The Soldier's Peaches--Stuart Cloete

The Soldier's Peaches

by Stuart Cloete (1897-1976)
Word Count: 5231
Mrs. Brennen took snuff. She got it out of her grandson's store; going in
and helping herself from the big tin on the second shelf. It was a habit
her family deplored. Mrs. Brennen did not like snuff much. It was one of
the things she had got over. It made her cough. But the fact that her
family deplored her taking it prevented her from giving it up completely.
She drank a little too. Not much; just enough to get "tiddly." That was
what she called it, "I'm a little tiddly to-day," she'd say, and the
family didn't like that either. Nor did she, save for the fun of shocking
them and the interest outwitting them gave her.
An old woman did not have much fun, and she had her reputation as a
character to keep up. Sometimes she wished she was not a character.
"Mad," people called her behind her back; "eccentric," to her face. "Dear
Mrs. Brennen, you would do that. You are so eccentric." "Mad" she would
not agree to; "eccentric," yes; if it was eccentric to like sitting on
the stoep in the sun and only talking when you wanted to. There was too
much talk in the world. Sometimes she would go for days without talking.
"One of her spells," they called it. Oh, yes, she knew what they said:
"Old Mrs. Brennen is having one of her spells." But she was too busy
thinking to worry about what people thought. "Let 'em talk," she said.
"If they'd seen what I've seen, they'd stay silent. If they'd seen what
I've seen, they'd have something to think about. Lot of damned old women!
That's what they are, men and all." Her family made her laugh with their
goings-on. When they reached her age, if they ever did, they'd know that
nothing mattered very much. She took another pinch of snuff. Some of it
slipped between her fingers on to her black alpaca dress. She flicked it
off with the back of her fingers and fumed to watch a span of oxen pull
up to the store.
The voorloper bent down to pick up some clods to throw into the faces of
the oxen. The driver whistled and turned the handle of the brake. The big
wheels locked, dragged on a yard or two and stopped. Taking off his hat,
the driver went into the store. The voorloper sat in the dust under the
horns of the leaders.
Mrs. Brennen wondered how many wagons she had seen pull up like that
since she had come to Brennen's Store as a bride. Thousands and thousands
of wagons. Thousands of men, too--white men, Kaffirs, men on foot, in
Cape carts, in spiders, or riding, and now they came in motor-cars. Mrs.
Brennen did not like motor-cars. Of course they saved time. But what did
one do with the time one saved? No one could tell her that. She chuckled.
They couldn't tell her, because they didn't know.
She had seen two wars and some native troubles. Once when Brennen was
away, the store had been burned by Kaffirs. She had just escaped. A
friendly native had warned her. She had hidden in the bush. She had taken
Susie with her--a sweet little dog. She had never had another dog like
Susie-black and white, as soft to touch as silk, with a wet pink nose.
Generally, black-and-white dogs had black noses, but Susie's had been
pink. As she crouched among the rocks, the Kaffirs had come quite near
her. Susie had tried to bark and she had held her between her knees and
strangled her. Then the Kaffirs had gone and she had buried Susie. The
road had been moved since then, and the new store built. Susie was buried
about where the wagon stood now. She looked at her hands. They were very
frail, veined, knotted and lumpy with gout. Once they had been beautiful.
Brennen had said she had beautiful hands. Once they had strangled a pet
dog while wild Kaffirs swarmed round her.
They were off-loading the wagon. Mealier. Her grandson, George, was
buying them, then. He would pay too much for them. He always paid too
much for everything. She thought of a horse he had bought once. That must
have been twenty years ago. Like all horses said to be salted, it had
died of horse sickness. She had told him it wasn't salted. Anyone could
see it was not salted. A salted horse had a look. You couldn't explain
it. You just knew the look it had.
George came out of the store now. A stupid boy. He always had been stupid.
