The Sea Cave

by Alan Scholefield

  After consultation with Mrs. Preller, Kate and Lena had transported a complete English traditional dinner into the hot African night: soup was followed by goose and plum pudding. The wines were in a beautiful teak cooler which had come from yet another wrecked vessel. There were no elaborate decorations, but a small paper Christmas tree stood in the middle of the table. It was the most festive setting Kate could imagine. She had never known such surroundings.

  The talk was general and she sat back, drinking her wine and listening. She was interested in the talk, but more so in her own reactions to the atmosphere. It was as though she fitted in naturally. And again she thought, as she had when she sat by the ruined tennis court and the cracked swimming pool, how much she would like to recreate Saxenburg and bring it back to its original splendour.

  ‘. . . cold enough, my father would take us skating,’ Mrs. Preller was saying. ‘My father always bought a cake at Demel’s . . . a “creation” is more the word. I remember one that was a valley in the Tyrol: the little houses made of chocolate, the meadows of cream, the snow of marzipan.’ She had drunk several glasses of wine and her speech was rapid, her manner excited. Kate noticed that Dr. du Toit was frowning. ‘. . . fried carp. But that was for Christmas Eve dinner. No one knows how to cook carp in this country. And coffee . . . there is no comparison. Mr. Preller found a shop in Cape Town with Viennese coffee. Whenever he came back from Cape Town, he brought me coffee. He was always giving me presents. But he had so little time to be here towards the end. Business, business. That was after Hugo died. Do you know, I still . . .’

  ‘Augusta –’

  ‘All right, Hennie, all right.’

  There were undercurrents in the conversation that Kate did not understand.

  Mrs Preller staggered as she rose, and du Toit steadied her. ‘Miss Buchanan and I will leave you to your cigars. We will have coffee in the drawing-room.’ Words and syllables had begun to run into each other.

  Dr. du Toit gave Kate a glance that needed no interpretation and she moved forward to let Mrs. Preller take her arm. ‘I am not crippled,’ she said.

  When they were in the hall under the huge Saxenburg figurehead, she stopped. ‘I will join you in a minute.’ Kate watched her go along the passage into the downstairs cloakroom.

  She carried coffee through from the kitchen, telling Betty to start clearing the table. Jonas was already at the sink. In the drawing-room, she put the coffee down, emptied ash-trays and removed glasses. When she had finished, she stood in the doorway, frowning, then moved to the cloakroom door. The light was on, but she could hear no sound.

  She called: ‘Mrs. Preller?’ There was no reply. She knocked gently, then louder. She heard the men come from the dining-room and drew the doctor aside.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Charles said.

  ‘We don’t know. Your mother may have fainted,’ du Toit said. He knocked and called, then twisted the door handle. ‘I’ll have to break it.’

  He put his huge frame against the door and pushed. It was made of heavy teak and the lock was solid, but there was a splintering sound and it burst open.

  Mrs. Preller was lying on her side in the middle of the room, her hair covering her face, her long dress caught up under her knees.

  Du Toit knelt beside her. ‘It’s the wine, on top of martinis. I told her she shouldn’t drink much. Augusta!’ He slapped her wrists. ‘We must get her upstairs.’

  ‘My God, what’s happened? What has she done?’ Smuts said from the doorway.

  ‘It’s all right, Smutsy. Too much wine,’ Charles said.

  Dr. du Toit picked her up easily. ‘Charles, you wait down here with Smuts. Miss Buchanan, come with me.’ He paused at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Tell Lena to come.’

  ‘She went to church. She won’t be back until late.’

  ‘Then Augusta may be in trouble,’ he said grimly.

  Kate had not been in Mrs. Preller’s bedroom before. Her impression was of lace everywhere, curtains, hangings above the bed, lace that billowed and moved like the ostrich feathers in other parts of the house. The bed was large and high, with pillows piled up against the headboard. Du Toit placed her against them.

  ‘Help me undress her and get her into bed.’

  There was a sound from the sitting-room and Charles called, ‘I’ve told Smuts to go. I’ll be downstairs.’

