The Housemaid's Daughter

by Barbara Mutch

  ‘Apartheid!’ Mrs Pumile spat out the word that described this thing, like she spat out tea with too little sugar.

  It was a new word for me. I had never seen such a word on the signs in the shops or on the boards outside the newspaper office that had said ‘It’s War’ all those years before. But although the word was new, I understood where it came from. Here was the thing that had worried me about walking with my young Master in town, here was what made white people turn away from me, here was Master’s dismay at his son’s dependence on a servant. Here was one word that could hold all of those fears.

  ‘It will make us move,’ Mrs Pumile hissed at me through the hedge, ‘across the Groot Vis, or to the township past the jail on Bree Street, with all those skollies and drunks. Be grateful to the Lord, Ada, that your mother never lived to see this day.’

  ‘But what can we do?’ I asked, glancing back at the house where Master worked in his study while Madam remained with Miss Rose in Johannesburg.

  ‘I will go back to my family in Umtata,’ said Mrs Pumile with a satisfied smile. ‘There is a man there who will marry me if I return. But you,’ she peered though the hedge, ‘you should find a husband quick-quick. You’re still pretty enough. There’ll be no place for girls with no man to protect them. Coming, Ma’am,’ she turned and yelled over her shoulder at a voice calling from the kitchen door. ‘Just digging vegetables, Ma’am.’

  * * *

  It had been two weeks since I had visited the doctor in his two-roomed house across the Groot Vis. After he explained about inheritance, he told me that it was too late to get rid of the baby even if I had wanted to. He also said I did not need to pay him because he received money from the mission to do his work. The same mission that gave schooling to black pupils like I once might have been. It was very dark by the time I walked back and I kept up a fast pace and stayed near the light of street fires where people cooked. Men called out to me from the shadows and dogs nosed around my legs for scraps and the stars were hidden behind smoke and the fear of looking up. Was Master Phil judging me as I hurried along so fearfully? Did he understand that it had been my duty? Or did he feel betrayed by what I had done with his father? Like I had betrayed my beloved Madam …

  I slipped into Cradock House by the back gate and the unlatched kitchen door. Master had had a dinner meeting at the town hall and had not needed food. The garage was empty and I heard his car later on as I lay in bed holding on to my stomach with its burden of child that I longed to love but was afraid would not love me. Not when he saw the difference of skin. Not when he saw he was inferior to white, but also – shockingly – to black as well. What would become of us, this child who fitted in nowhere and me?

  * * *

  ‘Ada,’ said Master, as I served him his scrambled eggs at breakfast, ‘the Madam is returning next week.’

  I stood next to the table, feeling a hotness stain my face and the child stir like a butterfly within me.

  ‘Miss Rosemary is better now and Madam doesn’t need to be away any longer. She is looking forward to coming back. We must make the house especially perfect for her.’

  He looked up at me briefly, and then down at the eggs cooling on the plate in front of him. His hands flexed in his lap, then stilled. ‘I want Madam to see that nothing has changed since she went away.’

  He stopped, lifted his hands and reached for the linen napkin that I wash and iron each day.

  ‘You understand, don’t you, Ada?’ he went on, addressing a spot on the table in front of his plate.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘I understand. Everything will be the same as before, just as Madam likes it.’

  Edward brought me roses as well. I combined them with Mrs Wetherspoon’s. Edward is somewhat changed, as I’m sure I am for him. More serious, thinner lipped, but ever polite. Too polite, and my fear that we would find no words between us was renewed but then thankfully postponed; what with the Wetherspoons’ friends and some local Irish folk who’ve hosted Edward in the past, there was enough cheery talk to cover the reticence between us.

  And now I write this from the train which will carry us to Cradock and our life together. The roses lie beside my coat in the luggage rack above, still breathing their perfume. Edward has gone to reserve a table for dinner in the dining car, giving me the chance to write these few words.

  Dear Mother and Father, dear Ada and Eamonn, what would you make of this?

  What would Father say of the rich soil and the hordes of dark labourers to work it? What would Mother say of the fine ladies in light-coloured dresses – surely as smart as India? And Ada and Eamonn? Wouldn’t they gasp in wonder, as I did, at the vast mountain with its ever-tumbling cloud? ‘Take me with you, Cath,’ Ada had pleaded before I left. ‘I’ll be no trouble at all!’ And now Edward returns …

  Chapter 18

  I realise that I am doing things for the last time.

