Over the Lotion

By Lesley Beiro and Heather Scott

Heather, an innocent young girl, growing up in post World War II, South Africa soon discovers that life is not easy. From Polio as a teen and later enduring the trials of marriage to an alcoholic, she is forced to develop a backbone of steel, to fight for her children. Her life's journey takes her on many twists and turns, leading her ultimately as an immigrant to America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lesley Beiro Books
• Release date: Aug 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370779796

Lesley Beiro

Lesley Beiro lives in Prince George, Virginia with her husband Joe and three sons. She serves as a speaker, teacher and elder at her home church. She has home-schooled her children and ran a home based business, prior to working full time as an administrator. Her passion is in writing about the depths of the human heart and the power of God at work in the lives of those who trust Him.

Book preview

Foreword

1942:

Durban, South Africa. Perla Gibson, the Lady in White stood on a podium at the Durban harbor, with a megaphone in her hands. The white painted hospital ship slowly moved into port. She lifted her megaphone and called out: Is there a Lieutenant Celia Morgan aboard? Her fiancé has asked me to sing this to welcome her home from the war in North Africa. And, with no accompaniment, she broke into the song made popular by Vera Lynn:

Yours …… till the end of life’s story……….

******

1956:

Pretoria: South Africa: The spittle dribbled down my immaculate blue convent school dress. I looked up at the hate-filled face of the boy who stood in my way, blocking my walk home from the bus stop. You’re a sap! he hissed. "Sies! I managed to dodge around him and ran all the way home. Lizzie was at the door, waiting for me. Hau, nonna, what happened to you?" she cried. I put my head against her breast and cried, smearing my glasses even more.

She smelled of Lifebuoy soap and floor polish. Some terrible boy spat all over me and called me a sap. What is a sap, Lizzie? Her black, lined face screwed up, and she just hugged me harder. "Ag, never mind him, nonna. Let’s get that dress off you and in the bath to soak so that I can get it cleaned up before the madam gets home from work".

Later that night, I sat at the supper table with Mom and Dad. Heather had an ugly experience on the way home from school today, Mom told my father, who had his nose in the newspaper beside his plate. What’s that? he asked, pushing his glasses up on to his forehead and looking at me.

A boy stopped me after I got off the bus,’ I said. He spat all down my school uniform, and he called me a sap. What’s a sap, Daddy?"

Dad looked up at Mom, and then back at me. Hmmm, I am sorry that happened to you, Cookie, he said, using the nickname I hated. A sap, Eh? Well, I suppose he meant that you are English, and that he is Afrikaans. You are nearly twelve years old, Heather, and its time you realized that you live in a country that is very divided. The people who run our country, who are the government, are mainly Afrikaans people, you see. They belong to what is called the Nationalist Party. For short, they are known as Nats. The people who used to run the country, who were mainly English speaking, belong to a party that is called the United Party. It’s also known as the South African Party. SAP for short. That boy saw your convent school uniform. So, he knew you were probably English speaking. That’s why he called you a sap".

But why does he hate me for being a sap? I asked, bewildered.

Well, that is harder to explain, lovey, Mom answered. ‘It has mostly to do with the war, I think. Many of the Afrikaners were sympathetic to the Germans, whereas the rest of us fought for England against the Germans. As you know, your Dad and I both went up to north Africa, and fought for the Allies in the war, and we are very proud of it."

The conversation then went on to their memories – of Egypt, where Mom had been a nurse in the underground hospital in Cairo, and Dad had been a soldier in the desert. I lost interest. I had heard it all so many times before. Indeed, I knew their stories so well that sometimes I could imagine that I, too, had been there. This was just one of the things about my childhood – the only child of older-than-average parents. They never treated me like a baby, but rather like the third adult in their home. Aunts and uncles often remarked that Heather has an old head on young shoulders. I suppose it was because I didn’t have many friends of my own age, and my constant companions were two adults who shared their experiences with me.

But the conversation about Saps and Nats stuck. The idea that our country was divided went deep and remained with me. Of course, I knew that there were other divides too, but there never seemed to be any strong feelings such as I had encountered that day with the Afrikaans boy. The other divide was that we had black people and white people, and now I had learned that the white people were on opposite sides, and in some cases, with strong feelings between them.

But the black people I knew, were just maids, - domestic servants mostly. Girls (regardless of their age) who worked for white people in their homes. They cleaned floors, did the laundry, swept the porch, and sometimes even cooked the meals. They arrived, seemingly out of nowhere, very early in the morning before the family set out for work and school, and stayed all day until early evening, when they disappeared to… well, I never thought about where they disappeared to. Lizzie had worked for us for some years, and she was a sort of institution in our home. Mom had gone out to work when I was nine. Before that we didn’t have a maid, and Mom did all the housework. But my convent school was expensive, and Mom got a job working behind the counter in a department store, and so Lizzie came to work for us. I knew vaguely that she had a family somewhere, but I never saw them, and it never occurred to me that she lived in a home of her own. Mom said she liked Lizzie because she was honest and clean. I supposed that meant that some black people were not honest, and not clean.

