The Sea Cave

by Alan Scholefield

  All the circumstances had been right for love. There had been the farewell dinner and the farewell dance. The band had played Auld Lang Syne. The bars had stayed open late. Lovers – shipboard lovers – had clung to each other in every corner of the deck. Everyone knew the good time was coming to an end. The atmosphere throughout the ship was tinged with sadness. It was then Kate had known she was in love with Tom.

  They had watched the sun rise from the porthole in his cabin, and seen Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak come slowly closer. She had said, ‘When will I see you?’ He had said nothing. ‘You’ll be looking for somewhere to live and so will we. The Settlers’ Association say they’ll help. You said your office will be in the Cape Times building. I’ll find it.’ Still he did not speak. ‘Or would you like me to telephone you? No, I think I’ll just come and knock at your door and –’

  ‘Kate,’ he had said. ‘I don’t think we should see each other again.’

  She wondered if she had heard him correctly.

  ‘We’ve had a good time. A wonderful time. But the voyage is over.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. We’ll both be in Cape Town.’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘How would you hurt me? Don’t be silly, you could never . . .’

  ‘My wife’s coming over to join me.’

  ‘Wife?’

  ‘She’ll be here in a month or six weeks. I have to find a house in the meantime.’

  ‘Wife . . .?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I meant to tell you, but we were having such a damn good time it seemed a pity to spoil it.’

  ‘You’re a bastard,’ she said.

  He had nodded. ‘I’m not unaware of it.’

  That should have been that. But it wasn’t.

  She did not see Tom for nearly a month. During that time she and her family moved into the small rented house found for them by the British Settlers’ Association. It was a mean little single-storeyed house in a terrace which had been built about sixty years before in Observatory. Both White and coloured lived in the street and Mrs. Buchanan, who had never met a coloured person before, found that she had coloured folk as neighbours. She was immediately frightened of them.

  Kate hated the house. In its way, it was as squalid as their tenement near the Canongate in Edinburgh. What made it worse was that she had, for the first time in her life, tasted luxury. The rooms were small and sparsely furnished. The kitchen, with its poor lighting, its old gas stove, the worn linoleum on the floor, the peeling paper behind which cockroaches hid and the smells of decades of cooking that had penetrated the very walls, was a dreadful place. Everything she touched felt greasy. Above all, the house was damp, for they had arrived in winter.

  They had bought cheap furniture at a local auction mart and there was so little room in the house that the ice-chest had to stand in the corridor. Often she would come home in the evening to find the drip-bucket over-flowing. Soon the wall behind the ice-chest was dark with fungus. There was a small fireplace in the sitting-room and they kept in a coal fire, but the rest of the house was clammy and they used paraffin heaters in the bedrooms. The fumes, mixed with old kitchen smells, gave an overall odour which permeated the house and lingered in her clothes.

  It had taken her a few days to find a job, and she took the first one that came along. It was a temporary position as secretary to a clothing manufacturer who had a small, dirty factory in the old industrial suburb of Salt River. She hated the job and the noise, but her family needed the money.

  She soon found herself not only earning the bread, but baking it, too. Mrs. Buchanan, who had a weak chest, found that a wet Cape winter in a damp house kept her wheezing in her bed for much of the time. When Kate came home from work she had to clean the house and cook a meal. She had started to put money into a tin box which she kept locked. This was for rent and house-keeping, with a few pounds for herself. But Duggie and her father were constantly sidling up to her to borrow a few bob. She could not refuse them, in spite of the fact that she knew they were spending it on cheap wine.

  During all this time she thought constantly of Tom. She thought of him on the tram going to and from work, she thought of him as she washed the dishes in the scummy water, she thought of him as she lay in her narrow, damp bed. She no longer cared that he had a wife; she wanted him on any terms. The only thing she would not do was get in touch with him. She had too much pride for that.

