‘Dr Wilmott thinks Mrs Cath will get better.’
There was a pause.
‘Then why are you calling? Do you think you know more than the doctor?’
I waited, this time to let some silence grow, and to hope that within its boundaries Miss Rose might wonder if she’d been too quick. Like Auntie was too quick to throw me out.
‘Well? Ada?’
‘I thought you should know, Miss Rose. Your mama is tired. I have seen such tiredness in others before. It is not something that is cured with sleep.’
I heard her shallow breath in my ear, as if she was panting.
‘I’ll try to visit. But it’s not a good time for me.’ Her voice became wheedling, as if I had the power to keep her mother well until such time as it suited Miss Rose to visit. Will you iron my petticoats, Ada? I’ll buy you peppermint creams …
‘Thank you, Miss Rose. Mrs Cath will love to see you. And Helen, too.’ For Helen must be sixteen by now, and although Mrs Cath had visited her in Johannesburg, Helen had been to Cradock only twice.
I waited. There was a click at the other end. Miss Rose had put down the phone.
Chapter 53
I must fight for the return of my daughter, for this dancing in Johannesburg will only lead to trouble. And I must fight for Mrs Cath. I know Dawn and Mrs Cath are only two souls, rather than the thousands in Cradock that deserve help, but it is a fight that my ailing head can manage, a fight that I can get my arms round, a fight that I have a chance of winning. For my head is struggling to keep up. Or perhaps it is not the fault of my head alone, but the demands placed on it since I left jail.
Speak at the rally, Ada!
Insist the new school gets built faster!
Talk to the newspaper about flood relief, lost Passes, feeding schemes, class sizes, about babies dying from dirty water …
It is your duty. It is your struggle now. Your revolution.
‘You must,’ urged Dina, on my first day back at school. ‘You’re famous!’
The new school in Lingelihle was not yet ready, so we had moved to St James, where the young teachers were determined to recruit me. They told me of a new thing called black consciousness, words that I’d never seen paired together before. They spoke of Steve Biko, who taught the idea, and who was drawing supporters away from the jailed Mandela. I am cautious with such new words. They take time to arrive in a dictionary, just as the ideas they describe take time to root in the mind. But this was not the way of the younger teachers. For them, the time for caution had long gone.
‘The police are watching me, I can’t risk being caught again,’ I insisted to those who wanted to use me to further the revolution. ‘I can only offer my music.’
‘But they let you out! You survived! You’re the face of the struggle!’
But it is too much for me. It is Dawn and Mrs Cath that I must save.
From Johannesburg, Dawn writes every week, as she promised.
I am dancing, Mama! They have places here where people come to watch dancing – and I am the best! People ask for me!
I get paid every night by the owners of this place, and I also get paid by the people who watch me.
And what of your studies, child? I write back. Do you study when you are not dancing? When you are too old to dance, you will need an education in order to get a proper job.
I don’t need to study any more, Mama. I can earn enough by dancing. Now tell me about the flood. The papers say that Bree Street was destroyed – even the jail. Is this not good news?
Lindiwe says she has heard that Dawn dances not only for black and coloured people, but for white as well. No good can come of this.
Mama was right. However much you might believe you have been accepted and can sit in the chairs meant for whites, it will never be the case. And it is even more the case for Dawn, my child who belongs nowhere, my child who falls in between, like the brown waters of the Groot Vis once divided white from black until the flood tore everything apart.
And Mrs Cath remained in bed.
‘I have made butternut soup.’ I offered a spoonful to her where she lay against her pillows, gazing outside. She loved to watch the garden beyond her bedroom window, the sunbirds flitting among the orange Cape honeysuckle, the pampas grass waving its feathery plumes.
‘We’re so lucky,’ she murmured. ‘I can still see Maisie’s ruined place.’
‘Have some more soup, Mrs Cath,’ I urged, ‘then you’ll be strong enough to help Mrs Maisie start a new garden.’
She took one more spoon then set it down on the tray.
‘We had lilac, back in Ireland. I’ve never got it to grow here. Edward wasn’t interested, you know, Ada. He left the garden to me.’
