The Sea Cave

by Alan Scholefield

  They had stood at the window and looked down at the swimmers and the tennis-players, as she was looking now, and she had said, ‘You and Mrs. Preller were always talking about the old days. I suppose this is what they were like.’

  ‘I used to make-believe for her. We all did. But the old days weren’t so bloody good.’

  She remembered the conversation as she watched Charles and Jerry on the court. She could clearly hear their arguments about line decisions. They kept referring close calls to a fair-haired young man standing at one of the net posts. He was wearing a white shirt, white flannels and two-toned shoes. Kate suspected that he was Charles’s lover. After his first visit she had said to Charles, ‘I don’t mind who else you invite, but I don’t want Jeremy here.’

  ‘You invite your friends, I’ll invite mine, okay?’

  Her only defence was to stay out of their way. Last night they had played the Victrola and danced. She had feigned a headache and gone up to her room. It was almost dawn when Charles came to bed.

  At that moment, Charles looked up from the tennis-court and she caught his glance. He had been talking to Jeremy, now his face went blank and a stillness held him for a moment. Then Jerry called and the game went on.

  She wandered back to her chair, reached into a drawer and took out Tom’s most recent letter. She read it through again. It was full of his love for her, but there was no more talk about Paris. Instead he wrote of the first snow bringing silence to the city. She could hardly bear to read it.

  She folded it away and took out her pad. She wondered what to write about, and thought of the letters Mrs. Preller had written to Miss Binns. How could you relate the day-to-day activities of Saxenburg to someone caught up in the life of Vienna? She told him about the house, how it had changed, how Charles had turned the old nurseries into guest-rooms, how the ostrich feathers had gone from the drawing-room and the heavy antiques had been carried out into the incubator shed and covered with tarpaulins. It seems a pity to alter the character of the house in this way, she ended.

  She knew she should be answering the questions which came in each letter: When was she coming to Vienna? Why would she not leave Saxenburg? She did not answer them because she could not.

  The laughter from the swimming-pool began to irritate her and she went along the passage, as she often did these days, to Mrs. Preller’s rooms. They were kept locked and she had the key.

  She wandered from room to room, touching the fabric of the bedspread, running her fingers along the bookshelves. One of the ornaments on the mantelpiece had been moved. There was a small circle of dust on the dark teak. She must mention that to Tilly. She did not like things being moved from their places.

  Then the thought came to her that the suite was going to waste. One day the fabrics would rot and the rooms begin to decay. Why should she not move into them? Then she and Charles would no longer have to share any part of their lives. Nor would she have to listen to the shouting and the laughter from the garden.

  She pulled Mrs. Preller’s chair to the window and sat down. The view was tremendous. The aquamarine sea stretched away to the curve of the horizon. To her right was Saxenburg Cove and the headland containing the sea cave; directly out to sea from it was the India Reef. She sat there for a long time, looking at the swells coming in over the rock pools, remembering Miriam.

  She heard the door open, and turned. Charles came in and closed it behind him.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’ he said.

  ‘Sitting.’

  ‘I don’t like you being in here.’

  She rose as he came forward. She could see sweat on his face. His eyes were angry. She recognised the old Charles.

  ‘You’re bloody rude,’ he said. ‘You haven’t been down all day. These are our friends and . . .’

  ‘Our friends?’

  ‘All right, my friends. And you’re my wife. I expect you to treat them with respect and good manners.’

  ‘Respect? Good manners? You must tell me about them one day, Charles.’

  ‘Ever since . . . well, for a long time you’ve treated me as though I wasn’t really here. This is my house now. My estate. You’re my wife. You do what I say. I’ll never say please again! Never!’

  ‘I’m one of your possessions?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Why, Charles?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why do you want a wife at all? You don’t need one. You’ve got Jeremy.’

  He flinched and she saw again the curious deadness at the back of his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know exactly what I mean. You want me only to give you the respectability you feel you don’t have. Are you so ashamed, Charles?’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Your nature.’

  It was cruelly said, and he reacted. He hit her in the face with the back of his hand. ‘If you ever say anything like that again, I’ll really damage you,’ he said.

  She pressed her lips together, tasting blood.

  ‘I want you downstairs for supper. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  He left the room. She stood at the window, staring out, but seeing nothing.

  The cut in her lip was slight and she cleaned it up. Then she went to look for Smuts. He was in his room.

  ‘I want you to take me out in the motor,’ she said.

  He looked at her strangely. ‘The shops are closed.’

