*****
Jack arranged to meet Mrs Small at her home in Elsie’s River. He’d asked Vera to accompany him, to keep a record of the conversation, and, in view of the nature of the case, to avoid him being with the woman on his own.
‘A bit unusual, this, Mr Neuberger,’ Vera said a little sharply, as he was closing the office door behind them. ‘It’s not usually the advocate who traipses around all over the place interviewing people. That’s the attorney’s job, you know.’
‘Smit’s not done it well,’ Jack said calmly. ‘There are all kinds of gaps in the paperwork and hardly any interviews. He hasn’t got the facts straight.’
‘So you’re doing it for him?’ Her lips were pursed tight and he saw that she was pulling her gloves on rather over-zealously. ‘The other advocates I’ve worked for would manage with what they’ve got.’
‘So you think that’s what I should do? Go into the courtroom without the full facts?’
‘Who am I to say?’ Vera said. ‘I’m only the secretary.’
‘We’re going out to Elsie’s River, Vera. It may not be what you’ve been used to but I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with that.’
He started off down the stairs; Vera hesitated for a moment and then followed, allowing her heels to slap down on each step a bit more noisily than was perhaps necessary.
They drove out in the old bottle green Ford that Jack had borrowed from his cousin, Isidore. It took quite some time to find the little house, down a narrow, dusty street squatting among scrubby trees and run-down buildings, with a grocery store on one corner and a fruit stall selling paw paws and prickly pears on the other.
Vera wiped the dust off the backs of her nylon stockings and smoothed down her hair. He caught the look of mild disgust on her face. He knocked at the wooden door, with its mosquito screen and peeling yellow paintwork.
A woman came to the door. She was holding one child by the hand and another came running up behind, pulling at the fabric of her floral dress. For an instant, Jack was confused.
‘Mrs Small?’
‘Yes, I was expecting you. Come in.’
She was quite different from the woman he had imagined. A slight figure, with dark eyes and a fine-boned face, her black hair straight rather than curly, and swept up, leaving her neck exposed. She had a good skin, creamy brown and youthful. She probably had some Malay blood in her by the looks of it. She was a young woman, in her late twenties or early thirties by his reckoning, and very beautiful.
Jack groaned inwardly. This was not what he had been expecting. A vision of her standing up in court flashed through his mind. This complicated things.
Mrs Small invited them into her small front room, gesturing towards a wicker sofa, covered with a loose, pale-blue cotton spread. The room was furnished simply, bare of ornaments, but tidy and clean. On a table stood a wedding photograph, showing Agnes Small in happier days, holding a bouquet of flowers in one hand, her other arm locked around that of her husband.
She caught Jack’s gaze. ‘He died just over two years ago,’ she said. ‘Of pneumonia. Left us to fend for ourselves. There was no insurance, no payout from his work, so I had to get a job and leave the children with a friend.’
He saw her eyes filling with tears. ‘That must have been hard for you,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she replied simply, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘But it was work – it was money. I was employed in a canned-fruit company, packing tins of peaches and guavas, for a year or so. And then, someone told me about a better job, in a bottling firm in Goodwood, so I left and started there, for higher wages. Just a few months in and the company went bust. I fell out with my friend. I couldn’t pay her for the children any more and she lost patience – she needed the money herself. So there I was – no job, no one to leave my children with if I wanted to go out and get another. Times were hard. I found some small jobs, taking in sewing and mending, but that wasn’t enough to pay the rent and put food on the table.’
Here in the front room, with the light coming in through the open blind, Jack could see the toll that it had taken on her, this and, no doubt, the worry about the trial. Her face looked drawn and tired.
‘How did it come about that you asked Mrs van Heerden for help?’
‘My mother was a Christian. She took me to her church when I was small, even though it angered my father. A woman told me that there were church people giving out charity in Elsie’s River and that she had been given parcels of both food and clothes. I asked her to see if they would visit me as well.’
