‘Stop buzzing around us like a damned bluebottle,’ Pa said crossly. ‘Scram!’
Ma was out with Sauly, buying mince from the Kosher butcher on Salt Street and chollah bread for our evening meal and Ada was minding the store. I wandered into the back room and sat at the table drawing with a blunt pencil, feeling bored, wondering why grown-ups always had so much to talk about it and so little of any interest, always money, money, money.
Pa was worried about money again. A big new store had just opened up further down Main Road. People had been talking about Woolworths this, Woolworths that, ever since the first store opened on the site of the old Royal Hotel. And now here was one, right on his doorstep in Parow. Who did that Woolworths man think he was, selling everything a hardware store sells and more – clothes, shoes, confectionery, fabrics, sticky tape, glue? And the prices, said Pa, were frankly crazy.
‘Meshuggah! I couldn’t buy the light bulbs and cotton reels and mops from the wholesalers for what this Woolworth man is selling them for. Right on my doorstep. Right on my blooming doorstep.’
And now the customers were beginning to shop there, even ones whom we’d come to rely on as our regulars, almost as our friends.
‘It’s whadderyercall it?’ said Mrs Fortune, searching for the right word. ‘What’s that word?’
Pa was sorting skeins of worsted wool for her and knotting them into bundles. He was checking the colour to be sure that the skeins from different batches matched, then wrapping them in paper and tying the parcel with string.
‘Easy. All packaged up and quick,’ said Mrs Fortune. ‘What’s the damned word for it again? It’s on the tip of my tongue.’
Now Pa was counting out buttons for her – ten for a tickie – and pouring them into a little brown paper bag. He was rummaging through the wooden drawers looking for Size 9 knitting needles, a nice big darning needle and some squared pattern paper for dressmaking. He was weighing out her digestive biscuits and fig rolls.
‘Convenient,’ she said. ‘That’s the word! It’s really convenient. A convenient store, that Woolworths.’
She paid for her goods and left.
Some of his customers had started coming in quite unashamedly carrying a Woolworths paper bag under their arm. ‘Just the string and the candles today Mr Neuberger,’ said old Mrs Pretorius. I could see peeking out of top of the Woolworths bag many of the things she’d normally buy from Pa.
Things were not good; Afrikaners, poor whites, Jews, none of them had anything to spend. Pa said he could little afford even a tickie of that money going into some other storekeeper’s pocket. His takings had dropped and they were dropping by the day.
Ma was having a hard time making ends meet. She was darning the darns on her stockings and our socks and patching the patches on our trousers. She was roasting the chicken one day, picking the meat off the bones the next, boiling the bones for soup the following one and finally, by the end of the week it was milk soup and lokshen and that was all.
‘Will we g-get by?’ I asked her one day, too afraid to raise this doubt with my father. ‘Will we, Ma?’
‘Of course,’ she said, though her voice sounded less sure than her words. ‘Think of what our ancestors survived; they lived on little more than the air they breathed, they suffered from pogroms and beatings, they fought for the Czar and died of their wounds, they scratched the bare soil and milked their scrawny cows and killed their skinny hens. By comparison we’re in clover!
And then a few days later everything suddenly changed and the mood in our household switched from worried looks and angry frowns to frantic activity, excitement and laughter. Pa had suddenly announced that we were all going to Somerset Strand for a few days’ holiday. On special days, like birthdays, we had sometimes caught the train out to Muizenberg, the small seaside resort out beyond the city centre, to have a picnic lunch and swim at the beach and then run down the platform to get the last train back again at the end of the day. But we had never had a proper holiday by the sea, staying overnight away from home, in a boarding house or small seaside hotel.
Ma looked happy. She hummed in the kitchen and sang me my favourite song, the one she’d stopped singing for a while:
’Hob ikh mir a mantl fun fartsaytikn shtof Tra la la la
Hot es nit in zikh kay gantsenem shtokh Tra la la la
Darum, hob ikh zikh fartrakht Un fun dem mantl a rekl gemakht Tra la la . . .’
