Sarah's Story
First published in 2010 by Estuary Publishing
reception@estuarypublishing.com
Copyright © Ann Oosthuizen
All rights reserved
Smashwords edition 2011
ISBN: 978-0-9567761-1-2
Cover picture from an original painting by Mary Davidson
For David, my brother
PART ONE
1962 - 1963
Jo
Chapter One
Jo wandered down the track, which led to the river. She was a skinny eleven year old with a face, still trying to find an harmonious shape, angled towards an over large nose and dreamy eyes. Her straight brown hair was already beginning to work loose from the rubber bands which earlier this morning had fastened her two severe plaits. She was wearing a washed out blue cotton dress, with an inch of darker colour than the rest where the hem had been let out, a while back, to lengthen it. She slithered under the barbed wire fence to avoid snagging the material.
Although Glen Bervie stretched right up to the centre of the river, only the fields were fenced. By constantly changing its course, the river had created a hundred yard wide wilderness between its banks. If the gate were open, a donkey cart with a load of fine, white sand might have been parked there. It was a place where Jo could meet a woman walking with the light, dancer's step needed to balance on her head a huge bundle of thorn branches for firewood. Where James, Sarah's son, would herd the cows to drink from the thick, brown water.
Glancing up at the dark bulk of the krantz, which loomed above the river on its opposite bank, Jo walked towards it with care, avoiding patches of long, dried grasses and clumps of prickly, yellow poppies, which might shelter the sudden rush of snakes.
She haunched down at the water's edge, reaching forward to a flat rock on which dried silt had been curled by the sun into thin, pale wafers. With her fingernail, she peeled one off and held it delicately in her hand. Light, yet golden brown, it seemed to her to be like the manna from heaven, which had fed the homeless Israelites on their journey through the desert. Venturing a small bite, she felt its gritty texture jar against her teeth, and when she wiped her mouth vigorously on her skirt, the thirsty feeling on her tongue contrasted with the tears she discovered travelling down her cheeks in an abandonment of sorrow that she had not expected and did not understand. She held her knees, and rocked backwards and forwards, sobbing.
It had always been accepted that Uncle William and Aunt Vera would take over Glen Bervie, when Ouma died. William was Ouma's first born and only son. The farm was his inheritance. It didn't matter, it seemed, that Millie, his sister, and Jo, her daughter, lived there already. Now, only a year after Ouma had been so small in that high, narrow hospital bed, with her grey hair brushed straight off her face, William, a doctor, had moved his practice from Johannesburg to Fort Bedford, the market town close to the farm.
It bothered Jo that she hadn't said goodbye to Ouma properly. Ouma had roused herself only once in those last days, muttering something as if it were important.
‘What is it Mother?’ Millie had asked in the loud voice she used with Ouma, because, being ninety, she didn't hear so well.
‘Call Sarah,’ Ouma had murmured, and subsided back into that deep sleep from which she had not woken again.
‘She doesn't mean it really,’ Millie had explained because Jo had been so agitated, pressing Millie to drive to the farm to fetch Sarah. ‘She's dreaming she's at home.’
Using the blue flowered china jug and bowl, Sarah had washed Ouma every day, gently drying and powdering her brittle, painful body. Ouma's small, white hand had clung like a bird's claw to Sarah's strong, plump arm as Sarah had supported her on the long, slow walk up the passage to the chair set in the dining room window where Ouma stayed all morning. Millie would bring her tight rosebuds in her favourite shades of gold and red, the post she had fetched from town, or a book from the library. ‘Another little bioscope,’ she would joke as she handed it over. Jo would set out the cards on the green baize table, fitting a red jack on a black queen and turning over the next one so that Ouma could see if the game would come out this time. Towards noon Sarah would pass the window on her way to pick mint in the garden for the roast lamb in the oven that smelled so deliciously through the house.
Although neither Millie nor Sarah had told her, it was clear to Jo that William was going to change everything. Marge, his daughter, would go to Jo's school in town - they'd be in the same class. Today Aunt Vera was flying back from London, where she had been visiting her own family for the past three months. Her plane would be landing in Port Elizabeth at noon.
Earlier that morning, Jo had hid behind the open sitting room door, listening to her mother and Uncle William. She wanted her unseen presence to protect her mother from the harsh, exasperated tone William used towards his sister.
‘You'll have to clear up your mess in here.’
‘It's only my gramophone and a few records.’
‘It's not your room any more, Millie. After Vera comes, you're not to make so free with it.’
William's conversation with his sister was from long habit never more than a series of commands. As he came into Jo's line of vision, she saw him turn to survey with satisfaction, the newly painted dove grey walls and glossed white bookshelves. There was a different carpet in the room, under the lounge suite William had brought down from Johannesburg.
William was calling for Marge to hurry or they'd be late for the plane. It was over a hundred-mile drive and they wouldn't be back before afternoon tea. Jo slipped outside and hung on one of the wooden posts, which held up the veranda roof so that she could watch them leave. William had his ‘grown up business’ face and pretended not to notice her, but Marge pushed Jo's chest with the flat of her hand.
‘See you later, alligator.’
‘In a while, crocodile.’
They gave each other their secret thumbs up sign, and Marge waved through the side window until the car disappeared behind the trees.
Inside the living room, Jo's mother was putting a Beethoven sonata back into its sleeve.
‘Sarah, Sarah where are you?’ she called.
‘I'm coming, Miss Millie,’ accompanied the sound of Sarah's bare feet slapping against the linoleum as she ran along the passage.
‘Please put this under my bed.’
Sarah's strong arms encircled the gramophone, a box affair with a built in speaker.
‘Wait - I have to unplug it first.’ Millie coiled the flex and laid it on top. ‘Be careful with it.’
‘It's all right, Miss Millie.’
‘Won't we be allowed in the sitting room any more?’ whined Jo, defiantly provocative.
