The Housemaid's Daughter (11 page)

I watched as Madam moved to sit on the chair at Master’s side. She didn’t often go and sit beside him; she usually chose the chair opposite. The tortoiseshell comb in her hair caught the lamplight. She still wore grey for Master Phil, and perhaps also, now, for Mama. I can’t show how I mourn by means of indoor clothing; all I have is Mama’s funeral coat.

‘I’m afraid for her, Edward,’ Madam went on, twisting her hands like she’d done over Master Phil. ‘How will she manage?’

‘There’ll be other relatives,’ Master Edward said, and picked up his newspaper. ‘There always are. Especially as we’re paying for it.’

Mama did not want to be carried over the river here in Cradock, she wanted to be buried with her ancestors. So I put her black funeral coat on, took my identity Pass and pinned it to the inside pocket, and went by train and then by donkey cart with her coffin to KwaZakhele. Madam pressed pink roses from the garden into my hand for Mama’s grave.

The light was not yet up when I caught the train from Cradock with Mama’s coffin beside me in the carriage at the back. Mist hung over the tracks and mixed with the steam from the engine so that we moved along inside a cloud until the sun came up and burned it away. It was my first time on a train. I stared out of the window and wished that Mama could rise up out of her coffin and see the veld unfolding before us in yellow waves. Halfway through the journey I had to change to another train. Two old men going the same way saw me struggling with Mama’s coffin and helped me to lift it out of the first train and into the next one.

No one came with me – Auntie couldn’t afford the train fare but promised to pray at the outdoor church on the
koppie
– and I found no relatives in KwaZakhele who had heard of her even though the Master was paying. I had never been to KwaZakhele before. It was far bigger than the place where Auntie lived, or the township at the end of Bree Street. Many thousands of people live there, in rows of tiny houses or in shacks packed close to each other with no spare ground in between. Even though KwaZakhele gets more rain than Cradock, there were no trees. Instead, smoke from cooking fires hung over the place all day.

After a long time of searching the narrow dirt streets – it was frightening for me with so many strangers shouting and so many dogs barking and hundreds of shacks stretching as far as I could see, and me worrying about Mama waiting in her coffin on the platform back at the station – I found the church that Mama had attended as a child.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said, leaning tiredly against the door round the side that said ‘Vestry, knock first’. ‘My mother has died and wishes to be buried in your churchyard with her ancestors.’

The minister looked up from his desk and ran his eyes over me in Mama’s black funeral coat.

‘Where are you from?’

‘I have come from Cradock today, sir, with my mother’s coffin on the train.’

At first the minister said he was too busy to help and that he did not know of any living relatives at his church with our name. Once I said that I could pay him from the money Master had given me, he agreed to bury Mama. I had to be careful with the money, for it had to cover the cost of the coffin, the train fares, the donkey cart from the station to the church and then from the church to the cemetery. I could never repay Master for his kindness, but at least I could show that I was grateful by giving him back what was left over.

The minister put on a creased white robe – why did he not have someone to iron for him? – and sat alongside the driver.

I squatted in the back, holding on to the coffin to stop it slipping off the back of the cart. It took a long time to get to the cemetery. I felt sorry for Mama being jolted so hard along the uneven roads. I clutched Madam’s roses and looked out over the head of the minister and the driver and the horse. The sea was out there somewhere, as blue as the sky, and I longed to see it with ships on it like I had read about, and that had carried our piano to Cradock House, but the land in that place was flat and the township stretched beyond the horizon and no one can see further than the horizon.

Unlike where Master Phil was buried, this cemetery had no grass and the wind threw grit from the bare ground into my face. But I believe God the Father does not think any less of His children if they have a poor funeral with no congregation. It does not mean they are less worthy than those buried in a cathedral with crowds watching and an organ making the walls shake. Mama served other people all her life. God would be pleased with her, I was sure.

