THAT EXEAT, Paul was of course due at du Toit’s farm. Not that you would have guessed this from du Toit’s behaviour at breakfast. He gave absolutely no sign that soon he would be playing host and, when the meal was over, simply vanished, leaving Paul to emerge alone from the gloom of the corridor into the dazzle of the day’s sunlight.
Even so, and despite a feeling in his stomach of a kind more usually associated with returning to school after an exeat, Paul continued to walk tall. So what if his exeat invitation had come about strangely and the prospect of it did frighten him rather? It was a clear improvement on the term – the years – before.
And another thing. Looking round for the du Toits’ dusty white truck, he could also enjoy the fact that, for someone who’d always been rather ashamed of his own parents’ car – a modest Cortina, too modest when set against other parental vehicles, frequently Mercedes or the like, bigger, flashier, more expensive – a truck, however dusty, was pretty thrilling. And there it was, too, parked just inside the gate.
Through its windscreen – though only dimly, because of the dust and having to squint against the dazzle – Paul could discern two heads. So! Somehow du Toit, in spite of his vanishing act, had got there before him. But on reaching the truck he found that the head alongside Mr du Toit’s belonged to a girl – older, by the look of her, than her brother, because that was who she had to be: du Toit’s sister. She had the same lustrous hair, scraped into a ponytail; the same faultless tan; the same aura of disdain.
He hadn’t known there’d be a sister.
‘Behind Laura, Paul, why don’t you?’ instructed Mr du Toit through the open window. ‘Just yank the handle, it’s a bit stiff, and shove any junk on the floor. Now where’s that blerrie son of mine? He’ll be late for his own funeral, that one, hey, Laura?’
If Laura agreed, she wasn’t saying. She didn’t even turn in Paul’s direction. Only Mr du Toit’s cat-like eyes followed him in the rear-view mirror as he clambered into the back of the truck and began clearing the seat of a spanner, an empty biscuit packet, an oily rag that would have disastrously stained his Sunday shorts.
Then the other door was jerked open.
‘Hi, Pa. Hi, sis,’ said du Toit, climbing in. ‘What are we waiting for? The next Ice Age?’
And this was thrilling too: to be witnessing at close quarters how another family operated. Even down to such details as Laura being dressed in a school uniform herself: sky-blue, like her eyes, suggesting that she, too, was a boarder. You didn’t often get to meet a ‘saint’, as pupils from nearby St Mary’s were known.
Paul was being taken out of himself.
‘Less of your cheek, young man, and more respect,’ rebuked Mr du Toit as he threw the truck into gear. ‘We have a guest, remember.’
At this, du Toit, who’d been clearing his own seat of the stuff that had accumulated there, glanced up and, to Paul’s amazement, looked across at him and winked. Actually winked.
The du Toits’ farm was to the north of Pretoria, ten or so miles beyond the freshest of the city’s suburbs: uncharted territory for Paul. Usually when leaving town his parents would head south, either to Johannesburg to shop, or, if it was their annual holiday, towards the coast. Ramsgate or Margate or Southbroom. Oh, and once they’d driven due east, to the edge of a township called Mamelodi, to drop off Mosa because the buses weren’t running.
That the road was therefore unfamiliar should have been thrilling too – except there wasn’t, as it happened, much to absorb, apart from the occasional tree and stretches of parched earth as seen from a tarred road which soon became a dirt one. Hence the state of the truck. None of it looked fit for farming, about which Mr du Toit was lecturing them as they skimmed the bumpy road, leaving behind a widening plume of dust.
‘Four greats,’ he was saying. ‘My great, great, great, great-grandfather. So five, hey, for Andre and Laura. He was with Paul Kruger on the trek and the farm was big back then – more than two hundred morgen. You know mos what a morgen is?’
Paul had to admit that he didn’t.
‘So okay, it’s how much land a man can till with an ox in one morning. Een more. Or morgen, in Dutch or German. Somewhere between one and two acres, normally. Though over the years the farm has got smaller and smaller and we’ve been forced into other things. It’s tough making a living from land like ours.’
