The Housemaid's Daughter (34 page)

They say the new houses in Lingelihle will be made of brick and that new schools will be built and that life will be better and cleaner in the new place, although it is further to walk to town, and the land is higher and the winter winds will sweep colder across it than they did over the old townships. They say it is the law.

There are meetings in the St James School hall where the paint peels from the walls and people wonder, if there is a shortage of paint already, how will there be enough paint for new buildings? There is much talk about compensation for those who will lose their homes, however poor they may be. I know about compensation. It’s supposed to be a payment for loss, like Jake said Mrs Cath’s generosity to me was a payment for the loss of Cradock House when I left with Dawn growing inside me. But I know that payment in money can never replace what is lost from the heart. Lindiwe’s huts may have been simple but they were built from her own muscle and effort, and they sat amongst people she knew and who knew her, and their parents and grandparents before them. No compensation can replace that.

‘I don’t want to leave my father’s house,’ said Veronica, my fellow teacher who kept chickens and was nervous of Pass-burning. ‘Then the ancestors won’t know where I am.’

And then there was the matter of rent.

‘You’ll be in better houses than you have now,’ insisted the Superintendent at one such meeting. And he goes everywhere with a police escort. Today they stand legs astride, arms behind their backs, truncheons clasped in their fists. Two town councillors sit by the side of the Superintendent. They look frightened, they reach for books in their briefcases and page through them often.

‘Tell us what the rents are,’ a man calls.

The Superintendent consults his notes. ‘Three rand sixty-eight for two-roomed houses, four rand thirty-nine for four roomed.’

There are gasps, and then muttering around the hall. The muttering grows to a rumble.

‘But we pay one rand fifty-five now, so why should we move?’ shout several voices over the uproar.

‘What about compensation?’ someone else yells.

People glance at one another and then turn round to watch the police at the back of the hall. How far will they let this go? I see there are two more policemen now, they’ve come in quietly. They don’t wear uniforms but they carry cameras. They are photographing the audience, especially those that call out. My head is still sore. It aches when I’m anxious.

‘The houses will be better than what you have. And we will try for compensation.’

‘There must be compensation.’ Lindiwe gets to her feet. Lindiwe’s English is very good now. Lindiwe knows about compensation. The cameras click, I lower my face.

‘No move!’ come shouts from a wilder section of the audience, taken up by the rest. ‘No move, no move!’ Feet drum on the floor, but not in the way of applause. Several elderly residents get up and leave, covering their faces with their hands. The Superintendent looks towards the uniformed policemen, who begin to patrol across the back of the hall, swinging their truncheons lightly.

It is the edge of chaos.

If Rev. Calata had been at the meeting, he would have found a way to calm the crowd and get what they wanted by quieter means. Rev. Calata believes in negotiation. And there is indeed a negotiation to be made. After all, if the town council wants blacks out of sight then it must pay them or reward them in some way to bring this about. But Rev. Calata has been banned, which means he can’t attend public meetings and he can’t leave his house without a policeman watching him. This is the way it is. Even his picture has been removed from its place near the stage, leaving a pale square on the wall where it once hung. So it is up to people like Lindiwe to stand up for what they believe is right.

And me?

I glance about. Some people recognise me but some will not do so, for I am the woman who sinned with a white man, and the white man is the enemy. I’m a target, particularly as I don’t live in the township. People get beaten for not showing solidarity. It’s called black-on-black violence. And I’m also easy prey for the white police. They know who I am, they know my sin, they can arrest me whenever they wish. Be careful, I say to myself. There is no right side in this sort of war.

Yet I’m ashamed of myself for not standing up, I have good enough English and a good enough brain to handle such a negotiation.

‘They promised compensation,’ Lindiwe insisted later, as we pushed back to her hut through the bad-tempered crowd. I felt for the sharpened bicycle spoke in my pocket. Sirens blared. Impatient young men shouted ‘
Amandla!
’ and reached for missiles among the rubbish on the side of the road. Bricks began to whizz over our heads towards an approaching police van. The crowd surged, dust flew up and choked our throats. My head pounded. Lindiwe grabbed my hand. From behind us rose the frenzied barking of police dogs. We began to run.

