The Sea Cave

by Alan Scholefield

  ‘Here? In Helmsdale?’ Charles said.

  ‘Ja. He came back last night.’

  ‘That must mean the magistrate’s hearing is soon.’

  ‘Next month, they say. They brought him back early because the gaol has been strengthened. They say the cement had rotted round the bars and he could have pulled them out with his bare hands. Now there are new bars.’

  She and Charles saw him to his motor.

  ‘What do you think of Jonas’s lawyer?’ Kate said.

  ‘Stoltz? I wouldn’t want him if I was Jonas. But what difference does it make?’

  He started the engine and drove off.

  ‘What difference!’ she repeated angrily.

  ‘He’s right. We don’t want one of those attorneys from Cape Town coming out and getting him off.’

  Kate clamped her lips together and walked into the house with long, agitated strides.

  Smuts had been to town and had brought back the leather post pouch with the day’s mail. Charles sorted through it and gave her a pile of circulars. They opened the envelopes as they ate.

  ‘What the hell’s all this about?’ he said, and tossed a letter across the table to her. She glanced at the letterhead: ISIDORE MENDEL & CO. Importers of Exotic Feathers. Then she saw the first line: ‘Dear Miss Buchanan,’ and felt a surge of anger.

  ‘This was addressed to me,’ she said.

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘A great deal.’

  ‘It had Mendel’s name on the envelope. I knew it had to be farm business. What the hell’s it all about anyway? You never told me anything about this.’

  ‘It was addressed to me. It was my private letter. I will not have you opening my mail.’

  ‘Why? Have you got something to hide?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘I can’t see what you’re getting all lashed up about. There’s nothing private in a letter from Mendel. Anyway, it’s just as well I did see it. This isn’t the way you do business. Gentleman’s agreement! What the hell’s the use of that? This is farm business and we run the farm.’

  There was a heart-beat’s pause, and then she plunged. ‘We don’t run the farm. I run the farm. I’ve been running it for months, with Mr. Smuts’s help. I’m paid to run it.’

  ‘Hang on . . .’ A shutter seemed to drop behind his eyes, but it was too late to stop and she was too angry to care.

  ‘No, you hang on. If you want to run the farm, then say so. You get up at six in the morning and tell the boys what to do. You make all the decisions. And you take the responsibility if anything goes wrong.’ She had risen and was standing by her chair.

  ‘Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?’ He rose to face her. ‘You do this and you do that. Whose fucking farm do you think it is, anyway? It’s not yours just because I gave you my name!’

  She refused to be led away from the central issue into areas where they could do permanent harm to each other.

  ‘I want to know what you propose to do.’

  ‘Do? What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘I want to know if you’re going to run the farm. Because if you are, you’d better think about some changes. Like who is going to get you up in the morning. You can’t run a property like this and have breakfast in bed.’ She shook the letter at him. ‘And don’t you ever open one of my letters again.’

  There was rage and violence in his eyes, but she turned and walked out of the room. She went into the drawing-room and lit a cigarette with shaking hands, expecting him to come bursting in, but instead she heard him go up the stairs. He would be going to his mother for clarification, she thought. Well, that’s what they all needed.

  She opened the letter again and forced herself to concentrate. Mendel had thought over her idea of forming a direct link between his firm and Saxenburg, but felt he could not commit himself to the formation of a formal and binding contract because of the price fluctuations and uncertainty arising from the Anti-Plumage Bill. Then he went on: ‘But having said that, I confess I am attracted to the idea of a link between two of the oldest and, may I say, best of the feather organisations. How would you consider a gentleman’s agreement on the lines discussed when I drank such lovely hock at Saxenburg?’

  She read the letter twice more. It was long and there were several paragraphs about safeguards on both sides which she would need to think about. But its main thrust was that the idea was feasible in the form Mendel described. She felt a thrill of pleasure in the knowledge that it had been her idea.

  Above her, she heard a door slam and Charles’s footsteps on the stairs. Now that she’d had her say she suddenly felt ashamed of having lost her temper and went into the hall to apologise. But he was already out of the house and she heard the roadster’s engine cough into life.

