Langebaan Archives - Hemispheres Apart

A WEST COAST FARM PART EIGHT – A PERFECT DAY (November 2015)

... to wake up to this view every morning ... — … to wake up to this view every morning …

In the early morning the sun rises from behind our row of houses, sending rays of light across the lagoon. Finally the rays come to rest over the hills opposite, painting patterns of hazy pink across the horizon. I stand on the terrace with a cup of tea: ‘I wonder what it must be like to wake up to this view every morning?’ I think. Utter peace. I turn back into the house, for here is someone who woke up every morning on a West Coast farm, and she is ninety today, and we are all going back …

Betty Hare, ninety years old. The last owner of the farm Geelbek to have lived in that great house. No parents in law left, no strong hunting, fishing brothers-in-law left, and no husband left. They’ve all gone. But in her heart she holds a myriad of memories of life on that farm. Some of my older cousins do too, and they’ll all be there today.

Alongside the old veranda with its curved tin roof, the marque is decorated fit for a queen. The past few days have been spent working on the blue and white theme, balloons are everywhere. The tables are set for a hundred guests. Friendly neighbours at Langebaan have practically denuded their gardens of blue and white agapanthus. The promised ‘west coast’ fare of a selection of bredies is bubbling away on the kitchen stoves.

Last minute checks and the bus from Cape Town arrives. My cousins spill out, already in a party mood. They have had a whale of a time on the two hours journey, singing all the old songs we used to love as children …. She’ll be coming round the Mountain, Daar le die Ding, Emma Kalemma … all those old coconuts from our childhood. No matter that most of them are in their seventies, if not older. Welcome drinks are out on the lawn, under the palm trees and overlooking the lagoon.

... the long jetty stretching way out through the wetlands ...

… the long jetty stretching way out through the wetlands …

From this vantage point you can see the long jetty stretching way out through the wetlands and into the water. It needs to be that long for the rises and fall of the tidal drop on the lagoon is huge. Today it is used as part of a bird hide, but when my grandfather lived here this was the jetty for his speedboat. The Century. I can remember the novelty of it, the thrill of sitting safely between my mother and my grandmother on the wooden back seat. The quiet hum of the engine as we sped across the flat waters of the lagoon towards Churchaven way and the sheltered white beach of Kraalbaai.

I remember the story of how grandfather got it, but not enough … did it come from America? Was it really the first speedboat ever to be imported into South Africa? Did my grandfather really tell me that such was the difficulty with customs that they had to bring it in as ‘machine parts’? Two of my cousins have just turned eighty. They came to Geelbek, they stayed here and played here, and they’re here today. They’ll know …

As luck will have it I find the two oldest ones together. ‘Yes, I remember it well!’ they say in unison. ‘No you don’t’ says the one to the other, ‘you’ll just make it up.’ Some things never change. But it turns out that I was wrong. The Century was bought in South Africa.

‘It was the Canadian canoe that was imported,’ they agree. Grandfather and Granny were great travellers, and on a trip to Canada Grandfather fell in love with it, bought it and had it imported for Geelbek.’

By now the drinks on the lawn are over. Our mum is sitting in her wheelchair surrounded by family and loving it.

Suddenly as if from nowhere the sound of a bagpiper is heard. It is my son. The sound of the pipes draws nearer. He stops at her wheelchair; old blue eyes look back at him. Still piping, he turns and starts walking slowly towards the marquee. John and I walk on either side, holding her hand. From behind Kathy starts pushing the chair.

Elmarie Leonard (left) with Kathy ('Klein Kat') Blaauw, who was born on Geelbek — Elmarie Leonard (left) with Kathy (‘Klein Kat’) Blaauw, who was born on Geelbek

Kathy Blaauw, the only person here to have been actually born on Geelbek. What is she thinking today? When the great gables were taken away from Geelbek all the workers cottages were demolished. Kathy’s home gone …

Tiny great grandchildren run in and out of the marquee. At some stage I join them. They have run under the eucalyptus trees, and around to the back where the old fence was and the way through to the farmyard. I stand watching them go through the gate, thinking back …

In my mind there’s a terrific squealing and some small piglets career past. They have somehow got loose. One has been caught and as he wriggles and kicks his little black hooves he screams as if he is about to be murdered. I never knew a piglet could squeal like that.