‘I worked hard for my huts,’ Lindiwe panted. ‘I won’t move till I get it!’

All night the crowds rampaged through the streets, pursued by the police and their crazed dogs. All night Lindiwe and I lay awake in the darkness of her hut, flinching when the chase came close … and the shouts, heavy boots and barking dogs thundered by in a wild staccato. Lindiwe kept one hand on her buckets of water, kept full since her first hut was burnt down. Only when the gold of sunrise quivered on the horizon did the madness abate.

The township was quiet that day. Quiet like after a storm has passed, or when waiting for a new one to arrive. For the first time, I am glad that Dawn is not here.

Chapter 45

I
n my mind I live with Dawn. I wake with her in the grey morning light, I see her as she searches for work among the thousands who’ve come to find their future among the gold mines, and I watch over her when night comes and the stars are hidden by smoke. Perhaps it is the same for all of us. Perhaps we all live with others, especially those we love. I once lived with Phil, I once heard the whine of bullets over his head, I once felt the sand of Sidi Rezegh beneath his fingernails, I sometimes imagine him and Dawn and me as a family.

Since Master’s death, I’ve come to understand that this kind of imagining is also strong for Mrs Cath. When I am in the township she imagines what I am doing and puts herself in my place as a teacher. When I return home she wants to know what each day has brought. Mrs Cath grasps both sides of my divided life, especially the side that few whites see. And as the fires burn and the struggle rages, she worries for me, and she worries for Dawn whose days neither of us can truly know.

‘When will she come back, Ada? She’d be safer here than in Jo’burg…’ She touches a photograph of a laughing toddler Dawn that now hangs on the kitchen wall since there is no longer any need to hide such things from Master.

I have prepared an answer for this.

‘She wants to be where there are more coloureds, Mrs Cath.’

We never speak of the coming together of Master’s death and Dawn’s departure. We never voice the thought that if she’d waited one more day – if I’d waited one more day instead of rushing into the township – such a leaving might never have happened. But I know in my heart that Dawn was intent on going. If not then, then soon after. This is the answer that I cannot give to Mrs Cath. I cannot tell her that Dawn, like Miss Rose, was seduced by a Johannesburg future.

I also can’t tell Mrs Cath that Dawn seems to change her address often, that she doesn’t appear to have found a job yet, that her letters are filled with stories of bright lights rather than steady work. I don’t tell her that Dawn appears to be following the same brittle path as Miss Rose. In another world, Miss Rose – Dawn’s sister, after all – might have helped her find a job, or a place to stay. But Miss Rose and my daughter are as far apart as Ireland is from Cradock, even though they live beneath the same arc of southern sky.

‘Dawn will find her way,’ Lindiwe says, encouragingly, as we drink tea together. ‘Give her time.’

While I have no influence on Dawn’s future, I have tried to encourage Mrs Cath to reclaim hers: her white life, and the friends who are part of it. After all, the law has turned its attention elsewhere, and with Dawn gone as well, Mrs Cath’s friends have no reason to shy away. The evidence of mixed blood is gone. And it is true that they have tried. They invite her to tea parties and music evenings, they include her in bridge afternoons and farm visits, they call for her in their cars and take her for drives on to the open Karoo plains. She returns with sprays of papery everlastings and bags of purple figs. But I can tell she is unsatisfied. Their company does not fill her.

‘A marvellous day, Ada,’ she will say, laying aside her hat and seating herself at the piano. ‘The Colletts are delightful.’ Then it will be Mozart, but her fingers are distracted, and she will miss a couple of difficult passages and stop midway, and start on something else and that will go no better and then she’ll say that she is tired and will rather play tomorrow.

Although there is much to be grateful for here in Cradock House, there is a curious limbo in my life.

I thought that with Edward gone I would feel more free. And I do, in some ways, for I can visit whom I chose, I can express myself freely – within reason.

