The Housemaid's Daughter (31 page)

And yet I have no choice. Ada deserves the right to perform. Her ability is truly extraordinary. She deserves to be heard in every way.

S
omething special happened for me soon after Dawn left. I was invited to play the piano at Mrs Cath’s school. Such an invitation was no ordinary thing, for this was the school that would not hear of me attending it when I was young, even although the laws at that time were not so exact. This was also the school, according to Master, that would lead me to trouble later on if I went there. I am old enough now to smile over this – surely it is not possible that I could have found any more trouble than I have found already!

But no matter.

It was also no ordinary thing because at the time of the invitation the laws of skin difference were at their most fierce, and the dead of Sharpeville lay like a weight between black and white. Different skins were not allowed in the same place at the same time, particularly if they were enjoying themselves. The law insisted that such enjoyment should be had at separate skin-matching venues. Whites should have fun with whites, blacks should have fun with blacks, and so on. I’m not sure how Mrs Cath and her school managed to get past this but somehow they did.

I think it was a matter of finding the right words. Words can be persuaded to take on meanings that you don’t expect. Words can even outwit those who believe they own all their possible meanings.

‘Ada!’ Mrs Cath put her head around the
kaia
door one afternoon, not long after my confrontation with Master. There had been no change since that talk. Master remained detached, and I don’t think he said anything to Mrs Cath, for her attitude to me never wavered from its usual kindness. ‘May I come in?’

She sat down on the bed next to me. Mrs Cath saw no shame in sitting with me in this way. ‘There’s to be a concert at my school. I’ve been asked if you will play. There’ll be singing from St Peter’s choir,’ she ticked off the items on her fingers, ‘and the school orchestra is to do Strauss.’

I waited for a moment, confused. ‘Why do they want me?’ I asked. ‘There must be whites as good as me?’

‘Oh, Ada,’ her forehead creased, ‘how sad you should even say that.’

‘I don’t mean to be ungrateful, Mrs Cath. But black people aren’t allowed at your school. I know these things.’

She glanced at the door for a moment, where Dawn and I had repaired the frame from the midnight truncheon blow.

‘I’ll tell you, Ada, I’m not sure myself how this has been done. But,’ she leant towards me, ‘it seems they wish to reach out, and they have permission.’

I looked down at my hands that had played so many hundreds of pieces but only ever at Cradock House or in the township. Even music obeyed the laws of skin. Mrs Cath continued to speak but I found myself struggling to hear her. My head seemed unable to accept what she was saying and it came to me only in fragments.

‘People have heard of you … The first music teacher in the township … I spoke to Mr Dumise…’

‘You spoke to him?’ I felt the familiar shiver about names and Passes and the tangle of lies under which I worked across the river. What would he say? What would my fellow teachers say? Would accepting such an invitation be thought of as a betrayal of the struggle? I’d already betrayed my fellow blacks by lying with a white man.

Mrs Cath placed a hand on my arm. ‘Ada?’

‘This is a new thing for me.’

Her green eyes softened. ‘I know. You don’t have to decide straight away. But Mr Dumise is keen for you to play. And I’d be,’ she stopped for a moment to find the right word, ‘honoured, yes, honoured, Ada, if you would.’

No one had ever said such a thing to me. No one had ever considered me worthy of such a thing. Only Phil – and Mrs Cath herself – have ever valued me for myself and for what I could do. Yet maybe, I wondered, as I stood with suddenly tearful eyes at the
kaia
door and watched Mrs Cath go back into the house, maybe this was a sign from God the Father that I am to be forgiven. Maybe the anger that I feared would fall upon me once Dawn left has been stayed for good.

And so I said yes.

Boldly, without consulting anyone in the township, without dwelling on the consequences of a black woman playing for a white audience, I said yes. And, like the arrival of Miss Rose back at Cradock House that caused the world to change, so another change took place when I played at the school on the white side of the Groot Vis.

* * *

It turned out that I was not the only black person there. The organisers of the concert had been clever in more than the matter of getting past the laws governing blacks and whites under the same roof. They had also invited Mr Dumise and several township community leaders.