‘And Mrs van Heerden came herself?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘She’s a good woman. She came and helped me in my time of need.’
‘Did you get to know her well?’
‘She came many times, sometimes accompanied by one of the other ladies of her church. They brought me small parcels of food, clothes for the children, or a little bit of money for my rent. I was building up my sewing jobs but it wasn’t enough yet for us to get by.’
Jack looked at the children watching him in silence. A girl and a boy. The girl must have been about eight or nine, the boy around four or five. They looked anxious, their eyes fixed on his face, or turning to their mother’s for reassurance. ‘Times were hard… not enough to get by.’ It was a refrain he knew very well.
‘What will happen in the trial, Mr Neuberger? I’m so afraid for myself and for my children. And for Mr and Mrs van Heerden, who have been so good to me. What will happen to us if we are found guilty?’
‘I hope you won’t be,’ Jack said. ‘If all you say is true, you will be acquitted by a jury of decent people. But if not…’ He paused. What would happen if the verdict went the other way? It was anyone’s guess. The law was new and the van Heerden case could end up being the first one to be seen through the process, if it were brought to court quickly. There was no saying what the sentence would be – a small fine, a suspended sentence or a jail term – all of these were possible. Jack feared that there might be political interference, a signal from the Ministry of Justice that it expected stern sentences to be meted out, to make a show of how seriously the government was taking this new law.
‘I’ve no doubt you’ll be found innocent,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s just take each day at a time and put our energies into making sure of that.’
‘My advocate,’ she said. ‘Will you work together with him on this?’
‘I’ll talk to him. I’ll make sure we’re going in the same direction, singing from the same hymn sheet, as it were. We’ll share ideas.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, with a look of gratitude that touched him but made a little nervous knot form in his stomach. He had a sense that she trusted him and he would need to live up to this.
‘Now tell me about Mr van Heerden and his visits to you.’
Her account tallied exactly with that of his client. When Mrs van Heerden had her last child, she had been too ill to visit the families she was helping and Mr van Heerden had agreed to step in and help the women with their project. He drove them to Elsie’s River and shared with them the task of taking parcels to the homes. Sometimes he had come with Mrs de Villiers or Mrs Pietersen, sometimes with Miss Joubert, sometimes on his own.
‘How often did he visit you on his own?’ Jack asked.
‘Goodness, I’d need to think,’ she said. ‘Five or six times perhaps.’
‘And why did he come alone on these occasions?’
‘There was a lot of work to do – it gave the women freedom to go to other houses and help more people. Mostly he just brought me the parcels and left, he didn’t even come inside.’
‘But sometimes he stayed?’
‘I was grateful to him and his family. I invited him in to share a cup of tea. I told him about my mother and her church, my childhood faith that had b
een lost and that I was struggling to find again. He sometimes stayed and prayed with me.’
‘Did anyone ever say anything to you about this? Your neighbours, or your friends?’
‘A few people muttered about me taking charity. For some it was sinking low – it brought shame on you. There were occasionally harsh words, if my little girl, Lucille, came out wearing a dress that had been given to her, or Billy had a new coat. But I put it down to jealousy. It’s human nature you know – people who are struggling look over their shoulder to see how others are doing.’
She stopped speaking and sent the children into the kitchen. ‘Go get a drink of milk for yourselves, from the ice safe,’ she said.
When they were gone, she looked down at her dress, fixing her gaze firmly on her knees.
‘I never…We never…’
Vera was shifting uneasily next to Jack on the sofa.
‘That’s all right, Mrs Small. No need to say anything more. We know.’
Chapter 9
1941
‘Little Jackie’s speaking quite well now, isn’t he?’ Mrs van de Merwe remarked, looking at me with her icy blue eyes. ‘A bit of a stutter, it’s true, but at least that tongue of his has got going at last, so he’s not going to be one of those backward children, after all, like you were so worried about, Mrs N. I always said he’d be fine.’
