Blue Fire

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  If this was why her father had called her home, she wanted only to escape his presence and end this disillusioning interview.

  “Apparently you don’t agree with this reasoning,” she said. “And if that’s the case there’s nothing more I can say. I had better be going.”

  He heard her rise and reached for the silver-headed cane beside his chair as he stood up. He made no effort to keep her, but held out his hand. She put her own into it, aware of the sensitive touch of his fingers, as though he were again using them to see, learning the fragile structure of her bones, the span and length of her hand. But he did not ask her to come to see him again, nor did she suggest another visit. Because of Dirk she would undoubtedly be forced to visit this house from time to time, but there was nothing left between them of a father-daughter relationship.

  Mara came to meet her as she left the study, and Susan glanced a bit wistfully up the stairs. There was in her a greater sense of recognition of the house than of her father. She would have liked to wander upstairs, to return to the past through its rooms and corridors. But this was not something she would ask of Mara Bellman.

  “Thomas can drive you home if you like,” Mara offered.

  Susan shook her head and patted the camera slung at her side. “Thanks, but I want to walk. Perhaps I’ll find some good shots along the road.”

  Mara saw her to the door and Susan was glad to be out on the steeply slanting street again, climbing toward the high place where the road rounded its horseshoe curve and turned toward home on the higher level of the opposite hill.

  More than anything else she wanted to be alone. An unexpected sense of pain and disappointment filled her. In spite of her efforts to convince herself that her father meant nothing to her and that she could expect little from this meeting, there must have been an unaccepted hopefulness in her based on the memory of a child’s deep affection for her father. The fact that her mother’s ruse had succeeded and he had sent for her, not out of a like, remembered affection but only because of her value to him in the possible recovery of great wealth, left her with an aching sense of disappointment.

  Where the street began to curve Susan once more had a clear view of the mountain and she paused to gaze sadly up at it. The climbing houses ended well below the highway that cut horizontally along the mountainside, leaving a visible gash. Above the road the slopes were grassy, steepening as they extended upward to the level where rocky buttresses began. How blue and clear the sky was above the mountain this morning. In other parts of Africa the sky had seemed surprisingly white and thin. But the skies of South Africa could blaze with a deep-blue light.

  To distract herself in this moment of painful disappointment she snapped a picture of the mountain. As she did so something moving at one end of the great fall of rock caught her eye. A tiny cable car was swinging up the face of the cliff, its support invisible, as if nothing suspended it between mountaintop and earth. She watched it travel clear to the small white block that was the building at the top where the cable ended. She must go up in that car one of these days. She would get Dirk to take her. For some reason no one had ever taken her up there as a child.

  As she moved on toward the Aerie, she thought of how clean the streets of Cape Town seemed, and how pleasantly old-fashioned in this section. The white gabled houses still echoed the Dutch architecture, and the white stone walls, or picket fences with gardens beyond, seemed extraordinarily neat and well-kept in the true English manner. In one yard a poinsettia bloomed, and in another mountain mimosa, sweet-scented and pale yellow, sprinkled petals over the wall and upon the sidewalk.

  But her surroundings could not hold her attention for long because the thought of her mother’s letter was still upon her. There had always been a gentle fiction she had kept up to please her mother: the fiction that it was Susan who was dependent and helpless and Claire who cleverly solved all their problems. This had cost Susan little and it had helped Claire to build up the picture of herself that she found it necessary to harbor.

  In reality, Claire had never had any notion of the physical difficulties of Susan’s work or of the predicaments in which her daughter sometimes found herself in an effort to serve her paper. To Claire, being respectable had always been of the greatest importance. Underneath she might sometimes be as eager as a child for the gratification of her own wishes and pleasure. Yet all must be conducted with an air of gentility and decorum. She would never have been one, Susan recognized, to stand beside a husband who had disgraced himself, and thus disgraced her as well. Yet in the end Claire had been truly concerned about her daughter, had tried to ensure her future. And in a sense she had succeeded. At least the bait of the diamond had succeeded, Susan thought bitterly. It had caused Niklaas to act.

  She wished now that she had asked her father more questions about the Kimberley Royal. In itself the story seemed unbelievable. Had there really been some suspicion on her father’s part that her mother might have taken the stone, or was that still another of Claire’s fancies? Had her father’s imprisonment had anything to do with the disappearance of the diamond?

  She had no answer for any of these questions.

  The road climbed beneath the Lion’s Head and she looked up at it, looming against the sky. The Lion overhung all this part of town, claiming ownership, as Devil’s Peak on the far side of the amphitheater was ruler there. Yet both must pay homage to the more massive mountain bridging the space between them.

  Tonight she would tell Dirk about this meeting with her father, ask him the questions that troubled her. The thought of Dirk brought something of her courage surging back. After all, what did Niklaas or his motives matter? She must forget, suppress, the child in her who had once so loved her father. She had Dirk now. With him she could be complete.

  Her steps quickened. He would be in for dinner before too long and the warm memory of their reconciliation this morning hurried her toward home.

