The Visitors

by Mascull, Rebecca

  To me, our time in Africa has not been a thrilling quest, but a trial. I have come through it victorious yet I feel my soul has been wrung too harshly, the life of it crushed. I have saved my love, knowing full well as I did it that I have lost him too. I knew it when I first saw him in his hospital bed and he told me he loved her. Yet when he held my hands and wept, I saw his gratitude, his love for me, his acceptance of my love all these years, my dogged refusal to abandon it. He kissed my hands that day and thanked me, over and over. I believe he was truly saying, thank you for loving me, thank you for that, Liza. In that moment, the desperate need I always had for his regard, for his devotion, for his love and to possess him utterly, the rock of it I had shouldered these many years, seemed to lighten its load a very little. There was in his thanks a kind of release.

  Caleb is granted leave for two weeks to recuperate. The morning of his release, he comes to us at the Germans’ guest-house.

  ‘I must go to Mimosafontein. I intend to spend these two weeks I have in searching for Maria. Will you help me?’

  He does not need to ask. The trip to the farm is not so easy this time. The wind blows strong and we wreathe our poor heads in shawls, Caleb pulling down the brim of his cap to little avail. Just past the second farm there is a dust storm and we are obliged to blanket the pony’s head and hide under the cart until it will pass. Hiding under another blanket, all three of us crushed together, the granular wind slapping at our limbs and making us spit, we try to rest and hold on to each other. It is the closest I have been to Caleb for years and I surprise myself. I am not weakened by it, yet strengthened. I, the lonely one, the only child whose blindness and deafness enclosed her from the world, met a woman who saved her from the abyss and loved her. And here is her brother. My brother. Somehow in that moment, under the buffeted blanket, we three become a family.

  A voice is calling. It is a Visitor of course. They are the only voices I will ever hear. Beneath our covering I cannot see anything but the three of us, blurred. Lottie and Caleb have their heads down, enduring the storm. The voice is there again. I sense a Visitor approach. I lift one corner of the blanket to look for it. Caleb yanks the blanket back down. I see feet appear, gnarled and buckled men’s boots standing firm in the wild weather, the purplish light leaking from the edges of his brown weather-beaten trousers. I slip out from beneath the blanket and stand up to him. It is the Boer ghost I saw on our first journey. Caleb’s fingers grasp at my leg. I step away. This Visitor is furious, tormented. The worst I have ever seen, much angrier than my gypsy. He glowers at me as if he would take me by the neck. Dust strikes my body and attacks my eyes. I use my shawl to protect my head as best I can, but I am barely able to stand. He is unaffected by the storm. He inhabits a separate vein of the spectrum, free from worldly pressures. He begins to spit words at me, Afrikaans that I cannot comprehend. He is telling me a tale of great woe. Perhaps his wife and children are in a camp, perhaps they are dead. He tears at his hair as he tells me his story, waves his arm beyond us at the land, he jabs his finger violently at my breastbone, though all I feel is the faintest graze.

  Listen, I say. He stops.

  Listen carefully. You can hear the voices of your loved ones. Can you hear them?

  His eyes express confusion, then disdain. He begins to rant again.

  Stop shouting and listen. If they still live, you will hear them.

  His face falls serious and he cocks an ear, looks up askance. His eyes widen, his mouth lifts and he is smiling. I cannot hear their voices. They must be alive. He calls to them, he points at me and laughs. He questions me in Afrikaans. I believe he is asking if I can hear them too.

  You can hear them and that is all that matters.

  He speaks to them but soon realises they cannot hear him. Yet he is content to listen to them for a time. I will never know what he heard, but I can read in his face the elixir effect their voices had on him.

  Caleb is climbing out from beneath the cart.

  Do you want to go now? Do you wish to rest?

  My Visitor nods his head. His eyes are so tired.

  Go now. Go for ever and never come back.

  He turns into the wrath of the wind, yet not a hair on his head lifts. He looks his last across his beloved country and he is gone.

  Caleb is beside me and grasps my shoulders, turning me so I can read his lips.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he yells and bundles me back under.

  Lottie peers from beneath her shawl. One look from me and she knows instantly what I have been about. Caleb is back under, complaining, but I am not looking at him. Lottie’s eyebrows are asking me if I am well. I nod and smile gently.

