MY DAPPLED LIFE - A QUILT OF MEMORIES. CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ZAMBIA

 

Having so many lonely times in my life in the mining village, I longed to have another baby. Séan and I had always wanted a large family and it would be nice, I thought, to have a baby when we could afford one and when I could take care of the little one myself for a change, while my son and daughter could share with me in the joy of the little one's upbringing.  With all the attention they were receiving from me, they were learning new things every day. But no new baby made announcement.

Séan was saving away.  But we were fully conscious that trouble was brewing very close to our border and fearful that one day it might spill over to us.  Maybe it was anxiety that was keeping me from another pregnancy.  After several months, my doctor spoke to me.  “I’m afraid you will never have another child,” he told me regretfully.  Despite my disappointment I was very happy that I still had my daughter and son.

“Why would you want another child?  Children are expensive!” my friends asked when I spoke about this as we were having a tea party together.   But this day I was to be the prima donna and all eyes would be on me.

“On Séan’s salary I could afford a dozen,” I said stoutly.

There was dead silence.  All their husbands were earning as much money as Séan did and some got more, but there is a particular kind of lassitude intrinsic to the contradicting of an obvious untruth. It was easier just to agree that babies are unaffordable, even though children are such a blessing.  Nine months later several babies were born to mothers in our street and I hoped my comment had had something to do with that.

Meanwhile, my appreciation of the mining village was diminishing until it finally faded altogether.  About five o’clock on New Year’s Day we were fast asleep when we woke up to screaming. It was coming ever closer down the road.  Our street was practically deserted.  The majority of the miners were South Africans who had gone home to their families ‘down south’.

Séan and I woke up at the same time and lay, rigid with horror, listening to the approaching multitude. We decided to take our children and run to the neighbours' house, hoping for safety in numbers. I tore on a coat over my nightie and flew into the children’s bedroom where Séan was already picking Nicolette up.  I our son up and we ran outside.  There was no thought of saving our belongings, not even of our savings book.  All we wanted to do was reach safety.

Since there were no fences in our gardens, by going out of the back door we managed to avoid the first of the roisterers.  As we passed the backyard of the empty house next door, suddenly the sun came up.  I looked towards the street where the people sounded as if they were already in the street in front of our garden and so they were.

It became light almost immediately and suddenly the noise behind us stopped.  We knocked loudly on Jane and Earl’s back door, and they arrived, mystified.  We looked nervously behind ourselves and there was not a soul in sight.  I could only conclude that they had all gone back into the jungle.

“Didn’t you hear anything?” we asked. 

“Not a thing.”

“Please lock!” I begged.  “There was a crowd coming down the road and I thought they were coming to kill us.  I’ve never been so scared.  Don’t ask me where they got to when daylight came."

So there we were at the crack of dawn, drinking hot, steaming coffee and if we could have left the area that very day it would have been time enough in my opinion.  Earl was civil about our untimely call.  As he accompanied us outside, it was about five twenty in the morning.  He grinned and said: “Drop in any time.”

We had Mass that day and I told Father Ludwig about it. 

I knew one thing. I didn't want to spend another New Year in the mining village and I started asking Séan to leave Zambia. 

Some months later Earl went to visit his mother who lived outside of Brakpan, where we had stayed.  One day Jane came running to our house.  It was her turn to be terrified.

“Séan!  Séan!” she begged, “please come to my house.  A spider fell down from the ceiling and it is hanging on a cup.”

Séan went with her to help her and I realised how brave I had become as far as spiders were concerned.  Those were not spiders like the ones you meet in most other places.  They have eyes which dart at you and move like greased lightning on their thick hairy legs.  If you swipe at them from the right, they scuttle to the left and back again.  Many of them are very poisonous.   

Once I saw two Alsatians scavenging from the bin one day.  I passed them to go inside and told Séan who said: “Those aren’t Alsatians.  I think they’re wolves.  They must have come out of the jungle."

One day as I stood watering the front lawn, Séan was talking to Jack, our neighbour on the other side.  Our children were playing around me.  Jack’s wife Pat came out and I dropped the hosepipe, wanting to talk to her. 

Suddenly the children started laughing and I turned around to see a massive ape, almost as tall as myself, come walking out from the jungle, cross the tar road, and enter our garden. I was energised. "At least I'll have something to write about to the family in South Africa this week," I thought. Then I heard Séan's voice, intoning: "Take the children by the hand, Lu, and start walking towards Pat's front door. Close it quickly behind you. Don't show him you're scared." 

Until then I hadn't been scared but now I was, though less so than Pat who slammed the front door shut behind her, so I walked over to her kitchen door, opened it, pushed in the children and shut that door behind us. Just then Pat appeared in the kitchen from the other door with the face of the monkey behind her.