‘Don't say things like that. Of course we will. But you've lots of other places to play - it's not a children's room.’
‘What about - ’
But her mother, her grey curls fizzing round her head, was already hurrying to see whether Sarah had scrubbed the cork floor, that marked so easily, in the dining room, whether Leah had started the brawn for supper. She began to beat egg whites into a peaked fluffy mountain to fold into a chocolate cake for tea. Cut off by this high tide of activity, Jo trailed after her, then banged moodily through the screen door which separated the kitchen from the back yard, to join Sarah and Leah, who were eating breakfast, sitting on a sparse patch of grass in the shade of a single pine tree.
Jo plumped down too close to Sarah. ‘Hai Miss Jo, Give me some room to eat.’
‘Sorry.’ Jo moved reluctantly, and watched as Sarah spooned up the creamy white mealie meal porridge, mixing in the sugar, and blowing on it to cool it down.
‘I hate Aunt Vera,’ Jo blurted out. ‘I wish she would stay in England.’
Sarah seemed not to have heard. She said something in Xhosa to Leah, which Jo couldn't understand, and they both laughed.
‘What's wrong? What are you saying?’ Jo suspected they were making fun of her, and she pulled her skirt tight over her hunched knees.
‘No, nothing's wrong,’ teased Leah. ‘Miss Jo is getting very cross these days.’
‘I'm not.’ They were turning against her. She worried they would side with the newcomers. She knew everything would be much worse if Sarah did that.
Leah and Sarah were sisters, although they didn't look a bit alike. Leah's skin was a pale caramel, compared to Sarah's reddish brown. Leah, who had not married, had worked in the post office in Port Elizabeth before she had returned home to look after their old mother. She was slim, where Sarah was plump, and she wore a red and black knitted cap on her head, not a white doek, like Sarah.
Jo wanted to confide her fears to someone. William and Vera now owned Glen Bervie. This awesome idea gave her the creeps. Already she'd seen her mother pushed out of the sitting room and Vera hadn't even arrived!
Jo watched Sarah drink her coffee in hot, hurried gulps. ‘Where's Nozuko?’ she asked. Nozuko was Sarah's eldest daughter, just a little older than Jo.
‘She's gone to the clinic with Nontobeko and baby Nontu.’ It wasn't worth going over to Sarah's house, then. It was boring having no one to play with; she was better off away from the whole lot of them.
‘If my mother asks, tell her I've gone to the river.’
When Jo turned her back on the house, she was, as always, comforted by the scale of the landscape. A clear sky sizzled over fields and paths, which glared back into the sun. It was hot enough to need to linger for a moment in the deep shade of the oak trees that Ouma had planted along the gravel drive. She sniffed the wet, red earth in the furrow, which was used to flood a field of sea green lucerne, already a foot high. Now she could see the krantz rising grey above the tops of a line of poplar trees. Further away still, miles away, blue mountains shimmered in the heat.
Chapter Two
Before she had begun school, Jo spent hours on the river bank with Sarah and Nozuko. Sarah usually carried Nontobeko cradled and asleep in a light blanket tied onto her back. Under Jo's guidance, for Nozuko was a gentle, quiet girl, older than Jo, but awed by Jo's different status on the farm, Jo and Nozuko had built streets of miniature mud huts, and collected pebbles to make walls and paths for elaborate gardens which they decorated with bright yellow fairy powder puffs from the mimosa thorn trees.
Sarah had woven stories about the tokoloshi into the river landscape. ‘Don't go that way, Miss Jo. Mamsamsaba lives there. That's her place.’
Jo had gazed with awe towards a wilder area upstream, where a small tributary joined the main watercourse.
‘Who is she?’
‘A tokoloshi - a spirit - a bad spirit.’
‘A witch?’
Sarah shivered. ‘Don't talk about her any more.’
Since that time, Jo had kept obediently to Sarah's invisible boundaries. She explored what she took to be her own territory, peopling it with imaginary characters from the books she read. She named the grassy island in the middle of the river after Robinson Crusoe, called the shallow cleft, with its easy climb onto the top of the krantz, the Garden of Eden because in its shade, unlike the rest of the dry, slate surface, plants grew in abundance; freesias in early spring, and later, red hot pokers, dark blue agapanthus, and bright velvet African violets.
This was her very special place. Now Uncle William's shadow fell over it and claimed it. Used to being obeyed, he could order her out, in that voice, which said, Don’t contradict me.
If she refused to listen to him, screaming her rebellion, her mother would be shamed and tell her to behave. She hugged her knees, and blew her nose on her skirt. It'll always be mine, she vowed, rocking backwards and forwards, I'll remember every inch of it, every tiny bit. One day I'll come back here, even if I'm very old, and I'll build myself a house - right here. She scooped her hands into the river bank, tunnelling downwards until she reached water level, where the sand, heavy with seepage, collapsed in on itself.
Sitting back on her heels, she was distracted by the flight of a yellow weaver bird darting towards its nest, which dangled with a dozen others over the water. Tied to the very tip of a thorn branch, so that its weight curved the branch downwards like the arc of a fishing rod, it was a grass fortress, a hanging basket with a small, round entrance. She could hear the chicks scream. Wriggling under the trees, she lay on her stomach and leaned as far out as she could in an effort to see what was going on in that living darkness, but the nest was still further over the water, and its opening was turned away from her.
As she edged back, she spotted a pale blue egg, freckled in navy, lying abandoned in the grass. It must have fallen from a nest higher up and rolled, without cracking, to its present position. She felt tender towards it, cradling it, hoping that the life inside was still undamaged. Perfectly balanced, it lay like a feather in the palm of her hand.
Oh, she thought, can I save it? She wanted to find a warm nest to hatch it in. She was too energetic to hold it under her armpit. What about inside her mouth? But no sooner had she popped the egg into the pouch of her cheek, than its fragile shell broke, and her mouth was full of rottenness.