They were turning through a gate, beyond which, on a slight rise, stood a commonplace bungalow.
‘Right, you ous!’ said Mr du Toit, bringing the truck to a halt beneath a blue gum. ‘Let’s see what Violet’s got.’
With Mr du Toit at their head, the trio of youngsters trooped on to the long stoep fronting the bungalow. There they found that glasses of cooldrink had been poured for them, a plate of rusks set out. Laura helped herself, then ran quickly to the far end of the stoep to vanish through a door there. Meanwhile, Mr du Toit lit a cigarette from the packet he kept in his shirt pocket and inhaled deeply.
‘While you’re showing your guest around,’ he said, smoke snaking from him, ‘you can also do me a favour, hey, and look in on Tsebo.’
‘Ag nee, Pa. Must I?’
There was a sudden, chilly pause.
‘Really?’ said Mr du Toit, voice rumblier than usual. ‘Don’t think that because you’ve got a guest you still can’t get a blerrie good klap. Okay?’
‘Explain how I’m busy with some calls,’ he continued, ‘and there’s people for lunch. He’ll understand. I’ll go tomorrow, tell him. Got that?’
Then he too walked off, leaving Paul and du Toit to their own devices.
Or should that be Andre, now they were no longer at school? Christian not surname. Was that what you did when you became friends outside? Paul wished he knew. But it hadn’t happened before; and anyway, how could he say with confidence that they were proper friends? Early days. It was still early days. So, as he helped himself to a rusk and took a cautious sip of his cooldrink, he waited for his companion to speak first.
‘Okay, Harvey,’ began du Toit, answering Paul’s unspoken question, ‘Slug’s shown me what you got.’ Smiling, he too reached for refreshment. ‘Of course you had help from me – which you really, really mustn’t talk about, hey – I’m not supposed to help anyone with their task – but still: you did all right. And I bet there’s more you can find. I haven’t forgotten how you keep a diary. You’re good at noticing things. So – just go on watching, ja? And write it down this time, what you find or see. I want a proper report, like in your diary, if there’s anything. ’Cause isn’t it quite weird, don’t you think, that Spier should talk to us about this Mandela guy? Normally it’s the outside world.’ Ending with a sly, ‘You also knew about this trial. How come?’
As with Spier in General Knowledge, I can’t with certainty remember du Toit’s exact words. But I do have the gist; the underlying thrust. I also recall how Paul felt, as he listened and sipped at his cooldrink and tried to bite into his rusk without exploding it into crumbs.
A memory too, quite clear, of explaining about Simon Tindall coming to lunch. How intently du Toit listened as I talked about the priest’s problematic son.
‘Your parents are also pretty weird,’ he said when I’d done, ‘having friends like that.’
Then, as if realising that what he’d said might be wounding – the first time he’d ever shown such consideration – he added quickly, ‘But you didn’t choose them, hey? All parents are weird in their different ways.’
Which allowed Paul to ask something he wouldn’t have dared ask otherwise: where was du Toit’s mother? His own would never have let so long elapse before emerging.
‘Ag, she’s not around,’ said du Toit, face whitening beneath his tan. Clearly he didn’t want to talk about her, and so Paul knew better than to pursue the subject. Du Toit wasn’t someone you pushed.
A scraping sound distracted him. Mr du Toit, still wreathed in smoke, was scowling from a nearby window. ‘Forgotten that klap?’ he growled.
The sun was high in the sky, an intense white radiance that translated into an immediate prickle of sweat on the back of Paul’s neck as he jumped from the stoep to follow du Toit, who was already halfway towards a cluster of outbuildings.
‘Wait! Not so fast!’
Thus began their circuit of the farm, which certainly had shrunk in size from its original two hundred morgen or so; Mr du Toit hadn’t been exaggerating. The outbuildings, for instance, numbered just four in total and were not much more, really, than large garages. A rusting car on bricks and a clutter of equally rusted agricultural machinery – ploughs and the like – occupied the first, while the second was locked, the third empty and the fourth home to just one pile of sacks.
‘What’s in those?’
‘Mielies,’ said du Toit, over his shoulder. ‘But not ours, hey, we only store them for a neighbour.’
