Tales from the Old Karoo

by Guy Butler

  It was unfortunate that Henry’s farm was near the outspan. Feckless and improvident, he’d let any transport rider who had pretty daughters have free grazing on his small holding. Hester took this as a sign of generosity, and the car as a sign of wealth. After his delicate, chattering first wife, Henry felt drawn to the healthy, quiet Hester. She fell in love with Captain Henry and with his little motherless child. They were married. Her disillusionment was rapid.

  Unlike her husband, Hester Vermaak seldom smiled, and used words sparingly; he was work-shy , while she loved work. He inflicted children on her at regular intervals, and she brought them up clean and decent. There was not much education in Ladycole because the Cape Education Department was still careless about such matters. Henry Vermaak put his children to work almost as soon as they could walk. In fact, it was Hester who gave all the instructions to the children while Henry sat on the stoep or under the pepper tree, or drove into town to visit the two hotels. The nearest he got to a regular job was visiting farms as a traveller trying to sell farming equipment for Dunell Ebden & Co, without much success. He never travelled long for one firm, and was always selling something else. What he did do very well was pick up gossip and embroider it, and watch rugby. He was a most conscientious attender at rugby games in the East Cape Midlands.

  Then, after a series of miscarriages, Hester fell seriously ill. Henry groused as if she had planned this in order to inconvenience him. He displayed a callous incompetence in the management of the smallholding which shocked the neighbourhood. Without the customary direction from their mother the children forgot or mistook their tasks, so that the plants and the small stock all suffered. Henry lashed out at his demoralised offspring. When he was out, Hester called Alida, Marigold’s child, to her bedside.

  ‘Wash yourself, put on your Sunday dress, comb your hair nicely, and go to Mrs Spies. Ask her to come to me.’

  The Spieses were a young couple who so far had had no children. On their plot, half a mile down the road, they were going through a difficult time: their marriage had brought neither of them the fulfilment they had expected. He was bored and she was on edge.

  ‘On that Monday morning, when I saw the eldest Vermaak girl coming up the path in her Sunday best’, said Mrs Spies years later. ‘I knew in my bones that she was not coming to beg for the loan of a loaf of bread or a bottle of paraffin.’

  Mrs Spies, a trained nurse, moved in. She slept on the floor next to the feverish Hester. Henry decided it was time for him to sell Drummer-Boy sheep shears in Dordrecht. From her pillow Hester told Mrs Spies what needed to be done. In a few days the little farm was back in shape, and running better than ever before. The young man supervised the children in the outside tasks, picking up quite a few useful tips which their mother had taught them. He’d pop around twice a day at least, running the two plots with ease. As for Mrs Spies, she blossomed with domestic business. The Vermaak children found in her a gentleness which Hester sometimes felt but could never express. ‘Something was untied in me during that time’, said Mrs Spies, ‘and I fell pregnant before the year was out. I called the child Hester.’

  When Henry got back, having sold very few sheep shears in Dordrecht, the happiness brought into his home by the Spies couple drove him into a jealous fury. None of the children, except perhaps the youngest, Stoffel, had shown any pleasure at his return. The still convalescent Hester rejected his amorous advances and he felt unwanted in his own house. He hated Spies for the calm way he’d become an unpaid farm manager to Hester. When he tried to make an issue of this, Hester said: ‘I hear there’s a market for sickles, gaffels and fencing tools up Hofmeyer way.’

  He spent more and more time away from home on the road. On his trips he started employing his talent for gossip, and he directed it against his own wife. That the hints and innuendoes made a cuckold of himself did not seem to matter, as long as they smeared the happy new relationships in which he had no share. Hester, he hinted, was having an affair with that young Spies. Not that you could altogether blame Spies, whose wife was frigid, while Hester – well, Hester was insatiable, as he well knew. Almost a sexomanic, in fact.

  When these stories reached Mrs Spies she had a moment’s agonising jealousy, followed by a terrible nausea; then she confronted her husband, who would have gone out and challenged Henry to fight; but Henry was away again, selling baling wire in Middelburg (Cape).

  Meanwhile the wife of Simon the mason had heard the same stories, and she told Hester.

