The Visitors (21 page)

The Crowes come up to the big house. We received the letter from Caleb only a week ago. It is March 1901, the daffodils lift their heads and the hellebores are nodding. The Queen passed away in January, but we were already wearing black. We see them through the dining room window, Mr and Mrs Crowe, walking slowly and seriously up the drive. We run out to greet them, but Maid Edith has already shown them into the drawing room. We think they are here to pay their final respects to Father, though it has been almost a year. We know they cannot leave home easily or often. I see Lottie’s face and she knows something is wrong the moment she sees her ma look up.

‘What is it?’ she says and Mrs Crowe starts crying.

My gut twists and I think, Caleb. It is Caleb. He is dead.

Mrs Crowe passes over a slip of paper and Mr Crowe says, ‘We don’t know what to do, love.’

It is a telegram. An image appears in my mind of the telegraph boy knocking on the Crowe door, dressed in red on his red bike, warning, danger. We read it together.

All I can think is, He’s alive, he’s alive. The truth of the news does not truly hit me, just the relief that he is not dead. Lottie just stares and stares at the paper, as if it were written in Greek.

‘What does it mean?’ she asks them. ‘Have you heard anything else?’

‘No, my dear,’ says Mr Crowe. ‘That’s all we know. We got it yesterday. We tried to speak to someone at the barracks, at the East Kents, but they couldn’t tell us anything. They said to talk to the government, but we don’t know who.’

I clap to call everyone’s attention. ‘Mother will know,’ I sign. ‘She has friends, important ones. She will know what to do. Wait here. I’ll send for refreshments.’

It is morning, so Mother will be in her study writing letters or reading. On the stairs, I feel light-headed and grasp the banister to stop myself from falling. Caleb is accused of murder, arrested, charged. In prison, a trial to follow, and what next? If found guilty, death, surely; he will be put to death. Now the truth hits me. And I think, Is it to do with that woman? Is it her doing? Wild possibilities flit through my mind. I knock on Mother’s door and push it open. She turns around and frowns.

We talk over sandwiches that no one eats and tea that no one drinks. The others sign and speak at once to assist me. Mother is magnificent. ‘I help with a committee to send resources to the Boer ladies in South Africa,’ she tells them. ‘Through this, I have connections with military wives whose husbands are high up in the army. One is the sister of a general’s wife. I will write to her and ask for her help. I will also invite our local Member of Parliament around and enlist his help too. Please do not upset yourself, Mrs Crowe, Mr Crowe. First we need to find out more. Then we must engage counsel for your son. I will pay all fees relating to his defence – no, no, I won’t hear any argument. Lastly, I think someone must go out there, to see how it proceeds, to see Caleb and help him through it, if possible. What do you think?’

Everything seems more hopeful now. Mother will write letters and speak to important people. Matters are in hand. But there is one thing I want to do, one thing I must do, and if I am denied I will defy all orders. But first I must see what the Crowes have to say.

‘We want to go to him, Mrs Golding, of course we do,’ says Mr Crowe. ‘It is a father’s duty to rescue his son, or to try. But I cannot leave the oyster beds to rack and ruin and theft. There is no one left to trust it to, now we’re not in the co-operative and other men are our masters. We’re at war with the whelk trappers and the Essex dredgers, who steal our stock. I can’t let my other sons go to ruin while I try to save this one. And if my wife goes …’

‘What will become of my boys?’ Mrs Crowe says. ‘A neighbour minds them today, but I’d be gone for months to that God-forsaken place and who would tend to them? Mrs Golding, I believe that parents are meant to guide their children through life, like a ship’s pilot. I’ve always done that for all my little ones, all their lives. But this is beyond me. I just don’t know what we can do for Caleb.’

I stand up and everyone looks at me. There is one reason – the best – for why it must be me who goes, a reason I cannot reveal to anyone but Lottie. That I will seek out the Visitor of that murdered man and I will make him confess who killed him. It will prove Caleb’s innocence and he will be saved. For now, I must conjure other excuses to persuade the others. ‘I think Lottie should go. I would like to accompany her, if she agrees. We are the only ones who can go, as you must stay with your family and Mother is too poorly, you know you are, Mother. Lottie and I are strong and young and healthy and free. We already have everything ready to travel and will do all in our power to help Caleb. Besides, when they see two nice English ladies, one of whom is deaf, they will pity us and give us special treatment. I have the money and the means to finance it, from Father’s legacy. What do you say, Lottie?’

My friend claps her hands and we embrace. The parents look on, shocked, shaking their heads. Yet the logic of it will out. On considering the alternatives, there is little argument. If Father were alive, he would have gone; I would have begged to go with him, and would have been refused. Now he is dead, I am the one who assumes responsibility. Perhaps there is this one slender consolation for his loss. It is agreed. Lottie and I are going to Africa.