Kathy comes up behind me. Together we watch the children running across the farmyard to where the stables were. It’s West Coast accommodation now. Kathy is silent. ‘What are you thinking Kat?’ I ask. ‘I’m thinking about Sakkie the snake catcher,’ she says, ‘I think he was my mother Lena’s brother.’

I have a photo of him somewhere,’ I say, ‘tell me about him.’

... Sakkie the snake catcher ... — … Sakkie the snake catcher …

‘Sakkie was a quiet, gentle man’ she says ‘he wasn’t very good at much, but the one thing he could do really well was catch snakes. As quick as lightning he would have them in the bag, and as far as I know he was never bitten. My mother Lena told me that when your grandfather heard of his skill, he got him to come to the garden in front of the house on regular inspections. In the summertime there are snakes everywhere at Geelbek and Sakkie used to catch them in order to keep you children safe.’

By now we have strolled back to the marquee, and finally the party is over.

Cousins pile back on the bus, and we wheel my mum out of the marquee to wave good-bye. I turn back to the house, thinking about something Elmarie told me over our cup of tea.

When I mentioned how sad I felt that nobody lived in this great house anymore she had replied: ‘This house is not lonely – the restaurant, and especially weddings, have breathed a new life into it. Just think of all the couples that have married here over the past years … so many dreams coming true, so many memories that they will hold in their hands forever.’ She’s right.

Very soon we are back at our house in Langebaan. We open the garage door to allow our mum’s wheelchair through. There’s the speedboat, the Century from all those years ago. It hardly ever goes on the water, but sleeps peacefully in the safety and shelter of the garage. We wheel my mum through to her room and help her lie down. She’s very tired now. Gently we cover her with a blanket.

Almost immediately her eyes close and she is asleep. I stand watching over her.

‘Yes,’ I think, ‘Time to put the whole thing to bed.’

She kicked the gate open with her foot fixed

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A WEST COAST FARM PART SEVEN – THE NIGHT WATCH

When the tide goes out the lagoon empties. Strong currents push the water back through the narrow entrance to the sea, forcing the fish along deep channels, and the fisherman out onto the rocks. At the age of eighty my father found a plot at Langebaan and here he built a house, perched high above the lagoon. As he grew old and frail he used to love sitting on the veranda, watching the little fishing boats skim across the water, towards Churchaven way and past Geelbek. For hours on end he would sit there silently, for the Parkinson’s had got his speech. Did he think about Geelbek? Did he think about being young again, and did he think about farm life all those years ago?

The drive to Geelbek takes me south through the National Park gates. The veld is barren here, windswept and wild. Below me the lagoon spreads out towards Churchaven and onwards to Kraalbaai. The tide is still out, the colours of the lagoon ranging from deep cream, through turquoise to navy blue. Elmarie has promised to take me to Churchaven someday. For there, at the water’s edge, stands a tiny church. It is closed to the public now, but somewhere inside it holds our family bible. It was given to the church by my grandfather, and Elmarie has access to it.

The little church holds our family bible …

‘I’ll see if she has time today’ I think. ‘But first I need to find out why she feels that she is not alone in that great house at night.’

This morning we decide to have coffee in the front room of the restaurant. The room with the long sash windows that look over the lagoon, the one that was my father and mother’s bedroom. There’s a palm tree outside and my mind flicks back again … back to a very small girl sitting on the grass. All around her are tiny oval orange dates. They’ve fallen off the palm tree. One by one she picks them up and places them carefully side by side. She is marking out the plan of a house, first the kitchen, then the bedrooms …

‘It’s a pity that we could not hold it in here,’ Elmarie says, with a grin, ‘Just think – her 90th birthday in her old bedroom.’ ‘The family’s too large,’ I say, ‘and she is so popular. Everyone will come. My cousins call her ‘our National Treasure’. The marquee will be fine. Now tell me about the nights alone here … ’

‘I’ll start with the first peculiar happening,’ she says, ‘Look around and tell me if you notice anything really interesting in here.’ My eyes move around the room. Through another door I can just see two small doors, each bearing a sign. One says ‘Ladies’ and the other ‘Gents’. ‘Well, apart from those two signs, the Ladies leading into what was my bedroom and the Gents into my brothers, I’ve no idea …’ I say.