There could be no service like Master Phil’s, of course, but the minister and I sang
Abide with Me
over the hole that had been dug where the coffin would go, and where I placed Madam’s roses, delicate and beautiful against the broken earth. Although the wind stung our faces, it also surely carried our voices up to heaven where God – and I hope Master Phil – were listening. I gave the minister some extra money and he said he would put up a sign with Mama’s name so that I could find it if I visited again. Even so, before we left, I tried to fix in my mind where Mama’s grave was amongst the many hundreds of mounds. It lay in line with a distant shack with a tin roof like the
kaia
back in Cradock, except that there was no bony thorn tree but a straggly creeper over a piece of fence. In the other direction was a tall light – taller than any light I had seen before – that shed an orange glow even although it was still the day. Where the two directions met, was Mama’s grave. Behind me, in the rutted street alongside the cemetery, a lively group of children kicked a ball, their voices rising into the air with Mama’s soul.

* * *

By the time I got back to the station, the last train of the day had already left and so I sat on a bench through the night, holding on to my leftover money, closing my ears to the shouts of drunken men in the dark beyond the dim platform light, until the first train of the next day appeared through a grey dawn. It started to rain. Other passengers appeared out of the bush beside the railway line. The vast township hid behind a veil of low cloud. I got on to the train stiffly and went home.

Chapter 15

I
 miss Madam, so I read her book every day. I wonder why she left it on her dressing table when she knew she would be away for a while? It isn’t like Madam to be so forgetful of something so important to her. What will she write on in Johannesburg?

The company on board ship is charming. In particular one Colonel Saunders, on his way to rejoin his regiment in India. Mrs Wetherspoon, my chaperone, is quite captivated. And so is he – with me!

How strange that I should spend five years serving my betrothal in Ireland and just when I am allowed to go to Africa to marry Edward, I find myself waylaid by another suitor. It is flattering, of course, but I give him no encouragement. And he, to his credit, is most proper.

In order to fill Cradock House with sound, I play the piano every evening after I’ve done the dishes. Madam would have wanted it so. I don’t put on the lights – I don’t need to see my fingers – I just slip into the alcove where the piano is, and begin. At first, there’s some light from the sunset, a silky purple rather than the bright yellow stripes of Master Phil’s bedroom. Then even that fades, and I play in the dark. I play for myself, and for Mama, and I play for Master Phil who never leaves my heart.

Sometimes Master is in the study writing to Madam visiting Miss Rose in trouble in Johannesburg and he opens the door to listen to me. Sometimes he’s in the lounge, behind his newspaper. I notice that he never turns the pages while I play. And often the lamp next to his chair isn’t on. Perhaps he likes the dark too. I know he always wanted Madam to play Chopin, so I play Chopin. I hope it gives him comfort in Madam’s absence. And then I play Debussy as well, slippery tunes that wander round in your head for days afterwards.

He usually says, ‘Thank you, Ada,’ when I’ve finished, although sometimes he seems to find it hard to speak and has to cough before he can start.

Then I say, ‘Good night, Master,’ as I close the piano. For a while, that’s all he says and all I say.

And I know that I am playing for him as well, and for the loneliness that’s inside us both.

* * *

When I look back on it now, after many years, I know that it came out of the loneliness. Not Master Phil’s frenzied sort of loneliness – where fallen comrades give you no peace – but rather a shadow that settles about you with sly weight. Madam knew about loneliness, and the difficulties it can cause, so perhaps that was why she decided to go to Johannesburg to be with Miss Rose, her remaining child. To chase away Miss Rose’s loneliness and in this way keep her from more trouble? But loneliness taken away from one place looks for a home somewhere else. And trouble taken from one person will surely search for a new lodging.

I made lamb chops and potatoes and peas and served them to Master, on his own at the head of the table in the dining room.

I ate my supper in the kitchen. Then I washed and dried the dishes and hung up the tea towels on the line outside. It was one of those evenings when the Karoo has a strange, warm light and the stone
koppies
brighten from brown to pink, holding their glow for longer than you think possible, before fading to navy. I wondered if Mama could see the strange light from where she was with God the Father.

