The Sea Cave

by Alan Scholefield

  They went down to dinner. The dining-room was filled with farmers who had come into town for the inquest and they were all drinking brandy-and-water with their greasy mutton chops. The air was hot and the fans in the ceiling did nothing but stir it. They were put at a corner table and several of the men looked at Kate with approving eyes. One smiled and nodded.

  ‘Who’s your friend?’ Tom said as they sat down.

  ‘The bank manager.’

  ‘Those are the friends to have.’ He read from the menu: ‘Vegetable soup, fried stockfish, beef olives, cold meat. We’ll have a bottle of cold white wine as well.’

  They talked about the inquest for a few moments and then a waiter arrived to say that Tom’s phone call to Cape Town had come through. He took his copy and went into the lobby. He was away for longer than Kate had expected. When he returned he drank a glass of wine in one long pull and motioned the waiter to fill his glass. Then he said, ‘I spoke to Joyce.’

  The name hung in the air like a shadow between them, ‘I wanted you to know why I’d been so long, in case you were wondering.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’ Then she said sharply, ‘That isn’t the real reason you told me.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. I wanted to mention her name because we don’t talk about her and I think that’s half our problem. We treat her as though she doesn’t exist, yet we know she does. It gives her an importance in our relationship that she shouldn’t have. We’ve made her separate, a kind of brooding presence, a spectre at the feast. And it shouldn’t be that way. We should talk about her naturally and then perhaps we could be natural with each other.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about her.’

  ‘There you are. By not talking about her you can’t erase her. She’s there, all right.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Tom . . .’

  ‘It’s true.’ He crumbled a piece of bread in his fingers and said: ‘Ask me how she is. That’s what people do when they meet. They ask about wives and husbands. It’s the natural thing to do, so why don’t we be natural?’

  ‘All right. How’s your wife?’

  ‘Joyce?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, say it. That’s half the bloody battle, isn’t it? She’s got a name, you’re still treating her like a disembodied spirit.

  Kate gritted her teeth and said, ‘How’s Joyce?’

  ‘Would you really like to know?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  He opened his mouth to go on with the game and then stopped.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she said. ‘Do you want to change the subject?’

  ‘Christ, no. I’ve got to tell someone. Why not tell the one person who really matters to me?’

  She felt an ache above her heart. ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘Where do I start? The problem with this kind of discussion is that it’s difficult to keep a whine out of one’s tone, difficult to preclude self-justification and self-pity. If you hear anything like that, kick me under the table.’

  As he began to talk, she realised that she had never given his day-to-day life with Joyce much thought. He was right: she had avoided thinking about her. He spoke flatly without any sign of self-pity, painting the story in word pictures brilliantly lit and coloured and suggestive of emotions and hatreds and guilts which she had barely guessed at. He spoke as he wrote, sparely, but with a magic that made scenes come alive. She began to see the pictures, began to understand what made up the mosaic of their lives.

  Their days and nights were filled with one long, endless argument. It was never loud or angry, sometimes it was not even expressed, but it lay in the house ready to ambush them with its low-keyed nagging. It rose from trivial things. He told her that one thing he looked forward to every morning in the hot weather was a shower out in his garden. There was an arbour formed by hydrangeas and plumbago and he would go down there in the early hours and hose himself. His description was so well-drawn that she could see the big, shadowy garden, smell the rubbery, earthy smell of the water.

  But Joyce did not care for it. She had seen him from her bedroom window and had told him she thought it undignified.

  ‘She said, what if one of our maids or those next door saw me naked? And I said they’d probably seen better equipment, anyway. And she told me I was being vulgar and it wasn’t fair to her to allow my dignity to be eroded. It’s that sort of argument. About damn all.’

  She had her own bedroom and would spend large parts of the day in bed, sometimes not getting up at all. ‘When I tell her that both her doctors – oh, yes, she has two – feel she should exercise the leg as much as she can, she tells me I’m unfeeling. So we argue about that. And we argue about me playing the gramophone and about how you treat servants and about whether the curtains should be open or not in case the sun fades the carpets. And we argue about going out or not going out.’

