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BONGIWE LETSEKA, WHO played the baroness, seemed to take great delight in adopting a snooty and condescending tone to Maria and positively fawned over James’s Captain von Trapp.
“I think she’s still sour that she didn’t get the part of Maria,” Nomusa said.
Megan Macarthur, who was playing the part of sixteen-year-old Liesl, looked flat-out panicked. She was playing her romantic scenes and her big musical number opposite Ronald de Vries, a first-team rugby player from Clifford Heights. Ronald, who was playing Nazi-wannabee Rolfe Gruber, was a huge, thickly muscled matric pupil, a few years older than James, on account of having failed two years of school. He had wide shoulders and a short thick neck, and his face was dominated by a spray of painful-looking pimples and brows which almost met across the bridge of his nose.
Every time the read-through was nearing one of his lines, Ronald would inch excitedly to the edge of his chair and hold his script up firmly. Then he would bark out his lines in a thunderous voice which made the others jump.
When he shouted, “ROLFE: NO LIESL, WE MUSTN’T. (HE SETS HER ASIDE FROM THEIR EMBRACE)!” Mrs. Borman winced and said, “Erm, wonderful projection Ronald, and very, ah, enthusiastic! But perhaps you should save your voice for when we are actually on stage and not seated right next to each other? And, dear boy, we read only the actual speech, not the stage directions.”
Ronald saluted.
“I reckon he’ll make a very convincing Nazi,” Jessie said out of the corner of her mouth.
When Ronald read his next line “Yes of course, I’ve missed you Liesl!” he still bellowed the line in a monotone, but at least he didn’t read the stage directions.
All the others seemed competent enough. Zakes Rantao, a grade eleven boy with an impish glint in his eye, played the role of Max with oodles of charm, but Apples seemed a bit embarrassed by the whole process as he read the lines of the mischievous Friedrich, saying the lines with a serious air. Samantha wondered if he was avoiding smiling because he felt self-conscious about his braces.
“Well, never mind, dear,” Mrs. Borman said to Apples. “I’m sure with a bit more practice ...”
Samantha, Nomusa and Jessie had only a few lines between them. Jessie, who was believably rude as Louisa von Trapp, directed all of her lines at James, even when she was supposed to be speaking to her governess. Cindy shot scathing looks whenever Samantha read a line and kept rolling her eyes at Nomusa.
It was while Cindy was simpering through one of her own lines that the hall was suddenly plunged into darkness. There was a long moment of silence, punctuated only by a loud, confused grunt from Ronald and a few girls whispering and giggling. Then the sound of an electric guitar pierced deafeningly through the hall.
“What the devil —” began Mr. Matteson, but a voice came through loudly over the sound system.
“Apologies for the interruption — just running a few checks on the equipment.”
Sam looked towards the back of the hall where, sure enough, she could see the grinning face of Dan by the dim light of the sound booth. Then all the lights came up again and Dan’s voice once more echoed through the hall. “Please continue.”
“Well, really!” said Mrs. Borman, clearly annoyed. “Perhaps we should end the rehearsal there, boys and girls. Only those of you in Act One, scenes one to four need attend the next practice. Goodnight, all. Girls, straight to your dorms, please.”
Despite this instruction, there was a lot of lingering at the chairs and in the hall foyer. Jessie, who had seemed on the verge of inventing an excuse to go and chat to James, caught sight of Cindy heading over to him with a smile on her face, and said, “Honestly! The way they all bug him like that — it’s so childish. And so obvious.”
Samantha and Nomusa exchanged a glance but said nothing as they headed out of the hall and back to Austen house.
* * *
TWO WEEKS LATER, ON the eve of Good Friday, the school broke up for the Easter holidays. Samantha, Nomusa, Jessie and Cassandra waited for their parents on the top stair of the school entrance, where they were protected from the softly falling rain. Samantha clutched the painting Jessie had given her, safely wrapped in plastic.
Jessie and Cassandra were going on holiday with their parents to a luxury resort in Mauritius.
“Two weeks on a tropical island — it’s going to be fabulous,” Samantha said.
“Trust me, it’s going to be excruciating,” Jessie said.
Nomusa lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”
“It’ll be two weeks of non-stop bickering between my parents. My father will keep trying to sneak in some work on his laptop and will make endless business calls. My mother will punish him by spending all her time and a whack of his money in the spa and the beauty salon. And Caz and I will be dumped in some kiddie holiday programme.”
Remembering Jessie’s parents from the day they had all arrived at Clifford, Samantha could well picture the scene Jessie described.
“I like the kiddie camps,” Cassandra said.
“They’re a lot less fun when you’re my age,” Jessie said.
“At least you’ll be out in the sun, sea and sand,” Nomusa said.
