A Tickey on a Train Track

By Louis Du Toit

The events leading up to the promulgation of the apartheid laws in South Africa often raised huge concern, perhaps more so where the color lines merged. Blacks, being confined mostly to homelands and Bantustans, were regarded as a rarity in many communities. In one such community, the laws meant being suspicious even of your neighbours if they had darker complexions.

A young woman with exceptional abilities but of mixed breed found herself close to, but on the wrong side, of the color line. Church interference and scandalous gossip increased when it became known that she was living with two white men. On regular visits with his father to collect oysters, a young white boy made her acquaintance. Over the years, a strong bond develops. Unfortunately, life-shattering events completely beyond their control overtake them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Sep 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781482802573

Louis Du Toit

Louis du Toit qualified as a chemist at Wits Tech in Johannesburg and the London City & Guilds Institute. He spent many years as a technical writer in the Chemistry section of the South African Bureau of Standards. Now in retirement he has turned his hand to writing fiction.

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September 2007

1

"Delicate shell washed up by the swell

Was there purpose in your life as well?"

(An attempt at a rhyming translation from the Afrikaans, Skipskop Strand).

‘Unleaded, Sir?’ the coloured petrol attendant asked. No longer baas he noted.

‘No, only the windscreen, please.’ His car went through a swarm of bees shortly after he passed through the small town of Napier about ten miles from Bredasdorp. Absentmindedly he switched on the wipers and water squirted onto the yellow mess. Big mistake. The sticky mess on his windscreen reminded him that swarming bees filled themselves with honey before leaving the hive in search of a new one.

‘Is this the new Mercedes, Sir?’ the attendant asked, trying to make conversation while wiping the wet sponge over the windscreen.

‘I don’t know, Chris.’ It was the name on the front of his blue overall. ‘It is a rented car. I didn’t check the model.’

‘Oh,’ he said and after a few moments of reflection added, ‘it’s a cool car, Sir.’

They were conversing in Afrikaans and to hear again, after so many years, the local, lilting accent of the Cape Coloured caught him unawares and almost brought a tear to his eye. The way Chris pronounced Mercedes with the r in the back of his throat was another reminder of the local accent. Softly he practised his own long forgotten burr, ‘Bredasdorp.’ He was back after more than five decades.

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One prevailing notion is that there is no such thing as coincidence, everything being predestined. Something he found hard to agree with. Although he could think of several times when so called coincidences, such as being at the right place at the right time, altered the course of his career and his life. His whole life seemed a series of unplanned events, which he was unwilling to ascribe to either coincidence, or predestination. It just happened.

They were in a restaurant and he had called for the bill when his cell phone beeped. There were fresh oysters amongst the entrees and they both had some. They teased each other about the aphrodisiac effects and he told her again about the best oysters in the world – those deep-shell Skipskop oysters. What he never told his wife, Tina, before was the other associations with Skipskop and Bredasdorp. About Piet and Jamie Stanley. About Miena, and Denise Conradie. Could he really tell his wife without causing her pain? How could he avoid having to admit that it was another woman that led to his initial infatuation with her? Would he ever be able to tell it without bias? It was from her, an eminent scientist in her time, that he learned about subjective bias. His determination to get away from this small village was one of the few exceptions to unplanned events. Maybe he could persuade himself to like Bredasdorp again, but to overcome subjective bias, not so easy.

He answered his cell phone. He was going to find out soon. The call was a private number. The last thing he expected was a call from Bredasdorp. Oysters – Skipskop - Bredasdorp. Coincidence?

For a few moments he could not place the voice that addressed him by his childhood name, ‘am I speaking to Pietie du Toit?’ It slowly became clear that he was speaking to a family member - his brother in law, Johan, Ena’s husband. The call quickly put an end to the pleasant repast of the evening. Ena, his sister, had fallen into a coma and was hospitalised. Johan explained about his wife complaining of headaches and not feeling well for several days. She was scheduled for a complete medical examination the following day but shortly before the midday meal she had gone into a coma. She recovered and they were waiting on test results. The doctors suggested that it might be diabetes related.