Horrible! She retched yellow slime and fragments of blue shell onto the grass, and cupped her hands to carry river water in all haste to rinse the taste away, taking care not to swallow because the water was impure, probably infected with the bilharzia worm. She couldn't stop shuddering, nor could she get rid of the memory of that sulphur death. Her face and dress were wet, and there was a yellow stain on her front, which she splashed and rubbed.
Escaping, she crossed to the other side of the river, jumping awkwardly from rock to rock. Once, she slipped, soaking her sock and shoe in the brown water, but she kept going, scrambling in a panic up the krantz, grabbing wildly at tufts of grass and juts of rock to steady herself. She was still shaking when she stood on the top and turned to face the view, breathing lungful’s of air in great sobs to slow herself down and push the experience deep inside her.
Now she could see the farm. Oupa and Ouma had named it Glen Bervie after the place in Scotland where Oupa had lived before he came to South Africa. A hundred acres: a gentleman's small holding, Oupa joked, because in the Karoo a profitable sheep farm ran to thousands of acres. Glen Bervie supported twenty jersey cows. Every morning the cream was taken in a donkey cart to the train siding, and the money they received from the cheese factory in Cookhouse paid the wages for the people who worked on the farm.
From this height, the plain in front of her looked like the relief map on the table at school, with its green sponge trees and painted match box houses. Only this map was one she knew from living inside it and walking all over it. There was the red farmhouse roof, partly obscured by the leafy greens of all the different kinds of trees, which surrounded it. There was the gum forest at the back, planted as a windbreak, an orange grove, lawns and an ash tree, as well as the three tall pines at the front of the house. Round the tennis court were more trees, hedges and flowerbeds. Then came the gravel drive with its avenue of oaks and the two white gate posts facing onto the brown earth road which linked up with the sleek tarred road going to Fort Bedford, three miles away.
The land on which she now stood belonged to their neighbour, Big Jan Botha, a farm so big that it stretched across an entire mountain. She leaned against one of his fence posts, her gaze taking in not only Glen Bervie, but the whole view. She picked out the other small holdings lying along the curve of the river; a twist of windmill over at the Seaman's place; the Fourie's green tin roof. A red lorry was travelling along the main road. It passed the Fourie's place, and then, before crossing on the bridge over the river, the turn off to a large number of poorer houses that together made up what everyone called the plots.
Jo knew that Leah lived on the plots with her mother because once, with Millie, she had visited her house when Leah was ill. Leah was lying on an iron bedstead in a small, dimly lit kitchen. A very old woman sat on a straight backed chair next to a paraffin stove. There was a big, dark sideboard, and a table with two more straight backed chairs. The uneven floor was covered with cracked linoleum; faded pink roses over green and white squares. Jo stood close to the bed and rubbed its knitted quilt between her thumb and forefinger.
‘Now you just stay in bed until you get better. Sarah and I are managing very well.’ Millie spoke cheerfully, ignoring an invitation to sit down.
Walking back, Jo had kept close to Millie because the houses were so different from her own. They were squat and crowded together, and the walls and rusted tin roofs were a uniform mud colour, the colour of their swept, dry yards.
She squinted sideways to catch a glimpse of a group of men playing cards in the shade of a grape vine which spread across a doorway; then a tidy vegetable garden with neat rows of mealies, and a roof weighted down with fat, orange pumpkins. A child, her dress the same faded mud colour as the wall of her house, stared as they passed. The whole settlement, as if it had a unified life, hummed with many sounds - a dog barking, voices raised inside a house, a car engine turning over. The total area of the plots was less than one lucerne field, yet they had crossed several uneven narrow roads before they were safely back over the main road and walking between their own wide lands.
Now, from the elevation of the krantz she could see that beyond the plots was another large farm; while holding the whole vision together: the big farms, the small holdings, the plots, the bend of the river, the main road and the innumerable dirt roads and tracks, was the great mountain range which surrounded them all in a high ridge of blue.
Sarah's apron appeared through the trees like a white flag flapping against her long, navy cotton dress. Jo knew exactly what this meant - her mother was calling her for lunch. It had been arranged that they would eat sandwiches on the lawn in order not to spoil the glory of the dining room, where everything had been scrubbed and polished, and where Millie had placed a bowl of orange Barberton daisies, which she had picked first thing this morning before the sun had had a chance to make the stems go limp.
Jo slithered down from her high point, jumped the stones and was at the gate in time to meet Sarah.
‘I saw you - you needn't have come all the way.’
Sarah's face was moist with the heat. She held up a strand of barbed wire so that Jo could climb more easily through the fence.
‘Miss Jo, how did you get so dirty? What have you been doing?’’
‘Nothing.’
Jo wiped her hands on her skirt, then inspected her dress, which she now noticed was stained in green and yellow and brown. She pulled up her socks. The right foot was still wet; both the sock and the shoe were muddy.
‘I fell into the river - my mother won't mind.’
‘What about when Miss Vera comes?’
Prompted, Jo imagined Vera stepping out of the car, not a hair out of place. She could hear her English drawl, ‘Good heavens, Jo - have you been living on the mountain with the monkeys?’ And then she would snigger at Jo's discomfort. Vera was fanatical about dirt. When she wanted to be particularly damning, she'd wrinkle her nose and call someone ‘smelly’.
‘I'm not against the natives,’ she'd say. ‘I just don't think they're very interested in personal hygiene.’
Jo began to feel sick. She crossed her arms over her chest as if trying to become very small.
‘I've put rain water on the stove to heat so we can wash your hair,’ Sarah comforted her. ‘And Leah has ironed a clean dress for you. Don't worry, you will look nice when she comes.’
