| |
––––––––
Annamari couldn’t believe how much she was missing Beauty. She hardly ever came home from Cape Town where, although just a second year student, she was already dazzling the University of Cape Town’s Law Department with her ferocious intellect. Perhaps she wanted to avoid Arno. It was sad really, but a relief too that their friendship seemed to have cooled after the matric dance fiasco. Or had it? She wasn’t sure that Arno was really over Beauty. He never mentioned her. He still didn’t seem to have a steady girlfriend although he seemed to be going out a lot, but with different girls all the time. Annamari didn’t even know their names. But he was a handsome boy with a good heart and he would find someone, eventually. So would Beauty, Annamari was sure about that. At the moment, however, Beauty appeared to be wrapped up in her studies. She hadn’t even come up to Bloemfontein to watch Stefan Smit being sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty on three counts of premeditated murder.
Annamari hadn’t been able to bring herself to go back to the court either; not for the judgement, and not even for the sentencing. Those awful, awful words he’d shouted at her almost a year before continued to haunt her. She couldn’t go back and give him an opportunity to taunt her again. Had he known? Is that why he called her a whore? How had he found out?
Sometimes, Annamari wondered whether Arno and Beauty weren’t secretly in touch with each other. But then she’d laugh at herself. She was paranoid. But sometimes, when she was speaking to Arno on the phone and she’d mention Beauty and he would go dead quiet – not commenting, not asking anything, as if he was holding his breath. She wondered whether her relief when Beauty had finally agreed to go to the University of Cape Town rather than the University of the Witwatersrand had not been a little premature.
Annamari’s heart had dropped when Beauty announced a few weeks after her triumphant matric dance that she was going to go to Wits University which had offered her a full scholarship. She had been so excited. Wits was her dream university. It was where Nelson Mandela himself had studied; so had Arthur Chaskalson, George Bizos, Ismail Mahomed, Sydney Kentridge – so many of South Africa’s top legal minds. She was honoured, awed that they wanted her – a little nobody from nowhere.
But the University of the Witwatersrand was a mere fifty kilometres from the University of Pretoria; forty minutes by car and Beauty and Arno could be together. Annamari was frantic with worry. It was fate that had made her switch on the TV while that documentary was on. She was just about to change channels when she realised they were talking about a young woman lawyer. Curious, she paused. This woman, it seemed, had been appointed to the Constitutional Court by Nelson Mandela when she was just thirty-seven years old. Annamari quickly wrote down her name when it was revealed that Justice Kate O’Regan had studied at the University of Cape Town. Over a thousand kilometres from Pretoria. And, if Annamari remembered correctly, UCT had also offered Beauty a scholarship.
‘Alright, MaAnni,’ Beauty said quietly. ‘I’ll follow in Judge O’Regan’s footsteps if you think that will get me an appointment to the bench faster.’
Annamari hadn’t been sure whether Beauty was joking. She found it increasingly difficult to understand Beauty at all anymore. If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought Beauty was deliberately avoiding her. She never phoned; and she never came home, not even for the holidays. She said it was too expensive.
Annamari knew that regardless of whether or not Beauty ever became a judge, she would be a brilliant lawyer. Big law firms all over the country were already falling over themselves to offer her a job once she completed her LLB degree.
She wished Arno had studied something useful like law or accountancy rather than the airy-fairy nonsense he’d chosen. But Arno had insisted that marketing was the next big thing. And when he graduated at the end of the year, he was going to go back to Tukkies to do his Honours.
‘And then you’ll see, Ma. I’ll get a great job and make pots of money,’ he laughed.
Annamari hoped so. A university degree was absolutely essential for any young person, Thys always said, especially in the new South Africa.
That’s why she was so worried about De Wet. She wished he’d apply himself as much to his schoolwork as he did to his rugby, or even his cricket or hockey – depending on the season. In fact, she really hadn’t expected De Wet to pass Grade 9, but somehow he had managed to scrape through and now he was attempting to cruise through Grade 10.
***
De Wet walked through the kitchen door, flung his cricket bag on the floor, rushed over to Annamari, caught her hands and danced her around the room. Four-year-old Steyn, screaming like the Mirage jet that had been the star of the recent Bloemfontein Air Show, flew in after him, thrilled to have his older brother home at last. Thys brought up the rear.
‘De Wet, stop. I’m trying to get supper ready and ... oh my lord, look at your clothes! What have you done to yourself this time? Steyntjie, land now or go and fly outside.’
Steyn swooped around the kitchen with his arms outstretched once more, then screeched to a halt in front of De Wet and brushed energetically at the grass stains on his big brother’s white shirt and pants.
‘Oh, I suppose that happened when I dived for a catch, like Jonty Rhodes,’ De Wet said.
‘Did you? Catch it, I mean?’ Annamari looked up at her middle son, who seemed to have grown another few inches. He was already taller than Arno and was rapidly gaining on Thys.
‘No, but Hansie said it was a very good effort. He said I reminded him of himself, he said I showed real batting talent, he said I could possibly even be a Protea one day, he said ... Ma, he even shook my hand and he said...’
‘Hansie? Hansie Cronje? Really? He saw you play? Thys did you also see him?’
Thys laughed and confirmed that indeed, the South African cricket captain and Grey College Old Boy had turned up unexpectedly to watch the Grey College Under 17s take on – and hammer – Bloemfontein Technical High School thanks largely to De Wet’s unbeaten sixty-five.
‘But what De Wet hasn’t told you was that Hansie also told him that it takes more than raw talent to be a first class sportsman, didn’t he, son? He told De Wet that to be a first class sportsman takes discipline and application, on the field and off. And that means getting good marks in class, not so?’
De Wet nodded sheepishly. ‘Ja well, I can do that. I’m going to play for South Africa one day. You’ll see. I’d give anything to play in the same team as Hansie. And maybe I’ll also be the Protea captain, like him, one day. After he retires, of course.’
‘I thought you wanted to be a Springbok. You can’t be a rugby Springbok and play first class cricket. Not anymore,’ Thys said.
Annamari held her breath. She forced herself to go with Thys to watch De Wet’s rugby matches at school in Bloemfontein when they could get away from Steynspruit, but she hated it. Every time he touched the ball, or worse, was tackled, the memory of Thys at the bottom of that pile of blue jerseys flashed before her. She knew it would break Thys’ heart if De Wet gave up rugby, but she’d be delighted.
So when De Wet said, ‘Sorry Pa, but I think I really do prefer cricket,’ Annamari murmured a quick prayer of thanks to the Lord. And Hansie Cronje.