The Housemaid's Daughter

by Barbara Mutch

  * * *

  By the time I got back to the station, the last train of the day had already left and so I sat on a bench through the night, holding on to my leftover money, closing my ears to the shouts of drunken men in the dark beyond the dim platform light, until the first train of the next day appeared through a grey dawn. It started to rain. Other passengers appeared out of the bush beside the railway line. The vast township hid behind a veil of low cloud. I got on to the train stiffly and went home.

  Chapter 15

  I miss Madam, so I read her book every day. I wonder why she left it on her dressing table when she knew she would be away for a while? It isn’t like Madam to be so forgetful of something so important to her. What will she write on in Johannesburg?

  The company on board ship is charming. In particular one Colonel Saunders, on his way to rejoin his regiment in India. Mrs Wetherspoon, my chaperone, is quite captivated. And so is he – with me!

  How strange that I should spend five years serving my betrothal in Ireland and just when I am allowed to go to Africa to marry Edward, I find myself waylaid by another suitor. It is flattering, of course, but I give him no encouragement. And he, to his credit, is most proper.

  In order to fill Cradock House with sound, I play the piano every evening after I’ve done the dishes. Madam would have wanted it so. I don’t put on the lights – I don’t need to see my fingers – I just slip into the alcove where the piano is, and begin. At first, there’s some light from the sunset, a silky purple rather than the bright yellow stripes of Master Phil’s bedroom. Then even that fades, and I play in the dark. I play for myself, and for Mama, and I play for Master Phil who never leaves my heart.

  Sometimes Master is in the study writing to Madam visiting Miss Rose in trouble in Johannesburg and he opens the door to listen to me. Sometimes he’s in the lounge, behind his newspaper. I notice that he never turns the pages while I play. And often the lamp next to his chair isn’t on. Perhaps he likes the dark too. I know he always wanted Madam to play Chopin, so I play Chopin. I hope it gives him comfort in Madam’s absence. And then I play Debussy as well, slippery tunes that wander round in your head for days afterwards.

  He usually says, ‘Thank you, Ada,’ when I’ve finished, although sometimes he seems to find it hard to speak and has to cough before he can start.

  Then I say, ‘Good night, Master,’ as I close the piano. For a while, that’s all he says and all I say.

  And I know that I am playing for him as well, and for the loneliness that’s inside us both.

  * * *

  When I look back on it now, after many years, I know that it came out of the loneliness. Not Master Phil’s frenzied sort of loneliness – where fallen comrades give you no peace – but rather a shadow that settles about you with sly weight. Madam knew about loneliness, and the difficulties it can cause, so perhaps that was why she decided to go to Johannesburg to be with Miss Rose, her remaining child. To chase away Miss Rose’s loneliness and in this way keep her from more trouble? But loneliness taken away from one place looks for a home somewhere else. And trouble taken from one person will surely search for a new lodging.

  I made lamb chops and potatoes and peas and served them to Master, on his own at the head of the table in the dining room.

  I ate my supper in the kitchen. Then I washed and dried the dishes and hung up the tea towels on the line outside. It was one of those evenings when the Karoo has a strange, warm light and the stone koppies brighten from brown to pink, holding their glow for longer than you think possible, before fading to navy. I wondered if Mama could see the strange light from where she was with God the Father.

  I turned back to the house and then stopped for a moment, remembering Master Phil lying on the grass that now bent soft beneath my feet. His skin was golden in the sun, his eyes pale as the lightest evening sky. If I called his name he would surely answer …

  I went back inside. I took off my apron and hung it behind the kitchen door. Master was in his usual chair in the lounge. I slipped into the alcove and started with Clair de Lune. Pink light came through the window and rested on the piano, and followed my hands on the keys. Then I played the Pathétique. Master did not turn the pages of the paper. I was used to that by now. Slowly the flush of evening faded and I played the last Chopin nocturne in darkness. Master sat in the darkness as well, his newspaper on his lap.