He had no idea how Johan got his number. The Cape Town office of his old firm must still have it on record. From the concern in Johan’s voice he gathered this was completely unexpected, and that Ena must have lived an otherwise healthy life.

‘Gaan, Piet,’ Tina said. She pronounced his name as Pete. When Afrikaans failed her, she continued: ‘Go, my love. Book yourself a flight. You know I can take care of things.’

He had retired years ago. It was only recently that he finally managed to extract himself from the last of the consultation positions. Not yet a year free of business commitments. On the internet he could only find a business class seat available from OR Tambo International airport. His flight would land at 10:10 a.m. in Cape Town and he also booked a car. He replied to Johan by SMS that, if all went as planned, he could be in Bredasdorp by mid afternoon the following day.

By 11:00 a.m. the next morning he was on the N2 to Bredasdorp where he left immediately after the results of the final school exams 56 years ago. Left, because he could no longer endure the humiliation and grief that he experienced in that little village. As the wide four lane highway unrolled in front of him he started thinking about the reasons that led to his flight so long ago. He could accept that his own sensitivity was the main cause. Even that felt like an unsatisfactory excuse after all this time. His two sisters, Ena, short for Helena, and Marie must have experienced it differently. Admittedly they did not share some of his worst experiences – the shock that almost sent him spiralling into depression and breakdown. They seemed able to cope much better even with the unpleasant experiences that they did share. It might have helped that they stayed on longer to complete high school - Ena one more year and Marie three more years. During that time the events might have lost some of their initial sting. They became part of the town. From the skimpy correspondence over the years he knew that Ena had a teaching post at the school before she married a local businessman, Johan Maree. They had one son. His other sister, Marie, the youngest, got married a few years before Ena to a farmer in the district and they had three kids.

He, himself only married late in life - too late even to think about having children. This was mainly owing to the hectic business life he led. A lifestyle that started soon after he left school. That final school year with its great loss, scandal, humiliation, and cruel gossip that made him flee the dusty little village.

Many of his class mates felt no compunction in leaving Bredasdorp. Several were from the farming community and appeared to progress seamlessly into farming careers. Some got work in the village as shop assistants and bank clerks. A lucky few went to university. His marks were good enough for university. He could have applied for a loan but it would have meant continued association with the village. This did not suit him at all. He wanted to get away and make a clean break. He wanted to be self-supporting as soon as possible, even if he had to slog it out in a low paid job. In desperation he started searching the advertisements in newspapers for jobs in Cape Town, writing letters of application to several. One that he pinned his hopes on received a good response. He had to come for an interview as soon as his marks became available. Good testimonials from his principal, Mr Morkel – Maths, and bookkeeping teacher, Mrs Van Eden, might have helped. Early in January, a few days after the matriculation results were published, he took the train to Cape Town – a slow goods train with one passenger coach taking the whole day for the 120 mile trip. He stayed over with an uncle, a brother of his mother, in Goodwood. The interview for a junior articled clerk with an auditing firm was successful. He could start immediately, on a Monday in four days time. His uncle could give him lodging. He had just enough time to take the train back to Bredasdorp to pack his few meagre possessions and back again to Cape Town.

The memory of that early morning of his departure with a small suitcase from the Bredasdorp station remained with vivid clarity. He could still remember his restlessness to depart. His father, Ena and Marie was there to see him off. His father gave him two five pound notes to see him through the first month and shook his hand. Marie gave him quick kiss on the cheek, but it was Ena who hugged him tightly, tears in her eyes. The bond with her from infancy was about to be broken. She was the only one who had some conception of the depth of his feelings and what was driving him away. She also understood that she would not see him again soon. Neither of them had any idea that it would be that long. There was one other unexpected greeting. The train was already in motion when a clerk came running out of the offices. It was Jan Lourens with the nickname Skurwe, scabby, Jan who left school at standard eight, never a friend of his. He grabbed Pietie’s hand and shouted: ‘Pietie Titties, good luck old pal!’ In Afrikaans the vowel alliteration in his name and nickname, Pietie Tieties, was the main reason it clung to him like a bad odour. Pietie was intensely annoyed at the use of that irritating nickname. The thought that it would be the last time he would hear it was some consolation.