I had a little coat that I made long ago,
It had so many patches, there was no place to sew
Then I thought and I prayed
And from that coat a little jacket I made.
She got up on a chair to reach for the old suitcase on the top of the wardrobe and dusted it off. She sorted out clothes and swimming costumes and towels. She even found the cameo brooch that Ouma had given her for her wedding and the lacy underwear she had kept from her trousseau. She packed them in the case, blushing and trying to hide them from my interested gaze.
On the train out, Ma is smiling and Pa is smiling. They are sitting close up next to each other, legs touching, hand in hand, with the luggage in the rack above them and Sauly sprawled out asleep on a seat beside them.
‘How long till we get to Somerset Strand?’ I ask and realise, with surprise that my stutter has stopped.
‘When can I have my egg sandwich?’ Yes, it really has stopped completely. ‘Will there be boats at Somerset Strand? Will there be an aquarium? Will we be staying in a Boarding House? Will we be able to walk to the beach? Will we eat ice cream? Will we eat crayfish even though it’s not kosher?’
‘Yes, yes, yes, yes!’ says Pa, who seems to have caught the excitement, like a big bright beach ball that he can throw up in the air, and Ma seems to open her arms wide to catch it. ‘A holiday,’ she says, breathing in deeply and laughing, with a girlish peal in her voice that I have never heard before. ‘My goodness, a proper, proper holiday.’
*****
In the train coming home I think about my proper holiday. I remember: the sandcastles and the stinging salt wash of the sea in my eyes; my sunburnt back and the soothing dabs of calamine lotion; collecting wood and stones to help with Pa’s dam; poking at slippery weeds and crusty shells in the rock pools; Mrs Maree’s Boarding House with the low tock tock of the grandfather clock in the cool dining-room; the stoep, the porch at the front of the house, bordered by paraffin tins filled with geraniums; the sailing boats being dragged right up the beach when the wind came up and the waters frothed and foamed; the women walking to the white church with their doeks tied tight against the wind; reaching up for loquats from the over-loaded trees in the garden and shaking them down so they fell like heavy, thudding rain; eating tea and cakes at the Strand Café and still having enough room for crayfish for supper; Sauly puking up at the harbour from too much crayfish, too much ice cream and granadilla sauce; the library on Van der Byl Street, where Ma took me to borrow a book; the smell of the books and the wonderful black ink pad and the date stamp that the lady banged hard into the ink and stamped down on the first page of my book; Ma’s face at breakfast at Mrs Maree’s, smiling and smiling and smiling; Pa’s face at breakfast at Mrs Maree’s, smiling and smiling and smiling.
*****
We arrived home. I was tired out from the walk from the station and looking forward to the drink of warm milk and the biscuit that Ma had promised me, before undressing and going straight to bed. As we got closer to the store though, something didn’t seem quite right. There was a scent in the air that didn’t smell like home, an odour that hit us all the more powerfully as Pa opened the front door.
I saw Ma looking anxiously towards Pa but he seemed unconcerned. He was whistling and humming as he took our suitcases upstairs and started unpacking them, and continued humming happily as he opened up cupboards and drawers. Ma and I went into the kitchen and Ma went
straight to the back window, to look out into the yard. And then she screamed. She yelled. She stared into the yard, crying now, sobbing, holding her head in her hands, beating furiously at her chest. She fell to her knees and howled like a dog in pain. I pushed open the back door and ran out to see what had happened.
The chickens were lying dead in the yard, their feathers singed off to reveal dry bony carcasses. There was a heap of steaming, smoking, shivering wood, charred, charcoaled, blackened. Ashy paper floated up, sending flapping slivers and wafery fragments, some curled, some crisp, swirling around the yard. The shed was a smoking and charcoaled nothing, razed to the ground, gone.
I ran towards the steaming heap of blackened embers to see what was left but it was still too hot to approach. I turned back towards the house to seek out Ma and Pa. What were they going to do? How were they going to make this right again, as I assumed that they would? Surely Pa would know what to do; he would be able to bring the shed back to life again, with a sweep of his expert arm.
