When Time Fails (Silverman Saga Book 2) (10 page)

The ref blew the final whistle
.
‘Daar’s hy
!
That’s it!’ Thys punched the air, then bounced off the couch to scramble across the room to the ringing phone.

‘Hello? What? Hang on....Let me turn the TV down. Quiet!’ he yelled at the boys who were whooping around the lounge, Arno in the lead, followed by De Wet. Steyn toddled along behind, imitating his brothers with lusty shrieks of his own, delighted to be released from the constant shushing and tension that had gripped them all the entire afternoon. Arno glanced at Thys and quickly led his troops out the room. Annamari raised her eyebrows but Thys was speaking into the phone once more.

‘Ja? Brian!... It’s Brian, from New Zealand,’ he mouthed at Annamari. ‘Brian, where are you?... What’s the time over there? Uh huh... uh huh.... Ja... Well, I always said we’d beat the Aussies... ja, it was a nice opening... how long.... Fantastic... ach no, shame...that’s terrible.’

Annamari watched in frustration as Thys listened, and listened and smiled and frowned and nodded.

‘What?’ Annamari asked. Thys motioned to her to wait. Out the corner of her eye she could see the panel of TV experts silently dissecting the opening game. They replayed Joel Stransky’s try. She glued her eyes to Thys’ face. He looked stunned.

‘You are kidding! Really? You can’t be serious!...Ja... ja... no fine. I’ll speak to Annamari and phone you back at the farm.... Ja, we have the number.... Ja, okay, I’ll phone you just now – okay, tomorrow....Thanks.... Ja. Bye.’

Thys replaced the receiver. He walked slowly back across the lounge and sank down onto the couch. He shook his head.

‘What was that all about? What did Brian... where’s Diana... are they coming to visit?’

‘You are never going to believe this,’ Thys said. ‘You are just not going to believe this. I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it...’

‘Thys!’

‘That was Brian,’ Thys said.

‘I know that. What did he want?’

‘They’re coming to South Africa for the World Cup. Him and Diana.’

‘That’s wonderful. Are they coming to visit?’

‘Maybe, but they may not because they want to go to Cape Town and to the Kruger and...’

‘Oh, that’s sad. So we won’t see them.’

‘No, we will. We will see them. You’re not going to believe this...’

Annamari clenched her hands to stop herself reaching over and punching the huge grin off her husband’s face.

‘Brian’s parents were supposed to come with them but his ma has had an accident and can’t travel,’ Thys said, beaming.

‘That’s terrible. What happened?’

‘Dunno. Anyway, she can’t come and his pa can’t leave her so Brian and Diana are coming alone – and... and guess what they are bringing with them?’

‘A live kangaroo for you, I suppose,’ Annamari snapped.

‘No man. Kangaroos are from Australia. They’re from New Zealand.’

‘Thys! Stop it. What are they bringing? Why are you grinning like that?’

‘You’re not going to believe...’

Annamari stood up. ‘If you say once more that I’m not going to believe whatever it is you’re not telling me, I’m leaving, because obviously, it’s not something I’m going to believe so I may as well not hear it.’ She hitched up her jeans and made towards the door.

‘Two tickets
,
liefi
e
. Two tickets to the final. At Ellis Park. For us. And now that we’ve beaten the Wallabies, I just bet you anything we’re going to be playing in that final. You just wait and see.’

‘Ja right, and pigs will fly.’ Annamari returned to her seat, then jumped up with a squeal: ‘Two tickets? For the final? You’re kidding!’

‘Told you you wouldn’t believe me.’ Thys laughed.

Annamari threw a cushion at him.

***

It was time. She couldn’t put it off any longer. And, as Thys said, six years was long enough. Tucking the pile of clean linen under her arm, she turned the key, pushed the door open and looked into the room.

Her eyes darted around, looking for signs of... something. Anything. She stepped through the doorway. The old brown armchair where she’d read and daydreamed about Thys was gone from the corner – Thys had told her he’d burned it, along with the deep pink shaggy carpet, and the frilly pink curtains. ‘They couldn’t be cleaned,’ he’d said.

The walls were white. Before, they’d been a sort of pinky-creamy colour. And the watercolour landscape – a bargain Ma had picked up at the Artists’ Market in Bloemfontein – it was also gone. Pa had hated that painting so it had been banished to this room, her room, almost as soon as Ma and Pa had returned to Steynspruit after her wedding.

She let out her breath. There was nothing in the room to indicate the terrible tragedy that had taken place here; the terror her mother must have felt; the anguish that must have gripped her father and Christo before... before...