His father, sisters, and Scabby Jan were still waving when the train took a slow curve out of the station and a row of blue gum trees cut off the view. He was sitting at the window as the train moved slowly through fields still with the stubble of mown wheat. A hill, like a slowly closing curtain, started to cut off the view of the village. He internalised a sigh of a relief when the last of the houses were gone. It would not be long enough if he never, never ever again saw that village. Such were his feelings at the time. His sense of relief was only superseded by a hollow feeling in his stomach for the unknown awaiting him. Could he face that life on his own? It was Ena’s fortitude that carried him through the last few months. It would require dogged determination to carry on without her.

In the first month in his new job he was teased mercilessly about his country clothes. The pants hanging somewhat loosely from a pair of braces and school blazer still with its badge and its work related motto: Arbeid Adel, Work Ennobles. As a result he spent most of his pay for the next two months on new clothes. The blazer with its badge and all his old clothes and even undergarments were passed on to a servant and a gardener working on weekends for his uncle. He got rid of everything that would remind him of Bredasdorp. Everything except for a thin, blue, feint ruled, school exercise book.

Failure and the possibility that he would have to return to Bredasdorp was not an option. It was with the fear of this even remote possibility that he immersed himself in his work. This did not go unnoticed and after six months he was offered a small promotion that spurred him on further. Early in the next year in an internal newsletter of the firm there appeared a vacancy for a more senior position in their head office in Johannesburg. His application was approved. A few weeks later he was on the train to Johannesburg. Every clack-clack of the wheels on the track carried him further away from that soaked in gossip little village in the South.

His firm regularly offered study bursaries and towards the end of his first year in Johannesburg he went to the personnel department to complete the necessary applications. Once again he was successful and obtained a full bursary. He registered for BCom at Wits. The next five years he only remembered as study-exams-work, study-exams-work, except for one brief episode – his first serious love affair. Counted in weeks he went through the whole spectrum of love experiences. The chance meeting and reciprocal interest. The courage to ask for a first date. The thrill of the first serious petting. The pleasure of shopping and cooking together. The ecstasy of sleeping together for the first time. The feeling of being head over heels in love. The nerve racking, possible career destructive anxiety of a three week late period. The shock and many days of despondency and a broken heart after Alet van Blerk left him for an engineering student with a shiny red MG TF sportster.

It took months, much longer than the affair itself, before he could attain a measure of objectivity about it. At last he realised with the clarity of hindsight that it would never have worked. She was much too superficial and materialistic. He even had cold shivers when he thought about what would have happened if they had to get married. It was a narrow escape – not at all what Miena would have wanted for him. It slowly dawned on him that the engineering student with the shiny red MG TF did him an enormous favour. After nearly being caught in a disastrous union he was careful in the next few relationships, mostly of short duration, to keep his emotions in check. His partners probably thought of him as dishwater dull. He kept himself distant, to all except one.

In his final year at Wits he received a letter from Ena informing him that she was at Stellenbosch University in her final year and of her plans to do another year to get her teaching diploma. It was a short letter wishing him well and he being in the midst of another series of exams replied even shorter. Afterwards feeling guilty about keeping it so short.

Another two years of articles and Board exams and he was still unattached. Without commitments he was the ideal candidate for a vacancy that occurred in their London office. Memories of Bredasdorp grew fainter but it did occur to him during the overseas flight that the distance between him and that little village in the South of Africa was increasing at about ten kilometres per minute. While in London he got another short letter from Ena telling him that their sister, Marie, married a farmer at Karsrivier near Bredasdorp. Ena had a teaching position in Worcester and she enjoyed it. The letter ended as before with that unanswerable question: when will they see him again? He replied with an equally brief letter using the excuse of a hellishly busy life and that he expected to be transferred to New York shortly.