Chapter Three
‘I've got my work cut out - this place is in a complete shambles!’ William leaned against the bedroom door, enjoying Vera's meticulous toilette. His fingertips pricked as he stared at the blue satin bib she had tied around her neck to protect her shoulders from a dusting of face powder. Always, in the mornings, he watched her dressing. He told himself that the confidences they shared at this time were important in establishing a common front against Millie's insidious anarchy.
‘What have you planned to do today?’ He asked the question idly, needing intimacy.
‘Big Jan has offered to take me riding. I'm to have his grey mare - she's a gorgeous mount.’ Vera ran a bright red lipstick over her partly opened upper lip, then imprinted it firmly on the lower one, smoothing the colour with a thin brush.
For an uncontrolled moment, William saw the farmer's hand on Vera's thigh. He almost heard a jovial laugh, and the smack as Big Jan patted the round of Vera's bottom, before she gathered up the reins and the horse skittered away. He deliberately forced the pictures out of his mind.
‘I'm going to build on more rooms,’ he announced, making it up to her. He'd been planning this, even before Vera's return. ‘A music room for you, and a study for me.’
‘Well, now, as if the house wasn't big enough already.’ They were in accord - he appreciated the sarcasm.
‘It's too bad,’ he sighed.
‘Can you fit a tiny modern kitchenette into your plans? I simply hate that filthy wood stove. Millie has an electric oven in the pantry, but the surfaces there are sluttered - I mean cluttered - ’ she giggled, ‘with jars and tins.’ Vera wrinkled up her nose. ‘I'd like to boil an egg without bumping into one of them.’
‘Talking about Millie - I've just seen her strolling around outside - of course she's wasn't even dressed. The hem of her gown is stained dark brown with dragging around in the mud!’ William's mouth, so often drawn into a straight line, as if the world needed all his determination to keep it on course, relaxed as he sneered at his sister.
‘Was she still wearing that hair net?’
‘Of course.’ William silently thanked his lucky stars for providing him with a wife of whom he need never feel ashamed. As Vera lifted a hand mirror to survey the back of her head, he promised himself yet again that he'd make it up to her for having to live in what was, to her, a god forsaken place in the middle of nowhere.
They'd met in London towards the end of the war. He was nearly forty, she a good ten years younger. She was his ideal: cool, sophisticated, controlled. In spite of her Englishness, or perhaps because of it, she'd been quite a star on the Johannesburg social scene. Then there'd been a scandal; absolutely without foundation, through jealousy probably, she'd been cited in a divorce case.
They'd never discussed it - he was too proud to ask her about it - but he was almost sure she'd been relieved to escape the gossip. He himself had always yearned to make Glen Bervie his home, and now, it seemed, circumstances conspired to make this the right moment to move. Marge would be much healthier in the country, and there would be people to look after her when Vera made her frequent trips home. He'd made that bargain when he proposed. ‘I know I'm just a colonial,’ he'd joked, ‘but I promise you'll always be able to keep in touch with the music and theatre in London. I'll guarantee you that.’
On the morning breeze came the faintest echo of axe on wood.
‘Listen!’ He stepped quickly to the open window.
‘What?’ She put down her hand mirror.
‘There it is again ... Can't you hear it? They're chopping the trees in the river - I expressly forbad them - I've even wired up the gate.’ He was bending to secure his shoe lace, his face red under his tan, the war scar, which ran from the corner of his mouth to his chin blazing white as his jaw tightened.
‘Eat your breakfast first ...’
‘Later ...’
He caught up with them as the last one stooped to climb through the fence, carefully passing over the wood she had collected before lifting her skirt, as if in a curtsey, to show a delicate ankle and bare feet.
‘Hey!’ There were three women. Two had already replaced the bundles of wood on their heads, the third was through the fence before he reached them.
‘I've told you people you can't come here for wood any more. If you keep cutting down the trees, the river bank will be full of dongas.’ His voice rose. ‘Understand?’
‘Ja, Baas,’ the eldest spoke for them all, emotionless. She stood quite still, a caryatid, her right arm raised to steady the load.
‘There's no more wood next to the bridge, Baas.’ That young one is cheeky, he thought. If the riverbank next to the plots was such a wasteland, they'd only themselves to blame.
‘You must buy wood - or cook with paraffin.’ Why was he getting into a debate? ‘This is my land - it's not your land. I've told you already, you've no right to come. I'll call the police the next time. Tell the others. You'll be arrested for stealing. Understand?’
‘Ja, Baas.’ All three spoke at once, a chorus.
‘Go now. Don't come back again.’
‘Ja, Baas.’
He should have taken their axe, but he couldn't bring himself to do that. That was something for the police to handle. He watched them walk up the road, the young one trailing behind as she adjusted the cloth padding on her head. She was running to catch up with the others, yelling something in Xhosa - he caught a few swear words. Made him feel accused.
They'd made him late for work. His hands were shaking and the palms were sweaty, as if he'd just come from a battle. Well, he'd enough war medals to prove he could fight! He'd gladly bet on the winner!
The joke cleared his head. Looking up the gentle slope towards the farmhouse, he could see the smoke from the kitchen fire spiralling above the trees. Higher still, a white egret sailed across the sky, then floated downwards against the backdrop of the mountains. Who would have thought that loving a place you owned would be such hard work? The responsibility was overwhelming.
When his mother had died, he had thought he had inherited a life of ease and plenty; he'd told his new partners that he was too old to do night calls. Why not? Patients made appointments with him during the day because they knew he was good, particularly at diagnosis. He felt so secure in his own judgement, that he was prepared to return the consultation fee if he made a mistake. Yet now, he was being made a fool of, forced to play policeman, get into arguments about what was by right his property.
It wasn't just free firewood. He counted the ones who actually lived on his land: Freddie and Emily and six children; Sarah and Ernest (retired now) and four children. That totalled fourteen. Then Leah and Alfred, who lived on the plots. He didn't mind the men; there was the lucerne and the cows, heavy work, but it was the women who got under his skin - and you could add Millie and Jo to the list if it came to that.
