by Carol Gibbs
We try our best at all times. Mr Anderson said we were good children – we even gave our hearts to Jesus. You can’t give more than your heart, but if you were smart you would keep your heart to yourself, because when anyone else gets hold of it they can do whatever they like with it. No matter what we do, it will all happen again on Brandy Friday. Aunty Dolly says we are three miracle children, battling every day with strange emotions, bad enough for adults who can cope, but worse for children without hope.
Then, one afternoon, after school and when Daddy’s still at work, Aunty Dolly appears at our door still wearing her nurse’s uniform.
“There is something we need to discuss.”
Mommy frowns.
“May, just one of these episodes is enough to tip a highly strung child like Colleen over the edge. You heard what Doctor West said. You see what she’s like – a nervous wreck. She and her sister.”
“I’ve hardly slept since it happened,” mutters Mommy, covering her face with her hands. “Maybe I should phone my mother.”
“Why don’t you phone her right now? I’ll wait to hear her answer.”
Desiree and I could tell Mommy was a little scared. Scared to tell Grandma, scared of Daddy, scared of what Grandma would say, what she would do. But she dialled the number anyway, and didn’t cry once. I closed my ears. I didn’t want to hear her say the words I knew she was saying. At last, she said goodbye, put down the receiver and, her lip wobbling a bit, turned to Aunty Dolly who had been sitting quietly in the corner, twisting her hankie in her lap.
“My mother will have the girls.”
“I can’t believe she agreed so readily.”
“You know my mother. Sometimes her bark is worse than her bite. I’ve always wanted the girls to go to the convent.”
“It’s going to be a big adjustment for them, but I suppose they’ve already adjusted to lots of things in their short lives.”
“I’m going to miss them,” sighs Mommy.
“It’s not a moment too soon. This is the best decision you’ve made in years. Gabriel will probably have to stay where he is, poor boy, but at least he’s older.”
Desiree is doing fancy steps and singing.
“We’re going to live with Gra-a-andmaaaa.”
“What will it be like?”
“The teachers at the new school are nuns. They are married to Jesus and they wear funny clothes.”
“Will we have to marry Him, like the nuns, if we go to Catholic School?”
Soon we’ll be settled into our grandmother’s boarding house and we’ll be in for a better life. Edna says she will miss us because we are like her own children. Sometimes, in the days that follow, her lip wobbles when she talks to us, but we pretend we don’t see. Because we’re going to have a better life with Grandma, that’s what Aunty Dolly says.
The plan is that we will spend some time with Grandma over the holidays – “Just to test the waters,” says Mommy. So when it’s time to pack our bags and take the train to the city, we’re not sad and not scared, not even a bit. Cape Town station is as familiar to us as our own back yard. We step off the train and watch as the man in black trousers and waistcoat climbs up the wooden ladder and walks along a steel bridge right above our heads. The metal boards click as he hooks them in place. People crowd below, craning their necks to check the giant timetable.
We walk past the bar, where Worcester Hock – poor man’s champagne, that’s what Daddy calls it – costs sixpence a glass. We hate the smell of it. We run past the open door at top speed and head for the miniature train and the clock. Mommy always says if you get lost, meet me under the clock. Gabriel puts a penny into the brass slot and we watch the engine driver wave. We wish we had money for the Nestlé chocolate machine, but Gabriel puts the last penny into the stamp machine. He licks the stamp and slams it onto the envelope with his bunched-up fist. Two seconds later we are outside the General Post Office and Gabriel slips the letter into the bight red postbox with the crown on top. The letter is telling Ouma about our new adventure, that we’re going to a convent and we’re going to live at Grandma’s house in Cape Town.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Grandma’s new statues crowd the lounge. Now it really is the best house in the whole wide world. The statues are huge and the wooden floor sags under the weight and bounces as we walk past. Rebecca at the well stands tall, with a big jar on her shoulder. I can just touch her bare feet. Her toes are always cold. Martha stands guard on her pedestal, looking oh-so-holy, straight out of the Bible. David stands tall in his corner with a fig leaf covering his thing. We giggle every time we see him.
The lounge is our favourite room. Warm sunlight streams through the big bay window. Bare-bummed cherubs clutching sheaves of wheat run around a brass urn that holds an asparagus fern. I don’t understand, because bare bums are rude. The urn has two lion faces with round rings through their noses for handles. Lilies are my grandmother’s favourite flower and there are always a few in the lounge. We love to watch the tight petals as they unfold into heavenly pink, filling the room with their lily perfume.
Table Mountain is so close it looks as though the mountain is right in Grandma’s lounge and we can see the cable cars going up and down. We love to watch the tablecloth come over the top of the mountain when Van Hunks and the Devil smoke their pipes. Gabriel says it’s not true.