  I am washing these shirts for the last time. I am fetching bread from the bakery for the last time. I am walking down Church Street in my blue uniform. I look into the butcher’s for a sign of Jacob Mfengu but he is not there behind the swinging haunches of meat; he is never there.

  Cradock House is sparkling. There are vases of Madam’s favourite pink roses on the mantelpiece and in the alcove by the piano where she can smell them when she plays. The brass doorknobs have been polished, the stoep has been newly scrubbed. The windows have been cleaned and the beds are freshly made up as if Miss Rose and Master Phil are about to arrive as well. But it is only Madam who arrives tomorrow on the midday train.

  I have prepared cold chicken and a potato salad for her lunch with Master. There will be a lamb stew on the stove for dinner, and an apple pie in the larder for dessert. I will even lay out the best cups and saucers for afternoon tea and leave the lemon sponge cake under a glass cover on the dining-room table. I have placed Madam’s special book on her dressing table, next to a spray of mimosa in a glass she brought all the way from Ireland. I have read from the book for the last time.

  We arrived in Cradock this morning. I must confess that the train journey from Cape Town was testing. So little privacy, so many hours of baked earth and sky.

  Edward has been attentive and careful with me, which normally I would have welcomed, but with Colonel Saunders’ gallantry so recent in the memory, I have instead found his reticence a little disappointing. But there can be no regrets. I am grateful to have a settled future.

  I have now seen our house, a fine sturdy place equipped with plain but solid furniture and a shy young woman called Miriam who is the housekeeper. Edward has done well. I hope Miriam and I can be friends, for we must be of similar age, although Edward says I must not fraternise.

  I pray it is not too long before we have a family of our own, as I miss Ireland sorely. When we are at the table, I confess I look out of the window and imagine it is the stream over Bannock cliffs that I hear, not the dull brown rush of the river they call the Groot Vis.

  I wash and fold up my spare blue overalls and what I think of now as the ‘white’ clothes that Madam gave me: the smart blouse and skirt for Master Phil’s funeral, the navy dress that I wore instead of an overall. I leave them in a neat pile on the bed for the new maid that Madam will need. I take my towel and flannel and the nightdress that Madam bought me, and put them into my mother’s cardboard suitcase.

  I take Mama’s shoebox from under the bed. I have only put a small amount of money into it each month because Master and Madam send most of my wages to the bank on Adderley Street. Madam explained that I can ask for it back whenever I want it. She showed me a book from the bank that proves how much money I own. There is more money in it than the amount I expect. Madam says that the bank has added extra money to say thank you for lending them the money in the first place. This seems strange to me, someone giving you money without you having to work for it. Of course, I don’t have this special book. It lives with the family’s papers in Master’s study. So that means that I don’t have the mone
y either. I will have to manage with the small amount left over from my mother’s wages in the shoebox and from the coins that Madam gives me each month for personal items.

  I put my identity paper – my Pass – into the suitcase as well. I have no other documents, no references to prove that I worked at Cradock House, no words to say if I was a good worker, nothing to show a new employer for the years of dusting and polishing and washing. I play the piano for the last time, gentle sonatas, the Mozart in C major, Beethoven’s Moonlight. I take the score for the Raindrop prelude and slip it into the bottom of the case where it won’t be creased. I don’t think Madam will mind.

  ‘Ada?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  It is the day of Madam’s arrival. Master is in the study, standing behind his desk. I wait in the doorway. He doesn’t look at me and so I search with my eyes for the bank book among his papers but it is not there. I have looked for it on Master’s desk for the past few days but it is never there. I am careful to replace Master’s papers exactly as I found them so he will never know, like I used to turn Madam’s special book back to the place where she was writing so that she would never know. ‘I’m leaving to fetch Madam. The train may be early.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Lunch will be ready for Madam and Master when you return.’

  ‘Thank you, Ada.’ He is wearing the dark suit that Madam likes. He still doesn’t look at me and turns his grey head away to pick up the keys to the car with the headlights like the eyes of night animals.