‘Stop it, Annamari,’ she said loudly. ‘Just stop it. Ma would be ashamed of you, behaving like a pipsqueak little girl. It’s just a room.’

She dropped the linen onto her old bed, walked over to the window and pulled back the new beige curtains. There, in the distance, the poplars swayed in the wind as they always had. When she was a child, she’d look out the window and watch them standing to attention in the moonlight, always vigilant, always on guard, protecting Steynspruit from monsters and ghosts. They always made her feel safe
.

She shook her head, turned back and faced the room. There was work to be done. Brian and Diana were arriving tomorrow, and after the fantastic time they’d all had in Jo’burg at the final, the very least she could do was show some good, old-fashioned Free State hospitality and make the room as welcoming as possible – and show their Kiwi friends that South Africans could be as gracious at winning as Kiwis were at losing.

‘South Africa needed this more than we did,’ Diana had said that evening at dinner, after they’d escaped the partying throngs that lined the streets all the way from Ellis Park to Sandton. Out of deference to Brian and Diana’s feelings, they eventually found a restaurant that wasn’t replaying the amazing World Cup final game.

‘When your president held up the trophy with your captain, well, I just got tears in my eyes and it wasn’t because we lost,’ Brian said.

Annamari smiled at the memory. It had been an incredibly emotional day. She’d been surprised to find tears dripping off her chin while Thys had snivelled like a baby Cheshire cat, his fist thumping the air in time with the ‘Nelson, Nelson, Nelson’ chant when Nelson Mandela walked out on to the field dressed in Francois Pienaar’s number six Springbok jersey and green Springbok cap. She’d chewed her nails to the quick through the thirty longest minutes extra time play, praying for the final whistle to blow after Joel Stransky put the Boks in the lead with an incredible drop goal. At the final whistle, she’d jumped up and Thys had swallowed her in a huge embrace and they’d just let the noise and cheering wash over them.

‘You see?’ Thys had yelled in her ear. ‘I said we’d win. It’s all going to be okay now. South Africa will be a great country. You’ll see.’

***

She quickly stripped the faded pink bedspreads off the twin beds and made them up with new soft, brushed cotton sheets. She stuffed the duvets into the elegant beige and brown covers she’d bought at the posh linen shop in Sandton.

Annamari went to the old roll-top desk. It was a miracle it had been spared. Not a scratch on it despite the fact that the wall behind it had been pockmarked with bullet holes, Thys said. She opened the desk and looked curiously at the yellow plastic Checkers bag inside. Then she remembered. Petrus had brought her the bag with the papers from Christo’s study when they were preparing to convert his house into the school; she’d told him to give them to Thys. Thys must have put the bag in the desk.

She tipped the bag over. A paper fluttered to the floor. She picked it up. It was a faded fax of a photograph. It looked familiar. She pushed her glasses up and squinted at the browning page. Yes, she recognised it. But what on earth had Christo been doing with a fax of the photograph that had been sticky-taped to the wall in Stefan Smit’s bedroom? The one of that awful man with his poor dead wife and daughter, taken – he had told her – just a few months before they were killed in the Church Street bombing. Scrawled across the photograph, in handwriting she didn’t recognise, were the words: “It’s him”.

She looked closely at the date and sender name printed at the top of the fax. It was from the Pretoria News. The date – it looked like a five, or was it an eight? She squinted at the number. It was a five, no fifteen. Fifteen June, 1989. The day before her family had been murdered by the terrorists. The fax slipped from her fingers and her knees folded, depositing her in a heap on the bed. Once again, she retrieved the fax from the floor and stared at it, willing it to speak to her. To explain why it had been in Christo’s study and what that cryptic message meant.

She riffled through the papers, looking for something, anything that could answer the questions thundering through her brain. Most of the papers were pamphlets for fertilizers and seeds and tractors. She tossed them aside impatiently. There were some invoices. She glanced at them and shoved them back into the Checkers bag. There were a couple of envelopes. A white DL envelope caught her eye,it was addressed to Christo de Wet, Steynspruit
,
Posbu
s
32, Driespruitfontein. The postmark said Pretoria. The date appeared to be June, 1989
.
The envelope was empty.

Annamari turned the envelope over and read the return address neatly printed on the flap: Ian Joubert, c/o Pretoria News, P O Box 439, Pretoria, 0001.

