The Housemaid's Daughter (10 page)

‘So you must play piano, Ada,’ she commanded. ‘Play for your Madam and Master and for your mama. Then there will be life in that place!’

And so I did. Every morning it was my scales rather than Madam’s that rushed through the house and down the garden. Every evening it was my lively scherzos that broke the silence while Master read and Madam pretended to do so, and Mama crocheted in her chair by the window. Just as I had learnt that musical notes could say different things to the heart depending on their sequence and their length, I now learnt that musical notes could speak to the body in ways I had never understood before. My tunes, echoing through the quiet, finally stilled Madam’s hands in her lap.

Once, the doctor who had promised that Master Phil was cured, came to see Madam and Master and stared in surprise when he saw it was I, and not Madam, who was playing.

‘Ada is wonderfully talented,’ said Madam with a kind touch on my arm as I made to slip away. ‘More talented than any of my students at school.’ She cast a quick glance at Master as she spoke, and I remembered Master not being keen on me going to school because of trouble later on.

‘How are you both managing?’ I heard the doctor say as I left. I didn’t wait to hear their replies. I knew that whatever Madam said, it would not be the truth. Even though she now wore again the cream day dresses that spoke of a normal life, the real truth lay inside her and was not for showing, or speaking about, or writing in her book, or in the letters that I posted once more. The truth lay in what she could never say, in the sentences of love and loss she would carry forever inside her.

And what of me?

My mother Miriam was less strong these days, and needed to turn more of her duties over to me. And with the piano-playing necessary to fill Cradock House, and the trips to town to fetch groceries and post letters, my days were busy from dawn until dark. Such busyness was just as well, for I soon discovered – as Master Phil could have told me – that those who die are never truly gone. Master Phil was beside me everywhere I went. He whispered words in my ear and he watched me with his light eyes as I dusted and polished. Sometimes I even thought I saw him in the garden beneath the red-flowering kaffirboom, standing pale and thin in his soldier’s uniform. ‘Come,’ he seemed to be saying, holding out his hand, ‘let’s take a walk. We’ll go down to the Groot Vis…’

If I had been idle, there would have been no escape from the tears that came along with his voice in my ear, and his light eyes upon me. But my work came in between and there was no time to cry. Instead, I fought to carry the best of him with me – the young Master who had clattered about Cradock House as a boy, the lean soldier who’d hugged me in front of white crowds at the station. When the world confused me, I repeated to myself what he’d taught me about numbers and the Sahara, about banks and cricket, about the nature of war. And also about things that hadn’t needed explanation, like kindness and honesty, whatever the world thought.

And I thanked God for the privilege of knowing him, even though my heart ached. For there was something that I didn’t understand, something that troubles me still, something that perhaps only a minister of the church can explain.

Why did God the Father do what He did?

Why did He choose to take Master Phil so soon? Why did God take Master Phil when there was such a long world ahead of him?

Chapter 13

M
iss Rose got into trouble in Johannesburg. Perhaps that was why she never came to her brother’s funeral?

What sort of trouble I do not know, but trouble it was. My mother said it might have been to do with a young man but there was no baby which is usually what happens when girls get into trouble. It also made me think again of the trouble later on that Master had been afraid of if I went to school. I spent some time wondering if Miss Rose’s trouble and my possible trouble were in any way connected. Perhaps it had something to do with being away from home? Both the mission school where I would have gone, and Johannesburg where Miss Rose was, were far from Cradock House. I began to understand that it might have been the loneliness of being far away that would make Miss Rose – and maybe me – want the comfort of a baby, however shameful that would be without a proper husband.

Mrs Pumile from next door said that the fact of no baby did not mean that there had never been one. Girls in places like Johannesburg, where there were riches in the ground and all manner of doctors above it, would find a way to get rid of a baby that they didn’t want. Mama would let me listen no further to Mrs Pumile, and shooed me away from the hedge through which Mrs Pumile talked. Auntie from the township across the Groot Vis simply shook her head while she scrubbed clothes on the riverbank and said Miss Rose was a bad girl to bring disrespect to her family, especially since Master Phil – God rest his soul – was dead.

