Grandma’s new statues crowd the lounge. Now it really is the best house in the whole wide world. The statues are huge and the wooden floor sags under the weight and bounces as we walk past. Rebecca at the well stands tall, with a big jar on her shoulder. I can just touch her bare feet. Her toes are always cold. Martha stands guard on her pedestal, looking oh-so-holy, straight out of the Bible. David stands tall in his corner with a fig leaf covering his thing. We giggle every time we see him.
The lounge is our favourite room. Warm sunlight streams through the big bay window. Bare-bummed cherubs clutching sheaves of wheat run around a brass urn that holds an asparagus fern. I don’t understand, because bare bums are rude. The urn has two lion faces with round rings through their noses for handles. Lilies are my grandmother’s favourite flower and there are always a few in the lounge. We love to watch the tight petals as they unfold into heavenly pink, filling the room with their lily perfume.
Table Mountain is so close it looks as though the mountain is right in Grandma’s lounge and we can see the cable cars going up and down. We love to watch the tablecloth come over the top of the mountain when Van Hunks and the Devil smoke their pipes. Gabriel says it’s not true.
“They really do smoke their pipes on Devil’s Peak,” I say, pushing my bottom lip out. “Grandma told me so.”
“Put your lip back. You’ll trip over it,” says Gabriel like he’s the boss of me.
But I know Gabriel is not about to call Grandma a liar, because he’s just as scared of Grandma as the rest of us. We’re spending the school holidays at Number 82, getting used to our new surroundings, and Gabriel has come to visit us for the day.
Grandma is always busy, arranging her teacups, dusting her statues or talking to people from the Kennel Club, but today she surprises us.
“Wash your hands and faces and make sure you’re wearing clean broeks,” she says. “I’m taking you to Stuttafords.”
While Grandma gets ready we stand close to her dressing table and watch her every move. She stretches her fingers wide inside her hair net to make it fit her head and she tells us it’s made from real hair. She dabs the big fluffy powder-puff into the glass powder bowl and peers into the mirror. She pats rouge on her cheeks and lipstick on her lips and then she sticks a long shiny hatpin through her black hat. She reaches for her scent bottle and with a bit of luck she will give us a squirt. When she isn’t around, Desiree and I always want to give it a squeeze, but we aren’t brave enough. At last she grabs her handbag from the oak hat stand in the passage and we’re off at a trot down Queen Victoria Street.
“Can we go into the hothouse?” Gabriel pleads.
Grandma nods and, as we race off, lowers herself onto the bench in the rose garden to rest her legs, blue with varicose veins. The hothouse is a magic place. It’s like a secret tropical jungle with dank smells and big orange fish. The front door has a low handle we can reach without having to find big people to help us. We race to the round fishpond in the middle of the glass room and lean over to see our reflection. Sometimes there’s a water lily on our heads, like a pixie cap, or a dragonfly skimming over the water, making ripples on our skin. Sometimes there’s a fish in place of an eye. The big orange fish swim silently by and we like to watch their gills open and close, open and close as they breathe. We’re lost in a magic world until Grandma comes to find us.
“Stuttafords could have closed down for good by the time we get there. My tongue is hanging out for a cup of tea.”
We pass the open-air restaurant with the green slatted chairs, where they sell ice cream. We say hello to Cecil John Rhodes standing on his stone pedestal.
“H-h-he must be t-tired. He’s b-been standing there s-since 1902 when he d-died.”
We marvel at golden pheasants, budgies and rosy-faced lovebirds in their cages. The slave bell looks very big. We race from the hand pump, embedded in the big tree, to the statue of Sir George Grey, standing with his back to the library. We take turns to stand on his huge stone feet and look right up into his nostrils and Gabriel says he can see into his brain.
In Adderley Street, the Stuttafords shop windows are full of Christmas presents. We feast our eyes on twinkling lights, dolls and prams, tricycles and bikes. There’s a magic tunnel and a lucky dip, pink for girls and blue for boys. Maybe that’s why my grandmother has brought us to Stuttafords. Now we sit with our clean hands and clean broeks on straight-backed chairs behind the iron railings of the balcony over Adderley Street, trying to be good. I feel giddy in my head when I look down and see cars like Dinky toys. There’s a lady sitting opposite us holding a crutch. We can’t take our eyes off her stump.