Sometimes he would get into such a rage, he thought he would go mad. Like the evening he came across that piccanin with her billy-can standing at the kitchen door.
‘Who's this?’ he'd shouted at Sarah.
‘She's Sina's granddaughter. She's come for the separated milk that the old Missis and Miss Millie always gives to us.’
‘Who's Sina?’
‘Sina used to do the washing. She's too old to work now.’
‘She must have a pension - I don't suppose like the rest of you she'd even think of paying something for the milk.’ He felt that was fair comment, but Sarah and the child just looked at him in that insolent way that natives have when they dig their heels in.
There was too much loud talking in the kitchen. And there were always a couple of big pots steaming away on the stove - Sarah or Leah were probably cooking for their entire families right there in his house. In his opinion it was degenerate to bring children into the world that you couldn't feed or clothe properly, and then expect someone else to take care of them for you. He himself had decided that one child was quite enough responsibility, and Vera had concurred. After Marge, he had had a vasectomy. He rather thought Vera had something done too, but as he wasn't her doctor, he had no business to ask.
Was it any wonder that he had begun to think there was something inferior in their nature? Sex was for animals - it wasn't what kept him and Vera together. He loved Vera and she loved him - the act itself - so undignified - seemed to him unworthy of expressing that love.
Thinking about personal dignity fed his grudge against Millie. How could his own sister turn out to be the very opposite of everything he most admired? She was untidy, loud. In spite of her size, she refused to wear a decent bra because she said it gave her a migraine, so she slopped around in home-made jumpers with gravy stains down the front and her breasts hanging down like an old bitch. To crown it all, she still behaved as if she owned the place, asking her pals from town to bridge parties in the afternoons, or arranging tennis, without even mentioning the idea first to him, or, for that matter, to Vera.
The trouble was she had come to him together with Glen Bervie, as part of the property. She'd refused to leave home until she was almost an old maid, then she'd finally married that no hope farmer who'd got himself killed because he couldn't drive a tractor properly and the damn thing overturned and fell on top of him. Of course she'd come straight back home again, this time with a child as well.
He hadn't said anything at the time - as a matter of fact it had suited him, what with Father needing special care, and, later, Mother being on her own, but he was paying for it now, with a vengeance.
He looked at his watch: eight o'clock. He'd have to change his shirt - this one smelled of his rage. Sarah would have to clean his shoes again. Lucky he had no ward rounds at the hospital this morning.
As he passed through a gap in the pomegranate hedge, the house was visible for the first time. On the steps leading to the veranda sat an old black woman with her arms around a younger one, who appeared to be sobbing, although he could hear nothing from this distance. They were partly obscured by a man in a rusty black suit jacket and wide khaki trousers, who stood in front of them. To William the group looked like a dirty brown stain against the clean white walls of his house.
William left the drive, circled round the rockery, walked swiftly across the lawn and jumped onto the veranda to avoid passing close to them.
‘Baas - ’ He wasn't stopping, but the man lifted his head, and William couldn't help seeing his face. He glimpsed deep lines around the eyes, a thin mouth and a few yellow teeth.
‘Sarah!’ he shouted, blinded by the gloom of the house after the bright morning sunlight. As usual, she came running. ‘Why didn't you tell those people to wait at the back door?’
‘Baas William, they wouldn't listen to me. The woman is very sick. Her husband says they must sit where the Baas will see them, so that they don't miss Baas William. He is afraid she will die.’
‘Do you know who they are?’
‘No, Baas William. They come from the other side of the river. Baas Botha's place. She got sick in the night.’
‘Look, if they walked here, they can walk to town.’ He drew a deep breath to calm himself. He was desperately afraid of his own compassion. ‘This isn't a clinic. Tell them that. Tell them they must go to the hospital - the doctor there will treat her.’
He washed his hands. Vera was waiting for him in the dining room.
‘Have you got rid of them?’ she asked.
‘I told Sarah to do it.’ He helped himself to scrambled eggs from a dish on the sideboard, leaving the bacon.
Vera rang the bell sharply. ‘Toast for Baas William,’ she ordered, when Leah appeared. ‘And hot coffee.’
The group passed in front of the dining room window. Sarah and the older woman were half carrying the other one, who seemed to be unable to walk. Probably acute appendicitis. No, he told himself, don't even think about it. If you get involved it will be just the beginning; they'll come from far and wide and you'd end up being a kaffir doctor with no respectable status and no white patients. How will you support your family? Imagine what it would look if everyone in the district turned up here to be treated! The Hippocratic oath never insisted that one had to be a saint. Besides, they've got a perfectly good doctor at the hospital, and it only costs twenty cents a visit. He ate voraciously, buttering more toast than usual.
Sarah was trying to calm the man down. His loud voice was uneven and breathless, while the woman's sobbing rose almost to a scream. It was an outrage that they should dare to make such a racket on his property.
Now Marge and Jo had turned up - Marge with big sympathetic eyes, and Jo tugging at Sarah, asking her something. They were both dressed in gymslips and white shirts, carrying satchels.
He looked at his watch. ‘Millie's late, as usual.’
‘I've given up trying to understand Millie.’ Vera opened the window and spoke to Marge as if no one else existed. ‘Marge - come and wait inside.’
‘But, Mother - ’
‘You heard me.’
‘My Mom's bringing the car round now, Aunt Vera.’ Jo turned her head momentarily, raising her voice above the hubbub.
‘Jo, don't interfere.’ Vera closed the window, shutting out some of the noise, and returned to her place at the head of the table. ‘We've got to separate Marge and Jo. That girl has been allowed to grow up without any manners at all.’
Marge stood in the doorway. ‘Mother, I'm just waiting for Auntie Millie. We're going to be late ...’