‘Look at that clock on the wall,’ says Elmarie. ‘It is terribly old … do you recognise it?’ ‘No, I don’t,’ I say, ‘but maybe one of my older cousins will. What about it?’

‘It really is very peculiar.’ Elmarie continues. ‘Every year we have a local clockmaker come and attend to it. He gives the clock a thorough check and oils it. While he is doing this he stops the clock so that he can do his work. Then, when he comes to reset the time and the date, no matter what he does, the clock reverts back to a certain date … it is always 28th October 1789. It frightens the living daylight out of him. Sometimes he has to leave it and return here several times before the clock will oblige.’

This got me thinking,’ Elmarie went on, ‘what could possibly have occurred at that time? So I began to research that date in depth – but I can find nothing around here that happened then. Nothing at all. Yet there must be something, and I am convinced that it has to do with the lady who stands in the passage … not far from where you are sitting now.’

‘Oh, come on!’ I say, ‘Don’t tell me you think that there is a ghost here? A lady wandering the passages at night? If so I hope that you stay well away, safely tucked up in Mrs Ferreira’s little house.’

‘Well, that’s just the thing.’ Elmarie replies. ‘I don’t stay away at night. Not at all. In the evenings, once my family has had supper, I wander through the old wire gate next to the farm dam, and come and work here. I cannot tell you what it is like, no tourists, no staff – the sheer peace of it all. The big house falls utterly silent, and I settle down to do my books. And that’s when I first felt it. I had the distinct impression that I was not alone … the strong feeling of another presence, but not an uncomfortable feeling, more like some-one is trying to reach out in friendship …’

‘My small study is off the kitchen – it was the old pantry. From the door I can see right down the passage. On two occasions she’s been there, just standing at the end of the passage, where the door leads into what was your parent’s room.’

‘No!’ I say. ‘Can’t be. It’s the light playing tricks on you – the moon through the windows …’

‘Absolutely not!’ she replies, ‘This is the figure of a woman, and I like her there. I am never afraid. However, since you don’t believe me I’ll tell you who was afraid. In fact terrified … Some months ago the farmhouse had a burglary. It was in the middle of the night. The thieves ransacked the linen cupboard and took several of the orange linen table cloths. They spread them out and filled them with anything portable … cutlery, candlesticks, you name it. They had come in through the larder window at the back, and that is the way they must have gone out, as the police found the window hanging from a broken hinge. But the strangest thing of all, is that all their loot – all the table cloths, still with the stolen goods bundled up inside, had been hurriedly dumped on the floor of the larder. Nothing was missing.’

... the orange linen table cloths ... — … the orange linen table cloths …

‘Now think about it. Geelbek is National Parks Board property, deep inside the park. Not a soul is around at night. If I am not working in the farmhouse, then we are all sound asleep in the cottage. There was absolutely nothing to stop the thieves making off with their hoard. The police are convinced that not only did something disturb them, but it was something so terrifying to them that they could not get away fast enough.’

‘Aha! It’s your friendly ghost!’ I say.

‘Tell me that it isn’t!’ she says. ‘I know that this ghostly figure loves this place as much as you and I. I only wish I could find out more about her … more about the woman who lived in this place. The trouble is that there no records. So I only have one wild card … a fairly improbable date to go by, and any research on that has not paid off as yet.’

‘What’s that date?’ I ask.

‘It’s the date that puzzles the clock man.’ she says. ‘28th October 1789. Something must have happened then.’

