Born in Africa: Uprooted by the Winds of Change: The Story of One Family’S Life in Africa from 1928 to the Year 2000

By Rosemary Venter and Bruce Venter

This book was written to explain a situation where those who seemed to have everything became only dust to be swept into the sea. Or so it seemed, but that dust had life within it and was to sow another future in another land.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Nov 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504992206

Rosemary Venter

Former East London City Councilor Rosemary Venter was born in the Transvaal in 1928. She met her husband, Neil, at Rhodes University, where they both studied. They married in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, in 1950. Rosemary stayed home to raise their two children, while Neil followed his career. They were optimists with faith in themselves. Life threw them many challenges as they moved from Southern Rhodesia, to Zambia, and back to South Africa, always aiming to provide a better life for their children. Their horizons widened to include business and civic affairs. Pressure grew as apartheid policies crippled the divided country. Adapt or sink called for new talents and strengths. The country needed leadership where all people could take their rightful place in society. Reconciliation meant adjustment and sacrifice. Rosemary and Neil now live quietly in New Zealand. Bruce Venter was born in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1951. Educated in South Africa, he went on to study dentistry at the University of the Witwatersrand. In the late 1970s at the age of twenty-seven, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. His previous book, “Paranoid Schizophrenia, My Label, My Life,” tells his remarkable story. Now he spends his time writing as well as studying music theory, the piano, and clarinet, in order to enter university again to obtain another degree, in music.

Book preview

Born in Africa:

Uprooted

by the Winds of Change

_______________

The Story of One Family’s Life in

Africa from 1928 to the Year 2000

Rosemary Venter & Bruce Venter

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AuthorHouse™ UK

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

www.authorhouse.co.uk

Phone: [phone]

© 2015 Rosemary Venter & Bruce Venter. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/05/2015

First Edition

ISBN: 978-1-4918-9060-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-9220-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015916786

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Table of Contents

Preface

Authors’ Note

PART I

Growing up in South Africa

Chapter 1   Rosemary’s Story Begins In Africa

Chapter 2   Move From Adelaide To East London

Chapter 3   The Aunts

Chapter 4   Home Activities

Chapter 5   A Friend

Chapter 6   Ups And Downs Of Childhood

Chapter 7   Books And More

Chapter 8   1934 Move To The Transvaal

Chapter 9   Back In East London

Chapter 10   Separation From My Brothers

Chapter 11   The War Years

Chapter 12   Holiday On The Farm In The Transvaal

Chapter 13   School Changes

Chapter 14   Crisis

Chapter 15   The University Years

PART II

Heading North

Southern Rhodesia And Zambia

Chapter 16   Starting Life Together

Chapter 17   Unexpected Developments

Chapter 18   Would They Ever Afford A Home Of Their Own?

Chapter 19   Family Loss

Chapter 20   Another Child?

Chapter 21   Setback And Lessons Learned

Chapter 22   More Friends And Relations

Chapter 23   Fostering

Chapter 24   Neil Moves To The Treasury

Chapter 25   The Caravan Holiday

Chapter 26   Home Again At Brucefield

Chapter 27   A New Life In Zambia

Chapter 28   Back To South Africa

PART III

Returning South:

Apartheid And Beyond

Chapter 29   Neil Takes A Position In The Xhosa Development Corporation In East London

Chapter 30   What The Move To East London Meant

Chapter 31   Changes Within The Xhosa Development Corporation

Chapter 32   A Brief Interlude

Chapter 33   Neil And Rosemary Get Involved In Local Politics

Chapter 34   Rosemary’s Mother Returns To South Africa

Chapter 35   Back To Council Work

Chapter 36   Patricia Learns To Fly

Chapter 37   Neil At The XDC And Rosemary In Council

Chapter 38   In Lighter Vein

Chapter 39   The XDC Expands And The Bureaucracy Multiplies

Chapter 40   Going Into Business

Chapter 41   Early 70s

Chapter 42   1976: Rapid Change

Chapter 43   Family Focus

Chapter 44   South Africa Feels A Shift In Balance

Chapter 45   A Wedding Brightens The Scene

Chapter 46   Spotlight On East London

Chapter 47   Neil Looks At Prospects

Chapter 48   Meeting Gwen Shaw

Chapter 49   Upheavel In Ciskei

Chapter 50   The Gwen Shaw And Ratepayer Case Is Heard

Chapter 51   Juggling Different Priorities

Chapter 52   Family Distractions

Chapter 53   Business Conditions

Chapter 54   No Respite For Gwen And The Ratepayers

Chapter 55   Shock Revelation

Chapter 56   1994: A Great Year For South Africa

Chapter 57   1995: Challenges From All Sides

Chapter 58   1996: Cancer Strikes

Chapter 59   1997: Here And Now Closes

Chapter 60   Life Beyond The Shop

Chapter 61   The Years In East London Draw To A Close

References and Bibliography

Co-authored by Rosemary Venter and her son Dr Bruce N. Venter

Edited by, Dr Bruce N. Venter

Preface by Dr Bruce N. Venter

Other books by Dr Bruce N. Venter:

Paranoid Schizophrenia, My Label, My Life 1st edition: 10/25/2012

Paranoid Schizophrenia, My Label, My Life 2nd edition: 02/06/2013

Editor’s note: Please see my website:

<http://drbruceventer.com>

where I also keep a blog

Preface

During my second visit to New Zealand to see my sister and parents in early 2015, my mother gave me this autobiography to read. I decided to publish her book because I realised it would be a valuable chronicle of our family background and the times in which they lived; showing how we grew up in Africa before going our separate ways, scattered around the world, yet still able to visit one another electronically using the Internet via email and Skype, mostly on a daily basis. All I had to do was edit this autobiography.

At publication, my mother is in her late 80s, spending her time keeping up with the extended family and taking care of my father, her husband, Neil.

We have changed the names of some of the characters to protect their identity.

The story has three parts. The first is a glimpse of her childhood and written in the first person. Parts two and three use the third person, to give breadth to the narrative and take in the historical background. It takes us north to life in Southern Rhodesia, later on into Zambia. The last part describes the longest period spent in growing older and wiser and coping with the political and economic changes that were thrust upon them. But the family survived.

I must also thank my mother and my father for their continued support and encouragement, especially my mother for all the hard work she has done in preparing her autobiography to such a high standard.

I’ve previously published my life story under the title:

Paranoid Schizophrenia, My Label, My Life

See my website:

drbruceventer.com

where I also keep a blog

Dr Bruce N. Venter,

United Kingdom

and

Rosemary Venter

New Zealand

August 2015

Authors’ Note

We have altered the names of friends and professional colleagues, where they or their families might not agree with our interpretation of events or where we wish to protect their identity.

This is a long book, covering a period of 72 years. My mother who produced the original manuscript is now 86 years old, consequently many of the persons mentioned in the story have already passed on. That does not detract from their importance to the story as it is, among other things, an attempt to portray the social history of the times. She believed it important that records were kept of those days, where economic and political change was rapid and unpredictable. This was her contribution to that history.

For these reasons she does not want to change the names of political leaders, she does not want to change the names of attorneys involved in the legal battles, made as spokespersons for the civic society in which she and the ratepayers participated as ordinary citizens. To substitute names in the text would distort the picture, making it a fiction of the realities recorded in the daily papers and the general media news of the time.

Everything has been carefully researched. Corroboration can be found in the Archives of the local East London Daily Dispatch newspaper, in the East London City Council minutes and in Court documents.

She referred to family letters and emails kept over many years and to her own diaries dated from 1988. Certain of those diaries have been used as hard evidence in the High Court of South Africa. The diaries, which still remain in her possession, and those which were returned to her after the court case, span the years where objections might have been made regarding the behaviour of legal men. In those cases she has attempted to give a fair assessment of that conduct. She pointed out why they needed to press charges against a lone widow and she mentioned the financial pressure the attorneys had to bear at that time. Later it was the business community and developers who were put under pressure or who came under scrutiny. They were all victims of the apartheid policy and its consequences.

The country, the society and the people in their own homes were all subjected to pervasive stress. These also manifest themselves in multiple illnesses within our family. Those who seemed to be enemies then, if meeting face to face today, would welcome each other as fellow sufferers caught in a turmoil greater than any personal conflict. It would be much the same as the results seen at the TRUTH and RECONCILIATION COMMISSION chaired by Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and head of the Anglican Church in South Africa at that time.

This is what we hope to convey in the pages of BORN IN AFRICA: UPROOTED BY THE WINDS OF CHANGE.

Pertinently the times she writes of could now be another country, another town. The same circumstances do not exist. The people involved have died or left the country and become scattered all over the globe. To alter the names of legal firms and public companies will fade the picture and deny them the right to their participation in the bigger story.

