`Didn't work out, hey?'
'No,' said Dick blankly. `I didn't bother to reap it. I thought I might as well leave it to do the soil some good…' His voice tailed off.
`Experiment,' said Charlie briefly. It was significant that he sounded neither exasperated nor angry. He seemed detached; but kept glancing curiously, with an undercurrent of uneasiness, at Dick, whose face was obstinately set and miserable. `What was that you were saying about your wife?'
`She's not well.'
'Yes, but why, man?'
Dick did not answer for a while. They passed from the open lands, where the golden evening glow still lingered on the leaves, to the bush, where it was dense dusk. The big car zoomed up the hill, which was steep, its bonnet reaching up into the sky. `I don't know,' said Dick at last. `She's different lately. Sometimes I think she's much better. It's difficult to tell with women how they are. She's not the same.'
'But in what way?' persisted Charlie.
`Well, for instance. Once, when she first came to the farm she had more go in her. She doesn't seem to care. She doesn't care about anything. She simply sits and does nothing. She doesn't even trouble herself about the chickens and things like that. You know she used to make a packet out of them every month or so. And she doesn't care what the boy does in the house. Once she used to drive me mad nagging. Nag, nag, nag, all day. You know how women get when they've been too long on the farm. No self control.!
'No woman knows how to handle niggers,' said Charlie. `Well, I am quite worried,' stated Dick, laughing miserably. `I should be quite pleased if she did nag.'
`Look here, Turner,' said Charlie abruptly. `Why don't you give up this business and get off the place? You are not doing yourself or your wife any good.'
`Oh, we rub along.' `You are ill, man.' `I am all right.'
They stopped outside the house. A glimmer of light came from within, but Mary did not appear. A second light sprang up in the bedroom. Dick had his eyes on it. `She's changing her dress,' he said; and he sounded pleased. `No one has been here for so long.'
`Why don't you sell out to me? I'll give you a good price for it.'
`Where should I go,' asked Dick in amazement.
`Get into town. Get off the land. You are no good on the land. Get yourself a steady job in town somewhere.'
`I keep my end up,' said Dick resentfully.
The thin shape of a woman appeared against the light, on the verandah. The two men got out of the car and went inside.
'Evening, Mrs Turner.' `Good evening,' said Mary.
Charlie examined her closely when they were inside the lighted room, more closely because of the way she had said, `Good evening.' She remained standing uncertainly in front of him, a dried stick of a woman, her hair that had been bleached by the sun into a streaky mass falling round a scrawny face and tied on the top of her head with a blue ribbon. Her thin, yellowish neck protruded out of a dress that she had apparently just put on. It was a frilled raspberry-coloured cotton; and in her ears were long red earrings like boiled sweets, that tapped against her neck in short swinging jerks. Her blue eyes, which had once told anyone who really took the trouble to look into them that Mary Turner was not really `stuck-up', but shy, proud, and sensitive, had a new light in them. `Why, good evening!' she said girlishly.
`Why, Mr Slatter, we haven't had the pleasure of seeing you for a long time.' She laughed, twisting her shoulder in a horrible parody of coquetry.
Dick averted his eyes, suffering. Charlie stared at her rudely: stared and stared until at last she flushed and turned away, tossing her head. `Mr Slatter doesn't like us,' she informed Dick socially, `or otherwise, he would come to see us more often.'
She sat herself down in the corner, of the old sofa, which had gone out of shape and become a thing of lumps and hollows with a piece of faded blue stuff stretched over it.
Charlie, his eyes on that material, asked: 'How is the store going?'
`We gave it up, it didn't pay,' said Dick brusquely. `We are using up the stock ourselves.'
Charlie looked at Mary's ear-rings, and at the sofa-cover, which was of the material always sold to natives, an ugly patterned blue that has become a tradition in South Africa, so much associated with `kaffir-truck' that it shocked Charlie to see it in a white man's house. He looked round the place, frowning. The curtains were torn; a windowpane had been broken and patched with paper; another had cracked and not been mended at all; the room was indescribably broken down and faded. Yet everywhere were little bits of stuff from the store, roughly-hemmed, draping the back of a chair, or tucked in to form a chair seat. Charlie might have thought that this small evidence of a desire to keep up appearances was a good sign; but all his rough and rather brutal good humour was gone; he was silent, his forehead dark.
`Like to stay to supper?' asked Dick at last.
`No thanks,' said Charlie; then changed his mind out of curiosity. `Yes, I will.'
Unconsciously the two men were speaking as if in the presence of an invalid; but Mary scrambled out of her seat, and shouted from the doorway: 'Moses! Moses!'
Then, since the native did not appear, she turned and smiled at them with social coyness, and said: `Excuse me, but you know what these boys are.'
She went out. The men were silent. Dick's face was averted from Charlie, who, since he had never become convinced of the necessity for tact, gazed intently at Dick, as if trying to force him into some explanation or statement.
Supper, when it was brought in by Moses, consisted of a tray of tea, some bread and rather rancid butter, and a chunk of cold meat. There was not a piece of crockery that was whole; and Charlie could feel the grease on the knife he held. He ate with distaste, making no effort to hide it, while Dick said nothing, and Mary made abrupt, unrelated remarks about the weather with that appalling coyness, shaking her ear-rings, writhing her thin shoulders, ogling Charlie with a conventional flirtatiousness.
To all this Charlie made no response. He said, `Yes, Mrs Turner. No, Mrs Turner.' And looked at her coldly, his eyes hard with contempt and dislike.
When the native came to clear away the dishes there was an incident that caused him to grind his teeth and go white with anger. They were sitting over the sordid relics of the meal, while the boy moved about the table, slackly gathering dishes together. Charlie had not even noticed him. Then Mary asked: 'Like some fruit, Mr Slatter? Moses, fetch the oranges. You know where they are.' Charlie looked up, his jaws moving slowly over the food in his mouth, his eyes alert and bright; it was the tone of Mary's voice when she spoke to the native that jarred on him: she was speaking to him with exactly the same flirtatious coyness with which she had spoken to himself.
The native replied, with a rough offhand rudeness: ' Oranges finished.'
`I know they are not finished. There were two left. I know they are not.' Mary was appealing, looking up at the boy, almost confiding in him.'
` Oranges finished,' he repeated, in that tone of surly indifference, but with a note of self-satisfaction, of conscious power that took Charlie's breath away. Literally, he could not find words. He looked at Dick, who was sitting staring down at his hands; and it was impossible to see what he was thinking, or whether he had noticed anything at all. He looked at Mary: her wrinkled yellow skin had an ugly flush under the eyes, and the expression on her face was unmistakably one of fear. She appeared to have understood that Charlie had noticed something; she kept glancing at him guiltily, smiling.
`How long have you had that boy?' asked Charlie at last, jerking his head at Moses, who was standing at the doorway with the tray, openly listening. Mary looked helplessly at Dick.
Dick said tonelessly, `About four years, I think.' `Why do you keep him?’
'He's a good boy,' said Mary, tossing her head. `He works well.'
`It doesn't seem like it,' said Charlie bluntly, challenging her with his eyes. But hers were evasive and uneasy. At the same time they held a gleam of secret satisfaction that sent the blood to Charlie's head. 'Why don't you get rid of him? Why do you let him speak to you like that?'
Mary did not reply. She had turned her head, and was looking over her shoulder at the doorway where Moses