  As soon as he is gone, I check the dining-room table for the last time to make sure that lunch is set as Madam likes it. Then I put my mother’s old funeral coat over my uniform and tie my hair into a blue doek. I go upstairs and stand in Master Phil’s room one last time, and touch the bed where he lay, and stand beside the curtains that were always drawn to keep out the war, and feel the sun as it warms my back through the glass. I go downstairs and close the door of my room where I waited while he died outside. Then I take up my case and leave by the kitchen door, taking care to latch it, and go through the back gate. I can hear Mrs Pumile talking to herself in her kaia next door. I don’t want her to see me, I don’t want anyone to see me.

  I must hurry. I will keep to the side of Dundas Street where there are the most trees and I will keep my head down all the way past the shop signs that I used to use as word practice. Some of the shopkeepers know me but I hope they will not recognise me with a suitcase and covered by my mother’s coat. I am now like one of the girls I used to see from Master Phil’s toy box, hurrying down the road, only without a baby on my back. Can I ever come down this road in the future with my baby on my back? People will see the child’s colour is different from mine and they will know my shame. But will they know that I am not a bad person? Will they understand that the child came from my duty to the Master in his loneliness?

  Can Madam ever know this? Can Master Phil?

  What I did – how can it be both right and wrong?

  Church Street is busy and there are motor cars hooting and dogs leaping about their master’s heels and donkey carts lurching along with piles of wood. Master Phil would have hated the noise. Over there, beyond the red tin roof of the magistrate’s house on Achter Street, stands the tree near the Groot Vis where he told me he loved me.

  This is where my escape becomes dangerous. The iron bridge leads not only to Auntie’s small township by the railway camp, it is also the way to the railway station. At any moment, Master and Madam could see me as they drive past in the black car with the eyes of night animals. But I have been listening for the train and so far I have not heard its whistle. There is still time to get across and then turn left off the road and head for the cramped community of huts where Auntie lives.

  There are many people going my way now, towards the iron bridge. Their bare feet making a soft slapping sound on the tar road. They murmur amongst themselves, they have friends in the crowd. I have no friends, I will have to manage with this new loneliness and try not to get into any further trouble because of it. Some of my fellow walkers carry cases like I do, some have their goods wrapped in colourful blankets on their heads, some have babies on their backs. I shift the case to my other hand, turn my head away from passing cars and hurry across the bridge and over the brown river and away from Cradock House that was once mine. Away from the bony thorn tree that I was nearly born under, away from the furniture that I have polished all my life, away from the people – some alive, some with the ancestors – that made it my home too.

  Chapter 19

  Ada is not here. But has left lunch on the table. I can only assume that there is a reason for her absence. Perhaps Mrs Pumile knows. I will check with her once I have unpacked.

  Edward is pleased to see me.

  ‘Why you think you can come here?’ Auntie demanded angrily, standing in her doorway with arms folded over her broad chest while I waited outside on the dusty street.

  ‘I got no space, you can see I got no space!’ She looked down at my swelling stomach, then back up at me. ‘And I got no money for an extra mouth.’ She turned and went inside.

  ‘It’s just for a short time,’ I said, leaning against the sloping wall for I was tired from the walk and the strain of getting away, and the child seemed to be swelling hard inside me. Auntie squatted on a thin, striped mat that covered part of the mud floor. ‘Then I will find another place to stay.’

  ‘What with? You got money?’ asked Auntie from the dimness inside. Auntie was a shrewd woman. She knew that places to stay didn’t come without money. And she knew that I had money in the bank.

  ‘You have to pay me for the place.’ She pointed at the mat she was sitting on.

  My eyes began to see more clearly into the hut. I had never taken much notice of it before, when I visited with my mother. After all, I had the comfort and shelter of Cradock House. I never thought of Auntie’s shack with its outside latrine as a place to stay. And Auntie was right: there was no space. Against the wall stood her narrow bed on bricks, sagging in the middle and covered with a faded blanket. Next to it was a rusty paraffin stove and a chipped enamel basin with a bar of soggy green soap. A bucket and a calabash stood ready for carrying water from the communal tap at the end of the street. Nails hammered into the mud walls held Auntie’s overall and a towel. String bags piled on the floor held washing waiting to done. The only part of the floor not covered was the mat in the middle, and that was not even as long as my body. I had never slept on a floor before – the evil tokoloshe would have no trouble finding me and my baby.