There is no way the sequence of events can be changed to hide anything for whatever reason. What was done in the past, is now a part of history. The book is closed and things have changed. The landscape and the people have changed. The winds of change have left but dust.

This book is to explain a situation where those who seemed to have everything became only dust to be swept into the sea. Or so it seemed, but that dust had life within it and was to sow another future in another land.

Rosemary and Bruce Venter.

New Zealand 2015

PART I

CHAPTER 1

Rosemary’s Story Begins In Africa

Lightning struck the windmill the night I was born. It was the 10th of November 1928 and the place Christiana, Transvaal. My mother had taken refuge on the sofa in the darkest corner of the passage, which, she did not realise, was the nearest she could possibly get to the metal windmill, that stood outside in the back garden. Her fright and fear were conveyed to me and I have always since remained afraid of thunderstorms.

I arrived early, before the midwife from Johannesburg could get there, so I was brought into the world by a large and competent neighbour, Mrs Smith or Aunty Miff, the name by which she was remembered. My mother had bled badly and was seriously ill when the nurse at last arrived. My mother responded to treatment, being of strong Scottish constitution.

The house was The Residency, where my father was the Christiana magistrate. The town was established in 1870 at the time that diamonds were found along the banks of the Vaal River and the government needed a township to control claims and disputes. My mother used to tell us, that the dusty gravel on the streets and around their tennis court gleamed with colour from the crushed stone within it, tiny particles of quartz and semi precious stones. Long ago there would have been rough diamonds amongst them from where they dug the gravel on the banks of the Vaal. Only weeping willows now swept their long fronds through the sandy gravel.

My own first memories are not of anxiety or fear. I recall a glow of warmth, the sweet taste of breastmilk, the perfume of lavender and the touch of heavy satin ribbon. It must have been the ribbon of my mother’s bed jacket. She said I never settled until I was given a ribbon to suck. Every night Zibbon was my imperious demand, then a lullaby. Her lullabies evoke dreamy darkness and the sound of her soft Highland voice singing the Gaelic songs her mother sang to her twelve children, and another favourite, The Irish Lullaby,

Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,

Too-ra-loo-ra-li,

Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,

Hush, now don’t you cry."

Our family always loved cats and I believe my first venture away from home was to follow a stray cat. I was lost for a while. I believe it was when we were on holiday at Mossel Bay. But all I remember was leaving the sunny verandah steps and following a path into straggly, high, bush. The cat must have let me stroke it, as my feelings were of softness and warmth within a secluded space, which seemed to enfold me in a world of my own.

Different was the feeling of independence I had, when climbing the Adelaide grape vine. I do not remember the taste of the grapes or the pain of the many stings from the bees in the vine, but I do remember calling for the Boo bag! (the Reckitt’s Blue bag used to whiten washing), that was supposed to alleviate bee stings. I did not learn my lesson because I would go straight back to the vine!

I remember door handles always being too high for my reach. I would feel quite hopeless and impatient and call out, Ope door, ope door, poor Mali. I could not yet say my full name, Rosemary at that time.

These earliest memories were mostly sensual and emotional, only later did they contain intellectual content. One strong memory dating from when I was two years old was based on the arrival of my second brother.

My elder brother, Michael, and I were playing our special game, invented that day, which I called Terrible Happenings in Mummy’s Zoom. We were playing on the long verandah that stretched all the way down the side of the Adelaide Magistrate’s Residency. The bedrooms opened onto it through French doors. We had been shooed away from our mother’s bedroom and were at the far end. My brother had a bottle of buttons, which he would take away and spill out onto the cement, then call, Terrible Happenings in Mummy’s room! I would rush to help and together we would laboriously pick up every button and return each to the bottle. That would be repeated time and time again, as children do. The game seemed far more important than a second brother. My mother had home births with all her children.

These last memories are all of Adelaide, where Bubba was born. Only years later did I realise that Bubba was a derivative of baby, when I noticed many of my friends also had a bubba in the family and they were always the youngest. Then I learned to call Bubba, Bill instead. His full name was William Arthur.

CHAPTER 2

Move From Adelaide To East London

In 1931 my father retired and we moved from Adelaide to East London. It was during the Great Depression, when even a small pension was a valuable asset. My mother was twenty-three years younger than my father so retirement cast a shadow over her expectations. The Government gave enforced early retirement to many English speaking civil servants. It suited their pocket and suited their politics. None of this had any impression on me or my brothers. We were happy-go-lucky and memories now become more numerous but remain isolated and not connected to any strong time sequence.