  The storm passes and we go on to Mimosafontein. We find Maria there, slumped in the corner of the cow barn. I know for a second they think she is dead, but I know different. Her Visitor is not here. She is only asleep. When she opens her eyes and sees her Caleb, she smiles at him and her dirty, tear-streaked face transforms, she becomes the Maria he fell in love with. I will not lie to you, there is a thorny kernel in me that envies them their love, the seed of the angry child I once was who pulled out my hair in clumps and would say now, why her? Why not me? But it is a dwarf, not a giant, and if I can quash it for now perhaps one day I will tame it.

  Caleb puts his arm around her, helps her towards the cart. As we leave the barn, white-violet light catches my eye and I see Jurie is here, kicking about in the dust, hands in his pockets.

  Hello, he says.

  Are you lonely?

  Yes, I am.

  Maria has stopped. I look up and she is staring at me.

  ‘I will speak with this one,’ Maria says to Caleb, nodding towards me. ‘Alone.’

  ‘Later,’ he says. ‘Plenty of time.’

  ‘No, now. She knows why.’

  Maria glances back at the cowshed. She nods at me. I understand. I walk with her to the barn. We go inside, so the others cannot see us.

  Maria says, ‘Is Jurie here?’

  I gesture outside. Then Jurie appears in the doorway.

  Are you here to stay? he asks me.

  Maria sees me watching him.

  ‘Release him,’ she says.

  I look deeply at her, frown, nod.

  ‘Please do it. Tell him I will always love him. Say goodbye for me.’

  Go now, Jurie. Your Mamma says she loves you always. She says goodbye. Go now. Go for ever and never come back.

  Jurie says nothing. A gust from the veldt takes him, like breath to a taper.

  ‘Is he gone?’

  I nod.

  ‘Thank you,’ says Maria.

  She takes my hands, enfolds them.

  When we come back to the cart, I see Lottie has spoken with Caleb. He does not ask any questions, just helps Maria into the cart, wraps a blanket around her and holds her close. Within minutes, she sleeps.

  Lottie and I sit at the front. Nobody speaks. As we approach the sad shell of the first ruined farm, I feel a tap on my shoulder. Caleb is smiling at me. Maria lies across his lap, still sleeping. Lottie looks ahead, directing the cart.

  He signs to me, ‘Why did you never tell me of your gift?’

  ‘Do you believe it now?’

  ‘If you tell me it is true.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Then I believe it.’

  We smile.

  On our return, we bring Maria to our guest-house.

  ‘We have a visitor for you,’ says Lottie to the Germans. They have no love for the British, we know that, but they are devoted to the Boer cause. They take her in and will protect her. They will provide food and shelter until she regains her health. Caleb knows he can return to service, visit her on leave, and one day – who knows when – the war will end and, if both survive, he will surely return to her. Whether he will journey to England, see his family, arrange his affairs, this we do not know. That is his business and, as ever, he keeps it close. Perhaps he will merely disappear from his garrison one night and the Germans
will wake one morning to find her gone. That is what I would do.

  After that day in the Cape cart swaying back from Mimosafontein, where Caleb and I smiled at each other one last time unobserved, we have not had another second alone together. He spends his fortnight’s leave at the guest-house daily, tending to Maria every waking minute. It is quite a test of my new-found peace with him to see him attend to her with such devotion. But the times Lottie, Caleb and I spend together as she sleeps – chatting and strolling, like the old days on Whitstable promenade or down the hop lanes after picking work in the warm evenings at home – are like medicine for my malady. We find some of our old ease in those hours; we are companions again. As Maria recovers, Lottie and I grow to know her a little, to see the strength returning to those clouded eyes of the woman Caleb first met. We edge to a kind of closeness in our discussion of the Visitors, who fascinate Maria; she quizzes me about them most engagingly. By the time we plan to go, just before Caleb’s leave is up, I have an understanding of how he came to be captivated by her, most of all her intense and searching mind. I cannot say I find her easy, but I respect and admire Maria Uitenweerde. She pats my hand when we say our goodbyes at the guest-house, and mouths very clearly, ‘I hope we are like sisters now.’