In fact, I had visited a girl in my class who lived nearby when she was home sick, and the maid who worked in their home was definitely not clean. She didn’t wear a nice crisp overall, and she smelt awful. I almost gagged when she opened the door to my knock. Her body odor wafted over me, and I noticed that she wore beaded rings around her ankles, arms and neck. I asked my friend why she was so different, and she told me that she was a Milaita - from a different tribe to most, and they never took those beads off to wash, which is why they smelled so bad. She said that her Mom was thinking of getting rid of her because she was also stealing things from their home. I was shocked. Nothing like that had ever happened with Lizzie. Our Lizzie always smelled of the harsh, carbolic soap that she used, and her overalls were always spotless. Lizzie was just part of the background of our lives, indispensable, always there.

It never occurred to me that she had any life outside of her days in our home. At the end of each day she would take off her overall, under which she wore a modest dress, put on her down-at-heel black flat shoes and her funny straw hat instead of the "doek" (scarf) she wore at work, and disappear – only to re-appear at seven the next morning.

So, there were divided people in our country. English and Afrikaans speakers, the English were descendants from the 1820 settlers from England, and the Afrikaners came from the earlier Dutch settlers starting out with Jan van Riebeeck from Holland, whom we learned about in school. Dutch had become Afrikaans in the early part of the 20th century, and it was a sort of mixture of English, Dutch, French and a couple of black languages. No one I knew at that time could speak it. It wasn’t necessary. Although the Afrikaners were the government, we were still part of the British Commonwealth, and you needed only to speak, read and write English to handle daily life. Queen Elizabeth was our queen, and my aunt in England had sent me a cut-out picture book of her Coronation, which I treasured. My school had Irish nuns, and because the government had made Afrikaans the official second language, they made a half-hearted attempt to teach us Afrikaans. The nuns, fresh out of Ireland, would go to the Technical College to learn Afrikaans in the afternoons, and then teach it to us in school the following day. Needless to say, our command of the language was minimal at best.

There were also black people in our country. We called them natives. I dimly realized they were different sorts of black people, but didn’t know much about it. Besides the women who worked as domestic servants, I saw black men working in gardens, on roads, and on building sites. They were the ones who did the hard-manual labor. At school, there were a couple of black men who worked in the gardens, but where they came from, and who they were, I had no idea. The nuns told us to keep away from them, and we did. Mother Superior had once caught Patricia York whistling on the stairs, and she had told her very sternly that she didn’t want to hear that again, convent girls shouldn’t act like native boys.

Natives were happy people. You always saw big smiles in black faces wherever you went. They chattered to each other on street corners in their own language, and shrieked with laughter all the time. Of course, no one knew what they were talking about, and it never occurred to me that they could speak my language as well as their own. After all, I was English! That was something to be proud of. My parents had fought in the war for Britain, and had beat the Germans! Britain rules the waves and the whole world, it owned the Commonwealth, of which South Africa was a part. That is what my English granny told me, and she should know. She had been born in England, and had come to South Africa at the age of 14. She had married a Welshman, and had 13 children, of which my mother was one. I was part of a proud family, middle class, hardworking, and educated. What more did I need to know?

1957.

Boksburg, South Africa.

I was spending the Easter holidays (ten days off school!) with my cousin Audrey, Uncle Bob and Aunt Mary. Since I was about to turn thirteen, Mom had allowed me to take the train from Pretoria to Germiston, and then to change trains to the East Rand line, and on to Boksburg, all by myself. I was very excited about that, since it was the first time I had been allowed to make the trip alone. Usually the three of us, Mom, Dad and I took the journey together, to spend the weekend with one or another of Mom’s sisters and brothers who lived in Boksburg. I felt very grown up and responsible and kept checking my white plastic handbag to see if my tickets were still there. Walking through the underground passages at Germiston station, which were dank and half dark, I was a little nervous. The smell was awful. I saw a black man urinating against the wall, and gave him a wide berth

Then up the concrete steps to platform 16 and the sunlight and fresh air where I felt I could breathe again. Soon the No. 19 train pulled in from Johannesburg, and the conductor jumped off and called out all stops to Springs. Very importantly I climbed aboard and settled into the green leather seat at a window. I was on my way! I just prayed that Uncle Bob would be there to meet me at the Boksburg East station. I patted down my hair, tied up in a fashionable pony tail, and held up with white plastic slides. My new black patent leather shoes and white socks looked so good as I crossed my legs before me, and my flared skirt with its starched petticoats was new. Mom had sat up all weekend sewing the skirt for me, and I loved it. The latest style which called for very wide, calf length skirts over prickly, starched petticoats made of net that emphasized my tiny waist, and swished around me as I walked, or danced. I was looking forward to the ten days with Audrey in Boksburg, because she had a large circle of friends, and during the school holidays there were parties every night. Bill Haley and the Comets had just brought out their Rock Around the Clock album, and we were learning to rock and roll to this exciting contemporary music. Most of Audrey’s friends were older than me – Audrey herself was two years older, nearly fifteen! Most of the boys in her group were in standard nine and matric, seventeen and eighteen, and very mature. This was going to be some holiday!

