Miriam had not answered for a moment, then she said, ‘Everyone comes here. Even the holiday visitors. People in town call it the “grotto” to make it sound more interesting.’
Kate walked to the low, arched entrance and looked out to sea.
‘They say if you’re washed out of the cave the tides take you to the reef,’ Miriam had said.
She led Kate back across the slippery rocks, but instead of going onto the beach she turned seawards, walking through shallow, sandy channels. ‘I’ll show you the rock pools,’ she said. ‘You can swim here when the tide’s out.’
Kate had never seen anything like the pools. There were three of them, interlinked. The rocks around them were dry in the hot sun, but she noticed that the water was not more than a foot or two below the tops and once the tide began to come in the pools would be taken over by the sea itself and, like the reef, disappear below waves and rolling swells.
‘Charles and I used to swim here a lot. At low tide they’re as clear as a swimming pool. But never go in when you can’t see. Look.’ She pointed down to something that looked like a purple pincushion. ‘That’s a sea-urchin. If you stand on one you’ll be sorry. Hennie stood on one once.’
‘Hennie?’
‘Dr. du Toit. He taught me to swim. He stood on one and got blood-poisoning from the spines.’
Suddenly, she unbuttoned her dress and let it drop. She stood in a pair of peach-coloured satin cami-knickers. Kate have never seen such luxurious underwear. She wore plain white lock-knit knickers and a brassiere or a spencer in winter. The cami-knickers looked startlingly exotic in the surroundings of Saxenburg Cove, with their lacy top and lace-trimmed legs. Miriam was not unaware of the impression she was making for she posed, leaning on her arms in such a way as to arch her back and throw out her chest. Kate was not sure how to react. Scotland’s climate was not conducive to outdoor nudity and even at school she and her fellow-pupils had preserved as much modesty as possible. What experience she’d had with boys had been under rugs on a golf-course or petting in dark corners of the wynds off the Royal Mile. Tom was the only other human-being with whom she had ever been completely naked, and even that had been in the gloom of his cabin with a shutter over the port-hole. As she looked at Miriam, she wondered if she was a member of that strange new species of which she had read, but to date had no first-hand experience: a Bright Young Thing.
Miriam had broken into her thoughts: ‘Well, what do you think of her?’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘Mrs. P.’
Kate smiled. ‘I can’t imagine anyone calling her that.’
‘Have you seen her face?’
‘She sits in the dark. I’ve seen her hands though.’
‘They were burnt.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know, exactly. People talk, but they make most of it up. It happened when Hugo died. They say her husband was like a wild man.’
‘She says he worshipped her. She says he did everything for her after that.’
Miriam had laughed unpleasantly. ‘Boss Charles only worshipped one person, himself. He had a flat in Cape Town. He used to go there often.’
‘You mean for . . .?’
‘I mean with other women.’ She had opened her huge dark eyes and was looking at Kate. ‘I mean, he took them there to fuck them.’
Kate knew the word, but had never heard it spoken so casually, or by a woman. It disturbed her. She felt the skin on her breasts contract and move against the material of her blouse. Her face was hot. Pictures of Tom came into her mind.
‘There was a fire at Saxenburg,’ Miriam said. ‘Hugo died in it.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘No one really knows, except Smuts, perhaps. Charles went away after it, to boarding-school, and when he came home I hardly saw him. She kept him there. Just the two of them.’ She paused, then said bitterly. ‘She told me not to come to the house. I hate her.’
Kate had seen beads of perspiration on her upper lip as she stood up.
‘I’m going to swim,’ she said. ‘You?’
Kate had shaken her head. ‘I haven’t got a bathing-costume.’
‘I haven’t, either.’
She had taken off her cami-knickers and stood there, letting Kate see her body, then dived into the pool and swum to the far side. Kate had dabbled her toes in the water. Miriam used her body as a shapely machine and Kate was jealous of it, jealous of the big breasts and the rounded thighs, so different from her own thin figure.