‘You should have left ten minutes ago. Now stay here until - ’
But at that moment the 1948 beige Chevrolet appeared in the drive. Millie had been mistress of her father's car for the past eight years. She sat straight up in the driver's seat, her neck straining to see over the bonnet, as if she were driving a tank. She braked sharply, then leaped out to consult with Sarah.
William noticed she was now wearing her town clothes; a blue cotton dress and navy and white court shoes without stockings. Her hairnet had been removed, but there was still a faint pink line across the middle of her forehead from the tight elastic band, which had held it in place. Millie opened the back door of the car and Sarah bundled the petitioners inside. Jo was standing at the window mouthing, ‘Marge - we're going to be late ...’ and wringing her hands and jumping up and down in pantomime panic.
Vera put out her cheek for Marge's kiss.
‘You and Jo must come to the surgery after school,’ reminded William.
‘We will, Dad. Goodbye.’ Marge fled.
William knew it was going to be a dreadful day. How was he expected to concentrate on his work when he would be plagued by the memory of how he had barely saved himself from these never ending appeals to his charity; and his anger would be further fuelled by the vision of his daughter's sleek blonde head wedged between Millie's grey curls and Jo's mousey plaits, with behind them the muffled shadows of the blanketed women and the black man's shapeless brown hat.
Chapter Four
During lunch one Saturday, Millie recounted the news she had picked up at her morning's bridge party. ‘Bunny Loots says the newspapers call Nelson Mandela “The Black Pimpernel.” He's travelling all over the country telling people to strike. He could be in Fort Bedford this minute - or hiding on the plots. The police can't catch him even though he's been on the loose for months. They've hundreds of men out looking for him.’ Millie felt inspired by what seemed to her a real live adventurer.
‘What do you mean “The Black Pimpernel?”?’ William was instantly at his most stern.
‘Oh! “They sought him here, they sought him there” ... You know.’
‘What I'm asking is, why you're presuming he's some kind of hero?’
‘I ... Oh ...’ Millie's voice trailed away, but she wasn't beaten. She'd come back full of news. At least it was something to talk about. Meal times had become so silent lately. ‘Rita Albertyn said her sister, who lives in Port Elizabeth - Connie - I think that's her name - Connie van der Byl - the one who married that farmer from Cradock who lost his farm and went into selling stock feed.’
Vera sighed, and cast her eyes to the ceiling. Millie rushed onwards. ‘Connie asked their girl, Agnes, “Agnes, I hear that you've been told to kill us white people, but Agnes would you really kill me and the Master?” Agnes has been with them for years apparently. Anyway, Agnes said, “Oh, Madam, I could never kill you and the Master, but maybe I could kill the people next door, and then Esther from next door could come here.”
Millie, who did not believe this story, enjoyed its gruesome theatricality, but her laughter died when she realised the effect her words were having on the two girls who were staring at her wide eyed. Too late she remembered her mother's adage: Little pitchers have big ears. Damn. She should have held her tongue, at least until the grown-ups were alone. ‘It's not true, Jo,’ she looked at them both, ‘It's only a silly story. It couldn't happen.’
‘Really Millie - you and your women friends gossip about strike and murder as if it's nothing. That kind of talk could get you into serious trouble.’
‘William! The children!’ Vera was warning him not to lose his temper in front of the girls, but he was too carried away to stop himself.
‘Who's Nelson Mandela?’ asked Jo.
‘Don't interrupt.’ William drew a breath, then turned on Millie once more. ‘You don't know the first thing about what you're saying. Mandela's a communist - do you care about that? If he got into power, he'd want to give this farm to Freddie or Ernest, and then what would happen to you?’
To please him, although she thought he was being far-fetched, Millie gestured horror, ‘I was only ...’
But there was no stopping him. ‘You think it's exciting the police can't catch him? It's against the law to strike - don't you believe in the rule of law?’ William didn't want an answer; his mind's eye was now fixed on the argument, so that he didn't really notice her. ‘If the natives did what he said, what would they eat if they didn't work? Mind you, it wouldn't make much difference to this farm. Most of them have never done a proper day's work in their lives. They don't know the meaning of real work.’ This was one of William's favourite grudges. Millie could see him pause for a moment, hating them.
‘He's asking for a minimum wage of two rand a day - we couldn't pay that.’ She wanted to show William that she didn't need convincing. To Millie, who had very little money of her own, such a demand was fantasy. It would put up the wage bill astronomically - for a whole month's work, they paid Sarah only four times the daily rate that the strikers would ask for.
‘That just shows you. I'd have to sack most of the people here if I had to pay that sort of money. That wouldn't be a bad thing - I sometimes think the place exists just for their benefit. Sarah certainly acts as if it belongs to her.’
Although it was still dangerous to disagree with him, Millie launched herself into a defensive position. ‘William, you know Mother said she couldn't have done without Sarah ... and she nursed Father too. She slept in the kitchen at the end - even when she was pregnant with Nontu - so that Mother could ring for her if she needed something in the night. Mother - and Father too - promised we'll always look after her, even when she gets too old to work, because of what she's done for us over the years.’
‘I'm not saying she must go, but she must realise that things are different now. She's got to smarten up for one thing.’ Millie was glad that William sounded calmer. Luckily he'd started eating again. It was her fault, she shouldn't have upset him.
‘I'll see to that,’ Vera spoke decisively. ‘I've already spoken to her about it. By the way, Millie, to change the subject, Andrew Wilson and his wife are coming to stay next weekend. You know, the pianist from England who's doing the concert in the town hall. I'm asking William's partners and their wives to a small supper party here afterwards. I think it would be better, Millie,’ her voice slowed down for emphasis, ‘if you and the children ate in the kitchen during their stay. Like all artistes, he's bound to be very highly strung, and I think the less people he has to meet during the day, the better - and afterwards, well, I don't think you'd fit in do you? I also forbid the two of you,’ she looked sternly at Marge and Jo, ‘to rush around the house while he's here.’