Ian. She remembered him. He’d been in the army with Christo. Nice guy. From Warmbaths or somewhere. Christo had brought Ian to watch the Free State-Blue Bulls game in Bloemfontein. Thys had organised tickets. Ian, she remembered, had been a fervent Bulls supporter and even wore his blue jersey into the Free State dressing room after the game. She remembered thinking Ian was extremely brave – or just bloody stupid – to do that. It had been a very interesting weekend with Ian firmly holding his own against Thys, Christo and herself in analysis of the teams, the game, the ref. Ian had said he hoped to become a rugby reporter on a newspaper when he finished his national service.

Annamari dialled telephone enquiries and held on as the mechanical voice stated: ‘You are number eighty-five in the queue.’ She drummed her fingers on the coffee table. She wondered if Ian still worked at the Pretoria News. Or if he didn’t, whether they’d be able to tell her how to contact him.

‘You are number sixty-seven in the queue,’ said the voice. Annamari was tempted to hang up. It was so long ago. Ian must have moved on. For all she knew, he might not even be in South Africa anymore. A lot of young whites had emigrated. Even she had considered it.

‘Let’s go,’ she’d said to Thys a few months after the funeral. ‘Let’s just sell the farm and go. There’s nothing for us here. There’s only going to be trouble and violence and murder. It’s dangerous for our children. Think of them, Thys. It’s their future at stake here. Let’s go.’

But Thys had refused. This was their country, he’d said. No terrorists were going to chase him away. He believed, he truly believed, that it would all work out, eventually. And then when Mandela was released and the negotiations started, he was even more determined to stay.

‘I love you and the boys more than anything in the world,’ he always said. ‘Do you really think I would stay if I thought anything would happen to you? Yes, there’s violence. Yes, it’s dangerous – but it will all settle down. You’ll see. And South Africa will be the best place in the world to live. I don’t want to go somewhere where I’ll always be a stranger; where we’ll just be anothe
r
bangbroe
k
family who ran away. Where our boys won’t know their roots. We’re South African and we’re staying.’

So far, Thys had been right. Things had settled down. And he was right – it was wonderful to be part of something as exciting as seeing the new South Africa take shape. It was wonderful to be making a real difference as they were with Kibbutz Steynspruit. It was wonderful...

‘You are number three in the queue... Hello, what number do you want?’

Annamari gulped. ‘Please can you give me the number for the Pretoria News newspaper, in Pretoria,’ she said, and quickly scribbled it down as the call centre agent gave it to her.

Fingers trembling, she dialled 021 555 3000.

‘The number you have dialled does not exist,’ said another mechanical voice.

She dialled again. Same response. Then she laughed, realising her mistake. She was dialling the Cape Town 021 code and not Pretoria 012. She tried again. This time the phone rang, and rang, and rang. Finally, just as she was about to put the receiver down, she heard a click, and then: ‘Pretoria News, good morning. How can I help you?’

‘Please, I want to speak to Ian Joubert. I think he’s in the Sport department.’

‘Hold on. I’m putting you through to News.’

Annamari held on while the phone rang and rang. Then a voice answered: ‘Hello. Ian’s phone.’

‘Hello.’ Her hand was shaking. ‘Can I speak to Ian, please.’

‘Sorry, Ian’s on leave. Can I help?’

‘No, sorry. Could you give him a message for me? Could you ask him to please call Annamari van Zyl at Steynspruit. The number is 0456 443399.’

After receiving an assurance that the message would be given to Ian the minute he returned, Annamari replaced the receiver.

She returned to her old bedroom, put the rest of Christo’s papers back in to the Checkers bag and stared thoughtfully out the window at the ramrod poplars.

***

Two weeks later, the phone rang just as she was getting ready to drive the minibus to Driespruitfontein for the weekly grocery shop. She handed Steyn to Pretty and rushed back into the house.

‘Hello?’ she gasped into the receiver.

‘Hello, Annamari?’

‘Yes.’

‘Annamari, hi. It’s Ian Joubert here. I got a message you’d called. I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to reply but I was overseas.’

She clutched the receiver tightly. Her hand had started shaking so much she was afraid she’d drop it. ‘That’s okay. Thanks for returning my call.’

She didn’t know what to say next. How on earth could she expect him to remember a letter he’d sent to Christo six years before. She was wasting his time, and hers, and all the kibbutz women who were waiting for her to drive them to Driespruitfontein.

‘Annamari, you still there? Is everything okay with you? I’m so sorry I haven’t kept in touch but, well, you know how time just gets away from you. How are you keeping? And Thys? And the kids? They must be quite big now?’

