You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town (4 page)

At an early age I discovered the advantage of curling up motionless in moments of confusion, a position which in further education I found to be foetal. On these topsy-turvy days I crept at great risk of being spotted to the kitchen
which jutted out at a near ninety degrees of mud-brick wall from the school building. Under the narrow rectangular table I lay very still. The flutter inside subsided the instant I drew my knees up and became part of the arrangement of objects, shared in the solidity of the table and the cast-iron buckets full of water lined up on it. I could depend on Mamma being too absorbed by the event to notice me. Or if she did, she would not shout while the car squinted at the kitchen door.

So under the kitchen table I invariably found myself when vehicles arrived. And at first Mr Weedon arrived like any other white man enquiring about sheep or goats or servants.

As the time between sunrises and sunsets began to arrange itself into weeks and months and seasons, Mr Weedon's arrivals became regular. Something to do with the tax year, at the end of March, Mamma explained. The children still ran out to whisper and admire from a distance, and I with a new knowledge of geography still crept under the kitchen table, but with the buckets of water was now swept along on the earth's elliptical journey around the sun.

Mr Weedon spoke not one word of Afrikaans. For people who were born in England the g's and r's of the language were impossible, barbaric.

‘A gentleman, a true Englishman,' Mamma said as she handed Father his best hat. For the Mercedes could be seen miles away, a shining disc spun in a cloud of dust. A week or so after the autumn equinox he arrived. He did not blow a horn like the uncouth Boers from the dorp. There was no horn in the back seat. Neither did he roll down a window to rest a forearm on the door. Perhaps the chrome was too hot even in autumn and he did not wish to scorch the
blond hairs on his arm. With the help of the person who occupied the driver's seat, Mr Weedon's door was opened, and despite a light skirmish between the two men, he landed squarely on both feet. The cloud of dust produced by the car and the minor struggle subsided. So Mr Weedon puffed deeply on a thick cigar, producing a cloud of smoke. Mr Weedon loved clouds. Which may explain why his eyes roved about as he spoke, often to rest ponderously on a fleecy cloud above.

‘A true gentleman,' Mamma whispered to herself from the kitchen window as he shook hands with Father, ‘these Boers could learn a few things from him.'

‘Well and how are you, how's the wife?' The English r's slid along without the vibration of tongue against palate. Mamma's asthma mentioned, he explained how his wife suffered with hers. And Cape Town so damp in winter she was forced to spend a hideous season in the Bahamas. Father tutted sympathetically. He would hate to spend several days away from home, let alone months.

‘Yes,' said Mr Weedon, braiding his lapel with delicate fingers. How frail we all are . . . an uncertain world . . . even health cannot be bought . . . we must all march past as Death the Leveller makes his claim, and he looked up at a floating cloud in support of his theory of transience.

Father too held his chin slightly to the left, his goitre lifted as he scanned the sky. Possibly to avoid the cigar smoke, for he supported the school of thought that doubted whether God intended man to smoke; why else had he not provided him with a chimney?

Mr Weedon dropped his cigar and rubbed his palms together, which indicated that he was ready for the discussion held annually in the schoolroom. Father smiled, ‘Certainly,' and tapped the black ledger already tucked
under his arm. He rushed to open the door and another cloud of dust ensued as the man who opened doors tried to oust him. Everyone mercifully kept their balance and the man retreated sourly to lean against his Mercedes.

‘Good Heavens,' whispered Mamma, ‘he's picking his nose.' Was she talking to me? Even in the topsy-turviness of the day I dared not say anything, ask who or where. Only the previous day I had been viciously dragged by the hair from under the table with threats of thrashings if ever I was found there again. It was not worth the risk. Fortunately she went on. ‘I wouldn't be surprised if he were Coloured, from Cape Town I suppose, a play-white . . . one can never tell with Capetonians. Or perhaps a registered Coloured. Mr Weedon being a civilised man might not mind a brown person driving his car.'

