Soul Sisters

by Lesley Lokko

I just asked Johnny. You remember him? The one from the Star.

  We should have been better organized back then. You know, too much in-fighting. That’s our problem, man. We so busy fighting each other we forget who’s the real enemy!

  His aunt’s fingers dug into his shoulders. In that house, children were seen but not heard. He could feel her tension as she waited nervously for a gap in the conversation. Not like his mother. She would have been at the centre of the discussions or arguments, her flamboyantly painted fingernails waving as she underscored someone else’s opinion, or, more likely, refuted it. There was a pause in the talk. His aunt pounced. She hurriedly nudged him forward.

  ‘Mfundi, this is Oliver’s son. The one they were talking about.’ An older man looked up, his eyes blinking slowly. He looked Solam up and down.

  ‘Oliver’s kid, eh? You’re Iketleng’s son?’

  Solam nodded. A shy obstinacy came over him. He watched closely as the group’s attention slowly shifted, coming to rest on him.

  ‘He’s a big boy already!’

  ‘Looks just like Iketleng. Man, that woman. Fearless. Fearless, I tell you! Did you see her when they came for her?’

  ‘How old are you, son?’

  ‘S-seven.’ His stammer, long since suppressed, suddenly reasserted itself.

  ‘Big for his age. Tall, eh? Just like Oliver.’

  ‘So, how would you like to go overseas, young man?’

  He blinked. Overseas? He didn’t understand the word. He turned to look up at his aunt. There was an expression he hadn’t seen in her face before. Anger? Her nails were piercing his skin. He shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘Here, come . . . come here, son.’ One of the other men beckoned him forward. The air was marbled with cigarette smoke. He slid out of his aunt’s grasp and stood before him. The man, whose name he did not know, smiled at him encouragingly. ‘Yes, overseas. To England. It’s been decided.’

  A few weeks later, aged seven, he made the long trip to England with a friend of his father’s, a quiet taciturn man who mostly read and dozed on the flight from Johannesburg via Cabo Verde, somewhere out in the middle of the Atlantic. The man broke his concentration to explain that other African countries would not allow South African Airways to fly over their airspace. They had to stop and refuel on one of the islands still owned by the Portuguese. ‘Not for long,’ the man remarked cryptically. Dimly, Solam understood that the fate of the island nation was somehow tied to South Africa’s own fate, the cause for which both his parents were in jail and, it seemed, prepared to die. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He understood that his own importance as Oliver and Iketleng’s son was intimately tied to their sacrifice, but he longed for his mother’s touch, her easy smile or the warmth he remembered when her attention was on him.

  They drove from London to the boarding school selected for him. Stowe School, about an hour’s drive from the airport. He stared at the imposing facade from the car window, his breath coming short. He had never seen anything like it. It was as big and grand as the Union Buildings in Pretoria. This was a school? He was handed over to a Mr Jenkins, the housemaster, into whose care the seven-year-old was entrusted. Mr Jenkins briskly looked him up and down and smiled. He was a big, chalky man, with large, warm hands. He shook Solam’s hand gravely but firmly – a double pump, up-down, twice, before letting go. There was something solid and comforting about that handshake. The man, whose name he still didn’t know, and who had accompanied him for almost two days, seemed eager to leave. There was a muted, hurried conversation between him and Mr Jenkins at the door . . . and then he was gone. The last link to home.

  He found that he fitted in surprisingly well in his new home. He was clever, good at sports, fair-minded, funny . . . the sort of qualities the English admired. Soon the nagging sense of being out of place left him. He was popular, both with his teachers and his classmates, which he sensed was unusual. But the real meaning of boarding school escaped him. What was it all in preparation for? What was he supposed to do with himself?

  In sixth form, he shared a room with Charlie de Cadanet, the son of one of Britain’s most famous sculptors. Charlie was new to Stowe, having left his previous school ‘before he was asked to’. Good-looking, with a dry sense of humour, he and Solam hit it off immediately. He too was afflicted by the disease of being ‘a son of’, as he cheerfully put it. ‘We’re both our fathers’ sons.’ Both were defined by their fathers, although for entirely different reasons.

