The Housemaid's Daughter

by Barbara Mutch

  ‘Where does she get this?’ Dina said in dismay, after failing in another attempt to stop Dawn’s fighting.

  ‘It is her skin that drives her on.’

  Dina looked pained and then nodded in agreement and took my arm as we walked back to class. I remembered Mrs Cath describing Miss Rose as wilful. And I wondered again about inheritance and how much of Dawn came from myself and Master, and if it was possible for her to have gained an extra dose of wilfulness from Miss Rose. And how much came from the surroundings in which she found herself.

  ‘Why do you fight so much, Dawn?’ I asked as we lay in the darkness of the kaia at the end of the day.

  ‘Because I’m different from you, Mama.’

  I sat up and looked at her where she lay on her back in the new bed Mrs Cath had recently bought on account of her increasing length.

  ‘I’m sorry every day for giving you the skin you have.’

  ‘Hush, Mama.’ She leant over and kissed me on the cheek. ‘I don’t know if it’s the skin, but I love the township!’ Her eyes sparkled in the gloom. ‘And I want to belong there.’

  But how can you, my precious child? I wanted to cry out to the kaia, to the bony thorn tree, to the apricot that now surely carries you in its sap. I have tried so hard to give you a future here – the future that God the Father wanted for you, and spared me for. I have protected you, I have saved you from washing for a living, or illness caused by foul latrines. I’ve shielded you from drink and the violence that goes with it outside the shebeens. Your wild black friends will tire of you, they’ll turn on your pale skin one day and want nothing to do with you. This I know. These things I have seen.

  ‘Mama!’ Dawn sensed my fear and leant over to hug me, her pale skin smooth against mine. ‘I will find my way, just as you have.’

  But at what cost, I wanted to say, what price will have to be paid? I felt tears, then, futile tears like those that had come upon me at Master Phil’s funeral.

  ‘I’ll always come back, Mama,’ Dawn went on gently, for she had as much capacity for tenderness as she had for trouble. ‘I love you and Mrs Cath and Cradock House, I’ll always come back.’

  * * *

  Miss Rose has had a baby. Mrs Pumile says that is hardly surprising given the amount of trouble Miss Rose has found and that sooner or later this always means a baby.

  Mrs Cath only came to hear of this baby a while after it was born. It seems that Miss Rose wished to keep the news quiet for as long as possible. Like I kept quiet the fact that I would be having a coloured baby. But in the matter of colour, Miss Rose was luckier than me. Her baby was white. But there is one thing that we both share: neither Miss Rose nor I have a husband to go with the babies we have borne.

  ‘She’s coming to stay,’ said Mrs Cath breathlessly, hurrying into the kitchen one day clutching a letter. Her hair had escaped from its bun and fell about her shoulders like it did when she was in Master Phil’s bedroom comforting him in his war nightmares.

  I lifted my hands out of a bowl of flour that I was rubbing butter into for scones. ‘Does Miss Rose know?’

  I had never asked Mrs Cath if Miss Rose knew about Master and me and that I had had his child. How do you tell your daughter that her father has sinned in such a way? Nor did I know if Mrs Cath had told Miss Rose of my return to Cradock House. How do you tell your daughter that you have accepted a sinner back into your home? Perhaps Miss Rose didn’t know. Perhaps this was the reason for Mrs Cath’s particular disturbance.

  ‘I wrote to her a while back,’ Mrs Cath began, reaching a hand to tuck her hair back into its arrangement and avoiding my eyes. ‘She was,’ Mrs Cath hesitated, looking in her mind for the right word, like Lindiwe used to do, ‘surprised.’

  I kept my eyes down as well and returned to the scone mixture. Surprise was surely not what Miss Rose felt. Anger, yes. Betrayal – for Miss Rose regarded Master as her particular property, to be charmed at will – almost certainly. Indifference? Perhaps. If I was lucky.

  Edward wants to find out who the father is, why he has not done his duty by Rosemary and married her. I have refused to fan this particular fire. It’s true that folk will gossip, but we have been down that route before, and I have learned that the only course is to hold up one’s head and go forward. It is interesting to realise that I have learned this from Ada. She has steeled herself against isolation and disappointment by only looking forward.