  Auntie’s hut was no place to bring up a child, but there would be little chance of finding any other place with the sort of child that I would bear. Nobody wants to help a girl who has sinned with a white man instead of her own people. I turned my head, for there it was, a whistle in F sharp, the sound that meant Madam’s return.

  ‘I will help you with your washing business,’ I said, forcing my voice to be cheerful. ‘I have a lot of experience with washing. And I can cook, too.’

  Auntie looked up at me, suspicious.

  ‘Why you don’t get another job over the river?’ She sniffed and gestured towards the Groot Vis. ‘There’s families that want girls like you that have been maids before. That Madam you talk about so well, that Madam will give you references.’ She stopped and stared at me hard. ‘Unless you stole from her? Please God your mother never knew this!’

  On the street behind me there was a shout followed by more shouts. A woman was being chased by a man who was striking her on the back of the legs with a stick. A small crowd looked on.

  ‘Will no one help her?’ I cried. The crowd turned to look at me, then turned back to watch.

  Auntie hadn’t even come to the door and was instead lighting her paraffin stove.

  I turned away too. I told her that I hadn’t stolen from Madam, but I didn’t want to be a maid any more. I told her I was tired of big houses with furniture that needed to be polished and cakes that needed to be baked for fine te
a parties. I told her that I wanted to bring up my child among people like me. Like her. And I told her one other thing that wasn’t true yet, but might become true soon enough. I told her that this new fear of skin difference made it hard to live across the river these days.

  Auntie shrugged, and checked her stove, and heaved a battered kettle on to it and made tea and gave me half a piece of old bread and told me that I could stay on her floor for a short time but that I must pay her for the piece of floor. When I said that my money was hidden at the bank by the Master and Madam for my own good, she shook her head. But when she saw my face she said I could pay for the piece of floor by washing with her every day down on the banks of the Groot Vis, on account of the fact that I had experience with washing and would be better at it than some of the other girls she’d tried. And when the baby was born, I could put it on my back and carry on washing. Any other needs that I had must come out of the money that was hiding in the bank. Money was no use unless you could buy things with it. Money was no use just sitting in a bank.

  I would have to learn how to get it back.

  * * *

  There are two kinds of loneliness. One is loneliness on the outside and one is loneliness on the inside. I am not lonely on the outside any more. There is no room to be lonely. Auntie’s hut is full with just the two of us and the child grows inside me and pushes into the space between Auntie and me. And then there is the washing. The hut overflows on good washing days. There is dirty washing, and there is washing that is clean and wet, and washing that is clean and dry, and dirty washing that is needed clean today, and dirty washing that can wait for another day to be done.

  I am not lonely beyond Auntie’s hut either, because there are any number of people who rush to and from the huts about us. I try to learn the names of those that rush by regularly, so that I don’t feel I am spying on the lives of strangers. From my place on Auntie’s floor, I can’t help hearing them call out in the night, I can’t help jerking awake when their children cry. I hear husband and wife arguing, and I later recognise their voices in the street and know their disagreements before I recognise them by their faces or their names. Old men cough in my ear like they did at the doctor’s house; I even hear someone snoring in a nearby shack. The only person I heard near to Cradock House was Mrs Pumile, and she lived across a thick hedge at the bottom of the next-door garden. Yet here, far closer than the kaia of Mrs Pumile, there is Poppie from the shack alongside and her grandchildren Fulesi and Matthew who are the ones that cry in the night. But Poppie is quiet and she greets me kindly and asks after the baby more than Auntie does. And, further in the matter of learning names, there appear Sophie and Beauty and Pushi and Lindiwe and other women, too, who compete for business in the washing trade down on the banks of the Groot Vis. Some of them live on Auntie’s side of the river, but many more of them live across the Groot Vis in the sprawling township that swallows the far end of Bree Street. They wash on their side, or they come across the drift below Cross Street to our side where the washing rocks are better and the river runs easier for the purposes of laundry.