Some time in the early thirties we added on rooms to the East London house. The original consisted of the front verandah backed by two front rooms off the hall, which led to a passageway giving access to the east bedroom and a bathroom and kitchen and pantry. In the original kitchen there was a raised platform and a chimney for the old fashioned coal stove and later used as a base for an electric stove. Off the kitchen was a back stoep. It was a small house with a big garden, which was divided down the middle from north to south by a hedge, which my elder brother later was to chop out all on his own. A huge job!

The extension consisted of the new kitchen, a pantry, a small passage to the sitting room and, beyond sliding doors, a study. The windows in this part of the house were steel and did not prove as weather proof as the old wooden ones in the original house. A side door from the study led onto the front stoep. The original pantry became a passage and a door was knocked out at the west-end, to join to the extension. In the new sitting room there was a neat face-brick fire place that worked well. There never was smoke in the room and we quite often had fires on cold days but the problem was the weather. On the same cold, rainy day a berg wind could arise and blow all the cold away leaving us panting and needing to put out the fire.

All I remember of the building job was the deep foundations dug into the rich dark soil. And a man with a broad smile who was the builder and who allowed us to run about playing hide and seek in the foundations.

One of the first experiences I remember clearly, was of wash days. The girl would do the washing in the back garden behind the outbuildings. There were large zinc baths for washing and rinsing and she used a metal scrubbing board, on which she vigorously rubbed the soapy clothes and sheets. When the soaping was done, the baths would be emptied on the grass and refilled with clear water for rinsing. I remember the last rinse for the sheets always had Reckitt’s blue swished into the water in a muslin bag. The blue came out of a paper package striped blue and white. It always puzzled me that the bright blue did not show up on the sheets, though sometimes there were slight greyish streaks. I was later to learn the Reckitt’s jingle,

Out of the Blue comes the Whitest Wash.

When the washing was done it was screwed and twisted by hand to remove the excess water, then the Xhosa girl would hang everything out on the line. Lastly she would take a forked stick to lift the line to a greater height, where the wind would reach it and help with the drying. All the while this was going on, she, Lisbek, had Bubba tied onto her back with an old towel. He must have been nearly two and was a nine pound baby at birth, so would by then have been pretty heavy. But she approved of the arrangement and often freed a hand to pat him or lull him to sleep. My mother would not be anywhere near. Michael would be with me watching and helping where we could.

Tuesday would be ironing day. The kitchen table would be covered in a folded blanket and topped by an old sheet that had several brown burn marks where the iron had been too hot, even one charred hole. The ironing would be damped and starch boiled on the stove. I can recall the warm smell of singeing that made that day special. Afternoons would often mean the girl would take out all the cutlery to the grass behind her room and there, leaning against the warm brick wall, she would polish it with Silvo. I liked to watch it regain its shine and noticed how carefully Lisbek slipped the cloth between the prongs of the forks to make sure no metallic tasting polish remained. She sometimes let me do the teaspoons.

Another association with aroma and happiness was baking day. My mother encouraged us to take part when she was baking scones or making bread, which she did often. For the scones there was flour all over the wooden kitchen table. She was deft of hand and patted the dough quickly into a nice thick layer, then used a metal cutter to shape the scones and lift them onto the baking sheet. All the leftover bits of dough would be given to us to roll out once again and we used her fancy cutters to make other shapes, stars and half moons and even hand-made blobs that would be ours to eat after the baking. She would also get us to help with the bread making, greasing the tins and in later years Michael was big enough to do the kneading. Usually Daddy would knead if there was a large amount of dough used.

She always made brown bread even before the war. During the war we never had white flour, so flour for cakes had to have the bran sieved out of it. The bread tasted nutty and was used for my school sandwiches. Daddy made them with butter and home made marmalade. He always made the porridge and gave us our breakfast. Mummy liked to lie in for a while and read the paper. He would have got it much earlier and already read all he wanted. The Daily Dispatch newspaper was folded into a neat small square and came flying onto the front stoep, as the paper boy passed on his bicycle. It sometimes made a loud bang as it hit the big front door with its brass bell and coloured glass decoration. On every fine day it would stand open, held back by a heavy round stone gathered from the rocks off West Bank, where the constant movement of the sea had given it the perfect shape.

The wind came up sometimes without notice and blew in the doorway causing the polished linoleum strip to rise up and buck like the back of a whale. Other doors in the house had sausages attached from handle to handle so that a banging door would be arrested and the noise avoided. But the sitting room door had another perfectly round stone holding it back.

