Free The Complete Short Stories by Muriel Spark Page A

of tribute-money to the bank people which patriarchal farmers
like her father were obliged to pay under the strict ethic of the Dutch
Reformed Church. She now understood her cash value, and felt fiercely against
her husband for failing to reveal it to her. She wrote a letter to him, which
was a difficult course. I saw the final draft, about which she called a
conference of nurses from the clinic. We were wicked enough to let it go, but
in fact I don’t think we gave it much thought. I recall that on this occasion
we talked far into the night about her possibilities — her tennis court, her
two bathrooms, her black-and-white bedroom — all of which were as yet only a
glimmer at the end of a tunnel. In any case, I do not think we could have
succeeded in changing her mind about the letter which subsequently enjoyed a
few inches in the local press as part of Jannie’s evidence. It was as follows:
     
    Dear Jannie there is going to be some changes I
found out what pa left is cash to spend I only got to sine my name do you think
I like to go on like this work work work counting the mealies in the field By
God like poor whites when did I get a dress you did not say a word that is your
shame and you have Landed in jale with your bad temper you shoud of amed at the
legs. Mr Little came here to bring the papers to sine he said you get good
cooking in jale the kids are well but Hannah got a bite but I will take them
away from there now and send them to the convent and pay money. Your Loving
Wife, S. Van der Merwe
     
    There must have been many occasions on
which I lay on my bed on summer afternoons in Worcestershire, because at that
time I was convalescent. My schooldays had come to an end. My training as a
radiotherapist was not to begin till the autumn.
    I do not know how many
afternoons I lay on my bed listening to a litany of tennis noises from where my
two brothers played on the court a little to the right below my window.
Sometimes, to tell me it was time to get up, my elder brother Richard would
send a tennis ball through the open window. The net curtain would stir and part
very suddenly and somewhere in the room the ball would thud and then roll. I
always thought one day he would break the glass of the window, or that he would
land the ball on my face or break something in the room, but he never did.
Perhaps my memory exaggerates the number of these occasions and really they
only occurred once or twice.
    But I am sure the
curtains must have moved in the breeze as I lay taking in the calls and the to
and fro of tennis on those unconcerned afternoons, and I suppose the sight was
a pleasurable one. That a slight movement of the curtains should be the sign of
a summer breeze seems somewhere near to truth, for to me truth has airy
properties with buoyant and lyrical effects; and when anything drastic starts
up from some light cause it only proves to me that something false has got into
the world.
    I do not actually
remember the curtains of my room being touched by the summer wind although I am
sure they were; whenever I try to bring to mind this detail of the afternoon
sensations it disappears, and I have knowledge of the image only as one who has
swallowed some fruit of the Tree of Knowledge — its memory is usurped by the
window of Mrs Van der Merwe’s house and by the curtains disturbed, in the rainy
season, by a trifling wind, unreasonably meaning a storm.
    Sometimes, on those restful
afternoons, I was anxious. There was some doubt about my acceptance for
training as a radiotherapist because of my interrupted schooling. One day the
letter of acceptance came by the late post. I read the letter with relief and
delight, and at that same moment decided to turn down the offer. It was enough
that I had received it. I am given to this sort of thing, and the reason that I
am drawn to moderate and tranquil motives is that I lack them. I decided
instead to become a hospital nurse and later to follow my brother Richard, who
was then a