  ‘Send Betty up.’

  ‘She left a few minutes ago.’

  Mrs. Preller’s dress was fastened at the neck. Kate undid it and slipped it over her head. She found a night-dress under the pillows and started to remove her undergarments.

  ‘Oh, God!’ she whispered, as she saw her body. She wanted to look away, but couldn’t. Mrs. Preller was painfully thin and at first Kate thought she was wizened, like someone very, very old. Then, in the shadowy lamplight, she saw the skin of her chest – there were no breasts to speak of – and upper arms and back looked as though candles had been dripped all over her and the wax allowed to harden. It had the same dead-white, ridged and shiny appearance. She saw something else: blotchy bruises on the inner arms, some red, some purple and some a sulphurous yellow.

  She hurriedly pulled the night-dress down and Dr. du Toit drew up the sheet.

  ‘Not feeling ill, are you?’ he said.

  ‘I’m all right. It was just seeing –’

  ‘Ja. Well. You’ve seen what third-degree burns can do.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ she said again. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Has no one told you?’

  ‘People are always talking about an accident, but that’s all.’

  ‘You sleep upstairs, don’t you, in the old nursery? It happened in the room next door. The two boys had it as their bedroom. I’m not sure of the exact details, but it was winter and a fire was burning. A piece of coal or wood must have fallen from the grate. I was told that there was some washing drying on a clothes-horse in front of the fire. Apparently it caught alight. Man, the next thing, the whole room was in flames. She got those burns trying to save Hugo, but it was no use.’

  ‘What happened to Charles?’

  ‘He was only a child. He says he –’

  The telephone rang and they heard Charles answer it downstairs. They listened. Then du Toit said, ‘I’m damn sure that’s what killed her husband. I don’t think he ever recovered. Nor did she. Man, they loved that boy.’

  ‘It’s for you, doctor,’ Charles called.

  ‘She’s all right for the moment,’ du Toit said as he picked up the extension in Mrs. Preller’s sitting-room.

  When he returned, he looked annoyed. ‘On Christmas night! Now I’ve got a confinement. The pains have started. Listen, there is not much to do here. She may vomit. I hope she does. You must lift her head, otherwise the stuff will get into her lungs. The main thing, though, is that you must turn her over every half hour or so. It’s important. When they go into this kind of coma, they can’t turn themselves. The nerves can be damaged and cause a Bell’s palsy. You understand?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Just stay awake. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  He left and she heard him talking to Charles. Suddenly, for no reason she could explain, she did not want Charles there. When he came to the door, she said she would call him if there was anything he could do.

  ‘I’m sorry about this,’ he said. ‘Not a very nice Christmas for you.’

  ‘Nor for her.’

  She sat by the bed. Every half hour, she put her hands under Mrs. Preller’s body and heaved her over onto her other side.

  By two o’clock the doctor had not returned and she was exhausted. She dozed, then came awake suddenly, flustered and frightened, only to see by the clock that she had slept barely a minute or two. She rose and turned the old lady. Mrs. Preller opened her eyes.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘Where is Lena?’

  ‘She went to Church.’

  ‘I fell. I remember falling.’

  ‘That’s right. You must have tripped
. You fell in the cloakroom.’

  ‘Who found me?’

  ‘I did. Then Dr. du Toit broke the door down.’

  ‘He would have enjoyed that. He was a rugby player. He always talks scrum . . . scrum . . .’ She lay back, her white, wasted face matching the colour of the expensive linen pillow-cases. ‘Who undressed me?’

  ‘Dr. du Toit and I.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘One of his patients is having a baby.’

  ‘So. On Christmas. It is not possible to conduct these things.’ She paused and looked directly at Kate. ‘Then you saw?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘It is not pretty. You know, once I was like you, thin, but with a good figure. Maybe like a boy’s, but good. Young. Strong. I used to walk like you. Quickly. As though there was never enough time to get where I wanted to go. Did Hennie tell you about it?’

  ‘He said it happened the night your son died.’

