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did before the war. Maybe war makes you value things and people more than you did when there was Peace and you knew there would never be a shortage?
    I wondered about the black men who hadn’t been asked to go to war. If ways could be found to trust them with guns, then they could take the place of the white men who didn’t want to go. And no one would have to go to jail. I wanted to say this to Madam, but my mother Miriam said it was not my place to question Madam and Master about such things.
    I didn’t understand about the sides in this war either. Especially as I remembered Madam saying that our piano came from Germany. This must mean that the clever people who had made our piano were now our enemies. It seemed to me that this might be the worst thing about war: that friends could be enemies-in-waiting.

Chapter 7

    ‘ A da!’
    I looked about. No one ever shouted to me on Church Street. The town streets were mainly for white people to shout on, black people did their shouting in the township alleys where Auntie lived. As if, Auntie used to say with a sniff, they lived on opposite hills instead of just across a dirt road from one another.
    ‘Ada!’ Young Master Phil in his khaki uniform marched across the gravel, avoiding a horse and cart coming along at a trot. ‘What are you doing here?’
    ‘Posting Madam’s letter, sir.’ I showed him the envelope with Madam’s beautiful thick and thin pen strokes. I had been hiding it in my pocket so it wouldn’t get dirty from the dust of the street, or smudged from the heat of my hand. It was a letter for Madam’s sister, Ada, who I had been named for. I wished I could write to this Ada and ask her about her life in Ireland, if it was less dusty there, and if the stream still played Grieg as it fell over the cliffs into the sea.
    ‘I’m leaving soon,’ said young Master Phil, standing like a soldier, feet apart, shoulders square.
    I looked up at him. His pale eyes were staring down the road, where the horse and cart were heading in a brown cloud. Only his hands moved, flexing themselves against his drill trousers. ‘Where will you go, sir? To protect Madam’s country? To Ireland?’
    He laughed then, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. ‘Oh no, Ada, there’s no war in Ireland. I’ll be sent up north, probably, to north Africa. Come with me.’
    He began to walk up the road. I didn’t know whether to follow. He turned and looked at me. I could walk and talk with Master Phil at Cradock House, but here, on the street, in front of white people, it was different. I’m not sure why it was different, skin difference was not a matter of law at that time and there were no signs saying benches and entrances were for white people only, but already I knew it was so. Even when I was on my own, the shopkeepers shooed me away if I hung around too long reading their signs. Church Street with its line of pepper trees and its soaring Dutch Reformed Church was not meant for people like me. Walking along Church Street by the side of a young Master in the uniform of a soldier was certainly not meant for people like me.
    Already someone had noticed.
    A lady in a pink frilled blouse and a darker coloured skirt was coming out of N.C. Rogers General Dealers, fanning herself. I saw her look from Master Phil to me, and back to Master Phil once more.
    ‘Why,’ she said, turning her back to me, ‘it’s Philip Harrington, Cathleen and Edward’s boy. How smart you look!’
    Young Master Phil took his gaze away from me and walked across to shake her hand politely.
    ‘I believe,’ she lowered her voice, ‘you lads are to leave soon.’
    ‘I don’t know yet, Ma’am.’ Young Master Phil’s words were steady, but I knew the fear that lived just beneath them. I had heard it in his voice in the garden at Cradock House, just as I’d seen the sun shine on the muscles he’d grown for war. I hated the lady from the General Dealers. I hated her for reminding young Master Phil that not only