Off the Voortrekker Road

by Barbara Bleiman

I waited longingly for the Edwards children’s visits to the store. Maisie was fair and tall with two long plaits; her knees were grubby and her teeth were crooked but her eyes were a lovely dark blue and I thought her the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I yearned for Maisie to talk to me but I knew that she, like all the other children who came to the store, would never stay long enough to play with Little Jackie, the storekeeper’s son. They did not seem to notice me. It was as if I were a plank of wood, or a box of soap suds, a sack of beans or a bag of rice. I had no hopes of making friends with any of these children, lovely Maisie least of all.

  But then there was Terence, Terence Mostert.

  Along Main Road, after the bakery, beyond the barber’s shop and a bit further on than the Jewish Communal Hall and the Victoria and Opal bioscope, stood Mostert’s Garage, where automobiles stopped to fill up with petrol at the single pump and where the coloured mechanic Walter Hendricks could often be seen lying on his back in the oily workshop, tinkering around with a broken-down Chevy or Oldsmobile. May Mostert, who ran the garage, was a plump, friendly, hard-working woman. Her husband Simey had been ill for a long time and spent most of the year in the sanatorium at Rondebosch.

  ‘She’s a good sort,’ Ma said when anyone asked about May. ‘She has a tough time of it, with Simey so ill. TB, you know.’

  I wondered if being a good sort was the same as being a mensch. Ma often talked about whether someone was a mensch, as if this were the biggest accolade one might bestow. Menschen were ‘human beings’ – honourable, good, decent people who behaved well towards others. A mensch commanded Ma’s respect, and that respect, as Pa and I both knew, was not easily won. I puzzled over whether May Mostert could be a mensch, or if only men were menschen, or perhaps, and this seemed to be the case from the examples Ma always quoted, only men who were also Jews could qualify. Afrikaners and coloureds, English and Malays never figured in Ma’s menschen list, so obviously May Mostert, an Afrikaner, couldn’t be one, which seemed to me like a very great shame, as May seemed to me to behave very well towards people, and most of all towards me.

  Simey and May had a small son called Terence who was five and a half, just like me. He often came into the store with his ma and brought with him a handful of Dinky cars that the toy salesman had given him when he had his car repaired at the garage. The cars were bright and shiny Oldsmobiles and Chevvies, pick-up trucks and big-wheeled tractors. Sometimes, while Ma and May Mostert talked about the price of candles or the summer heat, Terence brought his Dinkies over and, without saying a word, sat down cross-legged beside me and set them out in front of us. Together we cleared the sawdust around us and raced the cars across the wooden floor.

  Terence had closely cropped blond hair, skin that was splashed with freckles and pale-blue eyes. Like his mother, he had a broad, open face, which I thought had a nice kind of softness to it, like a ripe apricot or peach. Terence looked entirely different from me, with my dark skin and brown eyes, my thin face and small frame. He was a lot sturdier, and these physical differences, coupled with his Afrikaner background, made us an unlikely prospect for friendship. With his good looks, he had the appearance of a boy who should have had friends in abundance, and been full of self-confidence and boyish bluster. But there was something hesitant and gentle about him that made me feel comfortable in his presence. He didn’t make demands of me or expect me to speak a great deal, just sat with me racing his toy cars on the floor of the store. Looking back, I realise that, despite appearances, he probably didn’t feel very sure of himself at all and, like me, had probably found it difficult to make friends, but for his own rather different reasons. I think he appreciated our brief games at the store just as much as I did.

  One day Mrs Mostert asked Ma if I could come and play with Terence, in their flat above the garage. Ma looked at Pa who shrugged. Then she turned to me.

  ‘Do you want to play with Terence?’ Ma asked.

  I nodded shyly and soon I found myself walking down Main Road, one hand holding Terence’s sweaty palm, the other clutching one of his shiny Dinky cars.