  ‘There is no escape,’ Charlie said to him good-humouredly on their first night in their new room. Their beds were at opposite ends of the small attic, all the way at the top of the boarding house. ‘But let’s face it, worse things happen at sea.’

  ‘Why don’t you change your name?’ Solam asked after a moment. He actually had no idea who the sculptor was. People at school talked of Edward de Cadanet in hushed tones. Politicians, revolutionaries, statesmen . . . those were more in Solam’s field. Artists meant little to him.

  ‘Why should I? Would you change yours?’

  Solam pondered his response. ‘No,’ he conceded after a moment. ‘Mind you, it’s not the same thing.’

  ‘In what way? Your parents are famous too.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s different with mine. They’re in jail. Everyone feels sorry for me. And I’m African.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means most people are just relieved I can speak English. Or I haven’t got a bone through my nose.’

  Charlie let out a guffaw. ‘Priceless!’

  ‘It’s true,’ Solam said, beginning to laugh as well.

  ‘Well, I won’t let on if you don’t,’ Charlie said, and there was the sound of a smile in his voice. Solam began to relax. He liked Charlie, even if they barely knew one another. ‘What’re you doing at half-term?’ Charlie asked suddenly.

  Solam burrowed further down in his bed. At 6'3, with a duvet made for the average man, his toes were always cold. He pondered the question. Half-term was still a way off. ‘Dunno. I usually go to Basingstoke. To friends of the family. Sort of.’

  ‘Basingstoke? Where the hell’s that? Why don’t you come home with me? Mum and Dad’ll love you. And not because you speak so well.’

  Solam pondered the invitation. Home. He had no sense of home other than Stowe. ‘Sure,’ he said, as casually as he dared. ‘Sounds good.’ He had no idea what he would say to the very distant aunt whose two-up, two-down house on Hawthorn Way he’d gone to every half-term and holiday since he’d arrived in England. He liked his aunt well enough, but after a night in the cramped house where the number of residents seemed to change daily, depending on the situation ‘down there’, he itched to get back to Stowe.

  Charlie was right. Edward and Libby de Cadanet adored him. For almost the first time, he sensed they were genuinely interested in him as a person, not as a token or a badge of honour. There was no pity or surprise. They accepted him just as he was. It was his first taste of freedom.

  For the two remaining years of school, it was to the de Cadanets’ beautiful Pimlico home that he went every holiday, not to Basingstoke. If his aunt was hurt by the switch, she was gracious enough not to let it show.

  ‘Any time,’ she said to him over the phone. ‘You come to us any time.’

  He never went back. Pimlico, with its sophisticated wine bars, elegant high-ceilinged villas and beautifully manicured squares, was much more to his taste.

  He was twenty-four when his parents were released from jail, alongside Mandela. With the unbanning of the ANC and the release of all political prisoners, the regime’s days were numbered, everyone knew it. With his degrees in hand, he flew to Cape Town to meet his mother and father, whom he hadn’t seen since he was seven, and to visit the country of his birth. He was a stranger. He’d forgotten his own language. England was his home now. He spent less than a fortnight in a hotel in Cape Town, bewildered by everything, unable to connect. He flew back to London with the taste of disappointment fre
sh in his mouth. South Africa was no place for him.

  But a year later, with apartheid finally in its death throes and his parents moving rapidly up the political ladder, he began to change his mind. Part of it was to do with the new group of friends he’d met in London. Like him, they were Africans who’d attended the best universities in London, Paris . . . New York. They were bankers and doctors and engineers. They were well educated, well-travelled, full of confidence. Some of them were from the south, like him – South Africans, Zimbabweans, Zambians – but there were Ghanaians and Nigerians amongst them, as well as Kenyans, Ugandans, Senegalese. New Africans. People who were like him, who liked him . . . he’d found his tribe. And home was his for the taking, when the time was right.

  Now he had a plan. He took another path. For the first time ever, he leaned on his parents for a contact. He wanted to live in London, and he wanted a place at the London School of Economics. Iketleng was galvanized into action. For her, it meant only one thing: their only son would soon be coming home.