“Your face!” Pat said, laughing.  I indicated the monkey behind her. Pat looked over her shoulder, and rushed out via the kitchen door, grabbing one child in each hand on her way and I followed, closing the door behind us in the monkey’s face.  

Shortly afterwards Jack and Pat got the mine to give them another house, situated in the centre of the village – a little further away from the jungle and surrounded by a fence.

The end of the incident could have been a very happy one for me but I had lost my nerve.  Almost the entire street came to my front garden where Mr Monkey sat on the stoep, flanked by Séan, Pat (who had somehow regained her nerve) and Jack, the monkey eating bananas, peeling them before consuming them and working up a gastro attack.  I served gallons of tea by way of the window.  Later they took the monkey away to a safe home.

I kept on asking Séan to let our family leave Zambia. He yielded to my unrelenting requests and we sold up all the things we had so painstakingly collected in South Africa.  We were going “home” to Mother Ireland whose depressed economy would offer us no employment.  Séan put in his notice and while he was working his last month I discovered I was pregnant.  Our second son was on the way.

 

 Image courtesy of ChatGPT with CN Whittle

Many names have been changed

 

 

 

MY DAPPLED LIFE - A QUILT OF MEMORIES. CHAPTER TWELVE. ZAMBIA

Chafing under the yoke of penny-pinching

The continued lack of money was beginning to take its toll on Séan.  I had become inured to poverty which had prevailed in my life ever since we had left Holland.  But Séan had made very good money before he married me and was chafing under the yoke of having since become penniless.  Life without a car in South Africa with its vast distances limited our movements considerably and it did not look as if we would ever be able to buy another one.  It almost seemed as if we were having a run of bad luck.

Coffee and pies

Every evening as we came home from Johannesburg we would feel half starved.  Once when we changed trains in Benoni we found there was always a lovely fire burning throughout winter in the station waiting room.  Piping hot coffee and pies were served.  Near payday when the dibs were temporarily in tune I sometimes asked Séan to come out with me in Benoni and have coffee and a pie next to the open fire in the waiting room to rally our resources before stepping onto the next train and continuing our journey. 

Zambian Copperbelt

One day we were sitting there waiting for the next train when Séan showed me an advertisement in the newspaper for miners for a mine in the Zambian Copperbelt.

“I thought you were scared of the mine,” I said.

“I am,” he said, “It’s a terrifying existence.  But to watch my family squirming in misery for lack of money is worse.  Look at these fringe benefits!  Free housing, water and lights, medical benefits and a pension.  I say we go for it.  What say you?”

“I’m in.”

Mining village

Séan applied for employment in the mining village and got the job.  He gave a month’s notice immediately but it would take six months before all the red tape had been completed and he would receive his first full month’s salary.  How we subsisted on my wages in the interim remains a miracle to me.  Our housekeeper who was always first to be paid even though all of us were on short commons learned to stand dead still, press her back to the wall and play possum whenever one of our creditors was banging on the window in order to reclaim the fridge or the washing machine because we had fallen behind on the instalments.

Meeting at the bus stop

One day Nicolette crossed the street and went to stand at the bus stop. We were living just beside an overhead bridge and there were slip roads on both sides of the double carriage highway.  How she got across is anyone’s guess.  A lady driving past picked her up and took her to the houses in the neighbourhood.  When she got to my house the housekeeper had not missed her.  Nicolette had told the lady: “My mommy come.”  It was the second angelic miracle in her short life.  But if I had stopped working we would have starved to death and the housekeeper promised in future to lock up the house like Fort Knox.

To Zambia

Three months later Séan left for Zambia.  My father lent him the money for a train ticket but he arrived there in mid-month and it would still take six weeks before his first full pay-day.  Meanwhile I sold the house for the same amount we had paid for it, although we had painted and fixed it up inside and out at high expense.  We still owed money for paint to the hardware shop.  I put my furniture into a removal van and informed the driver that Séan would pay for it at the other end.  The coup de grâce came when we discovered that during all the months he had not worked on the South African mines, his mine workers’ union fees had not been paid and that these had to be covered before he could be allowed underground.

Springs

While I continued working in Johannesburg as long as it would take, the buyers moved in and allowed me to stay on in the main bedroom but this was not an ideal situation for either family, so I moved to my parents’ home in Springs.  My mother bought air tickets for the children and myself.  Finally, six weeks to the day Séan had left home, our son, Nicolette and I flew to Zambia.

Travel

The trip was horrendous.  I sat at a place with a table on which the two children rolled, curled, climbed and yelled at the top of their voices.  There was a Catholic nun sitting opposite the table who was reciting one rosary after another.  