They’d started up a small koppie behind the outbuildings, which was where – as their pace slackened – Paul did finally manage to ask, since naturally this was intriguing him too, about Lombard. Why, he wanted to know, addressing du Toit’s sweaty back, was Lombard no longer a friend? What had happened to cause his departure? Paul had always assumed him to be du Toit’s right-hand man. Never Slug!
Du Toit didn’t reply immediately. Only after they’d reached the top of the koppie did he stop and swing round to face Paul.
‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘people do things, say things, you don’t expect. Being a captain isn’t easy, hey!’ He spread his arms wide to indicate the view, smiling wryly as he did so. ‘It’s lonely at the top.’ Then, smile fading, he fastened his unfathomable gaze on Paul again and said, ‘That’s why I rely on you.’
Briefly, it seemed as if he might be about to step forward and touch Paul with a still-extended hand. Until, hand dropping, he turned away slightly and Paul was left feeling he might have dreamt the moment. ‘Anyway, now you can see for yourself,’ he continued quietly, eyes on the landscape, ‘how hard it is to grow stuff here.’
From where they stood, Paul could also see how large the farm must once have been. And that the land ahead was in fact still being cultivated, presumably by whoever had bought it from the du Toits. Industrial-sized sprinklers had created squares of vivid green, stretching into the far distance, offsetting the prevailing brown.
Then he noticed a further source of water: a small dam at the foot of the koppie, near which, behind a bamboo fence, stood an arrangement of thatched rondavels, their terracotta walls showing signs of having once been painted in a series of geometric patterns.
‘That’s where our land stops now,’ said du Toit, pointing. ‘By the kraal.’
‘So what does he actually do then, your dad,’ ventured Paul, ‘if he can’t really farm any more?’
‘Government mostly,’ said du Toit enigmatically. ‘Stuff for the government.’
‘What kind of stuff?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘I’m only asking.’
‘Ag, who cares about work? Work’s boring. Does your dad talk about his?’
As it happened, Douglas did. Mealtimes were often taken up with stories of what had befallen people foolish enough not to have taken out insurance. But, if du Toit didn’t want to talk about his own father’s work, then, as with his absent mother, the topic must remain off limits.
Meanwhile, du Toit had broken into another trot, this time down the far side of the koppie, at the foot of which they came to the dam, its dark green waters throwing up a sudden stench of rotting vegetation.
‘Where now?’ asked Paul, wrinkling his nose.
‘This way!’ commanded du Toit, swerving on to a path with a friable skin of dried mud, along which they soon came to the bamboo fence that surrounded the huts Paul had seen from the top of the koppie. Here du Toit explained, ‘We mustn’t go into the hut unless he invites us. Okay? And don’t ask any of your stupid questions. There isn’t time. Also, it isn’t polite.’
This, Paul decided, had to be where Tsebo lived. Whoever Tsebo was. Although, before he could ask even that, du Toit had slipped through a gap in the fence.
The ground inside the kraal was even drier and dustier than on the outside, yielding only some wilted weeds and a smattering of virtual junk: an old tin bowl or two, a sheet of corrugated iron, a roll of wire, some rickety chairs, on one of which, face to the sun, sat a frail old man. His few tight curls were completely grey, as was his sketchy beard, and a roughly hewn walking stick was propped against one thigh. All the same, he was not without majesty. His eyes, which had registered the arrival of the boys the minute they appeared through the fence, might have been rheumy but they were also keen; and against the shining blackness of his skin his white shirt blazed.
‘You have brought a friend to see me,’ he said as they approached. ‘I like it very much to meet your friends.’
‘Dumela,’ said du Toit, dipping his head.
‘What then is your name?’ asked Tsebo, for this had to be Tsebo, looking at Paul.
‘He’s called Harvey,’ said du Toit. ‘We’re in the same class.’
‘I am pleased to meet you, Harvey,’ said Tsebo, raising a hand. ‘You must be a good friend to Andre if he brings you here. That makes me happy. A boy needs good friends. Is that not so, Andre?’
