The Sea Cave

by Alan Scholefield

  He had been drinking. He came forward and put his hands on her breasts. She struggled, making as little noise as possible, but it was only when Hugo had begun to cough that Boss Charles let her go, fearing the boy was waking.

  Kate recalled that Charles had told her how, from the other room, he had seen the shadows on the walls, had not known what they were and, frightened, had buried his head under the blankets.

  Thinking she would have no more trouble, Lena had gone down to the incubator shed, but Boss Charles had followed her and had raped her on the dirt floor.

  She paused in her evidence. No one moved in the courtroom.

  ‘And while this was happening to you, the fire had started in the house?’ Prescott said.

  ‘Yes, master.’

  ‘What do you think caused it?’

  ‘Maybe we had knocked the clothes nearer the fire. Maybe a piece of coal fell. No one knew.’

  ‘When you got back to the house . . .?’

  ‘Madam was burned and Master Hugo was dead.’

  Prescott tapped his teeth with a pencil and stared at her for a long moment. ‘Then, about nine months later, Betty was born, is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you gave yourself a married name?’

  ‘Madam said it is better that way.’

  ‘And you agreed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She paid you money and told you not to say anything?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In other words, she was bribing you to keep your mouth shut.’

  Lena looked at him angrily. ‘Madam is not like that.’

  ‘A great deal has been made of your devotion to her. I put it to you that you were not devoted, that you were kept in that house like a prisoner . . .’

  ‘No!’

  ‘. . . sharing a secret with your employer. I put it to you that you were paid to keep silent.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘. . . that far from being devoted, you hated your employer and that . . .’

  ‘No, no! I love Madam. I look after Madam. I gave her the medicine three times a day. What you say are lies!’

  Prescott’s face was red and sweat was running down his neck. ‘Then why did you suddenly turn on Mr. Charles? Or are you telling lies again? Isn’t your whole testimony simply one lie after another?’

  Lena gripped the sides of the witness stand. She was trembling.

  ‘I put it to you, that you have lied from the moment you stepped into that box . . .’

  ‘God told me I must!’

  ‘God told you to lie?’

  Several things happened simultaneously: Nel leapt to his feet; the judge began to reprimand Prescott; and Lena’s voice lashed across the courtroom. For the first time, she looked directly at Charles. ‘God told me to tell, because of the bad thing Mr. Charles did to Betty.’

  There was immediate uproar. Prescott, realising he had gone too far, tried to shout her down. The judge was banging his gavel. There was a chatter of voices on the Press bench.

  But Lena was unstoppable.

  ‘God told me, because the child was his!’

  ‘M’lord, I ask that to be removed from the record.’ Prescott had to shout to make himself heard over the din.

  But Nel was still on his feet. ‘M’lord, my learned friend was quick with his classical allusions a moment or two ago. May I also use one: As ye sow, so shall ye reap. I think the court must hear what Mrs. Lourens has to say.’

  The judge looked around angrily. ‘If I have any more of this, I shall clear the court. I hope that is understood. Mrs. Lourens, you say the baby your daughter had removed was that of the accused?’

  ‘Yes, master.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Betty told me the day she died. She was drunk, and she laugh at me. She laugh because I thought it was Jonas’s baby. She said she had never been with Jonas because he was too black.’

  ‘M’lord, this is pure hearsay,’ Prescott said. ‘I request that it be stricken from the . . .’

  ‘It is true!’ Lena shouted. ‘Fat Sarah saw the baby!’

  But Mr. Justice De Wet Fourie would tolerate no more. He rose, and the court adjourned for the day.

  *

  The room below the Supreme Court was stifling in the afternoon heat, with only one small window opening at street level. Charles, Prescott and Kate sat around a plain deal table. The lighting was poor and Charles’s skin appeared light yellow, as though he had jaundice. Prescott fanned himself with a sheaf of papers and sucked at his Sen-Sens. Kate listened to the two men and a feeling of claustrophobia swept over her.

  ‘This is what advocates fear most,’ he said. ‘Traps, snares, quicksands. If we know they’re there, we can usually do something to avoid them. But when we don’t . . . I asked you more than once, Mr. Preller, if you had told me everything.’

  Charles nodded. He appeared to be in a state of semi-shock.

  ‘Everything. And you said you had. Well, it wasn’t, was it? You’ve damaged yourself badly and, for what it’s worth, made me look a fool.’ Kate saw he was trying to control his anger. ‘I’d like to know what you suggest now, Mr. Preller. But first of all, I want to know if there is anything further you have kept from me. Have you fathered any other children among the workers on your estate?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is there any circumstance either in Helmsdale or Cape Town, past or present, that I don’t know about, that might affect this case?’

  Charles glanced up at Kate, and then looked away. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Are you quite sure?’

  ‘Yes. This was what I was worried about. Of course I didn’t know she was my . . . my sister –’

  ‘Half-sister.’

  ‘I mean, I swear to God I wouldn’t have touched her.’

  ‘I think we’ve had enough of God in this case, Mr. Preller.’

  ‘We’re talking about bloody . . .’ He couldn’t bring himself to say the word.