Among the passengers beyond, a middle-aged lady was seated who looked as if during her teenage years she had been one of those girls at school everybody automatically votes in as head-girl.  She was spare and attractive and dressed in a simple blouse and skirt of impeccable cut.  The air hostess had told me that she was the wife of the mine manager in the mine village where Séan was working.  

I was wondering what she and the other passengers must be thinking of me, lacking in control over my children as I was.  This was, of course, understandable, since I had worked until the day before leaving South Africa and the children had been looked after by others, so I had not established many rules with them.

Kind understanding

Only once the eyes of the lady with the strong personality met mine; at a time when the kids were at their noisiest and I realised why the mine manager had married her.  I was looking around wildly and deeply embarrassed, at a loss what to do next, when across the aisle she smiled and gave me an almost heart-stopping look of infinite patience and indescribable maternal warmth, contained amusement and empathy – one mother who had been there, got the T-shirt and sent the postcard, who knew exactly how it was with the other in the latter’s hour of need.  The look said: “Loosen up.  This is what all kids do, given half a chance; not just yours.  Who’d be a mother, hey?”  For a moment my heart opened and shut. 

I remembered that look when years later I read in the book ‘He and I’ that Our Lord had said to Gabrielle Bossis: “A look can go straight to the soul and touch it.”

I was never to meet that mine manager’s wife in the mining village, for we did not move in the same circles.  But I’m still grateful for that look.

Reunion

Séan was waiting for us at the airport and we drove back in a car he had borrowed from the local Catholic parish priest.

I was crying with joy as I had missed Séan so horrendously. In the car, the children, worn out by their antics on the air trip, fell asleep and did not bother us.

Arriving in the village that night in the private house Séan had hired while on the waiting list for a mine-house, I found my own familiar furniture.  Immediately I felt at home. The house had a long passage and on its wall reposed the largest spider I had ever seen.  I pushed the kids inside the bedroom, gave Séan a shove into the passage to take care of the spider and returned to cower in the bedroom with our offspring.  There was silence in the passage and I feared that Séan was dead.  When he re-entered the bedroom, having removed the spider outside, he was roaring with laughter. 

“Never mind if I get poisoned, as long as you are OK, right.” 

“You’ve got it in one,” I replied.

Debt-free for the first time

Three days after our arrival, Séan received his first full pay cheque and it amounted to two hundred and fifty pounds.  You will realise how much money that was when I tell you that our house in South Africa had cost two thousand five hundred pounds.  I had been earning sixty pounds in Johannesburg and had not received a salary from Séan for over five months so this pay packet represented five months of his salary to me.  

We immediately sent my parents the money we owed them for our transport and were completely debt-free for the first time in our married life. Séan started saving which was easy, since we were not paying for rent, electricity, lights or medical aid.  Séan bought a bike and cycled to the mine at night as he worked shifts.

Although my grinding money problems were thus ended as though by magic, I was very lonely in Zambia.  I tried to be the best mother to our son and Nicolette I could ever be, because they had seen so pathetically little of me during their earliest years.  I went to church and the few shops in the tiny town pushing our son in a pushcart while  Nicolette stood on its little step, holding on to the side bars.

Furniture

I had given my fridge to my mother who was paying off the balance of the instalments, so I had been delighted to find a fridge and stove on the premises.  Most of my neighbours had arrived without any furniture and were issued basic furniture for lounge, dining-room and bedroom for seventeen pounds.  It was odd to go from house to house and see the same wooden furniture in each.

Insurance

A man started visiting us who was called Andy and wanted us to take out a large insurance.  I told Andy I did not feel we were ready for this yet.  Andy called me Girl.

“Look, I’m not a salesman, Girl.  I’m simply your friendly adviser.  Just imagine Séan here kicks the bucket.  Where do you and your kids stand?”

“Ah please, Andy,” I implored.  “Just drink your tea and let’s talk about the news.  I don’t want Séan to take out insurance before we’ve been here just a little longer.”

“Ja, but what if something happens in the meantime?  Then you’ll be caught napping, won’t you, Girl?”

“It’ll be me caught napping, Andy – not you.”

“Of course, Girl.  I only want the two of you to regard me as your friend.”

He and Séan must have been meeting at the club or the pub in my absence, however, for one afternoon his car swept up our driveway and Séan disappeared through the back door after a hasty injunction to me to tell Andy he had changed his mind about signing those papers after all.

“Andy,” I said desperately, “you know I told you we weren’t ready for insurance yet.  Now I want you to keep dropping in on us but as a friend, not as a rep.”

Andy spent five minutes telling me what he thought of my craven spouse while I stood, my head bowed.  Then he faded from our lives.

Angels on point duty

My son still couldn’t walk, but he crawled through the house with the speed of a meteor.  One day I was watching him and Nicolette play in our unfenced back garden from the kitchen window when a knock came to the front door.  It was Father Ludwig.  He kept me talking for a while but I had a dreadful sense of panic about my son so in the end I excused myself and ran out.  