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A WEST COAST FARM PART SIX – GEELBEK RESTAURANT (November 2014)

Once more I am sitting on the side veranda with my mother and my brother John. Once more I hear those bright yellow finches chatter as they hop from branch to branch in the eucalyptus trees above. I know the dam is just beyond those trees, but it is obscured by a large marquee. I know too that those great Dutch gables, the ones that that housed my grandparents have gone. So too have my grandparents and my father. And old Leah, and kind simple Mot. All gone, well nearly all gone …

"now where have those gables gone?" — “now where have those gables gone?”

I turn back to the table. My mother is sitting in her wheelchair, blue eyes, snow white hair. Kathy sits in the chair next to her, watching her, caring for her. Klein Kat – the very same little one that crawled around the kitchen floor. She’s listening intently as my mother chats to Elmarie. ‘That will be simply wonderful,’ my mother is telling Elmarie, ‘So it’s all settled now – on the actual day, Saturday 15 November, we’ll have my 90th birthday in the marquee.’

For the past ten years Elmarie Leonard has run the Geelbek Restaurant. ‘Ever since National Parks bought the farm I’ve been passionate about the place,’ she tells us. Elmarie and her family live in the farm manager’s house … I wonder if she bakes bread for her children in that little kitchen of Mrs Ferreira? I must ask her sometime …

I come back to the matters at hand. ‘We’ll have West Coast bredie,’ my mother is telling Elmarie. ‘Lovely!’ says Elmarie, ‘… and what else?’ ‘Just bredies!’ says my mother settling back into her wheelchair. ‘Just bredies?’ gasps Elmarie, ‘… er – nothing else?’

‘Nothing else,’ says my mum. ‘Tomato bredie, green bean bredie, fish bredie and my favourite, sousboontjie bredie. It should come with yellow rice, sweet potato, pumpkin fritters and chutney.’

Bredies ... tomato ... green bean ... fish ... and my favourite, sousboontjies — Bredies … tomato … green bean … fish … and my favourite, sousboontjies

‘What about a little salad or green vegetables?’ asks my brother John hopefully. There’s a definite shake of the head. Negative.

‘Well then, what about desert?’ asks Elmarie brightly. ‘Ice cream,’ comes the reply. ‘Just ice cream. Lots of it.’ I look at my brother and we smile. It’s her party. A little while ago she told the two of us that her time living at Geelbek was one of the happiest times of her life.

Elmarie gets up to leave. The Restaurant is popular and she is always busy. ‘Let’s push mum around inside the house for a little,’ I say. I want to see what she can remember …

We enter the house from the veranda door. The long passage still runs down this side of the house, and the old kitchen is still in the same place. In the dining room sunbeams are slanting through the great sash windows. Kaleidoscope patterns form on the polished floor. Small square tables dot around, with bright yellow cloths. No great rectangular table any more. No head of the table, no cousins visiting …

I walk over to the window, and look out. ‘Remember?’ I say to my mother, ‘Remember, Granny’s garden was here? Now it’s just lawn and the new entrance comes in here.’ My mother looks at me. ‘I remember your khaki sun hat,’ she replies.

She’s tired now. I look at Kathy. ‘Kathy, would you like to take her home – she’s had enough,’ I say. John’s already gone ahead. ‘I’d like to chat with Elmarie for a bit.’ Kathy drives our mum everywhere, and together they form a marvellous team.
Like me, Elmarie shares a love of history. She’s made some time for me and we settle down over a strong West Coast coffee. We chat about the decision of SA Heritage to pull down the great gables facing the lagoon. ‘It’s a decision I will never understand.’ I say, ‘This desire to get back to the original core of the house, to tear down significant wings like that. After all, they too are part of history. What would have happened in England if they had demolished the Tudor wing, the Edwardian wing etc – you’d be left with a Norman keep!’

‘An interesting thought,’ says Elmarie, ‘… and on that note tell me about the entrance gates. I believe your grandfather built them?’ ‘He did,’ I reply, ‘in the 1950’s. Now if you are going to be a purist those really should have come down. Playing with history is a dangerous thing.’

Elmarie smiles: ‘Still, I love Geelbek, and even though the manager’s house is small I cannot imagine living anywhere else.’