  He told her about a recent morning when he had gone up to Joyce’s room after he’d had his breakfast. It was still in darkness, the shutters closed, the curtains drawn. ‘She was beautiful once,’ he said. ‘So beautiful it hurt almost to look at her. It was a kind of misty, pre-Raphaelite beauty. But now . . .’ He paused, and said, ‘I suppose it’s all the time she spends in bed. She’s put on a lot of weight and, of course, that makes the leg weaker.’

  Kate began to get a picture of a puffy figure in a dim, hot, stale-smelling room. A kind of younger, fatter Mrs. Preller, who lived out of the world, but without that lady’s toughness.

  ‘The other morning I went up to her after breakfast to say good-bye, and she said, “This is the only time I see you during the day and it’s always just to say good-bye. You never sit down. You can’t wait to go.” And I said something like we wouldn’t get the rent paid if I sat down instead of going to work and her eyes filled with tears and I said, don’t bother, it might have worked once, but not now. It was a bloody awful thing to say and I felt ghastly about it all day. That’s the problem. I often say things that hurt her and then feel dreadful. But the moment I recover, I do it again. Then I apologise. And so on. You see, the danger is, if I go too far she’ll try again.’

  ‘Try what?’

  ‘Sleeping pills. Her wrists. She tried once in London, and once about a month ago.’

  ‘You never told me.’

  ‘As far as you were concerned, Joyce was a non-person, remember? They’re not serious attempts. By that I mean she knew that I or someone else was going to be around to save her. But all the same, it’s pretty bad. That’s why I have to have a damn good reason for going on a trip like this. She’d never have believed me if I’d said London was interested. But I went along to George Ascher on the Cape Times and told him I’d thought of doing an article on the new feather boom and that I could do the inquest for them at the same time. He jumped at it.’

  They had finished dinner and were drinking a bitter mixture of coffee and chicory and she was waiting for the next stage of the evening. She wanted nothing more than to go up to his room with him and yet the thought of what had happened in Fat Sarah’s still made her break out in a cold sweat.

  And then he said suddenly, ‘I’m going to take you home now.’

  She remained silent and he smiled and said, ‘I hope you won’t mind. But talking about Joyce and thinking about her sometimes makes me feel like a eunuch. Perhaps I should never have brought the subject up.’

  ‘I’m glad you did. I’d never realised what it was like for you.’

  ‘There you are, I’ve made you feel sorry for me.’ It was said lightly, but again there was an underlay of bitterness. ‘Come on, before I change my mind and take you upstairs and rape you.’

  He drove her back to Saxenburg and looked up at the big house standing starkly against the night sky. ‘My God, it looks like Bluebeard’s Castle. Sister Ann . . . Sister Ann . . .’ Then he kissed her once, hard, and drove away.

  She lay in bed listening to the wind. Sister Ann . . . it seemed to say . . . do you see anyone coming . . .?

  Chapter Tw
o

  Charles came back for the week-end. She had not seen him for several weeks and was wary of him, but he put himself out to be charming and seemed to have forgotten the incident in the old house. He was plumper than she remembered. His face was growing heavy and the sensual cast of his lower lip seemed more pronounced.

  He wanted to talk about the inquest and asked her to walk down to the beach with him. She had not been close to the rock pools since she had shown Mr. Sachs the spot. Charles said, ‘It’s sad. Of course it’s sad, but these things happen. If one didn’t go to places where some tragedy or other had occurred, there’d be no place to go at all.’

  ‘That’s where we found her clothes,’ she said, pointing midway between the rock pools and the far headland.

  ‘When does that bloody Jonas come up for trial?’

  ‘In the autumn. That’s what they’re saying.’

  ‘They’ll hang him all right. The bastard.’