  Mrs Mostert made babotie for our lunch and I was shocked by the fierce heat of the spicy minced beef, the sweetness of the raisins and cool egg custard in which it was baked, so different from the boiled chicken and milky soups favoured by Ma. In the heat of the afternoon I played upstairs with Terence’s Dinky cars and discovered that he had a whole cupboard full of other toys – a painted wooden train set with ‘Cape Government Railways’ painted boldly on the sides of the locomotives, a box of brightly coloured books, a glass jar of swirling marbles, a store-made skipping rope with red wooden handles, a Meccano No. 10 construction set and a small painted garage, with ‘Mostert’s Garage’ written on the sign, looking just like the real thing. ‘Walter made that for me,’ said Terence, proudly.

  I went to Mostert’s Garage often now, walking hand in hand with Terence and Mrs Mostert down Main Road, past the Jewish Community Hall and the Victoria and Opal, and a little further on. I said a shy and stumbling hello to Walter, who looked up from under a Chevy or an Oldsmobile to give me a smile. I ate babotie and boerewors, tomato bredie and frikkadels, chewed on strips of biltong and drank ginger beer while playing with the toys in Terence’s toy cupboard, reading Babar’s Travels, or one of his many Rupert Bear books. I was in heaven.

  I listened to Mrs Mostert and Walter talking and laughing in the garage and sometimes heard voices I recognised from the store, Arnie Fortune or Mr du Plessis, Mr van de Merwe or Isaac Stern, buying cigarettes and petrol or checking on the carburettor, the crank or the spark plugs.

  One day, Walter came upstairs, carrying a parcel, wrapped in brown paper and tied in string. He had a big smile on his face and said, ‘Hey man, a little dinges, a little something, for you, Jackie boy.’ He handed it to me and then went straight back down to the workshop, leaving me to open it. Terence was hopping from one foot to another and yelping, ‘Man, man, man…oh man! I know what it is, I know what it is! Just wait till you see it. Ooh, yirrah!’

  My heart was beating fast. I had never been given a present before, unexpected and out of the blue, all properly wrapped up like this. I was afraid to even imagine what it might be. Perhaps it was a trick or a joke and Terence would then laugh his head off at my stupidity for being so easily fooled. Carefully I tried to unwrap the parcel, using my slow, clumsy hands to untie the knotted string. I fumbled with it, unable to loosen it. Terence jumped to my aid. Deftly he untied the knot, so that all the wrapping fell away to reveal a small wooden model of Pa’s store, with the name painted in tiny little letters on the front, ‘Neuberger’s Handyhouse’. Terence was saying, ‘Well? Well? What do yer think of it? What do yer think? Say something, Jackie.’ But I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe.

  At the end of the afternoon, I carried my new wooden store downstairs and out the shop, past the workshop and went over to find Walter, who was working on a car, lying on the ground, face hidden under the chassis. I talked to his legs, the only bit of him that I could see. ‘Th-th-th-th-thank you,’ I said shyly and Mrs Mostert ruffled my hair.

  ‘You’re a sweetie, Jackie,’ she said and then she walked me home.

  Back at the store, Ma kissed me and told me what a lucky boy I was. Pa looked impressed.

  ‘Coloured or not, that Walter Hendricks certainly knows what he’s doing with his hands,’ he said, admiringly. He turned the model this way and that, looking at the joints and the planing and the paintwork.

  ‘A good job, that!’ he said. ‘I almost wish I’d thought of doing something like that myself.’

  Chapter 10

  January 1958

  Jack had put together a list of people he wanted to interview. He was looking for character witnesses to call in defence of his client, people who would swear to the propriety and moral rectitude of Johannes van Heerden and let the jury see how unthinkable it was that a man of
this kind would sully his reputation by sleeping with a coloured woman.

  Van Heerden had given him some names. Mrs de Villiers and Miss Liesbet Botha were on the list, as was the verger of the church, Paulus Nel. He mentioned his wife’s uncle, Martin Pietersen and his mother’s old friend Marius de Wet, who had known him since he was a boy. And finally he had suggested Clara Joubert, who was a childhood friend of his wife and remained her closest confidante. All of these people knew him well and Clara Joubert in particular could give whole-hearted reassurance on the sound and healthy relationship he had with his wife. If Laura and Johannes van Heerden had been unhappy, Clara Joubert would have been the first to know.