After the first anxious telephone calls, and talking in low voices between them – Madam shakily, Master with a frown and tight lips – Madam and Master said very little about Miss Rose. It was as if she was no longer theirs; it was as if God had taken her in life like He had taken young Master Phil in death. I knew this was hard for Madam. She spent a lot of time writing to her sister in Ireland and I once discovered her weeping over her book in the dressing room.

‘What can I do, Madam?’ I asked, reaching a hand towards her but not touching. ‘Is it Miss Rose?’

Madam sat up and felt for her hanky with the lace edges. ‘Such a wilful girl,’ she said, fighting the tears, ‘I really tried…’

I found the word ‘wilful’ in the dictionary that Madam had bought me, and it said headstrong. I decided it was a good way to describe Miss Rose. She followed whatever her own head said and never took account of other people’s head thoughts.

In the matter of talking, it was sad that Madam and Master never spoke of Master Phil at all as a way of forgetting Miss Rose’s troubles. There seemed to be no comfort for them in remembering him, as there was for me. I could think of his laughter and his lost buttons and his light blue eyes and how he showed me numbers. I could remember how handsome he was in his uniform before he went to war. These thoughts became a way to stop the tears for me. Perhaps, though, when it was your own child, the remembering became a torment rather than a comfort. Perhaps any accident to your children was a nightmare so great that the only remedy was to try to forget not only the bad times but the good as well. It certainly seemed to be that way for Madam and Master. Maybe they talked in private together, but there was nothing in the evenings between them as there had once been in the past, just Madam’s hands straying from time to time to Master Phil’s military brooch pinned to her dress.

I knew this from watching through the crack in the door, my heart hurt by the silence. Madam would work on her sewing, although there was very little these days, or write letters to Ireland that I posted in town, or look at a library book. Master would sit behind the
Midland News.
The light of the lamp shone on their bent heads. Sometimes she would play if I was busy with supper and Master asked specially, but her fingers were no longer eager. And when she practised, her scales whipped the piano keys as if she was punishing her fingers for not keeping Master Phil alive and Miss Rose out of trouble.

* * *

A season later, Miss Rose came home for a short holiday. It was the first time she had been back since she left that day in the blue dress from Anstey’s Fashions and the red lipstick from Austen’s the chemist. She was just as beautiful as before, perhaps even more so now she was properly grown up. But there was no sign of a baby, either with her or in the way her body looked. She arrived by train, wearing a yellow dress with a tight waist and a full skirt that stood out about her legs. No one in Cradock had ever seen such a dress – and others like it that she wore – and Miss Rose was followed by people’s eyes wherever she went.

‘Doesn’t it crease?’ asked Madam, fingering the folds of soft material.

‘Ada can iron it for me!’ Miss Rose said with a merry glance at me as I brought tea on to the
stoep
for the family. ‘You still iron, don’t you, Ada?’

‘Of course, Miss Rose,’ I replied. ‘I do all the ironing.’

Miss Rose was not at all changed by her life in Johannesburg. ‘Not on the bed, in the cupboard, Ada!’ she snapped, like she used to, as I brought a pile of clean washing into the bedroom. Then, glancing away from the mirror on the dressing table where she’d been powdering her face, she looked me up and down, noticing the navy dress that Madam encouraged me to wear instead of a uniform, and said, ‘You’ve grown up, haven’t you? Quite pretty for a black girl.’

I caught sight of my face in the mirror – round, smooth, not unattractive – yet Miss Rose’s words, unlike Mrs Pumile’s, carried no compliment. And it was clear she thought I should still be wearing an overall. Anything better would mean that Madam thought of me not as a servant but as a part of the family.

There were soon several young farmers, and one older town councillor, who began to call for Miss Rose while she was at home. She went out dancing or taking rides in their motor cars to nearby farms. I often wondered what she did there, for Miss Rose had never shown an interest in animals or the veld. My mother and Mrs Pumile disapproved.

‘No shame for that trouble in Jo’burg,’ sniffed Mrs Pumile through the hedge, ‘and still no manners.’

‘Out every night, no time for Madam and Master.’ My mother shook her head.

