The Housemaid's Daughter (39 page)

She did not wake.

And although it was wrong of me, although the dead should only be touched by God, I reached out to her cold hands. I tried to warm them with my own, even tried to pry the fingers open – if I could open her fingers then she may wake up, for Mrs Cath’s life is in her fingers – but they remained closed and not even my warmth or my tears could quicken them.

‘Ada?’

I started, and snatched my hands away. It would not do for Miss Rose to see me like this, touching her mother as if I had the right. But it wasn’t Miss Rose, it was Helen, standing in the doorway, in a pair of pink striped pyjamas, her eyes round with growing realisation.

‘She wanted to see you.’ I stumbled to where the girl stood rooted to the spot, for my eyes were blurred with tears and the pressure was heavy in my head. ‘She wanted to see you, you and your mother, before God took her.’

Helen swallowed. ‘Can I look?’

I took her hand and led her to the bed, not too close, but near enough for her to see that apart from the clenched hands, it looked as if her grandmother was simply sleeping. We stood together, Mrs Cath’s grandchild and I. Dawn, I cried inside. You never said goodbye. Helen’s hand remained tucked within mine.

‘Do you believe in God, Ada?’ Her voice wavered.

I freed my hand and touched her hair, golden like the grass that springs from the veld in late summer. Surely the work of God, I used to think, as I walked through its waving tendrils with Dawn in my arms.

‘I try to serve Him. Child,’ I drew her away from the deathbed, it was not the memory of Mrs Cath I wished her to keep, ‘your granny served Him the best of anyone I know.’

A door opened along the passage.

‘What is it? What’s the matter – oh, no.’

Miss Rose rushed into the room, belting her silk dressing gown. Her face, without its usual powder and paint, looked older. Helen dropped my hand.

‘Get out, Helen. This is not for you to see. Why did you let her in here, Ada?’ Miss Rose rounded on me.

‘She wished to say goodbye, Miss Rose.’

Helen, with a last agonised look, turned away and left the room. I waited, halfway to the door. I wondered if Miss Rose could also smell her mother’s scent, that faint trace of Irish cottage flowers that she must have sprayed on herself before she fell asleep for the last time. How comforting to breathe a familiar fragrance! If only I could have played for her as well. Our beloved Chopin. The
Raindrop
…

Miss Rose bent over her mother, and sighed. I picked up the cup and wiped the spilled tea with a tissue, and searched for some grief in her face, but it was hard to find. Tears are not the only way to show grief – this I know, for my mama never cried over Phil and yet mourned him deeply – but there was nothing in Miss Rose’s face or in her body that suggested sadness.

‘Go and call the doctor. Quickly. And the minister. I don’t know who’s at St Peter’s these days.’

‘Yes, Miss Rose. God be with you, Miss Rose. I’m sorry for your loss.’

She lifted her slate eyes and looked at me over the body of her mother.

‘Thank you, Ada. Now go do as I say.’

* * *

I forced myself down Bree Street in the filmy morning light. The Great Flood clean-up still continued. Bulldozers growled through the wrecked houses, lifting great heaps of brick and branches in their jaws and setting them down into waiting dumper trucks. To my right the river ran in plain view because the mimosas and gums that used to dig for water on its banks were gone.

Mr Dumise must be told. Lindiwe must be told. Then I must hurry back, for there would be food to prepare for those calling to pay their respects, and washing to be done. And Dawn …

Miss Rose was determined that the funeral should take place without delay. ‘It’s Helen,’ Miss Rose said, with a toss of the head. ‘Helen needs to get back to school.’

St Peter’s Church sat alone above the debris, its thick stone walls intact but its graveyard a mass of overturned headstones and sagging hedges. The minister said it would be ready for the service. He said there was no flood damage inside, and that they would lay planks across the devastated graveyard for the congregation to walk over.

The house with the tap that had given me water when I stumbled home from jail was gone, swept away. So, too, the place where a dog had barked at me and its owner had leant out of the window, fearing an intruder. The jail was still standing but a greasy line scarred the walls, reaching up towards a row of shallow windows, one of which was so recently mine. Two policemen swivelled out of the doorway, carrying cardboard boxes of papers. They looked across at me, wondering why I was lingering in front of a place that could snatch blacks so easily. I pushed on towards the township and St James School. I prayed there would be no roadblocks today, no Pass-checking to slow me down, no van on a corner waiting for me.