“Don’t dare ask – and don’t stare!” hisses Grandma.
The waitress who brings our tea is wearing a pointy white lace cap and her organza apron is tied with a pretty bow. She sets the big shiny teapot with Stuttafords engraved on the front on the white starched tablecloth. We marvel at the gold-rimmed snow-white cups and I bite my nails, because I’m scared that if I try to be hoity-toity I’ll drop my posh cup. There are side plates to match the cups and starched napkins that stand up straight like a bishop’s hat. The waitress brings a tray with a milk jug and a sugar pot with little blocks of sugar and a funny thing to lift them out. It doesn’t look a bit like the spoon we use at home. Desiree’s eyes travel to the napkins and she gives me a wink. I wonder what we are going to eat, but the waitress comes back with a plateful of little cakes. Desiree smiles, licks her lips and kicks me under the table. Nothing escapes my grandmother’s hawk eyes.
“You’re not in Crawford now,” she tells us through clenched teeth, as she bends down to put her handbag on the floor. Desiree pulls a face behind her back, but Grandma has eyes in the back of her head and Desiree, for her trouble, gets a smack.
“I’m going to teach you some manners. The best news I’ve had in a month of Sundays is that they give elocution lessons at the convent. Unfortunately, Gabriel, you will have to take your chances at that awful school in Crawford, although you, with your stutter, would benefit the most.”
We are caught in Grandma’s web and there’s no escape if we want the cakes.
“Fold your hands neatly in your laps. Never put your elbows on the table. Remember to say please and thank you at all times. And never reach for a cake without being offered one. Don’t slurp. If you sip your tea like a lady, you won’t burn your lips.”
She shifts her bum in her seat and then continues. “Put your hand in front of your mouth when you cough and have a handkerchief handy in case you sneeze.” She stops for a second.
“Sniffing is very unladylike,” she says, looking straight at Desiree and me, “and don’t forget to eat with your mouth closed. As for you young man …”
Gabriel is bored and he’s fiddling with his penknife under the white starched tablecloth.
“Stop fidgeting!” Grandma says in a stern voice.
Gabriel suffers from nerves and I hope he won’t start stuttering, but Grandma doesn’t give him a chance.
“You, Gabriel, must see that the ladies in the party are comfortable. You must pull their chairs out and then push the chairs gently under their bottoms when they sit. Do you understand?”
While Grandma is lecturing Gabriel I whisper in Desiree’s ear. Grandma guesses what it is we need and she fishes in her leather purse for a penny.
“It’s bad manners to leave your companions high and dry. You must choose your moment.”
We don’t understand what she means, because when your pee comes there’s not much you can do. Desiree stands on tippy toes and drops the penny into the brass slot. “Open sesame!”
She slides the bolt aside. Together we cram inside and take turns to hover over the white pan the way Mommy taught us, because of the world being full of germs. Grandma doesn’t know it, but we hover over her lavatory pan just the same, because Aunty Katarina went out with the sailor men. Desiree reaches for the lavatory chain and she gives such a mighty pull that it almost hits the ceiling. To loud gurgling sounds, we leave and get back just as Grandma says the tea is getting cold.
Our hands are getting pins and needles from sitting on them to stop ourselves from grabbing the little cakes.
“Have a petit four,” says Grandma at last. Her arthritic hands strain to hold the posh teapot steady as she fills the delicate white cups with the gold rims. “Girls first.”
When tea is over we go down the wooden escalator. The steps come up out of nowhere. Gabriel has seen Popular Mechanics at the Selbournes’ house and now he wants to know how everything works. Last week he took the alarm clock apart, but the bits and pieces got the better of him and he couldn’t put it all back together again. Daddy was late for work and Gabriel got a scolding for his trouble.
“I like children who ask intelligent questions,” says Grandma. “We can look it up in my encyclopaedia when we get home.”
I’m frightened as the floor comes towards me and the steps disappear again, but my grandma and Gabriel each take a hand firmly and lift me off my feet. “One, two, three!”
Hot air surrounds us as we step onto the pavement. To keep up with our grandmother, striding along on her varicose-vein legs, we dart between the people busily going about their business. Soon we reach the leafy green tunnel of the Company Gardens, where there’s a man holding the most impossible amount of teasers between his fingers.
