The Sea Cave

by Alan Scholefield

  ‘But it’s Duggie I’ve come to talk about,’ she said. ‘It’s his leg. It’s no’ getting better, just the reverse. The pain’s terrible. I took him to a specialist. It’s called osteo-myelitis. It means the bone has gone rotten. He wants Duggie in hospital and the surgeon will take out some of the bad bits and then they’ll treat him in a nursing home. It’ll take weeks. Months maybe. It’s either that or he’ll lose the leg.’

  Kate stared at her. She saw, instead of the domineering woman who had caused her so much unhappiness, a pathetic old lady who had lost her way. This was at the root of yesterday’s behaviour: they had all lost their way and they looked to her to find it for them. And suddenly she knew it was she who had lost it for them; she who had forced them out of an environment which they had known and with which they might have coped, to this alien territory where everything was unfamiliar and where it was easier to allow themselves to sink than to swim.

  ‘Tell the specialist to make the arrangements,’ she said. ‘I’ll find the money somehow.’

  ‘I knew you would,’ Mrs. Buchanan said, touching her knee. ‘I said to Duggie, Kate’ll no’ let us down.’

  The following day she took them to the seaside at Muizenburg and watched her father paddle and Duggie lie on the sands by the bathing-boxes, his handsome face waxen from drink and trying to cope with pain. Briefly, fleetingly, she thought of Tom waiting in his office and the ache was like a stone at her heart.

  She caught the late train back to Helmsdale and Smuts was waiting for her on the station. It was unusually brightly lit. Cars’ headlights illuminated the rear of the train and she saw dust rising and moths flying in and out of the beams. A group of people had collected at the guard’s van. Something was being unloaded. Kate went closer and saw that it was a coffin.

  ‘They’ve brought Miriam home,’ Smuts said.

  He helped her into the motor and started the engine. She sat back in the deep plush seat. There was a wild banging at the window and she saw Mr. Sachs’ face. She tried to roll down the window, but it stuck. He banged again. She thought that his face was covered in sweat, but quickly realised that the sweat was tears. He was sobbing and choking and mouthing words at her. She started to open the door but Smuts let out the clutch and the car shot forward.

  PART TWO

  The Second Inquest

  Chapter One

  Helmsdale received the news that there was to be a second inquest into the death of Miriam Sachs in an atmosphere brittle with tension. Over the centuries the little town had been host to a dozen wrecks and to their dead and living, but Miriam’s murder was in a category by itself – and that is what they were calling it: murder. No one knew how the word had first come to be used, but it was on everyone’s lips, though Sachs himself had not used it. After his outburst at the station he had re-buried his daughter next to her mother in the Helmsdale cemetery and had taken himself off to live with his sister in Cape Town. The police were saying nothing, either.

  Mrs. Preller was reinforced in her belief that Miriam had brought her fate upon herself. ‘How you die depends on how you live,’ she said to Kate. ‘I knew something would happen to her. Right down here in my heart. I said it to Boss Charles long ago. I said it to Smuts.’ Kate felt that she gained some satisfaction from being proved right.

  In the Evergreen Cafe and the Helmsdale hotel, in Paris Modes and Preller Motors, the talk was of Miriam.

  Then two things happened at Saxenburg within a day of each other. The first was that Betty became ill after eating contaminated shell-fish, and was sent to her aunt in Caledon, about sixty miles away, to recuperate. The second was that Jonas was arrested.

  When the police arrived, Kate was helping Smuts in the incubator shed, Jonas was working in the plucking kraal, mending one of the plucking boxes. There were four of them, Sergeant Van Blerk and three constables Kate had not seen before. They came in a dusty truck and stopped in the yard.

  Kate followed Smuts as he went to meet them.

  Van Blerk stood by the truck, the others made a small group on one side. Each was armed. They were all big men, including Van Blerk. His body was gross and there were dark patches on his khaki shirt where he was sweating.

  ‘I’m looking for one of your boys,’ he said.

  ‘Which one?’ Smuts said.

  ‘Koopman.’