‘Ummm … it saddens me to feel that after we left no one ever lived in the farmhouse again’ I say. ‘No children running in and out, no family to breathe life into the place. Yes it’s a beautiful restaurant, a perfect place for weddings in the marquee, but it seems so, well, alone.’

Elmarie gives me a measured look. ‘Oh, that’s where you are wrong.’ she says slowly, ‘You see, I work here in the farmhouse at night. My study and all my papers are here. So, after supper and in the cool of the evening I come back. Sometimes I work until well after midnight, and it’s many an evening that, once I have settled down quietly, I know that I am not alone.’

With that she glances at her watch. ‘Oh help!’ she exclaims, ‘My next appointment is here. It’s a wedding the Saturday after your mums party. Come back tomorrow and we’ll have breakfast under the trees …’

Geelbek ... a perfect place for weddings ... — Geelbek … a perfect place for weddings …

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A WEST COAST FARM – PART FOUR – DUST TO DUST (circa the 1950s)

When I was about six, and my brother John about three, my grandfather fell ill. When I think back on it now I am not really surprised, but in those days we did not know. My grandfather smoked more cigarettes than anyone I have ever known. Every Friday we would drive away from the farm, and risk the eighteen gates and the car-sickness, so that we could get to the little town of Darling to buy stores. But now I think it was maybe to buy cigarettes.

Grandfather used to start getting into a panic on about Wednesday, and I can remember it well. Then he used to scratch the little pieces of tobacco out of the ‘stompies‘ –the stumps – that he had smoked, and save this tobacco. By Friday morning he had truly run out of cigarettes, and he used to roll this stompie tobacco up in lavatory paper and make do, smoking it until we got to the general dealer in Darling.

The little village of Darling — … the little town of Darling …

So my grandfather coughed. He coughed and coughed and coughed. Yet I do not remember anyone telling him to give up cigarettes, or suggesting that he stopped smoking. All I remember is that he became very ill and he had to go back to the city, and we all packed up and left for Cape Town.

We stayed with one of my uncles in a house with a long, long passage from the front door to the back door, and my grandfather lay ill in the room leading off from the middle of the passage. My cousins and I would run, and then stop still and slide on the mat. ‘Shh,’ my mother would say, ‘your grandfather is not well’.

And we would hear the coughing and go outside and feel hollow inside.

Then one morning my father came to my bedroom and sat down on my bed and ruffled my head. ‘Just a little while ago your grandfather died,’ he said, ‘and you’re not to be sad. You’ve got a lively mind and I think you can understand these things. Think of all the lovely things you’ve done with him on the farm, and all the stories he’s told you and his special naughty poems that you loved. Be happy that he was alive, not sad that he’s dead.’

But all I could think of was the coughing and coughing and that I wouldn’t see him anymore, and I didn’t know where he had gone, and that worried me a lot.

Long, long after that I used to wake up in a panic, not knowing where my place in the universe was, and terrified because I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. This lasted until Uncle Chips died, when I was about twelve, and my mother got one of the first of her very bad migraines and could not go his funeral.

Uncle Chips was one of her favourite uncles. A real ‘Mr Chips’, he had been a school master all his life. He was devoted to teaching and the funeral was to be an enormous one. ‘Don’t worry,’ my father told my mother, ‘I’ll take her, she’s old enough to go and must learn about these things’.

We stood in the second pew and I remember watching everything that my father did, and trying to copy. He didn’t seem to worry that the coffin was coming soon, and that Uncle Chips was going to be inside. He greeted family and friends and I felt smaller and smaller. Then the organist started and slowly slowly the pall bearers came towards us, and I couldn’t look.

Then he bent down to me. ‘That’s not Uncle Chips in there.’ he said, ‘It’s just his shell. He needed it to live here on this earth, but now he’s gone to heaven and he doesn’t need that old shell anymore. Just like a tortoise’. Somehow that seemed alright, and more and more after that, when my mother could not bring herself to face funerals, my father and I would go along, silently drawing support from one another.

