The Housemaid's Daughter

by Barbara Mutch

  ‘Dawn! At last, child – but look at your clothes – what have you been up to?’

  ‘Dancing, Mama!’ She twirls around in front of me, slender brown legs flashing, hands flying. ‘How is Mrs Cath? Can I borrow your pencils? I’ve lost mine.’

  It takes a year or more but slowly I get used to her disappearances and my heart lifts whenever she returns from whatever it is that she does, for it’s not always dancing.

  ‘Are you careful with boys, Dawn? Don’t lie with them till you’re older,’ I warn, as I have warned her since childhood about boys and the trouble they can bring, for she is beautiful now in her wildness; a pale exotic against the blackness all about her. She must not fall, she must not do what I have done or what her grandmother did. She must be clever and wait until she finds a man who will stay. A man with matching skin.

  ‘I know, Mama. I’m careful, I know what can happen.’ She leans down to me at the piano, gaiety melting into tenderness, and rests her cheek on mine.

  But I do not ask what she does or where she goes. I do not wish to know. I think I am becoming like those white people I despise: if I don’t see something, or don’t hear something, then it has never happened.

  ‘How is Dawn?’ Mrs Cath asks nervously each day I return home. Mrs Cath reads about the stone-throwing youngsters, she smells the smoke rising across the Groot Vis, she has seen the tear-gassed face of Dawn. But she does not dwell on it. Neither do I. If we don’t talk about it, then maybe the stones and the smoke and the sirens will not engulf Dawn.

  ‘She is well, Mrs Cath,’ and Mrs Cath nods with relief and hands me a pretty handkerchief or a bottle of our homemade apricot jam and tells me to give it to her when I next see her. I cannot tell her that I don’t see Dawn every day.

  Master never asks after his daughter, but then he never saw her when she was living here, so there is no difference to be made of the fact that she is gone. I always said to myself that I would speak to him about the not-seeing, I always said I wouldn’t let it lie. But when Dawn and I were in the kaia, I never wished to risk him throwing us both out. Now that she is gone, there is no reason not to speak. And the words have grown stronger within me rather than fading with the passing years. They want to be said. They are like an inside wound borne for too long, eating away at me, demanding to be released.

  I took courage one morning when Mrs Cath was out and Master was in his study with the door open, listening to my piano. Elgar. Chanson de Matin – song of the morning. It was early summer, and in the back garden the hedge beetles waited for the full force of midday heat to start their rasping chorus. The koppies on the edge of town glistened in the yellow sunlight. It was too beautiful a day to have a confrontation, but it wasn’t often that I was alone in the house with Master. I left a sonata unfinished and appeared in his doorway before he could close the door.

  ‘You never ask after Dawn, sir. Even after the tear gas.’

  He still wore a chain in his waistcoat and he still did not meet my eyes.

  ‘I am sure she is well,’ he said distantly.

  He bent over his papers. Still he did not look up. He should be made to face what he did. It was too late for apologies, but I needed some release from the feeling that it was all somehow my fault. I’d waited a long time to say these words. I’d prepared them many years ago, and practised in the night until I knew them off by heart so there was no danger that I would forget them, or say more or less than I intended. Maybe God the Father might disapprove, but I could not help myself. I had been quiet for too long.

  ‘She is well enough, but her skin gives her no rest. It will always be this way.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘I did what I thought was my duty, but you knew about inheritance.’

  Still he said nothing.

  ‘You knew about the law. I did not.’

  My words struck him like stones flung on the township streets. He flinched. I felt a trembling in me, like I had trembled at Phil’s funeral when the white congregation watched the back of my neck. But this was not a trembling born of fear or sorrow; this was a trembling born of many years of waiting, and many years of stored injury. It was, I’m ashamed to say, a kind of revenge. I waited. The space between us grew cold.

  ‘I made a mistake.’ He looked up briefly. ‘You were—’ Something flickered in his washed-out eyes for a moment, then shut down.

  ‘You have never greeted Dawn or me since.’

