Page 73 of The Pearl Sister
Watching from the drawing room window, she saw Camira’s small figure recede into the distance. A sigh escaped her as she realised that Andrew had probably been right. Her baby kicked suddenly inside her, and she walked into the drawing room to sit down. The heat today was oppressive.
An hour passed but just as she was about to give up hope, she saw Camira walking towards the house, then hesitating for a second before making her way back up the drive. After waiting for another ten minutes, Kitty walked over to the hut, taking with her a glass of cool lemonade that Tarik had just made, with ice shaved from the newly delivered block.
The door to the hut was ajar, but still, she knocked on it.
Camira opened it and Kitty noticed that everything on the breakfast tray she’d taken in earlier had been eaten.
‘I brought you this. It’s full of goodness for the baby.’
‘Thank you, missus.’ Camira took the lemonade from Kitty and sipped it tentatively as if it might be poisoned. Then she drank the lot down in one. ‘No keepa me prisoner?’
‘Of course not,’ Kitty said briskly. ‘I want to help you.’
‘Why you wanta help me, missus? No whitefellas wanta.’
‘Because . . .’ Kitty searched for the simplest answer. ‘We are both the same.’ She indicated her stomach. ‘How long were you at the mission?’
‘Ten years. Teacha fella say I good student.’ A small expression of pride passed through Camira’s dark eyes. ‘I knowa German too.’
‘Do you now? My husband speaks it, but I do not.’
‘Whattum you want, missus?’
Kitty was about to say ‘nothing’, but then realised that Camira currently could not grasp the concept of kindness from a ‘whitefella’.
‘Well, for a start, if you stay here, perhaps you could teach Fred some English.’
Camira wrinkled her nose. ‘He-a smell. No wash.’
‘Maybe you can teach him to do that too.’
‘Me be-a teacha, boss?’
‘Yes. And also’ – Kitty thought on her feet – ‘I am looking for a nursemaid to help when the baby comes.’
‘I knowa ’bout babies. I takem care in mission.’
‘That’s settled then. You stay here’ – she indicated the hut – ‘and we give you food in return for help.’
Camira’s serious face studied Kitty’s. ‘No locka the door.’
‘No locka the door. Here.’ Kitty handed her the key. ‘Deal?’
Finally, a glimmer of a smile came to Camira’s face. ‘Deal.’
* * *
‘So, did your little black bolt off with everything she could steal when your back was turned?’ asked Andrew when he returned for lunch.
‘No, she went for a walk and then came back. Can you believe that she speaks some German, as well as English? And she has been brought up a Christian.’
‘I doubt it goes any further than skin-deep. So what will you do with her?’
‘She tells me she took care of the babies brought to the mission. I have suggested that in return for helping me with the new baby and teaching Fred some basic English, she can stay in the hut.’
‘But Kitty, my dear, the girl is pregnant! Chances are, it’s a white man’s child. And you know the rules on half-castes.’
‘Andrew!’ Kitty slammed her knife and fork onto her plate. ‘Camira can be no older than me! What would you have me do with her? Toss her back out into the rubbish where I found her? And as for the rules . . . they are cruel and barbaric. Tearing a mother away from her baby . . .’
