‘Miss! Miss, when is our lesson, Miss?’
‘She was proud of you, Ada,’ he called over their heads. Dina, overhearing us – for Dina always contrived to be close to the latest news – put her arm round me.
‘Now you must come back to the township,’ she shouted in my ear. ‘We need you here. But I know she was good to you,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t think such white kindness existed.’
The bell rang again, this time for longer.
The youngsters reluctantly packed up their games and their scheming, and made for the classrooms or the bare earth outside that served as a substitute. Snatches of ANC talk, the new black consciousness, pan-Africanism, the latest protest vocabulary swirled about me like the flood waters so recently departed. The eyes of the policemen in their vans followed me as I walked out of the school gates. There was a larger yellow vehicle, called a Casspir, parked a little further down the road. Casspirs usually carry soldiers, not police. Soldiers in khaki uniforms with helmets and long guns. Phil would have recognised them. He would have been astonished to see them here, for Phil was only used to soldiers fighting wars far from home. Soldiers don’t usually make war on their own people.
I walked to Lindiwe’s brick house in Lingelihle. The new houses had filled up since I was last here. A new ‘Township Bach’ was growing from the cries and hammerings and snatches of song. Even a few thin dogs had attached themselves to the place.
I found Lindiwe mixing cement in her tiny yard.
‘There are holes in the walls,’ she muttered. ‘How can they build houses with holes in the walls? Ada – what’s happened?’ She wiped her hands on her frayed dress and hurried to greet me.
‘It’s Mrs Cath,’ I said, the tears falling.
‘Oh, Ada.’ Lindiwe wrapped me in her powerful arms.
She made tea in her new house for me. There was no running water yet, so it still meant a trip to the standpipe every day. And there was no electricity, although it had been promised. Even so, I think Lindiwe is pleased with her new place, although it is colder than her old hut.
The tea helped. We did not talk much. There wasn’t a lot to say. Lindiwe will attend the funeral. She will stand at the back with Mrs Pumile.
‘I don’t believe in God,’ she said gently. ‘But if He is there, I will ask Him to bless Mrs Cath for what she did for you and Dawn.’
* * *
I tried to find Dawn, but the phone number that she’d given me after her arrival did not work. Instead, it played a long, hard middle C in my ear. So I went down to the post office and sent a telegram to the address she wrote on her last letter: Mrs Cath died. Funeral Friday. Try come home. Love Mama.
Wednesday and Thursday came and went but there was no message from Dawn. My arm was stiff, and its stiffness spread down my left leg. My head gave me no rest.
‘Is it possible to wait until next week for Madam’s funeral?’ I asked Miss Rose, where she sat in Mrs Cath’s bedroom, sorting through her mother’s jewellery. Phil’s military brooch, the pearls she wore with the soft cream day dresses before the war …
It was not just me who wanted it delayed. Many of Mrs Cath’s farming friends were unable to be in town at such short notice. The Colletts were shearing sheep, the Van Der Walts were in Port Elizabeth at a farm equipment auction.
‘We can’t do this for your convenience,’ retorted Miss Rose, rifling through an embroidered pouch with impatient fingers. ‘I’ve told you already, it’s so I can get Helen back to school in Jo’burg. The arrangements must suit the family first.’
I waited for a moment until Miss Rose looked up at me.
‘Dawn is family too, Miss Rose.’
‘How dare you?’ she hissed, springing up and coming towards me. ‘My father would have lived longer if you hadn’t—’ She broke off, her face inches from mine, her eyes marbled with venom.
‘Mrs Cath loved Dawn like her own.’
‘I don’t care,’ she spat. ‘I’m not having this funeral becoming a spectacle.’ She turned and flung herself down at the dressing table.
After this outburst, I left it for a day before asking Miss Rose how she wished to arrange the seating in church.
‘Where do you want me to sit, Miss Rose?’ I asked, as I stood in the kitchen, mixing ingredients for a lemon loaf cake. We were constantly besieged with visitors. I had been up at first light, baking. Helen was out picking lemons for the topping.