When she left the shop, Ma turned to Ada, her eyes dark with fury.
‘That woman will drive me to murder one day! She was the one who got me all worried, silly woman, with her talk of the Jordaan boy in the home for retarded children!’
‘Ag man, Mrs N,’ Ada replied, hands on her hips and eyes rolling up towards the ceiling. ‘You take no notice of her. The woman’s brain’s rattling around inside her head like a little dried pea in a big empty jar. You can’t expect to get any sense out of her, silly Afrikaner vrou.’
Ma tried to look stern – perhaps Ada had overstepped the mark? But then she laughed out loud.
‘You’re right, Ada,’ she said. ‘She could do with some of your cleverness!’
It had been a good few months now since I’d started speaking. Ma never seemed to tire of telling the customers about the first time she heard me talk and it caused great interest and entertainment for everyone except me, the subject of her story, who would rather not have had attention drawn to it in this way.
‘We’d just eaten our evening meal and I’d put the boys to bed, kissed them goodnight and half closed the bedroom door, but instead of going downstairs as usual, I’d stayed upstairs, tidying away the laundry in the cupboard on the landing. Not long after I’d left them, Sauly had begun his usual little trick of seeing if he could climb out of his cot. He’d been trying it for a while now but I was pretty sure he couldn’t manage it – those wooden bars that Sam put up were nice and high. Then suddenly, just as I’d finished putting away the sheets, I heard a voice I’d never heard before, saying loudly, “N-no, Sauly! N-no! You’re a very n-naughty boy!” My words! Just what I’d have said to Sauly myself, but there they were, popping right out of Little Jackie’s mouth. He was trying to stop Sauly from climbing out and hurting himself, you see. Being a really good big brother! And the words poured out in a whole sentence, just like that. A bit stuttery they were, but lovely whole words from my little boychick!’
‘Aah,’ they all said. ‘Speaking at last. What a relief! You must be very pleased. ’
Why hadn’t I been able to speak like other children? Why now was it still a struggle? The words were perfectly formed in my mind but didn’t seem to come out and be heard. I could cry out loud like other people, when a mosquito stung me or I fell in a bed of nettles, or if I cut my finger on the edge of a piece of paper. I could laugh, if there was something to laugh about, when Oupa told me a joke, or my cousin Isidore, the youngest son of my Aunt Fella, did a magic trick for me with his pack of cards, or when the ‘Coon’ Carnival passed along Main Street and we all went out onto the pavement to watch and wave. But my words, uttered at last, were full of stops and starts, as if my tongue were fighting my teeth and my teeth were in combat with my lips and my lips were arguing with my tongue to stop them emerging whole and pure. The more I tried the worse it became and, as time went on, I began to wonder whether I would ever speak freely and easily like other children. Any day now I would be starting school and, from Ma’s worried conversations with Ada, I picked up that it might not be very easy for me if talking remained such a struggle.
Ma walked me there on the first day, along Main Road and down Silk Street, holding my hand. Sauly was in the big pram, which wouldn’t fit through the schoolyard gate. He was red-faced and bawling, so Ma kissed me on the head and pushed me through the gate towards the crowd of children, then turned abruptly and walked away.
I watched her go, following her back and her swaying gait as she pushed the pram along the road till she was just a tiny figure. She was going to be with Sauly all day; she was leaving me on my own, and Sauly would have her all to himself; they would not even think about me and perhaps they might forget to come and collect me at the end of the endless hours that I faced alone at school. I would need to speak – to the teachers, to the children – and Ada and Ma would not be there to help me.
I stood at the wire fence watching the children. Boys chasing each other, kicking up gravel and dirt. Girls playing five stones, jumping into a skipping rope that slapped and slapped on the ground, or chalking hopscotch squares, ready for a game. Boys in little clusters, swapping glass marbles, or prized stamps. In the corner of the yard, Miss Fortune, whistle in hand, a little group of girls adoringly hanging onto her brightly printed red cotton skirt. And there by the big wooden school door, the head teacher, Mrs Coetzee, stout, thick-calved, brown hair pulled into a bun, dressed in a tweed suit and sweating in the heat of the February sun.
