Keepers of the House

by JH Fletcher

  It could have nothing to do with Pieter Wolmarans’s troubles, real or imagined. They were not her concern, as he would no doubt be quick to tell her if she tried to interfere. The fact that she had not heard meant nothing; his next letter was not due until Christmas.

  She had been restless for months; that could have something to do with it, but could hardly be the full explanation.

  She would not even be in time to see Mark, who would be back in Sydney by now. Perhaps, if she really were hitting the nostalgia track, that was as well.

  Your life is always so organised, she told herself crossly. Now look at you.

  At Johannesburg’s Jan Smuts Airport, she changed to a local flight, reached Cape Town by lunchtime. She rented a car, drove into the city and booked into a hotel standing beneath the mountain called Lion’s Head. She sat on the terrace and looked at the sea. Now she was here, she realised how apprehensive she was of taking the next step. Mark had said Pieter Wolmarans had been hostile; she wondered how he would greet her. Not that she was planning to call on him straightaway; she had other priorities.

  She wandered around the city, re-visiting the past. She jostled with the shoppers in the Golden Acre, took the train from Adderley Street to Simonstown. The waters of False Bay lapped almost to the carriage wheels. In the distance, lower slopes hidden in haze, she saw the dreaming summits of the Hottentots Holland mountains.

  Fifteen years before, she had taken this journey with Mark, his hand in her lap, its heat warming thighs warm enough already without extra help.

  I listen to the chug-a-lug of the wheels, watch the beach huts at St James form cubes of brilliant colour against the tawny sand. On the other side of the compartment, a coloured child is eating a banana. I watch him and experience an extraordinary sensation, of watching my own life emerging like the banana from its skin. I am sensitive to everything about me — the rumbling wheels, the swaying train, Mark’s hand warm in my lap — and for the first time understand that one person can in fact be several people, each with a different potential for good and evil, sorrow and happiness. I have the power to become more than the individual I have known all my life.

  ‘The road to Damascus —’

  ‘What?’

  Mark hears my murmur but not the words.

  I smile at him, feel brilliance in my face as I press his hand ardently against me. ‘Nothing …’

  They had taken that journey the day before the riot and the meeting with Adam Shongwe that had changed so much.

  Now once again Anna sat in the train and looked at the water, the distant mountains, the textures of what her life had been. For an instant, fifteen years earlier, she had glimpsed another choice, had lost it again so quickly that now she did not even know what she had seen, only that it differed vastly from what her life had in fact become.

  She stirred restlessly. There was no point in such thoughts, yet there was nothing imaginary about the sense of bereavement and regret that overwhelmed her.

  When the train reached Simonstown, she ate at a restaurant overlooking the bay; a fish called kingklip, a half-bottle of bone-dry wine. She remembered how, fifteen years before, the whites-only beach had been deserted; now it was crammed with brown bodies. She clambered across rounded boulders to a tiny cove, she paddled in the warm water, she returned to the station in time to catch the city-bound train.

  Back at the hotel she discovered that something had happened to her during her pilgrimage into the past; she was in a fever of impatience as she went to her room, made her few arrangements.

  She had intended to phone Pieter Wolmarans when she was ready, ask when it would be convenient to call on him. Now she had other plans.

  Early the next morning, she drove into the country. The mountains grew close about her. She needed no map to put her on the road to Oudekraal.

  Watching the vines on either side of the narrow road, Anna remembered the vineyards of France, her catastrophic attempt to seduce her husband under the Burgundy sun; at least there would be no such problem now. Beyond the vines, the mountains were blue and moss-green against a brilliant sky. The first glimpse Anna had of the house was what she had seen on her first visit, the carved pediment framed by the giant oak tree that Pieter Wolmarans had told her had been planted over two hundred years before. So long a time, she thought. Generation upon generation of Wolmarans, moulding and changing the land, even as the land, inexorably, had moulded and changed them. My ancestors.

