The Housemaid's Daughter

by Barbara Mutch

  They are ready to die too.

  I creep home beneath the guns and the noise that is now more than mere ‘Township Bach’, all the while fingering my sharpened bicycle spoke – although my arm is too weak to use it as Lindiwe taught: thrusting in and up towards the heart. To avoid trouble, I learn that it’s best to avoid the youngsters, even those that want to protect me, and walk among old people instead. Old people don’t usually carry stones in their pockets. Old people are less of a target for the soldiers.

  After several days, it is reported in the Midland News that the bodies of the Four were found on the sand dunes by the sea, outside Port Elizabeth, not far from the railway station where I waited all night for the train back to Cradock after burying Mama. Vast, swaying crowds attend the funeral of the Four. A white bishop speaks, and his face and words are captured by the cameras that arrive from overseas to record what is happening in our poor, dusty world. Green, black and yellow ANC flags snap in the brisk Karoo wind and ANC slogans are chanted to the skies, in defiance of their banning. The police sit on the edge of the township during this time, their tear gas and their guns and their truncheons stowed. They do not wish the cameras to be turned upon them. When the cameras leave, and the bishop and other dignitaries depart, the police and the soldiers move back. The attention of the world, like the beam of a powerful torch, shifts away from Cradock. Some people hoped that its blaze might bring some lasting benefit, but it has not happened. Cradock has returned to being a small town in the Karoo known mainly for its dust and its rocky koppies and its brown river, and – briefly – for its savage treatment of skin difference.

  After the murders, I considered giving up my teaching altogether, but Dina and Lindiwe talked me out of it.

  ‘If children come to school at all, then they come for the music,’ Dina said intently. ‘Not for my lessons, or anyone else’s lessons, but for the music.’

  ‘They need you,’ added Lindiwe.

  And they’re right. There is little joy left for our youngsters. If they make the effort to attend, then they deserve their musical escape. But I don’t take Thebo with me, as I once took Dawn with me to the school across the Groot Vis. It’s too dangerous. I will not risk it. He is too white. Whiteness, even in a child, can be a spark.

  I make a will. The money will go to Thebo to send him to a private school that will take blacks – or whatever colour it is decided that he will be.

  Seasons pass. My head troubles me. The memories that I once could call up as fresh as when I first made them now reappear with reluctance, faded at the edges, like Market Square seen through the dust of horse carts, before tarred roads. While I struggle to hold on to the past, some people say there is now hope for the future. I have not felt it yet – that rising newness that I have known twice in my life – but others are convinced it is here. Fragile, as easily damaged as apricot blossoms in a late frost, but finally here.

  Perhaps Mrs Cath was wrong. Perhaps apartheid will pass from the country in my lifetime?

  * * *

  When Thebo is asleep in his mother’s bed, I read from the red diary, and I read from the brown diary that I saw in Mrs Cath’s bedroom when she died. I found it again recently. It had been pushed into a dressing-table drawer, perhaps by Miss Rose.

  Helen has grown so tall!

  I am thrilled to see she has somehow contrived a mind of her own, despite the trenchant views of her mother. Once again, I’d hoped that Rosemary would have mellowed, but it’s not to be.

  I am so weary these days. Ada summoned Rosemary and Helen, of that I’m sure. How can I ever tell Ada what she means to me? I know she still carries deep shame over the affair with Edward, and I wish I knew some way to tell her that she was never to blame. But alas, I don’t think she will believe it from my lips. So that is why I have decided on another way, a public way, provided the minister follows my wishes.

  I must rest, as I said to them just now. First a little of my favourite perfume, then sleep and the thought of seeing my lovely granddaughter again tomorrow. If only Dawn were here too …

  Chapter 59

  A key turned in the front door. The hinges squeaked. The door has not been opened for some time. I grabbed Thebo and picked him up with my good arm. Then began to limp back to the kitchen. Even with the stiff door, I was too slow, I wouldn’t be able to get out in time, they would discover me and throw us out—

  ‘Who’s there?’ A female voice. Tentative steps.

  I stopped. My heart pounded in my head, squeezing it, hurting my eyes.

  ‘Anybody there?’

  I set Thebo down and put my finger against my lips to keep him quiet. I shuffled back, peered through the crack in the door. A young woman stood with keys in her hand. She had golden hair. She was a little younger than Dawn would have been. I thought I’d seen her somewhere before, but the pounding in my head was starving it of memory. I stepped out from behind the door.

  ‘Ada?’ She started forward, a shy smile forming on her face. ‘Ada?’

  ‘Miss Helen!’ I gasped. ‘Oh, Miss Helen, you’ve come home!’

  I felt the floor tilt and I reached for a chair and sat down heavily. It wouldn’t do to fall over like I’d done before – when was that?

  She looked about her, at the open piano with its propped sheet music, the gleaming furniture, the ordered interior compared to the wilderness outside. I felt a rush of feet.

  ‘Hello,’ I heard Thebo say. ‘Can you play the piano too?’

  ‘No,’ Helen said, and squatted down to his level. ‘Nothing like Ada.’

  ‘You’ve got hair like me,’ said the boy, reaching out and touching Helen’s blond strands. ‘Did you know my mama? She was Dawn, but she’s in heaven, now.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Helen gently, with a quick glance at me. She stroked the child’s arm. ‘I knew her. She was a wonderful dancer. She danced for me when I was about your age.’