After a few minutes Miriam had come out. She lay back, allowing the sun to dry her.
‘Have you got someone? A man?’ she asked.
‘Not really.’ She was unwilling to discuss Tom.
‘Charles and I are still . . .’ She paused, then said, ‘friends’, emphasising the word so Kate could not mistake her meaning.
‘That’s nice,’ Kate had said carefully. ‘It’s good to have someone like that.’
Faintly over the soft noise of the waves they had heard a call. At first Kate thought it might be a seabird, then she had seen Lena standing on the low cliff.
‘My father must be finished.’ Miriam began to dress.
Kate had noticed a movement on a rock about thirty yards away. Someone was standing beside it, watching. Then she had seen the ostrich plume.
‘There’s Jonas,’ she said.
Miriam went on dressing unhurriedly.
‘I wonder how long he’s been watching?’ Kate said.
‘I don’t care, he’s only a servant.’
They had met Lena at the foot of the cliff. ‘Has Miss Kate seen Betty?’ she asked.
Kate had shaken her head. ‘Are they still talking in the house?’
‘They finished now.’ Lena’s expression was angry.
*
‘. . . of the circumstances, otherwise there would have been a service at home.’ Leibowitz’s voice brought her thoughts back to the grave. ‘So I will read the kaddish that would have been said in the home.’ He opened his Daily Prayer Book. ‘A woman of worth who can find?’ he began. ‘For her price is far above rubies. She stretcheth out her hand to the poor . . .’
The reading was soon over and the coffin was lowered. The mourners threw in the symbolic handfuls of earth but Mrs. Preller turned away and Kate went with her. She took a longer path to the car so that she would not pass the mausoleum and Kate sensed she was feeling the chill of her own mortality.
On the way home she sat stiff and silent for a while and then suddenly said abruptly, ‘Mr. Preller built this road for me. In the early days there was no road. We went to town in the trap. But when the motors came Mr. Preller said I must have the first. So he built the road and then bought a motor. Is that not so, Smuts?’
‘That’s right, Miss Augusta.’
‘Smuts knows about motors. He can mend them. Mr. Preller made him learn.’
Chapter Five
Some days after Miriam had been buried Kate went out for a walk. She saw Lena and Betty at the top of the cliffs. She could not hear what they were saying for the wind was increasing, but it was obvious that they were arguing. Beyond them, she saw Jonas fishing down on the rocks, the big sea pole and the man forming a black silhouette against the red of the setting sun.
Betty began to run towards the house. Lena followed her more slowly and as she drew level Kate, conscious of their constant warfare, said impulsively: ‘Don’t you think you’re hard on her, Lena? After all, she’s nearly grown up.’
‘Does Miss Kate think so?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Has Miss Kate got a daughter? Beautiful like Betty? Eighteen years old?’
‘Of course I haven’t.’
‘Miss Kate wouldn’t say I’m hard on Betty if she had a child.’
‘I suppose not. I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.’
There was a sympathy in Lena which Kate had noticed was part of the coloured people’s character. She had heard it said they were feckless and immoral, but
she had found other qualities that were just as marked, like humour and sympathy. Now Lena said, ‘Miss Kate mustn’t worry about what she said. But if she knew what goes on with the young people, she would understand.’
‘What goes on?’
‘It’s not always the fault of the girls. It’s the men. They get drunk. I know young girls, twelve, thirteen, who have babies. Then they can’t get married. Who’s going to marry them?’
They had been walking slowly back to the house and now Kate stopped. ‘But can’t they have the babies taken away?’ She had said it almost without thinking.
‘What does Miss Kate mean?’
‘I mean abortion. Wouldn’t that be better than letting girls of thirteen have babies they can’t deal with?’
‘That’s true, Miss Kate. They do that, too. But sometimes, you know, bad things happen.’
‘Oh?’ She felt chilled.
Lena was watching her closely. ‘Girls can have babies taken away.’
‘Here?’
‘In the village. I know two people.’