So she knew that I was there, must have known all along, for I had been careful not to move. I turned my head towards the window and through the iron crossbars of the table saw in her two great buttocks the opposing worlds she occupied. The humiliation of the previous day still smarted; she was not to be trusted and I pursed my lips in disgust when she sat down, occupying her two worlds so fully.

‘Oom Klaas Dirkse has been off work again. You must take him an egg and a mug of milk, and no playing on the way.'

A brief silence, then she carried on, ‘And I've warned you not to speak Afrikaans to the children. They ought to understand English and it won't hurt them to try. Your father and I managed and we all have to put up with things we don't understand. Anyway, those Dirkse children have lice; you're not to play with them.'

As if the Dirkse children would want to play with me. Kaatjie Dirkse may lower her head and draw up her thin
shoulders, but her plaited horns would stand erect and quiver their contempt.

Oh how Mamma spoiled things. The space under the table grew into the vast open veld so that I pressed against the wall and bored my chin into clasped knees. Outside the shiny Capetonian leaned against his car; only Kaatjie Dirkse would have dared to slink past him with a single sullen glare. The murmur from the schoolroom rose and fell and I was glad, very glad, that Kaatjie's horns crawled with lice.

‘Stay there, you're not to hang over the lower door and gawp,' Mamma hissed unnecessarily. She heard the shuffling towards the school door and, finding her hands empty, reached for the parts of our new milk separator. These she started to assemble, tentatively clicking the parts into place, then confidently, as if her fingertips drew strength from the magic machine. Its scarecrow arms flung resolutely apart, the assembled contraption waited for the milk that it would drive through the aluminium maze and so frighten into separation. I watched her pour the calf's milk into the bowl and turn the handle viciously to drown the sound of the men's shuffling conversation outside. Out of the left arm the startled thin bluish milk spurted, and seconds later yellow cream trickled confidently from the right.

That's Flossie's milk. She's not had any today,' I accused.

‘We'll milk again tonight. There'll be more tonight,' and her eyes begged as if she were addressing the cow herself, as if her life depended on the change of routine.

Father did not report back to the kitchen. He was shown to the front seat of the car in order to accompany Mr Weedon to the gypsum mine on the edge of the settlement. Mr Weedon's cigar smoke wrapped itself in blue bands around Father's neck. He coughed and marvelled at the
modesty of the man who preferred to sit alone in the back seat of his own car.

Children tumbled out from behind the schoolroom or the ghanna bushes to stare at the departing vehicle. Little ones recited the CA 3654 of the number plate and carried the transported look throughout the day. The older boys freed their nostrils and with hands plunged in their pockets suggested by a new swaggering gait that it was not so wonderful a spectacle after all. How could it be if their schoolmaster was carried away in the Mercedes? But it was, because Father was the only person for miles who knew enough English, who could interpret. And Mr Weedon had a deep fear of appearing foolish. What if he told a joke and the men continued to look at him blankly, or if they with enamelled faces said something irreverent or just something not very nice? How they would laugh later at his blank or smiling face. For Mr Weedon understood more than he admitted, and was not above the occasional pretence.

With Father by his side Mr Weedon said the foreign Good Afternoon to the miners, followed by a compliment on how well they looked, their naked torsos glistening with sweat, rivalling only the glory of the pink desert rose that they heaved out of the earth. Distanced by the translation, the winged words fluttered; he was moved to a poetic comparison. A maddening rhythm as the picks swung with a bulge of biceps in unison, up, cutting the air, the blades striking the sunbeams in one long stroke of lightning; then down the dark torsos fell, and a crash of thunder as the blades struck the earth, baring her bosom of rosy gypsum. Mr Weedon, so overcome, was forced to look away, at a cloud that raced across the sky with such apparent panting that in all decency he had to avert his eyes once again.

