The Housemaid's Daughter (29 page)

‘Ada?’

I heard a cry from outside and then Mrs Cath was there, hair undone from her bun, dressing gown with its embroidered flowers trailing about her bare feet. She had run out of the house without her slippers. Her feet must be icy, for it was a winter night with the chance of frost. In the background I heard the kitchen door slam.

‘What do you think you’re doing!’ she gasped at the men.

Taking advantage of their distraction, I flung myself over Dawn’s body, shielding her with my own, and scrabbled beneath the mattress. If I’d been in the township, if I’d been in Lindiwe’s hut, the sharpened bicycle spoke would be in my hands—

But it wasn’t.

I forgot it lived across the room in a drawer with my Pass, ready to go into the township each day. I thought we were safe in the
kaia,
I thought there was no need for such a weapon by my bed.

Could I still reach it? Could I push past the two men? Was it a time for a cool head or a time for fighting back?

The heat rose in my face. My body tensed, ready to spring.

But Mrs Cath was there in her bare feet and her soft gown, Mrs Cath who had no knowledge of bicycle spokes and their desperate uses. I should not bring the blood of the township here to stain my floor unless there was no other choice.

The first man twisted round, his torch swinging wildly. ‘Who’s the father of the kid?’ he demanded.

Mrs Cath hesitated.

The bony thorn tree creaked and scraped against the
kaia
roof. Mrs Cath’s eyes were black in the shadowed room. They flicked to me, then to Dawn, then back to the men, the second of whom was smiling in a way that held no humour.

‘Ada!’ Mrs Pumile’s voice shrieked through the hedge. ‘Ada?’

The men exchanged glances, annoyed at the possibility of further interruption.

‘I don’t know who the father is, Sergeant.’ Mrs Cath drew herself up and spoke with slow assurance. ‘It is of no concern to us. Now,’ she drew breath and went on calmly, ‘my husband is a member of the town council. He is ill at the moment, otherwise he’d be here. If you give me your names, please, he will follow this up with your superiors.’

The policemen looked at each other. This talk of superiors was not what they wanted to hear. They were used to being obeyed – even if it was with resentment – not deflected with smooth talk of superiors. The first man, who seemed to be in charge yet always looked across at his colleague for approval, swung his torch again around the walls, as if there were other pale-skinned children to be flushed out.

I felt my nails biting into my palms as I sifted Mrs Cath’s lies, and wondered how it is that women can lie so easily. And I realise that it is because we have borne children, and once you have done so, a child’s life is worth far more than the telling of a few untruths.

‘We had a report,’ said the first man sulkily, lowering his torch, ‘that there was a case of immorality here.’

Mrs Cath moved around the two men and extended an arm graciously, gesturing for them to leave, as if all they had ever been were guests at a tea party who’d stayed a little too long. ‘There must have been some mistake. I’m sure my husband will not press charges. You were only doing your duty.’

The first man shrugged and turned his torch off. The
kaia
plunged back into darkness, Dawn’s pale skin and furious eyes disappeared into the night. Mrs Cath edged towards the door, still holding out her arm for them to leave. The second man hesitated, watching me coldly.

‘Come on,’ said his partner.

The second man followed, deliberately swiping his truncheon on the door frame as he left. The blow splintered the wood and I felt Dawn shrink back on to the bed. Mrs Cath ignored it and nodded formally to me. ‘Good night, Ada.’

And I realised that Mrs Cath’s lies had not only driven the policemen away and saved us from arrest this night, they had also saved Dawn from learning what we’d concealed from her so far: that her father was not some unknown man who took me by force – as I think she believed – but the Master.

* * *

Dawn was awake before I was the next morning. She had quickly fallen asleep after the men left – the young live only for the moment – whereas I lay for hours in the pressing darkness, hearing the wind worry the door within its damaged frame, and reaching over to touch her every so often to make sure she was still there. It was only as first light began to creep around the curtains that a fitful sleep came.

‘Who is my father, Mama?’

I roused myself and sat up. She was on the side of the bed, arms wrapped round her knees, light eyes meeting mine in accusation. Her words wheeled about us within the
kaia,
like the torch of the men chasing around the walls.

