People of Heaven

by Beverley Harper

  Michael was able to put Dyson’s mind at rest about the remainder of the family. ‘My mother threatened to report the commander to his superior officer in Durban if they were badly treated. She told him that the man was a friend of hers.’

  ‘Knowing your mother, she’d have done it too.’

  ‘Not really.’ Michael grinned. ‘She doesn’t know him.’

  Dyson expressed regret that UBejane was to be sold. ‘It’s the only home I’ve ever known.’

  ‘Me too. It will be strange without it.’

  Dyson shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is not UBejane that matters.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In these troubled times, we must live where we are understood.’

  Michael saw the depths of sadness in Dyson’s eyes. ‘One day, my friend.’

  ‘I don’t know. It may never be possible for me to return to Zululand.’

  ‘Don’t say that. It must be possible.’

  They were closer than brothers, their relationship cemented by mutual respect and understanding, by memories of games played on hot afternoons, by teenage worries and hopes shared, and by their love of a land they called home.

  On the second day, Michael worried aloud that Tessa was not getting better. ‘If she’s like this tomorrow I’m not waiting around.’

  Dyson agreed. ‘Our medicines are good but perhaps she needs something more.’

  ‘I can never thank you enough for trying to save her.’

  Dyson grinned. ‘What else could I do? She is my sister.’

  Michael knew he was speaking metaphorically, the Zulu way, but he laughed and said, ‘You know what they say, you can choose your friends but not your relatives.’

  ‘Is that an English expression?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Dyson thought that over. ‘See my aunt’s cooking pot.’

  ‘I see it.’ Michael could guess what was coming.

  ‘It has one burned spot she cannot remove.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Every cooking pot has one. A black spot. But we do not throw away the pot.’

  Tessa was sicker than anyone realised and did not respond to the traditional treatment administered by Dorcas Sobona. Since Tessa had entered Bechuanaland illegally, Michael did not want to bring attention to her by taking her to a doctor. The following day he decided to risk smuggling her out so that she could return home and see the family doctor. With Tessa lying on the back seat of his car covered by a blanket, Michael chose a time of day to exit Bechuanaland and enter South Africa when the border posts were busy. His caution was unnecessary. No-one was interested in looking in his car anyway.

  Before leaving he spent a last few minutes alone with Dyson. ‘I wish we had more time, old friend.’

  ‘One day, Nkawu, one day.’

  Michael handed him a cash cheque. ‘I don’t know how you’re going to organise a passport but this should get you to London and keep body and soul together for a while. Stay in touch.’

  Dyson looked at the amount. ‘This is too much.’

  ‘I’d give everything I had,’ Michael told him with feeling, ‘if it would see our country come right.’

  Dyson gripped Michael’s hand. ‘Stay well, Michael King,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Go well, Dyson Mpande.’

  TWELVE

  Claire had wept brokenly when Michael brought Tessa home from Bechuanaland. The infection, brought on by an unclean abortion, lingered in her body. She also had syphilis. Practical as ever, once Claire recovered from the shock, she picked up the telephone and called her own doctor in Empangeni, sparing no details when he arrived at the farm.

  Dr John Cane, although classified white and, indeed, with his sandy coloured hair and pale blue eyes he epitomised the appearance of a typical white South African, had a secret he fondly imagined no-one knew. He was in fact a descendant of, and had been named after, an earlier adventurer who arrived in Zululand during Shaka’s reign. A deserter from the merchant navy, turned trader and coloniser, the first John Cane had been a rough-and-ready individual who despised authority and whose only interest appeared to be enjoying life to the hilt. While doing this he was not averse to lining his pockets any which way he could. Historians, if they mentioned him at all, tended to paint him as a man of atrocious manners and deeds. However, he spoke Zulu fluently, regularly made himself available to do battle for the second Zulu king, Dingane, and adopted a tribal lifestyle that included the taking of numerous wives.