  She parked before the house. For a moment she sat there, immersing herself once again in the history of this place. She got out into the stammering flare of torches, the angry cries of the crowd forming a tight circle around the bound and terrified prisoners.

  She stared at the old house drowsing in the summer heat, and a man came and stood on the terrace, his hands on the railing. She looked up at him, as she had the first time she had come here. For a moment she felt shock; since she had last seen him, Pieter Wolmarans had grown old. Of course he had, she told herself. He had hardly been young fifteen years ago; now he must be in his late seventies.

  He did not move as she walked across the driveway to the house. At the bottom of the steps she paused. ‘Good morning.’

  She had thought he would show surprise, perhaps even pleasure. He did neither but nodded silently, face expressionless.

  Unsure of her welcome, mindful of what Mark had told her in his letter, she hesitated. ‘May I come up?’

  Again the nod. She climbed the steps to the terrace, while her cousin’s eyes impaled her, coldly. He was as upright as she remembered, the massive body still hard, but a melting of his features showed clearly the years that had passed since their last meeting.

  ‘So the ratpack is here again,’ he said.

  She blinked at the contempt in his voice. ‘I have come to see you,’ she said. ‘Since I am in the district. Since we are related.’

  ‘I was waiting for someone to remind me of that,’ Pieter said.

  ‘If you can tell me how I have offended you —’

  ‘And of course you know nothing about the man who was here only yesterday.’

  ‘Pieter, I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about —’

  ‘You expect me to believe that?’ Eyes like blue flame. ‘You don’t have enough in Australia that you have to badger me here?’

  She would get nowhere by being submissive.

  ‘It might help if I knew what you were talking about.’ She stalked past him, plonked herself down in the chair that still stood beside the small table at the end of the terrace. ‘If you want to tell me what the problem is, perhaps we can sort it out.’

  His nostrils flared; for a moment she thought she had gone too far.

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you people?’ he demanded, lips white. ‘Oudekraal is not for sale.’

  Anna stared out at the open ground before the house. She said, ‘Two minutes ago I was imagining the scene my great-grandmother Anneliese described to me the day her father — your great-grandfather — led the commando after the convicts. It was like being there myself. I could see the men on their horses, feel the wind …’ She looked at him. ‘Of course you can’t sell this place. I remember telling you that the last time I was here. How can anyone sell their past?’

  His face had changed, suspicion turning to puzzlement, but she had not won him yet.

  ‘Then why are you here?’

  ‘I had a letter from a friend. Mark Forrest. He said he’d been to see you. That you seemed … troubled. I tried to phone you, but I couldn’t get through —’

  ‘The phones are a joke,’ he said. ‘Like so much else in the new South Africa.’

  ‘I was concerned. So I came.’

  ‘From Australia?’ His sarcasm was caustic. ‘All that way just to see me?’

  For a moment, she stared at him. ‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘To see you.’ She saw that he was inclined to believe her. Yet he still had doubts.

  ‘Do you know a man called Danie
Myburgh?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A land broker from Stellenbosch. He has been here three times in the past month, badgering me to sell Oudekraal. Each time I tell him it is not for sale, but he does not wish to listen. He was from Swellendam originally,’ he said, as though that explained much. ‘No local man would behave in such a way.’

  ‘Who is he acting for?’

  ‘An overseas buyer; that is all he will tell me. When I saw you drive up, I thought it must be you.’

  Anna shook her head. ‘It certainly is not. I don’t want to buy Oudekraal at all but, if I did, I would approach you direct, not through a land broker.’

  Suspicion did not die so easily. Eyes shrewd in the seamed face, he said, ‘Yet you are here. Who is Danie My burgh acting for, if not for you?’

  She thought, An overseas buyer. ‘I can’t be sure …’

  ‘You know your husband came here?’

  ‘He told me, yes. But only afterwards.’