  Jack mentioned the churchwarden, Francois de Klerk. He had been one of the rumourmongers that van Heerden had talked of at their first meeting. Did he think that de Klerk would agree to be brought to court by the prosecution and speak out against him? Was it worth seeing if he could be persuaded to speak for the defence instead? Van Heerden shrugged. He didn’t fully trust the man but thought it worth speaking to him. Having him on his side would be helpful; he was a man who held some sway in the community and his agreement to speak for the prosecution would not be a good thing. Perhaps Jack could help him to see that his doubts as to the pastor’s propriety were unfounded and persuade him, at the very least, not to appear as a witness at all?

  Jack asked Vera to arrange a series of meetings over the course of the following two days. On the first day he saw four people one after the other and was unsurprised to hear their fulsome praise for his client.

  ‘Tell me about Mr van Heerden,’ he asked Paulus Nel.

  ‘Oh he’s a man of scrupulous honesty,’ Nel replied, leaning forward in his chair to give extra weight to his words. ‘I have never known him to be anything other than loyal to his own beliefs and correct in his behaviour. A man of exemplary moral fibre, a true servant of God.’

  ‘And will you testify to that effect in court?’

  ‘Of course, Mr Neuberger. You can count on me.’

  Marius de Wet was equally unequivocal. ‘I’ve known Johannes since he was a small boy and even then he showed the qualities of faith and morality that he possesses now. He was a good boy, a good son to his mother after the death of his father. He has never swerved from the true path, of that I can be absolutely sure.’

  ‘And before Laura,’ Jack asked, ‘did he take an interest in other girls?’

  ‘He was a studious boy, a serious young man. To my knowledge, Laura was his first love.’

  ‘And since?’ Jack asked tentatively, aware that he was now straying into more difficult territory.

  ‘Johannes has always had his mind on higher things,’ he said. ‘And anyway, Laura has been an ideal wife for him – they are perfectly matched. Why should he stray when he has a woman of such undoubted loveliness and goodness as Laura? He would have to be crazy.’

  Indeed, thought Jack, but that had not stopped many a man before him from being tempted. Even the best of men were capable of behaving like fools when the opportunity for sexual adventure came their way. But he said nothing, and thanked Mr de Wet for his time and patience.

  Mrs de Villiers and Miss Botha both told a similar story. The minister was a fine man and a good husband. When Mrs van Heerden had been taken ill after the birth of their daughter Beatrice, Mr van Heerden had shown the greatest tact and delicacy in offering to help her with her mission, assisting the needy. He had rolled up his sleeves and got on with the kind of donkeywork that some ministers might consider to be beneath their dignity. He was a good man; of that there could be no doubt.

  ‘And you’ll be willing to say that in court?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Yes, to be sure,’ they both replied.

  Each of these people would be a good witness. Every cell in their bodies oozed honesty, every expression they used spoke of their Christian faith; they were utterly believable.

  It had been a good day. Jack felt satisfied that he was accumulating a decent body of material in favour of his client. When he went home that evening he felt confident enough to tell Renee that things were going rather well despite his early reservations; he thought that this might just be the trial that would make his reputation, if he played his cards right. She kissed him and laughed.

  ‘That’s jolly good news,’ she said, ‘and all the better, given what I’ve got to tell you. I’ve been late by over a week now and feeling a bit strange. It’s suddenly dawned on me that perhaps I may be pregnant.’

  He hugged her tight to him and kissed her. It was soon, perhaps too soon, given that he’d hoped to establish himself a bit more before they started thinking about a family but how thrilling to think that he might soon be a father. You could plan and consider all you liked, but in the end these things sometimes just happened and he couldn’t feel anything other than joy at the prospect ahead. In an instant he realised that if nothing came of it, if she told him tomorrow that she’d been mistaken and that she wasn’t expecting after all, he would be deeply disappointed.

