Sometimes visitors came to Geelbek, but this was very, very rare. We had a long white chalk road and eighteen gates to open. We did not have cattle grids where you could drive around the gate and be lazy. I can remember very few visitors, and the one that stands out most in my mind is the one that dropped in out of the sky …
It was evening time and we were standing under one of the big date palms that flanked either side of the gables when we heard the droning of an aeroplane. Then suddenly it came into sight – a big fat-bellied plane of a dull colour. It flew low low over the hedges and then circled and flew even lower, belly flopping along the long hedge that ran parallel to the lagoon. It disappeared behind the hedge, near the grain silo, and out of sight. Suddenly there was a loud bang.
My father, grandfather and the farm workers rushed up to the top field and there, belly down in the field, was the plane, intact. I do not think that the pilot was injured but I do not remember him. Just the horrible feeling of seeing the plane lying there and wondering if there was anybody hurt inside, or if it was suddenly going to burst into flames.
Sometimes my cousins used to visit, and I loved it. They would come for the week-end and we would play all day. These cousins were all older than me, and I had to run to keep up. They would pile out of the car, quickly kiss Grandpa and Granny hello, and be off, careering down the farm track that ran parallel to the lagoon – for further along this track were the workers’ cottages, and more importantly for us, children.
These cottages were quite square, with a stable door in the middle and fat chimneys on the outside. Each had two small windows opposite the door. They stood right at the end of the great avenue of eucalyptus trees, and from there you could look over the wetlands, across to the water lapping at the edge of the lagoon.
There weren’t many houses, maybe three, but in there lived the loveliest of families. They were the Blaauw families, gentle people whose history went back as far as the Cape itself. Old Leah, our cook was a Blaauw, and beautiful Lena, our nanny, whose tiny baby Kathy was learning to crawl along the flagged stones of the kitchen floor. I suppose you could even say kind and simple Mot, the foundling, was now a Blaauw.
On one of my cousin’s visits I remember reaching old Leah’s house, and wanting to run inside, wanting to see what she had in store for us. Sometimes she would have a huge blackened pot bubbling on the wood stove and she would give us waatlemoen konfyt, all crispy and dripping with sugar.
But this time she was leaning over her stable door, and she called out, ‘Kindjies, jy moet nie vandag inkom nie. Vanmore ek het mis op die vloer gesmeer and dis nog nat.’ ‘Little children, you must not come inside today. I have smeared manure on the floor and it is still wet.’ Cow manure used to be mixed with water until it formed a paste, and then smeared on the floor. I never remember it having any smell at all, and it soon formed a solid base, almost like cement.
Mealtimes were always busy. We had a long wooden refectory table that could take eighteen or twenty people. Once on a Sunday a visitor came unexpectedly. He was a travelling person, and I think he may have been selling something. My grandfather asked him to join us for Sunday lunch, and we all sat down. It was roast lamb, and potatoes, and vegetables. The visitor sat on my grandfather’s left, and I sat opposite him, minding my manners very carefully.
The visitor and my grandfather got into a very involved discussion about farming, and I sat, entranced – for as my grandfather was talking the visitor was slowly and carefully positioning his peas all along his knife, from the handle to the tip. Once they were all perfectly balanced, he steadily lifted the knife until it was level with his mouth, then tilted it, and unbelievable! The peas went rolling down his throat. Nobody seemed to notice, but I was lost in admiration.
‘You must never, ever, stare,’ my grandmother told me afterwards, ‘even if you see the most extraordinary things, it appears very rude in a small girl.’
If visitors were scarce at that time, paid ones were like hen’s teeth. Once I became very ill. I had a fever. I shivered and shook, and was cold and hot. My mother was very worried, and by next morning I was covered in hundreds of little spots. My mother wanted to get me to the doctor, but my father, thinking of the eighteen gates and my chronic car sickness, decided on a contingency plan:
At that time we had the most beautiful black stallion. He was a great big horse with fine strong muscles and a magnificent body, and his name was Kim. He had cost a lot of money and he was sick. Three times that week the vet had been, and he was to come again the next morning. ‘That’s it then,’ said my father, ‘the vet must have been trained in all sorts of sicknesses and spots aren’t too difficult to diagnose.’ I was terrified of this vet coming and I couldn’t sleep that night. I had seen the huge horse needles that he jammed into Kim’s flank.
He arrived the next morning and I could hear him having coffee on the veranda with my father and my grandfather. Then they went outside, to see Kim first, and I suffered even longer. Finally he arrived. He touched my head and looked at my spots. ‘She’s got measles,’ he said. ‘She mustn’t come into contact with other children.’
The next day my cousins arrived and I had the most miserable time – for they wandered all around the farm and I had to trail a safe distance behind them.
Years later I got measles again, so I do not think that the spots that vets are trained to see are the same ones as in humans.
© 2016 hemispheresapart.com
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