The Housemaid's Daughter by Barbara Mutch Page B

at the possibility that I knew of something that was also found far away, that I’d sat in the shade of trees that grew at the other end of the world, that I could touch something that was part of war.
    ‘Yes.’ He took his arm away from his face. ‘Just like them.’
    I stared at him. I had read music that came from across the world, I had felt it quicken beneath my fingers. And down in Market Square there was shade that I had shared with Master Phil without knowing.
    ‘But it’s the sand you remember the most.’ He brushed his fingers, as if they would never be free of it. ‘Funny, isn’t it,’ he murmured, ‘how in a desert it’s the sand that flows…’
    The house was quiet. Madam was teaching at school, Mama was resting downstairs, Master was at the town hall. I had already peeled the vegetables, and made the pastry to go on top of the steak and kidney pie. The ironing was done. I waited for a moment.
    ‘How were you injured, sir?’
    He glanced at me, the light blue eyes suddenly focused, as they were when I shaved him and felt his gaze on my face.
    ‘I want to understand about war.’
    He hesitated, his eyes probing mine. ‘It’s not something to admire, Ada.’
    ‘I still want to understand.’
    From the station came the irregular sound of shunting. Low pitched, a drawn-out semibreve, then a rush of crotchets. It carried me back to the laughing and crying crowds on the platform, the buglers playing, and the quick warmth of Master Phil’s hug. Perhaps he remembered it too, for he gave a sad smile and then nodded. Maybe he knew my plan. Maybe he knew it was less about me than about him. Maybe in remembering out loud, he might learn to forget.
    ‘We were ambushed,’ he began after a pause. ‘That means to be caught, to be surprised by your enemy.’
    ‘What happened, sir?’
    ‘Don’t call me sir.’ He shifted in the bed irritably and looked down at his narrow, veined wrists. I waited in the shadows, pushing down my questions. I knew that men fought each other in war, but surely not like this? Only animals ambushed one another. Lions of the veld lay in wait to attack buck, for buck were their prey. Did war force men to lie in wait for one another, to stalk one another as prey?
    ‘They had tanks, with mounted machine guns,’ he went on, his voice clipped with remembered detail. ‘We had rifles. They could move about, we were in slit trenches – holes in the ground, Ada, just a foot deep. They pinned us down, we couldn’t dig deeper because the sand became rock.’ He covered his ears with his hands.
    I realised, then, that it wasn’t only the sights of war that returned to soldiers, but the sound and feel of war as well. Perhaps the closed curtains that I’d thought were Master Phil’s way of blocking out the world were also necessary to deflect the remembered rip of bullets over his head as he cowered in the shallow hiding place, and to expel the grit under his fingernails as he scratched desperately to deepen the trench …
    ‘There were shells, too, that whistled before they hit,’ he muttered, hands still over his ears, as the battle pounded against his skull. I had to lean forward to catch what he was saying. ‘You could hear them coming – high pitched, like a screaming violin – coming faster than you could get away – they explode, they splash sand – and blood.’
    He stopped suddenly, and wrapped his arms round his thin torso and began to clutch at himself, as if wondering again how it was possible that he could still be whole despite the terrible rain of death all about. I put out a hand and touched his shoulder. The bones felt jagged under the cotton of his pyjamas.
    ‘I still see them, Ada.’ He grabbed hold of my hand and stared wildly at me, his eyes aflame. ‘Ben, Frank, my sergeant…’
    ‘I will pray for them, sir,’ I said, trying to stop my hand shaking within his frenzied grip. ‘God the Father will make them well, I know He will.’
    He stared at me, but