  ‘Good night, Master.’

  ‘Thank you, Ada. Good night.’

  I washed and put on the nightdress Madam had bought me at Badger’s, and prayed by the side of the bed for the souls of Master Phil and Mama.

  ‘Dear Lord, make Mama rest now, and give Master Phil peace from the war.’

  It was when I was reading my Bible verse for the day that I heard Master’s footsteps, not going upstairs but rather heading into the kitchen. Maybe he wanted a drink? Some tea? I put my feet into slippers, ready to go and help him, but the footsteps continued beyond the kitchen, along the corridor, and stopped outside the room my mother Miriam and I had shared since I was six years old.

  I waited.

  The steps did not continue. He must be ill. He must be worried about having to wake me up. Should I go out to him?

  A light tap sounded on the door.

  I rushed over and pulled it open. ‘Master,’ I said. ‘Do you need me, sir?’ The curtains billowed at the window in the sudden draught.

  ‘Ada,’ Master said.

  Master didn’t often look at me, but he was looking at me now. I thought how tired he had become since young Master Phil had died, how grey and thin his hair was, how faded his eyes were. He was still in his suit and he was fingering the gold chain on his waistcoat.

  ‘Ada?’ he said again and looked beyond me into the room as if he hadn’t seen it before. He reached out the hand that was not fiddling with his waistcoat and put it on my shoulder.

  ‘What can I do, sir? Do you need some tea?’

  But he didn’t seem to hear and his hand stayed on my shoulder. I could feel its warmth. I could feel his fingers tightening through the material of my nightdress. This was different from the way young Master Phil had touched me.

  I stepped backwards. His hand fell from my shoulder. We stared at each other, the Master and I.

  There had been a young man once, on Adderley Street, when I was taking Madam’s letters to the post office, who’d looked at me in the same way. Who’d looked at me as if I could truly be called pretty. He said his name was Jacob Mfengu and he asked me mine. He was well dressed and polite and he worked at the Cradock butcher’s and often saw me going down the street. He said he wanted to call on me if my father would allow. I said I had no father but that he could speak to my mother. He nodded eagerly and said he would and we shook hands and his touch made me feel hot like the Master’s hand was making me feel hot now. I waited and hoped but he never called and when I was brave enough to go into the butcher’s and ask for him by name, the butcher said he’d left suddenly to go back to his family in the Transkei.

  The Master stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. And he came towards me where I stood in front of the bed and this time put both hands on my shoulders. The hotness grew.

  I began to shake. He must have felt it, for he said, ‘I won’t hurt you, Ada.’

  He reached down and untied the top of my nightgown. I didn’t think to protest. After all, who was I to refuse the Master who had cared for my mother Miriam and me? How could I refuse someone who had given me a home and food and the gift of music? Who had paid for the burial of my mother?

  How could I say that I waited for a young man who had once pressed my hand on Adderley Street, but had never returned?

  How could I say that it was Madam’s face that I saw as I looked at him? I reached down and pulled the nightdress over my head and stood before him, naked.

  The colonel declares himself in love with me, he wishes to marry me. ‘Stay on board, Cath,’ he urges. ‘Come with me to India. We’ll marry as soon as
we dock.’

  And I could if I wished. For he is charming and considerate and not a rake, and he knows my grown-up heart better, I daresay, than does Edward. I confess I am more than a little in love with him …

  But how can I?

  How can I abandon Edward, who has worked so diligently to provide a home for me – even a piano?

  The Master came to me three times. We never spoke a word. His footsteps down the corridor, turning from the kitchen, were the only signal I had.

  Earlier, each evening, I would still play the piano. I had wondered whether to stop but then thought he would find it strange if I did. It seemed to me that the darkness chased away the sunset too quickly on those nights, bringing with it a terrible gloom that seized my fingers, made my playing forced and filled me with uncertainty over whether he would come tonight.

  ‘Good night, Master.’