  ‘I know precisely what we’re talking about. You’re not accused of incest. You’re accused of murder.’

  ‘Yes, but it looks so bad! I mean, my father and Lena, and now . . .’

  ‘Mr. Preller, we’re not talking about social mores, we’re talking about the killing of a woman, and possibly a hanging. Can’t you get that into your head!’

  Charles looked down at his hands, then said, ‘What do you want me to do? I’ll go on the stand now. I mean, everything’s out. I don’t mind now.’ He swallowed. ‘I didn’t want anyone to know . . .’

  ‘That you had been sleeping with a coloured girl?’

  Prescott raised his hands in a gesture of despair. ‘Don’t you realise that it’s too late? At the moment, all we have is hearsay evidence from Lena. It won’t go into the record. But if you go on the stand Nel will cross-examine you and he’ll drag every sordid detail out into open court. He’ll show you to be both a liar and a man of violence like your father; he’ll show you up as someone who not only had the opportunity to kill Miss Sachs, but who, in all likelihood, did so. Now, since we keep on invoking the deity, for God’s sake, give me something to work on!’

  As he stopped speaking, there was a knock on the door and Godlonton came in. ‘Mrs. Preller, there’s an urgent call for you from Saxenburg,’ he said. ‘You can take it in the Clerk of the Court’s office.’

  She hurried after him and, when she picked up the telephone, heard Smuts’ voice: ‘We need you here! When can you come?’

  ‘I can’t leave Charles.’

  ‘If you don’t, we can’t carry on.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘There are other people helping Charles. Miss Augusta is getting worse and Hennie . . . there’s something wrong with him. I think he’s sick, too. He won’t go near his other patients and now he won’t see Miss Augusta. She won’t have Tilly near her. There’s only me. I’ve got to do everything and I can’t run the bloody farm as well, my friend.’

  Recognising desperation in his voic
e, she said, ‘There’s a train about six. I’ll be on it.’

  Chapter Seven

  The train was late getting into Helmsdale. She looked up and down the station, but could not see Smuts. The wind was blowing dust along the platform and she was reminded of the night when she had arrived on the same train as Miriam’s coffin, and Sachs had shouted at her through the car’s closed window. It seemed long ago, and yet the ghosts of the past were everywhere about her.

  She found that one of the farm-hands had come to meet her. ‘Where’s Mr. Smuts?’ she said.

  ‘At the house. The old missus is sick.’

  They drove through the battering wind along the cliff road then, on the undulating stretch approaching Saxenburg she saw, through the dark gaps in the folding ground, tantalising glimpses of the house. It stood on the end of its headland, ablaze with lights, like some great liner setting out to sea. It seemed that every light in the place was on. And because she had never seen it like that, she realised that something must be very wrong.

  An ambulance was parked outside the front door. She ran inside. There was a group of people on the staircase: two men in white coats, a stranger in a dark suit. And Smuts. ‘Be careful now! Be careful! Don’t you bloody hurt her!’ he was saying angrily.

  Then she saw the stretcher.

  The man in the suit said, ‘Shouting doesn’t help. She’s all right. She’s in good hands.’

  Smuts’ face was drawn and there were tears in his eyes.

  ‘What is it?’ Kate said.

  He pointed towards the man who had just spoken. ‘He says it’s pneumonia.’

  ‘I’m Dr. Bekker, from the hospital.’ He was short and square and something about him reminded her of Jerry. He was very young and was covering his nervousness with a kind of arrogance.

  ‘Where’s Dr. du Toit?’ she said.

  ‘I couldn’t find him,’ Smuts said. ‘Miss Augusta was getting worse. So I called the hospital.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have come otherwise,’ Bekker said. ‘She’s somebody else’s patient. But he said it was an emergency.’

  ‘And is it?’ Kate said.

  ‘I’m afraid it is. One lung is badly affected.’

  She looked down at the unconscious form of Mrs. Preller. She was small and shrivelled; her breathing was ragged.

  ‘The sooner we get her into hospital, the better,’ Bekker said.

  Kate took Smuts aside. ‘Does he know about the morphine?’

  He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t tell him. You know how she felt.’

  ‘He has to know. It may affect the treatment.’

  She caught up with the doctor as he was going out of the door. ‘There’s one thing you should know. She’s a morphine addict. She has been for years.’

  ‘Oh, hell!’ The mask of arrogance dropped away. ‘Why didn’t someone tell me? We must hurry.’

  ‘Should we come?’

  ‘No! Call me tomorrow morning. If Dr. du Toit returns, for God’s sake tell him to get up to the hospital as soon as he can.’

  She stood in the doorway wth Smuts, watching the ambulance pull out, followed by the doctor in his car.

  ‘When did it happen?’ she said. ‘You said she was worse, but I thought you meant the paralysis.’

  ‘She started coughing the day before yesterday. It was this bloody trial. She made me get the papers every day. She forced Hennie du Toit to read her every word. Columns of the stuff. That’s what made her ill.’

  ‘And you don’t know where he is now?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him all day.’

  ‘So all we can do is wait.’

  ‘Have you had something to eat?’

  ‘I don’t want anything. But I need a drink.’

  ‘So do I.’