  ‘He was another one who wanted to buy. I told him no. Again and again I told him, but he wouldn’t listen. In the end, I sent him away with my boot in his arse.’ The grimmest of smiles. ‘I suspect he did not love me for it.’

  ‘I bet he didn’t.’

  ‘Did you approve of his coming here?’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘Yet he is your husband.’

  ‘Only just. We are getting divorced.’

  ‘Not because of Oudekraal?’

  ‘For Oudekraal and a hundred other things.’

  ‘Even so …’ His voice was stern, as his face was stern. ‘Those whom God has joined together …’

  ‘It takes two.’

  ‘Perhaps. In my day, divorce was unthinkable; now it happens all the time. Sometimes I think I have lived too long, that I am out of step with the modern ways. It is none of my business, of course.’ He sighed. ‘As for our mystery buyer … I have thought of little else since Myburgh first turned up on my doorstep. It is like being stalked by a lion. Or a hyena.’ He stared at her assessingly. ‘Do you think it could be your husband?’

  ‘It’s certainly possible.’

  He shook his head, exasperated. ‘The man must be stone-deaf. I told him no a dozen times.’

  Anna wondered how to explain to this bachelor that Mostyn might want Oudekraal simply because Anna would not wish him to have it. That a once-loving relationship could become so degraded that its sole purpose was to hurt. Anything so vindictive would surely seem incredible to a man who had never known the traumas of a marriage break-up.

  ‘You are saying Myburgh may be acting for your husband?’

  She was sure — it had the stink of Mostyn all over it — but remained cautious.

  ‘I have no proof.’ But proof, perhaps, could be obtained. ‘If I can borrow your phone,’ she said, ‘I may be able to find out.’

  She dialled Myburgh’s number, asked to be put through to him.

  ‘This is Mr Harcourt’s office. He has asked me to enquire whether there have been any developments.’

  She listened, put down the phone.

  ‘No further developments, he said. That settles it. He’s acting for my husband.’

  ‘He doesn’t give up, does he? In some circumstances that might be admirable, I suppose.’

  ‘There is nothing admirable about this, I assure you.’ He looked his question; she smiled ruefully. ‘A long story …’

  ‘In which case let us be comfortable.’

  He went into the house, returned with another chair, two glasses and an unlabelled bottle of wine wet from the refrigerator. He placed the chair beside the table, drew the cork from the bottle and, with a flourish, filled both glasses.

  Anna inspected the honey-coloured wine. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Oudekraal’s best chardonnay,’ he told her.

  ‘I am honoured.’

  ‘To welcome home the last of the Wolmarans. And to apologise for doubting you.’

  She was embarrassed. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘To me it matters a great deal,’ he told her. ‘If you had been a stranger it would perhaps have been excusable, but I have known you fifteen years. I should have known better.’

  She saw that he meant what he said. Welcome to the family. Welcome to renewed trust. The wine was a double honour, then.

  She raised her glass. ‘To Oudekraal.’

  ‘And to the Wolmarans.’

  They drank ceremoniously.

  ‘Tell me about this husband of yours.’

  She did, as simply as she knew how. By the time she had finished, the bottle was nearly empty.

  ‘Perhaps he is doing it because he has an interest in wine farms,’ Pieter said. ‘Perhaps it is only that he wants to buy a South African property?’

  Anna saw he would be more comfortable with that explanation than with the idea that Mostyn was doing it out of spite, but she did not believe it. ‘Perhaps …’

  ‘You do not think so?’

  ‘I think he wants it, yes. For two reasons. Because he knows I wouldn’t wish him to have it and because he thinks he’ll be able to sell it at a profit.’

  ‘So he would not keep it for himself?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘I see.’ He thought about that for a while. ‘If I will not sell, he cannot buy.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Do you have any outstanding loans?’

  ‘Of course. Every farm has debt. Equipment is expensive and operations must be financed until the crush.’

  ‘Where do you get the money? From the banks?’