"Don't pay ten shillings a bag!" she shouted. "Don't pay more than eight;
and sample them!" If it wasn't for me, I don't believe he'd sample them,
she thought. She watched him drive a knife with a hollow groove into the
bags, emptying the pips into his hand. Some chickens ran out to pick up
the fallen mealiest One of them picked a tick from the heel of the near
wheeler--a big red and white ox that was chewing its cud.
Mrs. Brennen closed her eyes. Sometimes they forgot who she was. Yes,
sometimes they forgot that it was still her store. That she was Cecelia
Brennen, the mother of them all. The mother of a multitude of fools.
Children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. It was hard to keep track
of them now. Each year they came to show her the new babies they had
bred. She thought of her first grandson. She had been so pleased with
him. She looked at George; he had been the first grandson. He was leaning
against the door of the store. Babies were like everything else; when
there were so many of them, they became commonplace. It was hard to
remember their names or even their mothers' names. She liked the Kaffir
babies best--black like puppies, and pleasantly nameless. The Kaffir
women who brought them to her to admire did not expect her to remember
anything; all they wanted was a smile and a present. But that was what
most people wanted, when you came to think of it--a smile and a present.
She nodded her head. They thought her memory had gone; but she knew more
than the whole pack of them put together. Knew everything that was worth
remembering. Ninety-three, and the pattern of her life trailed out like a
cloak behind her--her loves and hates, that had once been so hot and
cold, all meaningless now--just part of the fabric; brilliant threads
that had been woven through it. Remember--she remembered all right. The
things she forgot, like the names of her great-grandchildren, and of the
women her grandsons had married, were not important. What did it matter
if she did not recognise them all, so long as they knew her? Besides,
women all looked the same now. They had no character--short curly hair,
red lips, red nails and no shape.
She watched the wagon go. The driver shouted and clapped his whip. The
voorloper trotted in front of the running oxen. The hind wheels were
still locked, and dragged. That was like a Kaffir, to start his span with
the brake on. The driver clapped his whip again and took off the brake,
then he ran forward and jumped on to the disselboom. She remembered a man
being brought into the store who had been run over that way. He had
slipped and the wheels had gone over his legs. Empty of ballast, the
wagon moved noisily. One wheel let out piercing squeaks. Grease, Mrs.
Brennen thought. George should have noticed it and sold him some grease.
She stared down the road. It was red, unmetalled, dusty, and wide enough
to turn a span. Part of it was bordered with big blue gums; grey foliaged
untidy trees whose bark hung in torn white ribbons from the trunks. There
was the bottle store, the chemist's, the Standard Bank, the coolie store,
and the usual white houses with red roofs that got smaller and more
disreputable as the road went on. The best part of the dorp was behind
her. That was where the doctor lived, and the bank manager, and Mr.
Fairburn. No one knew quite what Mr. Fairburn did or where he got his
money. That was where George wanted to live. He thought it was common to
live opposite the store. He wanted to drive down to it in his new car
each day, as if he was a professional man.
She laughed. Perhaps that was it, or perhaps he wanted her tucked away
safely where she could not see everything that went on. But the store was
her life. It did not change, like the children. It did not die. It did
not go away. It grew, but it grew slowly and precisely. You knew which
way it was going to grow. Seventy years was a long time to sit in one
place. She had been asked why she did not travel! Travel. Why go and look
for life when it was going on all around you if you had eyes to see and
waited long enough? She thought of the story of the two hunters. One had
walked for miles, looking for game. The other had sat near a water-hole.
The first had killed nothing. The second had taken what he wanted. It was
better and less exhausting to let things come to you than to go and
search for them. The store was like a water-hole--everyone had to come to
it in the end. If they wanted a needle or a plough, they came to
Brennen's.
She saw a car. What a dust it threw up! It came from Pretoria. It was
many years since she had been there. They said Church Square was now a
garden. It had been the outspan. They had often outspanned there in the
old days. Sometimes there had been two hundred wagons, Lying wheel to
wheel. But the great days were gone, and where were the men to day who
could compare with the men she had known then? Men like the old
president, Joubert, De Wet, De la Rey, Cecil Rhodes, or Doctor Jim. Men
like Brennen her husband. That was another reason she sat in the store
all day. Brennen was with her. She could feel his company.