  Then one evening as she came home from work, she had seen someone standing across the road from her house. He was wearing a trilby and a mackintosh and at first she did not recognise him. It was his size that gave her the first clue. She had stopped in front of him. Neither spoke for a moment, then he said, ‘I traced you through the Settlers’ Association.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I love you.’

  ‘Where shall we go?’

  ‘I have a car.’

  He had taken her to an hotel in Sea Point, overlooking the Atlantic breakers, where they had made love in a kind of frenzy. It had been the first of many such meetings. His wife was due to arrive in three weeks and they made the most of the time they had. He had taken her to the bioscope and to the Opera House. They had walked along the Pipe Track under the grey buttresses of Table Mountain. He had taken her to the long empty beach at Muizenberg and they walked along it in the winter sunshine. And all the while, his wife’s ship was rounding the bulge of Africa and steaming towards the Cape.

  After an initial unwillingness to talk about her, Kate realised that if she was going to fight for Tom, she must know as much about her adversary as possible. But when she did find out, she knew with a sinking heart that there never would be a fight, there never could be. Joyce Austen was a cripple.

  One day in early spring as they lay together under the pine trees on the slopes of Devil’s Peak she had said, ‘You can’t go on blaming yourself all your life. It’s not reasonable. Hundreds of people get infantile paralysis.’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that.’ He had turned away from her, holding himself up on one elbow. Things had been going badly between Joyce and himself for years, he had said. They both knew it. He was reaching the stage where he wanted his freedom, but he knew that she would never agree. She must have sensed his thoughts because she had begun what appeared to be a planned campaign. Whenever he had wanted to go anywhere she would pretend to be feeling unwell. He had known it was pretence because if he cancelled his plans she would make a remarkably quick recovery.

  ‘It got so that I could hardly go anywhere, which isn’t too good for someone who makes his living, by travelling. She kept nagging me to get a desk job and I kept fighting off the moment. Then the Russian trip came up. It was the most exciting single assignment I’d been offered since the war ended. I wanted to go. Joyce said she was feeling ill, but I went. While I was away, she developed infantile paralyis. End of story.’

  ‘But it wasn’t your fault,’ Kate said. ‘People do get ill, they do get infantile paralysis, they do become crippled in one leg – some people even die of it. You can’t go through life blaming yourself!’

  ‘If I’d stayed, I might have been able to help. The effects might not have been so severe.’

  ‘Or they might have been worse – who’s to know?’

  ‘I realise all that, and I can live with it. But the one thing I can’t do is leave her.’

  Kate had to accept that. She went with him as he looked for a house and helped him to find one, a beautiful colonial villa in its own grounds in Kenilworth. She thought bitterly that she had never seen such a lovely house. She knew how she would have furnished it, what colours she would have painted the walls, she even knew what curtains she would have put up.

  Joyce arrived and they had to meet more discreetly. Tom hired two servants to run the house and in that way he was able to make time for Kate. They would go to one of several hotels in the city or suburbs once or twice a week. Sometimes he might manage a drink in the late afternoon, or a meal. She
lived for these moments, especially on Saturdays, which was her half day. She would take the tram into the city after work and meet him outside his office and they would go to an hotel and have lunch. He would take a room and they would spend the afternoon together.

  But the strain began to tell. The erratic nature of their meetings, the spectre of the crippled Joyce and the fact that she was now spending more time at the house in Observatory with her family, had combined to make Kate irritable and jumpy. The bliss of a snatched hour with Tom was often followed by a snappish argument over something trivial. She told herself that this was natural, given the circumstances, but even so, she did not like it.

  And then, in a restaurant called the Del Monico, they’d had a serious argument.

  She had come into town after work and they had made love on the floor of his office; later they had gone to the Del Monico for supper. She still had the dust of his office-carpet in her nostrils.

  After they had eaten he had said, ‘I won’t be able to make it this Saturday.’

  This had happened once before since Joyce’s arrival. Kate herself considered Saturdays to be sacrosanct and had fought with her own family to make sure she had the afternoon to herself.

  ‘Is it Joyce?’ she said.