  ‘I supported you instead!’ He was suddenly possessed of rage and slammed his hands flat down on the desk. I felt myself take a backward step.

  ‘I let you come back for Cathleen’s sake. God Almighty! The police could return any day.’ He clutched his head, disturbing the white hair where it lay carefully combed from its side parting. ‘Don’t you understand, Ada?’ He looked at me fully now. His hands were shaking. ‘We could go to jail if they decide she’s mine. It’ll be all over the papers.’

  I thought of Jake.

  ‘They make more of the white man’s fall,’ I murmured to myself. Master did not hear me. An F sharp whistle sounded from the station. Once upon a time, Phil hugged me there in front of white crowds and Master saw it, and hated it, but when Phil was gone he took me for himself anyway.

  ‘Please leave me.’ Master stared down at his papers once more, the rage spent. ‘Please leave me alone.’

  I watched him and I tried to be angry, but all that was left in me was pity.

  ‘I think she left Cradock House to spare you from the law,’ I said softly, wondering if it might indeed be true. Dawn has never said so, but maybe she knows, maybe she has always known. Maybe I am the ignorant one.

  ‘What?’ I heard him gasp as I turned away.

  Maybe she left Cradock House to spare me, too.

  Chapter 41

  I have been asked to arrange a concert.

  It’s become known there is a young teacher at the school across the river who is a brilliant pianist. Because of my fund-raising connection with the school – and of course my music – I have been asked to contact her and invite her to play. It’s an attempt, in these fraught times, to defuse tension.

  No one, it seems, knows that the teacher concerned is Ada.

  Where in the past I have been so assiduous in my championing of our black community, now I’m afraid of what I have unleashed. What will happen when I reveal Ada as the teacher, our Ada, with her coloured daughter who has Edward’s eyes?

  So far, within our circle, there has been a tacit, though awkward, accommodation. No one has ever mentioned the fact of the coloured child under our roof. And the police have left us alone after that one horrific night. But this public exposure may well precipitate what Ada was afraid of when I visited her in that desperate, cramped hut: that we will be ostracised. And the police may choose to act once more.

  And yet I have no choice. Ada deserves the right to perform. Her ability is truly extraordinary. She deserves to be heard in every way.

  Something special happened for me soon after Dawn left. I was invited to play the piano at Mrs Cath’s school. Such an invitation was no ordinary thing, for this was the school that would not hear of me attending it when I was young, even although the laws at that time were not so exact. This was also the school, according to Master, that would lead me to trouble later on if I went there. I am old enough now to smile over this – surely it is not possible that I could have found any more trouble than I have found already!

  But no matter.

  It was also no ordinary thing because at the time of the invitation the laws of skin difference were at their most fierce, and the dead of Sharpeville lay like a weight between black and white. Different skins were not allowed in the same place at the same time, particularly if they were enjoying themselves. The law insisted that such enjoyment should be had at separate skin-matching venues. Whites should have fun with whites, blacks should have fun with blacks, and so on. I’m not sure how Mrs Cath and her school managed to get past this but somehow they did.
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  I think it was a matter of finding the right words. Words can be persuaded to take on meanings that you don’t expect. Words can even outwit those who believe they own all their possible meanings.

  ‘Ada!’ Mrs Cath put her head around the kaia door one afternoon, not long after my confrontation with Master. There had been no change since that talk. Master remained detached, and I don’t think he said anything to Mrs Cath, for her attitude to me never wavered from its usual kindness. ‘May I come in?’

  She sat down on the bed next to me. Mrs Cath saw no shame in sitting with me in this way. ‘There’s to be a concert at my school. I’ve been asked if you will play. There’ll be singing from St Peter’s choir,’ she ticked off the items on her fingers, ‘and the school orchestra is to do Strauss.’

  I waited for a moment, confused. ‘Why do they want me?’ I asked. ‘There must be whites as good as me?’

  ‘Oh, Ada,’ her forehead creased, ‘how sad you should even say that.’