  Hester said not a word, but took a revenge which is still remembered in Ladycole. She did not take a carving knife or an axe to him on his homecoming, or poison him slowly. She did nothing criminal.

  First she asked Mr and Mrs Spies to come and see her, together with the children. ‘There are stories going about’, she said. ‘We all know they are lies. We won’t even talk about them. But I am now fit and well. I can now work again. Mr and Mrs Spies, my children and I can never thank you enough for what you have done. But it is better that neither of you come to see me again. If you will remain friends with the children that would be kind.’

  When Mr and Mrs Spies tried to speak she raised a forbidding hand. Her look was so firm that they knew talk was no use, and left.

  She then moved out of the double bed. For the rest of her life she slept with her daughters. When Henry returned she said nothing, not a word. She never got angry, she never talked to him. Their only exchanges were of a practical nature. It was hard on the children.

  People who visited Hester said that when Henry came into the room the air turned dead with something worse than hatred. Personal hatred always has a touch of hope in it. This was rejection, pure and absolute, like the unbroken charge of negative electricity which a cat broadcasts towards a dog. There were no fights in the usual sense of the word. Henry would rant and rave, and she would half smile, and turn the other cheek. Sometimes he would strike her, so that it seemed to the children that he had lost all feeling for their mother. But Hester, now fit from all the farm work, was more than a match for Henry, flabby from selling sheep dip in the Tarka district.

  And now he in turn became victim of all sorts of scandalous stories and not only in Ladycole, but far and wide in the Karoo.

  What was he selling (or buying perhaps?) in the towns, particularly in the poorer parts where the races were all mixed up?

  Dagga?

  A little perhaps.

  Only dagga?

  Dagga and brandy, maybe. Only dagga and brandy? Well, sometimes women also.

  Hester and his children were managing well enough without him. Clean and well dressed, they were going to the church, and, unlike many of the other poor white children, taking part in picnics and sports. And they were getting bigger and stronger by the day.

  Years passed. Alida, his eldest child by his first wife Marigold, fell in love with a big stoker, Bertie, from the Railway Camp. She wished to marry him, but Henry kept making difficulties. Where would they live? The house was overcrowded already. He suggested a railway cottage, but Bertie was not yet eligible for one. Of course he knew that Alida was in a strong position; the place was entailed in her name.

  As for Alida, she had no wish to break up the Vermaak house, but she loved her stoker, Bertie. Bertie had Popeye tattooed on his right forearm and Olive Oyl on his left. She loved everything about him, particularly the way he spoke. Other men just said Jirre, Jissus, Jislaaik and Jirretjie, but he used other nice, refined expressions which he picked up on the station platforms from the first-class passengers, like ‘Jiminy Cricket’ and ‘Holy Smoke’. Only rarely did he lapse into the indiscriminate oaths of the inarticulate.

  Out of her tower of silence Hester studied Bertie. He was stupid but strong and straight. What better man for Alida? One day, out of the blue, she asked each of her children their dates of birth. When Alida gave hers, she looked hard at Bertie. A look from Hester was usually enough.

  Henry Vermaak was watching a Wednesday afternoon rugby match in Middelburg,
Cape, when an engine driver from Rosmead congratulated him.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Aren’t you the father of Alida?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, the stoker on the up train says he married Alida Vermaak on Sunday.’

  Henry could say nothing, he was so humiliated. He swallowed hard, and blushed. Without his consent! Behind his back! He wanted to hit someone, anyone, very hard. A moment’s reflection brought his helplessness home. Alida’s twenty-first birthday had fallen on the Saturday. He always forgot birthdays, until it was too late.

  He couldn’t bring himself to return to Ladycole, not while the fatherless wedding was still hot news. He went down to Pearston to sell roll tobacco and Brylcream; from there to Cookhouse, and then back on his tracks to Aberdeen, like a bee trying to get out of a hot glass-house.