She looked at George. He had not moved. George was fat. She hated fat
men. A fat woman was comfortable, but a fat man an abomination.
The car stopped at the store. A young man got out; he had a letter in his
hand. He looked at the notice outside the store. Then he went up to
George and gave him the letter. She would find out what was in it later.
A man in a car bringing George a letter.
George was bringing him over. He looked like an Englishman. There was
even something familiar about him. The turn of his head or the way he
walked.
"She may know," she heard George say, "but she's difficult. She has
spells."
That was another of George's delusions--that she was deaf. She hated
being shouted at, but it was worth letting them think it for the asides
she heard.
"This is Mr. Vane," George said, putting his mouth to her ear. "He has
come from England, Ouma."
She put out her hand. "I can see he comes from England," she said. "Look
at his boots." Mrs. Brennen wondered if she would take snuff now or
later. He seemed a nice young man, fresh complexioned, very clean and
shiny, with reddish hair.
"Sit down," she said.
He sat down.
"How much did you pay for those mealies, George?" she asked.
"Nine shillings."
He would go in a minute and leave her with the young man. George got up.
"I said you weren't to pay more than eight."
She looked him up and down. Once she had had great hopes of George.
"I'II be going," George said. "See you later."
"Thank you," the Englishman said. "I do hope I'm not being a nuisance,
Mrs. Brennen."
"Nothing is a nuisance now," she said.
She got her snuff-box. "Take snuff?" she asked.
"No, thank you."
"Quite right, young man. A filthy habit. He"--she pointed to George's
back--"thinks I am a disgrace to the family." She chuckled. "But I bred
them. If it wasn't for me, there'd be no family--and the store is mine.
That's what they don't like. They'd like to sell the store and go into
something else--too grand for Brennen's general store. Ride round in
motor-cars. That's what they want to do--just ride round and round.
There's no sense in riding round and round." She looked at her visitor.
He seemed a little bewildered. Never seen anyone like me before, she
thought.
"Never seen anyone like me, have you?" she asked. "And you won't again,
young man; I'm one of the last of them. Real people, we were. Men and
women. Real," she said. She closed her eyes. "What do you want?" she
asked. "Why did you come here? Who gave you a letter to George? No good
having a letter to George. He's a fool. He's my grandson, and I know."
"It's a long story." Francis Vane lit a cigarette. He wondered how to
begin. "It's my father," he said. "You see, his father--my
grandfather--was killed near here with the Three Hundred and First, and I
wondered if anyone could tell me about it. They sent me to George
Brennen. I had a letter to him."
"No good sending anyone to him," Mrs. Brennen said.
"Do you remember them coming here?" Vane asked. "It was in November 1880."
"Of course I remember," Mrs. Brennen said. "John--that's George's
father--was ill then. We thought he would die, and then they came. 'Kiss
me Mother . . . kiss your darling daughter'--that's the tune they played
as they marched in. They had a doctor with them--a Captain Bull. He saved
John's life and we gave him a cage of wild birds. . . . But what do you
want to know? she asked.
"I want to know how it happened. You see, my grandfather commanded the
Three Hundred and First. He was killed. They said it was his fault That
he was incompetent. My father is very old now and he broods about it. He
wants to know where his father is buried. He wants to know what happened.
He's very old," he said again.
"I'm very old," Mrs. Brennen said, "and I know; I brood too. Thinking, I
call it. Your grandfather. Then that's it. That's why I thought I'd seen
you before. I danced with him that night. He danced well. We gave them a
dance in the old store." She nodded to the warehouse behind the present
building. "We cleared everything out. Ploughs, harrows, soft goods and
all. We put buck sails over them and gave the officers a dance. They had
come from Lydenburg and were going to Pretoria. They didn't think there'd
be a war. They said it would be a massacre if it came--Boars against
trained troops like them. The Three Hundred and First," Mrs. Brennen
said. "Yes, the Three Hundred and First."