  So we welcome our new grandchild with open arms, and I pray that Rosemary will now settle down to motherhood, and abandon her waywardness. But I have no confidence that she will, for I’ve long since acknowledged that where my daughter is concerned, I am without influence or understanding. How hard it is to admit such a failure with one’s own child!

  My immediate concern is her reaction to the presence of Ada and Dawn.

  Chapter 38

  ‘This is Dawn, she’s almost ten,’ said Mrs Cath, her cheeks once again pale, as they had been when she introduced Dawn to Master.

  ‘What hair!’ exclaimed Miss Rose, pointing to Dawn’s tight curls and stroking the fair waves of her own daughter, Helen.

  ‘Ada, would you bring the tea?’ Mrs Cath forced a smile at me and patted Dawn reassuringly.

  The family was sitting on the stoep in the shell chairs I’d longed to sit in as a child but had been forbidden to do so by Mama. I returned with the tray. There were fresh scones with our homemade apricot jam. We had worked hard to make Miss Rose’s homecoming special. A roast leg of Karoo lamb was in the oven, there would be butternut squash steamed with brown sugar and cinnamon, and Cape brandy tart with dates from the desert where Phil had fought in the war.

  As I poured tea, little Helen played on a blanket at Mrs Cath’s feet. Dawn ran down to the kaia and returned with a toy rabbit Mrs Cath had knitted for her years before.

  ‘No,’ said Miss Rose, reaching over and taking the rabbit from Helen’s hand and tossing it back at Dawn. ‘She has her own toys.’

  And that is the way it went.

  Each day Miss Rose put on a new dress – no more full skirts now, but dresses that clung to her hips and narrowed themselves at her knees – and sat on the stoep and called for tea or walked down town to do errands. Sometimes she took Helen in the pram, but mostly she left her with Mrs Cath, along with strict instructions that Dawn’s company was not welcome for her child. For Mrs Cath, this was a great trial. She understood Miss Rose’s anger and hurt, as she herself had been angered and hurt, but the labelling of Dawn and me as unworthy and the rejection of our company as being unsuitable for her grandchild was a shock she found hard to bear. I could see all this in the tightness of Mrs Cath’s back, I could hear it in the forced gaiety of her piano playing. We had a lot of polkas and mazurkas during that time, but none of them caught fire.

  ‘Shall we make lemon meringue pie for dessert, Ada?’ she said, her eyes sore, her hands keen to be busy to avoid the awkwardness of sitting with Miss Rose while having to shoo away Dawn.

  ‘Of course, Mrs Cath,’ I replied, and we would go about our whipping of egg whites and squeezing of lemons with none of the talk that usually rose between us.

  Dawn, after early enthusiasm for Miss Rose’s stylish clothes and city manner, soon chafed at her alienation. While she often seemed happiest among her gang in the township, I knew that Cradock House was her respite, even if she never wanted to admit it was so. Miss Rose, with her cutting words and her thoughtless actions, was threatening the only quiet place Dawn had ever known.

  ‘She hates me,’ Dawn muttered early in the visit, after another incident of being slighted. ‘Why does she hate me, Mama? I haven’t done anything to her.’

  ‘Miss Rose cares only for herself.’ I looked up from the piano, where I’d been playing Gershwin. Dawn loved Gershwin, loved to twist her body to the offbeat rhythm of the Rhapsody in Blue, loved to dance for little Helen. ‘She sees no need to offer kindness elsewhere.’

  And another time, in the quiet of our room, ‘Why is she so diffe
rent from Mrs Cath?’

  I smiled and glanced out of the kaia door. The kaffirboom leant over the lawn, its leaves painting shadows on the grass where Master Phil had once sat. How many times had I asked myself this question? How could a mother as caring as Mrs Cath be rewarded with so selfish a daughter?

  ‘Only God the Father knows, child. It was like this even when we were children. But,’ I turned back and stroked her pale arm, ‘Miss Rose has the affection of Master. And Master gives us shelter. So she must be treated with caution…’

  ‘Andikhathali – I don’t care!’ Dawn hissed from her township self. ‘She means nothing to me!’

