Free The Housemaid's Daughter by Barbara Mutch Page A

more than any of us.’
    The doctor had a stern face, rather like Master’s. My mother said he was the same doctor who had delivered me at Cradock House.
    ‘We can’t expect…’ he began with a disapproving look at me. Perhaps he had forgotten that I, too, belonged in Cradock House.
    ‘Ada keeps Philip alive,’ came Master’s voice quietly, from behind the doctor.
    No one said anything. I felt a hotness in my face that I hadn’t known before.
    ‘Very well.’ He reached down for Master Phil’s wrist and held it for a while near his wristwatch.
    I slipped off the bed and went to stand near the cupboard. The curtains stirred in the breeze, shifting the stripe of sunshine on the floor. Master Phil stirred too.
    ‘Good day, Philip. How are you today?’
    Master Phil stared at them. Then moved his neck painfully and looked at me.
    ‘Time you were up and about,’ the doctor said in a loud voice and unbuttoned part of Master’s pyjama top to place a round metal thing on Master’s chest and connect its tubes to his ears. ‘Breathe deeply.’
    Master Phil breathed, his thin chest rising and falling, the ribs clear to see against the material of his pyjamas. No one said anything. A dog barked and growled outside and my mother Miriam shouted at it from the kitchen.
    ‘Your chest is clear.’ He took the tubes out of his ears. ‘The wound,’ he opened the pyjamas further and probed with his fingers over a red scar, ‘is fully healed.’
    The doctor sat down on the bed and looked at his hands.
    ‘There’s nothing further that I can do for you, young man. Physically, you’re fine. The rest…’ he stopped and looked up at Madam and Master, ‘must come from you.’
    No one spoke.
    ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Madam into the silence.
    A fly buzzed between the window and the curtains, freed itself and fell on to the floor. The doctor opened his bag and put away the round thing with its tubes. The Master turned away, his shoulders low. Madam clasped her hands hard behind her back, the knuckles white. Madam had very strong hands from the piano; she could twist caps off jam jars that no one else could shift. The curtains swayed again in a fresh draught from outside, bringing outside things – the F sharp whistle of the midday train leaving the station, the smell of Mama’s lamb stew drifting out of the kitchen, the raised voices of Mrs Pumile and her Madam next door – into the dark bedroom.
    ‘You don’t know!’ Master Phil’s voice rose in a scream. He reared up in the bed. The covers fell back to show bony legs below his pyjama trousers, like the branches of the thorn tree by the kaia. ‘You never saw what I saw!’ He covered his face with trembling hands, as if they could block out the guns and the blood and the sand of the desert. I made to go towards him but the doctor shook his head at me before turning back.
    ‘Get on your feet, young man,’ he boomed. ‘Find a job!’ He shot a look across at Master. ‘Work for a living! That will banish the ghosts.’
    ‘But—’ I blurted out in shock, turning to Madam and then Master, who shook his head strongly at me. Wars didn’t contain ghosts! Master Phil himself had said so, that day under the washing line when he talked of being afraid. And in any case how could men fight ghosts? Ghosts were mostly ancestors, or maybe an evil spirit like the tokoloshe …
    ‘I’ll see you out, Doctor,’ Master said quickly, sending a fierce look at Master Phil’s weeping figure.
    ‘Oh, Phil.’ Madam knelt by the bed and took him in her arms. His fair hair, lately sprinkled with strands of grey, lay against her shoulder, like it had the night he’d eaten too many ripe apricots. The dog barked again on the street outside and I heard my mother Miriam’s footsteps going to investigate. ‘Dear Phil, learn to forget. We need you well, you’re all we have now.’
    Master stopped at the door, frowned, and beckoned for me to leave. I followed him and the doctor out of