  He returned home very belligerent and drunk. Shouting for Hester, he got out of his car. As he approached the steps of the front stoep, Alida appeared in the front door. She looked down at her father, he glared up at her. At the sight of his bloodshot eyes the girl wavered, as though she was about to fly back to the protection of the house, but retreat was barred by her supporting siblings: Susanna and Piet, both fit from farm work, and Kate the fiery weakling who used her nails and teeth when necessary; also Stoffel, now a lanky-legged creature who played wing in the school fifteen. His two dogs did not come bouncing up to welcome Henry; they were waiting next to Stoffel, as if expecting to be sent into action on the word ‘Sa!’ But it was the presence of the stoker, Bertie, Alida’s husband and his son-in-law, that made Henry know he was licked. Hester was nowhere in sight.

  ‘Pa, welcome back, Pa’, piped Alida. ‘Now we are married, Bertie and me sleep in the double bed. The other rooms is all full. You are so seldom at home, Pa, so we think you must sleep on the back stoep, see?’

  ‘The back stoep?!’

  ‘Ja. Come and see.’

  Alida took the bewildered man by the arm and led him round to the back stoep. The others saved themselves a walk, by simply crossing the living room to the back door.

  On the back stoep was a single bed with a worn springbok kaross on it. A paraffin box stood at the bedhead to serve as a side table. His old jonkmanskas stood against the wall.

  Henry slumped onto the end of the bed. He wanted to scream. But he controlled himself and said: ‘Where’s Hester? Tell Hester I want some coffee.’

  After a while Hester appeared with coffee and rusks on a tray. She put it on the paraffin box and left, in no hurry, without so much as looking at him. She was cool as a maid doing a routine job for the hundredth time, and it was as though she had always served him outside, on the back stoep.

  Henry Vermaak started to cry. He knew that all Ladycole must know that he’d been thrown out, to sleep on his own back stoep, alone.

  My main informant for the rest of the Vermaak saga was the undertaker, Mr Hurst. Mr Hurst was very quiet and discreet, as was fitting for a man who had to function in the quiet of the funeral parlour and in the restrained atmosphere of church services and sad homes with the blinds drawn.

  Mr Hurst was agent for a burial insurance society, to which most people contributed regularly, the Vermaaks among them. Henry and Hester agreed on the necessity of a decent funeral. They kept the payments up, neither defaulting.

  Mr Hurst had a near monopoly in Ladycole, burying everyone regardless. This meant he didn’t mind using his one white hearse for blacks and coloureds also, if they could afford it. He kept his rates low to prevent anyone from cracking his corner in corpse disposal; but not quite low enough.

  ‘Back stoep’ Henry, as some heartless folk now called him, was kindled into a blaze of activity by his rejection. He determined to show them all, and he did. He went to Mr Hurst and demanded all his funeral insurance money. He needed it now, while alive. Let the dead bury their dead. A pauper’s funeral? He wouldn’t be there to worry about that. Let Hester and the children worry about a pauper’s funeral. That is, if they had any shame in them at all. Then Henry Vermaak disappeared, for months. Just when Hester was beginning to hope he would never come back, he returned in triumph, impeccable in a new blazer, driving a Rolls Royce. True, it was a 1911 model, but a Rolls, nevertheless. Where on earth had he found the money to buy a Rolls? Some suggested Illicit Diamond Buying.

  Among his other claims to fame, Mr Hurst was one of the first in South Africa to take an historical interest in old cars. In fact, he had been acquiring them discreetly for years, restoring them during slack periods, and quietly selling them to collectors on the Reef. When he saw Henry’s Rolls an unnatural glint came into his eye. No Rolls had ever passed through his hands. He’d tried to pal up to Henry, but Henry declined to do business with him.

  ‘Well, if you ever want to sell your car, think of me.’

  ‘I’d sooner ask you to bury me’, was the lordly reply.

  Some people say that Hester might have softened towards Henry if he hadn’t withdrawn his funeral insurance. She saw this as a threat. He was going to die first, and so inflict the shame of a pauper’s funeral on her and the children. She, Hester, would not care about that, but after all, the children were Vermaaks. Some say the thing worried her so much that she decided to die of cancer and have a proper funeral for all to see, and not be around to witness the pauper’s burial which the feckless Henry would have.