After dinner on Sundays the girl would scrub down the kitchen table as the last job she did before going off to her other home in the Cambridge Location. Less reliable servants would sometimes not arrive back on the Monday. We would get a message that a boy friend had hit her or that her sissie had died and she had to attend the funeral. Among the Africans, attendance at funerals was essential, even for distant relatives. We employed Xhosa women mostly but once I remember a Fingo, who like all her tribe, had one joint of a finger removed on one hand, when she was a child, as a mark of distinction. The tribe or what we would now call the extended family was more important than the individual and all cousins and second cousins in our way of thinking, would be brothers and sisters to them.

Next in importance to funerals for the Xhosa people were weddings. Sometimes we would see our girl preparing for a wedding. If she was of the younger sort, who wore short dresses, she would wash her legs from the knee down at the outside tap, then rub on soap until the skin dried with a bright shine. That was beautiful, she explained. But Lisbek, our favourite, who stayed with us for a long time was older, wore German print skirts, that almost swept the floor and, being married, always wore a doek twisted into a wide, flat turban shape to cover her hair in the traditional manner.

A great treat was to be shown into Lisbek’s room. I was surprised to see the high bed with a deep mattress and blankets covered by a beautifully starched, embroidered, white bedcover and two very puffy pillows with lace edged, embroidered, white pillow cases. There was a small cracked mirror on a makeshift dressing table and the walls were plastered with newspaper! It was all quite dark, as the small sash window was south facing and the room had a damp smell. A little pink rambling rose struggled to grow outside her window. But I thought her room was far more intriguing than any of the rooms in our house! But I was only allowed a peek, then had to scuttle off the board floor and down the cement steps to the yard.

CHAPTER 3

The Aunts

From very early in my life I was aware of my father’s two youngest sisters, Aunty Katie and Ethel. Janie and Edie, the elder sisters, were only occasionally mentioned.

We loved Aunty Ethel, as she was the one who gave Michael a new volume of Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia every Christmas and all three of us considered that the highlight of our year, devouring every page with eager appetite for knowledge. After the first few years, she sent the rest of the set and they became the backbone of our learning for years to come.

Aunty Katie, we much later realised, suffered from a bi-polar mental condition. She was highly intelligent and was the source of all the facts of our family history. Some days she was excessively active, making felt tea cosies, doing embroidery, knitting, or doing a course in wreath making and floristry, but never settling long enough at anything to earn a living. Aunty Ethel had promised their mother on her death bed that she would take care of Katie. And she did, having her live with her in her flat in Arcadia, Pretoria, from where Ethel could conveniently reach her own job, in the Lands Department of the Union Buildings.

Mum and Daddy would have Katie on her own to stay from time to time to help Ethel. Aunty Edie did too. But I once was shocked to overhear my mother say, It was Katie who killed Edie. My father’s older sister, Edie or Edith, married a lawyer, Roberts, in Port Elizabeth and herself was once Mayor, in her own right, of King William’s Town and was also head of the South African Temperance Union. What my mother had meant and my childish mind had misinterpreted was, Katie was too much for Edie and had contributed to the stress that caused the stroke that killed her!

Sometimes even we children were sorry for Katie. That was on her down days when she took to her room and her bed for days at a time. We knew her as someone who talked the tail off a donkey or slumped in a chair saying nothing. In those days even all those now most obvious symptoms were not recognised and no medication was available. She did have smelling salts, that in Victorian fashion she carried in a draw string bag. Inside was a small dark green bottle containing white crystals with a strong smell that shocked the nose, in a combination of ammonia and lavender and whatever else, that caused anyone to take a breath and apparently return to life after fainting. We only smelt it from a safe distance. Every night when saying my prayers, as we were taught, I started,

Gentle Jesus meek and mild, and ended with,

And God bless Mommy and Daddy and Michael and Bill and Aunty Ethel and Katie, And make me a good girl, Amen

Aunty Ethel and Katie were very much part of the family.

CHAPTER 4

Home Activities

Another interesting place was the Store Room, next to the girl’s room and part of the outbuildings. It had no windows but the doorway was wide. Inside, against the back wall, were wooden boxes and old leather trunks that gave the room a musty smell. Hanging from the ceiling was a saddle and leather leggings belonging to my father, with other relics of the Boer War and World War I. Sometimes he would take them out and show us items, such as his pith helmet, with a green cotton lined brim and thin leather chin strap, or his puttees or the leather case, holding a lidded dish with folded knife, fork and spoon. He used that in the Boer War while serving in the Cape Mounted Rifles.