The girls sensibly kept their heads down - staying out of the crossfire, thought Millie grimly, who had herself been mortally wounded. A mouthful of potato stuck in her throat. She poured herself a glass of water. At the bottom of the jug, a tiny mosquito lava jerked itself against the glass wall, like a comma on the loose. They hatched in the rainwater tank. She concentrated on it in a terrified way, wondering blankly whether Vera had spotted it as well and was making a note to complain about the water on some future occasion.
She had known about the concert of course, and had bragged about it that very morning at bridge. Bunny had exclaimed, ‘You'll introduce us to the maestro, won't you?’ and then Elsie Mills had come out with, ‘I bet she'll be much too stuck up to notice the likes of us.’ She had said, ‘Of course not,’ and she'd promised all manner of things. Oh, she had been foolish. Now she'd have to sit by herself and watch Vera shepherd in her party of guests. How would she explain that she hadn't even met him? It would be easier to stay home with the girls and pretend she had a migraine.
Chin up, she told herself, pivoting her face in what was becoming a characteristic gesture, and saw Sarah coming in to clear away the main course. ‘The beans were delicious, Sarah,’ Millie praised. ‘Did you know, William, we were eating Sarah's crop.’ Generously, she meant to smooth things over again, but from William's face she could see she had made yet another gaffe.
‘What?’
‘Sarah grew these beans in the field behind her house - didn't you Sarah?’
‘Yes, Miss Millie.’ Sarah didn't look up. She was trying to pack the tray as quickly as she could.
His face purple, William threw down his serviette. ‘I'm obviously much too stupid to understand.’ He stood up so suddenly that his chair crashed to the floor behind him. The girls jumped. ‘Someone explain to me -’ he was looking at Millie, but turned his head to glare also at Sarah, who had put down her tray and ran to pick up his chair.’ I've got one hundred acres of good land. I pay three boys to work on them. I'm trying my damnedest to be self-sufficient, but I end up buying vegetables from one of my own servants, who's doing more for herself on my land than I can myself. What sort of fool does this make me? Why aren't we eating our own beans?’
‘You know ours aren't ready yet, William. The carrots and potatoes are, but the beans were put in later ... you wanted to wait ... I thought you'd be pleased that Sarah was so enterprising ...’ Millie stood up as well. William shouldn't behave like this. Meals were sacred times celebrating family unity. Now that Mother was dead, there was no one to insist on that.
Her mind flashed back to her childhood, remembering how William had always been the one to give the orders. He was ten years old, in khaki shorts, refusing to play with her. No, you're a girl, girls are sissies. All right, then, but only if you do as I say. You be the nurse. I'm going to bring the wounded back from battle. You get the hospital ready.
Where are we? She would be hurriedly assembling blankets, pillows, glasses of water.
He was making a tremendous noise. At the front, silly. It's the battle of Delville Wood. In order to keep him with her, she allowed him to operate on her dolls. He'd only pretended; they weren't in any real danger. Lately they seemed to be on different sides and he wasn't playing any more. Don't fight him, she told herself.
‘I'll get the fruit salad,’ she murmured, bringing out her trump card.
‘I'm not hungry,’ announced William, in a voice which said, Look what you've done now. Millie knew this was meant as a rejection and felt it keenly. She couldn't stop him, although she put out a hand in feeble protest. It wasn't right to leave before the meal was over.
He ignored Millie. ‘Vera, please send my coffee to the veranda.’
‘I'll join you there, soon,’ responded Vera. They worked together seamlessly. Millie knew Vera rejoiced that she had made William angry. She'd have to ride it out - there was no way she could make amends now. It was difficult for Vera, she told herself, trying not to feel too hurt, Vera wasn't used to living at Glen Bervie yet - she had to make so many adjustments.
The fruit salad was a work of art - the oranges and pineapples sliced as thinly as pieces of stained glass. A blue jug contained thick, yellow cream. In spite of everything, Millie was proud of it; she knew she had created a triumph. She ate noisily, deliberately allowing herself to enjoy the flavour, tipping her bowl so that she could gather the last drop of juice onto her spoon, which grated against the china.
‘You must still be hungry,’ said Vera pointedly. ‘Would you like another helping?’
‘I shouldn't ... oh, well ... perhaps, just a sensation.’ Millie held out her plate.
‘Oh, Mom, you always say “just a sensation”. Can I have just a sensation too please, Aunt Vera.’ Jo and Marge giggled. Marge was whispering to Jo to buck up.
‘Can I go, please?’ asked Jo, finishing quickly.
‘Please may I be excused?’ Millie reminded her, using the old fashioned language that was part of the tradition of the house. She felt a stab of sadness, remembering.
‘Please may I be excused?’
‘You may.’
Marge looked mutely at her mother. ‘You may go too, Marge.’
The two women sat for a moment, then Vera stood up. ‘I'll have my coffee with William,’ she announced, setting her chair back neatly against the table.
Following Vera, but at a distance, Millie hesitated just inside the house. William and Vera sat side by side in comfortable wicker chairs, their backs turned to her, as if they had no idea that she hovered in the doorway. Millie wanted to apologise to William, but it wasn't the right moment. First she must get rid of the suspicion that they didn't really want to live with her at all. It was such a pity that William was so overworked because it made him lose his temper at the slightest thing and that was no good for the atmosphere of the house. Although, after Mother's death she had quite enjoyed running Glen Bervie on her own, she had been delighted when he had decided to come home. Summoning all her strength of character, she vowed to herself to keep on adoring him.
