The Sea Cave

by Alan Scholefield

  At two o’clock, as usual, she went up to Mrs. Preller’s apartment on the first floor. She still felt its strangeness, but it was nothing like the shock she had received when she had first been summoned.

  The room had been in semi-darkness and her first impression was that she had entered some sort of museum. She had smelt incense and the room was so full of furniture that she could see hardly any empty floor space. There were cabinets decorated with gold leaf, statues in black marble, gold-painted salon chairs, a small table inlaid with ivory. In one corner stood a large, dark grand piano, on the walls were heavy portraits of sober faces, and several tapestries. There were potted palms and hanging baskets of ferns and everywhere dyed ostrich plumes waving slowly from side to side. A bamboo-framed screen stood in a corner, opposite the piano. Here there was a desk and telephone and a straight-backed oak chair in which Mrs. Preller was sitting. All Kate had seen at first was a face and hair, disembodied, for the long dark dress she wore blended into the shadows. The face was dead white and the shoulder-length hair was dark. Her lips and fingernails were bright red.

  ‘Good-day, Miss Buchanan,” the face had said.

  ‘How do you do, Ma’am?’

  ‘Ah, you are Scottish. My lawyers did not tell me that.’ She pronounced it Schottisch. ‘I have been to Scotland. It is so melancholy, so sad. And rain, rain. Here it is wind, wind. Please let me see your hands.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘Your hands.’

  Kate had held out her hands, puzzled, but glad, at the same time, that she had washed them. Mrs. Preller had taken them in her own hands and Kate had seen that her skin was a mass of scars. Instinctively, she had drawn back, but Mrs. Preller had held her, and turned her hands over so that her palms were upwards. ‘You have a good heart line, not so? That is important. And a long life. At your age, you must be pleased, but there may come a time when the possibility of such a thing will make you tremble. Please sit in this chair in front of me. You are here for three months’ trial. Mr. Godlonton explained such matters to you?’ Mr. Godlonton was Mrs. Preller’s Cape Town attorney, who had interviewed Kate for the position.

  ‘Yes, Mrs. Preller.’

  ‘Good. So we have three months. By then we know if we like each other. Tell me about yourself.’

  Kate had told her briefly about her schooling in Edinburgh, how she had gone to secretarial college, how she had emigrated with her family. But Mrs. Preller seemed hardly to listen, so she gradually wound down and stopped.

  Suddenly Mrs. Preller said, ‘You do not like pickled fish?’

  Kate’s mind had somersaulted backwards. ‘I’m sure it’s very nice, Ma’am. I’ve never had it before.’

  ‘Pickled fish,’ the woman said, more to herself than to Kate. ‘Pickled fish and mutton. Mutton and pickled fish. Now we do some shorthand.’

  When Kate got to know her better she was not so put out by her sudden changes of direction, but on that first meeting she was taken unawares. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Shorthand. You do know what that is?’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry.’ She had taken out her pad and Mrs. Preller had begun to read her a paragraph from one of the magazines that lay strewn about the table near her chair. Kate wrote furiously. She had taken down a story about a young woman going to her first ball and being dressed by a maid in a mansion in London. It had seemed very remote from this darkened room overlooking the sea. Mrs. Preller had paused and Kate had sat with pencil poised, hoping she was not going to be asked what she had written.

  Then, in an altered voice, Mrs. Preller had said, ‘My husband always said the good times would come back. He said fashion repeats itself like history.’

  Kate had realised that the story had set her off on thoughts of ostrich plumes.

  ‘I hope so,’ she had continued, ‘But where would I be, I wonder, if Mr. Preller had depended on that?’ She had looked up sharply at Kate. ‘He worshipped me, you know. Worshipped.’ Although the room was warm, she had shivered and rubbed her arm. ‘Nothing was too good for me. And after Hugo died he was so kind, so kind. And then . . .’ In the midst of her memories she had yawned. ‘You may go.’

  As Kate was walking along the corridor she had heard the bell ringing furiously for Lena.