  Kate did not connect the name until Smuts said, ‘Jonas? What’s he been up to? Drunk again? He’s a bugger for the vaaljapie and when he’s drunk, the women better watch out.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘On the other side of the sheds.’

  They walked round in a group. Jonas was working with his back to them.

  ‘Jonas, you got visitors,’ Smuts said.

  He straightened up. He had a hammer in one hand and a handful of nails in the other. His eyes were hostile.

  ‘Is your name Koopman? Jonas Koopman?’ Van Blerk said.

  Jonas looked directly at Smuts, ignoring him.

  ‘They want to talk to you,’ Smuts said. ‘You been drunk again?’

  ‘It’s more than that.’ Van Blerk stepped towards Jonas. The other three policemen fanned out.

  ‘Jonas Koopman, I’m arresting you for stealing a . . .’

  ‘No, master!’

  Jonas was looking directly at Smuts, appealing to him. ‘No, master!’ he repeated, more loudly.

  ‘Stand still!’ Van Blerk said.

  Jonas was backing away, the hammer raised. Kate saw one of the policemen unbutton the flap of his holster.

  ‘They lie, master!’ he shouted. He flung the hammer at the nearest policeman and the nails at another, leapt the fence surrounding the plucking kraal and raced away through the ostrich camps.

  ‘Don’t shoot him!’ Smuts shouted. ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t shoot!’

  The urgency of his tone reached the police. Instead of firing, they gave chase. Van Blerk stopped after about twenty yards but the other three, young and powerful, spread out and coursed Jonas as though they were dogs coursing a hare. They caught him within half a mile. Kate saw a sudden flurry of dust and, for a few moments, nothing else, then the three policemen emerged from the dust, dragging Jonas by the arms. His face was covered in blood and his clothes were torn.

  ‘He fell,’ one of the constables said. ‘Hit his head on a rock.’

  They threw him into the back of the truck and two of the policemen climbed in with him.

  ‘He’s a bugger, that one,’ Van Blerk said.

  ‘Your men hit him,’ Kate said. ‘Three of them against one!’

  ‘He fell,’ Van Blerk said. ‘Didn’t you see? He fell and hit his head.’

  Jonas rose on his knees in the back of the truck. ‘Master!’ he called to Smuts. ‘Master must help me!’

  ‘Sit!’ One of the policemen pulled him backwards.

  ‘Listen!’ Smuts said. ‘What’s he supposed to have . . .?

  ‘You’ll find out,’ Van Blerk said, starting the truck.

  *

  The second inquest into the death of Miriam began on a day of gale force winds. Out of the wind, the heat was stifling. In the wind, it was cooler, but dust was everywhere, blowing up the main street of Helmsdale in clouds, lying in a thin veneer on the shiny wood and green leather of the courthouse.

  There was a different atmosphere about this investigation, dominated as it was by the prisoner in the small gaol on the outskirts of the town.

  Jonas had been in custody for a week and during that time rumours began to circulate that his arrest for theft was no more than a holding charge for something more serious. It was soon being said that the something more serious was Miriam’s death. Helmsdale split into two racial camps: the coloured fishing-village and the town itself. A group of white youths burnt an effigy of Jonas on the jetty of the small harbour and carelessly set fire to the rigging of one of the boats. The following day a white farmer was stoned by coloured youths as he was driving out of town. His windscreen was smashed, but he was unhurt
.

  In the bars, the white farmers drank brandy and told each other what they would do if there was any further trouble. ‘They’re talking like bloody vigilantes,’ Smuts said to Kate. ‘I don’t hold with coloureds murdering white women, but these chaps would run a bloody mile if there was any real trouble.’

  ‘You sound as though you thought Jonas was guilty.’

  He looked at her with surprise. ‘Do you think they would have arrested him otherwise? Everyone says he did it.’

  Kate was suddenly angry. ‘Who is everyone? I never liked Jonas, but do you think he’ll get fair hearing here?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that too loudly in town,’ Smuts said. ‘You don’t want people to get the wrong impression, my friend.’