  ‘I just want to go for a drive.’

  They drove along the cliff road past the old ostrich houses. After a while she said, ‘Take me to the graveyard.’ They went through the deserted afternoon streets of Helmsdale and came to the little sandy cemetery. Smuts parked under a gum tree and she got out. It was the first time she had been to the cemetery since Mrs. Preller’s funeral. She walked along the dusty paths between granite headstones until she came to the Preller vault.

  The name was there now, freshly chiselled: AUGUSTA PRELLER (née VON BERENDORF), then the dates of her birth and death. There was plenty of space below it for those to come. Would her own be on it?

  She heard the crunch of feet on gravel as Smuts joined her. They stood in silence for some moments and then he said, ‘Families go up and families go down. My own family were pioneers. They came here nearly two hundred and fifty years ago. They were educated land-owners when the Prellers were running about in bare feet. You didn’t know that my family once owned Saxenburg, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The Prellers bought it a long time ago but I’ve always felt I belonged here.’

  She touched the newly-chiselled letters. ‘I feel she’s still here, somehow.’

  ‘Balls!’ Smuts said. ‘If you’ll forgive my French. She’s gone. Dead. Buried. Unless . . .’

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Unless you force her to come back.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Listen,’ he said urgently. ‘Don’t you understand what’s happening to you? Can’t you see yourself? You’re turning into her.’ She stared at him, feeling an ice-cold hand close on her heart. ‘Every day I drive you to Helmsdale. You sit up in those rooms of hers. Soon you won’t come down at all. Don’t you understand that this is what she did when she was young? Christ, she talked about the old days as though they were something great. That was her defence. They were bloody awful for her. Boss Charles used to bring his rugby friends to Saxenburg just as Charles is bringing his peculiar friends. She used to sit up in her room, listening to the shouting and the horse-play, and make excuses about not joining them. One day he lost his temper and hit her.’

  Smuts came closer and his fingers closed on her arm. She was aware of the piercing noise of the Christmas beetles and of the heat reflected from the gravel at her feet. He had never touched her before, but there was an urgency about him that stopped her drawing away. ‘Tell me to shut up,’ he said. ‘Tell me it’s no bloody business of mine, but I can’t stand by and let you destroy yourself. Y
ou don’t love Charles, do you?’

  ‘I hate him,’ she said, and it was the first time she had acknowledged it publicly.

  ‘Get out, then! Oh, I know what you’re going to say: What about you? What about Saxenburg? Well, we coped before we ever heard of you. You can’t shape everyone’s life, my friend. Your parents are all right. We’ll be all right. Get going as fast as you bloody can.’

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Charles. What if he – tries again? What if he succeeds? I’d never forgive myself.’

  Smuts dropped his hand and walked to the corner of the tomb. He stopped, and turned. ‘I hoped I wouldn’t have to tell you this, but it’s better now that I do. That wasn’t a real attempt at suicide. Nothing like it.’

  ‘But I saw the blood. I saw Charles.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever seen a nose-bleed? My God, you think you’ve never seen so much blood in the world. But all it is is a nose-bleed. Blood always makes things look worse than they are. Listen, I spoke to Dr. Bekker. Charles had cut downwards.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Show me how you’d do it?’

  She drew her finger across her wrist.

  ‘Ja. So would most people if they were serious. That way you cut the veins completely. But if you do it this way . . .’ He drew his finger down the inside of her arm parallel to the bone. ‘. . . you don’t. Okay, you cut the veins, but you don’t sever them. And remember when I asked for something for a tourniquet and you found a small towel under the bath?’

  She recalled picking it up and how her hands had become red with blood. ‘He’d been using it to smear the blood,’ she whispered.

  ‘Ja. That’s what I think, too. But there’s one thing more. He’d told Tilly to bring him clean underwear. He wanted to be found quickly.’

  ‘So it was only . . .’

  ‘Of course it was. To stop you leaving. Look at him now.’

  ‘Are you sure? Because if you’re mistaken . . .’

  ‘Kate,’ he said, ‘you’re not God.’

  Chapter Ten

  The Conway Castle came slowly up Southampton Water in the fog, her horn booming mournfully in counterpoint to the shrill whistles of the tugs as they came to mother her.

  Kate was on deck with the Reverend Purchase and his wife, whose table she had shared throughout the voyage.

  ‘That’s the Isle of Wight,’ he said, pointing to flashes of brown and green seen through the shifting mist.