  And so it began. The new hope that people talked about. God the Father’s new plan. It could not bring back Jake, or Steve Biko, or the Cradock Four, but even so it rose up in the country and threw out the laws on skin difference and the people that policed them. It ripped the signs off the benches in the Karoo Gardens for good. It began to string wires for electricity and telephones in the townships. It gave Lindiwe her electric light. It allowed people of different colour – like Phil and me – to love each other and to marry. It flung open Mandela’s prison cell and led him blinking into the sunlight. It changed my belief that skin difference would continue while men had eyes to see the difference between black and white. This new hope proved to be stronger even than that.

  It ended the war.

  It ended my war. It banished enemies-in-waiting, it healed inside wounds, it softened the shame I have carried with me all my life.

  And it opened up Cradock House.

  It brought Helen to stay, it tamed the wild garden, it fired up the stove and the laundry, it gave Thebo a room of his own, it welcomed me back to the old room I’d once shared with Mama. It welcomed me home.

  * * *

  Helen is going to stay. Once she has finished restoring Cradock House, she intends to work on some of the other old houses nearby. This is her talent. She has also decided to become Thebo’s guardian so that when I’m gone he will have a family. She has enrolled him in the school which once would not hear of me, and where I later played a concert, and where Dawn danced with abandon behind the back row. The school where Mrs Cath used to teach. They have given him a place without any questions.

  And as for me, my greatest joy is teaching my grandson to play the piano. Somehow, my head is still good enough for this, and my damaged fingers still know their way over the keys. We sit at the old Zimmerman, and the music rises in both our hands, and we play together. A little classical, the Moonlight Sonata with him on the melody line and myself working the difficult base, a little jazz, then perhaps some African jive like his mother’s favourite Qongqothwane – the Click Song.

  Dawn is here
with us, now. I can see her, hair flying, slender legs flashing, hands twirling above her head. Helen is watching too, and clapping her hands. Or maybe it is Thebo clapping …

  Then, in the evening, when the purple light falls through the window and the beetles fall silent in the plumbago hedge, I will play Debussy. Tunes that wander about in your head the next day. And the next, slowly revealing their meaning.

  I can see Phil. He comes to stand by the piano, he touches my shoulder, he smiles at me with eyes light as the earliest Karoo dawn.

  Mrs Cath will come into the room too. Or maybe she has been here all along? I know what she will ask.

  ‘A little Chopin? The Raindrop? Please, Ada.’

  Glossary

  amandla ngawetu!

  power is ours!

  bossie

  small bush

  dassie

  rock rabbit (Rock Hyrax)

  doek

  scarf or cloth tied about the head

  dompas

  pass or reference book (used disparagingly)

  dorp

  small country town

  hotnot

  offensive mode of address towards a coloured or mixed-race person

  kaia

  detached servant’s quarters

  kleurling

  coloured or mixed-race person

  klonkie

  young coloured or mixed-race boy

  knobkierie

  stick with a knobbed head

  koppie

  a hill, often flat topped

  lappie

  cloth used for cleaning

  riempie

  softened strip of hide woven to make seats or seat backs

  shebeen

  unlicensed tavern

  skollie

  street hoodlum

  spaza

  township shop

  stoep

  verandah

  tokoloshe

  evil spirit

  tsotsi

  street thug, member of a gang

  verdomde

  damned

  Acknowledgements

  Many people helped to create this book, but there are some who deserve particular mention. I am indebted to Michael Tetelman for granting me access to his superb research thesis on Black Politics in Cradock between the years 1948 and 1985. His material provided me with the essential background to Ada’s story.

  The staff at the Cory Library at Rhodes University in Grahamstown helped me track down Michael’s thesis, along with a raft of other historical documents. My thanks to them for their time and generosity.

  Sandra and Michael Antrobus provided advice, invaluable referrals, and hospitality on the ground in Cradock, for which I’m most grateful. Thank you also to Duncan Ferguson, Cradock’s local archivist, who answered my questions, and allowed me to sift through his photographs and extensive collection of memorabilia.

  I would particularly like to express my appreciation to my agent Judith Murdoch and my editor Imogen Taylor. They helped me refine the manuscript, and provided much encouragement and wisdom throughout the publication process.

  Finally, my most sincere thanks must go to my family whose patience, love and support were unfailing.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE HOUSEMAID’S DAUGHTER. Copyright © 2012 by Barbara Mutch Limited. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mutch, Barbara.

  [Karoo plainsong]

  The housemaid’s daughter / Barbara Mutch.—1st U.S. edition.

  p. cm.

  Originally published as: Karoo plainsong. Leicester [England] : Matador, 2010.

  ISBN 978-1-250-01630-0 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-03196-9 (e-book)

  1. Women pioneers—Fiction. 2. Irish—South Africa—Fiction. 3. Apartheid—Fiction. 4. South Africa—History—1909–1961—Fiction. 5. South Africa—Social conditions—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9369.4.M88K37 2013

  823'.92—dc23

  2013026243

  An extended version of The Housemaid’s Daughter was first published by Troubadour Publishing Ltd. under the title Karoo Plainsong

  First published in Great Britain by Headline Review, an imprint of Headline Publishing Group

  First U.S. Edition: December 2013

  eISBN 9781250031969

  First eBook edition: November 2013