  It was in this atmosphere of hostility that the second inquest began. There were several advocates in black gowns in the court. One had come from Cape Town to represent Mrs. Preller’s interests. Leibowitz was there with Sachs and a young attorney called Stoltz was representing Jonas. On the exhibits table Kate saw a bundle of what looked like laundry, then she realised that she was looking at the clothes which she and the police sergeant had found on the beach.

  The coroner, Dr. Armstrad, entered briskly. He was a man of about forty-five, with short grey hair and a hard, lined face. He gave the impression of someone who would get to the root of any question, or know the reason why.

  Miriam’s father, frail and ill, was the first to give evidence, referring particularly to Miriam’s clothing, which had been found far from the rock pools. ‘My daughter would never have swum at high tide,’ he said. ‘She would never have walked naked along a beach for fifty, a hundred yards. Why? If she was going to swim she would have taken off her clothes by the pool. But not at high tide. Never. Never. It’s impossible.’

  He was followed by Van Blerk, then the hearing was adjourned for lunch. Dr. du Toit took Mrs. Preller out, and Kate followed. She found herself in a press of people.

  She heard a voice say, ‘Kate!’

  She turned to look into Tom Austen’s face. He caught her arm and pulled her towards him in the crush. She felt her breasts press against him and twisted away as Mrs. Preller looked back for her.

  ‘Have lunch with me,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t.’

  They were carried through the doorway on to the pavement. She introduced him to Mrs. Preller and Dr. du Toit, feeling flustered.

  He towered over Mrs. Preller. He bent towards her and smiled. She returned the smile and for the first time Kate saw her reacting to a good-looking man as he said, ‘Would it inconvenience you if I kidnapped Miss Buchanan and carried her off for lunch?’

  They had lunch under the slowly-moving fans in the hot hotel dining-room. The menu made no concessions to the weather: soup, fish, roast, treacle pudding.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’

  She shook her head. ‘I have to give evidence this afternoon.’ She sipped a few spoonfuls of soup and pushed the plate away. ‘Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?’

  ‘You resent my being here. I sensed it in the courtroom and again on the pavement.’

  ‘I suppose I do.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’ve been learning to do without you. And now you come bursting into my life again.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come to me at New Year? I know you got the letter. I checked up with the messenger.’

  ‘Yes, I got it.’

  ‘I waited all day.’

  The soup plates were taken away and the fish arrived. She picked at it. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’ he said.

  ‘No. It’s too hot. You’re not, either.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Kate,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘Let’s stop this. You know why I came. I could have lifted the story of the inquest from the Cape Town papers if I’d wanted it. I came because of you. I came because I love you and this was the only way I could get here, because of . . .’

  ‘Of Joyce.’

  ‘Precisely. It doesn’t have to be this way.’ He pushed away the half-eaten fish and placed his long, cool fingers over hers.

  ‘Not here.’ She slid her hand away. ‘Most of these people know me by sight.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about that.’

  ‘I do. I live here.’

  ‘All right.’ She saw him control himself. ‘But tell me one thing: You accused me of bursting into your life again. Tell me honestly: have I ever been out of it?’

  ‘Don’t force me to answer questions like that.’ She felt her hands begin to shake.

  He looked triumphant. ‘There you are. You haven’t got over it.’

  ‘I’m trying.’

  ‘But you haven’t. That’s all I wanted to know.’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that. I want to get over you. That’s the difference between us. You want us to go on and on, and always there’s Joyce in the background.’

  ‘Now you know I can’t help –’

  ‘Of course you can’t. But equally it doesn’t help me. There’s no future in it. Month after month. Year after year. Hotel rooms. The car. Or are you going to set me up in a flat and visit it on the way home twice a week?’

  She knew she had angered him then, for he said quietly, ‘Do you want anything more to eat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I really do have work to do and the hearing resumes in forty-five minutes.’

  She walked slowly back to the court-house. She knew she had sounded hard, but inside she felt mushy and weak. It would have been so easy to have slipped back into her earlier relationship with him, but always now at the back of her mind was the figure of Fat Sarah.