  ‘She likes to go to the races and they’re on Saturday afternoon. She’s always been keen on horses.’

  ‘Every Saturday afternoon?’

  ‘Not necessarily. But I told you, it’s one of her few pleasures. We can find other times.’

  ‘And make love on the floor?’

  ‘You didn’t seem to mind just now.’

  ‘You go through life feeling sorry for her. Well, I don’t. Sometimes I wish she were dead!’

  ‘That’s a bloody awful thing to say.’

  ‘I can’t help it. Sometimes I wish we’d never started this, that we’d never met.’

  ‘You made sure of that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Kate, you know exactly what I mean.’

  ‘No, I don’t. Do you think I would have got entangled with a married man?’

  ‘How the hell do I know what you would have done? You started it. You chose the moment. You didn’t know if I was married or not, and you didn’t care. Well, you got into something you couldn’t have bargained for.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’ But even as she said it she knew he was right. She had chosen the moment. She had looked at the man standing beside the rail on the deck and she had bowled the quoit as close to him as she could. It might not have been consciously done, but consciously or unconsciously, she had wanted him the moment she had seen him.

  A voice at her elbow said, ‘Hello, Mr. Austen. Remember me? We met at the Hodgsons’. I’m Charles Preller.’

  Kate had looked up and seen a man of medium height with a smooth, rather plump face, dark eyes and a sensual mouth. She had been reminded of pictures she had seen of Roman proconsuls.

  Tom had risen and made the introductions and then said – Kate had heard relief in his voice – ‘Won’t you join us for coffee?’ That was the moment at which she had decided to end their affair.

  ‘If you’ll allow me to offer you liqueurs,’ Charles Preller had said.

  She had not seen Tom again, but the damage had been done. She was convinced that it was that clutching, frenzied coupling on the hard, dusty floor which had planted the child in her womb and which had led her to this all-pervasive fear of what was going to happen to her.

  *

  The train was a few minutes late and she hurried through the station concourse and booked into an hotel which she and Tom had used several times. It was cheap, but clean. She left her suitcase in her room and put a nightdress and a change of underclothing in a brown paper bag and walked towards District Six.

  It was dusk and the heat was rising from the pavements. She turned towards Table Mountain and realised she had been here before; Charles had brought her to a restaurant called the Crescent for curry. The pavement was crowded and she felt people were staring at her. She could not see another white face. Everywhere she looked she saw Cape coloureds or Cape Malays, the men wearing the fez, the women half-veiled. People were doing their evening shopping. She could smell joss-sticks and curry and over-ripe fruit. Street barrows were piled with watermelons, pawpaws, mangoes, grapes, melons, peaches, plums and nectarines. There were stalls selling samosas and cool drinks and other barrows selling fish. There were hallal meat shops and basket shops and shops advertising dried snoek. Her senses were assaulted by smells and colours and movement. This was how she had imagined Calcutta or Singapore. She was jostled and stared at and touched. Then she saw the Crescent on her left and, immediately opposite, the Eastern Emporium.

  It was painted green and had the crescent moon of Islam on the windows. She paused. The interior of the shop was dimly lit. Outside, on the pavement, were sacks of rice and maize flour, chillis and cardomum pods, fresh cucumbers and lychees. She stood at the window and stared in.

  She felt something touch her arm. She jerked involuntarily, but felt herself gripped. She turned and gasped. Among the sacks was a legless figure, the trunk ending in trousers caught up with safety pins. The creature gripped her arm with one hand and pointed to his mouth with the other. She saw its pink interior. He had no teeth. His mouth was like a lamprey’s.

  She fought off his hands and stumbled into the shop. The Malay owner in a fez, collarless shirt and braces, looked at her in surprise. She saw two veiled women. They stared at her.

  ‘Yes?’ the man said.

  ‘I’m looking for someone called Sarah. I was told she lived next door to the Eastern Emporium.’

  ‘What Sarah, lady? You mean Fat Sarah?’

  ‘Is there another Sarah living here?’