And it was true. Miss Rose spent very little time with her parents. It was almost as if she’d forgotten that she was their last remaining child. Forgotten that she had a duty to be a daughter, a daughter in a house that had lost a son.

But Madam was hopeful, I could tell. She began to talk again in the evenings to Master.

‘She could make a fresh start,’ Madam would say. ‘She just needs a steadying influence.’

‘Rosemary will never settle here,’ Master would mutter and flap his paper in annoyance, ‘not when she’s seen the bright lights.’

But Madam refused to be discouraged and would jump up and give us a Strauss waltz or some lively polka, listening all the while for the sound of Miss Rose’s return with her latest young man and any hopes of a suitable marriage.

But no marriage came to pass. My mother said Miss Rose was too late, as all the good young men had been snapped up soon after the war. Mrs Pumile said Miss Rose had indeed received some offers – she wouldn’t say how she knew this, but maybe it was through her cousin who worked at the bank and had access to extra sugar, and also had very good ears. Anyhow, Miss Rose had refused them all, hoping for better prospects with the older councillor. But the councillor turned out to have a previous understanding with a well-known widow who’d inherited a large farm in the Tarkastad area.

Madam and Master said nothing, but when the veld became crisp with frost in the mornings, they put Miss Rose back on to the train in one of her swirling dresses the colour of kaffirboom blossoms and waved her goodbye once more.

‘I’ll be up with you soon!’ called Madam, holding on to her hat as the smoke billowed round the engine and Miss Rose waved out of the train window.

‘Lovely,’ cried back Miss Rose, her head disappearing inside the carriage before the train had chuffed its way out of the station.

Chapter 14

M
ama died while she was cleaning the silver. The doctor said it was a weak heart, that she wouldn’t have lived longer anyway, even if the clinic had noticed that she had a weak heart. Madam was upset that Mama might have died because she was working too hard, but Master said she should not feel that way because I had already taken over most of Mama’s duties. But Madam still wept into her handkerchief and I guessed it was about losing someone she had known since she came from Ireland. Mama may not have realised it, but she was Madam’s longest friend.

I have put the disappointment of Rosemary’s visit behind me.

But now Miriam is gone …

I could not – and still cannot – bring myself to write about Phil. Sometimes even Ada’s glorious playing overwhelms me and I need to contrive a visit downtown or an urgent task at the furthest extent of the garden.

Miriam knew this, and many other things beside. She would say nothing, but was always there when I returned: faithful, practical, discreet. Such words to describe a life lived for others seem so paltry, so insufficient. Maybe her best legacy is simply Ada herself.

* * *

The doctor was the same one who had delivered me and attended Master Phil, but he was kinder to me this time and put his hand on my shoulder. Master put his hand on my shoulder as well. The doctor leant over my mother’s tiny body and brushed his fingers over her face, closing her eyes. He pulled a white sheet that Madam had given him over her face. Mama had gone. I pray there is a place in heaven where Mama will see Master Phil and walk alongside him like I once did.

Madam took me in her arms and hugged me against her. Her cheeks were wet. She smelled of flowers, not the strong flowers I was used to in our Cradock garden, but gentler ones, maybe like those she’d known from across the sea, those that grew in songs I’d played on the piano as a child. Lilac, primrose …

* * *

It was just as well that Madam didn’t come to Mama’s funeral, because KwaZakhele was not a place for a lady like her and in any case Master said no.

‘I won’t allow it, Cathleen,’ I heard him say as I listened in the corridor through the crack of the door. ‘It’s not safe. And remember, my dear, these people have their own beliefs at a time like this.’

‘But Ada knows none of that,’ broke in Madam in a low voice. ‘Why, she’s taken on our values, our beliefs.’ She stopped and then went on, ‘Have we been wrong to encourage that?’

I peered past the door hinge. Was this another one of those times when I couldn’t understand what Madam was saying? Another time like the one when she said the school was deaf? Master Phil had later explained to me that this was a way of saying that something would never be allowed. At the time, I didn’t tell him that it was my schooling alongside him and Miss Rose at the town school that would never be allowed.