  ‘Is someone meeting you, my dear?’ Mrs. Purchase asked.

  ‘I don’t . . .’ Then she shook her head. ‘No. There’s no one.’

  ‘We have a compartment booked on the boat train. Mrs. Preller can come with us, can’t she, Matthew?’

  ‘Of course. Delighted.’

  Kate smiled, but said nothing. They had been kind to her, but she did not want their kindness now. She wanted to be alone, to make decisions, book seats, take trains. She did not want to rest or sleep or even eat. She was in movement like some projectile and had been ever since leaving Saxenburg. There had been a brief pause to say farewell to her parents and then she had started again on this huge journey that would take her the length of Africa and half the breadth of Europe. And all the time she had been frightened: frightened while she was in Cape Town that Charles might find some way of stopping her, frightened that she might be run down and injured, frightened that her parents or Duggie might fall dangerously ill and need her, frightened that the ship might sink, frightened that something, anything, might happen to check her movement.

  Everything had been done so fast. From the moment she had made her decision in the grave-yard, standing next to Mrs. Preller’s newly-cut name, she had craved speed. A call to the shipping company had resulted in a berth on the Conway Castle, leaving on Thursday, just four days away. She had left Saxenburg on the Wednesday, late in the afternoon.

  She had left the way she had come, sitting in the back seat of the motor. The same purple everlastings were in the same silver vase, the same lined and sunburnt neck was in fromt of her, the same white dust blew along the road and, for all she knew, the same ostriches stared at her in wonderment. She had turned only once and looked back at the house. It stood massively on its headland, dark and brooding in the evening light, and beyond it she could see the white line of the India Reef. But there was another form in the landscape: the white figure of Charles standing outside the front door.

  ‘No one leaves Saxenburg,’ he had said, disbelieving her to the bitter end. ‘Not unless they’re carried out feet first.’

  He had followed her to the door.

  ‘Good-bye, Charles,’ she had said.

  ‘You’ll feel better after a few days. The break’ll do you good.’

  She had shrugged. There was no way, it seemed, that he would understand. ‘You’re right,’ she said finally, ‘the break will do me good.’

  But as the motor had turned out of the drive she had seen his face. For the first time, he seemed to register what was happening, that this time he was on his own.

  The moment she reached Cape Town, she had telephoned Guy Bedford and asked him if he could get a message through to Tom.

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘Tell him I’m sailing tomorrow. I’ll cable him from London.’

  And now she was nearly in London. She knew exactly what she had to do. First there were the customs formalities, then the boat-train to Waterloo, a taxi across London to Victoria and the Night Ferry to Paris. From Paris, she would take the first train. It didn’t matter where it was going, as long as it was in the direction of Austria. She did not mind how many times she changed, how little sleep she would have. There was all her life to sleep. She had to keep going, keep the projectile in motion.

  Through the mists she saw the tops of the cranes along the wharf. Half an hour later they had tied up and the gangplanks were down. She stood in the cold morning, looking through the swirling mist at the cloth-capped stevedores, searching for a big man with sandy hair and a loping walk. She told herself not to be disappointed that he was not there. Vienna was now only a matter of days away.

  She found a porter in the customs’ shed and told him to put all her luggage under the huge letter P. She fretted as an official opened her suitcases and ran his hands along the bottoms, but a few moments later he was making small yellow crosses on them with his chalk.

  ‘Boat train, miss?’ the porter said as they left the shed.

  The Rev. and Mrs. Purchase were a few paces ahead of her. She supposed she would have to join them.

  She opened her mouth to say, ‘Yes,’ but a voice at her elbow said, ‘No. Just take them to the car over there.’

  The porter looked at Tom with suspicion. ‘Do you know this gentleman?’ he asked Kate protectively.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s an old friend.’

  ‘Oh, well, in that case . . . only I wasn’t sure, see?’

  They followed the barrow. ‘Hello, old friend,’ he said, taking her arm.

  She dug her nails into his flesh. ‘Hello, yourself,’ she said.

  *

  No one went to the sea cave for many months, nor swam in the rock pools. But gradually memories faded. Tides came in and went out. Storms did their scouring and cleaning. Eventually the cove returned to its natural place in the life of the community. People swim in the rock pools today, and there is a sign saying, To the Grotto. It is still an unspoiled place, and there are few holiday homes in the vicinity. The wind is what keeps it clean; people don’t like the wind. But on a calm day in summer it is as beautiful as can be imagined.

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