In the store room were also piles of books, that my brothers and I took from their boxes and paged through from cover to cover. Most seemed to have been Art books belonging to my Aunt Ena, daughter of Daddy’s eldest sister Janie. Ena’s brilliant career in painting had come to an end, when she was admitted to a mental hospital. She had attended the Slade School of Art in London. A painting of Diana the Huntress was my favourite illustration in one of her books. There were also boxes of the full works of Charles Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson and Milton, overflowing onto the damp floor. Many of these volumes must have been owned by my grandmother, who was the favourite daughter of Thomas Bowler, a well known Cape artist, who had also studied abroad and who had some of his work hung in the Royal Academy. He had owned an extensive library. Most of the books were water damaged but we never knew when or how that happened. Certainly the damp atmosphere in the store room did not help.

There was also a large, black, tin trunk of Mrs Little’s things, as my mother called them. These were things from India, where my grandmother had lived with our grandfather, Michael Little, before she, his third and last wife, was widowed and returned to make her home in Robertson in the Western Cape, where she had grown up. We children loved hearing the family stories about India, the punkah wallahs who manually pulled the fans to cool them while other servants prepared delicious Eastern curries. Lastly there was the Ayah, who looked after the little ones. She was like a second mother to them and as a result my father spoke mostly Hindi until the family left India when he was four years old. And in hushed voices we listened to the rumours that it was believed that my grandfather had been murdered, poisoned by someone who had disagreed with the judgement he had given in their case. He was frequently away on circuit court duties as Magistrate of a large District. Aunty Edie remembered seeing him being lifted lifeless into their home on return from circuit. He was a tall man, measuring six foot four in height and must have needed more than one person to carry him.

But it would not be long before we would be distracted by the interesting objects unpacked from that black trunk in the store room. As each item was carefully lifted out we would hear the story connected with it, bringing life to the hand embroidered silk shawls, the dainty baby clothes and the ebony and ivory boxes. We saw among them my grandmother’s tortoiseshell case used for carrying her visiting cards. There were also brass candlesticks, and trays and other ornaments and dishes. These were in good condition. We were only allowed to look at these when my mother or father was present.

The back stoep, which was still an open verandah in our first years, had its utility improved by building it in and putting in wire gauze-covered windows. It was on the warm side of the house and was the favourite place to play when it rained. The front stoep was open, apart from a low wall, and the red granolithic surface could be both cold and wet on rainy days and always slippery, so to be avoided.

Instead on rainy days we would open the BIG BOX which was kept on the back stoep. It was a treasure trove of fun. We found fancy dress costumes belonging to Mummy and Daddy. His was an owl costume with concealing headdress with two funny little ears that owls have and big circled eyes. The cloth was grey silk with hand painted feathers. Could we imagine my father in it? Mum told us that he once put it on at her insistence, but no sooner had they arrived at the party, than he went missing, going straight home to change into an evening suit. Fancy dress was not his scene. My mother’s costume was that of a magpie, black and white with a pleated, short skirt in a twenty’s style with a headpiece with a bright black eye and yellow beak. She loved it! I had fun donning that and other bits and pieces. There was a Japanese wrap silk kimono with a sash in a beautiful chrysanthemum design of gorgeous colours. Also a Japanese fan and paper parasol. I would dress up in those and sing,

"I’m a lady from Japan

See my parasol, my fan,

I can walky, I can talky,

I can dance the Rangy Tan."

(I do not know who taught me the verse or what a Rangy Tan was.)

Otherwise there were old rag dolls and a teddy bear and other near forgotten toys as well as games and puzzles.

CHAPTER 5

A Friend

Before I went to school I would follow my mother on her visits to her friend, Trixie, who lived at 12 Surrey Road. She had no children of her own and made a big fuss of me. Her other visitors did too. They used to come from playing tennis on the public courts next door to her. My greatest wish then was to grow up and have sleek, suntanned big knees like her friends had. I would get the close up view when they kneeled down to talk to me. The other special pleasure was to stand by the piano while Aunty Trixie played and sang songs like, Madam will you walk? Madam will you talk? Madam will you walk and talk with me? and The Isle of Capri. I was mesmerised and would come to visit her often all on my own. She had shelves of ferns growing in a glassed stoep. The glass being green too made it like a fairy grotto. I loved gardening and she would give me a small trowel and allow me to dig near her plants. But she never knew what I planted… some small teacups from my doll’s tea set and a sovereign I had been given for my birthday. I had heard talk of money growing when you save it, perhaps? All I knew was that plants grew and made more!