  6

  Dirk came home late and hurried to shower and change before dinner. Again Susan had left the meal in the cook’s hands, but tonight the food tasted wonderful. Bobotie, meat balls with egg and curry, baked in a square English pie dish, was a favorite of Dirk’s, he told her, and she found the well-spiced flavor delectable.

  The table looked attractive with the white candles the new maid, Willi, had set in silver holders that had been a gift from Niklaas van Pelt. Blue cornflowers had been massed in a small bowl in the center to give an accent of color.

  It was pleasant to have Dirk telling her about his work tonight. He had persuaded Niklaas to put in a stock of handsome silver jewelry, he said. Not work from the reservations this time, but fine silver craft done here in the Cape, some of it set with semiprecious stones mined nearby. He had brought home one of the pins for her and she unwrapped it from the tissue in delight. Cut into a raised silver oblong were tiny figures copied from ancient cave paintings: a naked running figure with a bow and arrow, another leaping with a spear upraised, and between the two human figures a doomed impala in graceful flight. She pinned the brooch to her blouse, touched by his gift.

  John Cornish was not mentioned, and the meal went off without variance.

  Willi served at the table so quietly that they were hardly aware of her. When she was out of the room Susan told Dirk that her father had shown her the surprising letter Claire had written him before her death.

  “You knew about the letter, didn’t you?” she asked. “You must have known about it when you met me in Chicago.”

  “Yes, I knew,” Dirk agreed. “Your father showed it to me before he sent me to fetch you home.”

  “But then why didn’t you tell me about it? Wouldn’t it have been fairer to me if I had known?”

  “Fairer, perhaps. But not so useful in furthering my purpose.” There was both amusement and affection in his smile. “You were being a bit obstinate and I didn’t want to add to my own handicap. If you’d suspected that your father had an ulterior motive in wanting you here you might never ha
ve come.”

  “But of course my mother’s ruse about the diamond was nonsense,” she assured him. “That was something she thought up to make certain my father would interest himself in me. And it seems to have worked.” She couldn’t help a tinge of bitterness in her tone. Dirk was undoubtedly right. If she had known about the letter she would have been much more set against coming.

  Dirk reached across the table for her hand. “Think of it this way—it might be of real service to your father if you could recall anything that would give him a clue about the Kimberley.”

  Clearly he had not understood her point. “But, Dirk, that was only a made-up story! I don’t know anything about a diamond. My mother was full of well-meant little feminine tricks like that. It’s exactly what she would have done—and thought herself very clever and helpful.”

  Dirk’s smile lighted his face with the bright look she loved to see, but at the moment it irritated her a little because it meant that he did not really accept her theory about the letter.

  “How could my remembering anything about a diamond benefit my father?” she demanded.

  “That’s a question I can’t answer,” he said. “But I have a strong feeling that it might.”

  She was on dangerous ground now, she knew. Always before, she had avoided probing too far because that way fear lurked like a shadow at the back of her mind, ready to engulf her if she looked too closely. But she could not go on being a child about this forever. She had to know. She moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue.

  “Was it because of this lost diamond that he went to prison?”

  Dirk shook his head. “No, oddly enough, the diamond had nothing to do with what happened. Even though the Kimberley was presumed to be in his possession at the time. It had been entrusted to him by its owner—a close friend of Niklaas’s—to bring to Cape Town for a special exhibit. When it disappeared, his friend said nothing to the press or to the police, merely withdrawing his consent to have it exhibited. He was devoted to Niklaas and he did not let anyone know what had happened. So there was no prosecution, no public search, no fanfare. Not until years later when all the trails had grown cold did word of the diamond’s disappearance emerge.”

  “But then why did my father go to prison? What was the offense that sent him there?”

  “You should have asked me that in Chicago,” Dirk said gently. “When I wanted to tell you, you wouldn’t let me. Now your father has asked me not to go into all that past history, since you don’t know about it. He feels it has no bearing on the present. If he decides differently he’ll tell you himself. So that’s the way it has to be, darling. I can’t go against his wishes in this.”

  Willi brought in the dessert—an English dish called a “trifle”—made of sponge cake, jam and rich custard. It put an effective end to their discussion as she struggled to get it down.

  Under the circumstances she could hardly insist that Dirk tell her what she wanted to know. He had not accepted her reasoning about her mother’s letter and there seemed to be no way to convince him. In any case, it could not matter now that she was here. It was wiser to let the whole thing go. Besides, she was looking forward to her first evening at home with her husband and she wanted no friction to mar it.

  After dinner, however, Dirk seemed restless, as if the idea of settling down to a quiet domestic evening were foreign to his bachelor nature. Willi lighted a coal fire in the small grate, and Susan set out some books and magazines invitingly, drew two chairs before the hearth. But Dirk did not notice her little byplay and she watched him, troubled, as he moved about the room, pausing at the bay window to look out at the lights of Cape Town, lost in thoughts he did not speak aloud. When the telephone in the hallway rang and he jumped like a cat, hurrying to answer it, she knew he had been expecting the call.

  From the hallway his voice reached her, controlled and low. She rearranged books on a nearby table, making small sounds so that she would not hear his words. Dirk had enjoyed a life of his own for years before she had come into it. She mustn’t expect his transition to be as complete and wholehearted as her own.