  Mrs. Preller’s vermilion lips stretched into a smile that split the white face when she saw Tom. ‘Finished your work, Mr. Austen?’

  ‘Well, part of it,’ he said. Kate watched him. The expression on his face was hard to read, but his eyes were no longer angry. ‘I’ve come not only for the inquest, I want to do an article on the resurgence of the feather business. Perhaps you would let me pick your brains.’

  ‘I have not much to pick, but you are welcome. You should have seen this place in the old days. Talk to Smuts about it. Miss Buchanan has seen the old houses. She can also help.’

  ‘Perhaps she could show them to me,’ he said.

  Kate suddenly recalled the room in the Berrangés’ house: her bare breasts reflected in the windows; Charles.

  ‘Mr. Smuts knows much . . .’

  ‘I only have this evening,’ Tom said. ‘I’d be very grateful.’

  ‘Come.’ Mrs. Preller took Kate’s arm. ‘We must not be late. It is that old fool, Dr. Richards, who is to give evidence.’

  Kate had not seen Richards since the first inquest. He appeared even smaller, more stringy and gnomelike than he had then. He started in the same positive, rather hectoring manner that she remembered, but Dr. Armstrad was having none of it.

  ‘You did not carry out a post mortem?’

  ‘No, I did not.’

  ‘You assumed that Miss Sachs had drowned?’

  ‘I didn’t “assume.” It was an educated assessment of what had occurred.’

  ‘But you could not be sure.’

  Richards threw up his hands and smiled at the spectators. ‘Who can be sure of anything in this life?’

  ‘District surgeons,’ Dr. Armstrad replied sharply. ‘At least they can be certain whether or not someone drowned. Do you recall what time the tide was high on the Sunday night?’

  ‘Some time after midnight. The sea was calm. There was no wind to speak of.’

  As she listened to the evidence, Kate realised that she must have been awake that night in Saxenburg House while Miriam was dying. That was the night after the picnic, the night of her scene with Charles in the Berrangés’ ruined house. She remembered how hot it had been when the black south-easter had dropped. She even remembered getting up and opening the window because she had been unable to sleep. She had lain in her bed, half expecting Charles to come to
her room, but Dr. du Toit had arrived to check on Mrs. Preller, who had summer ‘flu. Then she had heard the roadster leave and some time later Dr. du Toit’s car, and had been able to relax for the first time that evening. But still she had not been able to sleep. Eventually she had got up and gone to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea.

  She had hardly put the kettle on when there had been a banging at the back door and she had heard Lena’s voice. The woman had been upset.

  ‘Has Miss Kate seen Betty?’

  ‘No, Lena. Isn’t she at home?’

  ‘I been to church. Betty is not there.’

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ Smuts said from the doorway. ‘Lena, what’s all this?’

  ‘She’s looking for Betty,’ Kate said.

  ‘Well, for Christ’s sake, look for her in the morning. How can I get my sleep?’

  Lena turned on him in fury. ‘You don’t care what happens! Nobody cares! Jonas isn’t here, too.’

  ‘What?’ Smuts shouted. ‘That bugger! He’s supposed to watch the temperatures.’

  He flung open the door and ran out to the shed. Kate knew that Jonas was supposed to check the ostrich eggs in the incubators each night to see that the temperatures did not vary from 103 degrees Fahrenheit. Hurriedly, she lit a lantern and followed Smuts. He took it from her and held it up. The big wooden incubators reminded her of a mahogany chest-of-drawers her mother had left in Edinburgh.

  ‘Christ, this is a hundred and five,’ he said. ‘So is this. This one’s nearly a hundred and six. We’ll lose the whole bloody lot in a minute. I want buckets of water. Tell Lena.’

  But Lena was not in the kitchen and Kate filled two big tin buckets and carried them out to the shed. There was an opening at the top of each incubator and Smuts dashed the water into it. Kate ran to get more. They waited, watching the thermometers.

  ‘This one’s going down,’ she said.

  ‘So is this.’