  That was the first of many such meetings. Sometimes Kate would be given six or eight letters to type before evening. Sometimes she would have to accompany Mrs. Preller to Helmsdale to check on her business interests there, and later go over the books. But often the old lady would simply want someone to listen to her talk. It was always of the old days, the days at the topmost pinnacle of the feather boom, when the Prellers and the owners of the great houses that now stood derelict had been wealthy, of the parties and the balls and the fun. But often she talked of even earlier times, in Vienna before she had been swept off her feet by Mr. Preller.

  ‘That is your expression? Swept off? Such it was with me.’

  One afternoon she had come down and said she would like to go for a walk. She had given her arm to Kate and they slowly went along one of the gravel paths until they came to a gate in a white-washed wall. Kate had never been through it. She found herself in what had been a great walled garden. The walls had been built high to stop the gales. It was a jungle of dead grass. Thorn trees had grown up and were flowering in what had once been a cypress hedge. Paper-thorns had taken over the paths. ‘Here we used to play tennis,’ Mrs. Preller had said. The tennis court was a mass of weeds, the stop-netting bright with rust, and some of it had crumbled away, leaving gaping holes. The tattered remains of a net still hung on the posts and in one corner Kate could see what was left of an umpire’s chair. ‘And bathing parties there . . .’ She had pointed to a swimming pool, empty now and cracked beyond recovery. Small shrubs grew up through the cracks. ‘I did not like bathing in the sea, it is too dangerous, so Mr. Preller built this for me. There . . .’ She indicated a small rotunda. ‘. . . we used to play bridge.’ It had once been an elegant folly with an octagonal roof edged with iron lace-work and supported by wooden pillars. Now its marble floor was broken and a tree, growing up one side, had forced its way through the roof. In her mind’s eye, Kate could picture the hot summer afternoons, the lazy slap of the cards, the soft voices, the servants bringing tea from the house.

  ‘My father had such a summer-house in the garden of our house in Vienna. They used to play cards there. Sometimes I, also. But mostly for me it was practice, practice, until my fingers were sore and my back ached. On the very piano you saw.’

  She had led the way back to the house. ‘Cards! It was the end of an era. But perhaps they say that about the time before all great wars. My father would smoke his cigars and paint, my mother had her cards, my sisters went to this ball and that concert, to the Staatsoper, to the Musikverein, to Baden for the waters, to our house in the Salzkammergut. Such times! And then he came.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mr. Preller. So handsome. Young. A great rancher. Money no object. But for me to come here, from Vienna! What do you think?’

  ‘It must have been a great sacrifice.’

  ‘That is true. But one makes sacrifices for the man one loves. You will find this out, Miss Buchanan.’

  They walked on. ‘One day this will be put back the way it was. Charles will do it when he has made his fortune. One day I will take Charles to Vienna and show him my home, his grandfather’s home. So beautiful. So green and leafy in summer. Almost in the centre of Vienna, but like the country. Vineyards. Heurigers. One day he will be a great rancher too. It is why I have worked so hard. It is why Mr. Preller worked so hard. For our sons, Hugo and Charles. So they would have everything.’

  ‘What happened to Hugo?’ Kate said, breaking into her train of thought.

  ‘He died. His father loved him so much. Worshipped him . . .’

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘Ten years old. The first-born. Boss Charles would have made him king of all this. It is why he bought the hotel
and the garage and put up the factory. It was his kingdom and he would have done more, much more, and then Hugo would have had it. And he would have increased the property until it was like the very old days when the Prellers owned everything hereabouts. Now it is my other son, my big boy, my Charles, who must do it.’ Her voice faltered. ‘That is my worry. Sometimes I wonder if . . . I will not be here forever, Miss Buchanan.’

