Harvest

was that Charlie longed for after he had come home. She had seen it, though he had tried to disguise it, some yearning in him. The not wanting to be here, but there, wherever. The same yearning she sensed in Hussey, who seemed anxious again to be gone. She shook his hand again slow and cool in hers, seeing him off back to his blue hills and the boys bringing him tea on the veranda. He was a studious and thoughtful man, Charlie had said, if a little dry and academic, a classicist by training, an ethnographer by inclination. Surely such a man had observed, and could have told her what he and Charlie knew, which he might have explained to her, intelligently and rationally, coolly as a man does who knows Latin and Greek? If she had asked.

He was talking about the Mau Mau, wasn’t he? Richard said on the way home. Richard had watched the news on television.

Jonny asked, What’s maumau?

You wouldn’t understand. It’s politics. In Kenya, where that man came from, where he’s ruling the blacks.

But what is it? You haven’t said what it means.

It’s the terrible things you see, that you never forget. Richard wouldn’t tell him more. He would keep his advantage over his little brother.

Oh, Jonny said. I know what maumau is.



The winter wheat ripened. There had been rain in the spring, heavy showers in May and June, and after the rain the sun came out. The crop had grown thick and tall. This last crop would be the best Charlie had ever planted.

It was to be a fine harvest.

A fine summer.

Fine days broke, morning after morning – and she woke early those mornings, she woke early and watched the light grow and did not go back to sleep – the blue sky bright and empty, as if there was some hollowness there that set off an echo until there was such activity about her that it could no longer be heard.

That man invited us to Africa. Can we go?

Ah, you mean Mr Hussey. Did Mr Hussey tell you things?

No. He talked to Jonny though, about the things that Daddy did in the jungle.

Did he?

Or maybe Jonny made it up. Jonny’s silly, isn’t he?

Well, he’s younger than you are. You have to let him have his stories.

So, can we go?

Who needs to go to Africa? It’s so hot and sunny here.

Let them not go to Africa. Let them not know such things.

When the combine came out into the field in front of the house, she drew the curtains. She heard her mother’s voice from the past, her house-proud mother telling her when she had first come to live here that the sun came too brightly into the south-facing room, that she must draw the curtains in the daytime lest the light fade the pictures and damage the furnishings. There weren’t watercolours in the room any more, she had moved the watercolours long ago and put up other pictures instead, and had the chairs re-covered, but she kept the room dim nonetheless like the urban girl she had once been, her mother’s daughter who, when she came to the house, so anxious to do things right, had once worried about things like the light bleaching the upholstery. The curtains only muffled the sound a little – for how could she keep the windows closed on a hot July day? She sat in the room with the windows open and the curtains blowing, motes of dust dancing in the light that entered between the moving curtains, and heard other men and machines gather this crop that Charlie had planted. She had to let the boys go out to watch. She couldn’t keep them in. The men had said they would be good to them. She had to trust these other men, but she would not see them. Come out with us, Mum, the boys said, but she wouldn’t. No, I’ve seen it before, lots of times, you remember how we’ve seen it before. When they came back at the end of the day hot and dusty and exhilarated she had made them a cake for tea. But they saw that she was sad. Jonny saw, at least. It’s all right, Mummy, I won’t go tomorrow, he said, I’ll stay with you, and she said, Well then let’s take a trip to the seaside, so long as this weather lasts, that would be nice, wouldn’t it? Only Richard wanted to be with the men. They went out in the morning before the work had begun, with blankets and a picnic, and a striped windbreak because even in July the wind off the North Sea could be cold. Richard sulked all the way as they drove. When they got there he threw stones and kicked the sand into the waves, and when they swam he dared Jonny out of his depth and ducked him until he ran away up the beach crying. They came home late in the afternoon. The combine was still going, moved on to the next field. Inland the air had kept hot and dry, and the combine would keep going well into the dusk. All right, Richard, you can run out now, if the men will have you. But do ask the men first, won’t you? She saw him go and felt that she had lost him. He was boy, all boy, running out in his red shorts to the roar of the machines and the cloud where the combine worked. She picked up the jumper that he had left on the kitchen chair and ran after him a little way – Take this with you, it’ll get cold later – but he was too fast for her and she came back in. That boy-ness in him she could not touch.

One weekend late that same summer, she invited a male friend to stay. There had been other friends to