My Madam's Keeper

“You know I don’t like it when you do this, Gert. This taking without asking! It is very naughty...and inconsiderate of you, especially when I was thinking of making apricot jam for Koos.” Gert bowed his head, his clouded eyes briefly closed against the passing storm of words pelting from the lips of his madam. His naked, timeworn feet shuffled morse code signals in the dust, toe dots and heel dashes declaring his misery and shame. She sighed chidingly, “Never mind. I’m going for a swim now so take your apricots with you and go water the vegetable garden.”

Gert’s madam evolved as part of the landscape of Cabbage Tree Farm through marriage. She, Margaret, put down her roots in no gracious manner. Her interactions with people were taken from a limited scenario playbook that she had devised over the years; it was only with dogs that she revealed her true self. A shy and uncomfortable person both with herself and with others, she lavished on her two German Shepherds a devoted love. Since the death of her husband, the few remaining humans in her life received tepid helpings of attention from the limited feast of her range of emotions. Surrounding rural neighbors had long since deemed her ‘an odd bird’. This opinion deflected her random interactions from them to focus instead on the four remaining mainstays of her existence: her pair of dogs, the precious black bound journal, her beekeeper for hire, and Gert the farmhand.

Her treasured journal was the repository for all the thoughts and feelings she could not, or would not, express. It may have been that as a child she was forced to swallow every comment on social customs and conventions, along with the hated peas and despised slices of bouncy liver lying in wait for her on her dinner plate. She learned at a very early age that thoughts become words and words become actions. Actions attracted punishment: hence her perverted silence which persisted well into adulthood.

Her constant journal, however, declined to issue judgement. Its discreet cover imbued Margaret with a sense of trust, as in a soulmate willing to help tease through her scattered thoughts and make sense of her whispered secrets; she wrote, ‘I think I may be a little in love with Koos. He does look rather silly in his beekeeper’s outfit, like a misplaced astronaut, but I don’t care. He looked at me today in a special way. Longingly perhaps?’

And that was approximately when the awkward attraction began, and culminated, Margaret believed, in the mysterious appearance of twenty thousand dollars contained in an envelope and pushed under her front door. Her pair of dogs, Pickles and Onion, had neglected to bark a warning at the secret delivery: therein lay her clue. She was a practical woman, disinclined to engage in frivolous thoughts; the obviousness of Koos leaving the exact amount of money needed to create a swimming pool was, well, perfectly obvious to her.

She wrote with quivering lips, ‘Koos and I are going to have a swimming pool this summer that we’ll share once he has performed his beekeeping duties. How wonderful of him; such a good, modest man!’ Carried on her soft breath, when her words took flight they landed on the pages of her journal, finding a safe haven to breed. There they gained a life of their own as Margaret gathered her immortalized words fondly to her breast, and took action.

Earlier, Margaret and Koos had acquired the delightful--and they considered ‘highly civilized’--habit of sharing a sundowner subsequent to his attending to the bees’ needs. What was initially a mundane event became an anticipated affair for Margaret. Her outfits were planned days in advance, as were the drinks. They would perch on their garden chairs: she took great care to display herself at her finest angle whilst spreading the skirt of her dress in a welcoming fan shape. Gert, the farm hand, was ordered to double as a waiter on these occasions. He performed proudly in his clean but wrinkled shirt and khaki shorts that still bore the earth’s tang. He stood nearby, alert and erect with the posture and the attentive ears of a Zulu warrior as the conversation conducted between his madam and this fool of a beekeeper ran its predictable loop.

“Bloody hell! This is a damn good brandy.” Koos imbibed fiercely as the setting sun embraced his neck. He assembled the jousting thoughts and urges inhabiting his body.

“Marge, I’m telling you now, a swimming pool is what we need right over there. So help me God!” As he had done on several previous occasions he pointed to the perfect considered spot; its location was situated at the distant edge of the lawn where it would be a relatively simple task to dig up the snapdragons, hollyhocks and marigolds. Koos considered himself handsome; he knew beyond doubt that lounging in silvered water, in the radiance of a South African sunset seen now through the golden glow of brandy goblet, would transmogrify his coarse being into a suave sophisticate. Margaret sighed in agreement.

“I know Koos, but the cost is…..well, it’s a lot right now. We have discussed the amount previously, and frankly it seems exorbitant at this time.”