My brothers and I were invited to a Christmas tree party at Trixie’s house. There were a lot of children we had never seen before. The Christmas tree touched the ceiling and had real candles lit and lots of presents hanging from the branches. I took in everything with wide eyes. Then I spotted her, a beautiful doll, such as I had always dreamed of owning. My name was called. I did not get the doll, it was reserved for Aunty Trixie’s niece. I was terribly disappointed and could hardly smile, as I took my little picture book. I wished I had never been asked and could not understand how Aunty Trixie’s Santa Claus could do that to me.

But I still visited because I also loved seeing Trixie’s sweet mother, Granny Mac, who lived in the bedroom in a huge, high bed and spoke with a Scottish voice like my mother.

CHAPTER 6

Ups And Downs Of Childhood

When my own Christmas arrived I had great excitement in getting up in the dark to feel my presents and try to guess what they were. All thoughts of the doll I missed getting were gone, as I touched smooth rubber and decided it was a swimming ring! It had the head of a duck in front. I loved it. Just what I needed for bobbing about in the water in the lagoon at the beautiful Nahoon River mouth, where we would spend our Sunday picnics.

Those picnics bring back memories of sticky hot days under the twisted wild trees where the bush had been cleared to make a camp site for holiday makers. We children would climb the sprawling branches to find perches, where we could sit to eat our watermelon after finishing the main picnic on the rugs spread under the trees. My mother would have sealed Ball jars in which she brought potato salad with home made mayonnaise, made from eggs and vinegar, and other jars with the fruit salad. The chicken would be whole and wrapped up in a large white table napkin. We were not allowed to swim until an hour after eating. The sand dunes at Nahoon were very hot to walk on, so we ran as fast as we could to reach the cooler water, after changing under cover of the bushes growing along the bank. There we had to watch out for mosquitoes, the kind that were huge and had spotted legs, not the same as the smaller ones that worried us at night.

Once Aunty Ethel kindly rubbed my arms with repellent before I went to bed but the result was quite the opposite. I counted 80 bites on one of my arms that had escaped from the cover of the bedclothes. It seemed that the mosquitoes had been attracted not repelled. Poor Aunty Ethel did not know what to think. She had no experience of mosquitoes in Pretoria.

I never had a room of my own as a child. The back stoep was my favourite place to sleep. My brothers and I all slept there once it had been closed in, though the rain sometimes penetrated the green metal gauze, and the beds had to be drawn away from that side. I slept on the side where they had already put in glass. It served as a dormitory and playroom.

The other rooms in the house were needed for Aunty Katie and Ethel, when they came to stay. At the time of the mosquitoes I was sleeping in the back room, the original kitchen, which was more of a passage and had a large wardrobe where my brothers kept their clothes. My chest of drawers with my clothes was in my father’s room but I never slept there. When we needed more space for visitors I might sleep on the couch in the top room, an extension to the lounge separated from it by sliding doors. The couch had broken springs and was uncomfortable. Otherwise I would have a bed in my mother’s room. What I did not like about that was that she would tell me all her woes, about how she had missed out on her youth during the first World War, then how Aunty Katie had spoiled her life by staying on with her and my father after they were married. This would take hours. It really was a saga that took years to tell with much repetition. It started when I was about ten and continued until I left home altogether. I would be very tired and drowsy and could only manage an ’m, ’m or oh then get a comment such as, you, my own daughter, do not even care about me! I suppose she did need sympathy having responsibility for Katie when she was only twenty-six and my father already fifty, having to accept what to her was a strange arrangement. But that time of night did not work for me.

At home, on wet days, the washing was hung on a rope that was strung across from one side of the back stoep to the other. That rope also was useful at Halloween for hanging the apples, which we were supposed to bite and catch in our teeth, if possible. Only Michael did and we said he had the biggest mouth! There were apples then floating in a tin bath too, but again only Michael and my mother could bite them to get them out.

Sometimes when playing we got into real mischief. Michael especially led the way. He frightened Bill and I one night by tying something, I think his pyjama cord, round his neck and pulling until it nearly throttled him. We do not know how much was acting but it appeared most realistic. At the time we were reading comic book stories of the Yellow Peril and the like, that helped fire our imagination.

