Forget-me-not-Blues. Marita van der Vyver
says, shaking his head.
‘No, in honour of the princess’s twenty-first birthday. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to her, and the orchestra played “For she’s a jolly good fellow”, and there were Coloured children dancing in white dresses, the cutest little one on tippy toes right out in front. I so wished you were there to see it, Mammie!’
‘You weren’t there, Mammie?’ Ouboet sounds surprised. ‘Tired of the royals already?’
‘It was a Youth Rally, Ouboet,’ Mammie says. ‘Sadly I no longer rank among the youth.’
She smiles coquettishly and pats her blonde curls, which these days she dyes to hide the threads of grey, and looks at Deddy expectantly. It is his cue to say something like, ah, my dear, to me you will always be young and beautiful. But Deddy is looking at his plate, chewing his meat, his thoughts elsewhere.
It is true that Mammie looks rather good for someone who is already in her forties, but plumper than when Colette was small, she moans and groans while trying to fasten the hooks on her step-in girdle. Still, nothing a good step-in can’t hide, she frequently assures Colette. Today she is wearing a blue-and-grey checked wrap dress with a wide belt in the style of the American designer Claire McCardell which, as usual, she has sewn herself. Girls like us can happily wear blue every day, she tells Colette, it brings out the blue in our eyes. Colette no longer finds it all that cute when her mother talks about ‘girls like us’. Mammie is far too old to be calling herself a girl. She is now a tannie, and sometimes Colette wishes she would act her age and be a little less like the silly flapper she was twenty years ago. Yet, she has an idea that Mammie will still be a flapper at heart when she is eighty. A pathetic little grey-haired woman waiting with a toothless grin for her husband to tell her that she will always be young and beautiful in his eyes.
At the thought of this, Colette becomes so anxious that she carries on talking with a mouth full of roast beef. ‘The princess made a speech too. She speaks the most beautiful English!’
‘I am very glaaad to see so many young people heaahr todaaay.’ Kleinboet imitates the princess’s high-pitched little voice and royal accent so well that everyone starts laughing again.
‘Well, I for one am very glad she’s now boarded the ship back to England,’ Ouboet says, and he takes an enormous bite of chicken pie. ‘Now we can hopefully forget about the British royal house and for a change start concentrating on our own problems in the Union.’
‘Until next time,’ Colette teases. ‘She said she hoped to come back soon.’
‘We will see,’ Ouboet says in an ominous tone. ‘That will depend on who will govern the country in the future. Or what am I saying, Pa? Pa!’
Deddy blinks as if someone has suddenly shone a bright flashlight into his eyes. ‘Sorry, I just can’t stop thinking about Peers’ Cave where we were yesterday. The Fish Hoek Man’s brain was so much bigger than we have believed until now. We actually still know so little about our prehistoric ancestors, don’t we?’
‘Tsk, dear, you worry far too much about what we do and don’t know. All I know is that the view from the cave took my breath away. The entire Peninsula and both the oceans. Whoever the Fish Hoek Man was, he was clever enough to choose a magnificent view for his home.’
‘What I would like to know, Pa,’ Kleinboet says, ‘is how you managed to talk Mammie and Colette into climbing all the way up to the cave. They must’ve complained the whole way.’
‘Actually, they didn’t.’ Deddy smiles. ‘I didn’t talk them into it. In fact, I bribed them. Promised them that if the princesses visited us again, I would join them in the hot sun to wave at the procession. So let us hope you are right, Ouboet. If our people come into power, the princesses won’t get another invitation soon.’
Deddy and Ouboet grin at each other, just like two crooks who are hatching a plot.
‘Who are our people?’ Colette asks.
‘I’ll go get the dessert,’ Mammie says, and gets up hastily. Discussion over.
After lunch Mammie washes the dishes because Sina isn’t working today. Colette and Kleinboet dry them off and put them away. Colette is rather curious about what Sina does on her free Sundays. The other live-in maids in the neighbourhood are all older and speak English, which Sina struggles to understand, or a Bantu language, which Sina doesn’t even try to understand. Colette suspects that she mostly stays in her outside room paging through the old magazines Mammie saves for her. The last time Colette was in the outside room she helped Sina cut out pretty colour photographs of nature to decorate the bare walls. Deddy put a stop to that. Stick to your own kind, Letty. Deddy is never mean to Sina, he always treats her politely, but he evidently doesn’t consider her the same kind as the Cronjés.
While she packs away the clean glasses, Colette whistles the melody of ‘Jan Pierewiet’, which has been stuck in her head ever since the Youth Rally, until Mammie warns from behind the sink that a whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God nor men. To keep the peace, she switches to humming, although she has never understood why a humming woman is more acceptable than a whistling one. When she bends down to put away a stack of plates in a low cupboard, Kleinboet flicks a wet dishcloth at her bottom.
‘My, my! Could this be a nice sturdy Bushman bottom I see on my skinny little sister? Fighting off the boys yet, Lettylove?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Colette giggles.
‘Well, if they start pestering you, remember you have two older brothers who will protect your honour. That is more than poor Princess Elizabeth can say.’
‘She doesn’t need brothers, she has bodyguards. Who treat her better than my brothers have ever treated me.’
‘Did you hear that, Ma? Haven’t we always treated her like a princess?’
‘Like a princess.’ Mammie smiles at the soap suds in the sink. ‘Our own Princess Lettylove.’
‘But if Ouma Trui could see how tight those pants are across Princess Lettylove’s bottom, she would have a fit.’
‘On the farm I wouldn’t have been allowed to wear pants on a Sunday even if they hung on my body like a sack!’
‘And on any other day it is rather reluctantly tolerated,’ Mammie sighs. Ever since Deddy and Oom Kleingert started arguing about the Ossewabrandwag, Mammie has visited Somerverdriet with a sad and wintry heart. ‘Your grandparents are old, they don’t know any better, you can’t blame them for not understanding the modern world. But that brother of your father’s really has no excuse for being so old-fashioned!’
‘Auntie Wilma is even worse,’ Colette complains. ‘There are so many things you’re not allowed to do on a Sunday. You can’t knit or sew, or you’re putting a needle into the Lord’s eye; you can’t laugh or make jokes because after joy comes sorrow; you’re not allowed to wear pants or lipstick; and don’t ask me why, you’re not even allowed to play with paper dolls! Not that I still want to play with paper dolls,’ she adds quickly before her brother can start teasing her again. ‘I’m just saying. It seems to me that all you’re allowed to do is sit with folded hands and wait for the day to end.’
‘While the servants do all the work,’ Kleinboet says with mock sanctimoniousness. ‘Then they can go to hell instead of the Whites because they’ve desecrated the Sabbath.’
‘No, wait, Kleinboet, now you’re going too far!’ Mammie objects.
‘Are you scared Ouboet will hear me, Ma?’
Mammie scrubs a saucepan so viciously that soap suds splash onto the floor. It is a good thing she has tied an apron around her imitation Claire McCardell dress. They can hear Ouboet’s irate voice from the stoep, probably talking about things Mammie doesn’t want to hear while Deddy sucks on his pipe and nods.
While arranging the heavy silver cutlery they only use on Sundays in the flatware box with the royal blue velvet