  With Master, Miss Rose charmed and flattered as before, knowing that he still found her hard to resist. But she trod carefully. After all, Master sent her money every month. I knew that. From the crack in the door, I’d overheard him talking to Mrs Cath about how much Miss Rose was costing them to live in a smart flat in Johannesburg while finding no means to support herself.

  ‘She ought to find a job,’ Master would say. ‘There’s surely something she could do.’

  ‘But what?’ Mrs Cath would shake her head. ‘She’s qualified for nothing, she didn’t want to teach, or nurse. We hoped she’d marry one day.’

  And there they left it.

  But on this visit there was another side to Miss Rose’s dealings with Master. A side that she kept well concealed from Mrs Cath. She found a way to ally herself with Master that went beyond the tricks of flattery. She found common ground that they alone shared.

  She cast them both as innocent victims. Two souls taken advantage of by unscrupulous lovers.

  I doubt that Master agreed with Miss Rose’s position, but it was surely comforting for him to bask in her uncritical charm when there was such a dearth of it elsewhere in his life. Miss Rose with her yellow hair and her vivid dresses and her teasing manner – and now with a beautiful blond baby, even if no husband – was a burst of sunshine. I could see it was so. And I did not have the heart to disapprove. After all, Master was a shell of what he had once been. He might deny Dawn even the smallest recognition, but he’d held to his bargain of giving us a home and a future. Across the Groot Vis, blood and fear were rising with the passing of each season. Even Lindiwe despaired. Her latest hut had been burnt down before it could be occupied. We will make this place ungovernable, said the people who drove the struggle. We will tear down and burn up this place until there is nothing left but the bare Karoo earth.

  Miss Rose kept up her strategy of charm-plus-victimhood for some time. But one evening, as they sat together on the stoep while Mrs Cath played the piano and I finished making dinner and the hadedas listened as they flapped by, Miss Rose made her move. She told Master that he was unnecessarily generous in giving Dawn and me a future within Cradock House.

  ‘Pay her off,’ I heard from the hallway, where I passed on my way to the dining room. ‘Don’t keep her here. She’ll leave anyway, as soon as it suits her.’

  There was the clink of a glass being replaced heavily on the tray. And the sharp strike of a match for Miss Rose’s cigarette. I waited. Another enemy. Dawn and I would never be without enemies. Even in Cradock House.

  ‘I’ve promised Cathleen,’ came Master’s voice. From the piano rushed a lively scherzo, as Mrs Cath searched for cheerfulness in advance of the evening meal. I waited, my hands clasped against my blue skirt.

  ‘You owe her nothing more,’ hissed Miss Rose. ‘You have your own family to take care of. And it’s not safe.’

  There was a pause. I heard Dawn’s footsteps behind me. Since Miss Rose’s arrival, I’d encouraged Dawn to spend more time in the kaia. Now I turned and put a finger to my lips. Dawn shrugged and returned to the kitchen, resigned to her exclusion.

  ‘There haven’t been any prosecutions in Cradock…’ Master’s voice trailed off.

  Mrs Cath had switched to a Bach air. D major. I crept closer to the door.

  ‘No prosecutions yet, you mean,’ I heard Miss Rose say. ‘But who knows how long that will last?’

  * * *

  I understand revenge.

  Revenge is when you attack someone for the wrong they have done you in the past. Revenge draws upon stored bad blood. So now I think I understand a part of Miss Rose. She has taken revenge upon me for being better at the piano than she was, for being the daughter to Mrs Cath that Miss Rose herself should have been, and for, so she thought, luring Master into my bedroom.

  Before she returned to Johannesburg, Miss Rose went to the police. Or she said enough to make someone else go to the police. I now know this. It has been reported to the police that my wickedness has resulted in a child that Master and Mrs Cath are being forced to support for fear of being exposed by me.

  It was a banging on the kaia door at midnight that first told me about Miss Rose’s revenge. I had heard about this sort of thing, but I never thought it would happen here in Cradock House. But then I must remember that I do not live in Cradock House, I must not sit on the shell chairs on the stoep, I am not part of the family even though Mrs Cath treats me as if I am. Therefore I – and my daughter – do not come under the protection of the house in the matter of midnight visits by the police.