  She sent the letter up to Mrs. Preller and went out into the misty afternoon to inspect one of the gates, which had been hit by a lorry.

  Mrs. Preller asked for her in mid-afternoon. As she went up the staircase she felt a fluttering in her stomach. It was caused, not by apprehension, but by anticipation. She had never had a row with Mrs. Preller and did not wish to have one, but if the old woman was sending for her to reprimand her or to take Charles’s side, she was ready for a fight. For the first time, she realised how strong her position was now in comparison with when she had first come to Saxenburg.

  Mrs. Preller was sitting in the half-darkness of the room, with Smuts beside her. She motioned Kate to another chair.

  ‘This is very interesting,’ she said, holding up the letter. ‘Mendel seems to have taken a fancy to you.’

  ‘It must have been the wine,’ Kate said.

  ‘Well, what do you think? It was your idea.’

  Kate relaxed, realising there would be no conflict. ‘It sounds exciting. All our feathers taken at a fixed price near the top of the market, not subject to fluctuation except after certain time limits. He knows the price, we know the price. It allows us both to plan for the future.’

  ‘He also talks about the contract with Johnson & Co., for feather dusters. That means he’d take all our fine feathers and most of the ‘chicken’ feathers. He also says that with the new dyes even the poorer feathers are finding a market.’ She paused, and looked at Smuts. ‘What if something goes wrong?’

  ‘You mean this “gentleman’s agreement?” No, Miss Augusta, I would trust old Mendel completely.’

  ‘Yes, yes, he’s trustworthy enough. I mean, what if something went wrong and he couldn’t take the quantity?’

  ‘We could sell on the market again, or let Rothenstein in Paris take the whole lot. He asked us before, you remember.’

  ‘He’s harder to please than Mendel and he was always a bad payer. Still, we’d get rid of everything to him.’

  They talked for another hour, then Mrs. Preller let Smuts go. When he had closed the door, she said, ‘I don’t see you as much as I used to now that Charles and Smuts are here to drive me. Are things well?’

  ‘On the farm? I think so. I take Mr. Smuts round once a week.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know about the farm. Smuts reports to me. You have done well. That I know. That is why you are paid so much. No, not with the farm, with you?’

  ‘I’m just fine.’

  ‘I’m glad. It is nice that things are working as they should.’ She stopped, but as Kate stood up to go she said, ‘It is difficult for Charles, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘He has always had women around who gave in to him.’

  ‘You? That’s hard to believe.’

  ‘Sometimes.’ The thin vermilion lips twisted into a smile. It was a knowing smile and Kate carried the impression of it in her mind as she closed the door. Later she wondered about it: it was as though they had shared a secret, come to an understanding, forged a bond. But then another thought had come to her: Charles was better at business than farming. Why did Mrs. Preller not let him take over some of the company’s business affairs?


  She was in bed when he came back. She heard him stumbling about the bedroom, but pretended to be asleep. When he got in beside her she could smell the brandy on his breath and assumed he had spent the time in the hotel’s bar.

  She did not see him the following morning, but he sat down to lunch with her. They hardly spoke. Her impulse of the previous day to apologise evaporated under the pressure of his mood, instead she talked as if there had been no row at all. But he asked Lena for the Cape Times and sat reading it ostentatiously.

  Halfway through lunch he tapped the paper and said, ‘There’s a paragraph about Jonas. The magistrates’ hearing starts on the twelfth. Typical of this bloody place that you have to read about it in a Cape Town newspaper.’ She waited for him to continue, but he put the paper down and went out to the office. She picked it up and looked for the paragraph. As her eyes skimmed the columns they were caught by another heading: BRITISH JOURNALIST LEAVES CAPE TOWN.

  She read the story:

  *

  Mr. Tom Austen, correspondent in Cape Town for the London Chronicle, returned to Britain in the Glendower Castle yesterday.

  He arrived a year ago with his wife, Joyce, and lived at Kenilworth.