She glanced at her diary lying on the table next to her bed. Not the red velvet one of my youth, but a slim book covered with soft brown leather, closed with a silver button clasp.
‘A little Chopin, Ada?’
And so I began to play the entire set of Chopin nocturnes for Mrs Cath. Twenty-one in all. I think of each one as a jewel, a precious, shining gift. Twenty-one gifts for my Madam as she rests upstairs …
* * *
Miss Rose arrived today. She arrived by hire car from Port Elizabeth. It is now possible to fly in an aeroplane from Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth and then borrow a car for money, and drive up to Cradock. I fear this will one day mean the end of our railway line.
Miss Rose jumped out of the car and made a fuss of rushing inside, calling to Helen to take out the luggage. Miss Rose was as smart as ever, with a tight striped jersey over a long skirt with a slit down the side. She did not greet me as she went by. Helen, getting out of the car more slowly, turned out to be as tall as her mother, with the same yellow hair, but without the biting tongue.
‘Hello, Ada,’ she said shyly, reaching for my hand. ‘I remember your piano.’
‘Welcome, child,’ I replied, feeling her young skin, wishing I could hug her as a reminder of my own daughter. ‘Your granny will be so happy to see you.’
‘Is Dawn here?’ the girl asked eagerly, looking about her.
‘No,’ I caught my breath, ‘she lives in Jo’burg, near Soweto township.’
‘Oh.’ She glanced towards the house where her mother’s shrill voice could be heard. ‘I wish I’d known. It would be good to see Dawn, and we could send news of her, couldn’t we?’
I looked at her eyes, soft as Mrs Cath’s, and found myself fighting down sudden tears. I hadn’t wept in jail, I hadn’t wept when I returned to Cradock House, but with a few words this surprising girl had touched me.
‘Perhaps,’ I said, recovering myself, ‘but the laws don’t make it easy.’
‘I know,’ she whispered, leaning closer to me, not unlike Dawn in one of her intense moods. And then she said, ‘I hate those laws. Mum doesn’t, but I do.’
I stared at her. We hardly knew each other. She would have heard of me from her mother, and that would only have been unfavourable.
She smiled, awkwardly, and shrugged. ‘Mum and I don’t agree on much.’
I smiled back. ‘I’ll tell you a secret: it was the same between your mama and Mrs Cath. Now run in, child.’ I nodded towards the house. ‘Go and see your grandma. She’ll be waiting for you.’
That night, we had dinner in Mrs Cath’s bedroom. I made a leg of lamb with roast potatoes and Karoo vegetables to celebrate Miss Rose and Helen’s return, and an omelette for Mrs Cath, who found eggs easier to eat. I carved in the kitchen and took their food up on trays laid with cream linen from Ireland.
‘Where is yours, Ada?’ asked Mrs Cath.
‘I was going to eat downstairs, Mrs Cath,’ I replied, with a sideways glance at Miss Rose. ‘You haven’t seen your family for so long.’
‘Nonsense!’ she said with a flash of her old spirit. ‘Bring yours upstairs like you always do.’
It was a strange meal, one that I would have relished if we had been on our own, for the lamb was fragrant with wild Karoo bossi
es, while the vegetables were tender and the roast potatoes crunchy, just as Mrs Cath used to like them. We would not have needed to say much. From beyond the bedroom window came the heady scent of jasmine newly unleashed by the waning heat, and the last bokmakierie call-and-answer of the day, while in the background the Groot Vis dawdled gently, as if trying to convince us of its docility.
Instead, Miss Rose dominated, although she said very little of importance. There was talk about the latest theatre shows, the quality of the shopping in a place called Illovo, the difficulty of getting acceptable help in the home. She asked no questions about Cradock or the floods, or Mrs Cath’s life and well-being. As ever, Miss Rose was occupied with what happened to her, rather than what affected others. She didn’t appear to notice the good food, or the perfumed twilight.
Helen shrank into her seat and contented herself with her dinner. Mrs Cath gazed out of the window at the growing night.
‘Jo’burg is so busy now, there’s never any parking when you need it. And I won’t go into the city centre, too dirty, too many blacks.’
I ate the last of my lamb. There was a beat of silence.