Back in Pretoria I had very few friends. There were one or two girls at school with whom I spent the lunch break, but although they had invited me to their homes I had evaded their invitations. The problem was that at my home, there was only Lizzie there in the afternoons after school. Mom only got home from work at six, and as for Dad… well…. Dad rode a bicycle to work at the yard as he always called it. He worked for the Post Office in the telephone department, and his job was to install telephones in people’s houses. He drove a post office van from house to house, but we couldn’t afford a car of our own, so he rode his bike for the four-mile journey to his place of work, and back to our flat in the poorer side of Pretoria. The trouble was that he would get home at 4pm, and immediately go out again, to the little ramshackle hotel around the corner, and there he would stay until after Mom came home and it was time for supper. Then I would have to go around to the pub on the corner of the hotel, and because I was not allowed to go inside, I would have to wait until someone came out and ask them to tell my Dad to come home for supper. This had become a habit during the last year or so, and I hated having to go and fetch him there. The men who came out of the bar were usually half drunk, and although some would go back and shout for him to come out, others were nasty, and would either become too familiar, or otherwise chase me off. Dad was always tipsy these days, and the more he drank, the more morose he became. Most nights he would fall asleep in his chair at the table, with his dinner half eaten. Mom and I would clear the table around him and just leave him there.

For the rest of the evening I would bury myself in a book while Mom knitted or got busy at her sewing machine. Wednesday nights were special because we listened to Lux Radio Theatre on Springbok Radio, but otherwise I spent most of my time reading. I had become a voracious reader, having progressed from Enid Blyton to Nancy Drew and even Charles Dickens. I was average in most of my lessons, but had learned to love my English classes, thanks to a wonderful English teacher at school. Just lately, however, I had become very interested in music – the kind I heard over the radio. Mom and Dad had an old radiogram and a lot of 78s, but they were mainly by Bing Crosby and the Street Singer, very old and very scratched. I yearned to be able to buy Dean Martin, and now, Bill Haley records, but my pocket money of 2s.6d. a week was just not enough for that. Besides, Mom said if I was going to use the gramophone, I would have to pay for the needles.

One needle only played about three records, and a packet cost a whole shilling – nearly half of my weekly income. I couldn’t wait until I turned fourteen, when I could get a job as a student at the O.K. Bazaars where Mom worked, which meant I could work on Saturday mornings, and I had heard that they paid over a pound for just five hours’ work. Boy, then I would be able to buy all the records and needles I wanted! But you had to be fourteen, and that was over a year away.

For now, I was free from my lonely life at home, and about to have a wonderful holiday with my cousin and her exciting circle of friends. The train finally passed Boksburg lake, and pulled into Boksburg East station. As I stepped down on to the platform, I saw Uncle Bob walking towards me. He was one of my Mom’s brothers, and I was very fond of him. I felt very grown up when he took my small suitcase from me to carry it and led the way down the rickety steps to the parking lot where his car waited. I was quite sure Uncle Bob was very rich, because he worked in the gold mines here in Boksburg, he had a car, and he and Auntie Mary owned their own house! Such riches! Auntie Mary didn’t even have to work, like my Mom did. Although, Audrey went to a government school, not a private convent like I did. Which was why, of course, she had all those friends – they had girls and boys in their classes, not just boring girls like my school had. They even had male teachers! I was certainly starting to be more aware of the male gender these days… because, besides my father, my uncles and a couple of older male cousins, my experience was sadly lacking in that department.

In fact, I found that I was extremely shy of talking to Audrey’s male friends, and often just froze with my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, and blushing furiously, whenever any one of them spoke to me. I was plagued with freckles on my face; and blushing only made them stand out even worse than usual. For years, I had had a secret passion for Ramon, another cousin, who was six years older than me. He had two sisters, the younger of whom was younger than me, and often he teased us unmercifully. He would never know just how much I longed for him to take some notice of me – that was a secret which I buried very deep. Anyway, he was practically a grown up now, at eighteen, and I hardly ever saw him these days because the family had moved to Durban.