Since the floods, our students had joined those at St James to make a defiant throng. Wherever you looked, youngsters huddled and gathered stones. Rumours flew of uprisings in Soweto driven by young people like themselves, taking on the might of the apartheid state. The fact that St James had been spared – both by the floods and by the council bulldozers – gave them fresh voice.

‘
Amandla!
’ they roared in their hundreds. The waters have spoken! A new flood has begun! Despite Rev. Calata’s once tight discipline, despite Mr Dumise’s untiring efforts, despite the encircling police, St James School was beyond anyone’s control.

Into this chaos I came on the morning my beloved Mrs Cath died. Mr Dumise had set up a table in a corridor to handle the affairs of his original students, and it was towards this that I pushed my way.

‘Mrs Harrington has died.’ I shook his arm in the jammed corridor. One of my pupils waved at me. A group of girls jived to their own clapping rhythm. Dawn, I thought, I have to find where you’re dancing. I have to tell you in time for the funeral …

‘What?’ Mr Dumise bent his grey head above the frayed shirt collar closer to mine. A bell rang. No one took any particular notice.

‘Mrs Harrington.’ I cupped my fingers towards his ear. ‘She has died. I am needed to help with the funeral, sir.’

‘I’m sorry, Ada,’ he said, for I have abandoned Mary Hanembe; everyone now knows me as Ada. There is nothing to be gained with a false name any more. I have no secrets any more.

‘We will pray for you. Mrs Harrington was a fine woman.’

‘Yes, sir.’ I tightened my face to stop the tears. ‘I will get back as soon as I can.’

Young bodies crowded round me, raggedly dressed, mostly barefoot. The Groot Vis might not have raged through the township as it raged through Bree Street, but the rain swept away the simplest possessions not moved to higher ground. And it delivered hacking coughs to these youngsters forced to take classes outside on damp ground.

‘Miss! Miss, when is our lesson, Miss?’

‘She was proud of you, Ada,’ he called over their heads. Dina, overhearing us – for Dina always contrived to be close to the latest news – put her arm round me.

‘Now you must come back to the township,’ she shouted in my ear. ‘We need you here. But I know she was good to you,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t think such white kindness existed.’

The bell rang again, this time for longer.

The youngsters reluctantly packed up their games and their scheming, and made for the classrooms or the bare earth outside that served as a substitute. Snatches of ANC talk, the new black consciousness, pan-Africanism, the latest protest vocabulary swirled about me like the flood waters so recently departed. The eyes of the policemen in their vans followed me as I walked out of the school gates. There was a larger yellow vehicle, called a Casspir, parked a little further down the road. Casspirs usually carry soldiers, not police. Soldiers in khaki uniforms with helmets and long guns. Phil would have recognised them. He would have been astonished to see them here, for Phil was only used to soldiers fighting wars far from home. Soldiers don’t usually make war on their own people.

I walked to Lindiwe’s brick house in Lingelihle. The new houses had filled up since I was last here. A new ‘Township Bach’ was growing from the cries and hammerings and snatches of song. Even a few thin dogs had attached themselves to the place.

I found Lindiwe mixing cement in her tiny yard.

‘There are holes in the walls,’ she muttered. ‘How can they build houses with holes in the walls? Ada – what’s happened?’ She wiped her hands on her frayed dress and hurried to greet me.

‘It’s Mrs Cath,’ I said, the tears falling.

‘Oh, Ada.’ Lindiwe wrapped me in her powerful arms.

She made tea in her new house for me. There was no running water yet, so it still meant a trip to the standpipe every day. And there was no electricity, although it had been promised. Even so, I think Lindiwe is pleased with her new place, although it is colder than her old hut.

The tea helped. We did not talk much. There wasn’t a lot to say. Lindiwe will attend the funeral. She will stand at the back with Mrs Pumile.

‘I don’t believe in God,’ she said gently. ‘But if He is there, I will ask Him to bless Mrs Cath for what she did for you and Dawn.’

* * *

I tried to find Dawn, but the phone number that she’d given me after her arrival did not work. Instead, it played a long, hard middle C in my ear. So I went down to the post office and sent a telegram to the address she wrote on her last letter:
Mrs Cath died. Funeral Friday. Try come home. Love Mama.