Outside, a lady holding my son on her arm called out to me, "Is he yours?"  He had crawled from the house. I took him from her, apologised and thanked her. She introduced herself as Jane and her husband as Earl.  I took our baby to the house. Again I felt that the angels had been on point duty and I gave heartfelt thanks to God.

Firm friends

Naturally after that Jane and I became firm friends and I still remember her with great affection.  She was an English girl who had been nursing in London when Earl, an Afrikaner tourist, had come in as a patient.  His surname was Le Roux and he was pelting his fellow patients with banana peels.  The sister of the ward told Jane to go and stop him and she walked over to him.  “Mr le Roux, I’m sorry but this is not permitted.”  Two weeks later they were married.  By now they had three children; a boy and two girls.

Jane and her parents had lived with her grandparents.  Her grandfather had been working in the consulate in India.  One day when she was reminiscing, I asked her what position her grandfather had held. 

“No particular one,” she replied.  “He was just one of the personnel force.”

“Wasn’t he the consul?” I asked and she laughed.

“Well, ja, he was,” she said.

“So why didn’t you say so?”

“Because I wouldn’t have told you if he had been in jail either.”

That was Jane, humble, accomplished and a good friend.

Learning to walk

One day she discovered that whenever I got up from my chair to leave the room, my son would get up and walk behind me.  The minute I turned around, he would plop down on the floor.  The first time we put this to the test, the young man was busted.  Soon he was joining his sister and all the children from the street whose mothers brought them to visit in their games.

Congo martyrs and Ms Alice Lenshina

We lived in a street which faced the jungle.  A few miles from our village on the jungle road was the Belgian Congo border where, we were told, tragically nuns were being martyred. May their dear souls rest in peace.

Shortly after we arrived, Zambia became independent. A lady, Ms Alice Lenshina, gathered a group around her. As I understand the story, clashes occurred, and a number of her followers were killed.

Fr Ludwig and the crucifix

Meanwhile, I was for the first time since my children were born, spending all my time with them.  Father Ludwig spoke fluent Chibemba.  He was a missionary to the core, and faithfully ministered to his parishioners.   

One day, two missionary priests in long white robes returned from Belgium and visited him on their way to the Congo.  Father Ludwig brought them to us for lunch that Sunday.  The older of the two looked not a day less than seventy but it turned out that he was only forty-two.  Such was the stress of the strife in the Congo. 

In our town, no church had been built as yet so we had Mass in the church hall.  I belonged to the Women’s League and Fr Ludwig was running bingo sessions on Tuesday nights, which I couldn’t attend because Séan worked shifts.  Nevertheless, at the church hall I ended up scrubbing out ten rooms and washing windows for my sins. The people said they would attend only if Father took out the massive wooden crucifix on Tuesdays.  As saintly as Fr Ludwig was, he wanted to get that church built.

I was washing the outside windows when he climbed up on a high ladder, took down the crucifix and tottered perilously down again.  I thought: “Gosh Father, how can you?  Who are they to tell you what you cannot do here?  Is their money that important?”  Suddenly tears by the cupful washed his face and he kissed the crucifix of Christ with what I can only describe as tenderness.  I realised then that churches were not built without a measure of pragmatism.  

Vegetable garden

Green vegetables were hard to come by in Zambia and Séan started growing our own beans and tomatoes.  Every house except ours in the street had banana trees so everyone I knew offloaded their surplus bananas off on us.  A Dutch family in our church had a magnificent vegetable garden and they gave me some produce when I told them Father Ludwig was bringing a visiting priest to our house for lunch.  The visitor was also Dutch.

“I know him,” the lady said.  “Please ask him to come and see us too.” And I promised.

After lunch the visiting priest sat back with a contented sigh.  “You should be the housekeeper at our presbytery,” he said.  “Where did you get those lovely greens?”

“From Mrs Appel’s garden,” I told him.  “By the way she knows you and asked if you would come and see her afterwards.  I said I’d ask.”

“Lovely family,” Father Ludwig commented. I heard later that the family duly received a visit. 

I have never forgotten the wonderful vegetables.

Image courtesy of ChatGPT with CN Whittle "Priest with crucifix"

A number of names have been changed

MY DAPPLED LIFE - A QUILT OF MEMORIES. CHAPTER ELEVEN. SÉAN'S MINE ACCIDENT

 

                                                               Séan Whittle and friend

Mine accident

One day Séan fell off a six foot ledge underground and hurt his back.  In terms of his contract, he should have reported the incident in case he might need workmen’s compensation, but he was in a hurry to go home and play with his babies.  Later on he landed in hospital in Johannesburg for six weeks but by then it was too late for him to claim. 

