African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [62]
And so began the convalescence. The little girls recovered first and were playing ping-pong and tennis at the Club a mile away. Their mother and I were slower. The Coffee Farmer was in a bad way, facing a difficult operation on a shoulder already damaged twice.
People appeared and disappeared on the verandah.
It is evening around the winter fire, and the room is crammed with people and with animals. The shy young assistant from the next farm, the champion parachutist of Zimbabwe, sits with his new puppy and a great white Persian cat he is looking after and does not want to leave alone. The new puppy Vicky, a clever, scheming little bitch, sits by Josh, the half-grown sweet and stupid ridgeback. The fierce guardian of the estate, Annie, the bull terrier, who is a mass of scars and wounds, puts her head on her master’s knees and groans with agonized affection. A man whose job is to settle Africans on the new farms, has brought his dog, a setter. A little black cat, who is timid, finds all this astonishing and is frightened, and slips in and out between the legs of dogs, puppies, people, until she finds a safe place on a rafter, from where she watches us all. There are two couples from the farms lower down the hill, with three labrador puppies, brought to please the little girls, by their own little girls, who are teenagers. We, the wounded, sit carefully in corners, fending off friendly animals who are a threat to our sore ribs and our bruises. Who waits on us all? Milos, and beer and tea and coffee and cakes arrive all evening. It is noisy and cordial and we all watch the animals and discuss them and their behaviour as if they are people.
PAY NIGHT
Scene on a farmhouse verandah in old Southern Rhodesia. On every farmhouse verandah, once a month, this scene took place, through the 1920s, the ’30s, the ’40s, the ’50s…
The sun has gone down in its glow of sorrowful red. The stars are coming out. On a small table are piles of cotton bags from the bank in town, full of coins. Beside the table sits the farmer and behind the table stands the bossboy. If this is a raised verandah, then the table is at the top of a flight of steps, the polished red cement steps of prosperity, with plants crowded on both ends of every step. A lamp is on the low wall, if there is no electricity. Or, as on our farm, a hurricane lamp is set on the table which is in front of the house. Another hangs from the branch of a tree. A crowd of black people stand waiting. The bossboy calls out a name and out steps a man wearing a pair of old shorts, and a ragged vest. No shoes. In the pay envelopes are a few coins. The bossboy earned a pound a month, ordinary labourers ten shillings, twelve shillings. What could one buy with this money? A pair of shorts cost two shillings. A vest cost less. No one wore shoes. To buy a bicycle cost five pounds, and could take a couple of years to earn. Food was supplied.
The women had come up from the compound, though they did not do farm work. Pay night was an occasion, a spectacle, something to liven things up. They stood to one side, all together. They were handsome, and wore blue and white patterned cloth wound around them, or as skirts, or as full flouncy dresses. They had head scarves and bangles and earrings. These things were likely to be all they owned.
Sometimes there were arguments about the coins in the envelopes. Then the bossboy, speaking for the farmer, would say, ‘But you were away from work three days. You went to the beer drink on boss Jones’s farm.’ The man would stand there patiently, his face puckering with distress, which had to do as much with his life as with this small incident in it, a shilling taken off his pay. ‘But I didn’t go to the beer drink,