  A tiny basement flat in Kensington was found. It belonged to one of the many Jewish supporters of the ANC command-in-exile. Dr Feldman was only too pleased to let it out to the handsome young man whose parents had sacrificed everything for the cause, including their only child. There was no rent to be paid. No, absolutely not, he wouldn’t hear of it. The place was empty most of the year anyway. A housekeeper would come in once a week. It would be a pleasure, no, an honour. Solam moved in. If anyone on the interview panel at the LSE was astute enough to connect Solam Mxolisi Rhoyi with Oliver and Iketleng Rhoyi, he had the good grace and manners not to bring it up. The young man sitting in front of them was impressive enough without parental connections. 6'3 of solid, sport-honed muscle, a keen intelligence and an easy, charming affability, he’d be an asset to the university. After the interview, the panel discussed the applicant.

  ‘He’s their only son, am I right?’ Professor Galfard said, stirring his coffee reflectively.

  ‘That’s right.’ John Wootten, head of the admissions committee, nodded. ‘We’ve had a few like him. Worth their weight in gold. They’ll all go on to key positions, mark my words.’

  ‘Well, rather chaps like him than the sort we’ve been getting lately,’ Professor Galfard said darkly. He didn’t need to elaborate. The recent scandal involving a despot’s son who’d somehow obtained a PhD at the same time as the university had received several million pounds in funding pledges – none of which had materialized – had cost the vice chancellor his job and no one wanted to be reminded of that. Fortunately, Solam Rhoyi presented no such risk. He was the real deal.

  A year at the LSE was followed by two years at Merrill Lynch, a year at Standard Bank’s City of London HQ, and then, finally, the position he’d been waiting for – a transfer to South Africa, to the Simmonds Street HQ in Johannesburg. Professor Galfard was right. In the new dispensation after the fall of apartheid, men like Solam Rhoyi were like gold dust.

  He said his goodbyes, moved out of the basement flat in Kensington, bought Dr Feldman a small painting by Gary Hume on Charlie’s recommendation as a token of his appreciation, and flew straight to Johannesburg.

  He spent the first few months at his parents’ comfortable new home in Sandton. Straight after independence in ’94, his father had been appointed ambassador to the United Nations and he and Iketleng had moved to New York. For three years, the new home on Wilton Road was empty. It made a comfortable landing pad for Solam, but he hated the suburbs. He missed the city.

  He could never be sure who’d engineered it, his mother or his father. Neither would say. The approach was made cautiously, through his line manager at the bank. National Treasury was looking for young, qualified South Africans, something in tax analysis. He understood it had been Solam’s specialization at university. His name had been put forward . . . was he interested perhaps? The salary was good – not as much as the bank, of course, but a position in the Treasury would lead to other things . . . in time, perhaps, an elected position. For now, there was a vacancy and he’d thought of Solam. It would be a wrench losing him at the bank . . . but, all things considered, a civil service appointment might be just the right move. Would he consider it? I would. Oh, yes, I would. Within a year, he was promoted to Deputy Director of Prudential Regulation, the government’s youngest ever appointment. The journalists loved him. The newscasters loved him. The morning financial shows loved him. Everybody loved Solam Rhoyi.

  By the time Iketleng and Oliver returned from New York, the tables were turned. It was Solam who was now in charge. He was the one with all the connections; he knew whom to call, when. In their absence, the city had transformed itself. He knew where all the best restaurants were, where Iketleng could find the coffee she liked and the shoes she could now afford. He knew which clubs Oliver ought to belong to and whom to avoid. And it was Solam who’d chosen the restaurant in Rosebank where they now sat, mother and son, close in ways they’d never been before.

  ‘So . . . where’s this place you’ve been looking at?’ Iketleng said, placing her wine glass down on the snowy white tablecloth. She looked around her. Yes, her son had taste. ‘Is it close by?’

  ‘Er, no. It’s in Braamfontein, actually.’

  She looked up at him in surprise. ‘Braamfontein? Why on earth would you want to buy a house in Braamfontein?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s not a house, Ma, it’s an apartment. A loft, actually. It’s in a great building. Overlooks the Mandela Bridge, right in the heart of things. It reminds me of London. New York.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t give me that. Jo’burg’s nothing like New York. Certainly not Braamfontein. Why don’t you buy somewhere nice, like Sandton, or Rosebank? Who on earth lives in Braamfontein?’