It was not only Miss Rose who might want me in a less prominent position. Despite the applause from my recital at Mrs Cath’s school, despite the knowledge that Mrs Cath valued me, my spell in jail – and the reason for it – had annoyed some of Mrs Cath’s friends, who felt I’d used her, and banked on her rescuing me, which of course she did. I’m not sure how much of this Miss Rose knew.
In any event I could give thanks for Mrs Cath’s life and pray for her soul just as easily from the back of the church, where the cold eye of the congregation would not find me.
‘You must sit behind us,’ Miss Rose replied, not looking up from the list in her hand. ‘And don’t forget, I want the best tea set used for afterwards.’
For all her short temper, I could see that Miss Rose was well organised. And she’d always been good at giving orders. I wondered why she had not found work that would pay her to exercise such skills.
‘Will you sit with us, Ada?’ came Helen’s soft voice. I turned to her. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, the lemons in her hands.
Miss Rose sighed and flicked a hostile glance towards me.
I reached for the eggs and cracked them one at a time into the mixing bowl. ‘If your mother wishes it.’
Miss Rose shrugged. ‘Very well.’
And so it was that I took my seat in the front pew of St Peter’s Church, with the organ playing the music I’d selected – Ada will choose the music, Miss Rose ordered – and felt the breath of the white congregation on my neck, and prayed that Mrs Cath would forgive Dawn for not being there.
Lindiwe came to the funeral. She sat with Mrs Pumile in the back row, for the minister at St Peter’s was a man who did not believe in the laws on skin difference, and would not allow his congregation to practise them within the church walls. Lindiwe does not have smart clothes, so she looked quite ragged in her cement-stained dress, and attracted many glances. Mrs Pumile was already known to the congregation from the previous funerals. She carried her shiny black handbag and wore her Sunday hat and sang with gusto.
‘Your Madam was a lovely Madam. Never mean,’ she sniffed to me before I went in. ‘Not like others I know.’
It was a service that was now familiar. Even so, I forced myself to listen to each word that was spoken, and identify each note that the organ played, and separate each flower in the arrangement that stood near the pulpit. Mrs Cath’s favourite pink roses, wands of creamy jasmine, a fragile minor key, a gentle pianissimo … All these things were necessary to stop the tears.
‘We have been through dark times,’ intoned the minister, his robe smooth and well ironed. ‘Our town was nearly destroyed. But out of destruction can come hope.’
I didn’t want to cry as I’d cried for my dearest Phil. Back then, my tears had been for the waste of a life still to be lived, and a love still to be found – or so I thought. Mrs Cath, on the other hand, had led a long and worthy life. It should be a cause for celebration.
‘Cathleen lived with faith. Throughout her life she stood fast through joy and tragedy, and finally through flood.’
I felt the congregation nod its approval. Mrs Cath had indeed been brave. She’d ventured out to help others when the waters had been at their highest. The minister was right to praise her, he was right to focus on courage shown in this way. It was safer to contemplate this than the conviction she’d brought to other, more unsettling, crises.
‘Let us pray for Cathleen,’ he bent his head, ‘dedicated mother, dear friend and faithful servant.’
‘Amen,’ murmured the congregation.
‘Grant peace to Rosemary and Helen, and bestow upon them Your everlasting Grace.’
‘Amen.’
And for my child, I prayed, clasping my hands hard in my lap. For my wild, beautiful child …
‘And upon Ada and Dawn,’ my head snapped up, ‘whom Cathleen wished to be mentioned here.’
The congregation froze. There it was, shockingly out in the open – what they’d shied from for so many years: Mrs Cath’s willingness to forgive my sin, her embrace of Dawn and me as family, her resolve in the face of the law.
Two small voices at the back said, ‘Amen.’
I felt the stiffening of Miss Rose’s body within her tight black suit, even from where she sat on the other side of Helen. Miss Rose would be outraged. This time there would be no Mrs Cath to save me. This time, surely, Miss Rose would do whatever it took to be rid of me. The organ began a quiet Panis Angelicus. Tension slowly ebbed, pews creaked. Over the muted chords burst the honking cries of hadedas on their way to their afternoon roosts. I once feared they knew my sin, I once feared they would carry news of it across the Groot Vis, and drop it with a triumphant cry on to Cradock House, and my shame would be exposed …
Beside me, Helen twisted her hands in her lap.
