The Housemaid's Daughter by Barbara Mutch Read Free Book Online Page B

Rose, or when I played the piano and he didn’t know I could see him out of the corner of my eye.
    He turned away from Miss Rose, now admiring herself in the hall mirror I’d cleaned that morning, and looked down at me. There was still fierceness, but also something else, something strange that I hadn’t seen before in Master’s face. It was, I realised suddenly, the look of my young Master in the garden before the war, when he’d wondered if he would be brave enough to fight. Yet what nervousness could Master possibly feel on the return of his beloved son?
    ‘Soon, Ada,’ he said quietly and touched my shoulder. Master had never touched me before. Perhaps he was distracted by Miss Rose. ‘Soon.’
    * * *
    Master Phil arrived the next day. They carried him up to his room on the top floor. All I saw of him was his face above a blanket and the face was different from the face he’d taken to the war with him. Madam told me that Master Phil was very tired and needed to sleep a lot. I could understand that. After all, Mr Churchill had required very great actions and bravery from all of his soldiers. There had been a church service at St Peter’s for the families of Cradock boys who never came back. Madam and Master went along and said prayers to God to thank Him for sparing Master Phil and bringing him home. The other boys had mostly died and been buried in the desert ‘up north’ or in another country called Italy, where Mendelssohn went to find a new symphony in a land that was said to be almost as hot as our Karoo.
    ‘But why,’ I asked my mother in our room after a week had gone by and Master Phil still slept, ‘why are some of the other living soldiers walking around town? Didn’t they fight as hard as Master Phil?’
    My mother looked up from her crocheting. She crocheted tea cosies and bed socks for the church. They always were short of tea cosies and bed socks.
    ‘Master Phil is wounded, Ada,’ she said and laid the work aside.
    ‘Then why can’t I help you nurse him, Mama?’
    My mother Miriam smiled but it wasn’t a happy smile. ‘Some of Master Phil’s wounds are inside, Ada.’
    ‘Under the bandages?’
    ‘Further inside than that. These are wounds that don’t have blood.’
    I stared at her. She picked up her crocheting. The owl hooted outside in the kaffirboom. I wondered if Master Phil could still hear owls, or if the inside wounds had taken sound away from him as well.
    * * *
    Miss Rosemary left for Johannesburg soon after Master Phil returned. I don’t know why she went, although she seemed very happy to be going. She said that the future would be better in Jo’burg. I remember reading about the future in Madam’s book at about the time she was to leave Ireland for Cradock. It was clearly something that rich people needed in their lives. I wished I could find people who had already found the future, and then I could ask them what was so special about it.
    ‘Wish me luck!’ Miss Rose called from the window of the car taking her to the station. There were more cars and fewer horse carts these days since the war. Miss Rose looked very happy, waving her lace handkerchief from the car. She was wearing the new blue dress from Anstey’s and red lipstick from Austen’s the chemist. She hadn’t wanted Madam and Master to go to the station to see her off – ‘Too much fuss,’ she laughed gaily. Perhaps she wanted to spare Madam and Master the reminder of her brother leaving for war? But I don’t think so. Miss Rose was not that thoughtful. I think she just wanted to be away with as little delay as possible.
    Master stared down at his shoes that I’d polished that morning, then up at Miss Rose in the car and lifted a hand to shade his eyes from the sun. The breeze fluttered Madam’s cream skirt against her legs. Upstairs in his room, Master Phil slept.
    ‘Take care, darling! Write every week!’ Madam blew kisses and felt for the brooch at her throat.
    * * *
    ‘ Cathleen Moore for