She pointed out that I had always told her not to swim at night, but I said it was all right if you knew the pools as well as we did. I drove her to the beach in spite of her objections.
When we got out of the car she said she did not have a bathing costume. I said we should swim as we used to swim when she was a little girl. She said, “I don’t think so, Hennie,” so I told her that I had seen her doing so that afternoon.
She laughed at me and said, did I know what they called old men like me?
I did not wish to hear her talk like that. I reached out for her. I think I meant to cover her mouth, but the moment I touched her it turned into something else. I must have killed her when she started to scream. All I meant to do was silence her.
Perhaps you will not believe me when I tell you that it took me some time to realise what I had done. The mind is a curious thing. Not even doctors know much about it.
When it was over, and my head was clear, Miriam was dead. I undressed her completely and put her clothes in a pile. The scarf that Jonas found must have fallen when I was carrying her body to the sea cave. I believed that the tide would carry her out beyond the India Reef.
I have written to you in such detail, and at this time, because I have already caused my son, Charles, enough suffering. Yes, he is my son. Augusta would never acknowledge it publicly because of her feelings for family continuity. Her own family in Vienna had meant a great deal to her and she had transferred her feelings to the Prellers. Charles was all she had if the name was to continue.
I kept the secret for the sake of my own family and because I knew it would ruin my career.
*
Kate’s mind went back to her meeting with Miss Binns in Vienna and her talk of Augusta’s lover. Kate had believed that it had been Smuts. Now she saw how wrong she had been. It was easy to visualize the young Viennese woman in this strange and sometimes brutal place, forming a passionate attachment for a good-looking doctor, fresh from London, who at least had a veneer of sophistication and knowledge of Europe.
*
I like to think that I would have come forward even if he had not been my son. I felt guilty about what happened to Jonas, but when your own life is at stake you do abnormal things.
But everything has come to an end for me. I have looked after Augusta as well as I could all these years. Now her end has come, too. She cannot recover and I think it is best, after what has come out in the trial, that she does not. She is too proud a woman to be brought low through scandal. It is time for both of us to disappear.
I wish that we could have seen a grandchild. I would never have made my relationship public, but I would have known.
The future now is in your hands – yours and my son’s.
‘Good-bye, Kate. God bless you. Hennie du Toit.
*
She read the letter again, then sat with it on her lap. How long she sat there she did not know. She was trying to remember him as she first knew him, not as the seedy man racked by guilt and fear that he had become. She recalled her visit to his house, the dismal and unloved room, the rugby photographs, the tasselled caps. She remembered the magazines on the table, the way he had looked at her when she had realised what the pictures were. She remembered the big, strong frame smashing in the cloakroom door on Christmas night; the smooth, young-looking face with the dimpled smile, the silver-grey mane of hair which was combed in so dandified a way. Everything about him had spoken of the male ethos, of virility. He had expressed all his bitterness in the sentence: People think you are finished at fifty-three . . .
Remembering him, she felt pity, mixed with revulsion. Again in her mind’s eye she saw the scene on the beach: middle age in pursuit of youth. Miriam’s stinging laughter as he had tried, and failed, to turn the clock back. She understood, but she could not forgive him for what he had done to Charles. And to Jonas. She remembered him on the rock, firing at the drowning body; the white hands shaking, sweat on his face.
Then she thought of Charles and Jerry at school, the scandal, the threat of expulsion, the counter-threat by Boss Charles not to have the boy back in the house. No wonder Charles had needed a night-light even as an adult. But if Dr. du Toit was right, then Betty was not Charles’s half sister. That was something, at least.
She was chilly when at last she rose and went downstairs. She found Smuts asleep in the drawing-room where she had left him. She woke him and handed him Dr. du Toit’s letter. He read it carefully once, then went back to the beginning and read it again. He ran his hand over the stubble on his face and his eyes were old and tired.
‘Did you know?’ Kate said.
‘About Hennie and Miss Augusta, or about Charles, or about Hennie killing Miriam?’
‘Anything.’
‘I knew they’d been lovers. Or I guessed. I think that if it hadn’t been for him she would have gone mad in those first years. I think they were lovers right up to the time Hugo died. Even after that he looked after her as though she was still dearer to him than anyone.’
‘What about his wife?’
‘She was a farm girl. Hefty. Good stock, but not the brains to run the social side of the practice. But I never guessed about Charles. I just thought Hennie was fond of him like an uncle. As for the killing: not in a million years. I really did think it was Charles, you know. Christ, what a bloody mess!’
‘I’d better take this to the police.’ Kate picked up the letter. ‘The sooner they know . . .’
‘Hang on. I want to find Hennie.’ He tapped the letter. ‘We must be bloody sure this is the real thing.’
‘Where will you look?’
‘At his home.’
‘I’ll drive you.’
The first faint streaks of grey were showing on the horizon as she drove into Helmsdale. She parked outside du Toit’s house, and waited. The wind was dying and the early morning was cool. The street lights were on, but slowly the dark town became grey and the buildings lightened.
After five minutes, Smuts came out. ‘He’s not there. His car’s not in the garage, either, and his shotgun isn’t on the rack.’
