Free The Housemaid's Daughter by Barbara Mutch

whispered, his voice slowing over the letters of my name, ‘you already know.’
    But I didn’t know and he must have seen it in my eyes for he turned away and closed his, as if my not knowing was too heavy for him to bear.
    But this was the only time of difficulty; mostly we talked easily. Almost as easily as we’d talked when we were children and he had shown me numbers and the purpose of a bank and the long wait I would have for a future to arrive. Madam said I was the only one who could make young Master Phil forget his illness. Master never said anything to me, and avoided my eyes, but sometimes I caught him speaking in a low voice with Madam and shaking his head, and I know it had something to do with how much time I was spending in caring for young Master Phil. I don’t think Madam agreed with what he was saying because she would often walk away. I still don’t know what I could have done differently. Perhaps Master’s disapproval was not just because Master Phil had once hugged me in front of white crowds or because I had lately comforted him in my arms; maybe it was because Master Phil treated me as a member of the family, and touched my hand, and sometimes smiled at what I said. Perhaps that was the part Master did not like.
    During all this time of Master Phil’s illness, and the emptiness in Cradock House, and the restlessness of the townships, Miss Rose never came back from Jo’burg. She sent postcards with pictures of tall buildings instead.

Chapter 10

    I  was now seventeen years old. My world revolved around young Master Phil. I hardly went out any more, the gardener posted Madam’s letters to Ireland at the post office on Adderley Street as I used to do before. I had, in any case, found all the words I would ever need and surely read all the possible signs in the shop windows that there could ever be. I also knew how to write down the words that I saw. I have always been better at writing English words and English sentences than words in Xhosa, Mama’s language.
    Cradock had by now left me behind. The few young girls that I knew, daughters of maids like my mother and Mrs Pumile and her cousin who worked at the bank, all found young men and had babies. They went to live in the townships, or they stayed with their babies in kaias like Mama and I did while their husbands went far away to work. Sometimes, when Master Phil was sleeping, I stood on his toy box and looked out over the town like I used to do as a child and saw some of these girls with babies on their backs, walking down the street. They looked tired but proud. There would be no young men left for me. Mrs Pumile used to shake her head and mutter to Mama that it was time for me to find a young man because I was pretty now but I may not be pretty in a few years’ time. Whether she was right about me being pretty, I can’t say, for prettiness was what Miss Rose had with yellow hair and slate-blue eyes and a voice that teased men.
    My hair was dark and curly and although Mama often said approvingly that I had kind eyes, I don’t think eyes are enough where prettiness is required. In reply to Mrs Pumile, Mama said that there was no time for prettiness or boys while my young Master lay ill in bed. But I was not downhearted, I was honoured to care for Master Phil instead. My life was filled with love for him and for Madam and Master and Mama, and for Cradock House where I surely now belonged – daughter of the house, Madam had said – and for the piano that was my special joy.
    * * *
    The doctor came one day in his new black car while I was sitting with Master Phil as he slept. He used to get frightened if he woke up and I wasn’t there. The room was dark except for a stripe of sunshine that fell across the floor from a gap in the curtains. Dr Wilmott looked across at Madam and Master, then at me, then back at Madam and Master.
    ‘You may speak in front of Ada, Doctor,’ murmured Madam, laying a hand on my shoulder. ‘Ada cares for Philip