The Sea Cave

by Alan Scholefield

  ‘Do you know why I have asked you to see me? No? In that case, I have a pleasant duty.’ He had spread his Kitchener moustache with his plump thumb and forefinger. In the background she had heard a sizzling noise and the office was filled with the smell of frying fish. He had opened a file and read to her a letter from Mrs. Preller’s attorney in Cape Town, Mr. Godlonton. It was written in legal phraseology and she had found it difficult to follow. When he had finished he dropped it onto his desk and said, ‘Well, there you are. I think you’ll agree that this means the start of a new life for you. And, I suppose, your family, too. How is your brother? It was your brother, wasn’t it, you spoke of before? A war wound, I think?’

  ‘May I read the letter?’

  He had handed it to her, saying: ‘By the way, I have not congratulated you. I hope you’ll both be very happy.’

  She had read it slowly and with concentration. It appeared that as from a date two days previously, Preller Estates (Pty) Ltd., were to pay her an annual salary of six hundred pounds, split into twelve monthly payments. From the day of her wedding a second company, Preller Investments (Pty) Ltd., was to be formed, of which she was to be a director, along with her husband Charles, and Mrs. Preller. At that time she would receive twenty per cent of the equity of the company, the other eighty per cent to be shared between Mrs. Augusta Preller and Mr. Charles Preller on the basis of three to two, which would give Mrs. Preller the controlling share. Kate’s allocation, the letter had stated, was to be her wedding present from Mrs. Preller.

  ‘What does equity mean?’ she had said.

  ‘The share capital. If the company is in profit, you will receive dividends, the amount of which you and your fellow-directors will decide.’

  Equity. Fellow-directors. Share capital. She was moving into a world she knew nothing about.

  Mr. Hamilton had held up a cheque. ‘As I understand from Mrs. Preller, the six hundred pounds has nothing to do with the other matter. This is your salary. Do you want it paid into your current account or shall we open a deposit account? And then I’m sure you will want to talk about payments to be made . . .’

  She had written to her mother later that day telling her to telephone Saxenburg. Two days later, she had spoken to her.

  ‘Do you know what this is costing?’ The voice had come to her faintly, and in her mind’s eye she could see her mother standing in the Greek café on the corner of the street.

  ‘Yes, I do, Mother. I’m sending you enough to cover it, and more.’ And then she had told her about her engagement.

  There was silence for a moment, then her mother said, ‘Getting married? Did you say, married?’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  ‘Oh, ma wee Catherine! And to Charles! Oh, my dearie, what a thing! Wait till I tell your father and Douglas. They’ll be so . . . they’ll be jist . . . I canna say what I feel. Are you coming home first?’

  ‘No. I’ll write, though, and let you know the date. It’ll be here in Helmsdale.’

  As Charles drove her over the mountains towards Cape Town, that all seemed a long time ago.

  *

  When she thought back on her honeymoon in future years, her memories were coloured by the events that followed, and it was difficult to tease out the reality. But at the time, she enjoyed herself. And if she was clear-sighted enough of the past, she could sometimes remember herself feeling happy. It was never the passionate, overwhelming happiness she had found with Tom, but a happiness made up of things which were important to her then, and reached through her own decision to do her utmost to make her marriage work. She wanted no half measures. She had reservations about Charles, that was true enough, but she felt, as Mrs. Preller did, that marriages were not made in heaven, but that there were practical aspects that could compensate. After all, Mrs. Preller should know, if the stories about Boss Charles were anything to go on.

  Her happiness emerged in unexpected ways, from negatives and positives alike. For the first time in her life she felt that she had true security. Even at school at the Academy she had known that the idyll could not last. But now she could look forward to a future of financial stability and, if she worked hard enough and did not demand too much, emotional stability as well.

  She had set aside a certain amount of money to be paid each month to her mother. This meant that Duggie could have his operation, that the rent of the house would not fall into arrears and that there would be enough left over to feed them, thus removing the guilt which had hung over her since she had caused the family to be uprooted and brought to the Cape. Later she found that having bought the removal of guilt, she could not face visiting the house in Observatory. She and Charles drove down several times to see Duggie in St James, but she never went to the house, arranging instead to meet her mother in the city.

  In her relations with Charles, she found almost immediately that his love-making was pale and anaemic compared with Tom’s. But she forced herself to put Tom out of her mind and when she lay with Charles she tried to give him what she thought he expected. If there was pretence, it came from the best of motives. Charles’s sensual face belied the reality. He was a lover without much finesse and the acts were quickly over.

  But on their honeymoon, he was attentive. He seemed naively pleased to be married, as though he had joined some kind of club. He took her about the city, to parties, to lunches and night-clubs, and showed her off. This flattered her.

  He bought her clothes and, with her small breasts, she wore the current, boyish shapes with elegance. She had her hair marcelled and she began to smoke cigarettes in a long, amber holder.

  As she came to know her husband better, she found him a curious mixture of naiveté and sophistication. He carried on his endless sporting duel with Jerry to the point of absurdity, like a small boy. But he knew his way around, menus and wine lists and had the confidence of a man who had been educated at the best school, been dressed by the best tailor and been used to money all his life. During the two weeks of their honeymoon the violence which she knew lay just below the surface of his psyche did not surface.