  It was strange walking down by the sea shore without seeing Jonas and the big sea-pole silhouetted against the sky. She wondered where he had strangled Miriam. On the beach? Among the rocks? Perhaps he had not meant to kill her. Perhaps he had been fishing there that night when she had stripped and walked across the beach in the moonlight. The sight of Miriam’s nubile body would have been an invitation to many men. She remembered the day she had watched her swim naked. Jonas had been around then. In fact, he may even have seen Miriam. Kate remembered mentioning it to her and the off-hand way she had dismissed his presence, as though he did not count because he was a servant. Or – and the thought came sharply to her – had Miriam been aware of him all the time? Had she undressed slowly, garment by garment, knowing she had a male audience? Kate wondered if she should mention such thoughts to Jonas’s lawyer, Mr. Stoltz. Perhaps he would want to cross-examine her about that day when the preparatory examination was held.

  ‘Have you heard from your family?’ Charles asked.

  ‘Mother isn’t much of a correspondent. I get an occasional letter.’

  ‘Did you know that Duggie went into hospital yesterday?’

  ‘I knew Mother was making the arrangements.’

  ‘I went to see him. He’s in a lot of pain.’

  ‘Poor Duggie. He’s been in pain ever since he came back from the war. I’ll telephone the hospital tonight.’

  ‘I’ve promised him a good time once he gets out of that place.’ He paused and said thoughtfully. ‘Although good times are getting scarcer these days.’

  There was something in his tone that caught her attenion. ‘Why so gloomy?’

  ‘It’s a gloomy time. Haven’t you heard about Black Friday?’

  ‘Black Friday?’

  ‘The stock market crashed last week and a lot of people got badly burned.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Including me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Charles.’

  ‘So am I.’

  They walked back to the house in silence. He spent the afternoon with his mother, but later he had a drink with Kate, sitting on one of the window seats of the blue and purple sitting-room. The sea was calm and the India Reef no more than a ripple on its surface. She was very much aware that they were alone together in the high, shadowy room and that all he had to do was shift along the window seat and she would be facing the same problem she had before. But nothing happened, and she told herself he would not try anything in the house itself; there were too many eyes.

  Perhaps some similar conjunction of thoughts were going through his mind, for he said, ‘I hear Betty’s sick.’

  ‘She’s staying with an aunt in Caledon.’

  ‘Is she coming back?’

  ‘Lena hasn’t mentioned it.’

  After a moment he said, ‘Mother tells me you know about the morphine.’

  ‘I’ve known since Christmas night.’

  ‘So you know what happened – before?’

  ‘Only what Dr. du Toit told me, which wasn’t much.’

  He began to pace up and down the room. His heavy face was flushed and she realised he had been drinking upstairs. ‘It’s Hugo’s birthday today – or it would have been if he was still alive.’ He was moving restlessly and seemed almost to be talking to himself. ‘My father always sent me a card on Hugo’s birthday. He never forgot. Even when I was at boarding-school. Not a birthday card, but a bloody mourning card. Edged with black. And the words were always the same: In Memoriam, Hugo Adolphus Preller, who would have been eleven years old – or twelve or whatever it was – today.’

  She thought of the little boy opening his envelope every year until his father died, and felt a surge of pity for him.

  ‘Do you remember anything about that night?’

  ‘I’m not sure now whether I remember or whether it’s what Smuts or Lena or my mother has told me.’ He lit a cigarette and poured himself another drink and continued his pacing, making the dyed ostrich feathers stir and wave in their vases. ‘Have you ever seen a picture of Hugo?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘My mother keeps one. Only one. It was taken just before he died. I remember we went to a photographer’s studio in Cape Town and they took one of each of us and the two of us together. She keeps the one of Hugo in her bedside table. Maybe she’ll show it to you one day. If she does, you’ll see why my father . . .’ He broke off and she noticed that sweat had broken out on his forehead. ‘My father thought the sun shone out of his . . . well, you know what I mean. Jesus, I hated him!’