‘Actually, Pa asked him,’ said du Toit, ‘if you must know. And anyway, it’s only an exeat.’ His head was still lowered, arms held smartly at his sides. ‘Pa also says,’ he went on, ‘that he’ll see you tomorrow. He had some calls to make and Harvey’s parents are coming too.’
‘Tell your father I am well today,’ replied Tsebo. ‘He must not to worry.’ He looked again at Paul. ‘Every Sunday,’ he said, ‘if I am not well, then Andre will visit me. He is very good.’
‘But we’ve got to go,’ interrupted du Toit. ‘We can’t be late for lunch.’
‘Ah!’ chuckled Tsebo, face breaking into a toothless smile. ‘Or Violet will be cross. Tsebo knows! Shoosh!’ He made a sucking sound. ‘And when Violet is cross, life is difficult!’ Placing both palms together, he effected a slight bow of his own. ‘Be safe, my children, and return soon.’
‘Come!’ ordered du Toit, reaching out a hand again so that, for the first time ever, he actually touched Paul. Just a quick tug of the arm, to pull him away. ‘Come!’
As the boys ran back along the path they’d already marked with their flashing sandals, then around the foul-smelling dam and over the koppie, Paul tried to make sense of the day so far. Du Toit’s unexpected moments of warmth, bracketed by his usual coldness. The mystery of the mother. Disdainful Laura. Tsebo and his presumed wife, Violet, since that was who, from the way Tsebo had spoken of her, Paul imagined the as yet unmet Violet to be.
How exactly did this family, to whom he’d been given such unforeseen access, function? Because one thing was certain: the du Toits were not like the Harveys. And so his thoughts came round to Peggy and Douglas, whom he was missing, he realised, and had been all morning. Quite badly, truth be told. Of course he’d seen his mother at cricket yesterday, when it had been agreed that Mr du Toit would collect Paul in the morning and that the adult Harveys should come separately, around lunchtime, but not for long: she’d been talking too much to Mr du Toit. And anyway, it was only she who’d been there. Douglas had had some unexpected work to deal with in the office, apparently.
Du Toit rounded the last of the outbuildings and the stoep came into view again. On it Paul saw: a uniformed maid with a tray; Peggy in the same silly dress she’d worn to cricket yesterday; Douglas in his customary suit; while Mr du Toit, cigarette in mouth, commanded the steps.
‘There you are!’ he cried as the boys ran up. ‘We were about to send out a search party. Hey, Peggy?’
‘Hello, darling,’ smiled Peggy, coming to stand alongside Mr du Toit. ‘Don’t you look hot! Must you always run?’
Her dress and the utter predictability of her greeting notwithstanding, Paul wanted only to hug her. But didn’t dare. Not in that company. And besides, Mr du Toit precluded the possibility by clamping a firm hand on to his shoulder.
‘I think you’ll find,’ he said, steering Paul away from Peggy and up the steps, ‘that Violet has another something on her tray for you. Then after – okay, Andre, no arguing? – go and wash your hands and find Laura. Lunch’ll be ready soon. Ja, Violet? Is dit gereed?’
The maid nodded, at the same time indicating with a twinkle very like Mosa’s that Paul should help himself to more cooldrink from her tray. ‘How is Tsebo?’ she asked du Toit quietly as he did this.
The adults, by contrast, appeared – in true adult fashion – to have forgotten them already. Mr du Toit was repeating, sort of, what he’d said in the car that morning, while Peggy and Douglas were also explaining, but in a more muted manner, their story being less boastworthy, how they too had arrived in the Transvaal. What Britain had been like in the aftermath of the war. The cold. The rationing. The lack of opportunity. Future uncertain. Until eventually, thanks in part to a government scheme, they’d boarded the Stirling Castle. They spoke about their first, breathtaking sight of Table Mountain as their ship sailed into Cape Town harbour. The job that Douglas was coming to, in Johannesburg. Less breathtaking, but a good opportunity, all the same. Future more certain. Then being transferred to Pretoria and their concomitant move to Nellmapius. Paul’s start at St Luke’s.
‘Such a pretty village!’ exclaimed Mr du Toit. ‘So English in its way. You must feel at home there.’