Francis Vane leaned forward.
Mrs. Brennen saw it all. She saw them march in. "Kiss me, Mother . . .
kiss your darling daughter." The drum-major tossed his stick, caught it,
twirled it; men in red--an endless stream of sunburnt young men in
red-mounted officers, rumbling transport, mules, baggage, wagons drawn by
oxen, dogs that followed the battalion with lolling tongues.
For a day Brennensdorp had been gay, populated with soldiers. They had
swarmed everywhere--walking about in pairs, standing in groups, or Lying
on their backs in the shade of the gum trees--they had been small then
and their shade thin. She saw them washing in buckets, their young chests
bare, their hair wet, their eyes wrinkled against the soapy water. She
had propped Johnny up so that he could see the soldiers. And it had been
hot. It was not hot like that now. It had been so hot that the sheets of
corrugated iron on the roof cracked as they pulled at the nails. The
trees had danced up and down on the veld and the road was wet with mirage
water. The red jackets of the troops had made it seem hotter. Wherever
you looked there were red jackets. How they worked to empty the store!
Everyone had helped. They had thrown mealie meal on the floor to make it
fit for dancing.
The colonel had come to thank her. "Thank you, Mrs. Brennen," he had
said. "It is very kind of you to entertain us like this."
Colonel Vane had admired her. She had seen it in his eyes. "I hear your
little boy is ill" he said. "Perhaps we can help you. Would you like to
see Captain Bull, our doctor?"
She had seen him. A kindly man. He had come at once in his dusty boots.
Brennen had given him beer. The bottles were kept cool in a canvas bucket
that hung from the roof. "I'll stay with him, Mrs. Brennen," the doctor
said, and he had stayed watching at the bedside.
The dance had been an event. Boys had been sent out to call in the
countryside--all that were loyal, that is--and they had come, every man
and woman and girl for miles round. Both sides of the street had been
full of their Cape carts and buggies. The regimental band played tune
after tune. The doorway was filled with watching Tommies. The dust and
mealie flour had risen off the floor in clouds. It clung to the dresses
of the girls, to the clothes and moustaches of the men. Music, laughter
and some kissing.
There was a tale she had heard about a clown who had made jokes while his
little son was dying. She felt like that clown. She kept going in to look
at Johnny. The doctor put his finger to his lips and motioned her away.
She had gone away. . . .
"May I have the pleasure of this dance, Mrs. Brennen?"
"Delighted."
"How well you dance, Mrs. Brennen."
"How light you are, Mrs. Brennen."
What did they expect, she wondered. It was strange how one could go on
saying and doing all the right things when one was feeling nothing. It
was as if one stood some way off watching oneself. She had noticed this,
time and again. That cannot be me. This cannot be me. Cecelia Brennen
could not be doing this. But Cecelia Brennen was doing it. Her place was
with her son; her place was at the dance. She was Mrs. Brennen, the wife
of John Brennen, of Brennensdorp. It was her place to entertain the
soldiers of the Queen.
There had been a great killing of beasts and fowls, a great baking, a
great emptying of casks of wine and brandy. She had seen to it all, and
to her sick child as well. She had worn cyclamen taffeta with a bustle
and hoops.
Her hair hung in ringlets round her neck. A pretty young thing--the belle
of the ball and the mother of a dying child. But he had not died. If only
Johnny can grow up strong and healthy, like these officers, she thought.
If only-- Excusing herself, she ran to see him. Captain Bull was asleep;
the child slept, too, his hand in that of the soldier. How tired he
looked!
In the morning Johnny was better. "He'll come through," the doctor said.
He made up medicine for him in a whisky bottle. She and Brennen had
wondered what they could give him. They could not give money. "Give him
my cage of birds," Johnny said. They were beautiful birds; little finks
of every colour--rooibekkies, blouvinks, kingvinks. They were all tame,
and sang and twittered on their perches. She had taken them to Captain
Bull. "A present from Johnny," she said. Brennen had come at that moment
with a Kaffir carrying a case of champagne. The champagne and the birds
had been stowed in the doctor's cart. The case of wine on the bed, and
the cage slung from the roof and lashed to the sides, so that it should
not swing.