And so midst all that making of poetry, two prosaic
mounds rose on either side of the deepening pit. One of these would ultimately blend in with the landscape; fine dust cones would spin off it in the afternoons just as they spun off the hills that had always been there. There was no telling, unless one kicked ruthlessly and fixed an expert eye on the tell-tale tiredness of the stone, that this hill was born last year and that had always been. The other mound of gypsum was heaved by the same glistening torsos on to lorries that arrived at the end of the week. These hobbled over gravel roads to the siding at Moedverloor from where the transformed plaster of paris was carried away.

Mr Weedon turned a lump of jagged gypsum in the sun so that its crystal peaks shimmered like a thousand stars in the dead stone.

‘For my daughter,' he said, ‘a sample of nature's bounty. She collects rocks, just loves the simple things in life. It's nature, the simple things,' he said to Father, who could not decide whether to translate or not, ‘the simple things that bring the greatest joy. Oh Sylvia would love our Brakwater, such stark beauty, and his gaze shifted . . . ‘the men are doing a marvellous job' . . . as his eyes settled on a rippled chest thrown back.

‘These man-made mountains and the bowls they once fitted into, beautiful and very useful for catching the rain, don't you think?'

So he had no idea that it never rained more than the surface of the earth could hold, enough to keep the dust at rest for a day or so. Father decided not to translate.

‘Tell them that I'm very happy with things,' and he turned, clicking his fingers at the man who opened doors. An intricate system of signals thus triggered itself off. The boot of the car flew open, a cardboard box appeared, and after a particularly united blow at the rock the men laid
down their picks and waited in semaphoric obedience. Mr Weedon smiled. Then they stepped forward holding out their hands to receive the green and white packet of Cavalla cigarettes that the smiling man dealt out. Descants of ‘Dankie Meneer' and he flushed with pleasure for he had asked many times before not to be called Baas as the Boers insisted on being called. This time not one of the men made a mistake or even stuttered over the words. A day to be remembered, as he reviewed the sinewed arms outstretched, synchronised with simple words of thanks and the happy contingent of the kind angle of sun so that a bead of sweat could not gather at his brow and at a critical moment bounce on to the green and white Cavalla packet, or, and here he clenched his teeth, trail along the powdered arm of a miner who would look away in disgust.

‘I don't smoke thank you, sir,' Father seemed very tall as his rigid arm held out the box. Mr Weedon's musings on harmony splintered to the dissonance of Father's words, so that he stared vacantly at the box of one hundred Cavallas held at him between thumb and index finger. Where in God's name was the man who opened doors?

Was the wind changing direction? Moisture seeped on to his brow and little mercurial drops rolled together until a shining bead gathered dead centre then slid perpendicularly to the tip of his nose where it waited. Mr Weedon brushed the back of his hand across the lower half of his face, rubbed the left jaw in an improvised itch and said, ‘Well we must be off.' The box of cigarettes had somehow landed in his free arm.

The men waited, leaning on their picks, and with the purr of the engine shouted a musical Goodbye Sir in Afrikaans, words which Mr Weedon fortunately knew the meaning of. The wheels swung, a cigar moved across the back window and
a cloud of dust swallowed all. The men screwed their eyes and tried to follow the vehicle. When it finally disappeared over the ridge they took up their picks once more.

‘Here he co-omes,' the children crooned, as they do about all vehicles flashing in the distance. I ran to meet Father who would be dropped just above the school. From behind a bush I watched the Mercedes move on. A cloud of dust shaped itself into a festive trail following the car. A dozen brackhounds, spaced at intervals along the road and barking theatrically, ran in the manner of a relay race alongside the vehicle until the next dog took over.

I trotted to keep up with Father's long stride, my hand locked in his. His eyes like the miners' were red-rimmed in his powdered face. He handed me a lump of gypsum which I turned about in the sun until its crystal peaks shimmered like a thousand stars in the dead stone.

‘That was quick,' Mamma said. Obscure words of praise that would invite him to give a full account.

‘Funny,' Father replied, ‘Mr Weedon said that the mine was like a bowl in the earth. Bowl like hole, not bowl like howl. Do you think that's right?'

She frowned. She had been so sure. She said, ‘Of course, he's English, he ought to know.'