  ‘Waar is die kind – where is the child?’ a thickset policeman with a black truncheon shouted when I opened the door a crack. Here it was, what I had feared for so long. Here, coming out of the soft night like a single clap of thunder, was the possibility of jail for Master and myself. Here was the possibility of humiliation for Mrs Cath. The possibility that Dawn might grow up alone.

  He pushed me aside roughly. A second white man in plain clothes followed him. They swept their torches over the inside of the kaia. I heard their heavy breathing, as if they had been running, as if this was a hunt and we were prey.

  Or an ambush, like Phil under the guns at Sidi Rezegh.

  ‘Don’t touch her!’ I screamed, pushing myself between them and Dawn, where she lay blinded, crumpled with sleep, in the harsh light of the torch.

  ‘Ja, just look at it,’ the first man said with satisfaction, elbowing me aside to press the torch closer to Dawn’s pale face. ‘Hotnot for sure!’

  Understanding and then anger flared in Dawn’s light eyes at the insult. She knew about policemen. We hid from them in the township, these angry men with snarling dogs and vans with grilles into which they flung anyone without a Pass. Since she was a child, I had warned her about them. I had warned her to keep her anger in check and her fists by her side with such men. These were not township ruffians that could be taken on. These men had truncheons, they had guns. A cool head is the only defence against such men, I used to urge. Wait and pick your own moment to fight back.

  ‘Ada?’

  I heard a cry from outside and then Mrs Cath was there, hair undone from her bun, dressing gown with its embroidered flowers trailing about her bare feet. She had run out of the house without her slippers. Her feet must be icy, for it was a winter night with the chance of frost. In the background I heard the kitchen door slam.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing!’ she gasped at the men.

  Taking advantage of their distraction, I flung myself over Dawn’s body, shielding her with my own, and scrabbled beneath the mattress. If I’d been in the township, if I’d been in Lindiwe’s hut, the sharpened bicycle spoke would be in my hands—

  But it wasn’t.

  I forgot it lived across the room in a drawer with my Pass, ready to go into the township each day. I thought we were safe in the kaia, I thought there was no need for such a weapon by my bed.

  Could I still reach it? Could I push past the two men? Was it a time for a cool head or a time for fighting back?

  The heat rose in my face. My body tensed, ready to spring.

  But Mrs Cath was there in her bare feet and her soft gown, Mrs Cath who had no knowledge of bicycle spokes and their desperate uses. I should not bring the blood of the township here to stain my floor unless there was no other choice.

&nb
sp; The first man twisted round, his torch swinging wildly. ‘Who’s the father of the kid?’ he demanded.

  Mrs Cath hesitated.

  The bony thorn tree creaked and scraped against the kaia roof. Mrs Cath’s eyes were black in the shadowed room. They flicked to me, then to Dawn, then back to the men, the second of whom was smiling in a way that held no humour.

  ‘Ada!’ Mrs Pumile’s voice shrieked through the hedge. ‘Ada?’

  The men exchanged glances, annoyed at the possibility of further interruption.

  ‘I don’t know who the father is, Sergeant.’ Mrs Cath drew herself up and spoke with slow assurance. ‘It is of no concern to us. Now,’ she drew breath and went on calmly, ‘my husband is a member of the town council. He is ill at the moment, otherwise he’d be here. If you give me your names, please, he will follow this up with your superiors.’

  The policemen looked at each other. This talk of superiors was not what they wanted to hear. They were used to being obeyed – even if it was with resentment – not deflected with smooth talk of superiors. The first man, who seemed to be in charge yet always looked across at his colleague for approval, swung his torch again around the walls, as if there were other pale-skinned children to be flushed out.

  I felt my nails biting into my palms as I sifted Mrs Cath’s lies, and wondered how it is that women can lie so easily. And I realise that it is because we have borne children, and once you have done so, a child’s life is worth far more than the telling of a few untruths.

  ‘We had a report,’ said the first man sulkily, lowering his torch, ‘that there was a case of immorality here.’

  Mrs Cath moved around the two men and extended an arm graciously, gesturing for them to leave, as if all they had ever been were guests at a tea party who’d stayed a little too long. ‘There must have been some mistake. I’m sure my husband will not press charges. You were only doing your duty.’