  My leave-taking with Caleb is public; naturally Lottie is there and even dear Wallis accompanies us to Pretoria railway station to wish us well. It is a busy train with much pushing and shoving on the platform, from which Caleb and Wallis shield us as they lead us to our carriage. There is no still moment to sign a thoughtful phrase to Caleb, but in the seconds before the men leave us to our seats and we have all said goodbye and good luck and farewell and we shall write, he takes my hand swiftly and silently spells in our old way one word for me: ‘Sorry.’ The same word my mother laid out for me that first time we ‘spoke’. I shake my head and look hard at him, grasp his hand and try to spell, ‘No.’ I will not have that be our legacy, I do not want his pity. But he turns and leaves the carriage and I feel I cannot speak to Lottie of it. Instead, I sit and stare from the window at the bright rainbow of foreign lives and the ghostly blue of the lost Visitors, seeking Caleb in the crowd but not finding him, as we lurch forward towards Cape Town, our ship and the ocean beyond.

  18

  I sit on a wrought-iron bench beside the lake, beneath the shedding blossom of a cherry tree, contemplating the looking-glass water and the Evian shore beyond. The Alps are masked by morning mist. Only a hint between the fleeting clouds suggests there are mountains there at all. But soon the spring sun will rise and burn away the fog, revealing the startling solidity of this view, ancient stone thrusting up from the restless earth. Beside the lake drift dozens of Visitors, solitary and aimless, staring across at the mountains or eyeing me curiously. I have spoken with many of them since we arrived. My spell in Africa taught me treasured lessons about my Visitors. Now each time I converse with a new Visitor, I tell them if they listen very carefully, they may be able to hear the voices of their loved ones. Some can and it gives them great pleasure. It is a balm to their restlessness which cures their distress. Then I always ask, Do you wish to move on? I can help them, if they want it. Many agree and I always sense a release of tension, cool air after a thunderstorm, a sigh of the soul as they depart. After a long day’s journey, they can rest now.

  I pull my shawl closer about my shoulders. Lausanne stirs, the baker’s boy scooting past on his bike, his basket full of warm Swiss pastries for delivery, the restaurants still sleeping after their late night, their shutter-eyes closed whitely to the morning. Lottie slumbers too, within our pistachio room in the Château D’Ouchy behind me. We may stay here a while. We have explored Geneva, the little towns along the lake, neat Morges with its flower-dotted parks, quaint Vevey with shadowed lanes of boutiques to stroll through, and the Château de Chillon with its grisly dungeon, frequented by scores of despondent Visitors. I helped many there. And surrounding it all, the Alps; so still, so set in their flinty way, their mighty permanence gazing proudly at their double in the glassy Lac Leman. I am very small.

  I sit solitary beside the lake to read a letter I received last evening. The concierge gave it to me when Lottie was upstairs, and as I saw its hand I pocketed it and kept it a secret. I saved it until now, for I have given up much in the last year. Now I want this one gift of my own. A letter from Caleb. The first letter I have ever received from Africa addressed only to me. We have had communications for the two of us over these months. Caleb’s regiment, the East Kents, were sent home in May 1901, their service at an end. We hear Wallis went back to his work in Kent as a painter and decorator. Caleb chose to stay in Africa, and Maria recovered her health and joined him in Pretoria. The war drags its stony wake of chaos into the new year of 1902, the Boer bitter-enders fighting on as Caleb predicted they would. Meanwhile, we pass gaily on in our Grand Tour, through Spain and France, Italy and Austria, to Switzerland. Caleb and Maria returned to her farm. They spend their days reconstructing, pulling weeds, digging wells and trenches, sowing seeds and tending sheep. He is a farmer again. He has found his home at last and builds it himself, stone by stone. He wrote last in January to tell us that Maria is with child. Lottie is delighted to be an aunt. It is good to hear such happy news in his letters to Lottie and me. Yet this one is a letter for me alone, the second only to my first letter almost a decade ago, a child with a doll who had just learned to write and she read of oysters and the sea. In my lap lies my spectacles case. I put on my reading glasses and notice, as ever, that the Visitors disappear when I put them on. I am alone now.