In those days sick ‘day’s pay’ miners received only twelve days sick leave  per annum.  Taxes were not deducted on a monthly basis but annually and we had earned good money between us, all now spent on the stolen car, so we owed a lot of tax for the previous year.  The timing of the tax demand coincided with Séan’s hospitalisation.  When we were unable to pay, the taxman garnisheed a part of Séan’s salary.  Séan was supposed to get two or three pounds a week at work from some benevolent fund, details of which I cannot now recall, but even that the taxman took before I could get my hands on it.  So it was back to the grindstone.

Temporary work

This time I did temporary work in Johannesburg so that I could stay home in case our son or Nicolette became ill.  After work I visited Séan at the hospital if there was time before catching the five o’clock train back to Brakpan and making it to the crèche by six by the skin of my teeth.  Then I’d carry the kids back to the next bus home and I can assure you that when our heads hit the pillow by seven thirty the three of us slept like logs until the alarm rang at five the next morning.  It’s amazing what you can do when you have to.

Daily grind

In the mornings, I left the house with the children fully washed and dressed in time for the six o’clock bus to the crèche behind the station where, fortunately they were given a full cooked breakfast.  Then there was a brisk walk back to the station for me, followed by a seat on the train to Johannesburg if there was one vacant.  

Wrong train

One afternoon I took the wrong train home and failed to discover my mistake until I arrived in Randfontein at the end of the West Rand line.  Because this particular train stopped at nearly all the stations on the line I knew it would take me almost an hour to go back to Johannesburg by the next train, never mind the time I’d have to spend in Johannesburg awaiting the East Rand connection.

At the Randfontein station I telephoned the Brakpan crèche from a telephone booth and explained the situation.  The woman at the other end was furious.

“I’ve been looking after your children for almost twelve hours now and I have my own children waiting for me at home,” she said. 

“I’ll phone my sister in Springs and ask her to drive through,” I said.

My fabulous sister

Elly was now married.  She was working and awaiting the birth of her first child.  In those days we had no cellphones and so it was a toss up whether I’d reach her.  I phoned my brother-in-law's work and he said he and Elly were going to supper with friends. “Speak to Elly,” my brother-in-law said.  When I heard my sister’s voice I burst into tears. Elly said:

“Never mind the supper.  I’ll phone our friends.  This is more important. Explain how we can get to that crèche and we’ll be on our way at once.”

When I arrived at Brakpan station two hours later my children were enjoying the attention they were receiving from their uncle and aunt.

Successor to dear Aline

After this I took them out of the crèche and employed another lady, who took good care of the children and kept the place spotless.  Although I earned three pounds a day five days a week, there was hardly any money left after I had paid the rent, wages, water and lights, our son's formula and my train season ticket.  Most of what was left over was used to pay whichever one of our creditors I drew from the hat that month. 

One day the housekeeper waited until eight when I arrived home after visiting Séan in Johannesburg before making food for herself and her husband.  It smelled so heavenly, just onions, tomatoes and toast, and I longed for her to offer me some but she must have thought I had eaten in Johburg.  Nicolette ate little and our son had his formula.  However, I have listened to the parable of the Prodigal Son with different ears since then.

Needing the pay

One weekend while I was still temping and Séan was still off sick after the mine accident, our son's formula had run out.  I was supposed to get paid on Fridays and the petty cash box was put into the safe at three every afternoon.  By ten to three I whispered to the accountant:

“You do remember I haven’t been paid yet, don’t you?”  He lost his temper and screamed at the top of his voice, causing the rest of the staff to sit up and take notice:

“Don’t worry Mrs Whittle.  You’ll GET your money.” 

I wanted the earth to swallow me up but the staff looked at me, not judgementally but with sincere empathy.  He might have been working for his health but clearly I was not the only one who needed every cent I earned.  I realised that day that one can take a lot if one needs money to feed one’s child.

Lovely visit

My monthly season ticket was valid for the weekends too so I would take the train to Johannesburg on Saturdays and Sundays to visit Séan in hospital.  One of my Springs friends and her daughter were visiting her husband.  She offered to take me home past Brakpan in her car.

Her husband being in hospital and most of her relatives having congregated in the passage (I assure you, there were more than twenty standing or sitting there), my acquaintance and her daughter had been invited to coffee with the family.  I watched the party with absorbed interest.

Once inside the flat, the people so suave and sophisticated in their behaviour outside were transformed and the place became like a beehive, buzzing with their voluble conversation.

Entranced, I listened until my beautiful hostess steered me from the kitchen into the lounge where two gentleman were chatting together.  They took me under their wing with genuine kindness and interesting stories.  