  ‘I don’t mean to be ungrateful, Mrs Cath. But black people aren’t allowed at your school. I know these things.’

  She glanced at the door for a moment, where Dawn and I had repaired the frame from the midnight truncheon blow.

  ‘I’ll tell you, Ada, I’m not sure myself how this has been done. But,’ she leant towards me, ‘it seems they wish to reach out, and they have permission.’

  I looked down at my hands that had played so many hundreds of pieces but only ever at Cradock House or in the township. Even music obeyed the laws of skin. Mrs Cath continued to speak but I found myself struggling to hear her. My head seemed unable to accept what she was saying and it came to me only in fragments.

  ‘People have heard of you … The first music teacher in the township … I spoke to Mr Dumise…’

  ‘You spoke to him?’ I felt the familiar shiver about names and Passes and the tangle of lies under which I worked across the river. What would he say? What would my fellow teachers say? Would accepting such an invitation be thought of as a betrayal of the struggle? I’d already betrayed my fellow blacks by lying with a white man.

  Mrs Cath placed a hand on my arm. ‘Ada?’

  ‘This is a new thing for me.’

  Her green eyes softened. ‘I know. You don’t have to decide straight away. But Mr Dumise is keen for you to play. And I’d be,’ she stopped for a moment to find the right word, ‘honoured, yes, honoured, Ada, if you would.’

  No one had ever said such a thing to me. No one had ever considered me worthy of such a thing. Only Phil – and Mrs Cath herself – have ever valued me for myself and for what I could do. Yet maybe, I wondered, as I stood with suddenly tearful eyes at the kaia door and watched Mrs Cath go back into the house, maybe this was a sign from God the Father that I am to be forgiven. Maybe the anger that I feared would fall upon me once Dawn left has been stayed for good.

  And so I said yes.

  Boldly, without consulting anyone in the township, without dwelling on the consequences of a black woman playing for a white audience, I said yes. And, like the arrival of Miss Rose back at Cradock House that caused the world to change, so another change took place when I played at the school on the white side of the Groot Vis.

  * * *

  It turned out that I was not the only black person there. The organisers of the concert had been clever in more than the matter of getting past the laws governing blacks and whites under the same roof. They had also invited Mr Dumise and several township community leaders.

  This helped me.

  When I had said yes to Mrs Cath, I knew that such an invitation might not be well received in the township. If my old enemy, Silas, had still been at school, he would have found a way to prevent me taking part in this sort of white event. But when Mr Dumise announced to the assembly one day that I had been invited to play across the Groot Vis, my students forgot their resentment and the stones in their pockets, and shouted with delight. Any doubters on the staff kept their feelings to themselves. I thought Dina might call it sucking up to the white man but she didn’t. Dina had much else to occupy her, for she had recently married and was occupied in the making of babies with her new husband.

  ‘Just show them!’ she threw over her shoulder while rushing off to her hut after lessons. ‘Show them that blacks are as good as whites!’

  Sadly, certain of the black community leaders refused to come, for the invitation was indeed regarded with suspicion, such was the divide between black and white at the time. But mostly it was taken to be a small gesture on the part of the white school involved, and a welcome one. There had been few such efforts made in the past.

  The other person who did not come was Master. I was not surprised. Master had not been well lately. And it was better that he should not come, because otherwise people would look at him and would look at me and there would be no way for them to look away from the truth.

  Dawn didn’t want to come, much as I wanted her to.

  ‘They will stare, Mama,’ she said quietly, her buoyancy for once stilled. ‘They will stare at you because of me, not because of your music.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, child—’

  ‘Don’t be! Play well, Mama!’ She hugged me tightly. ‘It’ll be your night!’