‘Well,’ said Peggy, ‘to an extent, yes, I suppose we do.’
‘But I can’t believe there’s any question! And I’m sure you’re a real asset to the community. Am I right?’
There was for Paul, in the giggling way Peggy now patted her hair, something quite unlike her normal behaviour; something that echoed, or so he thought as he watched from the bench where he and du Toit had taken their cooldrinks, her frock. Which he knew he should have welcomed, having always wanted Peggy to dress more like the other mothers. But, now that she had, he was in fact finding that he didn’t want it quite as much as he’d thought he did. The frock was too brightly patterned. And short. Way too short. Tight also. With a dress like that, you needed a tan.
And apparently Douglas thought likewise; well, if the look he was giving Peggy was anything to go by.
Then Mr du Toit cried, with a clap of his meaty hands, ‘Ready, boys? I don’t know about anyone else, but this ou could eat an ox.’
Du Toit rose from the bench and, with a quick, impatient glance at Paul, took his empty glass back to the tray Violet had left on a nearby table before running towards the door through which Laura had vanished earlier.
‘Honestly, I give up!’ Paul heard his mother murmur with another giggle as he dashed after him. ‘The way these boys carry on! Always running, never walking. Hormones, do you think?’
Despite similarities of layout, the du Toits’ house appeared more spacious than the Nellmapius one. Where the Harveys tended to live compactly, there was a sense of leeway here, of unconstraint – more rooms than were strictly necessary for just a father, son and daughter with no apparent mother; more furniture in those rooms too, from what Paul could see as they ran past their often open doors. And, on the dun passage walls, ranks of black and white photographs. Generations of dour du Toits, it would seem, all in their Sunday best and facing up to the camera as if for the Day of Judgement.
Laura’s room, its door closed, was at the far end of the passage. Though a closed door wasn’t any impediment to du Toit, not du Toit, who barged in without knocking to announce, ‘Lunch is ready!’
His sister had changed out of her uniform and was standing by the window in a simple dress of blue that, while nicely matching the colour of her eyes, didn’t begin to take into account the expression there: full-on fury that her brother hadn’t knocked.
‘Who the hell do you think you are, hey?’ she demanded. ‘Little pig!’
‘Well, are you coming or aren’t you?’ replied an unfazed du Toit. ‘Pa’s waiting, and you don’t want to make him voes.’
Then he turned to run back down the passage and Laura transferred her gaze to Paul, holding him captive briefly with the overt curiosity in her look. Combined with his own curiosity, of course, as to what it might be like to have a sibling, something he’d often pondered. Would life be different – less lonely? easier? happier? – with a sister or brother to share it with?
‘Is he being nice to you?’ she asked. ‘You must say if he isn’t.’ Then, ‘But what are you waiting for, hey? I’m not in charge of you. Lunch is ready, ja? That’s what he said, isn’t it?’
The dining room, when Paul finally reached it, having stopped along the way to wash his hands, reminded him of the Harveys’ own. It too was gloomy, its furniture equally severe, though, where the Harveys’ table and chairs were of oak, the du Toits’ were of some very dark wood, almost black in places, heavy and extremely old-fashioned-looking. Rather like the family photographs, more of which hung in judgement here as well.
Paul’s parents were already seated, one on each side of Mr du Toit, who’d claimed the head of the table and who now indicated to Paul where he should sit, which was opposite his son. The chair at the far end was intended, it seemed, for Laura, of whom Mr du Toit asked testily, ‘Why’s she being a slowcoach now?’ And, when she did appear, ‘At this rate, Laura, the food’ll be cold, hey, and you’ll owe Violet an apology.’ He lowered his head and said solemnly, ‘Seën Here hierdie voedsel en die hande wat dit voorberei het en maak ons opreg dankbaar daarvoor. Amen.’
Grace over, Violet, who’d been hovering like Mosa alongside an elaborately carved dresser, began ladling food on to the plates she had there: a mince dish of some sort, with vegetables coming separately from dishes set on the table.
‘That’s right!’ instructed Mr du Toit as Violet began serving the plates. ‘Dig in, everyone. Help yourselves. Don’t hold back.’