“But you’re going to Cape Town — there’s oodles of sun, sea and sand there,” Samantha said, laughing. This was beginning to sound like a competition for who would have the worst holiday.
“Uh-uh,” Nomusa said, wagging a finger. “Parliament is still in session, which means my dear father will be dragging me in for the debates and endless readings of bills. I think he’s hoping that it’ll give me a taste for politics. It’s all part of the grand plan to turn me into a future president of South Africa.”
“There’s a grand plan to make you president?” Jessie said, amazed.
“I sometimes think so.” Nomusa picked up a stick and traced patterns in the dust on the wide stairs. “Do you know what my middle name is?” Samantha and Jessie shook their heads. “It’s Liberation.”
“You’re kidding!” Jessie said.
“Nope. Nomusa Liberation Gule — that’s me.”
“It sounds like a lot to live up to,” Samantha said.
“Yip. So you see why I’m not too excited about a trip to Cape Town.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, then Nomusa noticed her mother approaching and stood up. Mrs. Gule was elegantly dressed in a brightly coloured dress and intricate headdress. She held a black umbrella over her head and stepped delicately between the muddy puddles. A slight frown creased her brow. Perhaps, thought Samantha, she did not like to see her daughter sitting on the dusty stairs.
“Hi mom. These are my friends, Samantha Steadman and Jessie Delaney. And this is Jessie’s sister, Cassie.”
“Cassandra,” Cassandra corrected automatically.
Mrs. Gule nodded at them. “Come, Nomusa, we must get going.”
The girls exchanged hugged goodbyes, and Cassandra gave a little wave and a, “Toodle-loo, Nomusa.”
Just then Cindy Atkins and Katherine Bennington bounded out of the entrance. Cindy was carrying a large green bag and as she went down the stairs, it smacked into the back of Samantha’s head.
“Hey!” Samantha protested, rubbing the painful spot.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Cindy with plainly fake sympathy. “An accident.”
“You did it on purpose!”
But Cindy and Kitty just laughed and ran down the stairs and across the parking lot to where Cindy’s father was standing beside his Mercedes. Jessie stood up angrily and looked set to run after Cindy, but at that moment, Mr. Steadman’s noisy and very muddy Land Rover pulled in. While Samantha stood and gathered her bag together, Dan splashed across to where they stood.
“Hello, Liza,” he said to Jessie.
Jessie hesitated a moment, opened and closed her mouth, and then said, “Hello, Derek.”
Dan clapped a hand to his head as if flabbergasted. “A joke! An honest-to-goodness joke! The girl has a sense of humour after all. Just don’t smile, Jessie, whatever you do — don’t smile!”
At this, Jessie grinned widely, her hazel eyes glinting with laughter. “You are an ass, Daniel Steadman, you know that?”
With a sideways glance at his sister, he replied, “So I’ve been told on the odd occasion. Come on, Sam, Dad and James are waiting for us in the car.”
“I’ll walk with you,” Jessie offered at once.
“No need. Unless I’m very much mistaken, your lift just arrived.”
Jessie and Samantha looked where Dan pointed. Beside the enormous gold BMW, a man in a dark suit stood silently, apparently unaffected by the rain.
“Oh, look,” Jessie said, picking up her bags, “they’ve sent the driver. Always the loving, personal touch. Bye, Sam.” She hugged her friend.
“Bye, Lizette,” Dan said.
“Bye, Donald,” Jessie called over her shoulder, shepherding Cassandra across the busy parking lot.
“Well, shall we go or what?” Samantha asked when Dan, his gaze still on Jessie, made no move to go.
As they drove away from Clifford House, splashing through puddles and dodging potholes, Samantha caught up on her father and brothers’ news. Outside fine rain fell from low grey clouds which crept over the mountains, sank into the valleys and dissolved into wisps of mist. Rivulets and waterfalls glinted like silver ribbons against the distant rocky cliffs. On one side of the road ran an endless chain of wooden telephone poles while the other was fringed by banks of the eucalyptus trees which made her father mutter about “alien invaders.”
Soon the mountainous terrain smoothed into gently sloped fields of high grass — green and golden and ochre red at the tips. Eroded ravines were gashes of deep red earth in the veld. Tall grass gave the impossibly long-tailed widow birds, which swooped precariously across the road in front of them, a place to perch.
“Look!” Samantha said, pointing outside the window. “Cosmos!”
Great swaying drifts of tall pink, white and mauve blooms flanked the road and spread like pastel rivers into the fields, forming great lakes of flowers which stretched off into the horizon.
Samantha sighed, rested her head back on the seat and gazed out of the window at the pink and purple puddles. Her heart, she knew, would only ever be at home in this place, in this wild and almost unbearably beautiful land.