‘What do we do next?’
‘We look for his car.’
They drove out on the Cape road and then the Agulhas road, and then along the cliff road, looking in all the little turn-offs. The sun rose, a great red ball coming up over the dunes. They drove past Saxenburg, past the beach, and suddenly Smuts said, ‘There it is.’
Kate stopped. She followed his pointing finger and saw a car parked on the opposite headland. She drove along the bumpy dirt road until she drew up alongside it. There was no one in it.
‘I think I know where he is,’ Smuts said.
She followed him slowly as he climbed down the headland and walked across the beach. She knew where he was going. The tide was low and the sea was flattening out. She took her shoes off and walked to the water’s edge. Smuts had reached the tunnel entrance to the cave. He wriggled through and vanished. She stared up at the great house on the other headland. The sun was striking the windows, turning them the colour of blood.
Smuts emerged from the cave and walked towards her. ‘He’s in there. I’m glad you didn’t come. He must have shot himself last night or this morning. There hasn’t been a big enough tide to take him out, but the crabs have got to him, poor bugger.’
Chapter Eight
In the weeks following the death of Dr. du Toit, Saxenburg was caught up in its own mortality. Eight days after entering hospital, in the early hours of the morning, Mrs. Preller died, quite alone. Kate had spent hours by her bedside, listening to the breath whistle in and out of the infected lungs, sometimes seeing in her eyes the effort she was making to talk. But the palsied jaw had hung slackly. She had never spoken again.
During that time, too, an inquest was held on the death of Dr. du Toit, and Charles was released from custody after the charge against him was withdrawn. Kate went to Cape Town in his red roadster to bring him back to Saxenburg. It was then that she registered that h
e had changed. The first hint was when he got into the passenger’s seat and let her drive. He had loved the roadster with passion, now he seemed indifferent to it. He hardly spoke all the way to Helmsdale. Once at Saxenburg he remained silent and withdrawn.
She had thought he might be euphoric after his release, now she told herself that he was depressed because of his mother’s death and the revelations of the trial.
But the depression lingered and had side effects. Instead of taking up his role as manager – the role that had been forced on him by Kate’s accident and her trip to Europe – he took no interest in the farm. He would lie in bed until ten and eleven in the morning, content to let the day drift past.
She had not bargained for this. Her own watershed had been the death of Mrs. Preller, which, she believed, had released her from the future she had dreaded. She had decided she would leave Charles and Saxenburg after finishing the plucking season. Now another incubus stood in her path. How could she desert him in his present state? Her feeling of frustration, almost of panic, was exacerbated by letters from Tom. In one he told her he had been offered the post of the Chronicle’s Paris correspondent, with a large apartment near the Bois. It would mean a new beginning for us both and I think we need that, he wrote. No memories, no old tracks in the snow. New home, new furniture, new food, new streets, new air, new everything. My French is not too bad, but rusty, so I’m starting at Berlitz here on an intensive course. How’s yours? My darling, it’s the best thing I can offer you, the best thing I can imagine for both of us. I must know what you think within a couple of months. They won’t hold it open for ever. If you say yes, we’ll go, but I don’t think it’ll be much fun by myself.
Paris! The very thought of being in Paris with Tom made her ache. She knew the city only slightly, but had been caught by its beauty. And he was right, it would be starting anew. No old tracks in the snow, he had said. The image was so vivid. For one of the very few times in her life she felt tears start at the back of her eyes; tears of frustration.
That evening while Charles was having his bath, she sought out Smuts.
‘Ready for a spot?’ he said, indicating the brandy.
They chatted for some minutes about the quality of the birds and the prices being offered by Mendel for the new season and then, after a moment’s silence, Kate said: ‘I was wondering if it wasn’t time to look for a manager.’
His head jerked up. ‘What sort of manager?’
‘For the farm.’
‘I don’t understand, my friend. What the hell do we need a manager for?’
‘Well, I . . .’
‘You’re not thinking of leaving us, are you?’
‘What if I started a family?’
He looked at her obliquely. ‘Am I to congratulate you?’
‘No. I’m saying if.’
‘We’ll cope. We always have. Anyway, the boom seems to be levelling out.’ He paused, then said, ‘And there’s always Charles. He’ll have to pull his weight.’
‘I’m worried about him. He doesn’t seem to understand what’s happening at Saxenburg. He’s still so depressed, though I’ve tried to do everything I can to help him get over the death of his mother.’ Even as she said it she knew it was a lie. She had felt his need, but she had been unable to fulfil it. There was only an emptiness in her where Charles was concerned.
‘I shouldn’t say this to you, but I’ve known him a lot longer than you,’ Smuts said. ‘He’ll always take the line of least resistance. His mother ran the place for him, then you came along to run it. Sometimes I think it might have been better for him if he’d had to find his own bloody way. It could have been the making of him.’
*
That evening she went upstairs early. She had wanted to write to Tom, but what was she to say? Instead, she got into bed and thought about Smuts’ words. If she were to leave, would it be the making of Charles? She remembered how he had coped when she’d had her accident. He had been a different person. But wasn’t that the point? If she remained, would he ever pull himself together? Would she not, in effect, be doing him a favour by leaving him? She knew this was rationalisation, yet Smuts, not she, had originated it.