The only relationship that lasted had its start in New York. His firm won a contract with a large medical institute. In one of the many meetings a problem arose about how to budget for research and development with a potential equally balanced between huge profits, or a dead end. A scientist was assigned to him in order to acquaint him with the technical aspects of Research and Development. Her name was Tina – a highly qualified woman who was starting to make a name for herself in her field of research – virology. There was a feeling for each other right from the start. Maybe it was because they were the only non-Americans in the meetings. She was born in Vietnam and when she was four years old her parents emigrated to America, where she grew up and completed her studies. He would never forget that first day when she was called in to join them at a meeting. From the moment she entered he had difficulty keeping his eyes off her. She must have felt something too, because she dropped her eyes frequently as he looked at her. There was also something indefinable happening between them on the occasions when they addressed each other directly across a table laden with documents. A very special day.

A few days later, after another meeting, she invited him into her world of research. Behind double sealed doors and in white sterilised suits she placed him in front of the screen of a scanning electron microscope. She explained to him that the moving particles were viruses and parts of viruses. At one point three particles that could be construed as a head, trunk and tentacles suddenly joined up and became a moving a single unit.

‘What happened there?’ he asked in amazement.

‘We do not know Pete. Life as it starts in its simplest form, a life-force if you like. Some would say the hand of God. But we only observe and try new hypotheses.’

He stared at her. This small woman with her dark eyes and shiny black hair, cut in bob that fell smoothly into a delicate neckline, moved him strangely. Something in her reminded him of Miena. Tina had a slightly lighter complexion and the same hair.

It must have been in his first term in his final school year that he last went to church but if someone was to ask him he would have had to acknowledge that he somehow still had faith. Seeing life at this microcosmic level made him realise that either we have a completely wrong conception of a God, or faith in one is a delusion. He had a suspicion that the electron microscope session was set up especially for his benefit.

Their business meetings came to an end but not the social ones. They sought each other’s company. First in canteen lunches, then eating out together and going to shows. One thing led to another. For him the relationship was a new learning curve and, from the many talks with her on many subjects, he was fast developing a completely new perception of life. Her total objectivity and minutely methodical approach had a great influence on him. It did not take long for the relationship to become intimate. Together they planned vacations. When they had the time they were seldom apart.

Once she told him that she had some savings and wanted to know about investments. He made several recommendations based on different risk profiles. He also happened to mention that he put some of his own money that morning into a new, relatively high risk insurance business – Berkshire Hathaway. He was very annoyed when he learnt a few days later that she used all her savings to buy those shares.

‘Pete,’ she said. ‘I want to keep it simple. I feel I can trust you. If you want to take that risk, it should work for me as well.’

‘Mine was a calculated financial risk, Tina. I hope you do not take such risks in science.’

‘Pete, how do you think great discoveries are made?’

Those shares performed very well. They were only redeemed years later when their investments were consolidated in South Africa.

His firm was one of the first to move offices into the North Tower, Manhattan. The South Tower was completed the following year. His communications with Ena was reduced to Christmas cards with short notes covering one or two highlights of the year. He knew that she now had a teaching post in Bredasdorp. In his last year in New York a received a phone call from her to tell him that their father was taken seriously ill and that there as little hope of recovery. It was exactly 10:00 a.m. New York and 4:00 South Africa he got the call in his office. He knew that it must cost her a fortune and they kept it short. He asked if he should come, but she informed him that their father no longer recognised them. Later she sent him a telegram informing him that their father had passed away and then there was some further correspondence with regard to the estate. The estate was quite small and in order to save time and keep it simple he signed over power of attorney to Ena and his share to his sisters. Instead he asked them to keep some small memento of his father that he might like and would collect one day. He never got there.

Both Tina and he were exceptionally busy people and travelled frequently. Back in New York they spent most of their time in each other’s company. When one or the other was away and on his or her own they missed each other and felt somewhat lost. When an apartment in the same complex as Tina’s became vacant he immediately took it. Their relationship became a cosy and easy-going companionship. Tina’s hobby, or escape, from a young age was painting. He loved to watch her working in front of a canvas. He remembered his own prizes for drawing when he was still in primary school, but of art appreciation he had very little knowledge. He had no desire himself to take up painting but as he learned from her about viruses and genes, he also learned about composition, symbolism and the various movements like expressionism with its emotions, spatiality in cubism, and the psychological aspects of surrealism. Her interest included contemporary artists and especially Hopper’s treatment of light had her enraptured. They started a small collection that included some Picasso sketches and a Lautrec. A Hockney was a particularly prized possession. There was also some demand for Tina’s own work. An art shop near them frequently nagged her for more.