  ‘At one time, yes. But with all the political changes the banks are less co-operative than they used to be.’

  ‘Is that the only reason?’

  She watched him making up his mind whether to confide in this woman whom, Wolmarans blood or not, he barely knew.

  ‘There have been threats,’ he said eventually. ‘We have all had them. The land belongs to the people — that sort of thing. There have been deaths. Nothing like the Free State, where one white farmer is murdered every day, but one or two.’

  ‘And the banks?’ she prompted him.

  ‘Are nervous.’

  ‘Enough to call in their loans?’

  ‘They have no wish to lend more, at any rate. And capital costs are rising all the time.’

  ‘So where do you go for finance?’

  ‘There are institutions that provide what they call off-market funding. Quite a number have sprung up in recent years. They are expensive, of course, but —’

  ‘Is there any way Myburgh could know about your arrangements?’

  ‘It’s common knowledge. We all do it.’

  ‘Then you may have a problem,’ Anna said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘My husband’s a banker. Contacts all over the world. If he wants to buy up your loans, he will certainly find a way of doing so.’

  ‘Why should he?’

  ‘To get hold of Oudekraal. Pay up or get out.’

  ‘He would do that just to punish you?’

  ‘His nickname is Hatchet. Hatchet Harcourt. He would do it, never doubt it. Especially if he sees the chance of a profit.’

  Pieter leant back in his chair, whistling gently beneath his breath. ‘There is nothing anyone can do about it.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that.’ She smiled brilliantly at him. ‘Do you think it would be possible to take me over the estate again, like you did last time?’

  They went everywhere, as before; through the beds of streams, the water white as it gnashed its way past the stony fords, around rocky outcrops, past terrace upon terrace of grapes ripening towards the crush. Pieter drove the open jeep more like a rally driver than a man in his seventies, and Anna felt the land that was Oudekraal lay its hand once more upon her heart.

  He must have sensed something of her thoughts. Back at the house, they sat once again at the terrace table and he smiled at her.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I told you before
. This time it’s the same. I was thinking how impressed your great-grandfather would be if he could see the estate now.’

  He was pleased. ‘There is always much to be done.’ He laughed a little. ‘The work never stops.’

  ‘Or the need for capital.’

  Which wiped the laugh from his lips.

  ‘I am not trying to interfere,’ Anna said. ‘What happens here is none of my business. Except that, in a way, my husband has made it my business.’

  ‘How has he done that?’

  ‘If he gains control of the estate, do you really think he will allow you to stay?’

  Silence as Pieter Wolmarans pondered the idea of being forced to leave the only home he had known.

  ‘How do we stop him?’

  Anna told him.

  Anderson phoned to tell Mostyn that Anna was not available to sign the papers. It made him spit.

  ‘Months of her bloody nonsense, and now she’s not even here!’

  ‘Steyn says she’s out of the country. On holiday. That’s all he was willing to tell me.’

  Something must have come up. Given Mostyn’s plans, he wondered whether it was anything he should know. He made a few phone calls, within the hour had found out what he wanted.

  ‘What’s she doing in South Africa?’

  On holiday … He didn’t believe a word of it; the timing was too neat.

  He looked at his watch. Three o’clock in the morning over there. Tough. Time Myburgh started earning his keep.

  He dialled the number. He had told Anderson he would get even with Anna. He had issued the necessary instructions but had not followed them through. Time to put that right.

  The phone lifted.

  ‘Yes?’ Myburgh’s voice was blurred with sleep and exasperation; not a man who appreciated being woken in the middle of the night.

  ‘Mostyn Harcourt. What have you done about that business I asked you to arrange for me?’

  The voice quacked.

  Mostyn’s hand tightened on the receiver. ‘What do you mean, you told me already? I haven’t contacted you for days.’

  Again he listened; when Myburgh had finished, he slammed down the phone. Stared at Anderson furiously.