After my grandfather died I don’t ever remember going back to the farm, but we must have gone back in order to pack our personal belongings. My grandfather had not had this farm for very long, and he was not happy with it as a going financial concern. He left many assets, and good businesses, more than enough for his four sons to carve out a comfortable living for themselves, but while he was dying he worried about the farm.

‘Sell it!’ he begged them, ‘And let me die knowing that I have not burdened you with a potential loss loser.’ The four sons panicked, and within ten days they had found a buyer and signed the deed of sale, and they were able to tell him the good news before he died.

Much later on my father, and I think my uncles, felt that they had made a tremendous mistake, and that they should rather have told him that it was sold, for his peace of mind, and kept it. My grandfather’s worry was that the horses were not a good financial bet. He had tried several times to run sheep on the farm but they just would not do. Not long after this the farmer who bought the farm discovered that there was some kind of deficiency in the veld, and one injection a year sorted out the sheep, as well as the financial viability of the farm as a going concern.

Once we were gone nobody ever lived in that great gabled farmhouse again. The new owner had other farms, and other places to live. No tall farming men strode out onto the veranda and reached for their brown felt hats before they ventured into the heat of the African sun. No small children ran in and out of the gauze swing doors, no cousins ran out onto the tin covered veranda, ducking under those giant blue gum trees, and on towards the dam. For decades the house stood silent, and empty.

No small children ran in and out ... and on towards the dam ... — No small children ran in and out … and on towards the dam …

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A WEST COAST FARM – PART TWO – WILD PIGS AND STRONG HUNTERS

‘Never have anything to do with horses’, my father would say. ‘there are only three things that are worth knowing about them: They bite in the front, they kick at the back, and they are bloody uncomfortable in the middle.’ My father didn’t like them when he was put onto Geelbek, and he held this dislike until he left.

At first my father would take my mother out riding, and I can remember them setting off in the afternoon, and leaving me behind with my grandmother … my father with his sandy hair and fair skin, and my mother with her blue-black hair and her beautiful olive skin.

There had never been anyone else in my father’s life. He liked to tell me about other girls that fancied him, and how he had fallen asleep on a farm road once after taking a local girl out, and he had woken up as the old Chev car came to a standstill between two gum trees, but even then I knew that this was just talk that men do.

My mother was quite a bit younger than my father, and in those days he treated her as something very, very special… he was tremendously generous and kind, but even then he could be hasty with his words.

‘Teddy’ my mother’s mother once said to him, ‘I only hope that when you get to heaven the good Lord judges you by your deeds and not by your words, because if He doesn’t, you surely won’t get in.’

My mother was never as adventurous as my father, and she loved her home and home-making more than anything else. One afternoon when they were returning from a ride she kicked the gate open with her foot and the stirrup got tangled up in the gate latch and she was dragged off her horse. I don’t think she was hurt, but she never rode again. And as I got older I was never allowed to ride either. ‘A horsey woman that smells of the stables is not what I want for a daughter’, my father would say, and the matter would be closed.

When I couldn’t be with my father and my mother was busy, I used to wander around the farmhouse with my grandmother. It had an enormous kitchen, with a big open fireplace. Outside it had a funny little square thatched building. This was the meat house, for we had no fridges. The meat house had gauze windows and no glass, so that the wind could blow through and cool the inside. It had a heavy door and inside there used to be all sorts of hanging things – hams, a dead steenbok, or a whole lamb. I do not think that we ate the wild pigs, but there were plenty of them on the farm.

In the afternoon my grandfather used to put me on his lap and tell me stories about hunting these pigs, and how they ran down into tunnels in the reeds and how he and my father had to belly crawl down the tunnels slowly slowly after the pig. And then ‘whoosh …’ the pig would come careering up the tunnels at full charge and they were in danger.

‘Quickly, quickly, shoot it!’ he’d cry and drop back into silence, and I would think how I had nearly lost my grandfather and my father to this terrible wild pig.

He, my father, and my uncles, all hunted a lot. They went to Botswana in a huge caravan, and were gone for many months. Then they would come back and hang biltong on lines up on the ceiling in the kitchen above the Aga stove. ‘Every hunter needs to be a conservationist,’ my grandfather would say, ‘because if you like to hunt you must look after your game and make sure that there is plenty again for next year.’