‘Did you see the flood damage on your way in?’ Mrs Cath turned from her window and attempted to steer the conversation away from dirt and blacks and how they belonged together in her daughter’s mind.
‘Oh yes,’ Helen put in, quick to pick up the new thread. ‘We saw the damage along Bree Street. Were you frightened?’
‘Yes, a little. It was so noisy, you see. A great roaring,’ said Mrs Cath. ‘Tchaikovsky – the 1812 – with cannons.’ She glanced across at me. ‘Ada likes to think of things in musical terms.’
‘We don’t get floods in Jo’burg. Our climate’s much better, far more stable.’
And so it went on; Miss Rose taking the conversation in her direction, Mrs Cath trying to find a way to return it to the rest of us, Cradock House observing the tussle.
A bat streaked past the window. There are bats in the township, I saw them as I waited for Lindiwe after Auntie threw the newborn Dawn and me out of her hut. Some people say that bats are evil spirits. That they are the dead coming down to spy upon the living.
I brought up the dessert, homemade granadilla ice cream, made from the purple fruits that grow so well on our granadilla vine. Helen ate up her bowl and asked for more, like Phil used to with Mama’s jam sponge pudding. Mrs Cath lay back on her pillow, her hands motionless on the covers. She wasn’t getting downstairs to play very often. Her fingers were surely lonely for the piano.
Miss Rose paused for a moment in her one-way conversation.
‘Thank you, Ada,’ Mrs Cath murmured. ‘Delicious meal.’
I gathered up the trays. I could see her weariness. Whenever she sees Miss Rose, she hopes it will go better, but it never does.
‘I think I’ll rest.’ Her gaze lingered on her granddaughter. ‘We’ll talk more in the morning.’
* * *
But there was no more talk in the morning. When I went up at seven o’clock with Mrs Cath’s tea and buttermilk rusk, she was lying on her side, arms stretched towards the window, beautiful strong fingers curled in her palms. She had used some perfume before she went to sleep, for a faint scent lifted the close bedroom air.
‘No!’ I found myself crying, as I set down the tea so hard on the dressing table it spilled. ‘No! Not yet!’
She did not wake.
And although it was wrong of me, although the dead should only be touched by God, I reached out to her cold hands. I tried to warm them with my own, even tried to pry the fingers open – if I could open her fingers then she may wake up, for Mrs Cath’s life is in her fingers – but they remained closed and not even my warmth or my tears could quicken them.
‘Ada?’
I started, and snatched my hands away. It would not do for Miss Rose to see me like this, touching her mother as if I had the right. But it wasn’t Miss Rose, it was Helen, standing in the doorway, in a pair of pink striped pyjamas, her eyes round with growing realisation.
‘She wanted to see you.’ I stumbled to where the girl stood rooted to the spot, for my eyes were blurred with tears and the pressure was heavy in my head. ‘She wanted to see you, you and your mother, before God took her.’
Helen swallowed. ‘Can I look?’
I took her hand and led her to the bed, not too close, but near enough for her to see that apart from the clenched hands, it looked as if her grandmother was simply sleeping. We stood together, Mrs Cath’s grandchild and I. Dawn, I cried inside. You never said goodbye. Helen’s hand remained tucked within mine.
‘Do you believe in God, Ada?’ Her voice wavered.
I freed my hand and touched her hair, golden like the grass that springs from the veld in late summer. Surely the work of God, I used to think, as I walked through its waving tendrils with Dawn in my arms.
‘I try to serve Him. Child,’ I drew her away from the deathbed, it was not the memory of Mrs Cath I wished her to keep, ‘your granny served Him the best of anyone I know.’
A door opened along the passage.
‘What is it? What’s the matter – oh, no.’
Miss Rose rushed into the room, belting her silk dressing gown. Her face, without its usual powder and paint, looked older. Helen dropped my hand.
‘Get out, Helen. This is not for you to see. Why did you let her in here, Ada?’ Miss Rose rounded on me.
‘She wished to say goodbye, Miss Rose.’