  Before he’d met Renee, he’d sometimes wondered whether he should have children. On some deep, emotional level, he wanted them, that he knew, but after the ups and downs of his own childhood, he feared that perhaps he wouldn’t make a very good parent himself. It was painful for him to think that a child of his might view him in the same way that he had viewed Pa. But Renee had changed everything; she would so obviously make a good mother; he knew he could rely on that and he couldn’t let his own feelings of doubt get in the way of what seemed so very natural to her. It wouldn’t be fair on her.

  He thought about Laura van Heerden and the way in which Johannes had talked about her. If his mother and father had been in that interview room, what might they have said about each other? He doubted that there would have been anything like the same kind of warmth. But if he’d had to talk like this about his feelings for Renee, that would have been quite a different story.

  He’d met her through a friend of a friend at a charity event and had instantly fallen for her. It was a cliché he knew, but from the very first glimpse of her he believed that he would marry her, if only she would agree to it. ‘This is it,’ he’d thought, ‘the one for me.’ She was not beautiful in an obvious or conventional way, not glamorous or showy, but fresh, bright-eyed, with a lovely open smile. Her brown hair fell in a wave over her forehead and hung loose around her face and she wore a simple cotton frock that showed off her figure perfectly. There was something utterly uncynical and uncalculating about her – on that first day she met his gaze with friendly warmth, little realising the dramatic, devastating impact she was having on him. For a girl with her looks, she was remarkably unaware of her power over men, and didn’t seem to use it to play silly games. And most extraordinary of all, she seemed genuinely interested in him. He wasn’t especially good-looking or suave, he knew that, but she appeared to be entertained by his stories, amused by his jokes and, as they stood chatting in a small group, she gave him her undivided attention. The odd little stutter of nervousness at the start of the conversation was ignored by her, and quickly forgotten by him.

  Soon after they’d started dating, he’d then discovered to his surprise that, for all her apparent freshness and innocence, she was actually a girl with quite a troubling history. She told him she had something important to tell him, and revealed that he was not her first serious relationship; just a year earlier, she’d been engaged to another man. The wedding date had been fixed, the guests invited, a house bought for them to move into. At the last moment, she had broken it off, causing a huge furore in both families, and heartbreak for the man himself. Friends who’d heard the story began to warn Jack off her; in the small Jewish community she lived in, it was regarded as a major scandal and anyhow, how could he ever trust a girl who’d done something like that to another man, with such seeming heartlessness? He listened to their warnings quietly, and then
chose to ignore them. She told him that she had stepped back from the brink of marrying someone she didn’t love, that she’d become trapped by her family’s expectations and their pleasure at his wealth; from their point of view he was a brilliant match. But in the end she just couldn’t go through with it; she was looking for something more than that, something different, a different kind of life. The intensity of her feelings for Jack were clear; there was no doubting it, and he trusted the sense he’d had about her from the very start, that she was the right woman for him. If risk it was, he would jump at the chance to take it, whatever anyone else said.

  Young though they were, they had got married and now here she was, in all probability, expecting their first child. It seemed quite crazy, and utterly improbable, that someone like him had met someone like her and that now they’d be adding to their happiness by becoming a proper family. With his career taking off and this trial looking so good, he found himself marvelling at how well his life was turning out.

  The next day, the second day of interviews, he was due to see Francois de Klerk and Clara Joubert. Things didn’t go quite so well.

  Francois de Klerk arrived late. He was a tall, thin man, with slightly greying hair and a narrow, gaunt face. Jack was surprised by his diffident expression and his anxious demeanour; he had been expecting someone rather tougher looking, a more serious adversary for his client. The man looked ill at ease and kept glancing at his watch.

  ‘I have an appointment later this morning, Mr Neuberger. We’re having repairs done to the side roof of the church and the buildings surveyor is coming to give us advice. I can give you half an hour but no more.’

  ‘Half an hour will be plenty,’ Jack said. ‘You needn’t worry about missing your appointment.’

  ‘There’s nothing I can tell you, anyway,’ he said. ‘I have no knowledge that will be useful to you.’