The Visitors (19 page)
Authors: Rebecca Mascull
Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Ghost, #Romance, #General, #Action & Adventure, #Horror
‘Lies!’ she cried, and the boy, asleep with his head in her lap, stirred. She stroked his hair and he slept on.
We argued for a long while about the rights and wrongs of it all, who did what and when, and it was clear never the twain would meet. But by the end of it, I think we had a new understanding and looked at each other differently.
The passenger trains only run during the day and so by the time we reached Volkrust, the train stopped for the night. The boy woke for some bread and dried meat his mother gave him. I purchased some more food from the station before it closed and gave him some milk, for which his mother thanked me. We talked through the night as Jurie slept on. Maria told me of her life on her father’s farm as a child, a simple life of meat, milk and fruit, where they took the water from the earth and the sun grew their vegetables and they sang old songs and read the Bible. I told her of the oysters, the moods of the sea, the scent of hops. We slept for an hour or so before dawn, woken by the train’s blast as it let off steam, then jolted onwards towards Johannesburg.
For the rest of the journey, we spoke of the war in better terms. I told her about Wallis and how we escaped the fire. She told me of her numerous escapes from British soldiers, or ‘Khakis’, as she calls them. She has a different term for just about every category of person you might find in this war: she calls us Khakis, Tommies or Engelsman, she calls her menfolk burghers, she calls the blacks Hottentots. She reserves her sourest face for those of her kind who have collaborated with the British: there are the Khaki-Boers, people who help the British in any way, but worst of all to her are the Joiners, those who have joined and fought for her enemies. When she speaks of us with such disgust, I feel the bile rise in my throat and want to shake her. But I have to remember where she comes from, her life before all this, her youth and her dead husband. Then I forgive her hatred. I only hope that by conversing with me, and seeing the kindness of Captain Cox, she perhaps has a new idea of what an Englishman can be.
Late that afternoon, the train arrived at Johannesburg. We sat and watched the bustling station, the Boers and English, the Khaki-Boers and Joiners and Hottentots going about their business. Suddenly she leaned forward, her arms about her son and a look of great intensity on her face.
‘Let us go,’ she said. ‘Let us get out here. You can say I tricked you. Say I said my son was sick. I got away from you in the crowd at the station. You can say that.’
I told her I could not and would not do that. My orders and my duty were to take her to Camp Irene and that was what I was going to do. She begged me, and her boy pleaded too in perfect English.
‘Have you been to the camps?’ she asked me desperately. I had not. She told me they were places of horror, where people starved and children died of the cold and diseases raged. ‘The angel of death walks through those places.’
I was too shocked to respond. The train lurched on towards the camp, now just fifteen miles away. I assured her that these were only rumours spread around by Boers to stop women from going there for help. I explained that the camps had been set up to welcome and care for refugees, those cut off by the war, those who had lost their men or their livelihoods, to save them from the threat of Kaffirs interfering with them if they were left alone and unprotected out on the veldt. I told her that I had heard that the camps were run efficiently and fairly by the British and no harm would come to her there.
At this point, she grabbed at her hair and almost tore it from its roots.
‘How can you be so stupid?’ she cried and broke down weeping, her son stroking her face and whispering to her, soothing her, stealing glances of pure hatred at me, her persecutor.
She did not speak to me again. When we arrived at the camp, I walked her to the gates. White tents stretched away in a dozen rows up an incline, the canvas flapping in the cold wind that swept down on them from the veldt. It did look a desolate place, but I could not believe her fears. This was run by the British after all, and if you cannot rely on British civilisation, what else is there? I was not able to say goodbye to Maria and Jurie, as she ushered him away from me without looking back. And I had to entrain and make my way back to Frankfort, a garrison town where the East Kents are to be stationed for the meantime, from where I write this letter to you now.
I trust that she has settled at Camp Irene now and has resigned herself to her temporary fate. After all, once the war is done, she will be able to begin a new life with her son. She is only young. And they say those who have lost their homes will be compensated after the war. She only has to wait and look forward to better times. I will try to visit her there if I can and see she is well.