‘Smells delicious,’ said Peggy. ‘What is it?’
‘Bobotie,’ said Mr du Toit, going on to explain how the dish had originally been brought to the Cape by Malay slaves ‘way back when’.
Not that Paul was listening. Rather, he was concentrating on the person opposite, trying to infer from du Toit’s expression how he himself should be reacting. Would an exaggerated rolling of the eyes at the oddness of adults be in order? Or a shared giggle at something amusing? Or was boredom more appropriate? And was Laura to be included in whatever they did decide to communicate to each other, or should they simply be ignoring her, as she was them?
Simultaneously, the adults were talking history: history and its inevitable adjunct, politics. Having extolled at some length the glories of South Africa – why it was that people had always been drawn here from the Cape’s earliest days – Mr du Toit went on to warn against elements that lurked beneath the beguiling surface: elements to be wary of, he said, if you wanted to stay out of trouble. Of course, he didn’t mean to suggest that a person must worry, as he knew some people had after Sharpeville. That wasn’t his point at all; that kind of thing was under control now, well under control. No, it was just that, in a country like South Africa, it was wise to keep your eyes peeled, that was all.
‘So tell me,’ murmured Laura, looking at Paul, ‘what’s he like at school? As popular as he pretends?’
Aware of du Toit’s cool gaze on him also, Paul said, ‘Ja, everyone wants to be his friend.’
‘Everyone?’
‘But not everyone can be.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of how his club works.’
‘Club? What club?’
Du Toit interrupted with, ‘I’m not sure Barnabas really knows what he’s talking about.’
‘Barnabas?’ queried Laura. ‘Who’s Barnabas?’
But here Paul, having taken heed of the warning, somehow managed to change the subject while at the same time Mr du Toit was saying, ‘You will of course have heard the weekend news. About this Helen Joseph woman being put under house arrest. First person ever, but if we didn’t have such laws, how the hell, hey, are these people to be stopped? Because they tried to charge her before, you know, but she got off. Like that Mandela fellow, last time round. The courts can’t always be trusted. But, as it is, she won’t be leaving her house again in a hurry, our Mrs Joseph, that’s for sure.’
Then in bustled Violet with dessert.
‘Pineapple fritters, baas Andre, your favourite!’ she said with a smile, setting the plate down in the centre of the table.
Laura and her father also broke into smiles.
‘Sal ons tweede kom, dan?’ asked Mr du Toit.
‘Pa!’ said du Toit warningly.
‘I don’t feel like coming second today,’ smirked Laura. ‘I’d rather come first.’
‘Laura!’ Du Toit was beginning to sound really fussed.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Paul.
‘Andre,’ explained Mr du Toit, still smiling, ‘when he was younger, this is, said one day at dinner – we were also having fritters – that he wanted to come second. None of us had a clue what he meant. Then his mother worked it out. Seconds! He wanted seconds.’
Violet, who’d finished placing dessert bowls in front of everyone, asked softly, ‘Koffie, baas?’
‘Ja,’ said Mr du Toit. ‘Asseblief. But on the stoep, okay.’ Adding, once she’d withdrawn, the same exhortation as at the start of the meal: ‘Dig in everyone. Help yourselves. Don’t hold back.’
Well, well – who would have thought! Paul found he was smiling too, inwardly at least, as he speared himself a fritter. Sal ons tweede kom? A handy deterrent against further use of his hated third Christian name.
‘Another of our specialties, this,’ Mr du Toit was saying as he too took a fritter. ‘Or do you get them in England also?’
‘No,’ said Peggy. ‘I don’t think we do, actually.’
‘What puddings do you have, you poms?’
‘Well,’ said Peggy, ‘Paul’s favourite – isn’t it, dear? – is Queen of Puddings.’
‘Queen of Puddings?’ echoed Mr du Toit with a snort. ‘That’s funny. Very royal.’
‘Moreish, though,’ said Peggy. ‘We had it last Sunday, didn’t we, darling?’
‘Ah!’ said Mr du Toit. ‘Of course. The priest. And the priest’s son. What’s his name again? Simon, is it?’