But Pa was looking out from the upstairs window, his face furrowed with a frown that belied his earlier cheeriness.
‘M-m-my m-m-m-m-matchboxes!’ I cried.
Pa came running down. He scooped me up in his arms and held me tight. I flailed out, hitting him, pounding his chest, pummelling his face and arms, kicking at his legs. He fought his way up the stairs with me, holding me tightly and peeled me off him, laying me down on my bed, where I sobbed bitterly.
‘Be brave. It’s only matchboxes.’ Then he left me, closing the door behind him.
The next morning Pa was occupied in the store and I stayed in the back room; I did not want to see him. I sat at the kitchen table, refusing any offers of food from Ma or from Ada, not even a treat like a fig roll or an aniseed ball. Sauly came and put his arms round me and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
‘Sorry ‘bout the matchboxes Jackie.’
I stared straight ahead of me. It was nice of him to say something but I knew if I looked at him or said anything in reply I might start to cry.
Ada walked past, dragging a large sack of corn from the yard, through the kitchen and towards the store. She patted me on the head, muttering ‘Ag sies tog Jackie.’ I remained silent and stony-faced. ‘ You can start up your collection again, no problem,’ she said. ‘Everyone will help you. Soon you’ll have more than before.’ I said nothing.
Ma and Pa didn’t speak much to each other either that day. Ma spent her time in the kitchen preparing food, talking to Sauly and me but only saying what was strictly necessary. Pa was in the store, filling up drawers with tacks and nails and goods from the garage, items that hadn’t gone up in flames.
In the late afternoon the shop bell rang and Mr Choudhary came in. I hadn’t seen him since that last time. He waited till the queue of customers had subsided, standing to one side on his own, in the shadowy corner, near my sack of beans. Then Pa lifted the gate in the counter and came out to greet him properly, with an arm round his shoulder and a vigorous handshake.
He took him out to look at the smouldering wreck of the shed in the yard. Mr Choudhary waved his arms about a bit. I watched from the yard, near the kitchen door. Pa talked to him seriously, but every now and then he glanced back towards the house to note Ma standing by the kitchen window. He was also keeping an eye on me, watching as I scuffed my shoes in the dirt of the yard a few feet away. Mr Choudhary had his briefcase open and handed some papers to Pa. He read them and signed them one by one, with the smart fountain pen that Mr Choudhary unscrewed and handed to him. I caught a few stray words, drifting in the air like the smoky ash of the shed and then wafting away on the wind: ‘Old stock…new stock…replacement value…inspectors….’ And then finally Pa put his hand on Mr Choudhary’s shoulder. Mr Choudhary smiled, shook his hand, put the papers back in his briefcase and then went through the kitchen and the back room, into the store and out into Main Road. The store bell tinkled eerily as he shut the door firmly behind him.
*****
The next day Pa went out to Paarl to talk to the wholesalers. He was making plans for building a brand new shed and re-stocking the goods he had lost. It was a big job and he would be gone for the day, perhaps even having to stay overnight, if he couldn’t get through all the visits he needed to make. Since we had no telephone in our house or at the store, he promised to leave a phone message with Irene next door to tell Ma if he was going to be delayed and only able to return the next day.
It was early evening and Ada and Ma had shut the store. Ada swept up the sawdust and cleaned the counter. She pulled down the blinds and took out the rubbish. She paused to offer me a liquorice twist, on her way back through the store, which this time I deigned to accept. Ma told her that since her jobs were done, she could go home now; she wouldn’t be needed. Just as she was leaving, Irene leaned out from the window of her flat and asked her to pass on the message to Ma that Pa would not be coming home till the following day – he was still in Paarl talking to suppliers and would be back around lunchtime, all being well.
Ma put Sauly to bed and then, as a rare treat, she let me stay up with her, while she sat in her wicker chair in the back yard, darning socks and stockings by the light of a small metal kerosene lamp.