"Good morning, Mrs. Brennen." Colonel Vane rode up. "I am glad to hear
your little boy is better."
Behind the colonel there was a donkey wagon loaded with yellow peaches.
It had just come in and the soldiers were crowded round it, eating
peaches and stuffing them into their haversacks to eat on the march. The
colonel was laughing.
"Fruit's good for them," he said.
"It's a good year for peaches. And the trees in the district are weighed
down with them," she said.
Then the bugles sounded. The colour-sergeants shouted, "Fall in." The
markers were waiting. The men, fully accoutred, ruddy with sleep, ran
out. Transport drivers cursed as their hubs bumped. The Three Hundred and
First was going. They had come and they were going.
"Kiss me, Mother . . . kiss your darling daughter"--the band struck up
again. Like a red snake the regiment swung out of the dorp in a cloud of
dust. Then the dust fell. To-night they would lie in Pretoria.
The Three Hundred and First had gone and Johnny would get well. She was
sitting with Johnny when it happened. A man came galloping down the
street. A private soldier, wounded, riding an officer's charger. It was
streaked with sweat, its chest splashed with foam, its eyes were wild.
She recognised the horse. It was Colonel Vane's horse. The big bay she
had patted as he said good-bye.
The soldier pulled up and almost fell from the saddle.
"What is it?" she said. "Oh, what is it?" She knelt beside him in the
dust.
"The doctor sent me to get help! They are all finished!" he said.
"They're cut to hell--the whole bloody lot! We walked into it! The
colonel's dead! I took his horse!" He began to cry. "They got us--they
got us fair! It was murder!"
He was only a boy. She held him in her arms and the blood from the wound
in his neck ran on to her shoulder. Suddenly he sat up. "Bandages,"
he said, "and brandy . . . and food! That's what the doctor said! We've
got no bandages! They're all bleeding, and nothing to stop it! Oh, God,
Mrs. Brennen, nothing to stop it! I must get back!" He dragged the horse
towards him and tried to mount.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I don't know, but I must go back. I can't stay here."
"Where is it? Where did it happen?"
"At the little river--they were all round us."
"The Spruit?"
"That's what they call it."
Brennen was inspanning already, loading up the Cape cart. That would be
the quickest; the wagons could follow. It was not very far. She ran into
the house for sheets, towels, bedding, mattresses, blankets, brandy; the
house and store were emptied of everything that might be useful.
She climbed into the cart beside her husband. He had put in four horses
instead of two.
"Trot the oxen, Jan!" he shouted to the driver who was inspanning.
"They cannot trot so far, baas!"
"Trot them and be damned!" Brennen said.
And then they were off at a gallop, rocking first on one wheel and then
on the other as they hit the bumps in the road. Hardly checking for the
drift, they splashed through the water. Brennen hit the horses as they
slowed up to pull out of it. She had never seen him hit a horse before.
They sprang into the traces again with such a jerk that she thought the
swingletree would break loose. She looked at the pole. Brennen had tied
it with a double riem. They were on the flat now. The horses were
bolting. Let them bolt. Nothing could go wrong with a strong cart and
good gear on a straight road unless one of the horses fell. The whip
clapped like a pistol as Brennen urged them to greater speed. The four
reins were like live things in his hands as he cried out the horses'
names: "Bles! Charlie! Klinkie! Chaka!" Chaka was a new black horse.
Brennen had put him on the off lead, where he could get at him best with
his whip. "Come, Bles! . . . Come, Charlie!" She gripped the arms of her
chair. What a drive it had been. She smelt the dust in her nostrils.
The road was always dusty, but now it had been made worse by the passing
of a thousand men and their transport. The dust rose in clouds,
obliterating everything, so that sometimes she could see only the horses'
ears and their tossing manes. The reins went down to nothing. They
disappeared into the dust. She could see no road. That they kept on it
was a miracle.