Age of courtesy is past

A week after my visit to the family, Séan came back home from hospital.  In due course he returned to work but he had developed a fear of mining, so I encouraged him to resign and find a job as a clerk in Johannesburg.  I stopped temping and found full-time work there myself.  We went to work together in the mornings.  I was earning more than he was but together we were struggling to pay our debts off and I imagined that we had landed in that area of life which is called the darkest hour of the night that comes before the dawn.

We walked through a large patch of veld after leaving the train and there was a little footpath we used to follow.  During the rainy season the path had become muddy and my foot slipped in the mud.  I landed on my hands and feet and stayed in that position for a while, thinking: “This is just too much!”

In the pitch dark of the evening, Séan stood with his back to me and his shoulders were shaking.  “Don’t cry Séan, I’m all right.  Truly!” I said and struggled up.  When I reached him I discovered that, far from crying, he was laughing soundlessly, the tears of mirth running down his face.

“The age of courtesy is past indeed,” I commented acidly as I wiped my mud-smeared hands dry on my skirt as best I could.  Then I burst out laughing myself.  We must have looked a strange pair, making our way into the house, me covered in mud, and laughing fit to beat the band, while my housekeeper looked at us and the children clapped their hands for joy to see us come home.

Best sandwich ever

Food was still at a premium in my home and one day my colleague had organised a sales meeting and was left with a number of toasted sandwiches with mayonnaise.  She gave me two.  I ate one – it tasted like the Swedish bread and butter sent to Holland after the war – and phoned Séan to come to a spot midway between his office and mine at lunchtime.  

When I got there he was waiting for me.  He ate his sandwich with the utmost relish.  Even when we were over forty years married, he occasionally recalled that instance to my mind and expressed how I had won his heart again that day.    It’s that kind of love our marriage was made of, despite all the arguments his Irish temper and my Dutch obstinacy caused during those years.  First generation immigrants have such days and they form character.  I will say that in those days I never battled with my weight.

Electricity cut off

Another evening we arrived home to darkness.  The electricity had been cut off because it hadn’t been paid for.  It was a happy family occasion, each of us with a child on our lap, eating bread and jam and drinking milk in the flickering candlelight, and planning how to get out of our financial hurdle.  After all, we argued, it wasn’t possible for bad luck to continue forever.

Impromptu party

Because we no longer had a car, we took to walking to Holy Mass on Sunday afternoons.  An English Dominican celebrated Mass in a classroom.  We sat at the school desks and there was a lady who sang so beautifully that I was sure you could not have heard better in La Scala.

“This parish is so poor,” Séan said after the prayers after Mass we said before these were discontinued in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.  “I know we’re battling but their need seems to be greater.  Would you mind if I gave three pounds to Father?”

“Of course not,” I answered for the Dutch have a saying: ”De arme gegeven is Gode geleend” – what’s given to the poor is lent to God. I believed we surely needed to make an investment into the heavenly vaults.  Maybe Our Lord would pay us favourable dividends, I hoped.  We waited for the priest who rushed past us to his battered car, driving off without realizing our presence.

I could see Séan was feeling very foolish, looking at the three pounds in his hand::

“What shall I do with this now?”

The Amsterdam practical side of my character came to the fore.

“It’s money from home,” I said.  “On the way back, we’ll stop at the café and buy all the cold drink, ice creams, chocolates, sweets and biscuits we never can afford.  Tonight we’ll all celebrate.”

At home Séan told me that he’d take care of the children. Our pigeon pair were still sleeping in our bedroom to share in the benison of the electric heater.  I took my time getting ready for bed, and when I returned the children were half asleep, holding their bottles, having been bathed and had their treat.  I cannot tell you how snug we were in the middle of all our hardships. The room looked beautiful in the dim light of a bedside lamp and the heater was plugged in.  There was a plate with food on my bedside table, next to my library book and my rosary.  I lifted my glass of Coke and proposed a toast to the Father who had been the unwitting host at our table while at the same time I knew that God would bless Séan’s generous intentions.  The lack of material wealth always drew Séan and I close instead of apart as some people say happens when poverty comes in the door.

 

*Some names have been changed

MY DAPPLED LIFE - A QUILT OF MEMORIES. CHAPTER TEN. OUR BEAUTIFUL SON WAS BORN

 

Nicolette’s first Christmas and our second one as a married couple approached.  At my parents’ home we always used to receive dozens of Christmas cards but Séan and I received only five.  The year before we received only four.  The two lots together made a goodly little show on the mantelpiece, although they were mostly from the same people.

Teddy-bear Sandy

However, by that second Christmas we had a little baby who spent her days collapsing with laughter at the antics of her usually so reserved father.  She got a teddy bear at the mine Christmas tree.  It had a tag on it, proclaiming: “My name is Sandy.”  She could speak no English but had mastered a few words in Zulu.  She pronounced her toy’s name as Sheshie, lisping the sibilants and using Aline’s Zulu pronunciation.