My ten days in Boksburg passed in a blur of dancing to records at either Audrey’s house or one of her friends, drinking malted milkshakes at the local café, and long walks and picnics at Boksburg lake. It was a hot late summer holiday, and the days passed very quickly. Audrey was the closest friend I had, probably more like a sister than just a cousin. We spent long nights whispering in the dark after Aunt Mary had come in to say goodnight. We slept in Audrey’s single bed, head to toe, and most nights I awoke several times to find her feet on my chest. She complained that my toes got tangled in her long hair, but in all, we thoroughly enjoyed the time together. Too soon the holiday was over, and Mom and Dad came down to Boksburg on the last weekend and my return trip on the train was not half as exciting, because I was not alone and responsible for myself.

One of the friends I had met while I spent that holiday with Audrey was a boy called Anthony Champion. He was eighteen, and very handsome with fair hair and the bluest eyes I had ever seen. He was also so nice. He didn’t treat me, as many of the others did, as Audrey’s kid-cousin, but often took the time to walk with me when we were out at the lake. He confided that at the end of the year, when he finished school, he had to decide. His dad wanted him to study metallurgy, since there would be a decent job for him on the gold mines, but he had his heart set on entering the seminary, where he could study to become an Anglican priest. I had recently joined the choir at the small Anglican Church nearby our home in Pretoria, and was being prepared for confirmation, so I could relate to how he felt. I was also flattered that Anthony bothered to speak to me as he did, treating me as if I was just as old as he was, and even asking my opinion about the decision he had to make. On our last day together, he promised to keep in touch, and let me know what he decided.

I started the second term of my school year with renewed self-confidence after that holiday. For the first time, I had been accepted in a crowd of teenagers, and had held my own in their company. In May, I would turn thirteen, and be a real teenager at last.

My birthday came, and was celebrated quietly, as was usual. Dad had too much to drink and went to bed early, but Mom had baked a cake and after supper I blew out thirteen candles, and we had the cake for dessert. Then we listened to my birthday gift, Bill Haley’s Rock around the Clock, and although it certainly wasn’t my mother’s choice of music, she gamely sat through the whole thing, both sides, tapping her foot to the beat.

Only three days after that birthday supper, I had a telephone call from Audrey. At first, I could hardly understand what she was saying, as she was crying so much. Finally, Auntie Mary took the phone from her, and told me gently that Anthony Champion had been taken to hospital, and they suspected polio. I was stunned. I had seen him only a few weeks before, and he had seemed perfectly fine! However, this was 1957, and polio was everywhere. You heard about it on the news every day. Hundreds of children were becoming ill, and some had been paralyzed, and some had died. There was no cure for it. Poor Anthony. What about all the dreams he had shared with me? Would he end up paralyzed, too? It took me hours to finally get to sleep that night, after Mom had given me an aspirin and some hot milk. I kept waking up, however, and cried softly into my pillow. Poor, poor Anthony.

Everybody was talking about polio. The rumors were rife: Some frightening, some merely ridiculous. You got polio from swimming pools – the public pools were deserted. You got polio if you became overheated. Well, in the late South African summer months, everybody became overheated. You got polio from being in a crowded room. Many classes were half empty, with excuses from frightened mothers who did not want to send their children to school.

I stayed home the day after that phone call. I had cried so much that I just couldn’t face school the next day. The day after that I awoke with a pounding headache and persuaded my mother to let me stay home once again. That afternoon, we got another call from Boksburg. Anthony had died during the night. He was eighteen. Once again, a night of crying prevented me from going to school. My parents would not hear of me going to his funeral, which was to be held the following Monday.

I went back to school that Monday, feeling heavy and overtired from sleepless nights. This was the first time I had experienced the death of someone of (almost) my own age. In fact, this was the first time I had experienced the death of anyone I knew. My budding feelings for him had been so tender, so sweet. And now he was gone. All I could think about was that it was his funeral that day, and I was not allowed to go. I seemed to be moving about in a fog of misery, eyes swollen, and I had a nagging headache that just would not go away.

I spoke to no one at school, and came straight home as soon as classes were over. As usual, I was alone at home, both Mom and Dad were at work, and Lizzie had gone home early. I sat next to the old radiogram, listening to my records. I got up to change the needle, and to my horror fell flat on my face on the carpet. My legs wouldn’t move! My left arm lay under me, and try as I might, I could not will it to move. I started to cry, mostly from fright, but after a while I managed to drag myself to the telephone table and knocked the receiver to the floor. With my right hand stretched up to the table from where I lay on the floor, I dialed Dad’s number at work, and when he answered, I just mumbled that I couldn’t move, and would he please come home. I didn’t even replace the receiver, and for the next forty minutes I just lay there, with the phone buzzing in my ear.

Dad had got a ride home from a colleague who had a car, leaving his bicycle at work, and soon my mother materialized as well. I was lifted on to the old studio couch, and after an hour or so Dr. Wronsley, our family doctor was there. He used a little rubber hammer to tap my knees, took my temperature and blood pressure, and there was a lot of quiet talking going on between the doctor and my parents in the kitchen, out of my hearing.