  The current John Cane was under the illusion that no-one knew his history. But such things were gleefully discussed around dinner tables. Most whites were aware of his ancestry. Claire hoped that his pedigree would make him sympathetic to what she was telling him. It did not. In fact, almost the opposite occurred. When South Africa first decided to classify individuals into racial groups, the scramble of Dr Cane’s parents to prove they were as white as the next family led them to adopt extremes of racially prejudiced views and behaviour. Hence, Dr John Cane, whose maternal ancestors were as black as the ace of spades, became highly agitated and morally outraged by Claire’s frankness.

  Realising that the good doctor’s shock could well cause him to forget any oath of patient–doctor confidentiality and report the conversation, Claire panicked. She packed herself and an extremely sick daughter onto the first available flight to London. There, with Peter Dawson’s assistance, she managed to book Tessa into a private clinic. By the time she was admitted, Tessa was delirious with fever. When her condition had been stabilised the doctor in charge angrily demanded that Claire provide a full and frank explanation of the situation.

  Taking a deep, steadying breath, Claire began. The floodgates opened and Claire, who had denied certain things in the past, found she could deny them no longer. As she poured her heart out, telling of Tessa’s promiscuity, from the suspected incestuous relationship with her father through to being rescued from a brothel, Dr Benjamin Greenberg, himself the father of two small girls, for the first time found himself wishing he had fathered sons.

  When Claire at last fell silent, the relief of pent-up anxiety still coursing unchecked down her cheeks, Dr Greenberg’s earlier anger had been replaced by a desperate need to help the grieving woman before him. However, he wasn’t certain that he could.

  ‘You use the term nymphomaniac. It’s not one we favour.’ He didn’t mean to but it sounded as though he was rebuking her.

  ‘Don’t play word games with me, doctor,’ Claire snapped, sensing a brick wall. ‘I don’t care what you choose to call it.’

  Dr Greenberg leaned forward over his desk. ‘Hold on. I’m not lecturing you or being pedantic. I’m trying to put your daughter’s situation into perspective. Nymphomania has some pretty nasty connotations but it isn’t a medical term. Tessa’s problem is not a physical one.’

  ‘Are you saying my daughter has a mental problem?’ The steel was still there. Claire didn’t like what she was hearing and it showed.

  The doctor grinned suddenly, disarming her. ‘It’s not an accusation, you know. I am trying to help.’

  Claire stared at him for a long moment. He was an odd-looking man. Without the white coat and stethoscope she’d have taken him for one of the hippie-types so prevalent in London at the time. His hair was long and curly and he made no attempt to tame it except for an absurd-looking baseball cap jammed on backwards. He wore huge glasses that practically covered the top half of his face. His nose had been broken at some stage and leaned to the right. For all that, his face was boyish and soft. His eyes, kind and sincere, met her stare with a frank one of his own. She decided she trusted him. ‘Speak to me.’

  He nodded and sat back. ‘Okay. We can fix the toxins in her system. Might take a little while but the new antibiotics are a real breakthrough.’ He picked up a pencil and tapped it on the desk. ‘Syphilis is a bit of a bugger but we’ll get on top of that too. Physically we can make Tessa well again.’

  ‘And mentally?’ Claire frowned. ‘What do you call nymph
omania then?’

  ‘Sex addiction.’

  Claire snorted. ‘What’s the bloody difference?’

  The doctor grinned again, this time ruefully. ‘Okay. I’ll try to explain. The word nymphomaniac conjures up visions of sex-starved women prowling the streets looking for men to jump on. They are perceived as little more than ravaging animals, driven by a need to copulate. They are scorned and joked about but no-one makes any attempt to understand what drives them. In short, Mrs King, they are regarded as society’s dregs, not so?’

  Claire nodded hesitatingly. This doctor was not pulling his punches for which she was grateful.

  ‘Sex addiction is exactly what the name implies,’ Dr Greenberg went on. ‘It’s as much of a reality as drug or alcohol dependency. It provides the same kind of high and is sought for exactly the same reasons. Tell me, Mrs King, why does an alcoholic drink?’

  ‘My husband was an alcoholic,’ Claire said slowly.

  Dr Greenberg nodded. ‘I rather thought he might have been.’