  ‘Thank you, Ada.’

  When I heard his steps, I would take off my nightdress and lie down on the bed that I’d once shared with my mother Miriam. He would tap on the door and then enter, turning off the light as soon as he came in. He would come to the side of the bed and stand there for a while and then reach one hand down and touch me.

  And the next day I would wash the sheets and sweep the floor and make him breakfast and dinner as if nothing had changed. And he would work and eat and read the newspaper and write to Madam – oh, Madam, forgive me, God forgive me – in Johannesburg with Miss Rose who was in trouble.

  Chapter 16

  I used to wonder what it would be like with young men, the ones who caught my eye on the street when I went to the post office or when I walked with my mother to visit my aunt on Thursday afternoons off. They were bold, though, these young men. Especially when they came back from initiation – abakwetha – and they wore their new clothes around town, looking out for a wife.

  ‘Don’t look at him!’ my mother Miriam warned when I cast teenage eyes at one particularly promising boy in well-pressed khaki trousers on the corner of Market Street. ‘He will find out who you are if he wants to.’

  But he never did. And once young Master Phil was back from the war, my life was confined to Cradock House anyway, and the young men who might have taken the trouble to pursue me cast their eyes elsewhere. Except for Jacob Mfengu from the butcher’s. And he was not bold, but respectful. I had hoped that this was my chance. But I never heard from him again, although the touch of his warm hand stayed on my skin for many seasons.

  And then my mother became ill and I needed to nurse her and take on her duties in the house. The possibility of a young man, the possibility even of marriage, had to be put aside.

  ‘You needn’t do everything yourself, Ada,’ Madam said, finding me drooping over the ironing board one day. ‘I can get Mrs Pumile from next door to help out.’

  ‘No need, Madam,’ I said, straightening up. Mrs Pumile would rob Madam before the first day was over. ‘I’ll be finished soon.’

  When young Master Phil died, I still had Mama. But when Mama died, I had no one but Madam and Master. And when Madam went to visit Miss Rose in Johannesburg, I had only Master. And after that I had shame. It stayed out of sight at first but then it grew within me and began to swell my body. And it followed me every day for the rest of my life.

  Tomorrow I disembark.

  Tomorrow I marry Edward in the cathedral on the slopes of Table Mountain.

  My wedding dress is ironed and laid out ready, the embroidered skirt double-hemmed to manage the uneven streets of the port. My short veil – a gift from the village school – hangs over the chair.

  Mrs Wetherspoon has promised me a bouquet of fresh pink roses, although we do not know if it is the season for them in the Cape. Reverend Wetherspoon will give me away in morning dress and dog collar.

  We are all rising at dawn to see the mountain appear over the horizon. When I see it I will know that there can be no turning back.

  I have refused Charles Saunders, and he understands that I must do my duty. But I shall always wonder how it might have been.

  How it might have been to marry a man with whom I felt a quickening such as I’ve never known before …

  At first, of course, I didn’t know what was happening. My work dress tightened, my body felt tender. The natural cycle my mother Miriam had told me about stopped. In Johannesburg, Miss Rose remained in some sort of trouble, Master said. His eyebrows drew together, his lips tightened and he turned away to go into the study.

  So Madam stayed away.

  Madam, who could have told me what was happening to my body, but who would never have needed to do so if she’d remained in Cradock. Madam, whom I had betrayed. Madam, from whom I could never receive – or deserve – forgiveness.

  I couldn’t go to Dr Wilmott who had delivered me, who had treated young Master Phil, who had closed my mother Miriam’s eyes in death. He would have to tell Master or Madam. So, on one of my Thursdays off, I put my Pass in my pocket and walked across the iron bridge over the Groot Vis to my aunt in the small township by the Lococamp.

  ‘It is my body,’ I said, sitting with her in her one-roomed shack. My aunt was old by then, older than my mother Miriam would have been, and she had seen girls like me before. She leant over and put her hand on my stomach.