I turned back to the house and then stopped for a moment, remembering Master Phil lying on the grass that now bent soft beneath my feet. His skin was golden in the sun, his eyes pale as the lightest evening sky. If I called his name he would surely answer …

I went back inside. I took off my apron and hung it behind the kitchen door. Master was in his usual chair in the lounge. I slipped into the alcove and started with
Clair de Lune.
Pink light came through the window and rested on the piano, and followed my hands on the keys. Then I played the
Pathétique.
Master did not turn the pages of the paper. I was used to that by now. Slowly the flush of evening faded and I played the last Chopin nocturne in darkness. Master sat in the darkness as well, his newspaper on his lap.

‘Good night, Master.’

‘Thank you, Ada. Good night.’

I washed and put on the nightdress Madam had bought me at Badger’s, and prayed by the side of the bed for the souls of Master Phil and Mama.

‘Dear Lord, make Mama rest now, and give Master Phil peace from the war.’

It was when I was reading my Bible verse for the day that I heard Master’s footsteps, not going upstairs but rather heading into the kitchen. Maybe he wanted a drink? Some tea? I put my feet into slippers, ready to go and help him, but the footsteps continued beyond the kitchen, along the corridor, and stopped outside the room my mother Miriam and I had shared since I was six years old.

I waited.

The steps did not continue. He must be ill. He must be worried about having to wake me up. Should I go out to him?

A light tap sounded on the door.

I rushed over and pulled it open. ‘Master,’ I said. ‘Do you need me, sir?’ The curtains billowed at the window in the sudden draught.

‘Ada,’ Master said.

Master didn’t often look at me, but he was looking at me now. I thought how tired he had become since young Master Phil had died, how grey and thin his hair was, how faded his eyes were. He was still in his suit and he was fingering the gold chain on his waistcoat.

‘Ada?’ he said again and looked beyond me into the room as if he hadn’t seen it before. He reached out the hand that was not fiddling with his waistcoat and put it on my shoulder.

‘What can I do, sir? Do you need some tea?’

But he didn’t seem to hear and his hand stayed on my shoulder. I could feel its warmth. I could feel his fingers tightening through the material of my nightdress. This was different from the way young Master Phil had touched me.

I stepped backwards. His hand fell from my shoulder. We stared at each other, the Master and I.

There had been a young man once, on Adderley Street, when I was taking Madam’s letters to the post office, who’d looked at me in the same way. Who’d looked at me as if I could truly be called pretty. He said his name was Jacob Mfengu and he asked me mine. He was well dressed and polite and he worked at the Cradock butcher’s and often saw me going down the street. He said he wanted to call on me if my father would allow. I said I had no father but that he could speak to my mother. He nodded eagerly and said he would and we shook hands and his touch made me feel hot like the Master’s hand was making me feel hot now. I waited and hoped but he never called and when I was brave enough to go into the butcher’s and ask for him by name, the butcher said he’d left suddenly to go back to his family in the Transkei.

The Master stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. And he came towards me where I stood in front of the bed and this time put both hands on my shoulders. The hotness grew.

I began to shake. He must have felt it, for he said, ‘I won’t hurt you, Ada.’

He reached down and untied the top of my nightgown. I didn’t think to protest. After all, who was I to refuse the Master who had cared for my mother Miriam and me? How could I refuse someone who had given me a home and food and the gift of music? Who had paid for the burial of my mother?

How could I say that I waited for a young man who had once pressed my hand on Adderley Street, but had never returned?

How could I say that it was Madam’s face that I saw as I looked at him? I reached down and pulled the nightdress over my head and stood before him, naked.

The colonel declares himself in love with me, he wishes to marry me. ‘Stay on board, Cath,’ he urges. ‘Come with me to India. We’ll marry as soon as we dock.’

And I could if I wished. For he is charming and considerate and not a rake, and he knows my grown-up heart better, I daresay, than does Edward. I confess I am more than a little in love with him …

But how can I?

How can I abandon Edward, who has worked so diligently to provide a home for me – even a piano?