“Tickey a teezaah! Tickey a teezah!” he shouts through the gap in his teeth as he shakes them. The wind swirls the bright strips of crinkle paper round and round, making a soft shushshush sound.
Grandma sits on the bench to rest her sore legs. When she feels better she eases herself up and drops a surprise on us. “Time to see your new school,” she says.
Desiree and I look at each other, but we cross the road behind the National Gallery and gaze through the barred gate of the convent. I imagine myself in my school uniform, the strict nuns rapping me over the knuckles.
“I hear the ghost of a nun! Run!” shouts Desiree suddenly.
I’m already halfway down the street when Grandma calls me back. “Don’t be daft! That’s only leaves rustling in the plane trees. Don’t look so worried. Everything is going to be all right. You’ll see.”
I’m not so sure, so when we make our way back down the road, I trail behind.
Back at the house, Grandma unlocks, and we slip into the coolness of Number 82.
“Were you born in a cave?” Grandma shouts at me when I forget to close the door behind me.
As soon as she steps into the kitchen, my grandma puts the kettle on, even though she has just had a bucketful of tea.
“Grandma, why do you want more tea?”
“Because it doesn’t taste the same as the tea from my magic cup.”
“Why didn’t you take your magic cup to Stuttafords?”
“That would be bad manners.”
Her teacup has a big star in the bowl and squares with pictures in the middle. There’s a heart, a glass and an envelope, and an eye, an arrow, a cross, a bell and a bird, but that’s not all. There are funny signs and Grandma says they are called the signs of the zodiac. If you turn the cup upside down you can read words:
The Cup of Fortune.
Would’st learn Thy fortune with Thy tea
this magic cup will show it Thee.
“Please, Grandma, can I have some tea?”
“You know my opinion on telling children their fortune. You must wait until you are eighteen.”
“But it’s such a long time to wait!”
“Don’t be cheeky. Why don’t you three go to the museum so I can have my tea in peace?”
Once we’re safely across Queen Victoria Street, Gabriel leads us to the big cannon left over from the war. He sits astride it and blasts away at the play-play enemy. Then we dash through the arched doors of the museum and up the wide stairs with the high ceiling above our heads.
“Let’s go and see the magnified flea.”
Gabriel loops his arms around my skinny body and lifts me. I cling to the big eyepiece. The flea looks huge and I feel sorry for all the dogs and cats of the world.
“Come on, Skinny Legs.”
The communal nest is next. How can birds make such a big nest and all live together in peace without any fighting? Then there’s a big glass showcase on legs filled with millions of tsetse flies and pictures of people sitting under trees, clutching their heads in their hands. I’m frightened of catching sleeping sickness, but Gabriel says they all live up north and the flies can’t fly all the way down to Cape Town. We thrill at the sight of pygmy falcons, snakes, bobbejaan spiders, hornets and butterflies by the dozen, brown, cream, orange, turquoise and green.
The stern-looking man in his black uniform paces back and forth, his hands firmly clasped behind his back. When he isn’t looking, we slide down the wooden banister that ends in a lion’s head with open mouth. But we save the best part for last. When Gabriel wanders off to see the lion skeletons and the guard is doing duty in another room, Desiree and I duck away and run to the big showcase with the Bushmen crouching inside. We giggle at their drooping, yellow tits, but most of all we want to see what the men have inside their leather skin pouches. They don’t wear underpants and we wonder if their things are different. I get down on all fours and just about stand on my head to try to see, but the gap is never wide enough. We stifle rude giggles.
Mommy’s going to miss us and she wants us with her until the last minute, so we go back to the Doll’s House and sleep in our own bed for the last time. When the weak sun peeps out from behind the morning clouds, Desiree pushes the faded chintz curtain aside. She helps me dress in my Crawford school uniform and the navy-blue jersey that my mother lovingly knitted. Once again, Mommy takes us on the train and then we walk up Plein Street past the Houses of Parliament and St Mary’s Cathedral and through the gates of our new school.
“Colleen, when school finishes, sit on your suitcase inside the gate and wait. Grandma will fetch you. Don’t worry about Desiree. She’s staying behind for elocution lessons.”