‘Ja. Arno’s in matric – he’s seventeen, nearly eighteen. De Wet is twelve – he goes to high school next year – and we’ve had another baby, Steyn – he’s fifteen months old. And you? How are you keeping?’

Thys walked into the lounge with a squirming Steyn in his arms. ‘Annamari, the women are waiting for you.’

She held up her hand, indicating to him to be quiet. ‘It’s Ian Joubert,’ she mouthed at him and heard Ian say:

‘I’m married now, and we have a child, a daughter, about the same age as your little one,’ he said and added with a laugh: ‘Christo always said I’d never...’ He paused. ‘Annamari, I’m so sorry about Christo and your folks. I should have contacted you after... you know ... but I just didn’t know what to say. It must have been terrible for you. But you’re living on the farm now? Is Thys enjoying being a farmer?’

She swallowed the lump in her throat. Christo would have made a wonderful husband and father, she just knew it.

‘Oh Ian. I’m happy for you. But listen. I need to ask you something. You probably won’t remember, but do you remember sending Christo a letter? Not long before...before the attack? And possibly a fax as well, with a photograph of Stefan Smit and his family?’

There was a long silence, so long Annamari thought they might have been cut off. Thys put Steyn down and turned to face her, a frown of curiosity on his face.

Then Ian said: ‘Ja, I remember. Christo asked me to find out about the Smit family that had been killed in the Church Street bombing. I checked it out but there was no one of that name who had been killed or injured in that attack. I posted him the clippings with the lists of all the victims. There was no one called Smit.’

‘What! Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely. Christo was also very surprised. Then Christo faxed me a photograph of what he said was the Smit mother and daughter who had died in the bombing. He wanted me to check and see if any pictures of them had ever been published in relation to the bombing or perhaps another bombing. He thought maybe they’d been involved in another terrorist attack or had used the mother’s maiden name or something.’

‘And?’

‘And I recognised the photograph. But it had nothing to do with the Church Street bomb. The woman and girl in the photograph – they were Wilhelmina Botha and her twelve-year-old daughter Sara. Sara went to school with my little sister. And the man in the photograph was Wilhelmina’s boyfriend, Fanie Strydom.’

‘No! It can’t be. It’s Stefan Smit. He had that photo in his house. He said it was his family – his wife and his daughter who were killed in the Pretoria bombing.’

‘No. The guy in the photograph is definitely Fanie Strydom – and he and Wilhelmina weren’t married. Sara wasn’t his daughter. I sent Christo a fax with the story about them – and I confirmed that the photograph he’d sent me was of Fanie Strydom. But he never responded.’

‘I only found the fax with the photo a few weeks ago,’ Annamari said. ‘There wasn’t anything else – no newspaper clippings. I don’t know if Christo ever saw your fax. I think it came after the attack – or perhaps just before. I don’t know. What was the story about? Why was the photo in the newspaper?’

‘Wilhelmina and Sara were killed on their smallholding near Warmbaths. It was a couple of weeks before the Pretoria bomb, if I remember correctly. They thought it was terrorists.’

Annamari felt her legs collapse under her and she sat down heavily. ‘Really? Ian, are you sure? Oh that poor man. I didn’t like him but still... what a terrible thing to happen. No wonder he was so... so odd. But ... ’ She looked across the room at Thys who was watching her: ‘But then why did he say they died in the Pretoria bombing? Could we have misunderstood? Maybe he said it was a terrorist attack and we somehow got the wrong end of the stick. Maybe because the attacks were so close ...’ Her voice trailed off.

But they couldn’t have misunderstood. Stefan Smit had made a big thing about how his wife and daughter had died. Every year, on the anniversary of the Church Street bombing, he went to Pretoria. But after Pa and Ma and Christo had died, he stopped going. He said he couldn’t bear to go anymore. Only, if Ian was right, his wife and daughter weren’t his wife and daughter at all. And they hadn’t died in the Church Street bombing. And, more importantly, it was pretty clear that Stefan Smit had lied about being in Pretoria when her family was killed.

‘Do you know where Fanie Strydom – Stefan Smit – is now?’ Ian asked. ‘If I remember correctly, Christo said he worked for you. Is he still on Steynspruit?’ Ian sounded excited.

‘No, we fired him a few years ago. I think he got a job on a farm near Aliwal North. Why?’

‘Well, the last I heard, the police wanted to question him about the murders. There was some talk about the possibility that there was something strange about the whole attack and the way Wilhelmina and her daughter had died. There was some speculation that it was actually a family murder. One of the stories I sent to Christo was about that. It said the police were broadening their enquiries into the deaths.’