place too badly.
When we came to where the house had been it was nearly dark and the tufts of long grass were shivering in the night breeze, and the pawpaw trees were silhouetted high and dark against a red sky. Guinea-fowl were clinking softly all around us.
My sister leaned against a tree, breathing hard, trying to look natural. Mrs Thompson had lost her confidence. She stood quite still, looking about her, and we knew the silence and the desolation had got her, as it got us that first morning.
‘But where is the house?’ she asked at last, unconsciously softening her voice, staring as if she expected to see it rise out of the ground in front of her.
‘I told you, it was burnt down. Now will you believe me?’ said Mr Thompson.
‘I know it was burnt down … Well, where was it then?’ She sounded as if she were going to cry. This was not at all what she had expected.
Mr Thompson pointed at the bricks on the ground. He did not move. He stood staring over the fence down to the vlei, where the mist was gathering in long white folds. The light faded out of the sky, and it began to get cold. For a while no one spoke.
‘What a god-forsaken place for a house,’ said Mrs Thompson, very irritably, at last. ‘Just as well it was burnt down. Do you mean to say you kids play here?’
That was our cue. ‘We like it,’ we said dutifully, knowing very well that the two of us standing on the bricks, hand in hand, beside the ghostly rosebush, made a picture that took all the harm out of the place for her. ‘We play here all day,’ we lied.
‘Odd taste you’ve got,’ she said, speaking at us, but meaning Mr Thompson.
Mr Thompson did not hear her. He was looking around with a lost, remembering expression. ‘Ten years,’ he said at last. ‘Ten years I was here.’
‘More fool you,’ she snapped. And that closed the subject as far as she was concerned.
We began to trail home. Now the two women went in front; then came Father and Mr Thompson; we followed at the back. As we passed a small donga under a cactus tree, my sister called in a whisper, ‘Mr Thompson, Mr Thompson, look here.’
Father and Mr Thompson came back. ‘Look,’ we said, pointing to the hole that was filled to the brim with empty bottles.
‘I came quickly by a way of my own and hid them,’ said my sister proudly, looking at the two men like a conspirator.
Father was very uncomfortable. ‘I wonder how they got down here?’ he said politely at last.
‘We found them. They were at the house. We hid them for you,’ said my sister, dancing with excitement.
Mr Thompson looked at us sharply and uneasily. ‘You are an odd pair of kids,’ he said.
That was all the thanks we got from him; for then we heard Mother calling from ahead: ‘What are you all doing there?’ And at once we went forward.
After the Thompsons had left we hung around Father, waiting for him to say something.
At last, when Mother wasn’t there, he scratched his head in an irritable way and said: ‘What in the world did you do that for?’
We were bitterly hurt. ‘She might have seen them.’ I said. ‘Nothing would make much difference to that lady,’ he said at last. ‘Still, I suppose you meant well.’
In the corner of the veranda, in the dark, sat Mother, gazing into the dark bush. On her face was a grim look of disapproval, and distaste and unhappiness. We were included in it, we knew that.
She looked at us crossly and said, ‘I don’t like you wandering over the farm the way you do. Even with a gun.’
But she had said that so often, and it wasn’t what we were waiting for. At last it came.
‘My two little girls,’ she said, ‘out in the bush by themselves, with no one to play with …’
It wasn’t the bush she minded. We flung ourselves on her. Once again we were swung dizzily from one camp to the other. ‘Poor Mother,’ we said. ‘Poor, poor Mother.’
That was what she needed. ‘It’s no life for a woman, this,’ she said, her voice breaking, gathering us close.
But she sounded comforted.