I looked at my own fingers, not young any more, not as supple as they once were, and I thought of Mrs Cath’s fingers, and the pleasure they brought to all who heard her play. Scales rushing down the garden and into the kaia, marches for my dear Phil, sly Debussy melodies that echoed in the head for days afterwards.
I will carry on with the Chopin nocturnes that have been my gift to her. I will play the last few into the silence of Cradock House. I hope there will be time to do so before Miss Rose forces me out.
Chapter 54
‘The lawyers want to see you, too.’ Miss Rose smoothed her red dress – no black for Miss Rose – and picked up her handbag. ‘I can’t think why. I’ll be in the car.’
I rushed into my best skirt and blouse, and my shoes with heels, and sat in the back of the car as Miss Rose drove – at the sort of speed that must be acceptable in Jo’burg – to the lawyer’s office on Adderley Street. My arm was stiff from an afternoon of tea-pouring and cake-slicing and much washing-up. Helen had helped, while Miss Rose held court in the lounge and waited to be served.
The lawyer’s office was on the second floor of a building overlooking the Dutch Reformed Church on Market Square, which had escaped the floodwaters.
‘Good morning, Miss Harrington. Please accept my deepest condolences. Miss Mabuse,’ the lawyer shook my hand as well. ‘Please sit down, both of you.’
He settled himself behind his desk. There was a picture of him on the wall behind, like the Superintendent had at the town hall. It seems strange to me that people who are already important still need to reinforce their importance by displaying photographs to prove it.
‘As you know, we have handled the family’s legal affairs since the time Mr Harrington arrived from Ireland many years ago. It falls to me to present Mrs Harrington’s will, of which you are both beneficiaries.’
I heard the intake of breath beside me, and felt Miss Rose’s renewed anger. Apart from catering instructions, she had said nothing to me since the funeral.
‘What do you mean, sir?’ I forced my head to concentrate. I had not come across the word beneficiary before.
‘It means, Miss Mabuse,’ he looked at me over his glasses, ‘that you have inherited something from Mrs Harrington.’
Inheritance. The mixing of black and white skins that would always give rise to a brown child. The mixing of parental blood that carries only some traits from one generation to the next, but not all. Inheritance is a fickle thing. It made Dawn’s colour inevitable, yet it refused to pass on Mrs Cath’s capacity for warmth to her daughter.
‘How much?’ Miss Rose’s words were abrupt. For her, this was about money.
‘Let me give you the overall picture.’ He glanced down at the papers on his desk.
‘Miss Harrington, you inherit the bulk of your mother’s liquid assets, apart from three thousand rand that goes to Miss Mabuse, and five thousand rand to her daughter Dawn.’
I stared at him in astonishment. Together, that was far more than what rested in my bank book! With such money Dawn could pay for private lessons to finish her studies! With such money she could buy a new brick house for herself!
‘In terms of property, Miss Helen inherits Cradock House and its contents, to be held in a trust for her until she turns twenty-five.’
‘But—’ Miss Rose half left her seat.
‘All rental income shall accrue to the trust as well.’
‘But the house should be sold, Helen doesn’t need it—’
The lawyer held up his hand. ‘One moment, please. Mrs Harrington states that Miss Mabuse’, he inclined his bald head towards me, ‘may remain as occupant of the kaia at Cradock House and, if required, act as caretaker until that time, under the current financial arrangements.’
‘We can’t sell the house now?’ Miss Rose hovered on the edge of her chair, gripping the arms with white knuckles.
‘I’m afraid not.’ The lawyer gave a tight smile. ‘That will be Miss Helen’s decision when she is twenty-five. She may dispose of the house if she so wishes at that time.’