The next thing I knew was that an ambulance arrived, and I was being strapped on to a stretcher. Mom’s eyes were red and watery, and Dad had that grim expression that usually came over his face when he talked about the war. Dr. Wronsley had gently explained to me that he thought I needed to go to hospital for a while, and they would soon find out what was wrong with me. He warned, though, that this was a special hospital, and that my parents would not be able to visit me there for quite a while. All this seemed to be happening to someone else. I was frightened about not being able to move my legs or my left arm, but at the same time my head ached so much that I just allowed events to flow around me and did not question what the adults were saying.

The ambulance ride through the twilight streets of Pretoria was like a dream. I remembered thinking about how often, when I had seen an ambulance go by, I would say the little mantra my convent girl friends and I had made up: Father Son and Holy Ghost, may I never go in one of those! And here I was, being taken to a special hospital in ‘one of those’!

Of course, I had polio. I was put into a small, glass-walled room, and nurses came and went, wearing masks. A big, burly man who introduced himself as Professor Dick came and pummeled my whole body, and told me that I was a lucky girl, because I seemed to have a very mild case. I was all alone in my glass room. Slowly, as the days turned into weeks, I regained movement in my legs, but my left arm lay useless at my side. I had to have help with the smallest things. I was not allowed to sit up, and nurses came in and bathed me in my bed, fed me, changed my pajamas, brushed my hair and my teeth, gave me my medicine, and left me alone again. I remember being absolutely mortified when one of the nurses, after giving me my daily bath, stood at the door leading into the rest of the hospital and yelled out that Heather needed a sanitary pad. I had become simply a body to be looked after. The nurses were very busy, and only a few had the time to just be friendly. The hospital was overcrowded with children, all in these glass rooms, all sick with polio in varying degrees.

In the room next to me, a small boy was in an iron lung. It was a long, black machine, and only his head was visible. I watched him through the glass wall separating us, and felt very sorry for him. One night there was a flurry of activity in his room, and curtains were drawn across the glass wall between his room and mine. The next morning the curtains were opened, and the little boy had gone. Only the iron lung remained. I heard the nurses chatting outside my door, and gathered that poor little Willie had died in the night. I wondered if I would die too.

After about four weeks, Professor Dick pronounced that I was much better and that I could have visitors. I was ecstatic. Then I realized that having visitors entailed a movement of my bed, with me in it, through a door in my glass room and on to a verandah. There was a small patch of lawn adjoining the verandah, and after that was a five-foot fence. My visitors could come to the fence and shout across to me. They were not allowed into the isolation hospital building. On my first day, out on the verandah I lay expectantly waiting for people to show up at the fence, some thirty feet away from me. No one came. I cried with disappointment and asked the nurses why my parents had not come. It turned out that no one that thought to advise them of my new freedom. During the weeks, I had been there, occasionally a nurse would come in and mention that my mom or my dad had called to say they were thinking of me and sending their love. I learned later that they had called every day, but the nurses were just too busy to be bringing me messages. After my disappointing first day, however, and after I had cried myself into a state which resulted in a visit from Professor Dick, my parents were advised that they could come to the hospital to see me. Of course, because they both had to work all day, and the trip to the hospital from the west of the city where we lived required two bus rides, their visits were limited to Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

Soon, however, word got around, and to my astonishment one Friday afternoon as I lay enjoying the sunshine in my bed on the verandah, the Mother Superior and one of the nuns from the convent appeared at the fence across the way. It was quite funny to see the two figures there, their solemn black robes flapping in the wind, and having to raise their usually gentle voices to loudly make themselves heard. I was surprised to hear that I was quite a celebrity at school – the only pupil who had contracted polio. They assured me that I was being mentioned in school assembly every day, and that prayers were being offered for me daily. Mother Superior had also contacted the authorities at the hospital, and established that they could send me lessons and books, although no papers that I had touched could be sent back to them. They had decided that one or another of my teachers would visit me every Friday afternoon, and that an attempt to keep me abreast of my schooling would be attempted in this way.

The following day, Saturday, came my biggest surprise. My parents had bought me a small bedside radio, and it was brought to my room and set up on the locker next to my bed. This made a world of difference to me. I listened to that radio, playing very quietly, all day and night. I loved music, and this was the era of the birth of rock and roll. Soon I knew all the words to all the latest songs. I also listened to the news every day, so I had something to talk to my parents about when they visited. Soon books and magazines were being sent to me, and Prof. Dick brought me a kind of harness that allowed me to sit up in bed. It had a frame attached, made of wrought iron, on which I could put a book or magazine. My right arm was not affected, and so I could turn the pages. I devoured those books and magazines. My English teacher brought me Time and Life magazines, and soon I could discuss articles with her when she visited me on Friday afternoons. Before I had become ill I had been reading Nancy Drew. Now I was reading Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, and the classics. Some of the girls from my Sunday school clubbed together to buy me Field’s French Pink talc and soap. It had a divine perfume, and I have never found any since, to my disappointment.