Wednesday and Thursday came and went but there was no message from Dawn. My arm was stiff, and its stiffness spread down my left leg. My head gave me no rest.

‘Is it possible to wait until next week for Madam’s funeral?’ I asked Miss Rose, where she sat in Mrs Cath’s bedroom, sorting through her mother’s jewellery. Phil’s military brooch, the pearls she wore with the soft cream day dresses before the war …

It was not just me who wanted it delayed. Many of Mrs Cath’s farming friends were unable to be in town at such short notice. The Colletts were shearing sheep, the Van Der Walts were in Port Elizabeth at a farm equipment auction.

‘We can’t do this for your convenience,’ retorted Miss Rose, rifling through an embroidered pouch with impatient fingers. ‘I’ve told you already, it’s so I can get Helen back to school in Jo’burg. The arrangements must suit the family first.’

I waited for a moment until Miss Rose looked up at me.

‘Dawn is family too, Miss Rose.’

‘How dare you?’ she hissed, springing up and coming towards me. ‘My father would have lived longer if you hadn’t—’ She broke off, her face inches from mine, her eyes marbled with venom.

‘Mrs Cath loved Dawn like her own.’

‘I don’t care,’ she spat. ‘I’m not having this funeral becoming a spectacle.’ She turned and flung herself down at the dressing table.

After this outburst, I left it for a day before asking Miss Rose how she wished to arrange the seating in church.

‘Where do you want me to sit, Miss Rose?’ I asked, as I stood in the kitchen, mixing ingredients for a lemon loaf cake. We were constantly besieged with visitors. I had been up at first light, baking. Helen was out picking lemons for the topping.

It was not only Miss Rose who might want me in a less prominent position. Despite the applause from my recital at Mrs Cath’s school, despite the knowledge that Mrs Cath valued me, my spell in jail – and the reason for it – had annoyed some of Mrs Cath’s friends, who felt I’d used her, and banked on her rescuing me, which of course she did. I’m not sure how much of this Miss Rose knew.

In any event I could give thanks for Mrs Cath’s life and pray for her soul just as easily from the back of the church, where the cold eye of the congregation would not find me.

‘You must sit behind us,’ Miss Rose replied, not looking up from the list in her hand. ‘And don’t forget, I want the best tea set used for afterwards.’

For all her short temper, I could see that Miss Rose was well organised. And she’d always been good at giving orders. I wondered why she had not found work that would pay her to exercise such skills.

‘Will you sit with us, Ada?’ came Helen’s soft voice. I turned to her. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, the lemons in her hands.

Miss Rose sighed and flicked a hostile glance towards me.

I reached for the eggs and cracked them one at a time into the mixing bowl. ‘If your mother wishes it.’

Miss Rose shrugged. ‘Very well.’

And so it was that I took my seat in the front pew of St Peter’s Church, with the organ playing the music I’d selected – Ada will choose the music, Miss Rose ordered – and felt the breath of the white congregation on my neck, and prayed that Mrs Cath would forgive Dawn for not being there.

Lindiwe came to the funeral. She sat with Mrs Pumile in the back row, for the minister at St Peter’s was a man who did not believe in the laws on skin difference, and would not allow his congregation to practise them within the church walls. Lindiwe does not have smart clothes, so she looked quite ragged in her cement-stained dress, and attracted many glances. Mrs Pumile was already known to the congregation from the previous funerals. She carried her shiny black handbag and wore her Sunday hat and sang with gusto.

‘Your Madam was a lovely Madam. Never mean,’ she sniffed to me before I went in. ‘Not like others I know.’

It was a service that was now familiar. Even so, I forced myself to listen to each word that was spoken, and identify each note that the organ played, and separate each flower in the arrangement that stood near the pulpit. Mrs Cath’s favourite pink roses, wands of creamy jasmine, a fragile minor key, a gentle pianissimo … All these things were necessary to stop the tears.

‘We have been through dark times,’ intoned the minister, his robe smooth and well ironed. ‘Our town was nearly destroyed. But out of destruction can come hope.’

I didn’t want to cry as I’d cried for my dearest Phil. Back then, my tears had been for the waste of a life still to be lived, and a love still to be found – or so I thought. Mrs Cath, on the other hand, had led a long and worthy life. It should be a cause for celebration.