There was a pause. Dimly – for my head was aching – I began to grasp how skilfully Mrs Cath had dealt with those she was leaving behind: her decision to name Dawn and me during the funeral service not just out of love but as an enduring challenge to those who would dismiss us; her deftness in removing Cradock House from Rosemary’s grasp and saving it for Helen, so securing her heritage; and finally, the gift to me of the kaia beneath the bony thorn tree, for as long as Helen kept Cradock House as her own.
‘I can stay,’ I found myself murmuring. ‘Is that true, sir?’
‘Yes, it’s true,’ snapped Miss Rose. ‘You’ve been angling for that from the very beginning.’
Her words pierced the air between us, like the bullets I’d heard in the township. A series of cracks, a pulse of wind if you were close enough. Phil knew such sounds …
The lawyer took off his glasses and began to polish them on his tie.
‘Miss Harrington, it is unwise to begin a disposition such as this in an adversarial manner.’
Miss Rose yanked open her handbag, pulled out a compact mirror and examined her face briefly before thrusting it away. She tilted her chin.
‘Did my mother change her will recently?’
‘No, this has been her intention for some years.’
‘Then there’s nothing more to be said.’ She gathered her handbag and cast me a furious glance. ‘You have all my banking details. And I presume you will make the necessary arrangements to rent out Cradock House.’
She stood up. I remained seated. The lawyer stood too, and offered his hand to Miss Rose. ‘It will be handled with extreme care. And we will set up the trust in your daughter’s name. I presume you will inform her?’
‘Of course. Are you coming, Ada?’
‘I will walk back, thank you, Miss Rose. I need to understand what Mrs Cath wants me to do.’
Miss Rose extended her hand to the lawyer and swept out of the room. The lawyer looked at me for a moment, then closed the door behind Miss Rose.
‘I believe you have been with the family for many years, Miss Mabuse.’
‘I was born in Cradock House, sir. I have lived there for all but a few years of my life.’
‘Your English is very good. Now,’ he laid his hands flat on the table, ‘we shall not rush into this. As soon as Miss Harrington and her daughter have returned to Johannesburg, we will begin an inventory of the house.’ Seeing my blank expression, he explained. ‘We need to make a list of all the furniture and possessions because these will belong to Miss Helen from now on. Do you understand, Miss Mabuse?’
‘Yes. They have never been mine, sir. I will care for them for Miss Helen.’
‘Quite so. Only once th
at is complete will we seek tenants to take the house furnished. You will remain in the kaia. I believe you’re a teacher in the township?’
‘Yes, sir. I teach piano.’
‘Ah,’ he nodded. ‘I’ve heard you’re very talented.’
‘Mrs Harrington taught me all I know.’
‘Indeed. And you will need to give us your bank account number and identity details – and that of your daughter – so we can deposit the funds that Mrs Harrington has specified.’
‘Thank you, sir. I will write them down for you.’
My head was clearing and I was becoming aware of outside things. The palms on Market Square, untouched by the floods, swaying in the window.
‘There is one further matter in the will, which pertains to yourself only.’ He stopped and searched for easier words. ‘It’s only for you to know about.’
I waited. I could not imagine what he meant. He reached into an envelope and drew out the red diary. ‘This is for you. Mrs Harrington wished you to have it.’
I took the book from him with shaking hands. It was the first diary. I lifted it to my cheek and felt the downy velvet. The satin ribbon fell from its pages. This diary had long since been replaced, and I hadn’t seen it for many years. I’d lately read from the brown leather one.
‘There is a separate letter that accompanies it.’
He handed over a loose leaf of paper with Mrs Cath’s familiar script, the slender upstrokes, the heavy downstrokes, the particular flourish of the capital letter that began each entry.
He stood up.
‘If you need any further help, we are always here.’ He hesitated, then held out his hand once more. Few white men shake the hand of a black woman. ‘Your faithful service has been justly rewarded, Miss Mabuse.’
Chapter 55
My dear Ada,
This is the first time that I am writing to you formally, although we have been communicating like this for many years through my diaries. I have tried to be honest but there are some things that I have never written down, or spoken of, and which should now be recorded, on paper, so that you may always know them.
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