Although I had regained feeling in my legs, it was with great disappointment that I found I could not use them. In my fourth month at the hospital Prof. Dick arranged for me to be taken to the Occupational Therapy room, and I was gradually being taught to move about. I was put between bars, with my harness attached to keep me upright, and my useless legs dangling beneath me. Repeatedly I had to try to move along the bars, and progress was agonizingly slow. At one point, I was told that they were considering putting me in calipers, horrible looking black steel supports on my legs. This only made me determined to get my legs walking again. The muscles were so weak, and every movement was painful, but I pressed on, every day, for weeks.

By the sixth month at the hospital, I had started to regain some feeling in my left arm and hand. Prof. Dick was very optimistic, and promised me that I would soon be able to go home.

Finally, seven months and ten days after that ambulance ride, my Dad arrived in a van borrowed from his employer, and I was wheeled out of that special hospital. I could walk, very slowly, for short distances. I could not climb stairs. My left arm was still lame, but I had feeling in it. I was given a small rubber ball that I had to keep in my left hand, and I had to squeeze it continuously to strengthen the muscles. My hair had grown almost to my waist, I was painfully thin and pale, and my mother kept saying that I had gone into hospital as a child and come out as a young woman. Isolation and loneliness had left me very introverted, quiet and serious. Although I had longed for and thoroughly enjoyed my conversations with my visitors from my bed (and later, a chair) on the verandah at the hospital, the many hours of total solitude had taught me to somehow be comfortable with my own company, and the company of books and music provided by my radio.

There were changes at home: my bedroom in the attic of our small flat could only be reached by a steep flight of stairs, so Mom had moved my bed to the dining room downstairs. Lizzie was no longer with us – her son had been killed in the townships, and Lizzie had taken his body back to Bechuanaland to bury him. Mom didn’t think she would be coming back to work for us. That was a blow, as I loved Lizzie, but we had another maid now, whom I didn’t like very much at all. She was of a totally different tribe to Lizzie, and she wore huge beaded rings around her neck and ankles. Her name was Sinna, and I was quite sure she never took those rings off, because she smelled of body odor. She also did not speak very good English and was very sloppy in her work. With my parents out all day I was alone with her in the flat, and I would notice how she didn’t dust and clean with the same zeal that Lizzie had wielded her broom and mop. She couldn’t cook, which meant Mom had to come home after work and cook our dinner. Mom worked at a department store and had to be on her feet all day long, so she was always tired these days. Dad had returned to his drinking habits, and with my new maturity and insight I realized just how much this behavior was taking its toll on my Mom.

Sinna did not last very long as our maid. Mom discovered money missing from her purse, and when she confronted Sinna about it, she was given a volley of complaints about how she paid her too little and that Sinna thought she was quite justified in helping herself to some extra when the opportunity presented itself. Mom then gave her the option of leaving quietly, or explaining all this to the police, and Sinna took herself and her body odor off, to everyone’s great relief.

Of course, this left us with the dilemma that I was now going to be alone in the flat all day, and there was no one to do the cleaning and ironing. I suggested that I could at least learn to cook dinner, and as best I could, I could probably do a better job of dusting and sweeping than Sinna had done. While my mother and I were discussing this, we got the news that Granny Morgan, Mom’s mother, was coming to visit. Granny had been in Cape Town with mom’s brother, Uncle Ossie, and because she had been quite ill there, Mom and Dad had not told her about my being in hospital with polio until the time had come for me to be discharged. As soon as she heard, Granny had heaved herself out of her sick bed and announced to Uncle Ossie that he should book her on the train for Pretoria.

Granny Morgan was a wonder. As a girl of fourteen in Doncaster, England, she had become very ill with asthma. She had an aunt who had emigrated to South Africa years before, and the English doctor had told her parents that her only hope of living a healthy life would be to get out of smoky, industrialized England, and go to live in sunny South Africa. So, her parents had sent their only child half way across the world to the wilds of South Africa, never to see her again. She had met and married my grandfather a few years later, and had produced thirteen children, three of whom had died in infancy. Grandfather Morgan had died during the flu epidemic of 1918, and Granny had raised her ten children alone. All her sons, and two of her daughters of whom my mother was one, had gone up north to serve the Allies in the Second World War. When the war ended, Granny gave up her home, and spent her time visiting her married children, who were now living all over South Africa. Grandfather Morgan had worked on the railways until his death, and Granny as a railway widow enjoyed a free pass on the trains, so she traveled all over the country, spending three or four months at a time with Thelma in Durban, Ossie and Stanley in Cape Town, Leslie in Port Elizabeth, Dinks or Bob in Boksburg, or my parents in Pretoria. Doris, the other daughter who had served as a nurse in Cairo, Egypt, during the war, had married a British soldier there and had gone to live in England. The other two sons, Bert and Cliff, had died before the war in accidents.