  ‘What did he say exactly?’ Her voice was suddenly sharp.

  ‘That there had been an accident in the nursery. A piece of coal or wood had fallen on some drying clothes. You went in to save your son.’

  ‘No more?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’ Kate was out of her depth. The room, the scarred and twisted body, the fall, the house, the wind that was howling around the corners; everything was alien. Yet she also felt a bond developing between her and the woman in the bed, feeling a pity for her and an admiration that she had not known before. She realised suddenly that she had been so caught up in her own life that she had felt almost nothing for anyone else since she had broken with Tom.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ she said.

  Mrs. Preller ignored her, pursuing her own thoughts. ‘Once I loved to run and swim and play tennis.’ She yawned and rubbed her arm in a gesture that Kate had already learned to know. ‘How old do you think I am?’

  It was something she had often wondered about. Given that Charles was twenty-seven or twenty-eight, his mother, judging from her appearance, would have been about forty when she had borne him. And yet, when she spoke of Vienna and her marriage to Boss Charles, Kate had the impression that she had been young then.

  ‘I couldn’t say, ma’am.’

  ‘Guess.’

  Kate thought she looked between sixty-five and seventy, but she said, ‘Fifty-five.’

  ‘Has Hennie been speaking to you?’ Mrs. Preller asked harshly.

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  She lay back, scratching her arm. ‘You have done well here, Kate.’ It was the first time she had used her Christian name. ‘Sometimes I see myself in you when I was young. You have the same . . . how shall I put it? Hardness? Strength? I do not mean it in a bad way. I needed such hardness. Now you can see why. Maybe you will need it, too, who knows?’ She shivered in spite of the warmth of the room. ‘Go and see if Lena is back and send her to me.’

  Kate went out in the hot, windy darkness to the workers’ dwellings. There was no answer either from Lena or Betty.

  Mrs. Preller looked agitated when she returned to the room.

  ‘Is Charles still here?’

  ‘Do you want me to call him?’

  ‘No, no.’ She looked closely at Kate. ‘Now you must do something for me. Look in the cupboard.’ She pointed to the bedside cupboard. Kate opened the door and saw a kidney-shaped enamel dish, a syringe, ampules of a colourless liquid and a piece of red rubber tubing. For a second her stomach clenched as she remembered the red rubber tubing in the dirty room at Fat Sarah’s.

  ‘It will not bite you,’ Mrs. Preller said. ‘Have you never seen morphine?’

  ‘Ma’am, I –’

  ‘Come.’

  She picked up the syringe and the small bottle and held them out to Mrs. Preller.

  ‘No, no. You must do it.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Of course. If Lena was here she would do it. Look, I will draw it in.’ She took the syringe and drew the morphine up, then handed it back. ‘Now you must find the vein. Take the rubber tube. Put it so.’

  The inner side of her arm was, as Kate had already noticed, covered in blue-black, purple and yellow bruising. Now she could see old puncture marks.

  ‘Tighter. Pull the rubber tighter. Look for the vein.’

  She twisted the band and the arm began to swell. Thin, threadlike veins filled with blood and stood out from the skin. ‘Come, child, don’t be frightened,’ Mrs. Preller said.

  Kate touched the skin with the needle. It seemed at first that it would not go in, then suddenly it slipped into the vein and blood rose in the syringe. She pressed gently on the plunger and the mixture of blood and morphine slid down the tube and into the arm. She removed the syringe and placed it in the dish. Mrs. Preller was rubbing her arm. ‘Have you never done such a thing before?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Where do you think I get the morphine?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘From Dr. du Toit. Did he not tell you where the scars came from? Did he not tell you about the fire? Can you imagine the pain? No, you cannot. They had to give me morphine for weeks. After that, you cannot say no to it. You cannot live without it. You learn to live with it. So. You know my little secret now.’

  Her voice had become drowsy and she closed her eyes. ‘You can go now.’