  She discovered that he was afraid of the dark and liked to sleep with a night-light. She wondered if she could protest about this, but decided not to, remembering how he had told her what had happened the night Hugo died; how he had buried his head under the blankets because he was afraid of the shadows in the adjoining room. Probably his fear sprang from that. However, she was not used to going to sleep with a light on and after a week she asked if they might leave the light on in the hall instead.

  ‘I’ve always had a night-light since Hugo died,’ he said. ‘I used to have nightmares. Dr. du Toit would come and sit with me. I remember he used to hold my hand and tell me I must be a little man. He gave me the night-light. Do you think it’s silly?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said.

  Allied to his fear of the dark was fear of being alone. That, too, happened at night, and she thought it might spring from the same experience. If they were out with Jerry and Freda, he would want to go on and on, first to a night club and, when that closed, to a road house for sandwiches and coffee, or he would insist on bringing them back to the flat and keep them there, talking and drinking unil Kate would excuse herself and go to bed. It was even more of a problem when they were alone. He would talk and talk and she would feel her eyes grow heavy until sometimes she would go to sleep on the sofa while he stood on the verandah with a drink in his hand, willing the city to stay awake with him.

  He slept badly. Sometimes she would wake and find him reading a novel or one of the English magazines he bought when the mail-boat came in. The result was that he slept late in the mornings. This was when she would go out and stroll through the early-morning streets, often part of the commuter crowds. She would find herself looking for a tall man with sandy hair, but she never saw him. She liked these morning walks, loved being in a large city and feeling that she was not some amoeba-like creature who could be crushed by it but was, in a small way, dominating
it.

  The flat was on a hillside above the city and the views, especially at dusk, when the lights came up all the way down to the pier that jutted out into Table Bay, were breathtaking.

  Sometimes, when Charles was still asleep, she would take a tram down the hill and window-shop. She did not buy much, but loved the thought that she could have this dress or that hat, that leather handbag, those imported shoes, if she wanted them. Then at mid-morning she would go into one of the big department stores, Stuttaford’s or Cleghorn and Harris, and have her coffee overlooking Adderley Street, one of the city’s main arteries.

  All in all, it was a pleasant time, better than she could have hoped, but she was not sorry when the fortnight came to an end and they put their bags in the dickey-seat, locked up the flat and drove back to Saxenburg.

  Chapter Six

  It was during the first few weeks after returning to Cape Town that Kate began to see the pattern of her future forming, and she did not like what she saw.

  She remembered how Freda had once said to her in Cape Town, when she was depressed and angry with Jerry: ‘Once you marry them, it’s different.’

  Freda was not the most perspicacious person but, in her own way, Kate began to understand what she meant. What she had thought were merely sexual tensions between her and Charles before they were married were revealed as something more complicated. It was as though they lived in two different worlds: the city and the farm. The city had always been Charles’s territory; she had met him there, he had taken her about with him, it was where he lived and operated. The farm had become her world. Weeks had passed between visits from Charles, weeks in which she had been alone, or almost alone, and in which she identified – because she could not and would not identify with her parents’ little villa – with Saxenburg itself. The house had become her own, Helmsdale her territory.

  On top of this was a new layer of tension: she had been running the farm under Smuts’ guidance for months before her marriage. She had become used to having things done her way, of making all the decisions, only consulting Smuts on problems she had not encountered before, and Mrs. Preller on matters of finance. But when they returned to Saxenburg together, she felt that a subtle change had taken place: this was more Charles’s home than hers, it was eventually his inheritance, and she felt constrained by his constant presence.

  For the first few days, however, she was too busy to notice anything much outside the running of the farm itself. Smuts had kept things going, but relinquished the reins to her with obvious relief.

  She and Charles had moved into the guest suite, which was in the east wing and consisted of a large bedroom, dressing-room, bathroom and sitting-room. She’d had the suite repapered and repainted in cool greys and pale colours and had had two sets of curtains made, one in green and yellow for summer, the other of heavy red velvet to give warmth in winter. When it was finished Mrs. Preller came in, looked around and finally said, ‘It is all right for young people, but personally I like the old styles.’

  ‘Does that mean I can’t re-do the drawing-room and the dining-room downstairs?’ Kate had said it only half-jokingly. The rooms had oppressed her from the start and she itched to get her hands on the drawing-room, with its magnificent great windows overlooking the cliffs and the sea.

  ‘No one will touch those rooms while I am alive,’ Mrs. Preller said.

  But Charles liked their suite and said, ‘You have a flair for this kind of thing. I’ll work on mother about the ground floor. What about the gardens and the pool and the tennis-court? Why can’t we do those as well?’

  ‘Money,’ Kate said.

  ‘We might be able to put it through the farm account. Everyone says the boom’s going to last. Anyway, you’re a wealthy woman.’ Again there was a cutting edge to the remark.