  *

  The white cemetery was two miles north of the town. An attempt had been made to site it in a spot which had some little beauty. There was a grove of stunted trees and the background was the white side of a dune. It was not very attractive, but the best that could be done. There was no church or chapel, or even a hall. It was simply a fenced-off area on the plain with several small obelisks and one ornate Victorian mausoleum of pink marble, out of time and out of place in such bleak surroundings. As she passed it, Kate saw the name PRELLER carved in large letters on its side and then a list of names: Arnoldus, Petrus, Maria, Hendrina, and many others, with dates going well back into the early nineteenth century. ‘That is where I will lie,’ Mrs. Preller said. She indicated a place on the mausoleum where her name would be carved. Just above it was the name CHARLES ALBERTUS PRELLER and above that HUGO FRANCOIS PRELLER.

  A small knot of people stood at a newly-dug grave. Arnold Leibowitz, Sachs’ attorney, came to meet them. He was tall and thin and stooped and had a shock of jet black hair that stood up like a brush.

  ‘I am sorry to tell you, the rabbi cannot come. I am going to do what I can,’ he said, and led them to the graveside where the plain oak coffin stood on two railway sleepers. Kate noticed that most of the small Jewish community of Helmsdale was present. With the four people from Saxenburg there were fifteen or sixteen mourners.

  Leibowitz looked nervous and was sweating heavily in the hot sun. ‘As we all know, Morris Sachs is lying in hospital and cannot be here as Miriam is laid to rest,’ he said. ‘And also the rabbi from Cape Town is ill. So I have been asked to say a few words. We all knew Miriam and we all loved her. I got to know Morris and Miriam Sachs when I first came to Helmsdale, soon after Mrs. Sachs died . . .’

  Kate’s attention wandered to the plain coffin. The sun struck it, making the wood glow, and for a moment she wondered if Miriam’s body, cold from the ice-factory, was warming up. She must not think about that damaged face. She must try to remember Miriam as she had been in life.

  The first time she had seen Miriam was on the train coming to Helmsdale, the second was a few weeks later. Miriam’s father had come to Saxenburg to see Mrs. Preller and Miriam had sat in the car outside. When Kate invited her in she had said, ‘No, thanks, I’m going for a swim in a little while.’

  Kate recalled the day clearly for it had marked the beginning of something that would become important to all their lives.

  Morris Sachs was a short man with a heavy body and a large heavy face that contained on its cheeks a network of small red and blue veins. She had seen him in town, but had not previously met him. As she brought him into the hall he had swept off his black Homburg and said, ‘I have something from London!’ His voice was filled with suppressed excitement and he had tapped a roll of magazines under his arm. He was breathing heavily and Kate had to restrain him from bounding up the staircase. She sent Lena ahead to prepare Mrs. Preller and then escorted him up.

  The old lady was sitting in her chair by the screen. ‘Good morning, Sachs. It must be important for you to interrupt me in the morning.’

  ‘It could be more than important! Look!’ He had opened a magazine and thrust it under her nose.

  ‘Do not come so close! Give it to me. Miss Buchanan, take this and read it to me, please.’

  As Kate passed Sachs she had caught the sour smell of his sweat.

  She had found herself looking at a double-page spread of photographs of a garden party at Buckingham Palace. There were eight pictures, showing elegant groups standing on the lawn, cups of tea and small sandwiches in their hands. The men were in morning dress with grey toppers and spats. The women all wore long garden-party dresses, most had their hair marcelled.

  ‘What is it?’ Mrs. Preller said.

  ‘A garden party, ma’am. At Buckingham Palace in London.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I can see that. But what has it to do with me? Why have you brought a garden party to me, Sachs?’

  He stepped forward eagerly, delighted to show them what they were too stupid to see for themselves.

  ‘Look!’ He pointed with a short, fat finger. ‘And look!’ He stabbed again. ‘And look!’

  Each time, his finger indicated a woman, but still Kate could see no cause for his excitement.

  She took the magazine. Sachs opened a second one and handed it to her, pointing to pictures of guests at a charity ball at the Dorchester Hotel.

  Then she heard Mrs. Preller give a sharp intake of breath. ‘When did you get these?’ she said.

  ‘They came by post yesterday.’

  ‘When were they published?’

  ‘Three weeks ago in London.’