She, her father, the teddy bear and I had our Christmas dinner together, she in her high chair, screaming with laughter at the sight of her father wearing a paper hat.

Return to work

The new year approached and we returned to work.  I worked as secretary to a firm in Johannesburg. 

Soon my pregnant state began to show.  Hardened by my warehouse experience, I didn’t hide my situation but once again I had a lovable boss who allowed me to stay on.  He was an ex-army man who was one of the first South Africans to go up north to Egypt during World War II. He had a heart for everyone on the staff, which I really appreciated.

Baby leapt

One day at work as I was typing I felt the baby give an unprecedentedly huge leap in my womb and I wondered what had happened but later I forgot about it.  A colleague at the desk beside me, looked up:

“What was that all about?” she asked. 

“He seems to be very busy today,” I answered.

Though again it was not easy to work during a pregnancy, I had taken pity on Séan.  He had had nothing but trouble with the mine manager’s car which spent more time in the garage than anywhere else and simply guzzled petrol.    The firm I worked for was an auto engineering company, so I had our car done up as new at reduced rates during the last three months of my pregnancy, decking it out with white walled tyres and a new massive curved windscreen because the old one had a crack.  When I had paid for all the parts and repairs,  I retired once more from the working class.  I was seven months pregnant.

Heavy payments for car

The day I left work, I gave back nearly my entire salary and holiday money to finish paying all the car parts I had bought but there was enough left to celebrate that night, Séan took Nicolette and me to bioscope in Benoni.  It was an Oriental kind of show about a girl singing how pretty she felt.  I still become uneasy whenever I hear that song fifty-two years later, because of what happened afterwards. 

Stolen car

Having been up since five thirty, I felt drowsy and handed Nicolette, who was already out for the count, to Séan before falling asleep myself.  Feeling refreshed from my two hour nap, I stumbled out with the rest of the audience afterwards.  Since the car which had looked so shiny and beautiful had been parked in front of the cinema, it didn’t take us long discover that it had been stolen.  A good Samaritan saw us wandering pathetically through the streets of Benoni, looking for the police station and looking lost, and stopped his car.  He took us first to the police and then home, a long distance.  I have known guardian angels in human form.  He was one.

Total destruction

At twelve o’clock that night there was a knock on the front door.  The police told us our car had been found in a veld near Dunnottar, totally destroyed.  What contents the thieves had not removed had been dragged out of the car and sabotaged.  The curved windscreen which had cost two months of my salary had been dragged out and smashed with a hammer and the car seats slashed with a knife.  Worst of all, we weren’t insured.  We sold the car for scrap for a hundred pounds the following week.  I prayed for the perpetrators for many years.  Totally unthinkingly they had done more harm than they could ever imagine.  Séan, who wanted nothing for himself but loved his car, could never bear to mention it again.

Junior bike

Jos had borrowed Séan’s racing bike but when Séan went to ask him for it back Jos confessed that it had been stolen outside his friend’s house and my parents were unable to replace it.  As a quid pro quo Jos gave Séan his own bike, a junior model, which was held together by string and we were back to square one in the transport stakes.  Ten days after leaving work I landed back in the maternity ward in Springs, six weeks before my due date.

I felt no pain.  I went to sleep in the hospital bed at seven in the evening and woke up at midnight. The sister-on-duty attended to me. One hour and forty-five minutes later, our beautiful son was born.  There had been no time to call the doctor.

Our beautiful son

Our son was six pounds in weight and looked more beautiful than Nicolette ever had, but there was a very worrying thing which the sister showed me.  There was a loose knot in the umbilical cord.  I remember again that big leap in my womb at work and wondered if it had happened then. 

“If the knot had tightened any more, the oxygen to the brain would have been cut off,” the sister said.  I understood then that if our son had been a full term baby and that loose knot had tightened during the remaining six weeks, he would probably have been hurt or dead and gave profound thanks to God for bringing him soon.

I thought my mother would tell me now that Nicolette had been a plain-looking baby after all but all she said was:

“I always thought your first child was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen.  But this one is even more beautiful.”

Sad farewell to Aline

Aline got a job with a more affluent neighbour.  Her new employer was not amused when Séan asked her to look after Nicolette when Séan went to see us on Jos’s junior bike.  He had to cross an overhead railway bridge on the way and two or three times on his trips he needed to stop the bike and retie the ropes.

Our son was in an incubator and back at home, after I had left the hospital, I experienced a severe attack of baby blues.

Our son was baptised on 15 August, the feast of Our Lady’s Assumption.  My sister Miekie was still in high school and was wearing her school uniform when she stood as godmother.  Then she said goodbye and had to rush off to school.