But this country that I have come to love holds me in its vice. Because of apartheid, travel abroad has become difficult and expensive. I still dream that I might go back to Ireland for a visit. It has been more than fifty years since I saw the curl of the waves on the pebbles in Bannock cove. Fifty years since I heard the tripping melody of the stream over the cliffs. I long to embrace the families of my dear sister Ada and my brother Eamon …

But they say one should never return to one’s birthplace after a long absence. Too much will have changed. So let me rather rejoice in my adopted country, for all its agonies. Let me celebrate the devotion of, first, Miriam, and then Ada and Dawn. They are indeed my family, as I wrote in my diary so many years ago.

I know that I am struggling to fit all these pieces of my divided life into any sort of order, any sort of understanding: Master’s death, Dawn’s leaving, Mrs Cath’s restlessness, the forced removal of my school, the destruction of the townships – these things have come upon me too suddenly. Perhaps it is because my head still aches, even though my arm is healed and no longer bothers me when I’m at the piano. Perhaps my head is weary.

Perhaps this is why I am struggling to follow the voice echoing in my mind, a voice telling me it is time to act. Dawn is not here to require my protection, Master is not here to trouble the law, the police have not come to arrest me. I am free – but afraid of lifting my head after years of seeking the shadows. But it is time to step forward. For if the barriers between black and white Cradock could be broken without the need for violence – then surely I must play my part.

What would Phil say? Would he encourage me to be brave, as I once encouraged him? But this is not a war like the one he fought. There are no bombs dropping suddenly from the sky, there are no tanks crushing men into the desert sand. It is a war of hunger and casual cruelty, a war of suffocation by rules, a war of gradual, creeping death.

In the end, all wars come down to personal survival, and in this I have a choice. Should I help others, or should I save myself ?

* * *

I have seen the new township and the new houses. They are indeed better, but they are also far away from the centre of Cradock. Even so, many people are willing to move; many hope for a better future even though their ancestors will have to search to find them in such a new place. Those who drive the struggle say the removals are about whites exercising power, and they’re right. But if the houses are solid and the schools better equipped – and ways found to teach youngsters the truth – then each day might be a little healthier than the one that has gone before. For most people, that may be enough.

I have prayed to God for many years to tell me what is fair, and whether skins should be free to mix after all. If this is so – and apartheid is wrong – then is war the only answer? And does the struggle and the coming revolution have His blessing? The minister on the
koppie
thought so, but I’ve never heard God’s answer for myself, and I’ve never known His will.

I’ve never known if He favours another way apart from war. Until now. It was surely His voice that I heard in my ear at the meeting at St James?

‘You know English, Ada. You know about negotiation. This is my plan for you. This is why I have saved you. Not to live through your child, whose path you cannot influence any longer. Not to hide yourself in Cradock House, with only the solace of your music. But to reach out and make a difference.’

The name of the new township, Lingelihle, means ‘good effort’.

Surely I must try.

Chapter 46

I
 have discovered that there is more money in my bank book than I expected from my wages as a teacher. I asked Mrs Cath about this and she said she had not stopped paying me even though the arrangement was that I only receive board and lodging at Cradock House.

‘Why, it’s for your future, Ada,’ she said, looking up from the sweet-smelling roses she was arranging on the mantelpiece. ‘For when Edward and I are no longer here. It’s your pension.’

I have not thought about what will happen when Mrs Cath is gone, but I have heard of a pension. I’ve read about it in the newspaper. White people talk a lot about pensions. I suspect it is one of those things for a white future only – like the gold they wish to keep for themselves.

Mrs Cath’s generosity means I have more money than I need, yet I am careful to save as much as I can. I send money to Dawn and I buy myself a new shirt from time to time but mostly the money rests in the bank on its own.

‘You must keep some aside,’ my fellow teacher, Sipho, warned, wagging his pencil at me, ‘for if you get sick. Medicine is very expensive. And where will you live when you get old?’

This I know. For all its sturdy foundations, Cradock House might not live forever, or it might pass to a new family that have no interest in me. There is nothing certain in this world. The bank must hold enough money to keep me and Dawn safe on this earth until God calls us. But even so, that still leaves some over.