Then Mommy’s gone and we’re left with the stern-looking nuns. They wear black dresses down to the floor, with a white half-circle of material over their chests, a funny thing around their squashed faces and a veil. It looks uncomfortable. They all have holy crosses dangling from their waists. I think of them all being married to Jesus. I hope my pee doesn’t come gushing out again in front of them. When the bell rings I join the line of bodies filing through the high arch past the font. The children dip their fingers into the holy water and touch their foreheads, their tummies and their shoulders. I don’t know what to do so, after the long walk, I just dab the cool water on my cheeks.
Sister Annunciata teaches us to count on an abacus, but I still use my fingers under the desk where she can’t see. We have a grey slate in a wooden frame and we have to learn the alphabet. My first day at the convent seems to go on forever and I’m glad when the bell rings. I sit on my suitcase and wait just inside the school gate. I gaze at the big statue of a man across the road behind the gallery. He stands with the earth balanced on his shoulders and he has no clothes on his body. He’s looking down at his thing sticking out.
I sit and I sit, but no one comes to fetch me. I drag a stick along the railings that line the lane beside the gallery, tick-tick, tick-tick. Then I see the sun glinting on the surface of the pond and the blue, pink and yellow water lilies. I wave at the little stone boy sitting on a dolphin in the arch that is his home, with white pigeon poep running down his face. I kneel down to watch the big orange fish glide silently by. A boy from the German school kneels beside me and, as he tries to catch a fish in his cupped hands, the heavy satchel on his back makes him topple into the pond, splashing me. But a young man walking past drops the parcel he is carrying and jumps in to save him. I will never lean over the fish pond again. I hurry past the soldier standing on a big stone, with his hand on his hip, through the big gate – and there’s my grandma’s house. She meets me, out of breath, on her red polished stoep.
“Good heavens! I was just on my way to fetch you! My watch stopped.”
My eyes are still wide from fright, but I dare not tell Grandma about the boy who nearly drowned. She helps me out of my uniform.
“Why you so damp?”
Aunty Katarina is very clever; she paints on velvet cushions. She paints cypress trees and full moons, dogs and cats, lakes with boats, and snow on trees. Aunty Katarina painted the two satin bedspreads in Grandma’s room, the ones we are not allowed to sit on. The ladies hold trug baskets filled with roses and on their heads they wear poke bonnets. There are roses strewn everywhere, right to the frill that reaches to the floor.
Aunty Katarina shares Grandma’s room, but she doesn’t like it much because she says Grandma snores and farts her heart out at night. Aunty Katarina often says how much she wants a child of her own.
One night Aunty Katarina and I are walking down Adderley Street on our way to Grandma’s house. Near St George’s Cathedral a Malay man falls to the pavement.
“Oh, no,” gasps Aunty Katarina. “Just look how he’s thrashing around!”
“He’s having a fit!” I tell her.
“Push his tongue down!”
“Lay him on his side!”
“Call a doctor!”
I tug shyly at Aunty Katarina’s skirt. “I know what to do. If you put him in a bath with a packet of mustard, he’ll get better.”
Aunty Katarina just smiles, takes me firmly by the hand and marches me along the avenue. When we get to Grandma’s house she hides me around the corner, as usual, and then knocks on the door.
“Come and see who I found along the way!” I step into the light.
“Good heavens! Where did you come from?” says Grandma, putting her hand over her mouth.
I love our little game and for a few days I can have them all to myself, me, the only child in the big house.
I hate it when Grandma sends me to her room to fetch something, because our dead uncle’s eyes follow you. Dead babies can do that. They try to speak because they were taken off the earth too soon. If he wants to use me to speak to living people I have to, but I’m frightened out of my wits. I put my hand over my eyes and squint at the blue patterned carpet through my fingers and stumble around until I’m done.
Grandma also taught Aunty Katarina to sew and sometimes she makes clothes for our dolls from scraps of cloth.
“Did you know,” asks Aunty Katarina one day, “that your grandma was born in McGregor? She learned to sew at the knee of her German mother and won all the prizes at the Robertson Agricultural Show.” Now, though, because Grandma can’t see so well, Aunty Katarina has to thread the needles, make the buttonholes and cut the threads after Grandma has stitched.
