“What was I saying? Oh, yes. Well, Pat went in for what they call observation and the next thing I knew was they sent us a card saying he had been transferred to another hospital. I remember reading it and running in to our neighbours to ask if I could use the phone.”
“But why?”
“I thought there had been a mistake. I said to the girl at Addington that I wanted to know where my husband was. She asked for my name and then she was away from the phone for a long time. When she came back she asked if I hadn’t been sent a card. That’s why I was ringing, I said-the card said Pat had been sent to a native hospital.”
There was nowhere Kramer could look except straight at her.
“By this time my neighbour was getting all excited, she was right next to me you see, and she grabbed away the phone and started to give the girl a bit of her mind.
“All of a sudden she stopped talking. She went as white as a sheet and put the thing down. ‘What’s happened?’ I asked her. I was crying by then-I don’t know why. She started to cry, too. It was terrible, the two of us in the hall like that. Every time I asked her what they had said, she just shook her head.
“Then her man came home and he asked her. She said that-”
“Yes?”
Mrs Francis regained control of herself.
“While Pat was in hospital the doctors had noticed something. I don’t know what, I’ll never know. But what happened was that he had been reclassified Coloured.”
Kramer knew something of what she felt-it had happened to a school friend of his. Quite a bombshell. But laws were laws, so he put an official edge to his voice.
“You were later informed of this through the proper channels?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you go before the classification board?”
“Me and the children did. We were reclassified, too.”
“What about your husband?”
“He killed himself in the hospital with a rubber bandage.”
There was a perfunctory rap on the door and Farthing trotted in.
“Sorry to disturb,” he said, scooping up the flowers. “The old man’s back if you want to see him, Lieutenant.”
Kramer shook his head and waited for the silly bugger to get the hell out again.
“You know that neighbour?” Mrs Francis asked. “She never spoke to me again, she didn’t. We were Coloureds now.
“Oh, well, then we packed up our things and went out to live in Claremont. Everyone there was very nice to us except the usual one or two. I managed to keep on my old customers-I didn’t tell them, you see-and found some new ones.”
“But wasn’t there anything about this in the papers?”
“A little piece, months after, when there was the inquest on Pat. Not so you’d notice it.”
That would be right. The Press did not attend inquests but picked up their stories when the records were filed at the Attorney General’s office.
“And what about the children?”
She drew her fingertips hard down her cheeks.
“It was terrible. I did everything I could but it didn’t work.
“They had to leave their schools for a start. That didn’t matter so much to Tessa, she had her music, but Lenny had still a way to go.”
“They have schools in Claremont.”
“He wanted to be a pilot, though. Job reservation broke his spirit.”
This line did not ring true to Mrs Francis’s way of talking-or thinking. She was bitter but not political. It sounded very much like the sort of thing a Jew lawyer would say.
“Lenny got into trouble, did he?”
“How do you know that, sir?”
“Never you mind. Just tell me about it.”
“He stole from people on the beachfront-in a gang that would go down from Claremont. They didn’t catch the others, just him. I told the magistrate all about it and so did Mr Golder. That magistrate! He said he would be lenient but he sent Lenny to a reformatory.”
“Well, he could have been given cuts, too,” Kramer objected.
“Yes, sir, I suppose that’s true.”
“Of course it is. But what happened to Tessa meantime? Did she go on with her lessons?”
“That bloody Belgian really had me fooled!”
The sudden, totally unexpected profanity was a tonic for both of them. Mrs Francis even managed a smile which did not mean anything else. Kramer leaned forward.
“I suppose if it hadn’t been for him, then none of this would ever have happened.”
“Then I must know.”
She nodded.
“You will understand, sir, it is very difficult to say these things when your daughter…”
He waited.
“I went to this man and said that Tessa could not come any more because there was not enough money. He was very shocked, he said, that such a thing should happen. And then he said that he would give Tessa her lessons for nothing. I knew that like most foreigners he was a liberal but this seemed to be too much to ask. Then he told me it was his duty as a musician not to neglect a talent like Tessa’s. He even said there were things more important than money. I’ve thought about that often. Oh yes, more important to him, maybe.”
Kramer experienced an insight which made him cringe. Peculiarly uncomfortable. The old girl really had an odd effect on him.
“I see. How did you find out?”
“The Belgian’s wife told me. She said if it happened again she would report them both to the police. And she would, too, I know the type.”
“And so?”
“It was up to me, wasn’t it? I got Tessa alone that same night and came right out with it. You should have been there. It was terrible. She wasn’t my Tessa any more.”
“What did she say, Gladys?”
“I don’t know really. That she didn’t care-that nothing mattered any more. She would sleep with any man if it got her what she wanted. Her life was ruined, she could never have the nice things she had always hoped for. She cursed me for bearing her even.”
“That was nasty.”
“Do you know something, sir? That’s when I started to understand what she was saying. I had made Tessa, I made her with a weak heart. All this life she was talking about could stop at any time, the doctors had said so.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that.”
“Have you any children?”
Kramer shook his head.
“Then some other day you may understand. So when my neighbour made a joke about us trying for white, I suddenly saw here a chance for Tessa.”
“What did she think of the idea?”
“She jumped at it. She was more my girlie again and talked about all the nice things she would buy to put around her. I promised her that she need never fear me getting in touch with her or anything.”
“That must have been hard for you.”
“No. I thought it would give her what I owed her. It was my sacrifice.”
“What then?”
“Tessa just went. Two years ago. I didn’t ask her where.”