Sweet baby

Our son was different from sixteen-month-old Nicolette, who had been like a little monkey, always wriggling out of my arms.  He lay quietly in my arms, barely cried and quietly lay in his pram.  The place looked a shambles because I never was an inspired housewife.  Though I worked with determination, the results were generally below par in the housekeeping stakes.  Nicolette thought her brother was the most beautiful baby in the world.  She cooed and pulled a motherly little face whenever he was awake: “Ag shame, de baba!” she said. Nicolette was trying to say, "how sweet is the baby!"

Good father

Séan made a tremendous fuss of our son.  He was always so good with our babies.  We used to look at our son and laugh and talk with him.

The confinement having come so early had put our finances right back where they had been before I had gone to work.  Fortunately we had the hundred pounds and could cover the doctor and the nursing home.  We also put a deposit on a fridge, no luxury in that climate.  When the bills were settled, we were poorer than ever.  But luckily, as a later colleague of Séan’s would one day say: “Compensitis set in.”  The unemployment fee I received was not massive but it helped to feed us for a number of weeks.

Doing the best I could

I was trying all in my power to refrain from having to go back to work.  Though I was still doing the best I could, I sometimes lost the plot.  A lady in the street behind us had two children a little older than my two.  She was the perfect housewife and mother and I blushed at the thought of the difference between us.  I managed to keep most of the house tidy but my bedroom where the kids were sleeping with us because we could only afford one electric fire between us looked like a building site.

I'll clean when I get back

We had run out of baby formula and Séan was working night shift.  I left him with my pigeon pair and took the ten o’clock bus to go to the chemist and the supermarket.  Before I went I had bathed our son and changed the bedding in his pram and he looked like a little prince.  But the bed was unmade, the ashtray was littered with stubs, there were towels and discarded clothes on the floor and there were pages of newspaper everywhere.  “I’ll clean all this up when I get back,” I promised myself and came back on the very next bus.

Mrs Smith

“Your neighbour Mrs Smith arrived to congratulate you,” Séan told me, “and she left you a present.  She asked to see the baby.”

“Oh?  Did you bring him out?”

“No, of course not, he was fast asleep.  But I brought her in.”

“What?  Into the bedroom?  How could you drop me like that?  What did she say?”

“Well she looked rather stunned but she was too polite to comment.  I said: ‘If we can find the pram, we’ll find the baby’.”

Loan

I had asked my dad and my sister to sign surety for us for a loan to a lending bank.  I thought another hundred pounds should see us right.  My father arrived by bicycle from Springs and I made us coffee.  He had brought the forms over to our house to complete them for me.

“What’s the name of your bank?” he asked.  For a moment I was stumped.  Would I be borrowing money if I had a bank account?  Then I brightened.

“The bank in town!” I suggested.  “That’s if they’ll have me.”

Not so welcome

I was making a huge effort with the garden which had run to seed and had had the entire lawn replanted with grass of the Kikuyu variety. 

“I’ll get my husband to loan you our roller,” said the friendly lady across the road who had explained to my gardener how it was done. 

But when my gardener and I crossed the road one Saturday, she was less forthcoming.  Her husband was all smiles and invited me in for tea.  I was yearning to return to my lawn but did not want to look as if I only visited them to see what I could get out of them.  He went to call his wife and left by the door which led from the sitting room via the kitchen into the passage.  She had recently had an operation and in retrospect I assume she was experiencing some post-operation blues. 

There was a second door in that wall.  This one led straight from the living room in into the passage and stood wide open.  Thus it happened that I saw him arrive at their open bedroom door.  His wife came out.

“That Dutchwoman from across the road is here,” he mimed.

“Oh h***!” she mimed.

“She says she’s come to talk to you,” he said in swift signs.

“I don’t want to talk to her,” she gesticulated.

“You’ve jolly well got to,” he gestured.  “What on earth am I to tell her?”

“I don’t care.  Tell her anything you like but for goodness’ sake, get rid of her!”

Haerendel's "The Old Fisherman"

Suddenly, realising the door behind him was open, he shied like a nervous horse and looked over his shoulder into the sitting room, only to find me gazing in rapt admiration at the reproduction of an old sea salt in oilskins, a pipe clenched between his teeth.  Moments later his wife shot into the room via the kitchen, all black chignon and perfect figure, her face wreathed in hospitable smiles. 

“My dear, how kind of you to call on us!  What will it be, tea or coffee?” 

Talk about tea choking you, my dear, but I manfully drained my cup.  And I must say the garden looked professional after the gardener had worked his magic with the roller.  

*Some names have been changed

Image courtesy of ChatGPT and CN Whittle "Baby booties"