  So it was that I found myself crossing the green lawns of the school that Miss Rose and Master Phil had attended. The school building was painted white and there were flower beds set against the pristine walls. All the windows had glass in them. It was early evening and groups of children in ironed uniforms and polished shoes stood about on the grass, talking to each other and not playing rough games as they would have across the river. The last hadedas of the day flapped overhead, no doubt surprised to see me in this new setting. I was wearing my white blouse and my navy skirt and a pair of lace-up shoes with heels from Cuthbert’s Shoe Store. They were the first shoes I’d ever bought with money from the bank. How proud I felt to be able to afford them! Such shoes will last me for the rest of my life. I had never worn heels before, so I practised on the piano at Cradock House in them so that I would have no trouble managing the pedals on the night.

  ‘Mary?’

  I turned, and there was Mr Dumise, in one of his threadbare shirts, smiling at me but looking a little lost among the neatness of everything. Mr Dumise was used to running a school where just keeping the toilets working was a triumph. The possibility of green grass and unbroken windows was beyond his imagining.

  ‘Mr Dumise. My name is not Mary, at least not on this side of the Groot Vis.’

  He nodded and I think I saw a sparkle in his eyes. ‘I shall try to remember. But we’re very proud of you, whatever your name is.’

  ‘I hope I don’t let you down, sir,’ I said, ‘for there are others that play as well as I do.’ The school knew Mrs Cath’s playing; I couldn’t compete with her.

  ‘Ah, but you bring something from the heart,’ he said, touching his hand to his chest. ‘Play tonight like you played when you first came to school.’

  I nodded, feeling once more the heat of the closed-up hall on my neck, and the dust on the piano keys beneath my fingers. In the background, the Groot Vis rushed in flood. Dawn stirred heavily beneath my overall.

  Play for Mama, play for the child.

  Play for a job …

  ‘Ada? Mr Dumise, how good of you to come!’ It was Mrs Cath, wearing the green satin dress she used to wear for dinner parties many years ago. She was paler than usual, but perhaps it was face powder.

  ‘Ada, come, my dear, we’re about to start.’

  * * *

  The school was the smartest building I had been in apart from the bank. The corridors smelt clean and the floors were freshly polished. There were hooks down one side to hold blazers. There were untorn pictures and maps on the walls. It was the way that a school should be.

  In the hall, there were paintings of severe ladies wearing black gowns with satin and fur upon them, and flat black caps with tassels. They were the smartest ladies I had ever seen. A
nd the stage curtains did not drag their feet on the ground.

  As I waited for my turn alongside Mr Dumise and the community leaders, it was a little like sitting in church with Master and Mrs Cath at young Master Phil’s funeral: once again, people’s eyes were on my neck. This time, though, there was a difference. Most of the eyes seemed to be curious, some even friendly, particularly the children in the audience who whispered and craned their necks to look at me. It was surely a novelty to see a black woman in their school who wasn’t a cleaner. And these white youngsters probably never met black children of their own age. It was against the law.

  The evening began with the church choir singing selections from the Messiah. Mrs Cath sang in the sopranos and conducted the choir from the piano. The singing was different from the singing I was used to down at the Groot Vis. Here, the choir kept a firm grip on their pitch. No swooping up to the note was allowed.

  And then the school orchestra arrived, and there was some noisy rearrangement of chairs and uncertain tuning of instruments. Finally the youngsters gathered themselves and bounced their way through the Blue Danube under the conducting of a man with a large moustache. I found myself itching to move with the beat. Some of the audience swayed gently to the music and clapped politely afterwards, but mostly their reaction was tame compared to what I was used to. It seemed that white people liked to stay in their seats when listening to music. But maybe it was only because they had seats? There were no chairs in the school hall that I came from. Such an absence was clearly an advantage in the matter of enjoying music. I stole a glance at Mr Dumise and wondered if he was thinking of our township students and their wild jiving. I longed to gather up both groups and let them make music together – for surely music breaks through boundaries, and should have no colour?

  ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, we welcome our guests from across the river. Headmaster Mr Shepherd Dumise, and community leaders Phillip Skoza, Daniel Maludi and Peters Schwaba. And,’ the headmistress paused while the audience clapped, then held up her hand for quiet, ‘and from the same school we welcome our soloist tonight, Ada Mabuse!’