  ‘He drank because he was unhappy.’ Claire realised that talking to this stranger was bringing to the surface a new level of understanding. She had, many times, tried to work out why Joe drank but this doctor was leading her further than she had gone on her own, closer to a truth that had always been denied. It’s about time.

  ‘What made him unhappy?’

  ‘War was exciting,’ Claire said, feeling her way. ‘He was a hero, a glamour boy. There would have been women . . .’ She bit her lip.

  ‘Go on,’ the doctor prodded gently.

  ‘Before the war there had only been the farm and me. Those days in London were a high point in his life. Then he was shot down over France. I suppose what kept him going as a prisoner-of-war was to remember those times. I don’t think he gave much thought to his wife and son. Coming home meant facing reality. Life was no longer an adrenalin rush. It was a farm he didn’t want, a wife he’d practically forgotten and a son who was a stranger.’ The words were pouring out as the extent of Joe’s unhappiness became clear.

  ‘I did everything wrong. I pushed his son at him. I loved Michael, so why didn’t Joe? I expected him to go straight back into farming and when he wouldn’t, couldn’t, I showed him how good I was and made it impossible for him to sell the place. And because I found his personal attentions too adventurous, too distasteful, I . . .’ Her voice faltered. ‘Oh God!’

  ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself. It can’t have been easy.’

  ‘It wasn’t, but I made no attempt to understand.’

  ‘I’m fairly sure you did, Mrs King. Someone you had loved and cherished returned a changed man. Whatever the reasons, you were not to blame. He could have rolled up his sleeves and got on with his life. Instead of that, he lost himself in alcohol, became an addict.’

  ‘Like Tessa?’

  ‘Some people have addictive personalities. Not all of them become addicts. Depends on what life dishes out. Growing up as she did in a dysfunctional family, Tessa found a way to escape her fears or unhappiness. She discovered that having sex hid, momentarily, all those feelings of longing for a normal family life. I’m guessing a bit here, Mrs King, I won’t know for sure until I’ve had a chance to talk with her, but if you’re right about Tessa and her father I’ll lay odds right now that her addiction started with a simple desire to bond with him.’

  Claire blinked. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Human nature is the last word in weirdo. All of us get crossed wires. Addiction is the vicious circle when we fail, for whatever reason, to undo them. Your husband most probably wanted to stop drinking. He would not have been happy the way he was. Trouble is, he drank because he was unhappy and he was unhappy because he drank. Like I said, a vicious circle. I assure you, Tessa doesn’t want to be the way she is either. Her addiction makes her unhappy. Unhappiness is eased by giving in to her addiction.’

  ‘So what can we do?’

  He regarded her soberly. ‘I’ll only be able to answer that after I get to know her.’

  ‘You mean there’s no cut-and-dried treatment? No wonder muthi to make her better?’

  ‘Muthi?’

  ‘Sorry. Medicine.’

  Dr Greenberg shook his head. ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘Our options then,’ Claire quizzed, ‘what are they?’

  ‘A self-help program is worth trying. There are a number of them around. But success would really depend on Tessa’s determination to get better.’

  ‘Or?’ Claire pressed.

  ‘Keep her on drugs for depression. That usually pole-axes the libido.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Any chance she’d agree to becoming a nun?’

  Claire just looked at him.

  ‘Give it time, Mrs King. Let’s get her physically well first.’

  Tessa stayed at the clinic. Claire visited every day to fuss and fret over her. Fed intravenously, bathed twice a day, and medicated to the hilt, she responded to treatment almost immediately. The syphilis infection took two weeks to bring under control.

  ‘She’ll never have children, I’m afraid,’ Dr Greenberg told Claire once Tessa was on the mend. ‘There’s too much damage.’

  Claire wept a little at that. ‘What exactly is her future?’

  ‘It’s a bit early to tell. She’s not being very cooperative I’m afraid.’

  ‘Give her a break. She’s still drugged to the eyeballs.’