  It is believed that his return is a result of his wife’s death some weeks ago, after a short illness.

  Mr. Austen has written several highly-regarded books of travel and politics, notably about the East. He was also a well-known war correspondent.

  He was the only newspaper reporter to land with the first wave of troops at Gallipoli.

  It is unknown yet who his replacement will be.

  *

  She sat, staring numbly at the black print until her eyes filled with tears and the page became grey. Joyce dead. A short illness. Some weeks ago. The phrases went round and round in her head.

  She remembered with clarity Lena saying, ‘A Mr. Easton.’

  She had never returned his call because she could not, at that moment, have borne to hear his voice. But had he been calling to tell her of Joyce’s death or to wish her well? No, he had said it was urgent. She was to telephone him urgently. It had to be Joyce.

  What if she had telephoned? What if he had told her then, an hour before her marriage? Would it have changed anything? Duggie would still have needed the money, so would her father and mother. She didn’t know . . . she couldn’t tell . . . And now he was at sea. The ship was sailing slowly up the African coast, each minute taking him farther and farther away. This time the feeling of panic was real. It caught her in the throat. As long as he had been only a few hours away from her, she had felt safe, but now . . . She wondered if she would ever see him again and felt she could hardly bear it if the answer was no.

  *

  A few days later Smuts came back from town. ‘You’d never credit it,’ he said to Kate as she took the mail pouch.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bloody fools.’ He was clearly upset.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Some bloody idiot tried to kill Jonas last night. Poured petrol into his cell and then threw in a match.’

  ‘Petrol!’

  ‘Ja. You know they strengthened the cell window? Well, they still haven’t put the glass in, so it was easy.’

  ‘Is he badly hurt?’

  ‘They say not. They say he was sleeping under his blankets, head and all, when it happened. He got burnt on the arms, but not too badly.’

  ‘It’s a terrible thing to have done!’

  ‘They never bloody learn, my friend, never. When they had him here before, there was trouble. You remember the bonfire down in the harbour? Now they’re at it again. Christ . . . I don’t know!’

  Kate brooded about this all day. There were two pictures of Jonas which haunted her: his arrest, when the police had overpowered him on the farm; and the sight of him on her wedding-day, bursting in from the street, rain on his face, looking more like an animal than a human-being. She could not get it out of her mind that everyone considered him guilty and that the hearing and the trial that would follow at the Supreme Court in Cape Town would be mere formalities. Everyone seemed to have made up their minds that Jonas not only would hang, but deserved to hang. The following day, she decided to try to see him and find out whether he would like a new lawyer. She told no-one.

  *

  The little gaol-cum-police station stood on a rocky outcrop on the landward side of the town, with just enough distance between it and the first houses to produce a sense of isolation. It was a single-storey building of brown mountain stone with a red corrugated-iron roof. Half-a-dozen gum trees had been planted to give it shade, but now in winter, against the brown landscape and the grey sky, it was a cheerless place.

  Sergeant Van Blerk was working at an old, ink-stained desk when she entered and asked to see Jonas.

  ‘Jonas Koopman?’ He rose and came to the counter. His heavy body bulged under the dark blue winter uniform. ‘What for, Mrs. Preller?’

  Kate was still a new enough bride to find herself surprised when called ‘Mrs. Preller’, and was only beginning to get used to the fact that people did not mean her mother-in-law.

  ‘I want to see if he needs anything.’

  ‘He’s got everything.’

  ‘I want to find out how he is after being burned.’

  ‘He’s all right.’

  ‘Sergeant Van Blerk, Jonas is a Saxenburg employee, or was, and I wish to see him.’

  He gave in suddenly. ‘I’ll tell you one thing, he’s dangerous. Keep away from the bars.’

