was an old bus that rumbled along, detonating gravel rudely behind it. Each time it rolled to a stop to collect more scholars, clouds of dust would overtake us and our mouths would taste the grit as we stared out the window, our eyes still itchy from sleep. We always sat in the same place, behind the driver, in the front row. My brother, my sister and me next to each other, blonde and blue-eyed. Invariably, much bullying, shoving and pushing happened behind us, especially between the high-school boys, but the three of us sat there immune, safe, untouched and seemingly protected. We were English. And our mother, after all, was a teacher at the school.
But all privilege immediately dissolved when we were dropped off in the afternoons and made our way home along the dirt road. To break the tedium of our kilometre walk it sometimes became a game of neighbours pitted against neighbours and then we’d all gleefully and viciously participate in our very own post-Boer War flare-ups.
And this was just the place to do it, right here in the foothills of the Magaliesberg, deep in the valley of Silkaatsnek, where Generaal Koos de la Rey had played his hand and where the British Colonel Frederick Roberts had raised a white flag in defeat on that eleventh day of July 1900.
As our neighbours, the Badenhorsts, celebrated that long-ago victory, we took up the cause for Colonel Roberts and unreservedly fought back with stones that were thrown to almost miss and insults that were not fully understood.
“Engelsman!” they shouted.
“Dutchmen!” we hollered.
“Jy’s ’n rooinek. ’n Soutie.”
“You’re a plank. A houdkop.”
It made for an exhilarating journey home.
Other days were less eventful. Then we strolled along together, talking, laughing and kicking at the dirt. Some afternoons we stopped to pat the cows. Mostly, the cows ignored us and it became a competition of who could lure a brave one through the fence first and then stand still long enough as it enveloped a hand and an arm with its long tongue like a sandpaper tentacle all wet, sticky and slobbery.
But, together, we always looked out for snakes and we never fought on weekends and definitely not during school holidays.
Then we were steadfast friends.
Six
We stopped pretending that my father didn’t have a drinking problem at about the same time the Badenhorsts moved in to the smallholding alongside us. It wasn’t so much us no longer looking for hidden bottles, but rather that he simply stopped hiding them.
There had been a special on at the local bottle store, an alluring offer too seductive to snub. It’s a mystery as to how we afforded it, and as children do, we sniggered that perhaps a drought was imminent. My father arrived home with cases and cases and cases of Lion Lager. With a bent back and great fervour, he had heaved them in and stacked them meticulously and methodically, one above the other, all along the walls of the only unused room in our new stone house. Our spare bedroom was quickly converted into a lofty castle of lager, an effigy to alcohol. It was so impressive that we soon invited our new neighbours to witness it. This stupendous viewing cemented our acquaintance and a great time was spent together building castles within this grand, imposing structure. We strung blankets between sixpacks and used the towering columns of beer crates as our turrets.
Our lives took on a sparkle when the Badenhorsts arrived. Johann, the hairdresser, and his boyfriend had departed as discreetly as they had lived, but there was nothing restrained about the arrival of the Badenhorsts. They announced themselves on the land; Mr and Mrs Badenhorst and their four children moved in lock, stock and barrels of birds, and dogs, and broken vehicles that were left stationary wherever they had been dragged, rusted and ruined car parts framing their resting place. Gradually, over time, the tractor arrived, then the scramblers, the peacocks, the pigs, the cows and the endless swarms of flies.
Mr Badenhorst, Oom Baadie, was a short, corpulent man with a wide girth that challenged his height for span. And as is so often the case with round people, he seemed constantly out of breath as he rushed along. His dark hair, carefully Brylcreemed back into glistening curls, emphasised a wide, pulpy face, usually pink from exertion. And with his thick lips fixed in a beaming smile, he was all set for a sonorous “Kom gee vir oom ’n soëntjie”.
But my sister and I didn’t much care for Oom Baadie’s stubble brushing our soft cheeks.
Before we were aware of the python nestled within the sun-baked hollow of the marula tree at the lower gate, in the times when we still waited for my father to come home at dusk, we would be sitting perched on the stone wall, our faces aglow with the dusty shine of a setting sun, when we’d hear the cheerful chortle of Oom Baadie’s painstakingly preserved Volkswagen Beetle. With our knees bent and toes grabbing at rough, rocky edges for grip, we’d follow his journey as he paused at the entrance to his farm, and then corrected his course and veered toward us. But we really had no need for a clammy kiss and we soon learnt to hide within the leafy crown above us as we kept an eye on the halo of dust announcing his amorous approach.
Yet, despite his rotund shape, Oom Baadie was a man neat in appearance, typically dressed in blue. It was cobalt blue, the colour of a blue-collar worker. With the motor industry the mainstay of our town’s economy, there was much demand for skilled mechanics and Oom Baadie was employed by the largest tyre-manufacturing company in the area. It seemed that he wore his blue overalls with pride, overalls that would undoubtedly have been shortened by Mrs Badenhorst.
Mrs Badenhorst was quiet and reserved, and usually to be found in her dimly lit kitchen or behind her Singer sewing machine. She was also much, much taller than her husband.
The arrival of the young Badenhorsts – Jannie, Andries, Marie and Dirk – made a measurable difference to our happiness. They provided the social connection that we craved. Suddenly, we were no longer so isolated. Perhaps it was the same for them as we tore across the veld in the rush to get from one house to the other.
Jannie, being the oldest, looked out for us all.
Andries was a chip off the old proverbial ‘block’, a mirror to his father’s face, although not yet stout. He attended the same school as us, except he was in the special class. It seemed that he was a bit slow, and the only way the family could successfully communicate with him was to raise their voices. Andries was always being shouted at.
It was well after dark and I was warm in my bed when Oom Baadie’s bellows breached the quiet of one particular night. Someone had forgotten to latch the pigsty – clearly, it was Andries – and the pigs were out. What followed was an almighty commotion. As the human-like noise of squealing pigs swelled the sky, it became difficult to differentiate between the sound of man and beast. However, between the howls, heaves and grunts, Oom Baadie managed to raise his voice sufficiently to holler a hoarse, “Andries, vang die vokken vark!”
This was followed by a breathless, taut, “Kannie, Pa!”
“Vokken vang hom nou!”
There is no easy way to catch a pig.
Especially in the dark.
Eventually, once all had been rounded up, captured and impounded, and I had stopped giggling, the night resumed its familiar stillness and I fell asleep.
Perhaps it was also Andries who forgot to latch the aviary.
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon – and hot, too hot for even the bleached grass to move. We were ensconced indoors, trying to escape the swelter, when a trilling, shrieking cacophony alerted us to yet another imminent adventure centred around the Badenhorsts. We rushed out to find a squalling mass of partially pinioned birds, flapping frantically above. It was a veritable migration happening right over our veranda. It didn’t take long to realise that it was in fact the Badenhorsts’ collection of budgies and canaries that had taken to the air. We, naturally, added to the stridency as my brother, sister and I leapt about, heads held high, and grabbed at winged silhouettes. Oom Baadie’s voice resonating across the veld added to our fervour. We congratulated ourselves as we caught two little yellow canaries and one large blue budgie,