  When he returned to the living room he looked both exasperated and angrily alive.

  “I’ll have to go out,” he said. “There’s no help for it. Do you think you can put up with a husband whose daytime work spreads into the evening hours?”

  She was careful to smile, to hide her disappointment, but she would have been more reassured if he had offered some explanation about work so urgent that it demanded his presence after hours.

  She went with him to the door, striving for an appearance of cheerful good humor, and he kissed her warmly before he hurried away.

  When he had gone the house seemed still and somehow lifeless. Darkness created a seclusion of its own, a withdrawing from the life of the city all about, so that each home became a unit existing of itself, without relation to the whole. The Aerie’s high perch made this seem doubly so.

  At least she was not yet entirely alone in the house. Small sounds issued from the dining room and Susan crossed the wide hall and went into the room where Willi was tidying up.

  Once more Susan had an impression of a consideration and courtesy that was natural to this pretty, dark-skinned girl. Willi must be about her own age and Susan wondered about her as a person in the uneasy life of today’s South Africa. It was clear that she was not typical as a servant, and Susan had wondered at Mara’s choice of her for this work.

  “Have you always lived in Cape Town, Willimina?” she asked.

  “Not always, Mrs. Hohenfield,” Willi said, setting the coffee service in place on the sideboard. “My parents were originally from the Cape, but they moved to Johannesburg when I was quite small. We returned here a few years ago.” She glanced at Susan and then away, offering nothing more.

  In Chicago Susan had known colored girls in school and had made friends with one who had worked on the paper. She liked what she had seen of Willi. She wanted to know her. And Willi would not take the initiative, so Susan spoke frankly.

  “I’ve heard that the color bar is easier here in the Cape Province than it is in the Transvaal. Do you find that true?”

  A spark of something quickly suppressed showed in Willi’s eyes. “It is better here,” she agreed and went on with her work.

  “Are positions difficult to find?” Susan persisted.

  The girl shrugged slender shoulders expressively. “So many come here hoping things will be better. There are dozens applying for every job. Especially in certain types of work.”

  Susan remembered her friend on the paper—a colored girl who was a graduate of Northwestern University. It had been hard for her too, even though opportunities were increasing. She and Susan had enjoyed several talks on the subject. But Willimina did not know her yet, and friendship could never be forced.

  “At least you’ve been able to get in some schooling, haven’t you?” Susan asked.

  The look of spirit was there again in Willi’s eyes. “A little. I wanted more, but it was necessary to help at home. Otherwise I wouldn’t be—” She broke off, but the inference was clear. With the schooling she had wanted she would not have had to work as a domestic.

  She took the bowl of cornflowers from the center of the table and placed it between candlesticks on the sideboard, then removed the tablecloth and folded it up.

  “Is there anything else you would like me to do this evening, Mrs. Hohenfield?” she asked.

  Susan shook her head. “I don’t think so. Do you have very far to travel to get home?”

  A flicker of surprise crossed Willi’s face. “Miss Bellman said I was to have a room here. In fact, I’ve already moved my things into it.”

  Susan laughed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know. Perhaps you’d better tell me about the arrangements. Do the cook and yard boy stay here too?”

  “No, they both go home to their families. Our house is a little crowded just now, so I was glad to have a room here. That is, if it is all right
with you, Mrs. Hohenfield.”

  “I’ll be glad to have you in the house,” Susan admitted. “I’ve been thinking that it seems a bit empty when my husband is out. Where is your room, Willi?”

  “I’ll show you,” the girl said.

  She led the way through the kitchen, where the cook was giving things a last wipe-up, and went out through the back door. The night air was cold after the sun-warmed day, and Susan shivered as she hurried across the yard behind her. The girl stopped before a door that appeared to lead back into the house and pushed it open. It gave directly upon a small square room, meagerly but neatly furnished with bare essentials.

  “I haven’t had time to fix it up yet,” Willi said. “I’ve brought some of my own things, but they aren’t unpacked.”

  There was no door from the room into the house. The closest approach would be across the yard and through the back door.

  “I should think this would be difficult in bad weather,” Susan said. “Why didn’t they have a door open directly into the house?”

  “This is the way it is done here, Mrs. Hohenfield,” Willi said, and looked away.

  Susan understood. For years white people in South Africa had been living in a state of acknowledged jitters. And with some reason. All Africa was pushing at a door which was being held shut by a comparatively few white men in power—the descendants of the Boer settlers—the Afrikaners of the Nationalist party. It was these men who were calling the tune and making the laws. One of these laws, Susan remembered reading, was to the effect that servants were not to sleep inside the house of a white employer at night. It was necessary, everyone said, to take no chances. In Johannesburg many people slept with a gun on the bedside table. After the last demonstrations in Cape Town, Dirk said, there had been a run on the stores that sold firearms.

  Not wanting to intrude on Willi further, Susan told her good night and hurried back through the kitchen, where the cook was getting ready to leave. When Susan spoke to her the little woman darted a quick, birdlike glance her way, as if she were vastly curious about this stranger from America, and not entirely comfortable with her as a “missus.”