  The doctor looked at her sympathetically. ‘I don’t know how to put this delicately, Mrs King, so I won’t even try. Many sex addicts don’t actually enjoy the sexual act. Tessa, to quote her, loves it. So what we are dealing with here is a young lady who has an addiction, who is headstrong and rebellious and who doesn’t really wish to stop. The combination is lethal. A self-help program would be a waste of time. We’re taking her off the sedatives tomorrow. Expect some fireworks.’

  ‘Dr Greenberg, the fireworks are easy compared to the rest of it. What can we do for her? There must be something. I can’t take her back to South Africa and run the risk she’ll re-offend. She’d end up in prison. She’s eighteen now so I really can’t force her to do anything she doesn’t wish to. She refuses point blank to join her sister in France and won’t entertain the idea of university. I can’t just leave her on the streets of London.’

  The doctor was silent for a long moment, seemingly lost in thought. Finally he heaved a sigh and said, ‘There is one more thing I can suggest.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re not going to like it.’

  ‘Try me.’ Claire was prepared to listen to anything. Anything but the doctor’s next words.

  ‘There is a woman in London who runs a . . . boarding house for girls with Tessa’s problem. She also operates a companion agency. Now, I know what you’re thinking, that the term is a euphemism for a high-class brothel but it isn’t. Please . . .’ he held up his hand as Claire was about to interrupt, ‘let me finish.’

  Claire nodded, tight-lipped. Without being aware of it she had crossed her arms, subconsciously distancing herself from the doctor’s words.

  ‘Her name is Judith Murray-Brown. She comes from a good family, has had an excellent education and is a lovely lady. She was also addicted to sex. She went right off the rails, finally ending up on the streets. Drugs, prostitution, the works. Then one night she was beaten so badly she had to spend ten days in hospital.’ Dr Greenberg frowned at the mental image. ‘Judith is intelligent. She could see that she was in a downward spiral. And she could see she wasn’t the only one. There were others just like her who were unable to help themselves. She began the long climb back.’

  ‘No,’ Claire said stonily.

  ‘No?’ he quizzed gently.

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Hear the rest of it first.’

  Claire pressed her lips together and said nothing.

  Dr Greenberg took that as an affirmative. ‘My father was practising at this clinic at the time. He was recognised as one of the lea
ding sexual therapists in London and he was also doing research into the reasons for addiction. Judith came to see him. She cooperated with all the tests he did and, between them, they reached the conclusion that while most girls suffering from sex addiction benefit from a more conventional self-help program, a small percentage would not. Girls like Tessa, difficult personalities; addicted and not wishing to stop. These were the girls Judith wanted to help. My father completely agreed. He’d seen too many of them end up in the morgue.’

  Claire closed her eyes for a long moment.

  ‘With financial backing from her parents, Judith bought a house in Wimbledon. She opened a small and very exclusive companion agency.’ He leaned towards Claire. ‘It is not a brothel. I cannot emphasise that enough.’ He leaned back. ‘It’s quite amazing to see the change in these girls. All their lives they’ve been square pegs in round holes. When they go to Judith they’re confused and angry. She teaches them it’s okay to be different. And we’ve noticed something quite exciting. Many of these girls recover and lead perfectly normal lives.’

  ‘So this clinic is involved.’

  ‘Heavens, yes. My father is retired but the research goes on.’ He gave her a quick grin. ‘The girls are probably unaware of it but this, compliments of Judith, is as much of a self-help program as any of the others. It’s just . . .’

  ‘More unconventional.’

  He inclined his head. ‘It works. That’s the main thing. What are your options?’

  Claire took a taxi to the address in Wimbledon Dr Greenberg had given her. It turned out to be a solid and large brick building in a quiet, tree-lined street full of similar homes, not at all what she had expected. The woman who answered the door was well dressed and quietly spoken, her accent middle-class. ‘Do come in. I’m Judith Murray-Brown. Dr Greenberg telephoned to say you were on your way.’ She looked to be in her mid-forties. Calm brown eyes, brown hair, cut short and brushed back from her face which was devoid of make-up.

  Claire entered the house. ‘Thank you.’