But now, finally, the pool had come to fruition. The money that paid for the cost of its construction was never mentioned by either party. It seemed too delicate a subject for Margaret to broach: like a fragile flower, the act of generosity was never touched, eventually succumbing to the death of silence. Margaret was intrinsically a decent person; accordingly, Gert was enlisted to help her ensure Koos a state of perpetual gratitude for his perceived munificence. Appreciation was molded and presented in the form of homemade jams, freshly nurtured farm vegetables, pecans picked, and a free flow of harvested honey. The late afternoon habit of them swimming and drinking whilst Gert stood vigilantly in the shade awaiting their orders, became rote.

Within that same time frame of outward enjoyment, Margaret began to feel a tad bit ill. She confided--albeit hesitantly--to her journal, ‘I feel guilty after all this time still having more affection for Pickles and Onion than I do for Koos. He has been good to me, generous too, but he becomes cruel and deprecating--especially when he’s had a glass too many, and I find myself yearning for solitude. Should I switch beekeepers?’

Early sublimity of summer had soured into an autumn of unease for Margaret. She had begun inventing ways to be overly preoccupied with tasks on the days Koos arrived on the farm. Multiple occasions found Koos the sole occupant of the lovely pool and left to his own devices: flapping around like a strange fish with odd habits, seeking a mate.

Gert was at her side when Margaret collapsed in the garden one day. He had been digging holes for her in the rich African soil, creating a cool loamy bed in which she could tenderly place her bulbs in preparation for the winter ahead. His spade was thrown aside. Gert froze, not daring to touch his madam as she lay there like a felled tulip: a glorious splash of color on the earth, her graceful neck the stem with arms outstretched not unlike two leaves hunting the sun. “Madam? Madam?” his voice trembled, “Madam, I’ll get you water!”

As a trellis props up a frail flower, so Gert helped Margaret into the house. It was a remarkable homestead, uncomplicated and austere. The quiet of the interior was periodically broken by the rustling noise of the hadada ibises who had made their avian roost in the thatched roof overhead. Her bed was a commodious wrought iron that emanated a brooding air. Shaking fingers groped for the candlewick bedspread as she sought to lie down and bury her shame. What she considered undue weakness in herself, Margaret preferred to keep private. Yet in the small, white figure that Gert studied as he backed away from the bed, he divined a delicate pebble of a woman who had been washed smooth of choices, dreams and desires by the turbulent water of a river not of her choosing. His self assigned duty to protect and indulge her whims never felt more urgent.

The discombobulating news of Margaret’s illness pervaded the local community. It was difficult for her to distinguish between sincere and insincere condolences and offers of assistance; she withdrew further into herself, always knowing she could count on Pickles and Onion: also Gert, her farmhand who had become her mainstay after she dismissed Koos and gave him all her bees and hives as a parting gift. She wrote in a careful hand that betrayed a slight tremor, ‘For the first time in my life I feel safe.’

Winter’s advent, then reluctant departure made it seem to Margaret that either she had shrunk into her illness, or Gert was revealing to her a stature and an aura of nobility that had previously eluded her. He had become her magical ebony tree: black, proud and precious. A day arrived in early spring when Margaret begged Gert to accept a higher salary in lieu of the long hours and responsibilities he was undertaking on the farm. She intended it as a reward for her increasing dependence on him.

“Madam. No! Never!” he said, “The one hand washes the other. I have been working and saving all my life since I was a little boy--a piccanin. I am old now. I have no need, no family but you. No thank you madam.”

Margaret’s journal lay waiting for her that night, its well worn black cover beckoning her to safe shelter. ‘I have to confess this secret that I can tell no one else. I now know in my heart that it was Mister Gert who gave me the money to build that pool.’

On a capriciously cool morning in late spring, Margaret’s breath floated away, becoming part of the air that lovingly lifted all birds in flight. She was seated outside in her favorite garden chair, cocooned in a blanket. Her face was smiling at the sun when Gert closed the journal nestled in her hands. He seated himself on the lawn beside her, the better to bear witness with her to dawn’s arrival, and to pray in a soft cadence.

Her passing was reported in the local newspaper around the same time an elderly man was noted limping with a cane and two German Shepherd dogs to the railway station. Overheard that same night in the local bar, the ticket inspector mentioned to a friend that an old colored cripple with two bloody big dogs, emptied his pockets, and with the change bought a one way ticket to Zululand.