A week later, we have more news. Mother’s contacts have come good and Caleb’s commanding officer has sent information. Caleb has been accused of killing a British soldier. He has pleaded guilty; indeed, he gave himself up. He is confined in the Frankfort garrison for now but later he will be moved to a military prison in Pretoria, where the trial will take place in a few weeks’ time. Further enquiries reveal that the dead soldier was a guard at Camp Irene. He was found shot dead in a tent and some of his belongings stolen. Caleb has offered no explanation or defence. In fact, he has not spoken a word of it since his arrest. He was not working at the camp and, as far as they know, had little association with the dead man. But we know different. It is as I feared. It is the guard involved with that woman, it must be. I knew she would be trouble. What on earth was Caleb thinking? And then I realise he wasn’t thinking, he was blind to thought where Maria was concerned. That bloody woman. We will go to him. We will find out the truth and use it for good or ill to save Caleb. I am convinced in my ability not only to help him, but rescue him. Lottie and I together will get him out of that trap and free him. And damned be that woman if she tries to cross us.

Mother is worried and does not want me to go. She has lost Father, and now I am leaving. I remind her I was to travel in any case. This is a journey to a British stronghold, somewhere we will be protected by the might of the British Army on our travels. And it is for the best cause possible. But she is my mother and does not care for causes where I am concerned. She sees too that she has no sway with me over this; I will go, blow, wind, come, wrack. She sees the fire in my eyes after months of despondency over Father, and perhaps she thinks it would be good for me to do this. Mother books our passage and Lottie and I plan and pack, ordering maps of South Africa and city plans of Pretoria and Cape Town, as well as books on the flora and fauna, the history of the Boers, the British and the Zulus and other African tribes, the peoples and their languages. We want to arrive girded with knowledge, not lumbered with ignorance. We receive a permit to travel in South Africa from Mother’s friend’s brother-in-law, the general. We are told there is martial law in South Africa and that everyone needs permission to travel. Ours is very specific, a letter to be shown to whom it may concern, that the Misses Crowe and Golding are given permission to travel from Cape Town to Pretoria for the purposes of visiting the said Miss Crowe’s brother incarcerated pending trial, and for their return to Cape Town on completion of their business.

Now I must say farewell to Father. He will not understand, of course. He does not comprehend his own situation, let alone mine. I find him, as ever, in the hop garden, staring intently at the new buds just starting to show on the greening bines. I sail tomorrow.

No signs of trouble yet
, he says, smiling at me.
New growth looks healthy, very healthy.

Father
, I say.
I am going away.

To Whitstable?

No, Father. I am going on a ship to Africa. Caleb Crowe is in trouble and I go with Charlotte to help him.

He has drifted already, fingering the buds.
God willing, we’ll have no sorrow this year.

I raise my voice and say,
Listen to me, Father. This is important.

He looks up from the hop plants and stares at me.

I say again,
I am going to Africa, Father. Caleb has been accused of murder, but I know that he is not guilty. I know it with every fibre of my being, as does his sister and all his family. We go to prove his innocence. We go to free him. I hope I have your blessing, Father.

He seems to smile his approval. But I know it is the new growth that pleases him, not me.

I love you, Father. Goodbye.

Goodbye, my dear.

For a moment
,
I felt almost as if it were old times and he were Father as he always was. But he is not Father. I have said farewell for myself, not for him. Goodbye, my Father.

It will be harder to take leave of Mother, for she is flesh and blood and has a hold on me no Visitor will ever have. When she looks into my eyes on the morning of our departure, she seeks there some assurance that I will be well. I hold her hands tight. I kiss her cheek. I sign to her, ‘Do not fret for me, Mother. This is something I must do.’

‘I understand,’ she says. ‘You go to save the brother of the woman who saved you.’

‘Oh, Mother,’ I cry and hold her tight, my eyes filling with tears. She is right, so utterly right, in a way I had never thought to voice it. Yet she cannot know she is short of the mark too, that my love for Caleb is beyond what even his sister knows, it is something no one knows but Caleb and myself. It is a painful love, a love of loss and want, but it is more powerful than anything else I could feel.

We sail for Cape Town on the SS
Majestic
, the afternoon of 7 April. We leave Southampton under leaden skies and a vigorous wind. Our voyage will take almost a month. Before long, we sight the Needles. This is the last landmark of England we will see, as we turn in for the night. We wave farewell to the tall, rocky forms as they recede and the dark sea bites at their ankles. Goodbye, England. In the morning we enter the Bay of Biscay and later spy the Ushant Lighthouse, which belongs to Brittany. A taste of France. Then comes our first storm and the ship rocks so violently we retire to our cabin and moan in a haze of nausea all the following night. The next day we wake to calm seas and discover we have at last cleared the Bay of Biscay, then we see the lighthouse off Cape Finisterre and know we are leaving France behind, waving farewell to our dreams of Paris. Another time. We sail steadily on, the sea surprisingly calm now, glassy and broad.

We near the Canary Islands. We have passed Spain and visions of broad-skirted ladies dancing the bolero and farruca, and our Iberian plans vanish as the ship steams on towards Africa. We see several vessels sail by, including a troop-ship returning with the wounded. I wish my Caleb were on that ship, that he had suffered the one fate I wished against, injury or sickness, only so that he would not have got mixed up with that woman and her dangerous life. I look down at the tireless seas and spot flying fish defying their undersea destiny and assuming the life of birds for a few magic moments. I understand they do it to escape predators. So there they are, leaping for their lives as we admire them as picturesque. What can they make of us? Some great grey sea-monster that ploughs stupidly through the ocean. One can never know the truth of another’s life by looking.