  The gaol was split into two. In the main house was a single cell reserved for white prisoners, but there had been no white prisoners for the past twelve years and it was used as a store-room. The non-white cells were outside and round the back of the police station. Three of them comprised a small block with a flat roof on which the Sergeant’s pumpkins were stored. They reminded Kate of stables. The barred doors opened onto a narrow concrete passageway. Each had a window on the far side. The first two cells were empty, Jonas was in the third. There were black burn marks on the walls near the window. He was lying on his bunk on a mattress which consisted of a single piece of dark blue felt about two inches thick. He had his blanket up to his neck, but his bandaged arms were in full view.

  ‘Jonas,’ she said.

  He had been looking at the roof of the cell and now his eyes dropped to peer at Kate. His face had become thin and his cheeks sunken. His eyes were red-rimmed and curiously unfocussed.

  ‘Jonas, I’ve come to see if there’s anything we can do for you.’

  The eyes shifted away from her, back to the ceiling.

  ‘He hasn’t spoken for weeks,’ Van Blerk said.

  ‘Perhaps he would if you weren’t here.’

  Van Blerk shrugged. ‘Okay. I’ll go to the end of the passage. Don’t go near the bars. He’s very quick, that one.’

  She waited until he had walked away, then she said, ‘Jonas, is there anything you need?’

  He ignored her.

  ‘Are you satisfied with your lawyer, or would you like me to find you another one?’

  Silence.

  ‘Jonas, won’t you let me try to help you? Everyone thinks you killed Miss Miriam. I don’t know whether you did or not, because they haven’t tried you yet.’

  Slowly, he turned his back on her.

  ‘Jonas, no one else will help you.’

  She stood there in the chilly winter morning for a few minutes longer, but he did not move, and finally she left.

  She went to see Arnold Leibowitz, Mr. Sachs’ solicitor. She had to wait fifteen minutes while he dealt with another client, then she was shown into his office. Leibowitz uncoiled his long frame and rose from behind his desk.

  ‘I haven’t seen you to congratulate you,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘I hope you’ll be very happy.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She told him briefly why she had come.

  He ran his fingers through his short, wiry black hair and said, ‘I’m not sure how I can help you.
I mean, you say the boy didn’t speak. In other words, he didn’t ask for another lawyer. Anyway, you know I couldn’t do anything, even if I wanted to, because of Morris Sachs.’

  ‘Of course. I just wondered if you know someone better than this Mr. Stoltz.’

  Leibowitz studied his finger-nails and did not answer.

  ‘Isn’t there something called a watching brief?’ she said. ‘Couldn’t I hire a lawyer to attend the hearing and advise me, or Mr. Stoltz, or both of us if things were going wrong? It’s just that I feel Jonas is . . . well, that it’s all settled. Helmsdale thinks he did it, and that’s that.’

  ‘Helmsdale can think what it likes. It’s the Supreme Court in Cape Town that has the say.’ He paused. ‘But if you really wanted to . . .’

  ‘Do you think I’m being stupid?’

  ‘No, not at all. I agree. As far as everyone here is concerned, he’s ready for the gallows.’

  ‘It seems so unfair.’

  He looked up at her from under his eyebrows. ‘It’s easy to see you’re a new arrival, Mrs. Preller. Fairness? For coloureds? But there is someone, an attorney called Brinkman over at Bredasdorp. He might agree to come. He won’t be cheap. But at least if the boy is sent for trial you can then get him for the Supreme Court and he’ll brief counsel in Cape Town.’

  She left Leibowitz to make the contact and went back to Saxenburg. The cost worried her. Charles’s joke about her being a wealthy woman did not bear much examination, not after the money for her family had been taken out. And there would be no dividends until the summer, when the feathers were sold.

  She decided to say nothing about her plans either to Mrs. Preller or to Charles, but she needed someone to talk to, so she went to Smuts.

  ‘I wouldn’t spread it about if I were you,’ he said. He seemed to search for words. ‘People talk, you know.’

  ‘Talk?’

  ‘You’ve been here less than a year. You’re running the farm, you’ve married the heir to the biggest property in the district. They’re waiting to see what changes you’re going to make. They’re interested in you. You can’t blame them. You’re news, my friend.’

  ‘They can’t have much else to talk about.’