The Fever Tree by Jennifer McVeigh

Author:Jennifer McVeigh [McVeigh, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-03-04T05:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Four

Frances sat on the stoep watching the two men walk out of the veldt towards her. They were still far off, their figures no more than dark silhouettes against the sinking sun. Mangwa was crunching the balustrade between his teeth, occasionally curling his upper lip in distaste. She ought to have stopped him an hour ago—already there was a pile of wood chippings and paint on the floor—but it seemed pointless. The little house was crumbling into the veldt, with or without his help.

The heat made Frances lethargic, but she stood up as the men drew closer and pushed the zebra’s muzzle away. She couldn’t help admiring him. His brown fur was beginning to give way to the rippling, glossy coat of an adult zebra, and his body had the compact strength of a wild animal. He butted her with his nose, nibbling at her clothes with his lips, which tickled her skin and made her laugh. It was her husband, she realized, taking in the knapsack slung over his shoulders, walking with a man she didn’t recognize. Frances had been sure that she would know Joseph Baier in an instant—that the influence he had exerted over her life would single him out for her—but in fact she looked at him blankly until Edwin introduced them.

He was a small man who carried too much weight, and he arrived on their doorstep panting in the heat. His eyes, sunken into folds of pink flesh, darted about with surprising speed, disconcertingly at odds with the heavy softness of his body. He must have been in his fifties, but his bulk gave him a false youthfulness. An infant’s chubbiness smoothed out the lines on his face.

“So, Mrs. Matthews,” he said, eyeing up the cracked plaster and warped floorboards. His voice was a nasal whine. “This is quite a change, isn’t it?” He paused on the word “change,” giving it an unquestionable emphasis of disdain, while at the same time smiling quickly as if he were turning a knife in a pig, hoping it would squeal.

“From London? Yes. I can’t get used to the heat.”

“No more gilt taps and lace curtains.” He moved as he talked, thrusting his hands in and out of his pockets, adjusting his necktie and looking around the room like a prospecting landlord. He had a restless, unsettled manner. “Aren’t you Sir John Hamilton’s niece?” he asked.

Frances knew a little about Joseph Baier from listening to William. He was a Jew from the East End who had been one of the first to the diamond fields and made a vast fortune. She imagined he enjoyed parading William around the fields: the educated, cultured boy whom he held in check with his vast reserves of money.

“He dropped in at the quarantine station,” Edwin said quietly, when Baier was washing in the trough outside. “We’ll have to put him up for the night.”

“What do you do, Edwin, with such a delicate wife?” Baier asked over supper. “Keep her caged up here like

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