‘Who had babies taken away?’
‘No, no. Who can take them away. But it is against God’s law.’
‘That’s true. But some people are weak . . .’
‘That is why I watch Betty. I think myself maybe Betty is weak.’
‘But if Betty sinned . . . I only say if, you understand . . . if she was going to have a baby, what would you do, Lena?’
‘Miss Kate, Jesus Christ says we must not commit sin.’
‘If . . .?’
‘Maybe she would have it taken away.’
‘Here?’
‘No, not here.’
‘Where?’
‘In Cape Town.’
‘There are places there?’
‘Yes, a lot of places.’
‘Where would you go with Betty?’
‘To my cousin, Sarah. My cousin can do such things.’
‘Where is your cousin?’
‘In District Six.’
‘District Six?’
‘Has Miss Kate heard of it?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s where the coloured people live. Sarah lives in Hanover Street.’
‘I know Hanover Street,’ Kate lied.
‘Then Miss Kate must know the Eastern Emporium.’
‘I . . .’
‘It sells spices and curry and samosas and chilli bites.’
‘Oh, that emporium.’
‘My cousin used to live next door. Maybe she doesn’t no more. I haven’t been there for five, six years.’
‘And that’s where you would take Betty.’
Lena hesitated. ‘Betty isn’t having a baby, Miss Kate.’
‘Of course not.’
‘That is why I watch her.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest . . .’
‘Miss Kate musn’t be sorry. Miss Kate will have her own children one day, then she will see.’
‘I’m sure you’re right. How much is it, Lena?’
‘How much?’
‘To take the baby away?’
‘It is dear, Miss Kate. Very, very dear.’
‘How much?’
‘Ten, twelve pounds. If the police catch them, it’s trouble. That’s why they ask so much.’
‘That is expensive. Lena, if anything . . . I only say if anything were to happen, I want you to know you can come to me.’
‘For what?’
‘Money.’
‘Money for what?’
‘You know.’
She saw anger in the woman’s eyes. ‘Better safe than sorry,’ Lena said, and walked quickly back to the house.
*
The train wound across the plain. Dust devils spun across the horizon, and the mountains, baking brown, shimmered in the heatwaves. Had Lena guessed, Kate wondered? In the past few days she had been distant. Or was she reading too much into Lena’s expression, thinking it unusually severe? During their conversation she had felt that they had been playing a kind of game, saying one thing, each knowing that the other was thinking something else.
She opened her bag and counted her money. If Lena was right, she had just enough, the last of her Edinburgh savings, to pay Sarah, if she could find her, and to rent a room in a cheap hotel for a night. She remembered the girl she had known in Edinburgh. She’d had her abortion on a Saturday and had been back in the office the following Monday. She had looked like death, but she had been there. Today was Friday. Kate had left early and should be in Cape Town by six o’clock. If she could have the baby taken away tonight or tomorrow, she could catch the train back on Sunday afternoon. No one would be any the wiser.
She tried to doze, but images kept coming into her mind. Fumbling hands. Blood. ‘Bad things can happen,’ Lena had said. It was the thought of those ‘things’ she was trying to keep at bay. She was afraid, as she had never been afraid before in her life.
She tried to occupy her mind by looking at the scenery. They were among the wheatlands now, already cinnamon in the burning summer heat. Occasionally the train would stop at a small village, nothing more than a cluster of white houses round the station; sometimes it would pause at a wayside halt. The only people she saw were Cape coloureds, driving along the dusty roads in their donkey carts. She felt that if she left the train and started to walk she might never strike anything except more emptiness, more space. At that moment, she hated the country, hated its harshness, hated what was happening to her within that harshness.
And yet, who was to blame but herself? She had started it, and it would be self-delusion not to admit it. She could not even blame Tom. She had known the gamble.