  They went into the drawing-room and he poured them each a brandy.

  ‘At least no one will be reading her the papers tomorrow,’ Kate said.

  ‘Bad?’

  She told him what had happened in court, then added, frowning: ‘She said a strange thing to me before the trial. She said, “Lena will destroy us all”.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s not Lena. It’s more complicated than that. It all started with her husband. Christ, what a pig he was. Charles . . . he’s no bloody good. I know I shouldn’t be saying that to you, but you must have seen what he’s like by now, and in a way it’s not his fault. He really loved his father, you know, and his father loved Hugo. Charles couldn’t understand it. He would put himself out to please Boss Charles. I remember when he was a little boy he used to pick up shells on the beach and bring them back as presents. His father never looked at them. And when he went to boarding-school he made a chair in his wood-work classes. A nice chair. I saw it once. He worked damn hard. It was going to be a present for his father. But Boss Charles said, “What the hell do I want with another chair?” So it was left at the school. Ja, it all went wrong for Charles.’

  She wanted to tell him what had happened on the night Freda had died, but even now she could not bear to talk about it. Instead she said, ‘He told me about the cards his father sent him after Hugo died. Black edged. Every year on Hugo’s birthday.’

  ‘That was typical. At one time he said he wasn’t going to have Charles back in the house. That was after . . .’ He stopped.

  ‘After what?’

  ‘I shouldn’t be talking like this, not to his wife.’

  ‘Do you think you can say anything now that would make a difference?’

  ‘It wasn’t much. These things happen at a boy’s boarding-school.’

  She remembered Tom’s phrase, ‘liaisons with other boys’, and used it.

  ‘That’s right. They were caught. There was talk about making an example of them, but nothing ever happened.’

  ‘Who was the other boy?’

  He glanced at her and, even before he opened his mouth, she said, ‘It was Jerry, wasn’t it?’ He nodded.

  They were silent for a while. She knew they had to discuss the future and her role at Saxenburg but felt she could not bear it at the moment. She looked at her watch and saw it was a little past one o’clock. ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing more we can do now.’

  He nodded. ‘There are a couple of letters for you. I told Tilly to put them in your room.’

  Fighting a desire to run, she went upstairs to her suite. There was a small pile of letters on the table in her sitting-room. The top two carried foreign stamps. She opened them and read them according to date.

  Again she had the sensation of being with him, of hearing his voice and smelling his skin. Since he last wrote he had been to Budapest but was now back in his house. The first letter briefly described his trip along the Danube, and she longed to have been with him. The second was dated a few days later and said that he was going to be on leave in England for a couple of months towards the end of the year. Could she come?

  She remembered the sounds of London’s streets, the smell of coal fires on cold afternoons, the sparkle of shop windows as the lights came on, so different from her present surroundings, and imagined herself there.

  The rest of her post consisted of a couple of bills and a letter without a stamp. It had only her name on the envelope and she did not recognise the hand-writing. There were five or six closely written pages in the envelope. As she started to read, she felt her throat close with shock.

  *

  My dear Kate, it began. I hope by the time you read these few lines, I shall be dead.

  I write to you, and no one else, for several reasons, which will become clearer. Apart from my sons, you are my one living relative, if only by marriage. I always wanted a daughter.

  This letter is to tell you two things. The first is the most important, and it is my confession that I caused the death of Miriam Sachs. I will not say murdered or killed, because I did not mean to do either. But the fact is that she died because of me, and you must go to the police with this as soon as possible. To ensure that they will believe you,
and so that the case against Charles will be withdrawn, I will give you the details.

  *

  She read on, and his words painted with vivid strokes a picture of what had really happened that night so many months ago.

  *

  I am sure you recall that day as well as I do. Your friends had come from Cape Town, with your brother. You had a picnic down at the rock pools. It was this, I think, that caused the tragedy.

  I was coming to bathe myself that afternoon because it had turned hot. You were all at the pools when I reached the cove. I was about to join you when Miriam and your friend Jerry prepared to bathe.

  I have told you that when Miriam was a little girl, I taught her to swim down in those same pools. We used to bathe naked ourselves, until there came a day when she was twelve or thirteen when we could no longer do so, when innocence vanished.

  On the day of your picnic, when I saw her naked, I realised how beautiful she was, how desirable.

  This feeling in me was not isolated. It was something I have often felt since my wife’s death, when I saw Betty and other women around the town. People think you are finished at fifty-three, which is far from the truth.

  I stood at the rocks near the pools and watched Miriam. You all took it so casually. Not one of you can imagine how I felt.

  I went home, but I could not settle. In the evening I remembered that Augusta had a touch of influenza. I went out to see her, for something to do, something to fill my mind with other thoughts. We spent part of the evening talking about the future. She has such great hopes for you.

  About ten o’clock I left to drive home. When I reached the old ostrich houses, I saw Miriam walking towards town. I stopped to give her a lift. I asked her what she was doing in such a place at such a time. She said she had been going to swim at the cove, but she had decided that it was too far. I was not surprised. Miriam did such things. I now know, of course, that it was not the real reason she was there.

  I said, before I could stop myself, that I would like to swim, too. I said, why did we not go together?