  Mimosafontein,

  Transvaal

  23 February 1902

  I write to you, Liza, as it is long overdue. I want to say again to you that I am sorry. I know I spelled this in your hand at Pretoria, yet I could see in your eyes you did not accept it from me. But I say it again all the same, because I mean it most earnestly. I am sorry I loved you in your girlhood and made you my confidante. I am sorry if my absence caused you pain.s disappear when I put them on. I am alone now My only excuse was always your loveliness, your long hair flowing behind you as you raced along the hop lanes in your games, your deep eyes looking into me as we swapped signs on my boat, your hand on the body of my violin as I played sad songs for you. Your miracle of sight made you more delightful than ever and once you were a woman, your beauty would take a much better man than me to resist. When we kept our secret close, I could not write to you alone and wished to, most dearly. I did love you, Liza, I loved you tenderly. But I was an unhappy and selfish man. I saw my chance for escape in Africa and I took it. I had yearned after it for years.

  I should not have lain with you that night before I went. It was a wrong deed which I regret for the feeling it inflamed in you and in myself. It tortured me for many moons and there were nights on guard duty, as I watched the summer hail storms rumble towards us across the veldt, when I would relive every moment of that night, every touch and word we whispered in our hands. I loved you as a man but I knew that I did not have it in me to stay for you, to look after you as you deserved, to make a life with you. And though your beauty, so new in those days of your young womanhood, bewitched me, when you came to me in the oast house I should have taken you back to your room and bid you good night. But I have told you, I was selfish and I did what I wanted and hang the consequences.

  I do not warrant the love and regard you have always had for me. I am not mysterious and profound. I have no hidden depths for you to discover, only a dull inward nature that would never suit you. I am not trying to fob you off and pretend that I am a rotter. I know you will not believe that. But I do say that the man you loved may have been an image of your own creation, rather than the ordinary man I know myself to be. I must explain to you that it was you who were too good for me, never the reverse. It was to be Maria who saw through me, instantly detected every weakness, every crack in my façade, every untruth with which I fooled myself and my family. She would stand no lies, no nonsense, no senti
ment. In that way, she was more like Lottie than anyone. And it is that sharp paring away of my pretence that made me love her. Your love will always be sweetest for its purity. But I cannot live the lie that I am the man you thought you knew. You are the extraordinary one, not me. You are the one with the gift, who used it to save me. I can never thank you enough for what you have done for me. I can never repay in kind the riches you have given to me. I fear my gratitude will always divide us to the same degree it unites us.

  Now that I know the whole truth of what you did for me, what you risked for me, I want to say it again: thank you for saving my life. I want to thank you also for helping Jurie’s spirit, for setting him free. In that pure and decent act you set Maria’s grieving soul free at the same moment. Maria thanks you for that kindness profoundly. I will always love you for that, for your love for me and my family, for your care for Maria, for yourself in all your unique and wonderful ways. I know as sure as that I never will, you will make your mark in the world and do marvellous things.

  I hope you are happy, Liza, I wish it most sincerely.

  Much love to you, now and always.

  Caleb

  19

  It is the first day of September 1903. I am twenty years of age. At home, it is nearly time for hop picking. The plants tended, pests killed and diseases controlled, the year-round care of Golding Hop Farm’s men for our crop results in dozens of strong green bines laden with delicate cones. In Whitstable it is Partridge Day, the traditional moment when the Oyster Company ends the close period, when oysters spawn and the men can harvest. The oyster, soft, cold-blooded mollusc with no foot to move itself, began its journey within the confetti cloud of spawn, to float down to the bottom of the sea and anchor itself to some shell or other hard habitat. It can easily be suffocated by sand or destroyed by rough seas, and if it comes to rest on mud or weed it will die at once. If it survives, it grows, grey as the sea about it. The Crowes and their fellow dredgers tend these infants with daily care, from spawn, to brood, half-ware and mature oyster. Thus man tends his land, his flock and the resolve of these plants, these creatures, against all that would destroy them, is aided by the diligence of their farmers, but something in these beings – the hop seed, the oyster spawn – is determined to survive. I respect the hop, the oyster, for their tenacity.