The Housemaid's Daughter (24 page)

I felt the walls of my heart that I had hardened for so long begin to loosen, but I could not weaken yet. There was more to consider than the sin against Madam herself.

‘It is against the law,’ I said. ‘Master could go to jail.’

I saw fleeting surprise on her face, as if she hadn’t expected me to know such things. She shook her head. ‘No he won’t, as long as we’re discreet. Those laws are not pursued in Cradock to the same extent as in larger cities.’ She paused, then added, ‘I have made some inquiries, Ada.’

I sat down on Lindiwe’s bed. A silence fell between us. Dawn kicked her feet. Madam started and half rose from the bed, her hand reaching for her throat, as shouting burst out on the street.

‘There are other matters that lie beyond the law,’ I ventured, ignoring the noise outside. I had never talked to Madam like this. My school teaching and my outcast status in the township had made me brave. In any case, I had nothing left to lose. ‘What of your friends who will see the child and know where she comes from? People will turn away from you,’ I stopped and caught my breath, ‘as they have turned away from me. Even strangers turn away.’

For the first time, I saw her control falter. She lifted a hand and wiped her forehead, shielding her eyes from me in the process. The hut was very hot, I could feel a channel of sweat trickling down Dawn’s back where she sat pressed close to me.

‘If they turn away,’ she murmured, more to herself than me, ‘then they are not worth knowing.’

‘But it is so hard,’ I cried out then, willing her to understand, feeling the heavy air tremble with my words. ‘You don’t know how hard it is! They will make you feel a stranger in your own place, they will never forgive you! And what about Dawn? She belongs nowhere, but in the township there might be other coloureds for her…’

I tried to stop myself shaking. Dawn twisted in my lap and stared up at me, the beginnings of fright puckering her tiny face.

‘Ada, dear—’

‘And I will be in fear of Master,’ I muttered.

There it lay, beneath everything, hidden even from me. Would I ever sleep peacefully again under the same roof as Master? Would Madam, if I was there?

‘Ada!’ came a cheerful call from outside and Lindiwe swung through the doorway with a load of washing on her shoulder. ‘Oh, excuse me, Ma’am.’ She stared at Madam, who had risen to her feet. Lindiwe looked at me and I saw that she had already guessed who this was. She slung the load down on to her bed. I did not know what to say. I should have introduced Lindiwe straight away but my head and my heart were confused and slow.

‘How kind of you to be Ada’s friend,’ said Madam, seeing my distraction and holding out her hand to Lindiwe. ‘I owe you a debt I can never repay. And,’ she paused and glanced at me where I sat, ‘I want you to help persuade Ada to return to work for me.’

‘But Ada has a job already,’ said Lindiwe swiftly, glancing from Madam to me. ‘Ada does important work teaching. She must pass on her cleverness to others.’

‘Yes,’ said Madam, ‘I agree. Ada should continue to teach. But she could live at Cradock House and we would support her and the baby in return for a little light housework when she can manage.’

I stared at Madam. Lindiwe stared at Madam. I could see Lindiwe calculating my good fortune. Wages from school, food and clothing for Dawn and myself, books to read, shelter under a roof that did not leak, water that did not need to be fetched. All for a little work on the side.

But I did not think of those things. I thought simply of the quiet of my old room. Of the smell of jasmine as I hung out the washing. Of Madam’s companionship. Of Mama and young Master Phil who lived most strongly for me within the boundary of Cradock House. I thought of music, I thought of new melodies waiting for me inside the Zimmerman, and old familiar tunes ready to fill my heart once more.

And I thought of temptation. And how the need to belong was a temptation so hard to resist.

* * *

I stood on the iron bridge today after Madam left. I stood upright, not hiding from the cars or the passers-by that might recognise me. There was no need to hide any more. I went there because it was cooler than Lindiwe’s hut and also because it seemed the right place to be. I stood in the centre, with white

Cradock on one side and black Cradock on the other and the brown water of the Groot Vis – brown like Dawn’s skin – creeping beneath me.