Somehow they never got to discuss the possibility of a more permanent relationship. There was never any conscious effort to avoid the subject and the only explanation may be that both felt, because of their professional commitments, that it never was the right time.

When the request came from his firm that they need him urgently in London it brought an end to their cosy situation. It was the first time they gave it serious thought but they both had other inescapable commitments. Leonid Brezhnev’s détente raised the possibility of new business opportunities in Eastern Europe and his firm wanted to explore those prospects from their London office under his direction. He never thought that he would have a use for the German that he learned at school but now he had to attend private lessons to increase his fluency. In her own field Tina was on the point of an important breakthrough. His departure from New York was therefore with a heavy heart and their promise to each other to stay in contact offered little consolation. The contact was never broken. There were frequent visits back and forth across the Atlantic. He kept on advising her on investments, but even at the time he left New York she was already very well-off.

In his middle fifties a senior position became vacant in their Johannesburg office and he was asked to give it serious consideration. Back in South Africa there was every indication that his life could now proceed at a more steady level with less hectic travelling. In a luxury flat in Sandton, Johannesburg, he felt loneliness creeping up on him. He placed a call to Tina in New York to ask if she would be interested in a more permanent relationship. He already knew that she was at a cross-road in her own career. Some aspects of her work were taken over at two universities and for any further meaningful work she would have to take a chair at one of them, a prospect that filled her with reluctance. She was used to the business world where success in research could be translated into dollars, even if it did nothing to her own pocket. She loved a hands-on approach and the dullness of the academia would not have suited her at all. When he asked the question he could feel her hesitation and then wasted no time in booking a flight to New York. He wanted to ask her formally, directly.

She agreed to come to South Africa first, to see for herself. She spent two weeks in South Africa. The last few days in the Kruger National Park. It was there that she got the feeling for Africa. It was there in the evenings under a starry sky that the smell of the veldt and the night sounds made one aware of something in common with primeval man. He could almost sense her feelings – how it worked like a healing tonic through her veins and knew what her decision would be. She returned to New York to resign and to pack for South Africa. From now on she would relax and concentrate on her painting.

There were some foreseen obstacles. The Mixed Marriages Act was not yet repealed. At the time his firm was doing some work for the Department of Internal Affairs and in consultations with a senior official in the department he learned that there would be no problem. There was no longer any enforcement. Anyway, Tina was a registered American citizen with an American passport and there was no problem obtaining the necessary documentation. A few weeks later after a short ceremony in Sandton magistrates court Tina, or Phan Thi Thien, Tina – Westernized from Thien, became Mrs Piet du Toit.

Once more he thought of the incredibly great favour that engineering student with his shiny red MG TF did for him so long ago.

In his last years that he worked in South Africa and after retirement as a consultant he did travel around the country on business occasionally but the nearest he got to Bredasdorp was Cape Town. Once or twice he thought of taking the N2 there and hesitated. He decided that his wife should be with him when he went. He could not just descend on family unannounced. It got put off. Another more appropriate time perhaps. He and his sisters had drifted too far apart. They had full family lives of their own. Correspondence had dried up to less than the annual trickle. Although the original distaste with which he left the village had been moderated over the years to a somewhat vague feeling of dislike and his hesitation each time had turned to reluctance and then postponement. Johan’s call provided both impetus and purpose.

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In the mountains after the village of Grabouw he stopped at a roadside café for a midday meal. Then out of the mountains into the green hills to Caledon and the turn-off to Bredasdorp. The last time he travelled this road it was with his father and sisters to an athletic meeting in Caledon. It was then a winding and dusty dirt road but now a wide well marked tarred road. On both sides of the road were wide stretches of grain fields starting to discolour from green to yellow. There were also large fields covered in yellow flowers that he immediately associated with the rapeseed fields of Europe, locally known as Canola he found out, an unknown crop in his school days. Spring was definitely in the air and, of course, it was September – the month with the Equinox and the month with the big tides when you could get those large deep shell oysters at Skipskop at low tide. The month of his very first visit to Skipskop with fond, but also very sad, memories.