Desiree and I are happy because now we can see Uncle Nick and Aunty Bubbles whenever we want to. We’ve also got the hothouses and the museum as our playground. The Company Gardens are Paddy’s lavatory, so we get to know every corner. The best part for Desiree and me, though, is being able to lie in a safe warm bed, with not a thought of having to spend the night outside.
Aunty Bubbles often sashays in and tells us stories of the olden days. She always ends with Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman! Then we close our eyes, cover our heads with our blankets and scream.
“Stop it, Bubbles,” says Aunty Katarina. “You’ll give them nightmares!”
Then Aunty Bubbles finds our armpits under the blankets and tickles us until we shriek like the mad people in Valkenberg.
“Now they’ll never sleep.”
We don’t mind, though. We love having our aunties around. We watch how Aunty Katarina makes the beds, polishes the floors, and lays the tables for the boarders. In the morning the sun streams into the dining room and when it gets too hot Aunty Katarina closes the big white inside shutters. Desiree and I peer at the pictures of ladies in a garden next to a fountain. Cupid hovers above their heads with bow and arrow at the ready. Aunty Katarina stares at the pictures for a long time and her fingers trace the outline of Cupid.
“Aunty Katarina, why do you touch the pictures?” asks Desiree.
“I’m dreaming of an old love and waiting for my new prince to come.”
“What do you think he will look like, your prince?”
“Tall, dark and handsome.”
We feel sorry for Aunty Katarina and we wish her prince would come.
“Does Grandma have a prince?”
Aunty Katarina doesn’t answer, and Desiree elbows me in the ribs. But I already know that Grandma sends letters, so maybe she does have a prince somewhere … Grandma never writes her own letters, though. She sits in the chair belonging to a queen with her hands folded in her lap and talks faster than anyone. When Mommy’s with us, she sits opposite her in a straight-backed chair, writing Grandma’s words as quick as her wrist can move. The squiggles look like the markings of drunken spiders, dipped in ink, tottering across the blank page in scattered lines.
“Who do you think Mommy writes the letters to?”
“His name is Uncle Johnny and he is a sheep farmer in South West Africa.”
Desiree is so clever.
Grandma spends most of her time in the kitchen, cooking and humming happily to herself with Paddy at her feet. She peels piles of vegetables and kneads dough in big enamel basins. Her short hair hugs her head and the odd curl sticks to her forehead. She makes us cups of sweet tea.
“God help you if you don’t wash your cup and saucer,” she says without fail.
At night, when the boarders have finished in the bathroom – it is always clean and tidy because everyone’s scared of my grandmother, including the boarders – Grandma soaks the sheets in the bath. The next morning Aunty Katarina helps her load the sheets into the round drum of the Westinghouse and then, when the washing is done, they put the sheets through the wringer. If I stand too close the wringer will gobble me up and I’ll get flattened, like the people in the cartoons at the bioscope. Desiree says I’ll end up flat as a mat on the floor.
At suppertime, Desiree and I sit on the staircase in our pyjamas and watch the boarders. We giggle at Mr Francis because his gums squeak when he eats his cheese. The lady we nicknamed Sourpuss shovels her food in and makes no eye contact with anyone.
“Don’t ever eat like that!” warns Grandma.
The boarders also take food from the table to their rooms.
“Who can blame them?” shrugs Grandma. “They are far from their homes in Pretoria. They work at the Houses of Parliament for six months at a time and they get homesick, so they eat for comfort.”
Miss Ivanavich wears wide-bottomed gabardine trousers, in houndstooth check. Her hair is cut short in an Eaton crop and she always has a cigarette dangling from her lips. She sits on her own in the dining room and doesn’t talk to anyone, but the people in the dining room whisper about her. Desiree smiles her dazzling dimpled smile at Miss Ivanavich and Miss Ivanavich smiles back. She takes us outside and lets us sit on her big motorbike. She says she likes children because they are not prejudiced. We don’t understand the big word, but we’re happy she likes us.
Grandma is so busy pleasing other people and working hard for her living that she never has time for herself and that’s why she sometimes sulks. But we think Aunty Katarina works just as hard. In the mornings, she empties the slop-buckets into the upstairs drainpipe. She says it’s a disgusting job, but someone has to do it. We smell the pee as it splashes down and lands right beside us where we’re playing. When the pee hits the wall we run for our lives.