I am only glad my girls are safe home in England.
I will write again. It does not look as if the war will be over soon, as we hear Kitchener has asked for stores for another six months. I wonder if the British public will get tired of this war too. If the Boers had made a big fight of it and then surrendered I am sure we would be very popular at home and return to street parties and hats thrown skyward. As it is, I fear the country will forget us and we will slink back in a year or two and never speak again of South Africa.
We are to be here in Frankfort for some time. It is a nowhere place of thorn trees battered by dust storms, a sorry place.
Love to you both,
Caleb
To read those words, to hear his voice in them, is joy and pain entwined. Lottie and I weep afterwards and hold on to each other, spreading the letters out on her bed and poring over them. The tears return as I read passages again and my handkerchief becomes a wet rag. Lottie comforts me, she watches me. But she does not question me in my distress. I suppose she knows my regard for him all these years, even without our secret. We talk of his experiences, the danger that surrounds him, the changes in his views that have turned him from the Tommy we read about in the newspapers to this thoughtful man who questions the war. I am proud of him for that, for all of it. But another emotion clouds my thoughts and brings forth bitterness. This woman, this Maria. The way he writes of her makes me hate her. I pity her, who could not? I see why Caleb does. But I am so jealous of her, it freezes my blood. I do not tell Lottie this, of course. She waxes on about what a good man her brother is to care for this woman and child. But in this dark moment I curse her and I will him never to return to that camp, to her, or even to a thought of her.
A Visitor appears beside Lottie’s bed. An old man I have seen in the dining room before, dressed in black with a white bow tie; a butler from the old days before I was born. He once revealed that he collapsed while serving at a grand dinner party. He is still mortified that he has caused any inconvenience to his master. He looks at me curiously.
I did not mean to trouble anyone.
I know.
My wife was housekeeper here. She died, when was it? She just went to her bed and said she was weary and did not wake up. No trouble to anyone. An admirable woman, don’t you agree?
My tears fall again.
Do you cry for the dead?
No. I cry for myself.
How desperate I was for news of Caleb. Now I feel more wretched than ever.
Father has taken to his bed. This morning, as I am coming down the front steps, book in hand, heading for the orchard to sit and read in the spring sunshine, I see him walking up the drive with a hand against his chest. His hair is sticking up at angles, as if he has been swimming. But I learn later this is sweat. His face is red-gold, like the beer brewed from his hops. I run to him and he gasps for breath as he grips my shoulder. I feel his weight release itself on to me and we both go crashing to the ground. Others come running – Mr Davy the head gardener and Maid Edith – and we are helping him up. I see him say, ‘It is all right. I’m all right.’ He rights himself and brushes down his trousers.
‘Are
you
all right?’ he signs to me.
I nod and we all walk beside him into the house. He turns and dismisses us, a gentle wave of the hand sending us away with all our unnecessary fuss. But I see him whisper something to Mr Davy. I run to tell Lottie.
She says, ‘Don’t fret. Your father will make old bones yet.’
But I know Father has not been himself of late. He is worried about the yield this year. There has been powdery mildew on the crop and he has been out with the workers, dosing the crop with sulphur to kill it, checking its progress day and night. I have not seen him so preoccupied since the beginning of the war. Later, the doctor goes into Father’s room and does not appear again for an hour.
Mother asks me to come to her room after her afternoon nap. The curtains are half closed, providing a dimness in which two Visitors loiter. I tell them to go. They are Father’s relations and I have no time for them now. Maid Alice is arranging Mother’s hair and I sit on her bed, watching as the thick long tresses are trained up over a horsehair pad and pinned into place, Mother’s eyes patient yet her mouth pinched in the mirror. When she is done, she sends Alice away and turns to me.
‘When can I see Father?’
‘Your Father is ill and must not be disturbed.’
‘Is it bad?’
‘It is his heart. His heart is tired. He needs a lot of rest and then he will get better.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘He only needs sleep, and then he will be better?’