When we were quite young my mother became seriously ill with tonsil trouble and had to have them removed. While she recovered at Hogsback, Aunty Ethel came down to look after the family. I remember her sitting on the front stoep in a low chair, I had a close view of her feet and legs. She was such a small person compared to my mother. She wore size three shoes and they were always lace-ups with stacked heels, like nurses wear. She gave a very neat impression and was gentle when speaking to us. We liked her. I took every one of my toys to show her and never once did she seem bored.

When we were small, it was my father who told us our bedtime stories. He did not always read from a book but told us our favourites, the ones he had been told in India. The Monkey with the red flannel on its Tail and Bluebeard, who captured young maidens…. I always remember the end, Sister Anna, sister Anna, is there anybody coming? Sister Anna, Sister Anna, is there anybody coming? And at last after much repetition we were told. Yes, I see dust on the far hills! Horsemen are coming! Our brother is coming to our rescue!

As we grew older the routine never changed, just the kinds of stories. There were readings from Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Books and the Just So Stories replacing Daddy’s own remembered tales of India. Other choices reflected his love of the outdoors and Africa. He read right through Sir Percy Fitzpatrick’s Jock of the Bushveld. Bill and I would be cuddled next to him on the large couch and Mike would be draped across the back where he could look down at all the pictures. There were not many full page pictures but the page margins had detailed sketches of insects like Hottentot Gods (The Praying Mantis) and Bushveld trees and different buck. We all loved every minute of those evenings.

CHAPTER 7

Books And More

The Children’s Encyclopaedias were not the only books we read ourselves. There was a constant supply of Tarzan and other comics and what my mother called, Penny Horribles, bought with pocket money from a second hand bookshop off Oxford Street in town. These comics were lent to and swapped for others between Michael and his friends, Leslie Snow, Howard Parker and Gerald Werner, maintaining a good supply. Later we were allowed to buy a Micky Mouse comic every week.

A friend of my mother’s gave us a bookcase full of National Geographic magazines, which took us to a world of Leica cameras, snow capped mountains and incredible photographs of animals.

There were already shelves full of old Reader’s Digests that probably came from him too. We read everything in the Digests and every new idea was put to the test. We followed the procedures mentioned for hypnosis and tried it on ourselves. We pulled down the light in Daddy’s room, that was fixed to a pulley, and used that to stare into, while telling the subject,

Your eyes are tired, your eyelids are closing and you are falling into a deep, deep sleep.

It only worked on Bill, who was easily put under. He seemed to trust us more readily. We had him walking down the passage following instructions, hoping to get him to walk into the drawing room, where my mother sat with visitors. But we forgot to tell him to turn at the end of the passage. He was about to crash into the pantry wall, when his foot hit a big brass tray propped up against it. We both shouted out, Stop! Wake up! and he woke up, followed by my mother popping out of the drawing room door saying, Shush, you children! She never knew what we had been up to. There were other times when we hypnotised Bill again and were able to stick pins into him, without drawing blood. We could prop him between two chairs where his body would remain rigid, as it bridged the gap. We told him once that on waking his arm would be itchy. We had forgotten about it, while we were excitedly telling him of all the things he had said and done, when he interrupted us with,

Wait a sec, my arm is itching! and he scratched himself.

Michael and I smiled knowingly. It never did Bill any harm, as his later mental prowess demonstrated.

The old man at the second-hand bookshop became Bill’s friend, as his visits there became a weekly event, when his interest in electronics grew. He would bring home piles of second hand Popular Mechanics and other magazines and he and Michael would pore over them for hours. I even liked looking at the advertising smalls in them, that filled many pages with pictures or descriptions of gadgets and household items, only available in the United States, which became an impossibly desirable country in our eyes.

I was very much the middle child. Michael as the eldest had always been there, so his position was well entrenched. He was always ahead of me, always a little out of reach and doing things I could not do. I admired him from afar. Bill was the youngest and the brightest. From very early on he foresaw any punishment, staving it off saying,

I’ll be good, I’ll be good, before he could be locked in the bathroom. Sometimes, if really naughty, he would be the one to suggest,

Lock me in the bathroom. Otherwise there was never much of a reason to punish him. Michael remained the daredevil and leader into mischief.

When I felt my middle status most was when we rushed to Mummy’s bed in the morning. The boys would get there first. Michael would be on one side and Bill would have her other arm round him. I would sit between her feet at the bottom of the bed. No repetition of The one in the middle gets the gold fiddle compensated. It was the same in the car, each boy had a window seat, I sat in the middle. I felt ousted.

But my father always took me by the arm, when we went for walks, making me feel