Who is my father?

And who is mine? I wanted to ask. She is asking me as I asked my mama. I have given up knowing but it haunts me still. Is ignorance worse than knowledge? Will Dawn find more comfort in knowing, for all the shame it might bring? At least my unknown father and I shared the same skin.

Dawn’s eyes – light as Master Phil’s – never wavered from mine. In their depths I saw the conflicting sides of my child: the biddable one at Cradock House, the wild girl of the township. I had thought it was only her skin that goaded her on, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe this second Dawn was forever in violent, unknowing escape from her father. Maybe it was the secret of his identity that drove her away from me and from white Cradock, and towards the explosive streets. For driven away she increasingly was. I feared where it might end.

‘Ada?’ There was a knock on the door.

I nodded to Dawn and she went to open it, picking her way over a splinter of wood from the truncheon blow of the night. Mrs Cath had not slept either, I could see that. Her green eyes were swollen, her hair fell about her face in a cloud as it had once done at the time of Master Phil and the apricots. She reached for Dawn straight away and embraced her. I watched as Dawn’s dark head lay for a moment against Mrs Cath’s shoulder, like young Master Phil’s had lain as a sick child and as a tormented man.

What should I say, Phil? I asked him, as Mrs Cath whispered words of comfort to my daughter. And what would we say if Dawn was your child and not Master’s? But if that was so, then surely we would have found a place where we’d be welcome despite the difference in skin between all three of us? Perhaps in Ireland, where you once said we might go … Or is such a place unheard of in the world? And such a skin discrepancy never able to be overcome?

Mrs Cath had not even dressed before coming out to see Dawn and me. Mrs Cath normally never appeared downstairs in her nightclothes.

‘I’m so sorry, Ada,’ she said hoarsely, meeting my gaze over Dawn’s head. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Will they come back?’ Dawn asked, breaking free of Mrs Cath’s embrace. She was tall now, taller than me, but not as tall as Mrs Cath yet. In a few years she would be a woman, a beautiful brown woman.

Mrs Cath gathered herself after Dawn’s pulling away, and chose her words carefully. ‘I don’t think so, Dawn. I will ask Edward to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

I opened my mouth to protest – surely if Master went to the police it would make matters worse?

‘Why did they come?’ Dawn persisted, looking first at me then at Mrs Cath. ‘Did they think they would find my father here?’

‘Oh no, child,’ I rushed in, before her words could gain any import from the pause between Mrs Cath and me. ‘It was a mistake, just as Mrs Cath said.’

My reply hung on the air, too swift in denial, too ready with the lie.

‘You don’t want to tell me, do you?’

I stared at her, this lovely, fierce girl with the dancing feet that had somehow sprung from Master and me, and I could not tell her. Not now. Perhaps not ever. If I told her, everything that we had built for her at Cradock House would collapse into the brown earth. She would be angry with Master, she would be hurt for the sake of Mrs Cath, she would disapprove of me for not having had the strength to say no. For Dawn, there would never have been a conflict between duty and loyalty. She would have made her choice of her own free will; she would have shut the door on Master if she so wished. Even as a girl, my daughter has the strength and determination of a grown woman.

‘I can’t tell you,’ I said firmly over my quaking heart, reaching for my own hard-won township strength. ‘There are some things that are best left alone. I must answer to God the Father for what I’ve done.’

I held myself straight, as I’d done when I showed her pale face to Mr Dumise and to Silas on the day she was born.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Dawn shrugged. She turned away to pick up the sack she used for her school books.

‘What do you mean, Dawn?’ Mrs Cath spoke then, clasping her hands so that the knuckles showed white.

‘I can always go and live in the township.’ She lifted the sack over her shoulder. ‘Then there’ll be no one for them to find when they come looking for
hotnots
again.’

Chapter 39

I
 fear that God may become angry with me. So far, He has allowed me to go unpunished for my sin provided I raised my daughter in a godly way. This was Lindiwe’s view, when she first comforted me over Dawn: God will forgive you if you serve Him through the child. God will keep you safe so that you can keep the child safe for His later purposes. And over the years – like when Dawn was ill, like when Mrs Cath found me in the township – I believed that God was indeed protecting me, offering me a future in order that I should protect His child. This was God’s plan.