  And then Kate had understood. All the women in both sets of pictures were wearing or carrying ostrich plumes. Some wore single feathers in head bands, some carried fans, some had feathers curling around their hats.

  Sachs was like a volcano about to erupt as he drew a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘From London!’ he said. ‘From Mr. Mendel!’

  Mrs. Preller looked at him sharply. ‘Give it to me.’ She took the cable. ‘Mendel,’ she said slowly. ‘We have not dealt with Mendel since before the war. He has asked us for nothing, nothing.’

  Sachs advanced towards her and this time she did not flinch. He turned the pages of the magazine and read a heading: ‘The Luxury Look is Back. Wartime austerity replaced by High Fashion.’

  Mrs. Preller sat still for a moment, then she said to Kate, ‘Find Smuts and send him to me. I do not need you at the moment. You stay here, Sachs.’

  Kate found Smuts in one of the sheds. He looked surprised when she summoned him. ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, now.’

  She had gone back to Miriam, who had said, ‘They’ll be there for hours. Let’s go for a walk.

  The sun was hot and the wind was only a light breeze. The sea was that translucent green Kate had come to expect under the high blue skies.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she had said. ‘I realise it must be something to do with feathers, but . . .’

  ‘Something!’ Miriam said.

  ‘Is your father a farmer, too?’

  ‘Father? A farmer? What a priceless idea! He’s a feather-buyer. He buys feathers here and ships them to England.’

  ‘Who’s Mr. Mendel?’

  ‘He has the biggest feather business in Europe.’

  They had walked down the cliff path and were on the beach. Miriam took off her shoes and stockings and went down to the water’s edge. Kate had followed her example.

  ‘What will it mean?’ she said.

  ‘The feather business is always boom or bust,’ Miriam said. ‘When women in London and Paris and New York want ostrich feathers we live like royalty here. When they don’t, it’s more like poor whites. My father says that before the war everyone here was rich. Then during the war, no-one wanted feathers. Austerity, that was the word. Now perhaps austerity is over, perhaps women want to look pretty and fashionable again. If they do, they will want feathers. Saxenburg will become like a palace again. Helmsdale will be rich. Everyone will be rich.’ It was as though the word had a flavour, a taste in her mouth.

  ‘But what if women don’t want feathers again in a year or so?’

  Miriam had turned on her angrily. ‘Don’t talk like that! Why say such a thing now?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be pessimistic.’ She changed her tone. ‘What will you have? A fan? Something for your hair?’

  Miriam had looked at her oddly. ‘Women don’t wear feathers out here,’ she said.

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Haven�
�t you seen the coloured people wearing them?’

  ‘You mean that if coloured people wear something the white people don’t?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, I will.’

  ‘You’re new. You’ll learn.’

  They had walked on through the sand. Kate felt it cool between her toes and it gave her a sense of freedom.

  ‘Is Charles coming home this week-end?’

  ‘I don’t know. He didn’t come back last week.’

  ‘I know. I’ll be cross with him if he doesn’t. He knows I’m here.’

  ‘Are you . . .?’ Kate had paused.

  Miriam had let a smile answer for her. ‘We used to play together. Hide and seek. Come, I’ll show you something.’

  She had led the way to the headland which Kate had seen from her window.

  ‘We weren’t allowed to play here,’ she said. ‘It’s dangerous. You can only get to the point when the tide’s out.’

  The rocks were wet and slippery and covered with mussels and Kate had picked her way across them with care. She could see that they were making for a ledge, visible now the tide was out. When they reached it, Miriam said, ‘Can you see the hole?’

  Just above the ledge, amid a jumble of boulders that had come down in a landslip, was a hole in the rock about two or three feet in diameter.

  Miriam had gone down on all fours and wriggled through the hole. Kate followed and found herself in a cave four or five times the size of a large room. It faced seawards and the tide lapped at the entrance. The roof was low and when she stood there was not much space above her. The floor was white sea sand but there were larger, round stones near the mouth.

  ‘When the tide comes in, it fills the cave. That’s why we were never allowed here,’ Miriam said.

  ‘But you came, anyway?’