What should I do, Master Phil? I whispered. If you were here now, what would you tell me? Master Phil, who had loved me and yet touched me only with respect. Master Phil, who knew the price of skin difference long before I did …

I could turn away now, away from the crowds, away from the women washing on the riverbank, and walk to Cradock House and back into the rest of my old life. Or I could turn the other way, and pin my chances and Dawn’s chances on a township future. With the first I would find the private belonging I sought, with the second I would continue to battle for partial acceptance. With the first I risked exposing Madam to shame and to the law, with the second her life and Master’s life would go on as before.

Master Phil would have told me to write down all the best and worst things about each side and then choose. But some of those things could only be whispered, they could never be written down. And some that could be written down could never be decided upon until they had been tried. Would the presence of Dawn and me tear Madam and Master apart, would it poison the air in Cradock House and taint the memories of all that had gone before? Was it no longer possible for Cradock House to be home?

Where did Master himself stand in all this?

And while I could imagine a life ahead that drew on the best of Cradock House and the best of the township, would it be so for Dawn? Wouldn’t she be better off in the township where the turning away hopefully went no further than an insult or a jostle on the street? She would miss Lindiwe, and Jake’s sudden visits. I would miss them too. If we returned to Cradock House wouldn’t Dawn find herself – wouldn’t I find myself – isolated and perhaps at risk from the law as well?

Lindiwe looked only on the practical side. Apartheid might be building barriers between black and white, but when it came down to survival there was only one way to go.

‘Such an offer!’ she cried when Madam had left, stepping carefully out of the doorway in her beautiful dress, to be escorted away by a young man from St Peter’s Church on Bree Street who had been paid by Madam to find me.

‘You will still be able to teach, and just think,’ Lindiwe flung her powerful arms wide within the cramped hut, ‘you will have your own
kaia,
your own place!’

I nodded. Yes, I would have my own place. Maybe not my old room in the house, because of the laws that stopped whites and blacks living together, but at least the
kaia,
where Dawn could stand in the doorway and watch the water pooling at her feet when there was rain, or listen to it beating through the bony thorn tree on to the tin roof.

‘There will be food!’ Lindiwe went on keenly. ‘And medicine for Dawn if she gets sick. Ada,’ she grasped my hand with her own hard one, rough from washing, ‘the revolution is for angry men like Jake. You have a child to bring up.’

‘But Master is the father of my child!’ I blurted out, the first time I’d said the words since I told the kind doctor and then learnt the burden of inheritance. I looked quickly across at Dawn, but she was fast asleep in her cardboard box. Dawn hadn’t even heard those words from me when I talked to her at bedtime of my inside loneliness. Master is the father of my child. I know it, Madam knows it and now Lindiwe knows it.

‘I know he’s the father.’ Lindiwe glanced at Dawn as well.

‘How do you know?’ Panic rose once more. How could she know? Who else knew? Had someone at the school found out?

‘I guessed it.’ Lindiwe reached for my hand and pressed it gently. ‘And I saw it in your eyes just now. Ada,’ she squeezed my hand again and spoke slowly, ‘this time it won’t be your duty.’

I stared at her and felt the edge of tears.

‘Unless you wish it to be so?’

‘No!’

Yet there it was, even from Lindiwe. The suspicion that I had wanted the Master’s attentions, that I had sought him out to lie with me. Did all women who were taken by force or who succumbed to duty have to bear this? Did Mama face criticism that she had thrown herself at a young man with no thought of the consequences? That it was all her fault? Had such criticism come from Master, said or unsaid, when she was expecting me?

‘Are you afraid he will want you again?’ Lindiwe’s voice was low, for such thoughts could indeed only be whispered.

‘The law will not allow it,’ I said, strangely relieved that such a law existed even though it must cause pain for those who truly loved someone of a different skin. ‘And this time I would be brave. This time I would say no.’

I listened as the word I should have said fell into the quiet space between us. It was cool inside the hut now, but the thatch roof lost its heat silently, unlike the tin roof of Cradock House that kept you awake at night or interrupted your talk with its creaking.

Why didn’t I say no the first time? Why did I believe that duty was my only option? Even though duty and loyalty are often on opposite sides it does not mean that one has to be sacrificed for the other. And if my duty and loyalty had been to God the Father – as it should have been – then I would not have had to make such a sacrifice, I would not have had to choose between Master and Madam. I could have chosen God’s way instead, and He would have told me to say no. Yet even without God’s way, why did it take such time and pain for me to learn that I had the right to say no for myself as well?