So, Granny was on her way to visit us in Pretoria. This required more re-organization of the flat. The dining room table had to be moved into the sitting room, and another bed brought down to the room where my bed now was placed. There was a wooden screen which would give Granny some privacy, but really, she and I would be sharing a bedroom. On the appointed day, I stayed home while Mom and Dad caught a bus to the Pretoria station, and went to the unheard-of expense of hiring a taxi to bring them, and Granny, and her trunks, back to me at the flat.

Granny took charge straight away. As soon as she had acquainted herself with the domestic arrangements, she announced that she would (a) do the cooking and ironing, and teach me to cook while she was about it; (b) share with me the dusting and cleaning, and most of all (c) set about teaching this girl (me) to get back on her feet and walk again, so that she can get back to school! I don’t think any of us – not my Mom, and certainly not Dad who I was quite sure, feared Granny, or I, dared to question her plans. She set up a routine whereby the mornings were taken up with cleaning and tidying the flat, and then she would sit down at the gramophone, records and needles in hand, and play my records, while I had to dance! She hated my rock and roll records with a vengeance, but suffered through them while tapping her walking stick to the beat as I danced before her. I had to dance a whole song through, rest for five minutes, and then she would put another one on, and I had to dance again.

This would go on for about two hours, after which I was ordered to my bed to rest, while she peeled the vegetables for supper, and made us a sandwich for lunch. After lunch, she would set up the ironing board in the little hall off the kitchen, while watching me prepare the dinner, giving instructions all the way. Fifty years later I never make a gravy without seeing Granny, iron in hand, giving instructions about flouring, stirring, adding stock, etc. When dinner was done, and warming in the oven, we would both take a nap, after which we made tea and waited for Mom and Dad to come home from work. My cooking skills improved under Granny’s tutelage, and soon I could cook good, nourishing meals for us all without much supervision.

The convent had started sending me schoolwork as soon as I got home from the hospital. So, in the evenings after supper it was time for me to attend to my studies. If Dad had not been out at the hotel around the corner (which didn’t happen quite so often when Granny was there) he would help me with my work. On his travels around the city in the post office van he would deliver my work to Mother Superior’s office at the convent, and pick up the next batch of lessons. The last term of the school year had started, and I was hoping to be able to sit for the end of year exams. In all, I had only attended school for about six weeks of the entire school year.

Granny left us to go to Auntie Dinks in Boksburg in the middle of November. The exams at school started soon after, and Dad would fetch me from home and drop me off at school, fetching me again later in the day. I would sit in the school hall alone doing my exams, as I still could not walk up the stairs to my Standard Six classroom. Once the exams were over, Mother Superior gave me permission to swim in the school swimming pool while the other girls had to go to class. It was high summer again by now, and I thoroughly enjoyed my solitary swims in the pool. Professor Dick had recommended swimming as a therapeutic exercise for me, but since we had no access to a private pool, and the public pools were still closed due to the polio scare, I had not had much chance to do anything about it. Granny’s dancing sessions had certainly made up for the lack of swimming therapy.

During the long summer holidays, my physical condition improved rapidly, and when school reopened in January I could once again take a bus on my own, and attend school regularly. It was a great moment for me when, during the first assembly after school started, Mother Superior announced to the entire school that Heather had attained a first class pass in Standard Six, although she had been away from school for most of the year. Standard Seven loomed ahead, and this was the year when I had to make new and significant changes: My teachers had recommended that I pursue an academic matriculation, which meant another four years at the convent for me. Mom was looking more and more tired after working on her feet all day, and I knew her salary went almost totally towards the private school fees. Mother Superior had told Mom that she felt I should study journalism, which would mean that I would have to go to university. I knew there was no money for that. So finally, I opted to go for the commercial stream which meant I would learn shorthand, typing and bookkeeping along with the usual English, Afrikaans, History and Geography lessons that made up our education at the convent.

