Forget-me-not-Blues. Marita van der Vyver
just from shock and nervousness, but the thought that a ruined chocolate cake might upset her mother just as much as the news that Uncle David has fallen in love with another man suddenly strikes her as extremely funny.
‘Will you stop being silly,’ Sina hisses. ‘Bring me the brush and the pan, quickly, before your mamma comes.’
‘Can you believe my uncle is a homosexualist?’ Colette whispers wide-eyed while she crouches on the floor to help Sina.
‘Oh, come on, it’s not so terrible,’ Sina mumbles without looking up. ‘Even on the farm you get animals that are … different.’
‘Queer animals? You mean males doing it with other …?’
‘Males doing it with anything that moves. Even their own little ones. And I don’t just mean the animals.’ Sina spits out the words with such a bitter expression around her wide mouth that Colette stares at her, stunned. She has sometimes wondered why Sina never talks about her childhood on the farm.
‘But if Ouboet knew …’ she whispers anxiously. ‘He can’t stand Uncle David as it is because he thinks he’s on the side of the English!’
‘He doesn’t have to know.’ Sina fixes her with a stare, her voice a soft hiss. ‘No one else in this house needs to know. Do we understand each other, Letty?’
Colette nods. The thought of yet another secret that is never going to be mentioned by name makes her mouth go dry. Uncle David will emigrate, and Mammie will be sad because she won’t know when she will ever see him again, but she will tell no one what her brother told her this afternoon. Maybe not even Deddy.
And what, Colette wonders, is she supposed to do with all this unwished-for information? About milk and coffee, and her handsome uncle who is queer, and the people of Somerverdriet behaving like animals, and heaven knows what else. Somewhere in the back of her mind she will have to make room for everything she isn’t allowed to talk about, a kind of attic where she can hide all the shame and scandals of her house and her family and her country. Yes, that is what she needs, she decides right there on the black-and-white tiles of the kitchen floor while Sina gets up to scrape the messy remains of the cake into the rubbish bin. An imaginary attic where all these secrets can lie in the dark, gathering dust, until one day the time will be ripe to shine the light on them. When that will be or whether it will ever be, that is something she doesn’t yet dare think about.
Re: Sintra
• Colette Niemand 11/9/2007
There now, it is just a nasty flu that has laid me low for a few days, nothing to be concerned about. And the weather is perfect for staying wrapped up in bed. When it is so cold and wet outside, it is almost a treat to lie under a down duvet and listen to the rain beating against the window. And Sina is looking after me, as always. The two of us, we take care of each other.
Well, that is quite enough about my health, let us get back to Sintra! I need only close my eyes to see the town before me. I remember Pena Palace high on the hill, its Moorish balconies with views of the sea, the yellowed old photographs of the last Portuguese royal family. So much faded glory, isn’t there? It made me feel melancholy even then, although I was hardly older than you are now. But of course you will have learnt by now that you are in a country where melancholy easily creeps into the soul.
I am not opposed to royal crowns. I am not in favour of them either – probably just one more thing about which I have never really made up my mind. Or perhaps I changed my mind so often I ended up forgetting what I’d believed at the start. I do remember that Mammie and I were awfully pleased when the old English King George and his dignified wife and the two lovely princesses came to tour the Union. Sixty years on, the younger princess is dead and buried, her older sister the elderly monarch of a shrinking empire, and the Union an independent democratic country with a black president. And all I feel when I reflect on these radical changes, is old.
Darling child, take no notice of my aches and pains and silences. But please do keep writing to me, even if I don’t always respond, and don’t stop searching. Your heart will show you the way. There is still no better compass. If I had followed mine half a century ago, I wouldn’t feel so lost now. And perhaps not so darned old either.
Love from your bedridden guardian angel (although I will be back on my feet tomorrow, promise).
PRINCESS
‘Seën, Heer, wat ons eet en laat ons nimmer U vergeet.’ When Deddy says grace before lunch on Sunday, he pronounces every word slowly and clearly, as if he has just thought it up that instant. He likes to remind his children that the first Bible in Afrikaans wasn’t published until after Colette was born. To them praying in Afrikaans is a matter of course; to him it remains a privilege.
Then he rolls up his shirtsleeves, flexes his shoulders like a conductor just before he raises his baton, picks up the razor-sharp knife and a large fork – at this point Colette always imagines she hears the thundering opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony – and starts to carve the roast beef.
Mammie is convinced that, because he is a doctor, he can carve meat better than anyone she knows. Deddy says he learnt everything he knows about carving meat from his father and grandfather on the farm, not in medical school. Nonsense, Mammie says, he has the hands of a doctor, not a butcher. Then Deddy grins and says he’s afraid Mammie has always been a snob.
On the table along with the roast beef and gravy there is a chicken pie, as well as pumpkin purée, sweet potatoes, cauliflower with a white sauce, baked beans and beetroot salad. And of course rice and potatoes. Mammie dishes up, and holds each plate in front of Deddy so he can arrange a slice of meat half on top of the other food, because by then the plate is full to overflowing. It’s two years after the war has ended, and white bread and decent meat are still scarce in many homes, but thanks to Ouma Trui who regularly sends fruit, vegetables, home-made bread, honey, butter, eggs, chickens and red meat from Somerverdriet to the city, the Cronjés of Rondebosch never go hungry. On weekends, when Colette’s brothers are home from boarding school, they eat as if there is no tomorrow.
‘Is the roast beef in honour of the British king?’ Ouboet teases when he takes his plate.
Vexed, Mammie clicks her tongue. ‘As if we never had roast beef before the king came to visit.’
‘I’m just asking. The way Colette has been carrying on about the princesses recently, I thought …’
‘I haven’t been “carrying on”,’ Colette objects. ‘I wouldn’t dare while you’re around. Everyone knows you don’t like the royals!’
‘Children,’ Mammie admonishes.
‘Would Her Royal Highness graciously pass me the salt?’ Kleinboet asks Mammie, an entire potato stuffed in his cheek, his British accent so exaggerated that everyone bursts out laughing.
Thank heavens for a brother with a sense of humour, Colette finds herself thinking frequently, because the eldest one is becoming more and more difficult. Kleinboet is in matric, in Deddy’s old school in Paarl, and Ouboet became a Matie last year. He is so proud of the university’s maroon striped blazer, he even wears it at home on weekends. A promising student, everyone says, and a natural leader, a young man for whom a Bright Future is being predicted. But to Colette he is above all a pedantic spoilsport. Ever since King George and his family stepped ashore in Cape Town two months ago, he hasn’t stopped taunting her. All because she and Mammie joined thousands of people on the sidewalk that day to wait for the royal procession.
All right, perhaps she had been a little too excited about the long black car with the Union Jack in which they cruised through the city streets, and the funny way the queen waved at the crowds, with the back of her hand, like an elderly ballerina. She may also have chattered rather a lot about Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, and their hats and gloves and hair and everything that had seemed so gloriously beautiful. Still, that didn’t make her a rooinek or a traitor!
‘I was at the Youth