This Life (19 page)

Why do I remember that evening of Maans’s coming of age in so much detail, young Jasper Esterhuysen and old Tant Mietjie and the darkness of Pieter’s room, Dulsie by the fire in the kitchen and the outspanned carts in the yard? Everyone is long dead, the evening forgotten, but I still remember it all while I can no longer say how Maans and Stienie’s wedding was celebrated, and all the New Year’s dances and birthdays and weddings of later years have been wiped out of my memory. That New Year’s Eve after Jakob brought Sofie to us as his bride, and the evening of Maans’s coming of age, with Helena Breedt ducking her head as she entered the house while I watched through the fine haze of candlelight and dust as she smilingly smoothed her hair, made me realise anew that I would never belong with these people or have any part in their lives.

The boisterous young men made Maans drink too much that evening so that, being unaccustomed to liquor, he was very sick and in the end had to be carried to the shed and laid down on Coenraad’s bed, for the house was filled with people. Where Coenraad was I do not know, for I did not see him that night. I stayed with Maans in case he should need anything, and I must have fallen asleep in the chair beside his bed, because I recall being awakened at daybreak by the sounds of vehicles being inspanned and the last guests departing; for a moment I was bewildered, and when I looked through the window I half-expected to see Gert and Jacomyn dancing together in the early dawn to the rhythm of the violin, but there was no one. I went out into the bright morning, and I saw the carts departing, and I knew I was safe again, safe at last.

That winter, just before people started leaving for their winter quarters, Jasper Esterhuysen rode over one more time with something old Tant Mietjie had sent Mother, and he stayed for lunch and lingered for a while. I did not say much to him but when he left, he took my hand in his own small, slack hand and said he hoped to see me in the Karoo that winter. No, I replied, we were not going to the Karoo this year because of Father’s ill health, Maans would be going alone with the sheep; and I gave it no further thought.

That year we got our own minister at last, and in the spring he was ordained. We went to town for the occasion, Father too, though he had to lie across the back seat of the cart, supported by pillows; perhaps he felt he could not be absent now, after we had been waiting for so many years, or perhaps it was only because the visiting clergy would be staying with us in town and he wanted to be there himself to welcome them. I still remember the consuming zeal with which Mother prepared for the reception of these important guests, and how the servants suffered, the sudden outbursts in the kitchen and the screaming and slamming of doors, the hurling of utensils, like in the years of my youth, long ago. When the guests began to arrive, none of this was evident, however, and long afterwards people still spoke of the way they had been entertained by us. I only remember those sudden outbursts in the kitchen, and Father being too ill to attend the services: the people had to come to him, and there was an endless stream of visitors to our home.

When it was all over and the excitement had abated, it became clear even to Mother that the end was near and that Father would not be able to return to the farm; but he went anyway. Maans was sent to the farm to fetch the wagon, and we loaded him on his mattress, and so he was carefully and painfully brought home, for he said he wanted
to die in his own house on the farm, not in the strange new house in town, and this time Mother bowed her will to his in an unusual and uncharacteristic way. Thus he died in his own bed in his own room, in the bed where he was born, in the house built by his father, and Mother and I took turns to keep watch at his bedside. I cannot say I grieved for him, for his death was a release from the pain he had endured so patiently and for so long; but as I sat beside his bed one night, alone in the sleeping house with the tallow candle burning low in the candlestick, I suddenly realised he was the only person who had ever showed me any love or affection, except for Pieter long ago when I was young, and Sofie, and all that belonged to the past now. In the distance I heard an eagle owl hooting, and I experienced the same feeling as on that cold silvery morning when I stepped out of the outside room and saw the guests departing and leaving us behind, the feeling that something had ended for good.