And so, as they tackled their steaming fritters – which had to be eaten with care, Paul discovered, otherwise you could scald your tongue on the hot fruit encased within the batter – the talk turned to the Tindalls, about whom Mr du Toit wanted to know everything, down to the last detail.
After lunch, the adults repaired to the stoep, Laura to her room and du Toit asked, as he and Paul also left the dining room, ‘What now?’
‘Your dad doesn’t make you rest?’
‘Why would he do that? I’m not a baby. We can either play in my room or go outside.’
‘It’ll be hot outside.’
‘Okay, so my room, then. I’ll catch you there. I need the toilet.’
Then off he zoomed without explaining where ‘there’ was, abandoning Paul to the unsmiling eyes of the du Toit in the photograph opposite. The man wore a dark coat that buttoned to the neck and, above that, a bushy beard which grew only beneath and around the man’s chin, the Transvaal fashion back then. Why, Paul couldn’t imagine; it looked plain silly.
But enough of ancestors! He was here to spend time with a living du Toit and so, turning from the photograph, he started in the direction of Laura’s room, which was where, he reckoned, du Toit’s own must be. At that end of the house, certainly.
The first room he passed had a piano in it and some tall glass cabinets against one wall, in which he could see sheets of music and some other, smaller musical instruments: a violin, a ukulele, a couple of recorders.
Next came a study containing a vast desk made of the same dark wood as the dining room table. On it were laid some papers, neatly stacked; no chaos here. And on the walls, as if there weren’t enough of them elsewhere, more photos, one of which caused him to step gingerly forward. It was of a younger du Toit, standing in front of his father and a woman whose warm smile and cocked head was at pleasing variance with the stiffness on display everywhere else. A light hand rested on du Toit’s shoulder. His mother, presumably. Who looked nice. Really nice.
Then something else caught Paul’s attention. On top of the neatly stacked papers lay the object he’d so painstakingly pilfered from Spier. The wooden comb, or whatever it was. In plain sight.
A swirl of questions, suppositions, wild imaginings gripped hold of him as he stared, open-mouthed, at what he’d stumbled across. It was like an earthquake, bringing different parts of his life, of himself, into violent contact with each other. Then, deciding at last that his only course of action was to make sure du Toit didn’t discover what he now knew, he quickly withdrew and continued along the passage, eventually coming upon the room he’d been in search of. He knew because on the bookcase was a collection of comics, which he at once, and avidly, began to leaf through, finding Boy’s Own; Eagle, which had Dan Dare in it; and, best of all, Beano: Dennis the Menace, the Bash Street Kids, Roger the Dodger. For a boy confined to Classics Illustrated, these could almost take care of – well, for a while at least – the memory of what he’d just seen lying on Mr du Toit’s well-ordered desk.
‘He hasn’t left you alone, has he?’ came a voice. ‘He really should know better.’
Looking up, Paul’s startled eyes encountered those of Laura, who stood framed in the doorway: a living rather than a photographic portrait; full-length, too.
‘He’s in the toilet,’ he explained, ‘that’s all.’
‘Still,’ she said, coming forward. ‘He can be very rude.’ She leaned nonchalantly against the cupboard. ‘How long has it been now?’
‘What?’
‘That you’ve been friends. He hasn’t mentioned you before, see.’
‘Well,’ replied Paul, relinquishing the comic he’d been poring over, ‘I only joined his club last week.’
‘Ja, and this club of his. Tell me, is it—?’
But she got no further. Du Toit had returned and was scowling ferociously at the interloper.
‘Who gave you permission?’ he demanded. ‘And anyway, whose guest is he, hey?’
‘Yours, of course,’ Laura retorted, raising a tanned arm, strong and supple-looking, to brush a hair from her face. ‘So don’t go leaving him alone. Behave, Andre. Like Ma would want. This isn’t polite, what you’re doing.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says me!’
Brother and sister glared at each other. Then, glancing at Paul for a further second with a wholly sympathetic look, Laura slipped away.