  She was shocked by the violence in his voice. It came on a gust of passion in a way she had noticed before. One second he was normal, the next in the grip of violent emotion. She remembered him in the Berrangé house and the difficulty she’d had in calming him. And it had happened again in the yard with Jonas and Smuts. There seemed to be no bridge between normality and this sudden flare-up.

  ‘You hated your father?’

  ‘No. That came later, when he started on me. It was Hugo I hated. I’ll tell you this: I wasn’t sorry when he died. It’s a hell of a thing to say, but it’s true.’

  The violence seemed to be leaving him and he wiped his face with his handkerchief. ‘It was always Hugo this and Hugo that. What Hugo was going to do when he grew up. How Hugo was going to increase the fortunes of the family. He was ten years old, and I was eight. Only two years younger and they spoke like that in front of me! They thought I was too young to know what the hell they were talking about.

  ‘My father had always talked to him like that. By the time he was ten you’d have thought he was a prince or something. He ordered Lena about. It made my father smile. Sometimes my mother would get worried about me, I suppose, and give me more attention. Hugo hated that. He was so used to getting it all that he would become angry. He had a bloody awful temper. He got it from my father. Anyway, he made my life a bloody misery whenever that happened.’

  Without warning, he ripped off his right shoe and sock and held his foot out to her. ‘See that?’ He was pointing at two white scars about half an inch apart. ‘You know what they are?’

  Kate shook her head, slightly bemused at the outburst and the sight of his naked foot in front of her.

  ‘Snake.’ He sat down and put his sock on again. ‘A bloody night adder in the upstairs bathroom. You tell me how it got into the house and up the stairs and into the bathroom. People said it must have come up the waste pipe.’

  ‘You mean you think your brother put it there?’

  He poured himself another drink. ‘I’m not sure. Of course, I didn’t think so at the time. Snakes are common around here. But afterwards I thought, how the hell would a night adder get up the waste pipe? It was under the bath. When I went in, it hit me in the foot.’

  She shuddered.

  ‘Even now I can remember the pain. Smuts sucked it and they took me to hospital, but the fangs hadn’t gone in properly, so I was all right.’

  ‘Was it in my bathroom? The nursery bathroom?’ She felt a prickling sensation on her scalp.

 
; He nodded. ‘They’ve put wire mesh over the opening to the waste pipe. There’s no way anything can get up now.’

  The telephone rang, three shorts and a long, the party-line signal for Saxenburg. He went into the hall to answer it. ‘It’s your call to Cape Town.’

  After she had spoken to the staff nurse at the Rondebosch Cottage Hospital she told Charles: ‘They operated on Duggie’s leg this afternoon. They took a piece of bone out. The staff nurse says he’s still drowsy from the ether, but otherwise comfortable. Mother and father were there.’

  ‘It’s going to take time.’

  ‘I know.’ Then she said, ‘I asked Lena to make us a plate of sandwiches. Would you like them now?’

  ‘I’m not hungry. You?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll have one of your cigarettes, though.’ She sat back, smoking. ‘Do you mind talking about Hugo?’

  ‘I hardly ever talk about him. Mother does. When I go up to her room, she sometimes wants to remember him. Like today, on his birthday. She has the photograph and his school cap and a flute he made out of a reed. She usually drinks too much.’

  ‘Do you think I should go up?’

  ‘Lena’s there. It’s dangerous if she drinks with the morphine. It’s easy to take an overdose. But Lena knows what to do.’

  ‘Her scars are terrible.’

  ‘That’s my fault. According to my father.’

  ‘That’s a terrible thing to tell a child.’

  ‘It was the sort of thing he did. He was a very big man. Almost as big as Hennie du Toit. Heavy body and heavy face. At least, that’s how I remember him. Most people called him ‘Boss,’ but some called him ‘Bull’ Preller. He played rugby when he was young.’ He paused, then said, ‘It was partly my fault. If I’d run straight to my parents . . . hell, there’s no point in going over it now. It’s too late. They say Hugo’s death was what eventually killed my father.’