But now Dawn sought to leave my protection. She wished to take her chances beyond my ability to keep her safe. Did that mean that God would now have no further use for me? Or had I raised her well enough to be granted His long-lasting forgiveness?

We have fixed the
kaia
door frame. Mrs Cath said she was sure we would have no further night visits. Master said nothing, not at breakfast when I saw him that morning, not when he walked past me in the kitchen later that day, not when I laid a pile of folded washing in the linen cupboard opposite his open study door. It was as if it had never happened. Like his lying with me had never happened.

In fairness to him, I decided that Mrs Cath had probably ordered him to stay inside when the police came, reckoning that they might pick up the family resemblance if he was present, but even so his lack of the smallest sympathy towards us filled me with contempt. I opened my mouth to say something and then closed it again. Master has given us shelter so far. I must be grateful for that. I must not expect more.

For Dawn, the midnight visit was the catalyst she had been waiting for. From the time when the policemen came, I knew it would not be long before she left. But her reasons for going had nothing to do with a fear of being arrested. She was going because she preferred to be somewhere other than Cradock House. When I tried to understand this, the fact that my daughter wished to go back to the place from where she had been rescued, I could not do so. For me, the only place that made sense was Cradock House. The only solace that there was lay in the piano.

Each afternoon, on our way back from school, Dawn and I grew silent as we approached the house, expecting to see a police van in the driveway and rough men swaggering on the lawn. But everything was quiet – everything except my heart and, no doubt, Mrs Cath’s, for we both knew the police were simply biding their time before the next attack.

I played a lot of Beethoven in the weeks after the midnight visit. Its grandeur and certainty – unlike the wanderings of my beloved Debussy – became my anchor. With Beethoven you knew where you were going. Even minor keys stood up for themselves. There was time to steel your fingers, and your heart, for the crescendos.

‘You play more Beethoven these days, Ada,’ Mrs Cath said, coming into the house with fresh roses from the garden, for the rains had come to feed the flowers and swell the furrow with brown river water, and Mrs Cath was filling the anxious days with gardening. ‘You used to prefer the romantics.’

I ran my hands over the gleaming keys, my fingers hesitating for a moment where the bad keys would have been on the school piano. B flat, G. ‘I like his tunes because they’re clear, Mrs Cath, and sure of themselves. You can be certain what they mean.’

She nodded and lifted the roses towards me. ‘Smell. Aren’t they glorious? Isn’t the joy of music what we read into it? What isn’t certain? What we open ourselves up to hear?’

‘But she will leave, Ma’am!’ The old word slipped out before I could stop it. I struggled to keep my breath.

Mrs Cath put a gentle hand on my shoulder and leant down to look me in the eye as she’d done when teaching me my letters. ‘Yes, one day she will. You need to be brave.’ She straightened and turned to the window like she used to years ago, looking for Ireland and the family she’d left behind and the place she’d called home where the land was soft and green and the stream fell over the cliff to the sound of Grieg. And I realised Mrs Cath had travelled this route more often than me, firstly when she was the one doing the leaving, and then when Miss Rose left, and then our dearest Phil. I remembered the many days when she wore grey dresses and reached for his badge at her throat and whipped her fingers through her scales, and I knew that I had much to learn in the matter of leavings.

I have become inured to partings, although this one was particularly poignant. It happened when Dawn was thirteen.

I’d seen it coming for some time and I knew we were powerless to prevent it. Dear Ada did her best but Dawn possesses a quantity of her father’s stubbornness and was utterly determined. She hopes to find her way in the township but it is a tough place and I fear she will falter. Poor child, she is very confused by her mixed race and who are we to say that we would manage any better? The ramifications of Edward’s folly will resonate long after we are all gone.

Rosemary – from Johannesburg – says it was inevitable and seems to suggest that Ada herself should relocate too. She says the prosecutions for immorality are rising in the city and are sure to reach even our little
dorp
.