Slowly it would build up within him until he could not sleep, then he
would go down at night to a friendly widow who lived alone in one of
the gangers' cottages beside the new railway yards.
Yet he counted himself happy, until that day at the beginning of
September 1903, when he received an embossed card. It said simply:
Miss Storm Friedman requests the pleasure of the company of Colonel
Sean Courtney, DSO, DCM, at a party to celebrate her third birthday.
4 pm, September 26th.
IRSVPI The Goldbergs, Chase Valley, Pietermaritzburg.
In the bottom right, hand corner was an inky finger, print about the
size of a threepenny, piece.
On the 24th, Sean left by train for Pietermaritzburg. Dirk came back
from the station with Ada to his old room in the cottage on Protea
Street.
That night Mary lay awake and listened to him cry for his father.
Only a thin wooden partition separated them. Ada's cottage had not
been designed as a workshop and hostel for her girls. She had solved
the problem by enclosing the wide, back veranda and dividing it into
cubicles each large enough to hold a bed, a cupboard and a washstand.
One of these was Mary's and tonight Dirk was in the cubicle next to
hers.
For an hour she lay and listened to him weep, praying quietly that he
would exhaust himself and fall asleep. Twice she thought he had done
so, but each time after a silence of only a few minutes the tear,
muffled sobs started again. Each of them drove needles of physical
pain deep into her chest, so that she lay rigid in her bed with her
fists clenched until they ached.
Dirk had become the central theme of her existence. He was the one
bright tower in the desolation. She loved him with obsessive devotion,
for he was so beautiful, so young and clean and straight.
She loved the feel of his skin and the springy silk of his hair.
When she looked at Dirk her own face did not matter. Her own scarred
ruin of a face did not matter.
The months she had been separated from him had been an agony and a dark
lonely time. But now he was back and once again he needed her comfort.
She slipped from her bed and stood taut with her love, her whole
attitude portraying her compassion. The moonlight that filtered in
through the mosquito screened window treated her with the same
compassion. It toned down the mottled cicatrice that coarsened the
planes of her face and it showed them as they might have been. Her
twenty, year old body beneath the thin nightgown was slender but full
breasted, innocent Of the marks that marred her face. A young body, a
soft body clad in moon, luminous white like that of an angel.
Dirk sobbed again and she went to him.
'Dirk,' she whispered as she knelt beside his bed. 'Dirk, please don't
cry, please, my darling.
Dirk gulped explosively and rolled away from her, folding his arms
across his face.
'Shh! my darling. It's all right now. ' She began to stroke his
hair. Her touch evoked a fresh outburst of grief from him, liquid