Easily, from long practice, she paged through the photographs in her mind, conjuring up each scene. There was William, a bright faced four year old standing with his arm round Mother's shoulder, while she, still a toddler, sat happily on Father's knee. There were more family photographs: tennis-parties, picnics. She kept them all in a shoe box on the top shelf of the cupboard in her bedroom. There were others, which she had cut out from the newspaper: William, captain of the under fourteen cricket team; William in the mountaineering club; William, head boy. Those were group photographs, with William always somehow in the centre. Then, William in his university cap and gown: Dr William Crewe; William in uniform: Lieutenant Colonel Crewe with a DSO and bar. A sepia tinted war wedding in an old English church: William with his beautiful English bride.
In her estimation, no other man had ever come close to him. Conrad, Jo's father, was different, a comfortable man, not a hero. She hadn't needed another hero. William was a heart throb. Millie believed he looked just like Clark Gable, who was her favourite actor. She wasn't the only one who thought so. Bunny Loots joked that even though she was a middle aged frump, she felt like a schoolgirl when she was with him and she always wore her prettiest dress and put on her reddest lipstick when she visited his surgery.
Mother had adored him. After Father's death, she had relied even more on him, and longed for letters or visits from him. Sometimes he would sit with her for hours, without saying anything, or they'd make decisions about the farm and suddenly there'd be a new dam or a borehole that William had paid for. You could lean on William, Millie knew she herself wanted to do that, so it wasn't surprising that she sometimes confused him with the heroes in the novels she liked to read. He was really such a loving person. She couldn't blame him for being bad tempered sometimes; being a doctor was a terrific strain and he was trying so hard at the same time to make a go of farming.
There wasn't any point in hanging around. It only made her feel bad that they didn't want her with them, so she took her coffee cup to her bedroom and pulled the curtains across the window to soften the sunlight. Unbuttoning her dress, she climbed onto the bed, a high one with a dark mahogany headboard, to lie in her petticoat on the satin bedspread she had inherited from Mother's sister, Aunt Helen, who had never married, but had worked as a teacher in the college in Riebeek East. She stretched out to the bedside table for her glasses and her book, an old one she had read many times. She opened it where she had left off the night before.
Millie read: I worship him, thought Emily dreamily, holding his letter to her breast and looking up at the myriad stars glittering in the black velvet sky. Whatever he does, I'll always love him - no one, no one at all will ever, ever take his place in my heart.
Millie's eyes closed. Soon small, light snores mingled with her soft breathing. Her mouth fell slightly open, her glasses slipped down her nose, and her book tipped quietly from her slack hands.
Chapter Five
Marge and Jo burst out of the house like corks from a bottle. They blinked at the glare, but the earth was moving towards winter, and the sun, although still warm, had lost the fierce burn of summer heat. Sarah was giving a plate of boiled mealies and gravy to Nozuko, who was waiting for it under the pine tree, with Nontu playing beside her in the soft sand.
‘Will you go on strike, Sarah?’ Jo was pushy, direct. Her nose was red and shiny from the lunch time eating. Her head reached to Sarah's armpit.
‘Hai!’ Sarah tried to sound stern. The child was really a nuisance. She was like a dog sniffing out a bone buried in the ground. It must have been news about the strike that had made Baas William so angry at lunch time. Leah was right, when she said that he was waiting to sack them, and if they ever stayed away from work, he'd have his chance. Thixo! What would she do then, with Ernest so ill and tired and that pension of his not even enough to let him have his little bit of tobacco.
Jo craned her neck around Sarah's body to check whether Marge was still in tow. Quicksilver Marge, who never, thank goodness, wanted to talk the way Jo did, had already ducked into one of the outside storerooms to fetch a racquet and a bald tennis ball. She began to hit it against the wall in long, even strokes, moving backwards to give herself more room to swing her arm.
‘Has Nelson Mandela come to Fort Bedford yet?’ Jo tugged at Sarah's skirt.
‘Who?’ The men had met secretly at Isaac Gxoyiya's house. She had stopped James from attending, but Ernest had gone - it won't make any difference, she had told herself, don't worry, he has no job any more.
‘Nelson Mandela. He wants you to strike for higher wages - stay away from work so you'll get more pay.’
What right had she to ask? It was more than politeness required to give the child an answer. ‘Miss Jo, I must look after my children. Ernest is sick now. I can't stay away from work - Baas William won't pay me for not working.’
‘Oh, but - ’ Angrily, Sarah left her in mid sentence. Jo wanted her to fight Baas William just to suit her own grievances. What does she care about our life, Sarah thought bitterly. She's just a child, but already with more schooling than I've ever had. Didn't Jo ever notice how James and Nozuko had missed out? She was always complaining that something ‘wasn’t fair’ or that she hated someone or other. Why didn't she feel bad that she herself hardly talked to Nozuko any more now that Marge had come to stay, or when she dressed for school, why didn't she worry that the other children on the farm weren't getting the same chance as she had?
Sarah promised herself that her two youngest would be as well educated as any white child. Nontobeko was clever - the teacher said so. Miss Millie had given her two hundred Rand when her old Missis had died, which she had put away in the old cocoa tin she kept at the back of the wardrobe. She would need it to pay for the books and the uniforms. It wouldn't be enough, but she would find more somehow even if it meant growing beans and walking the long road to town to sell them to the Chinaman in the general store, and she would do it, whatever Baas William said to her.
Leah brought the final tray of dirty dishes from the dining room. It was Sarah's turn to wash up. She stacked the plates and slid them into the soapy water.
Do you know what Jo said to me?’ she asked. ‘She said were we going on strike with Nelson Mandela!’
‘Yehova! We are in trouble!’ Leah's face looked so stricken that Sarah had to laugh.
‘It's all right. They were talking about it at lunchtime, but they don't know anything. That's why Baas William was shouting.’
‘Serious? They don't know?’
‘Serious - it's all right. I told Jo we couldn't strike, because how would we live?’