And then they got there. The horses shied and pulled across the road as
the leaders almost ran into an overturned wagon.
The dust fell slowly.
"You've come." It was the boy on the colonel's horse. "I was coming back
to find you," he said.
They got out of the cart. Some soldiers took the horses out. She saw it
all--the undulating ground, the bush, the trees by the road--many of them
scored by bullets. There was blood everywhere. It ran down the sloping
road into pools.
They helped the doctor to move the men, to bandage, to cut more bandages.
Tents were pitched, food cooked, great cauldrons of hot water got ready
to dress the wounded. She had gone in to Colonel Vane. His legs were off.
While she was with him, Frantz Joubert, the Boer commandant, had come in.
"Will you drink with me, Commandant?" the colonel said. "And you, too,
Mrs. Brennen." It was the champagne her husband had given the doctor.
They drank. Joubert said, "Here's to Queen Victoria. May she live long
and take her soldiers from the Transvaal."
They had wrapped the dead in blankets and buried them where they fell
along the side of the road, on the veld where they had taken up their
positions. Beside almost every body there were peaches; they had fallen
from the hands of the men as they were ambushed. Their pipe-clayed
haversacks still bulged with them. The dead of the Three Hundred and
First were buried with their peaches where they lay.
She saw Johnny's cage of birds. It was broken and the birds were free.
The wild birds were free once more and the men were dead.
"Yes," she said, looking up, "that's what happened to the Three Hundred
and First. The birds were free and the men were dead, and buried where
they fell."
"But--" Vane said.
She had not spoken. She had sat for nearly half an hour with her head
sunk on her breast.
She looked accusingly at her grandson. "And they think I can't remember.
I can remember everything. I can even remember the names."
"That's what I was afraid of," George Brennen said--"one of her spells."
They were silent, staring at the old woman; her head was lowered again.
Suddenly, from the next house, a woman screamed at a child.
"Didn't I tell you not to eat so many peaches? Peaches--you guzzle
peaches all day, and then bring them home at night, so that you can eat
more. You'll be sick, I say. Where did you get them? Did you steal them?"
"I didn't steal them, Mother. They're the soldiers' peaches. We drove ova
there to get them. They're wild peaches." The child was crying.
Mrs. Brennen got up. "Let her have the peaches. Let her have all she
wants. The soldiers' peaches never hurt anyone." Mrs. Brennen sat down
again. "The soldiers' peaches," she said--"that grew out of their
pockets."
Tears ran down her cheeks. They followed the lines of her face and
dripped on to the snuff-stained alpaca dress. She made no effort to stay
them.
"Out of their pockets?" Vane said.
"She means their haversacks."
"Then there are peach trees?"
"Yes, there are trees--plenty of them."
"And they buried them where they fell? Do you know the place well?" Vane
asked.
"Everyone knows it well. All the children get peaches from them. They
grow like this." George Brennen traced a pattern on the dust of the stoep
with his finger. "Here is where there are the most. . . . That was where
the main body got it. . . . They were buried on both sides of the road .
. . and out here is where the scouts fell.'' He made scattered dots.
"Then there were scouts out," Vane said. "And it wasn't my grandfather's
fault."
"It was nobody's fault," Brennen said. "The Boers were hidden and they
held their fire."
Vane laughed. "Can we go over there to-morrow?" he asked. "I'll make a
map of it for my father. Poor father," he said. "If only he had known
this years ago! He nearly came once, and then he was afraid to
come--afraid of what he'd find."
"We call them the soldiers' peaches," George Brennen said. "And I wish
she had told you the story--I have heard it hundreds of times--but she's
old; she has spells."
His grandmother looked up. "I remember as well as anyone," she said. She
pointed to Vane. "I remember his grandfather. A fine man. There were some
fine men in those days."
Brennen took Vane's shoulder. "Come along to my place. Spend the night
and we'll drive over there to-morrow."

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