1958-9

The following two years brought changes, of course. We moved from our little flat to a rented house closer to the centre city, and away from that horrid little hotel around the corner. Dad, however, found ways and means of keeping up with his drinking. He no longer rode his bike to work but caught a bus back to the west of Pretoria. Unfortunately, though, he started coming home later and later in the evening, obviously the worse for drink, and I know Mom was worried about him being out in public in that condition late at night, but there was little we could do about it. I started working at the same department store where Mom worked – first on Saturday mornings, and then during school holidays too. This small income provided me with pocket money for my first attempts at using lipstick, perfume and nylon stockings, without having to ask Mom for money. I started going to the youth group club on Friday evenings at our church, and made new friends. I was particularly fond of one of the young men at church, whose name was Ian Jackson. Ian was a wonderful ballroom dancer, having attained a bronze medal at the South African academy of ballroom dancing. Many happy Friday and Saturday nights were spent with Ian at one or another hop at local clubs and churches, and he taught me so much more than I had known about samba, rhumba, tango and other dances I had not learned before. It was a wonderful time for me. Mom and Dad were very fond of Ian, and encouraged the dancing as I still needed exercise after the polio.

In July of 1958 it had become evident that Granny Morgan’s health was failing. She was living in Boksburg, with my Mom’s younger sister, whom we called Dinks, and her husband and family. Granny had cancer of the stomach, and time and again we were called to her bedside. Finally, in early September of that year she was admitted to hospital. My parents and I traveled by train to Boksburg almost every weekend to see her. As a fourteen-year old I became impatient with having to go to Boksburg every weekend, and finally persuaded my mother to allow me to stay with a friend in Pretoria on the weekend of the 16th. Unfortunately, this was the one weekend I should have been there. My dearest Granny, who had done so much to help my recovery from polio, died on the 16th September.

My cousin Audrey and I were considered old enough to attend her funeral. The day before, a cold, blustery day, we could go to the funeral parlor to see her for the last time. This was my very first experience of the kind. I was horrified. They had put her false teeth into her mouth – Granny had never worn them in my memory – and she didn’t look like my gran at all. I was heartbroken that I had so selfishly decided not to visit her for that last weekend.

By the time I had written my final exams in Standard Eight, I had persuaded Mom to allow me to leave the convent and go to a commercial college to continue my commercial studies, which included finishing Standards Nine and Ten, and finally matriculation, in one year instead of the two it would take at the convent. I was always aware of the fact that Mom was by now older than most people who had already retired, and that she was finding the daily grind at the department store difficult. Her health, never very good, was starting to show signs of giving her trouble. She was always tired, stressed, worried about money, and my Dad’s drinking. I had become aware of the fact that he did not always bring home his entire salary, and she could never depend on him to bring enough to pay the bills. My small income from working on Saturdays and holidays had now become a necessity to the household, no longer a luxury just for me.

1960

Two years after my bout with polio, my left arm was once again functional, but would always be somewhat weaker than my right. For the rest, however, I was healthy, and thanks to Granny’s therapeutic sessions, had discovered a love of dancing. Some of the boys at the church youth group asked me to church socials, and I was enjoying my life immensely, despite the worries at home.

Halfway through my year at college we moved out to the suburbs, to another rented house, the first home I had had to which I felt good about inviting friends to come. I had made new friends at college and was soon able to invite them home for girl’s sleepovers. Dad, however, had now graduated to a point where he sometimes just did not come home at all. We found out that he had got into a group of friends who played cards at night after work, and most times he was too drunk to make the journey home by bus afterwards. I was always nervous about having friends at home in case he came in drunk while they were there. It did happen once or twice, and I was mortified and ashamed of him, and I hated the sympathetic looks I got from my friends. Dad never became belligerent when he was drunk: he just became stupid, making silly, unfunny remarks about my friends in their presence, and walking into furniture and walls, staggering about the place. I could have died of shame. My relationship with him deteriorated to a level where I almost never spoke to him anymore, and indeed, when I did, I found myself yelling at him about his behavior, for which I only hated myself afterwards. Mom always tried to intervene at these times, but I could see just how hurt she was by his drinking too, and that only made me angrier with him.

Just before the end of my year at college, the principal called me in and told me she had received a call from a prospective employer who was looking to hire a shorthand typist, and she had recommended me for the position. She suggested that if I was successful in getting the position, I could complete my studies and exams at the college at night, since I was already far ahead of my class.

The employer turned out to be a diplomatic mission for Rhodesia, and with much trepidation I went for my very first interview for a job. I was hired on the spot, and I ran all the way to the O K Bazaars to tell Mom that I was now going to be a working girl, at a wonderful salary of twenty-five pounds a month. I was sixteen and a half years old, about to graduate college, and I had a job! Grown up at last!

Of course, only a month or two into my working career I realized just how young, green, and totally insignificant I was. I was put into the rather grand reception room of the High Commissioner’s Office for Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and despite all the things I had learned at college, found myself having to learn everything from the ground up. There were two other women working in the offices, both several years older than myself, and they were my first experience of having to react to office bitchiness

They went out of their way to trip me up, giving me assignments to do that were not in my job description at all, but I was too frightened of them to speak up for myself. Of course, I made many mistakes, and they were crafty enough to make sure that the First and Second Secretaries got to know about them.

The only two members of staff who were kind to me, were