  There was only one hitch at Hester’s funeral, said Mr Hurst. It split the Vermaak household from top to bottom, for a day or so. The question was: Who would follow the hearse in the Rolls, with Henry, the grief-stricken widower?

  While Hester was alive, none of the children had deigned to take a drive in the Rolls, except for Bertie the stoker, once, and after dark. Some felt that Henry must be left to drive alone behind Hester’s coffin, but they wavered. It ended by Alida and Bertie with their kids, riding in the Rolls just like Royalty. Hester’s own children had to be content with grace and favour seats in the donkey carts of the Spieses and other kind neighbours. Henry’s Rolls won that trick for him.

  But it was the last. The Rolls was heavy on petrol, like Henry was on brandy; and petrol and brandy, observed the quiet Mr Hurst, cost money. Hester’s death decreased the number of people living in the house. Even before they had removed her body, Henry was scheming to get back inside, off the damned stoep.

  These hopes were dashed by the belated bang of a shotgun. No one had dared to hear it while Hester was alive. But two days after the funeral, Piet, the eldest son, got married in the magistrate’s court, and brought his very pregnant bride to live with him. As he was unemployed, he could not afford to go anywhere else. The baby arrived in a matter of days. Everyone was delighted, except grandfather Henry. The parents tried to softsoap the grumpy shuffler on the back stoep by christening the baby Henry, after him, and James Barry, after the Prime Minister. Bertie the stoker was moved to poetry by this name, and by his elevation to the status of uncle.

  Henry James Barry

  Makes his uncle Harry

  As happy as Larry.

  Alida clapped her hands, wondering what heights of inspiration her husband would reach when their own child arrived. Arrive it did.

  Two nursing mothers with babies in good voice increased the people-pressure in the little house to something which even Uncle Bertie, who was used to working in hot, confined spaces, found hard to bear.

  One morning, when Henry approached the kitchen for breakfast, the lower half door was shut. The upper half was filled with the naked top half of his son-in-law. On Bertie’s broad chest was tattooed a Union Jack, surmounted by a very ugly and angry British bull dog. Tattooed in blue across Bertie’s solar plexus was the warning Hands off!

  ‘Jeepers Creepers!’ exclaimed Bertie. ‘This place steams with nappies and morning sickness. Here, take this.’ And he handed Henry a plate of porridge and a spoon. ‘Fresh air is lekker. Count your blessings.’ Then he turned his back. On it was tattooed Lord Kitchener, with his big black moustache, pointi
ng a forefinger straight at Henry. Under him was written: Your country needs you. Henry limped back towards his bed, with his plate of porridge in his hand.

  He wanted to escape, to go on a long, long expedition selling religious encyclopaedias to pious people in Burgersdorp or Britstown, but he couldn’t move. The right back tyre of the Rolls, worn to the canvas, had burst. And those tyres were a rare size and very expensive. Also the wet battery was burnt out because he’d forgotten to top it up with distilled water. And the petrol tank was empty. It would take twenty pounds at least to get roadworthy once more. But he was broke. Not only was he broke, he was in debt. He had the finest collection of registered letters of demand in the whole Eastern Cape – from Graaff-Reinet, Pearston, Aberdeen, Middelburg (Cape), Cradock, Tarkastadt, Dordrecht. He kept them for the franking marks and stamps on the envelopes. He knew about stamp collecting: all one had to do was collect, and live a long time. In the meantime, no one would lend him a penny.

  When Piet came on to the stoep and fixed a wire between two verandah posts, and when, later that morning, Piet’s wife hung little Henry’s nappies on it, inadvertently and utterly ruining grandpa’s view of Ladycole, Henry got up, rolled up his blankets and the Springbok skin kaross, and moved house, into the Rolls under the pepper tree. It was to be his last domicile.

  Henry might have felt like Job on his ash heap, but he did try hard to hide his sores. He was at his plausible best when interviewed by the Carnegie people. His retirement, he said, was a matter of considered choice. After a lifetime of hard work he was tired, tired to his very soul. His spirits might revive if only his lawyers would recover some of the monies owing to him, but would they? The depression was bad, very bad. Look at his own family, and he gestured towards the house.