Charles came to bed around midnight. She was still awake, but pretended to be asleep. Then, for the first time in weeks, she felt his hands lifting her night-dress. He had tried to make love to her a few days after returning from gaol and she had refused him. Now, as she felt his searching fingers, any sympathy she might once have harboured vanished, overlaid by disgust at his touch. Images of Charles and Betty, Charles and his young man, Charles and Jerry, flashed through her mind and she moved away, swinging her legs onto the floor.
‘Please . . .’ he said.
She did not answer. Instead she went downstairs to her office, where there was a small sofa, and locked herself in. The time, she knew, had come to tell him she was going.
But when she told him the following day, he chose not to understand her.
‘Going where?’ he said.
‘Away.’
‘You mean to the flat?’
‘At first.’
‘For how long?’
‘As long as it takes to get onto a ship.’
‘What do you want a ship for?’
‘Charles, I’m going. Leaving the country. Don’t you understand? I’m not coming back.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
In a way, his reaction helped her. Had he broken down, she would have found it more difficult. As it was, his obtuseness, or pretended obtuseness, gave her just the iron she needed. She decided that she would write to Tom that evening telling him she was coming, then she would talk to Smuts and begin to make the complicated arrangements which would finally give her freedom.
She was in the incubator shed late the next morning when she heard the commotion: first shouts, then running feet. ‘Miss Kate! Miss Kate!’ It was Tilly’s voice and she ran to the door as the coloured house-keeper came charging across the gravel yard. ‘Miss Kate must come quick!’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s Mister Charles! Miss Kate must hurry!’
‘Where?’
‘In the nursery bathroom.’
She ran into the house and took the stairs two at a time. She burst into the bathroom. Smuts was already there.
‘Don’t come in!’ he shouted.
But she had seen the blood. The bath was smeared, so was the wall. Gouts of it had dripped onto the floor, the water was the colour of rosé. In the bath lay Charles. He was naked and his flesh was the dirty white of a plant without chlorophyll.
‘Call for an . . .’ Smuts began. Then he said, ‘No, there’s no bloody time. Help me! Get something for his wrists. Something we can use as tourniquets.’
There was a small towel under the bath and she grabbed it. Her hands were immediately red with blood.
‘Give it to me,’ Smuts said. ‘You get the motor out. Send a couple of the boys to me.’
She ran out, shouting for Tilly.
They got Charles into the car. His limbs were slack, as though he were a doll. His eyelids were flickering and his breathing was faint. Smuts supported him.
‘For Christ’s sake, hurry,’ he said. She let out the clutch and the car jerked forward. It took less than ten minutes to reach the hospital. She walked by the side of the stretcher until the doors of the casualty ward closed on him. For some seconds she stood, staring at the brown paint, seeing her future.
Chapter Nine
On a warm Sunday afternoon about six weeks later, she was in her sitting room at Saxenburg. For the first time in a long while, she had little to do. The season was over and the feathers despatched. She had been reading a novel, but leisure was so foreign to her that she felt guilty doing nothing. Yet she was exhausted and she told herself that doing nothing was exactly what she needed. Her days, as the season grew to its climax, had been filled with work and worry, but above all, with despair.
She put down the book and sat back, li
stening to the sounds of boisterous laughter coming from the garden. Who would have thought when they had carried Charles into the hospital that in so short a time this would be happening? Who would have thought after seeing the blood-drenched bathroom that he would have been home a few days later, little the worse? They had celebrated his return, of course, making a fuss of him. Tilly had prepared a special meal and Smuts had brought up a couple of bottles of Rhine wine. Kate had forced herself to assume the burden of welcome.
Looking back now at the six weeks that had gone by, she realised that in a sense Charles had controlled their reactions. Neither he nor anyone else had mentioned the act which had nearly caused his death. It was as though it had never happened.
But it had happened, and it had changed more than her own future. It seemed to have had a cathartic effect on Charles, as though he knew that now she would never leave him. Within a few weeks, secure at the heart of Saxenburg, he had taken up his life again. This time it was an extension of the life he had been leading before his marriage.
One day he had gone into Cape Town, ‘to see that everything was all right at the flat’, and returned for the week-end, bringing a car-load of friends, most of them already half drunk. Jerry was among them, with a girl named Valerie, who seemed to be a new edition of Freda.
This had become the pattern of his week-ends.
Kate rose and went to the window. There had been other significant changes. He had pressed the entire farm labour force into service in the garden. The weeds had gone, the flower-beds been reclaimed, the tennis-court had been patched and new stop-netting erected. But the greatest work had been done on the swimming-pool. Now, watching Charles’s friends jumping in and swimming, splashing, shouting, laughing, she saw what life at Saxenburg must have been like in the old days.
She had mentioned this to Smuts the previous Sunday.
He had come up to her room and found her writing to Tom. ‘I thought you’d be here,’ he had said. ‘Always inside.’
‘You sound like my mother. She kept wanting me to go out and play on fine days.’
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