I used to think that these hunters in my family were very strong and powerful, and never in our household at that time did the womenfolk ever question their authority. Even my mother. The women’s work was to look after the home and the children, and that was the order of things.

My grandmother was the head of the house, she did the ordering and the catering, and that too was the way things were. Once the routine of the house was on the go, my grandmother would work in her garden. She had a little trowel for me, and I remember working busily alongside her. I remember too the smell of lavender and rosemary, and the huge bumble bees that used to hover around my green-lined khaki sunhat.

Once I found a tiny bird, I think that it must have fallen out of one of the finches’ nests. Grandmother and I took it into the house, and we found an old shoe-box. I layered this with dried grass and placed the little bird into it. Granny taught me how to chew white bread into pappy bits, and then hold its beak to my mouth and prize the tiny beak open with my tongue, pushing the bread in. But the little bird died the next day. I don’t remember crying.

Perhaps the rhythm of farm life and the harshness of the environment makes people tougher.

Once my grandfather had the most terrible argument with my grandmother, with the whole house, I do not know what it was about, but I can still feel the atmosphere and the trembly sound. He took himself off to his room, across the coir matting of the big enclosed veranda, up his little stairs where the gabled wing was, and shut the door.

He did not come out for three whole days. I thought he might be dead. Nobody said anything, and when no-one was looking I would climb the stairs and sit quietly, quietly, curled up next to the door to see if I could detect signs of life. The most amazing thing of all was that my grandmother would take him his food. Three times a day she would dish up a plate of food for him, and silently place it outside the door. She didn’t knock, she just went away.

Then, later, the plate was back outside the door, empty.

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A WEST COAST FARM – PART ONE – OF MISTS AND MEMORIES

Along with his brothers, my father owned a brickfield. It was situated on the back slopes of Table Mountain, where the stone pines lie down in obedience to the wind, and the Tahrs sometimes stray. My very first memories of this father of mine were him coming home late at night. He used to stand at the kitchen door leading in from the yard and take off his big brown working boots that stretched up past his ankles. All I could see of his face were two white patches around his eyes, and the rest seemed to be mud, or a sort of packed clay. That was when the kiln gave trouble, and he was so tired. I used to run and give him the pumice stone so that he could scrub his hands at the kitchen sink, and my mum used to run his bath.

Then he would come and sit, all steaming clean in the lounge, and drink a glass of witblits. I used to mix it for him and the smell was amazing – a tot of witblits in the bottom of the glass, a level spoon of sugar and hot, hot water from the tap.

What steamed up from that glass was something like liquorice and there was always a sense of awe about making this drink because my father was one of the most law abiding people I knew. ‘Always tell the truth,’ he would say, ‘and then you will see that the trouble is not half as bad as the worry about keeping quiet.’ But having this witblits was against the law.

Having this witblits was against the law fixed — “… witblits was against the law.”

My father got his supply from a friend who lived high up in the mountains at a mission station. She was the primary school teacher there and twice a year she would come into Cape Town, and on these visits she would bring these huge glass bottles with handles on their necks. They were filled with this ‘white lightning’ and my father would laugh and thank her and say she must be one helluva teacher, not like they had in his day.

Then he would lift the Persian rug in our hallway. Under that there was a neat square cut into the wood. You could hardly see it, but then two of my father’s brothers were carpenters and they were all good with their hands.

Down into the ‘smokkelgat’ the precious witblits would go. The doctor told my mother that my father should sit down every night and have a drink before he had his supper otherwise he would never sit down. But she couldn’t get him to have a drink because in the war he used to swop all his cigarettes for whisky, and that way he got to drink a bottle a day. When he came back from the war his nickname was ‘Whisk’.

That was because of his little fox terrier, my father told me. ‘That’ll be the day!’ said my mother. Anyway, one way or another my father never drank whisky again after the army. ‘Your mother’s too beautiful,’ he used to say. ‘I spent eight years away from her in the desert, and I’m not going to lose her now.’