  She was not sure what Charles really thought of the increase in her salary and her twenty per cent holding in the company. In the beginning he had appeared to be pleased. Now perhaps he was jealous that she had received anything at all. Perhaps he felt it gave her too much power, too much independence. She recognised this as a danger area in their relationship in which she would have to tread carefully.

  She fitted back quickly into the pattern of life. She rose early, saw to the distribution of the work and dealt with any problems that might have arisen during the night: sick or injured birds, the incubator heaters – they were a continual headache – a leaking roof, wind-damage, a thousand things that needed decisions. Then she would come back to the house for breakfast. At first, Charles had joined her, in his dressing-gown, but this soon stopped and she found herself breakfasting alone while Lena took a tray up to Master Charles. Sometimes he did not get up until ten o’clock. This had the inevitable result of keeping him wide awake as midnight approached, while Kate was limp with exhaustion. Sometimes he would play the Victrola and she would pretend to read, but her eyes would droop. When she wanted to go to bed, he wanted her to stay up, he wanted company, he did not want to be alone.

  When he did get up in the mornings, he took over her office. In the time he had spent at Saxenburg before their marriage, he had often worked there, but there had been a clear, though unspoken, understanding that he was borrowing it. Now he installed himself. Often, when she needed to work at papers or accounts, Charles would be at the desk talking on the telephone to friends in Cape Town. He made her feel like an intruder and would sit with his hand cupped over the mouthpiece while she took what she needed and left. She found herself doing her paper-work on the big refectory table in the dining-room, surrounded by the furniture from the wrecks.

  She told herself that all marriages began with periods of adjustment and said nothing, but sometimes she remembered the panic that had gripped her before the wedding. Then she had been afraid of the future; now that it had arrived, she no longer felt the panic, but she did often feel worried. She wondered if the fact that she was living in the same house as her mother-in-law contributed to these difficulties. Given the choice, she would have liked to start in a place of her own. But she had not had the choice and there was no point in brooding about it. So she kept her peace while Charles’s breakfast trays were taken up to him, while he talked and drank and wanted her to play Lexicon or poker or gin-rummy into the small hours; she smiled when she went to her office and saw him with his feet on the desk and the telephone in his hand.

  At dinner one night, he said, ‘You know, we could run another two or three hundred birds if we had more water.’

  She was delighted to talk to him about the farm. He had often seemed bored by it and she had felt that if she could draw him into a shared interest much of the tension of who ran what would disappear; ideally it would be a joint enterprise. She had once herself mentioned the lack of water to Smuts and he had shrugged and said, ‘Talk to the old man up there, my friend,’ pointing to the heavens. The problem was that all the rain came in winter, but the ground was sandy and it soon disappeared so that in the hot, windy summer months it was not there when it was needed.

  ‘If we put in a dozen or more bore-holes and windmills we should be able to run birds and irrigate more lucerne,’ Charles said.

  For several days he consulted farming books and magazines and made telephone calls and talked to people in Helmsdale.

  Then Smuts got wind of it. ‘Do you think we haven’t tried to find water?’ he said to Kate. ‘We’ve tried all over the place. There’s no underground water here.’

  When Kate told Charles, he said, ‘Smutsy isn’t running the place any more. We are.’

  A week later a traction-engine trundled onto the farm towing a drilling-rig and set up in the north camp. For a month Kate listened to the thud-thud-thud of the distant engine working all the hours of daylight, except when a bit was lost down the hole. Altogether the rig’s owner tried in seven different places, lost two bits and part of his drilling gear, before Charles called it off.

  During that month, Kate did not protest, but when the bill came in, it was enormous. Ch
arles had signed a contract at a high rate per foot, whether water was found or not. He had also undertaken to pay for any damage to the machine.

  ‘Bloody fool,’ Smuts said. ‘Any kid knows how easy it is to lose the bits and how expensive they are. You never stand to pay for lost or broken gear. That’s the owner’s responsibility.’

  When Kate spoke to Charles about the cost he said, ‘You’re putting it through the farm account, aren’t you?’ as though this was some magical way of conjuring money from the air.

  Kate waited for Mrs. Preller to send for her, because she went over the books with a fine comb once a week, but no summons came.

  This was only one of several occas ons when Charles either tried to make changes in the farm or questioned Kate’s decisions, which meant appealing to Smuts, the repository of knowledge. Invariably, she was proved right, and it was in this atmosphere that they had their first major row.

  One raw and misty day after a frustrating morning when things had been going wrong, and with the thud of the boring-machine in her ears, she was not in the best of moods when she came in to lunch.

  Charles was wearing a new tweed suit he’d had made in Cape Town on their honeymoon and was looking very elegant. Dr. du Toit had dropped in to see Mrs. Preller and the two men were having a sherry in the drawing-room. In her work-clothes, Kate felt dowdy by comparison with them.

  ‘I hope you’ll stay for lunch,’ she said, accepting a sherry, and really hoping the contrary.

  ‘No, no, thank you,’ du Toit said, smiling his dimpled smile. His mane of silver hair shone in the light from the window and he looked huge, dwarfing Charles.

  ‘I only dropped in for this.’ He held up his glass. ‘I use Augusta as an excuse. I hear your coloured boy, Jonas, is back.’