It had begun as a typical ship-board romance. Her parents, prostrate with heat in the tropics, had kept to their cabin, leaving Duggie and Kate to do what they liked. Duggie soon found drinking cronies and she began to enjoy a freedom she had never experienced before. The ship was like a cut-off world. Life had no beginning and no ending, she was encapsulated in a limbo of hot days and blue seas. She had begun to look around. There were several attractive men who were eager to partner her to the nightly dances and even more eager to take her up onto the top deck afterwards. She found herself kissing three different men on three consecutive nights and enjoyed herself immensely. Then she had met Tom.
Duggie had been teaching her deck quoits. Leaning on his cane, he had held one of the heavy rubber discs and was about to explain how to throw it when he looked at a man standing with his back to the rail. ‘By God, that’s Tom Austen,’ he said.
‘Who’s Tom Austen?’
‘He was a war correspondent with one of the London papers. He was with our regiment in Turkey. He has written books.’
She saw a big sandy-haired man in his thirties with a squarish face and a wide forehead. He was wearing a light cotton tropical suit and carried a book in one hand. He was watching the activity on the deck through half-closed eyes.
‘Is this the way?’ she said, taking the quoit from Duggie.
She bowled the rubber disc like a wheel. It had raced across the deck, gathering speed, struck a projection, leapt into the air and vanished over the starboard side, narrowly missing Tom Austen.
‘My God, if you’re going to chuck them about like that I’m off!’ Duggie said, limping away.
Austen watched the sinking quoit. Kate went towards him and said, ‘I’m sorry. That was a mistake.’
He had turned, smiling. She saw that he had blue-grey eyes under heavy brows. His smile was infectious and lit up his face. He said, ‘It’s an interesting new technique. I haven’t seen it done that way before. Let me show you. I’ve travelled on so many ships I’m something of an expert.’ He picked up a quoit and she noticed his hands, broad and powerful, but with surprisingly long fingers. ‘You hold it like this.’ He took her arm and she was aware of the strength in his fingers and of the power of his personality. ‘You throw it like this.’ The quoit landed flat and slid along the wooden deck. ‘Now you try.’
He had spent half an hour teaching her, then as the afternoon cooled they had sat outside the Verandah Bar and drunk Tom Collinses. She had never heard of the drink before. He had told her about his travels as a special correspondent in India, Japan and Russia and about the books he had written. Now he was going to Cape Town as the staff correspondent of the London Chronicle with the whole of Africa as his beat.
By the time they had talked for two hours she had realised that all the other men she had known, either in Scotland or on the ship, were like young boys compared with him.
She had heard the xylophone announcing dinner and said, ‘What sitting are you?’
‘Neither. I eat up at the sharp end.’
‘In First Class?’
‘I’m in First because my newspaper pays the bill. That’s the only reason. And it’s pretty dull. Full of elderly generals going out to the Cape for their health. But the food’s good. There’s a grill room. Why don’t you go and change and I’ll come and pick you up. We’ll have dinner in the grill and . . .’ He smiled. ‘. . . I can go on talking about myself.’
That was how it had started. The rest of the voyage, for Kate, was a kind of paradise. She had spent most of it in his airy cabin on B-deck. The difference between it and the bunk she had in a six-berth with three other women was enough to make her realise for the first time the scale on which some people could live all the time.
He was the first man she had slept with and after the first few times she knew that she had never really been fulfilled before. There was not only a physical completeness, but its influence seemed to spread to her psyche, giving her a confidence she had not known. They had made love every day and sometimes more than once. Gradually she had lost her early shyness and, given free rein, the strength of her passion was such that a door seemed to close in her mind, blotting out her normal personality. Her small, thin body seemed to be made up of fibres like electric cables, that surged with voltage when she was in his arms. Once, sweating and exhausted, they had lain side by side and he kissed her damp face and said, ‘I’ve never known anyone like you. I never knew there could be anything like this.’
It was the greatest compliment she had ever been paid.
Like most shipboard romances, it should have ended when the Dulnain Castle rode slowly into Table Bay. It was five o’clock in the morning and she and Tom had been up all night.
The Sea Cave Page 6