The brickfields had belonged to my grandfather, and when I think very hard I can remember beyond my father, to the time when my grandfather was alive, and we all lived on a farm. I can’t remember what he looked like, but I can remember his presence very well. He seemed a very strong man and I think he ruled our house completely.

This farm was on the edge of the Langebaan lagoon and it was called Geelbek. This was after a fish like that, although I never saw one. The locals called the farm Twee Gewels, because the front facing the lagoon had two huge white gables. When the sun was setting over Churchaven way the gables glinted and shone right across the water.

29 Geelbek gables in colour fixed — Geelbek – “the front facing the lagoon had two huge white gables”

My grandfather had bought the farm just after I was born, and he ran horses on it. My father and my mother had to pack up their little house in Mowbray and move to this farm so that my father could help run it. But my grandfather ran it very well and my grandmother ran the house very well too, so there was plenty of time for me.

It was here that my brother was born, and it was here that I began to run free with my father. I was his shadow and where he went, I went. This was to cause me great trouble later, as no boyfriend was going to be readily accepted. But right then we spent our days together.

Of the children living on the farm I only remember Louise and Mot. Mot’s real name was Moses. Old Leah, our cook, had named him that. One misty morning she had been walking along the edge of the lagoon – along that part where the flamingoes stand on one leg and the mists roll in from the sea. At first she thought that the sound she heard was the thin wail of the seabirds, but there was something about that cry that tugged at her heart. She stopped and listened.

Something about that cry was terribly wrong. There it was again, a thin cry – the cry of the vulnerable, the unprotected primordial cry for help – and it was coming from the very edge of the lagoon.

With that old Leah lifted her long skirt, and set off into the swirling mists, her stout boots stumbling over the strong tufted reeds as she ran. And there, right on the edge of the water, in a small clearing in amongst the bullrushes she found him. A tiny baby wrapped tight in swaddling clothes and placed carefully in an old wooden crate. There was nothing with him to show where he had come from. Nothing.

Old Leah tucked the baby under the warmth of her overcoat and set off for home, her rough coat wet around her ankles. Over the reeds she stepped, and across the salt marshes she tramped, until she reached the row of tall eucalyptus trees. Finally, surrounded by her family, and in the glow and warmth of the old wooden stove, she opened her coat and placed the baby on the kitchen table for all to see. ‘I found him in amongst the bulrushes’ she said ‘His name is Moses, and now he has found us.’

By the time I remember Mot I think that he was about eleven, and everybody thought that he was a bit simple. ‘Mot is nie reg in die kop nie – Mot’s not right in the head,’ they would say. But for me he was just fine. He had taken to following me wherever I went, and my father was quite happy about this, as he felt that with Mot by my side I could come to no harm. So every morning I would wait for Mot and then the two of us would start our adventures.

_39_His_name_is_Moses_converted — “His name is Moses …” Mot, seated on the left.

First we would go past the big dam where my cousins used to swim and sail in a tin canoe when they came visiting. Then we would walk along the sandy path and under the huge flowering gum tree to the gate in the hedge. I hated going through this gate, because there, on the other side, were the geese, with their long craning necks and forward pointing beaks, and they would hisssss – and peck your bare brown legs if you didn’t run fast.

But beyond the gate was the farm manager’s wife, Mrs Ferreira, and Louise, who was my age. Mrs Ferreira’s kitchen was small and cozy and always smelt of bread baking. She was a very large woman and she would cut big, thick slices of bread and spread them with goat’s fat and give them to us. I was always skinny and pale, and I think she thought that the big house fed me on quite the wrong diet. Then off we would go, after my father, to look at the horses.

I was completely in love with the horses fixed — “I was completely in love with the horses …”

I was completely in love with the horses. We had lots and lots, and most of them were wild. I can remember them running free, across the reeds and wetlands when the tide was out, their manes streaming out behind them and the mists swirling around them. In the mists they snorted, and the sound seemed to magnify and carry itself across to where I would be perched on a fence with Mot, Louise and my father.

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