  ‘That’s precisely the point. I don’t want to live where everyone else lives. Look, much as I’ve enjoyed staying at yours, I hate the suburbs.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. What’s to hate about security and rubbish collection and roads without potholes? You’ll be broken into, or your car will be stolen . . . or worse.’

  Solam shook his head. ‘Listen to you. Now you’re being silly. It’s 1997, not 1987. Things are different now.’

  It was Iketleng’s turn to shake her head. ‘I don’t know what your father will say,’ she said, lifting up her glass. ‘Braamfontein? Nobody lives in Braamfontein.’

  ‘Well, I’m about to,’ Solam said, following suit. ‘I’ll have you both over for dinner as soon as I’ve moved in.’

  Iketleng snorted. ‘That’ll be the day. Well, it looks like we’ll be living in Pretoria soon.’

  ‘So, what’s going on? I’m hearing rumours.’

  ‘What sort of rumours?’ Iketleng asked, a small smile playing around the corner of her lips.

  He looked at his mother. ‘The inner circle. Or so I hear.’

  Iketleng said nothing for a moment. ‘Well, it’s up to the old man,’ she said finally. ‘But, yes, there’ve been a few conversations.’

  ‘And Dad? What does he say about it? I thought he wanted to stay out of the inner circle?’

  Iketleng shrugged. ‘You know what he’s like. He doesn’t say much. At least not until it’s all been confirmed.’

  Solam smiled. She wasn’t about to give an inch. ‘And you?’ he asked slowly. ‘You’ve done your time, surely?’

  Iketleng met his eye. She drew in her lip, the way she did when she wasn’t sure how to answer something or needed more time. ‘We’ll see. We’re still talking. There are some who feel two Rhoyis in government is too much.’

  He nodded. He’d known that before asking. There was silence between them for a few moments. The waiter came back with a plate of warm bread, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Iketleng made a great show of refusing the bread, then, unable to stop herself, picked at the crust. She was uncharacteristically nervous, Solam saw. He wondered why.

  ‘So . . . when are you off?’ she asked quickly. Too quickly, he thought. She was up to somet
hing.

  ‘On Tuesday.’

  ‘And where are you going again?’ Her voice had the air of someone who knew the answer. He frowned. It wasn’t like her to be coy. What the hell was she up to?

  ‘London.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Few days, a week at the most. I’m going with the Director General. I can’t stay away too long . . . you know what this place is like.’

  Iketleng smiled faintly and he saw the irony wasn’t lost on her. It was now her son’s turn to tell her things were at home.

  ‘You should look up Kemisa if you have the time.’ Iketleng tried to sound nonchalant.

  ‘Who?’ He was puzzled.

  ‘Kemisa Mashabane. Tole and Florence’s daughter. Didn’t you meet when you were children? I saw Florence in New York, just before we left. She’s so proud of her. A doctor, just like her father. Imagine.’

  ‘Imagine,’ Solam said dryly. ‘Anyway, I won’t have time. I’m there for meetings, Ma.’

  ‘Well, it won’t hurt. We exiles ought to stick together. I was just telling Florence—’

  ‘Ma, we’re not exiles any more. It’s over.’

  Iketleng looked at him sharply. ‘It’s never over. Don’t forget that. You think independence solved everything? My child, independence is only the beginning.’

  ‘Sure, Ma, sure.’ Solam knew better than to argue with her. She had a way of pursing her lips together that was the forerunner to an argument or a sermon, he couldn’t tell which . . . not that he wanted either. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly two thirty.

  ‘You have someplace else you’d rather be?’ Iketleng asked sharply.

  He sighed. ‘No, Ma. I said I’d meet the realtor at the flat at five, that’s all.’

  ‘So, you’ve made up your mind?’

  ‘Yes, Ma. Yes, I have. Now, tell me what you want from London.’

  Iketleng immediately softened. ‘Ooh, won’t you bring me back some digestive biscuits? You know, the dark chocolate ones. I miss them.’

  Solam nodded. He understood her message. You can’t even get a decent packet of biscuits here. He smiled. For all her convictions, his mother was sometimes remarkably easy to read. ‘Noted,’ he said. ‘Two packets.’