  But Kate sat on. She did not know whether or not she coud continue to turn the sleeping woman and decided that she should. She sat watching the small figure and gradually she absorbed the terror and horror of that night long ago in the room next to hers. She saw in her mind’s eye the flames and heard the screaming. Year after year of needles and bruising, and the fight to keep sane, the fight to bring up her child, to hold onto Saxenburg. Until that moment, Kate had thought she had plumbed the depths in Fat Sarah’s house. She began to realise that she had scarcely sunk below the surface.

  She was awake, sitting stiffly in the chair, when Lena came in. It was a little after three o’clock.

  ‘What is Miss Kate doing here?’

  ‘Mrs. Preller fell. Dr. du Toit told me to sit with her.’

  Lena came towards the bed and saw the syringe on the bedside cupboard and a look of such fierce anger came into her eyes that for a moment Kate thought she was going to attack her. She bent and gently placed the bruised arm under the covers.

  ‘Miss Kate must go to bed now.’ Her anger seemed to have abated.

  ‘Dr. du Toit said I should turn –’

  ‘Does Miss Kate take me for a fool?’

  ‘No, Lena, of course not.’

  She went up to her room and lay in bed, but she could not sleep. She could not get out of her mind that night all those years ago. Her imagination was so vivid, her senses so sharp, that she even seemed to smell the fire. Could the smell still be in the room next door, a scent of charred wood, an old smell, a smell that would be there forever?

  *

  She spent the New Year holiday with her parents in Cape Town. She arrived there on New Year’s Eve, bringing a basket of crystallised fruit as a present. The house was even worse than she recalled. The city was experiencing a heat wave and the tar bubbled in the street outside and heat seemed to collect in the small, dark rooms. But the family seemed genuinely glad to see her and the house had been tidied and swept.

  ‘Come away! Come away!’ her father said, putting his arms around her. Mrs. Buchanan kissed her and Duggie gave her a hug. They took her into the front room and she had a glass of sweet wine and her mother brought in some Mowbray haddock cooked in milk. Kate was unused to such attention at home and was touched. But she saw in their eyes something beyond this brief affection and she could not place it. They seemed to wait for her to speak, to hang on her words. They made her tell them about Saxenburg. It was as though she lived in a far-off kingdom and had come to give them news of an enchanted world.

  She spent the following day at home and gradually the old values reasserted themselves. She found herself in the kitchen cooking most of the dinner
, she discovered that the family stopped talking when she came into a room; she began to feel the claustrophobic quality she had always felt at home. But home, she realised, was no longer here. If it was anywhere, it was at Saxenburg and she saw herself in her new black dress, a glass of Rhine wine in her hand, sitting at the great refectory table in the dining-room. That was where she longed to be; that was where she ought to be.

  Late in the afternoon a Coloured messenger delivered a letter for her. She took it to her room. She knew, before she opened it, that it was from Tom.

  ‘Darling,’ she read. ‘I telephoned Helmsdale and they told me you were spending the holiday with your parents. What’s happened to us is plain ridiculous. We must see each other. I know it and, in your heart, you know it. Come to the office tomorrow morning. I’ll take the day off. I love you so much it is like an ache that never goes away. Tom.’

  She read and re-read the letter. She smelled it and thought she caught the faintest trace of his skin. She knew that ache. It had never left her either and now, as though in ambush, it struck her forcibly enough to make her catch her breath.

  Of course he was right. They had to see each other. She did know it in her heart. She thought of tomorrow. She could make some excuse to leave her family. She would go to his office. He would take her in the car. They could spend the whole day together. Hours and hours. She would go early, straight after breakfast. They could go to a hotel. Have food sent to the room . . . a bottle of wine . . .

  There was a knock at the door. She hastily hid the letter. Her mother came in and sat at the end of her bed, something she had often done when Kate was a child. For a moment she was a little girl again, young enough not to know how much greater her mother’s love was for Duggie than for her.

  Mrs. Buchanan began by asking if she was well, if she was happy, and then the real reason for her visit emerged. Her father had not worked for more than two weeks, Duggie not for a month or more. They were living entirely on what Kate had been sending them.