This helped me.

When I had said yes to Mrs Cath, I knew that such an invitation might not be well received in the township. If my old enemy, Silas, had still been at school, he would have found a way to prevent me taking part in this sort of white event. But when Mr Dumise announced to the assembly one day that I had been invited to play across the Groot Vis, my students forgot their resentment and the stones in their pockets, and shouted with delight. Any doubters on the staff kept their feelings to themselves. I thought Dina might call it sucking up to the white man but she didn’t. Dina had much else to occupy her, for she had recently married and was occupied in the making of babies with her new husband.

‘Just show them!’ she threw over her shoulder while rushing off to her hut after lessons. ‘Show them that blacks are as good as whites!’

Sadly, certain of the black community leaders refused to come, for the invitation was indeed regarded with suspicion, such was the divide between black and white at the time. But mostly it was taken to be a small gesture on the part of the white school involved, and a welcome one. There had been few such efforts made in the past.

The other person who did not come was Master. I was not surprised. Master had not been well lately. And it was better that he should not come, because otherwise people would look at him and would look at me and there would be no way for them to look away from the truth.

Dawn didn’t want to come, much as I wanted her to.

‘They will stare, Mama,’ she said quietly, her buoyancy for once stilled. ‘They will stare at you because of me, not because of your music.’

‘I’m so sorry, child—’

‘Don’t be! Play well, Mama!’ She hugged me tightly. ‘It’ll be your night!’

So it was that I found myself crossing the green lawns of the school that Miss Rose and Master Phil had attended. The school building was painted white and there were flower beds set against the pristine walls. All the windows had glass in them. It was early evening and groups of children in ironed uniforms and polished shoes stood about on the grass, talking to each other and not playing rough games as they would have across the river. The last hadedas of the day flapped overhead, no doubt surprised to see me in this new setting. I was wearing my white blouse and my navy skirt and a pair of lace-up shoes with heels from Cuthbert’s Shoe Store. They were the first shoes I’d ever bought with money from the bank. How proud I felt to be able to afford them! Such shoes will last me for the rest of my life. I had never worn heels before, so I practised on the piano at Cradock House in them so that I would have no trouble managing the pedals on the night.

‘Mary?’

I turned, and there was Mr Dumise, in one of his threadbare shirts, smiling at me but looking a little lost among the neatness of everything. Mr Dumise was used to running a school where just keeping the toilets working was a triumph. The possibility of green grass and unbroken windows was beyond his imagining.

‘Mr Dumise. My name is not Mary, at least not on this side of the Groot Vis.’

He nodded and I think I saw a sparkle in his eyes. ‘I shall try to remember. But we’re very proud of you, whatever your name is.’

‘I hope I don’t let you down, sir,’ I said, ‘for there are others that play as well as I do.’ The school knew Mrs Cath’s playing; I couldn’t compete with her.

‘Ah, but you bring something from the heart,’ he said, touching his hand to his chest. ‘Play tonight like you played when you first came to school.’

I nodded, feeling once more the heat of the closed-up hall on my neck, and the dust on the piano keys beneath my fingers. In the background, the Groot Vis rushed in flood. Dawn stirred heavily beneath my overall.

Play for Mama, play for the child.

Play for a job …

‘Ada? Mr Dumise, how good of you to come!’ It was Mrs Cath, wearing the green satin dress she used to wear for dinner parties many years ago. She was paler than usual, but perhaps it was face powder.

‘Ada, come, my dear, we’re about to start.’

* * *

The school was the smartest building I had been in apart from the bank. The corridors smelt clean and the floors were freshly polished. There were hooks down one side to hold blazers. There were untorn pictures and maps on the walls. It was the way that a school should be.

In the hall, there were paintings of severe ladies wearing black gowns with satin and fur upon them, and flat black caps with tassels. They were the smartest ladies I had ever seen. And the stage curtains did not drag their feet on the ground.