Even if saying no might have meant losing my job, my home …

I am learning, I am learning.

I lifted the kettle off the stove and poured tea into two cups for Lindiwe and me. We still had a small amount of milk left and I smelt it to check it was fresh before stirring it into the tea.

‘I think your Madam is a clever woman,’ Lindiwe murmured after a while, sipping from her cup in the gathering darkness. ‘She wouldn’t offer you a place unless she was sure your Master would leave you alone. And the only way she could know this is if they have decided so together.’

I stared at her.

Lindiwe’s insights always took me by surprise. She could read minds and uncover hidden desires like no one I had ever known. She had taken the measure of Madam from just one meeting.

‘It would have been a negotiation?’ I wondered out loud. ‘A negotiation without money … a trade, like offering free washing for flour and sugar.’ I leant forward. ‘But what would Madam use to enforce such a trade?’

‘Why, Ada,’ Lindiwe said with a twist to her smile as she lifted her feet and rested them on a pile of dirty linen, ‘you talked of it just now. She would threaten him with the law!’

I gasped and set down my cup on the earth floor with trembling fingers. ‘Surely it would be too shameful for Madam to do such a thing? If he went to jail she would lose everything, her family, her friends, her place at tea parties—’

‘But she would get sympathy,’ Lindiwe interrupted, ‘whereas your Master would be disgraced forever.’

I got up and went to the doorway. Thin clouds mixed with smoke swam across the face of the moon. From the hut opposite came the sound of a guitar being violently strummed and a voice began to sing off-key.

‘And if they made such an arrangement,’ I turned back, ‘what benefit would it have for Madam?’

‘Your return,’ said Lindiwe simply, ‘with Dawn. This Madam is a fair woman, she feels responsible, she wants to give you and Dawn a better future. And,’ she hesitated and I motioned her to go on, ‘perhaps she’s lonely, as you are.’ She gave me a gentle smile, Lindiwe always knew my heart. ‘And there can be little left between her and your Master now.’

I gazed at Lindiwe, seeing the further loops of cleverness play out in her mind, how she’d calculated the consequences of Madam’s negotiation, how she divined its outcome despite knowing nothing for certain.

At first Edward denied it.

Only when I wept and said the child had his eyes – and the eyes of dear Phil – did he pass a hand over his face and admit his part. He said he would understand if I wished to ask him for a divorce. But we are both too old and settled in Cradock House to throw away what we have built here. Edward is not a bad man, merely misguided and foolish, as I have learnt men can be. And I must confess our regard for one another has always been based on fondness rather than passion, although that is no excuse for his behaviour. Maybe five years apart before marriage is not conducive to success …

Having achieved a tentative accommodation, I allowed some time to pass before telling him my plan.

He is deeply disturbed, but I have been insistent about his – our – responsibility.

He said we put ourselves at risk harbouring a coloured child, and I agreed we would need the inattention of the authorities – not to mention the blind eye of friends – to get by. However, without saying as much, I led him to believe that if he refused to support Ada and her child, or if he behaved towards them in any manner other than the most honourable, then I could not guarantee that his adultery would remain secret.

Tomorrow I go into the township with a young man from St Peter’s who says he knows where Ada and her coloured child are lodging. I pray she will agree.

As yet, I have written nothing of this to Rosemary.

Now that it is almost upon us, I wish I could say I am confident but it isn’t so.

How will Edward react? Will he look upon this child as anything other than the potential agent of his downfall?

Will Ada and Dawn find comfort here or just another form of isolation? Can I ever forgive Edward?

Am I doing the right thing?

Chapter 33

I
 did not write down a list in favour of returning to my old home, and I did not write down a list in opposition to it. When it came to Cradock House, the temptation of food and shelter for Dawn, and music and Madam for me overcame all else. Such advantage clearly outweighed anything opposing the move. And surely God the Father would not have brought Madam to me unless it was part of His plan for me to return? But I am not used to such decisions, or the sensible way to make them, or whether God does test us in the making of such choices.