‘Yes. A nurse is coming from town to tend to him.’
‘But I can tend to him. No one will do it better. I must do it.’
‘No, you will excite him too much, you know you will. You two will talk and talk and he will never get any rest. Is that what you want, to make him more ill?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Then you must leave him alone. You can see him in a few days, when he has rested.’ She smiles and bids me go.
I am not comforted by this. Mother does not smile very often and when she does, it is usually a sign that she is trying to cover up something. She has to put smiles on, you see, like a mask.
When afternoon lessons are finished, I ask Lottie if I can walk alone for a while. I creep upstairs and stand in the shadow of the bookshelves outside Father’s room. I wish I could hear what is going on inside. After a time, the door opens and a middle-aged woman appears, dressed in the starched white and blue of the district nurse, carrying a basin of water covered with a towel. She closes the door to and looks up.
‘Oh!’ she cries and starts back. She does not expect to see a girl haunting the landing. ‘Get off with you!’ she says. ‘You’ll disturb the patient. Do you understand me? Where’s your nanny?’
I can see from the muscles straining on her neck that she is trying to whisper and shout at the same time, from her frown and suspecting eyes that she has remembered I am that deaf girl and thinks perhaps I am an idiot.
I sign at her slowly and full of disdain, ‘I am not the fool,’ and she glares, perplexed.
I turn, head held high, and march down the stairs very proud. Once outside, I feel desolate. I just want to see Father. Nobody will tell me anything, no one will let me see. I cannot eavesdrop unless I can see their mouths and they know that, they have that power over me. I wander down the path, my head heavy with meditation. As I approach the oast house, I look up to the cooling loft. Where is Caleb now? Is he hot and thirsty? Is he shot at, lying face down in the sandy soil, the backs of his knees burning under the African sun? Is he bleeding? Is he dead? Is he with her? Oh, my love. I shake my head to dispel these pictures. The light is fading. I have just missed the magic hour, when the sun is low and suffuses everything with a golden glow, seeming all the more wonderful since it is about to leave us. It is the gloaming. From the corner of my eye I glimpse a Visitor leaving the side door of the oast house, its blue-white light illuminating the dusky air, so brightly as I have never seen before, walking away from me towards the hop garden. I know that walk so well. I call out to him in my mind,
Father!
He turns. His face is ivory, his eyes anxious.
The mould is in the hops
, he says.
Worse than the cursed fly. I fear we have met our Waterloo. What are we to do, Liza?
Oh, Father!
I cry and fall at the Visitor’s feet.
Now, now, my child. Do not concern yourself. God will protect us.
He reaches out and helps me up from the ground, his nebulous touch light as breath at my elbow. I stare at him. His face is unquiet, uncomprehending. He does not know he is dead. They never do. I want to turn and run to the house. Perhaps he is at the door of death, perhaps his spirit is free, but he is not yet gone. Perhaps he can be saved.
Come with me
,
I beg him.
Come upstairs with me. I have something to show you.
No, no, my dear. I must check the crops. It’s time for treatment. The powdering machine the horses pull keeps jamming. I must get on to Davy, get him to order that new one we saw in the catalogue. I am sure it will be more efficient. Sometimes I wonder if the old ways are not best, when we used to do it manually. But then we would have the sticky stains on our hands and have to rub them with hop leaves, do you remember?
And he drifts away, muttering to himself of hops and crops and mould and sulphur, the everyday stuff of his life. I want to scream at him, that none of this matters any more, but it is the same with them all and they never will learn.
I turn and run to the house, fling open the front door and bolt upstairs. Mother must hear me, as she opens her door as I pass and I can see her mouth forming words. I burst into his room and see him in the bed. His mouth is open, his eyes are open. He is alone. Where is the blasted nurse? He is alone, he has died alone. I run to the bed and throw myself across his stiff legs. I recoil and look at his dead face, his lifeless eyes livid, like Tom Winstanley’s. Mother is at my side, pulling at my arm.