As I waited for my turn alongside Mr Dumise and the community leaders, it was a little like sitting in church with Master and Mrs Cath at young Master Phil’s funeral: once again, people’s eyes were on my neck. This time, though, there was a difference. Most of the eyes seemed to be curious, some even friendly, particularly the children in the audience who whispered and craned their necks to look at me. It was surely a novelty to see a black woman in their school who wasn’t a cleaner. And these white youngsters probably never met black children of their own age. It was against the law.

The evening began with the church choir singing selections from the
Messiah.
Mrs Cath sang in the sopranos and conducted the choir from the piano. The singing was different from the singing I was used to down at the Groot Vis. Here, the choir kept a firm grip on their pitch. No swooping up to the note was allowed.

And then the school orchestra arrived, and there was some noisy rearrangement of chairs and uncertain tuning of instruments. Finally the youngsters gathered themselves and bounced their way through the
Blue Danube
under the conducting of a man with a large moustache. I found myself itching to move with the beat. Some of the audience swayed gently to the music and clapped politely afterwards, but mostly their reaction was tame compared to what I was used to. It seemed that white people liked to stay in their seats when listening to music. But maybe it was only because they had seats? There were no chairs in the school hall that I came from. Such an absence was clearly an advantage in the matter of enjoying music. I stole a glance at Mr Dumise and wondered if he was thinking of our township students and their wild jiving. I longed to gather up both groups and let them make music together – for surely music breaks through boundaries, and should have no colour?

‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, we welcome our guests from across the river. Headmaster Mr Shepherd Dumise, and community leaders Phillip Skoza, Daniel Maludi and Peters Schwaba. And,’ the headmistress paused while the audience clapped, then held up her hand for quiet, ‘and from the same school we welcome our soloist tonight, Ada Mabuse!’

I felt my heart contract and I looked across at Mrs Cath. She nodded. Alongside me, Mr Dumise touched my arm in encouragement and murmured something I couldn’t hear. One of the community leaders leant forward and gestured for me to go. The stage was a long way off from the front row where I’d been sitting and it was all I could do to walk there in my new shoes without tripping. I dared not look back at the massed audience but rather concentrated on the piano gleaming on the stage. Mrs Cath had assured me that its keys were as good as the Zimmerman back home.

I sat down and touched it gently, and waited for a moment. Every piano has its own heart, every piano deserves to be given its due if you want it to recognise you and give you its music.

Mama came to me, and Phil came to me, and then Mrs Cath came to me, and finally my pale Dawn. If only she could have been here …

I lifted my hands and the tune rose into my fingers.

The
Raindrop
prelude. By Chopin.

The first liquid notes rang out, and then the tender melody drifted into the hall, hovering and falling, and rising up again in its own time. I forgot who was listening, and I forgot where I was, and I played for those I had loved and they listened and gave my fingers wings.

When it was over there was silence. Then I became aware of feet drumming on the floor. For a moment I was back in the township on my first day as a teacher; the youngsters were stamping to the
marche militaire,
they were dancing to the beat, they were flinging their bodies this way and that as if bewitched …

But it wasn’t the township. It was the school that I hadn’t been allowed to attend. It was white students and their parents who were clapping and calling for more, more music.

And so I gave them more. I gave them some grand Beethoven, and a little sinuous Debussy. Still they clapped and wanted more. I looked down at the audience and I saw no one but Mrs Cath, wiping her eyes. And then I took a chance. I gave them what my students loved to dance to. What Dawn loved to dance to. Township jive, like Miriam Makeba’s
Qongqothwane
– the Click Song – with its vibrant rhythm and its offbeat base.
Pata pata.
The African jazz of the Manhattan Brothers. Hugh Masekela’s golden trumpet …

Mr Dumise was beaming in the front row, the invited black leaders were staring about them uneasily but clapping nonetheless. The smoke, the crowded streets, the baying police dogs were gone. Then, from the back of the hall came the familiar slap and slide of bare feet on floor and I glanced up quickly from the keys. It was Dawn.

The audience turned around in surprise.