We buried Father in the graveyard beyond the ridge, and Maans inherited the farm. It was during this time that diamonds were discovered in the interior, and shortly after the funeral Coenraad left for the diggings: I still recall that he left on foot the way he had come, with all his possessions in a grain-bag over his shoulder. There was great excitement about the diamonds, and after the funeral it was the main topic of conversation; Attie Keuler left for the diggings overnight with a few young men from the Fraserburg district, and Maans also spoke of going, but Mother made no reply when he mentioned the possibility one evening at supper, and in the end he stayed and continued on the farm. It was also during this time that old Oom Wessel, his other grandfather, died, and he inherited from him as well, money, as was said in later years, and farms in the Bokkeveld and the Ceres-Karoo, so that more responsibilities fell to him, and he had to go to Worcester several times to consult with the attorneys.

After a year or two Coenraad came back without any visible evidence of being either richer or poorer, but he did not return to us. Oom Thys Breedt had died a short while before, and he married Helena and went to farm on Fisantkraal where he prospered, for he worked hard, and their children are well-respected people today, but people say Helena was never very happy. Jasper Esterhuysen married Danie du Plessis’s widow and they lived with old Tant Mietjie on the farm. She had always been known as a miserly old woman, and they themselves lived frugally and carefully, so that people often made fun of them. They had no children, however, and when they died, everything they had accumulated so painstakingly was sold.

What Father’s death meant to Mother, I do not know, for even during those last years of her life no familiarity ever developed between us. Perhaps she mourned the death of the man with whom she had shared fifty years of her life in her own way, without realising it herself, so unfamiliar the emotion must have been to her. However, after his death she gradually laid down her responsibilities on the farm, and though she still kept an eye on things, made decisions and gave orders, she left most of the work to me.

She began to grow old, one might say, and if I hesitate to speak that word, it is because of the weakness and degeneration it suggests. With the years a certain mellowness and tolerance set in that had never been in evidence before; she shrunk a little as well and became a little smaller and quieter, and perhaps it was also during this time that she noticed the first signs of her disease, without giving in to it or mentioning a word about it. There was no weakening or flagging, however, no sign of grey in her dark hair, and her back remained as stiff as ever. If I think about it now, I realise with amazement that she must have been close to seventy, but the fire, the passion, the relentlessness and the
sudden fury, those were unabated. Nevertheless, after Father’s death she seemed to withdraw from us, losing interest in the house and the farm; on the other hand the new town house was claiming more of her attention, so that she stayed there more often, sometimes even for a few weeks at a time. There was a minister now, she said, and she could attend church every Sunday; but were the church services really so important to her? It was the battle about her seat which claimed most of her time and attention during those first months after Father’s death and which called for her presence in town, for she insisted on keeping her place in the front row among the wives of the officiating and resting elders: it upset quite a few people in the congregation, especially the wives, and there were people in the district who never set foot in our house again as a result of those events, but finally the minister and the church council gave in, and Mother retained her seat.

The town house became the focal point of Mother’s life, I noticed, as if the farmhouse represented to her the difficult years of which she no longer wished to be reminded. Presumably she was a wealthy woman, or so people believed anyway, and she herself also gave that impression. I remember the tea cups she ordered for the town house from Worcester the year after Father’s death, white cups with gold rims that had to be washed in the wooden tub in her presence, just like the crystal glasses and decanters and the coffee cups, before being locked away in the sideboard. When she was in town she liked to entertain, and there were always visitors and overnight guests in the house: the minister called on us regularly and often stayed for dinner, for he was unmarried, and Mother befriended old Mrs Aling who had come to live with her son for a while, so that there were many visits between our house and the parsonage farther along the back street, and notes were delivered by the servants, or gifts of butter or eggs or jam.