As he neared Bredasdorp he felt a slight trepidation of what he would find. Feelings almost the same as those of the unknown he faced that day so long ago when he left. His memory of the village was still that of the war and immediate post war years, before apartheid became law. It was hard to imagine this rural community as it was then: its simple lifestyle, its old fashioned ways, the naivety of people’s outlooks. Now the old Nat and Sap politics was history. A black government was in power. How would Bredasdorp have changed with the times?

He had moved around the capitals of the world and had outgrown his own naive political views. At first he had tried to defend the policies in his country but soon realised the futility of such arguments and adopted an apologetic attitude. It worried him immensely that he no longer dared to admit that he was South African, because of the ensuing questions and arguments. He tried hard to find books about the early settler history of the country for answers. He was surprised to find that even under early Dutch rule rural communities were striving for an own identity. English occupation only aggravated these feelings. Lord Milner made no secret of regarding the Afrikaner as backward and uncivilised, and he was by no means alone in this view. The brewing Afrikaner nationalism, gaining momentum since the early 1900s, came to the boil in the 1948 election.

Power, however, is seductive and seduction contains the seeds of its own destruction. The new regime was equally high handed over other groups also striving for identity - doing unto others as others did unto them. Still later he condemned it outright and felt embarrassed about his early views. When he settled again in South Africa in 1991 the end of apartheid was already in sight. He wondered how the village and his family would have adjusted to the changes. Would he be able to connect with them?

As he came down the last hill to the village he saw the blue gum plantation where he and Willie played Tarzan, and cowboys and crooks. Those games seemed so infantile now but still brought a lump in his throat. The tip of the church spire appeared above the first houses. Otherwise the village was almost unrecognizable as it slowly unfolded before him. There would be little to remind him of the old days. A good sign.

There may even be some chance that he could overcome any lingering subjective bias.

2

He had no address for his sister or her husband’s business. The village could not be that big for it to be a problem and he had Johan’s number if he got lost. As the attendant came back with his petrol card and the slip to sign he asked him if he knew the shop owned by Mr Maree.

Mr Johan Maree? Mrs Ena’s husband?

Yes. He was amazed that the village was still small enough for everyone to know everyone. Perhaps it was only petrol attendants who would knew most.

"In Church Street, Mr Du Toit.’ The attendant got his surname from the petrol card. ‘It is just below the hotel. It is a big shop with sports things in the windows. You can’t miss it.’

As he drove through town he looked in vain for a vaguely familiar face. Even the facial characteristics seemed to have undergone change. It was almost like seeing evolution in progress. Noticeable after only five decades? Maybe it was.

Most of the dusty old streets were transformed into sterile tarred tops with neat screeded sidewalks. His first stop was in All Saints Street in front of where their old house would have been, with the workshop next to it and a petrol pump in front. It was gone. He could only stare at a block of flats that looked incongruous in its surroundings. There was nothing remotely recognizable. On one side he could still recognise the house where Willie lived and on the other side Aunt Leen’s, both with alterations and with modernizations that made them difficult to assimilate. What else, he thought, could he expect after such a long time?

It was indeed easy to find Johan’s shop. It was very central with large display windows. Inside was equally impressive. With soft lighting and spacious layout, it appeared to cover all the popular sporting activities. An assistant directed him to a glass enclosure but Johan had already spotted him and was coming out to meet him. Johan was grey like himself but balder.

‘Pietie I presume,’ Johan said and extended a hand in greeting.

‘And you are Johan?’

‘That’s right. Welcome back. Did you recognise the village?’

‘It is still in the same place Johan, and the same church. It must be Bredasdorp.’

They laughed. Johan was two years ahead of him at school and Pietie could not remember much of him. He was the only son of the Maree owner of the then Maree & De Wet (& Kie) who was married to one of the Nosies, the De Wet sisters. They went to the office where Johan switched on an Espresso machine that spat out two very restorative cups of coffee.