  ‘Which boy did this? You must marry him!’ she said, heaving the pot of hot water for tea off the fire. ‘You got no family, so he won’t have to pay bride price.’

  But I said there was no particular boy.

  And she slapped her hand against her doek, then she slapped me a little for being with more than one boy and having no shame. She said I was no better than Miss Rose in trouble in Johannesburg. I took the beating and said nothing. She told me of a man who dealt with babies and pushed me out of her shack and left me to walk the dusty alleys until I found the man she talked of. It was getting dark by then and the streets had no lights and gangs of boys roamed around and thin dogs followed me. Smoke from cooking fires hung over the shacks and made the sky grey long before it would have been grey over Cradock House. It reminded me of KwaZakhele when I had buried my mother Miriam. So I prayed as I walked, prayed to calm my fear of the darkness and the rough people who jostled me. And I prayed to Mama to tell me what to do. But Mama did not answer me, and God Himself was silent for I had sinned with my Master and for that there was no forgiveness.

  The doctor, when I found him, was a kind man. He wore a stained white coat, but he also carried a tube with a metal disc like the one the doctor had used on young Master Phil and so I trusted him. There was a queue of people to see him in his tiny two-roomed house. They sat all over the floor inside and spilled out on to the bare earth outside. Wounded youngsters spilling blood, mothers nursing crying babies, old men with terrible coughs.

  It was late by the time the doctor had treated all of the wounded, crying, coughing patients but even though he must have been tired, he was still kind. He told me that I was going to have a baby. He also told me that I should tell the father of the baby because I was a fine young woman who would bear many more babies for my fine young man.

  ‘It is not a fine young man, sir.’

  ‘An older man can be just as fine,’ he reassured me with a weary smile. ‘He can provide more for his children.’

  ‘It is my Master.’

  He sat down on a bench against the peeling wall. His shoulders slumped and I wondered why.

  ‘Then you will need my help.’

  ‘To help the baby get born?’

  ‘Oh, child.’ He shook his head where he’d leant it against the wall. ‘You should not be having this baby.’

  ‘But why, sir?’ What was this? Was he a sangoma – a witch doctor? Did he see things that I could not see?

  ‘The child will be cursed with a pale skin, paler than yours and mine,’ he pointed at his own black arm, ‘but not as pale as your Master’s.’

  ‘He will be coloured?’ I cried.

  I knew coloureds. They lived halfway between Madam and Mas
ter’s people and halfway to black people. They were not one, and they were not the other. Only during the war, when they became soldiers and fought alongside white soldiers, had people been proud of them. But nowadays they belonged nowhere.

  I had not known about inheritance. I had not known that this was how coloured people were made: that black people could be diluted and that white people could be darkened and the result would be a boy who belonged nowhere. And why did I think it would be a boy? A boy for the Master in place of young Master Phil? How could anyone replace a firstborn son?

  And this child would be coloured. He would not belong to the Master, and he would not belong to me. I would have to tell him that his father had left before he was born, just like my own father. Perhaps that would draw us closer, this pale child and me.

  But whereas my own father had disappeared never to return, this child’s father was just across the iron bridge over the Groot Vis, a short, dusty walk away. I would have to see to it that he never knew this. I would have to see to it that he, like me, never found his father.

  Chapter 17

  There are many things in my life that I have not understood at first but then come to understand later on. Like places and people that would not hear of things but were not deaf. Like a future that you could not buy, that always seemed – like the sea – to be just beyond the horizon. Like war that caused a shortage of food and cake tins, and made soldiers die and ships sink and young men never recover from wounds that no one could find. Like Master Phil’s love for me that I did not understand until it was too late.

  As I grew up I learnt that sometimes these things could be explained by the different moods that words took. Other times the things I didn’t understand turned out to be new for the world as well. A new thing of this sort rose up in the 1950s: the creeping fear of skin difference, whispered at first, then shouted, and made real as the child who would be coloured grew within me.