years with Grandma Florie before her life of broken-heartedness consumed her. She died at Groote Schuur Hospital while in a diabetic coma. I wanted her back. I devised all kinds of plans to get her back out of that place in the sky I’d been told she’d gone to. These included the use of the very tall extension ladder which had to be placed on Grandpa Jack’s crock VW Kombi.
Grandma Florie and me with my crown of thorns, 1961.
The day she died in April 1963, her departing spirit endured its final humiliation at the hands of Grandpa Jack and Miss Lizzie. The mistress had never met Grandma Florie, who had decided never to play into their hands by acting out the role of the confrontational scorned wife. Mavie and Stella heard from a reliable source that on the day Grandpa Jack told Miss Lizzie that his wife had died, the two of them laughed until the tears rolled down their faces, and streaks ran down Miss Lizzie’s carefully powdered and rouged face.
About six months after Grandma Florie’s death Ivan, who was a badge designer at Mr Barlow’s embroidery factory in Steenberg, quit his job. He signed up for a six-month season working on the Dutch whaling vessel, the Willem Barends. At the age of 32, he worked as a deckhand, aiding in the hunting and killing of whales in the South Atlantic. The meat was destined for the European and Asian markets.
Ivan must have hated being at sea because he never went back when the season ended but resumed his job at Barlow’s. His stories were filled with the horrors of the Roaring Forties (the strong westerly winds of the Southern Hemisphere between latitudes of 40 and 50 degrees), fear of imminent death, of vomit overboard, horrible shipmates who had murderous intent to push him overboard, their foul language, and the gore and blood everywhere on deck, which was his responsibility to clean up.
Grandpa Jack was still living in two places: at Miss Lizzie’s all day, sleeping at Heatherley Road at night. After 33 years of defiant togetherness, he and Miss Lizzie only married in the mid-1960s, about three years after Grandma Florie’s death, at St Paul’s. Finally, he moved to her rented house in Belgravia Estate in Athlone.
Uncle Kenny, not long before he died, 1996
Miss Lizzie’s family had lived in Black River, but it was declared a white area and they’d been forced to leave their home in the 1950s and move to the Cape Flats.
Dor and me in the lounge, 1963.
Dor, Stella and Mavie only met Miss Lizzie, who had been a dark shadow in their lives for so long, the day Kenny married Olive from Simonstown. The wedding tea was held at the house in Heatherley Road. Dor and Stella were polite, but Mavie – who’d been cruelly rejected by her father to pacify his mistress – refused to be diplomatic and ignored her.
By 1966, only five people lived in great-grandpa Joe’s house: my mother Mavie, her husband Ivan, and me, and Mavie’s two older sisters Dor and Stella. But there was always an assortment of visitors in for short stays. The four grownups contributed to a pool which covered upkeep of the property, rates, electricity, water and food.
Each one saved the rest of their meagre wages and used it to buy what was perceived as uplifting things. They surely needed it as a way to help them deal with apartheid. By now, its laws had become the bane of their existence.
Ivan, Mavie and me at my first birthday party, 1962.
Mavie and me in mourning for Grandma Florie, standing in the straggly vegetable patch, 1963.
My first birthday party, friend Jean Engelbrecht, Grandma Florie, Mavie and me, Dor, friend Mrs Maggie Smith, Stella. Standing: Ivan, cousins Flo-Anne and Gregory, and Mr Peter Smith, 1962.
At cousin Esme’s home, where Cavendish Square is today, for her daughter Denise’s first birthday party, 1963.
Me on the purloined, old rusty bicycle in the yard. The old part of the garage can be seen in the background, 1964.
Me at my second birthday party; having breakfast on the road to Goedverwacht; and all dressed up for the double wedding in Goedverwacht.
View of the Heatherley house from Dale Street, 1976.
Mavie’s room at 62 Ajax Way, Woodlands, 1993.
Home, sugary home
THERE WAS NOTHING ordinary about the house and garden great-grandpa Joe had conjured into being and everybody else had added to over time. It wasn’t a grand house – it was an expressionist work of art.
The textures of my childhood home fed the imagination: the wood-framed sash windows, painted wooden shutters on the outside, the rows of African violets and a few cacti in pots with their perlemoen shells as saucers on the windowsills. These served as protection in lieu of burglar bars. Who had burglar bars and security gates then? Some people didn’t even lock their doors.
There was nothing quite like sitting at the open sash window at the small four-seater table in the kitchen, eating lunch or doing homework or listening to Springbok radio with Mavie, and being able to look out over the garden.
I liked our doors: the always-open blue-grey stable door, the painted wooden doors to the rooms with their round brass knobs, the patterns on the sand-blasted glass panes on either side of the seldom-used-front door, and the pane in the door itself which let afternoon light into the passage.
My favourite door was the one between the kitchen and the lounge. The bottom was wooden, while the top had different coloured glass panes in a frame. All mismatched, of course. I’m sure there was solid oak under the layers of paint. The floors were made of suspended tongue-and-groove teak planks.
We seldom used the lounge and dining room, except for parties and sometimes weddings. The old house was a one-stop space for weddings because photos could be taken in the lush garden with all its odd twists of beauty.
On the evenings before functions, I could explore the layers of time when the two sideboards and cupboards were unlocked to reveal what nestled within. Every bowl, tea set, plate, glass, knife, fork, ladle, spoon, cake fork and pudding bakkie had history attached of who it belonged to, either great-grandmothers Sophie and Minnie or Grandma Florie. Great-grandpa Joe’s Bible stood on the ‘newer’, circa 1940s, sideboard.
There were also many gifts from old friends – brass candlesticks, souvenirs from far-away places. And beautiful cranberry glass lamps, with fresh wick and oil in them, stood like sentries on one sideboard, in case of electricity failure in winter.
The drawers held linen tablecloths and napkins and an assortment of lace cloths. There were yellowing Belgian lace cloths made by Grandma Florie, and crocheted cotton doilies, tablecloths and tea-tray cloths made by Ivan’s mom Christina, whom I called Granny Davids.
My favourite things were the old Christmas decorations. There were colourful wooden ornaments, clay angels, Christmas lights from the 1950s and shiny, new baubles. That part of the sideboard smelled of Christmas. The old