Namaqualand Daisies

1

He was called the Captain, although he did not like the title and had asked people not to use the rank to which he had been briefly entitled because of his service in Hong Kong. That had been in China, and was back then. This was Africa, and this was now, 1956, and he was a plain district officer in Basutoland – nothing special. Just ordinary Mr Andrews. But someone had seen the letter addressed to him as Captain, and it had got about that this was what he was. In colonial society, particularly one tucked away in a mountain kingdom, anything that suggested a rank or a title was welcome. Such places were full of wartime majors and the like, hanging on to what remained of their authority and importance. The Captain was far too young for that; he was barely thirty-five, and his wife was even younger. She had laughed when she first heard him addressed as Captain.

‘It makes you sound like one of those old salts,’ she said. ‘It makes you sound ridiculous.’

‘I didn’t ask anybody to call me that,’ said the Captain. ‘It’s like a nickname, you know. You can’t stop people from calling you by a nickname. You just can’t.’

2

The Captain’s wife did not like the country. She had tried to create a garden in the grounds of their house in Maseru, but had been defeated. There were white ants that ate the fruit trees she planted; there was not enough rain; the sun was too hot.

‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stick this out,’ she wrote to a friend. ‘This place is so far from everywhere. South Africa is just over the border, but you have to travel for miles and miles before you come across anybody who speaks English. They’re all so insular. So petty.’

Her friend wrote back: ‘Darling, you sound awful. What you must ask yourself is this: are you prepared to throw your life away for Hugh’s sake? I know that he’s frightfully good-looking and, well, I can understand that side of things, but are you sure? Are you really sure?’

Of course, once she asked herself whether she was sure, she realised that she was not. She was bored with their life. She was bored with this life where she knew every face she was likely ever to meet, and where there was nobody who had anything new to say.

She looked at the Captain and thought: I don’t want to hurt him. He’s a kind man. But I can’t bear this any longer.

The Captain, gazing back at his wife – the wife he feared he barely knew – understood what she was thinking and realised then that he had lost her.

3

After his wife had gone, several people took pity on the Captain. There was the widow of a Scottish cattle-trader, a woman who had been in the country for thirty years and who spoke fluent Sesotho. There was the wife of the judge, a woman who moved in a cloud of scent and cultivated large beds of Namaqualand daisies in her garden. These women, particularly the cattle-trader’s widow, invited the Captain to dinner once or twice a week.