Helen, with a last agonised look, turned away and left the room. I waited, halfway to the door. I wondered if Miss Rose could also smell her mother’s scent, that faint trace of Irish cottage flowers that she must have sprayed on herself before she fell asleep for the last time. How comforting to breathe a familiar fragrance! If only I could have played for her as well. Our beloved Chopin. The Raindrop …
Miss Rose bent over her mother, and sighed. I picked up the cup and wiped the spilled tea with a tissue, and searched for some grief in her face, but it was hard to find. Tears are not the only way to show grief – this I know, for my mama never cried over Phil and yet mourned him deeply – but there was nothing in Miss Rose’s face or in her body that suggested sadness.
‘Go and call the doctor. Quickly. And the minister. I don’t know who’s at St Peter’s these days.’
‘Yes, Miss Rose. God be with you, Miss Rose. I’m sorry for your loss.’
She lifted her slate eyes and looked at me over the body of her mother.
‘Thank you, Ada. Now go do as I say.’
* * *
I forced myself down Bree Street in the filmy morning light. The Great Flood clean-up still continued. Bulldozers growled through the wrecked houses, lifting great heaps of brick and branches in their jaws and setting them down into waiting dumper trucks. To my right the river ran in plain view because the mimosas and gums that used to dig for water on its banks were gone.
Mr Dumise must be told. Lindiwe must be told. Then I must hurry back, for there would be food to prepare for those calling to pay their respects, and washing to be done. And Dawn …
Miss Rose was determined that the funeral should take place without delay. ‘It’s Helen,’ Miss Rose said, with a toss of the head. ‘Helen needs to get back to school.’
St Peter’s Church sat alone above the debris, its thick stone walls intact but its graveyard a mass of overturned headstones and sagging hedges. The minister said it would be ready for the service. He said there was no flood damage inside, and that they would lay planks across the devastated graveyard for the congregation to walk over.
The house with the tap that had given me water when I stumbled home from jail was gone, swept away. So, too, the place where a dog had barked at me and its owner had leant out of the window, fearing an intruder. The jail was still standing but a greasy line scarred the walls, reaching up towards a row of shallow windows, one of which was so recently mine. Two policemen swivelled out of the doorway, carrying cardboard boxes of papers. They looked across
at me, wondering why I was lingering in front of a place that could snatch blacks so easily. I pushed on towards the township and St James School. I prayed there would be no roadblocks today, no Pass-checking to slow me down, no van on a corner waiting for me.
Since the floods, our students had joined those at St James to make a defiant throng. Wherever you looked, youngsters huddled and gathered stones. Rumours flew of uprisings in Soweto driven by young people like themselves, taking on the might of the apartheid state. The fact that St James had been spared – both by the floods and by the council bulldozers – gave them fresh voice.
‘Amandla!’ they roared in their hundreds. The waters have spoken! A new flood has begun! Despite Rev. Calata’s once tight discipline, despite Mr Dumise’s untiring efforts, despite the encircling police, St James School was beyond anyone’s control.
Into this chaos I came on the morning my beloved Mrs Cath died. Mr Dumise had set up a table in a corridor to handle the affairs of his original students, and it was towards this that I pushed my way.
‘Mrs Harrington has died.’ I shook his arm in the jammed corridor. One of my pupils waved at me. A group of girls jived to their own clapping rhythm. Dawn, I thought, I have to find where you’re dancing. I have to tell you in time for the funeral …
‘What?’ Mr Dumise bent his grey head above the frayed shirt collar closer to mine. A bell rang. No one took any particular notice.
‘Mrs Harrington.’ I cupped my fingers towards his ear. ‘She has died. I am needed to help with the funeral, sir.’
‘I’m sorry, Ada,’ he said, for I have abandoned Mary Hanembe; everyone now knows me as Ada. There is nothing to be gained with a false name any more. I have no secrets any more.
‘We will pray for you. Mrs Harrington was a fine woman.’
‘Yes, sir.’ I tightened my face to stop the tears. ‘I will get back as soon as I can.’
Young bodies crowded round me, raggedly dressed, mostly barefoot. The Groot Vis might not have raged through the township as it raged through Bree Street, but the rain swept away the simplest possessions not moved to higher ground. And it delivered hacking coughs to these youngsters forced to take classes outside on damp ground.
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