“Sis, everyone had full bladders last night.”
“Imagine Mr Francis’s pee all over you.”
“If Sourpuss’s pee got onto me, I would scrub my body three hundred times a day, until my skin was raw.”
“Do you think Uncle Nick’s pee smells like brandy?”
“Ask Aunty Katarina to check before she pours it into the upstairs drainpipe, then you’ll know.”
Today the nuns are taking us to St Mary’s Cathedral. We have never been to a cathedral before. In the hat room we cram hats onto our heads until we find a panama that fits. As I step through the arched door into the giant space in that big, old church, my mouth hangs open in disbelief and my eyes dart from one beautiful thing to the next. Fat candles burn on the altar and there are huge statues of Jesus. There’s blood coming out of His side and it looks as though He’s been shot. The nuns line up in their funny clothes in front of the statue of Jesus, their husband. All the colours of the rainbow shine from the stained-glass windows onto the snow-white walls. I lift my eyes up to the high ceiling and there’s a dove circling. I hope the dove doesn’t poep. People arriving late bend their knees and make the sign of the cross.
An old priest leads people down the aisle. He is wearing a cloak and a big gold-and-silver hat on his head. A man who looks like Old King Cole carries a brass box swaying on the end of a pole with funny-smelling smoke swirling in blue-grey patterns. We watch in wide-eyed wonder as the choirboys, with their scrubbed faces and slicked-back hair, sing in sweet high voices. I love the cathedral but I don’t understand the strange, boring words. The cathedral makes our Gospel Hall look very small, but still I miss the Gospel Hall, where we hold hearts for Jesus, win prizes at Sunday school, and sing in plain old English.
When we tell Mommy that we miss the Gospel Hall and home, she tells us she misses us too. She breaks the rules and takes us home for a Saturday night with a promise to have us back at Grandma’s house in good time for school on Monday. Daddy behaves himself for once and brings us peanuts from the Grand Parade. It’s good to be back with Gabriel and our dog and our cat and tomorrow morning we will see Mr Anderson and all our friends at the Gospel Hall.
Mommy and Daddy are sitting at the kitchen table drinking their coffee and we’re in bed. Eavesdropping is second nature to us.
“I feel sorry for Katarina. She’s the only one left at home to help with the boarding house. My mother says Katarina owes it to her, but why can’t she get married like the rest of us?”
“You still ask! She’s used goods. Who would want her as a wife?”
“Don’t be so cruel, Jacob.”
“I told you those American sailors were nothing but trouble.”
We hear Mommy push her chair back and busy herself with the dishes. “I don’t wish to pursue the subject.”
Daddy takes no notice.
“You can’t blame your mother for being hard on her. She made her bed – now she must lie in it.”
We’re afraid they’re going to fight, but instead they put out the light and go to bed.
When we get home to Grandma’s, it’s business as usual: school on Monday and back to the everyday routine. At least we get to eat the same first-class food as the boarders, says Desiree. Grandma makes delicious sandwiches and we go with her to buy fruit on the Grand Parade.
“How do you know that Malay with all the gold teeth?” asks Grandma when Mr Essop waves.
We tell her about sour figs and the best peanuts in the world. My legs have filled out and there are no more mutterings about nervous wrecks. Our cheeks glow pink and life has never been better, even though Grandma can be really stern sometimes. Mommy says she rules with an iron hand, but we still love her.
I don’t mind school, but I don’t like Sister Finbar’s elocution lessons. She expects me to speak the Queen’s English with a stiff upper lip like Aunty Dolly and my Uncle Nick. She stands next to my desk in her penguin outfit and she gets so cross her whole body shakes and the holy cross fastened at her waist sways from side to side.
“Don’t say watermalon,” she says with her round pink mouth. “Watermelon. Open your mouth. Form the lips. It’s jelly. Jilly is a girl’s name.”
“Hou jou bek, stuk spanspek. Screm, screm, blikkie jam,” I mutter under my breath.
The bell rings and saves me from Sister Finbar’s big round pink mouth. When I get home Grandma finds me in front of the mirror looking down my throat.
“What in heaven’s name are you doing, child?”
“I’m trying to see where the words come from.”