  ‘Next door, that way.’ He pointed up the street. ‘Upstairs.’

  The house was double-storeyed, with a deep verandah on the first floor which ran the length of the building. It was decorated with wrought ironwork painted blue. The street door was closed but she tapped on it and it swung slowly inward. She found herself in a narrow hall covered in newspapers and empty boxes. A staircase faced her and she slowly began to climb the uncarpeted wooden stairs. The door at the top was open and she knocked.

  ‘Ja?’ A woman’s voice came from the darkened interior of the apartment.

  ‘I’m looking for Sarah,’ Kate called.

  ‘I’m here.’

  She stepped into the apartment.

  ‘Here. On the stoep.’

  She went out onto the verandah. A huge woman ws sitting in a basket chair, fanning herself. She was wearing only a housecoat and Kate could see her great breasts resting on her belly.

  ‘What you want, lady?’

  Kate looked into the round face that lay on its pad of double chins. The eyes were small, porcine, shrewd.

  ‘I – are you Sarah?’

  ‘I’m Sarah.’ The voice was light, almost girlish.

  ‘I’ve come to ask you to . . . I understand you perform operations on women.’

  The eyes hardened. ‘What kind operations?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Who told you to come here?’

  ‘A friend.’

  ‘I don’t do no operations.’

  ‘My friend said you . . .’

  ‘You going to get trouble, lady, you come here telling lies like this. Rosie! Rosie!’

  Out of the dark apartment came a small figure. Kate did not see her clearly for a moment, then she realised that the girl was not more than eleven or twelve and that she was a hunchback.

  ‘Rosie, go and look in the street.’

  As the child turned to go Fat Sarah said, ‘If Rosie see someone you going to get trouble.’

  ‘Sees who? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve come . . .’

  ‘I know why you come.’

  They were silent for some minutes and then Rosie came back.

  ‘There’s nobody,’ she said.

 
; ‘You look all round?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Plain clothes?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  Kate said, ‘If you think I brought the police, you’re mad.’

  ‘I know who is mad,’ Sarah said. But there was less antagonism in her tone. ‘How long?’

  ‘Nearly three months.’

  ‘It’s going to cost you twelve pounds ten.’

  ‘My friend said ten pounds.’

  ‘Twelve pounds ten. Before.’

  ‘When can you do it?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘You got the money?’

  Kate counted out twelve pounds ten and gave it to her. She had very little left.

  ‘Go with Rosie.’

  The child led her along the corridor and opened a door. Kate went into the room. It smelled of Jeyes Fluid. There was a bed and a table. The child switched on the light, a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling, and Kate saw what was on the table. She looked away, but the images were burned in her mind: the length of red rubber tubing, the douche, the thing that looked like a garden syringe, the thing that looked like a meat-skewer, the white enamel basin, the folded towelling squares. She sat on the edge of the bed, feeling sick.

  She knew that these were the worst moments she had ever experienced and always afterwards she tried to forget them. In time they did fade in the memory, but never completely. The smell of Jeyes Fluid would trigger off sudden sharp images, so would rolls of stomach fat glimpsed on a beach, or a twisted back in a crowded street.

  ‘You must take off your clothes,’ the girl said.

  When she had undressed she lay back on the harsh blanket, naked from the waist down.

  ‘I fetch Fat Sarah,’ the child said.

  Kate had not said her prayers for years, but now she prayed and, at the same time, tried to force her mind back and back until finally she conjured up images of happy days at the Academy in Edinburgh. She could feel Fat Sarah’s fingers opening her. She saw the dormitory she had slept in; she saw the class-room. She felt something cold slide into her. There was her desk. She could see her books . . . she cried out then, a half-cry, half-sob. There was a gush of warmth between her legs . . . the pain was intense. Oh, God, she thought, I’m bleeding to death . . . the desk was in the front of the middle row, it had a lid and she lifted it to get her books . . . the flow seemed unending . . . she began to feel giddy . . .