‘Line up!’ calls Mrs Coetzee and then again, more loudly, ‘LINE UP, BOYS AND GIRLS!’ The children gradually drift from their games into two lines, one of boys, the other of girls. I wait till the lines have formed, then slowly join the end of the boys’ queue. Heads turn, boys and girls whisper. I’ve been noticed. Who is he? Who knows him? What street does he live on? What do his parents do? Where’s he come from? Oh, it’s Little Jackie, Mr Neuberger’s son, the storekeeper’s boy, the one from the Handyhouse. The one with the baby brother, Sauly. The one whose pa employs Ada, whose nephew Willie drowned in the river, whose cousin is in Standard 2, who’s sweet on Clarice Schwartz, who’s held hands with Jacobus Malan. The one with the st-st-st-stutter, Little J-j-jackie.
‘Quiet, QUIET, children!’ shouts Mrs Coetzee. ‘Everyone to your classes.’ And the lines file into the school, with murmuring whispers and a last rush of marbles exchanging sweaty hands and being dropped into pockets. April Fortune steers me towards the first of the doors along the corridor and into a classroom. She introduces me to my new teacher, Mrs Uys.
‘This is Jack Neuberger,’ she says.
‘Hello Jack,’ says Mrs Uys. ‘Come and sit at the front where I can keep an eye on you.’
I like the coolness of her hand on my hot palm, the up-and-down waves of her voice as she tells us the story of the Boers arriving in South Africa, the singsong repetitions of numbers and the echoing of children reciting their times tables, their voices like the soft pulse of a native drum. The classroom is safe and I can stay silent, sitting next to Mrs Uys, listening to it all and not saying a word.
But at the break, in the schoolyard, I am surrounded by children. They are questioning me, buzzing round me like excited little goggas round a naked flame and when I reply, they laugh.
‘What’s your name?’ they ask.
‘J-jackie,’ I say.
‘J-j-j-jackie,’ they repeat.
‘Jackie what?’
‘N-neub-b-berger.’
‘N-n-neub-b-b-berger,’ they laug
h.
I fall silent. At last the boys and girls run off to continue their games.
At dinnertime I will have to find a place to eat my lunch, sit down in the dirt, open up my little paper bag and take out my food, the piece of wurst Ma has packed, the dry salt crackers and the three small loquats from the tree. I hope Ma has remembered to pack me the fig roll that I asked for. Is it there at the bottom of my paper bag, waiting to be nibbled slowly, so that the sweet fig seeds crunch between my teeth? Yes or no?
At the end of the afternoon, I stand waiting by the gate. Other mothers have already arrived but Ma’s not there. I watch the children wandering off one by one. Has Ma forgotten me? Will I be left here, standing on my own, waiting for Ma to appear, while the sky darkens and the schoolyard empties?
And then finally I see her, hurrying along the road with the pram, her face flushed and hot.
‘How was school?’ she asks anxiously.
‘OK.’
‘Making some nice friends?’
‘Yes.’
‘What are their names?’
I fall silent.
‘Never mind, Jackie. It takes time to make friends,’ she says. ‘It’ll happen, I promise you.’
*****
Children often came into the store with their parents, or their maids. Mikey and Clarice Shapiro with Millicent when she collected the groceries, clutching coins to buy tickey lollipops or sherbet swizzles; the five Levy children crowded round the pram where baby Ethel was sleeping while their mother bought rice or safety pins or dishcloths; Dorothy Fortune dragged in reluctantly by her big sister April, the teacher at my school, standing fidgeting by the counter, waiting to get back out into the sunshine to play with her friends; Billy Edwards and his sister Maisie coming on their own to buy things for their ma, who was sick at home.
Off the Voortrekker Road Page 7
