The maid left the tray and went in.
Late afternoon. Betty’s car was nosing up the street, and then she was beside Daphne. ‘He made it. Just.’
Daphne motioned Acave me with her hand.
Was the distance between the ship and the dock widening?
‘Joe rang. I told him you were ill.’
No reply.
‘He said the ship was leaving so as to get out of Cape Town while it is light - in ease there’s a sub about.’
Daphne let out a cry and then slammed her fist against her mouth. She said, ‘I’m a very wicked woman, do you know that? I don’t love Joe. I never did. I married him under false pretences. I should be punished for that.’
‘You had better lie down.’
Daphne began to cry. She stared down after the ship, her hands tugging at her hair tangled with salt spray and wind. Her face had forgotten make-up: her husband would recognise that English girl with her baby mouth, now woeful; as she looked now she would not easily be recognised by her admiring guests. Dreadful, deep sobs, and she was swaying as she sat.
‘Do you have any sedatives? Daphne?’
Daphne did not move or respond.
Betty went to call Sarah, who was in the room just behind, keeping an eye on what went on. ‘Help me get Mrs Wright to her bed. Then I’m going to the chemist for medicine.’
It took the two of them to lift Daphne: she did not want to go in till the ship had disappeared. The three women stood, the maid and Betty holding Daphne, while the ship dwindled over the horizon. They walked her to her bed, laid her down and Betty said, ‘Hold the fort, I’ll be quick.’ And in a few minutes she was back. Daphne lay on her bed, staring. Betty put an arm around her, lifted her, and made her swallow two tablets.
Daphne collapsed: her eyes closed.
And now Betty and Sarah stood together: slowly, carefully, their eyes met, and held.
When Daphne had arrived in South Africa she had criticised Betty, the South African born and bred, for behaving in front of her staff as if they did not exist. One day Betty had come out of her bathroom naked and walked across her bedroom in full sight of the gardener who was at work just outside the french windows. She had stood there and talked, brushing her hair, and turned about, as if the man were not there, and when Daphne told her off, she realised for the first time that her servants had become as invisible as mechanical servitors. They were paid well - for this was liberal Cape Town (‘We pay our people much better than they do in Joburg, fed, taken to the doctor, given generous hours off. But they were not there for Betty, as human beings. Remorse, if that was the wort!, had adjusted her behaviour and her thoughts, and she became noticing and on
guard, watching what she did and what she said. But she could not think of anything apt for this situation. The four maids, hers and Daphne’s, were friends and knew the other maids along the street: this went for the gardeners. Hy now all of them would be discussing Daphne and the soldier. Any one of them might tell Joe.
‘Mrs Wright is very sick,’ said Betty at last, knowing she was blushing because of the feebleness of it. And it had sounded like a plea, which she didn’t like.
Sarah said, ‘Yes, medem.’ Compassionate, yes: but no doubt there was derision there, a forgivable allowance, in the circumstances.
‘Yes,’ said Betty. She was in the grip of the oddest compulsion. Like Daphne, she could have tugged at her locks with both hands; instead she passed her hands across her face, wiping away whatever expression might be there - she didn’t want to know. And now, she couldn’t help herself, she let out a short barking laugh and clapped a hand across her mouth.
‘Yes, medem,’ said Sarah, sighing. She turned and went off.
‘Oh, my God,’ said Betty. She took a last hopeless look at her friend who was lying there, struck down. Somewhere over the horizon, that soldier was on his way north into the dark of the Indian Ocean.
Betty went to her house, sat on her dark steps, and in her mind’s eye persisted the sight of Daphne, lying white-faced and hardly breathing.
‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no,’ said Betty wildly, aloud, and sank her face into her hands, ‘No. I don’t want it. Never,’
Sometime later Joe’s car came up, Betty went to intercept him. At once he began talking. ‘Betty, Henry won’t be back tonight, he asked me to tell you, it’s been a real dingdong these last few days, you’ve no idea, getting in enough supplies and everything, it’s not been easy - for the ship, you know, the one that’s just left.’ He was talking too loudly, and walked past her up his steps, and turned.
And stood talking into the garden, where she stood, ‘We lost a ship - the Queen of Liverpool - no, forget I said that, I didn’t say it. Five hundred men gone. Five hundred. It was the same sub that was chasing the - the ship that’s just left. Hut we got her. Before she sank she got the sub. Five hundred men.’ He was now walking about, gesticulating, not seeing her, talking, in an extreme of exhaustion. ‘Yes, and the ship that’s gone, they left us twenty-five. They’re in a bad way. They’re mad. Claustrophobia, you know, stress. I don’t blame them, below the water line, well, they’re in hospital. They’re crazy. Henry saw them. When he gets home, he’ll need looking after himself. Five hundred men - that’s not something you can take in. Henry hasn’t really slept since the ship got in.’
‘Yes, I see.’
‘So, you must make allowances. He won’t be himself. A pretty poor show all around, these last four days. And I’m not myself either.’ And he went striding towards the bedroom.
‘Daphne’s not well. She’s taken a sedative.’
‘If there’s any left, I’ll take one too.’
Hetty went with him into the bedroom.