I loved to be on my own with her like this, sitting in the yard, in the gathering darkness, listening to the soft buzz of insects flitting around the light and the hiss of the grasshoppers in the grass beyond the back fence, watching her fingers tidily passing the needle through the wool, her face intently focused on the task. For once she seemed relaxed, untroubled, her face softened by the fading light and the flickers from the lamp. I felt unusually relaxed too; with Pa in Paarl there was no risk of rows, no bad-tempered looks or sullen silences, no threat of Pa’s anger.
‘I’m sorry about your matchboxes,’ Ma said at last, holding her needle still and looking up at me. ‘It’s a shame.’
I said nothing.
‘They meant something to you, I know.’ She paused. ‘You worked hard at that collection and it was a lovely one. But you can build it up again.’
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to start again. It would never be the same. I could never hold them in my hands, without the pang of knowledge that they could so easily vanish into thin air, turning swiftly into ash and dust. They were, after all, just cardboard and paper, rather than the precious objects I had so foolishly turned them into.
‘I know how hard it is,’ she said. ‘But there are compensations for us all, you know. The insurance money means that we can keep going now for quite a while, with the store. It’ll help us through these difficult times. There’ll be chicken for your supper more often!’
I nodded. I liked the idea of a full stomach and more treats, despite the pain of the matchboxes. ‘I suppose it must be a good thing that Pa knows Mr Choudhary,’ I said.
‘What do you mean,’ Ma replied but looked at me a little oddly.
‘Mr Choudhary is good with his hands, like Pa. He knows how to make a shed burn down.’
Ma’s needle went still. She sat up in her chair.
‘What do you mean, Jackie?’
‘Pa likes Mr Choudhary because he’s good at things like making sheds burn down.’
‘Where do you get all this from?’ Ma asked. ‘What’s this nonsense you’re talking?’ I wondered whether she was cross but she just seemed really interested in what I had to say. I was enjoying, for once, having her full attention and it gave me the confidence to continue.
‘I saw Pa talking to Mr Choudhary about the shed.’
It came back to me, the memories of that afternoon; I could see it all quite clearly, myself sitting drawing at the kitchen table, with the soft blunt stub of a pencil, bored, waiting for Ma to come home. Pa had come through from the store with Mr Choudhary. They had gone out into the yard and I had got up and climbed on a stool so that I could wa
tch them through the window. They were surveying the yard, the shed and the garage where the truck was parked. They went into the garage, letting the big wooden door swing open behind them, then they came out again, unlocked the shed and disappeared inside for quite a while, before strolling back into the yard.
I came out into the doorway, curious about what they were doing and keen to listen to their conversation but afraid to go up close and risk incurring Pa’s wrath again. I watched them from just inside the door; they were pointing and frowning, they folded their arms seriously and then finally after a long, serious pause, shook hands. I heard Pa thank Mr Choudhary warmly and smile and I thought that just as Terence was my best friend, Mr Choudhary must be Pa’s.
Ma sat still and looked at me. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
‘It’s good that we’ve got money now,’ I said. ‘I’d like to eat chicken for my supper. But Mr Choudhary burnt down all my matchboxes. So I don’t like him like Pa does.’
I waited a bit to see what Ma would say. I wondered whether I should ask her about the other thing that puzzled me, the other bit of the whole story that I didn’t quite understand.
‘Ma?’ I said. ‘I want to ask you something.’
Ma was staring at me still; I could see that her hands were trembling.
‘What do you want to know Jackie?’
‘Why does Pa keep money under the floor?’
Ma’s voice was low and calm.
‘Does he Jackie?’ Her voice was steady.
‘Yes,’ I said, warming now to my theme. ‘He puts it under the floor when he’s been counting out the money from the till. He pulls up a floorboard and puts it there, then bangs the board back down.’
There was silence.
‘Why did he have to burn down the shed, if he has money under the floor?’ I asked Ma. Now perhaps, I would have the answer.
There was a long silence.
Off the Voortrekker Road Page 10