‘Blerrie busybody,’ spat du Toit, throwing himself on to the bed. ‘She never knows when to keep out of other people’s beeswax. You’re blerrie lucky not having a sister. You haven’t, have you? And I bet your pa doesn’t act like mine does either. Trying to humiliate you in front of your friends.’
‘You mean about the seconds? He was only teasing, wasn’t he?’
‘You think you can trust them,’ said du Toit darkly. ‘But you can’t. I really hate him. And her. They’re always ganging up on me. Blerrie family!’
Paul thought of all the photos on the wall. And of his own, much smaller and more distant family circle – in particular, the grandmother who’d only come to visit once but who wrote to him constantly nonetheless and who’d also, of course, given him his diary. Which made him wonder whether, since he’d never experienced du Toit in a vulnerable mood before, this might not be the moment to ask why, if du Toit didn’t like being ganged up on himself, he’d thought it acceptable to gang up on Paul by stealing his diary?
Or: what about du Toit’s mother? He could ask again about her. Or the club. Lombard’s dismissal. Slug’s position within it. Even what he’d seen on Mr du Toit’s desk. He could even do that.
Except du Toit, having by now recovered, was asking a question of his own.
‘What did you tell her, anyway? About the club? And don’t pretend you didn’t. I heard her asking.’
‘Cross your heart? ’Cause if you want to stay I have to be able to trust you. You mustn’t talk about it to other people. Not ever. Got that?’
Numbly, Paul nodded.
‘So how many Dinky toys have you got, then?’ came next. ‘Want to check out mine?’ And, so saying, he threw open his cupboard to reveal a collection of miniature cars that easily outstripped, in terms of number and variety, the comics. Whatever else might be lacking in du Toit’s life, it wasn’t toys.
Lifting out a sleek blue car with tapering tail fins, a beige roof and an answering strip of beige along its sides, he said with a fierce grin, ‘DeSoto Fireflite. Got it in the holidays. Tit, hey?’
I also remember, from that fateful day, walking back down the passage after we’d finished playing with du Toit’s Dinky toys and how ashamed I felt in passing, for a second time, Mr du Toit’s study: ashamed that I’d somehow betrayed Spier, who’d always been so kind to me.
I remember that Violet had set out more cooldrink for us on the stoep, and that the adults drank tea. My relief that we weren’t expected, as I would have been at home, to eat anything more than another rusk.
I remember that at one point Tsebo was mentioned again, because that was when I learned that he’d had an operation of some sort. And how Violet, who was still present, started chuckling in the background: ‘Lazy! That man is just too, too lazy.’
Though when it comes to female behaviour it’s my mother who stands out. How she would throw back her head when she laughed; as if on-stage, under the spotlight. How she would run a graceful hand through the luxuriance of her hair. While my largely silent father just watched; watched intently.
I remember too that when it was time to leave, because Laura had to be returned to school as well, it was decided that, if Mr du Toit drove her, my parents could then take du Toit and myself. To save Mr du Toit unnecessary mileage.
I can also recall, as we stood under the blue gum where the cars were parked, how, with smoke curling from him again, another cigarette, the hairs on the back of Mr du Toit’s hand seemed to catch fire in the sun as he extended it to shake my own goodbye.
With, this time, my mother as the watcher.
And in the car, dirt road becoming tar, veld becoming suburb, how Peggy attempted to find out, with some gentle probing, what the story was with du Toit’s own mother.
Douglas saying, ‘Peggy, leave it.’
And, ‘Sometimes I wonder at you, really I do.’
Then parking in the school driveway, my parents thanking du Toit for a lovely day, and the way in which he ran off, as if glad to be shot of us. My mother giving me, from the boot, a tin of tuck for the coming week as she kissed me farewell.
And how, once I’d made my own dash for the steps, I paused for a moment to look back at them. A last wave; it was our custom. The sight of them standing side by side before their modest Cortina, my mother in that dress, and how a separate image superimposed itself on that of Peggy and Douglas by the car: Peggy and Mr du Toit after she’d come to stand beside him on the steps of the farm stoep when du Toit and I ran up to them.
Her saying, ‘Don’t you look hot!’
When actually, the flushed one was her.