Sometimes the two old ladies fell silent when I entered the room
and sometimes when the minister came for dinner there would be a sudden hush in the large dining-room, and I would become aware of the evening chill and the glow of the lamplight on the white cloth that was always spread over the table, and the sound of our knives and forks on the plates, and I would feel threatened without knowing why. He was a very dedicated man, Mother sometimes asserted, as if defending him against blame or criticism, he was devoted to his mother, and then I saw him the way she did: the broadcloth suit, the gown with the velvet straps and the starched white bands, the soft hands and the slight lisp that set him apart from other men, the wealthy family in the Boland, the studies abroad, the gabled house on the corner where he lived, the gifts of sheep and flour from the congregation, the education and the status. One day the ladies having coffee with Mother were discussing his health and how he lived so alone, and they hinted at the possibility that he might marry. “He’s twenty-five already,” old Tant Gesina Nel remarked, and cast a speculative eye on me where I sat to one side. “Let met see, how old are you now?” All the women seated in a semicircle with folded hands suddenly looked at me calculatingly, the way they inspected the crystal decanters and the gold-rimmed cups, so that I could see them working out how many years I was his senior and if I were too old for him, and I experienced the same momentary panic as that evening when old Tant Mietjie had sent Jasper to me across the dance floor. He was a quiet, pale, sickly young man who put me off with his soft voice and his soft hands, his sudden preoccupations and inexplicable silences. What had Mother been hoping for? For a while there were visits back and forth, and notes and invitations were exchanged, for a while he was a regular visitor, but his health deteriorated and eventually gave out, and after a few years he received his demission and returned to the Boland: he never served elsewhere and never married, and Mother never mentioned
him again. She nonetheless continued with her efforts to decorate the town house, and in the voorhuis and dining-room we had paraffin lamps on brass stands at a time when only the church and parsonage were illuminated with paraffin lamps.

The women examined me critically for a moment, but it was only too clear that I found no favour in their eyes and the possibilities they had briefly foreseen received no further consideration: I was evidently unsuitable, even for Mr Aling. I was the unmarried daughter who assisted Mother, and after Mr Aling’s departure it never again occurred to anyone that life could hold anything more for me. Sometimes some old man or farmer from the district still came to me with a document to decipher or a letter to read or write, but with the arrival of the minister and later the magistrate, it happened less often. In church I sat alone while Mother took her place among the wives of the elders. There were no further prospects for my life, and any plans or hopes for the future were for Maans’s sake: there had still been the passing possibility of Mr Aling as a suitable husband for me, but it was of minor importance, and the chief goal that was being pursued with the gold-rimmed cups and paraffin lamps, with the hospitality in town and the large gatherings now taking place on the farm regularly, was to find Maans a bride who would befit his dignity and meet the high standards set by Mother herself.

In these years I began to notice how often Maans’s name cropped up in Mother’s conversations as she entertained guests: “Maans,” she always said with slight emphasis, or to people who did not know him, “my grandson”, with the same almost acquisitive emphasis, and when she spoke of him it was with a certain complacency they must have found strange, for there was no apparent reason for it. “Well, won’t it be a lucky girl who gets her hands on Maans,” old Oom Andries Nel chuckled one Sunday morning as the congregation stood talking after church, and the bystanders laughed in agreement. Overhearing
it, I did not immediately understand the words or the reaction, as was often the case, but later I began to understand why the parents of grown daughters were calling on Mother, why their visits were fraught with so much pent-up tension as she inspected and evaluated the girls, and why she sometimes reacted with unwarranted vehemence when the name of a particular girl was mentioned, because it was someone branded as an outcast who would never find favour in her eyes. In my innocence I had seen Maans only as my brother’s son, the hardworking and dutiful young farmer who did not drink, and only now did I see him through the eyes of the community as the unmarried grandson who had inherited richly from both grandfathers and who would be a good match for any girl who could win Mother’s approval. I do not believe Maans himself had any say in the matter, and if he had any wishes or dreams himself, he did not express them. I knew he once wanted to be a soldier because I read his letter to Father and Mother, I knew he wanted to go to the diggings because I was present when he mentioned it to Mother, but he never spoke like that again, a friendly, smiling, agreeable but reticent young man who shared his thoughts with no one. He tended to walk with downcast eyes; when he looked up, he made no eye contact and when he did meet your eyes, his own eyes were veiled, as if he were unwilling to give anything away. But that was when he was a young man, and over the years that changed too.