“They really do smoke their pipes on Devil’s Peak,” I say, pushing my bottom lip out. “Grandma told me so.”
“Put your lip back. You’ll trip over it,” says Gabriel like he’s the boss of me.
But I know Gabriel is not about to call Grandma a liar, because he’s just as scared of Grandma as the rest of us. We’re spending the school holidays at Number 82, getting used to our new surroundings, and Gabriel has come to visit us for the day.
Grandma is always busy, arranging her teacups, dusting her statues or talking to people from the Kennel Club, but today she surprises us.
“Wash your hands and faces and make sure you’re wearing clean broeks,” she says. “I’m taking you to Stuttafords.”
While Grandma gets ready we stand close to her dressing table and watch her every move. She stretches her fingers wide inside her hair net to make it fit her head and she tells us it’s made from real hair. She dabs the big fluffy powder-puff into the glass powder bowl and peers into the mirror. She pats rouge on her cheeks and lipstick on her lips and then she sticks a long shiny hatpin through her black hat. She reaches for her scent bottle and with a bit of luck she will give us a squirt. When she isn’t around, Desiree and I always want to give it a squeeze, but we aren’t brave enough. At last she grabs her handbag from the oak hat stand in the passage and we’re off at a trot down Queen Victoria Street.
“Can we go into the hothouse?” Gabriel pleads.
Grandma nods and, as we race off, lowers herself onto the bench in the rose garden to rest her legs, blue with varicose veins. The hothouse is a magic place. It’s like a secret tropical jungle with dank smells and big orange fish. The front door has a low handle we can reach without having to find big people to help us. We race to the round fishpond in the middle of the glass room and lean over to see our reflection. Sometimes there’s a water lily on our heads, like a pixie cap, or a dragonfly skimming over the water, making ripples on our skin. Sometimes there’s a fish in place of an eye. The big orange fish swim silently by and we like to watch their gills open and close, open and close as they breathe. We’re lost in a magic world until Grandma comes to find us.
“Stuttafords could have closed down for good by the time we get there. My tongue is hanging out for a cup of tea.”
We pass the open-air restaurant with the green slatted chairs, where they sell ice cream. We say hello to Cecil John Rhodes standing on his stone pedestal.
“H-h-he must be t-tired. He’s b-been standing there s-since 1902 when he d-died.”
We marvel at golden pheasants, budgies and rosy-faced lovebirds in their cages. The slave bell looks very
big. We race from the hand pump, embedded in the big tree, to the statue of Sir George Grey, standing with his back to the library. We take turns to stand on his huge stone feet and look right up into his nostrils and Gabriel says he can see into his brain.
In Adderley Street, the Stuttafords shop windows are full of Christmas presents. We feast our eyes on twinkling lights, dolls and prams, tricycles and bikes. There’s a magic tunnel and a lucky dip, pink for girls and blue for boys. Maybe that’s why my grandmother has brought us to Stuttafords. Now we sit with our clean hands and clean broeks on straight-backed chairs behind the iron railings of the balcony over Adderley Street, trying to be good. I feel giddy in my head when I look down and see cars like Dinky toys. There’s a lady sitting opposite us holding a crutch. We can’t take our eyes off her stump.
“Don’t dare ask – and don’t stare!” hisses Grandma.
The waitress who brings our tea is wearing a pointy white lace cap and her organza apron is tied with a pretty bow. She sets the big shiny teapot with Stuttafords engraved on the front on the white starched tablecloth. We marvel at the gold-rimmed snow-white cups and I bite my nails, because I’m scared that if I try to be hoity-toity I’ll drop my posh cup. There are side plates to match the cups and starched napkins that stand up straight like a bishop’s hat. The waitress brings a tray with a milk jug and a sugar pot with little blocks of sugar and a funny thing to lift them out. It doesn’t look a bit like the spoon we use at home. Desiree’s eyes travel to the napkins and she gives me a wink. I wonder what we are going to eat, but the waitress comes back with a plateful of little cakes. Desiree smiles, licks her lips and kicks me under the table. Nothing escapes my grandmother’s hawk eyes.
“You’re not in Crawford now,” she tells us through clenched teeth, as she bends down to put her handbag on the floor. Desiree pulls a face behind her back, but Grandma has eyes in the back of her head and Desiree, for her trouble, gets a smack.
“I’m going to teach you some manners. The best news I’ve had in a month of Sundays is that they give elocution lessons at the convent. Unfortunately, Gabriel, you will have to take your chances at that awful school in Crawford, although you, with your stutter, would benefit the most.”
We are caught in Grandma’s web and there’s no escape if we want the cakes.
“Fold your hands neatly in your laps. Never put your elbows on the table. Remember to say please and thank you at all times. And never reach for a cake without being offered one. Don’t slurp. If you sip your tea like a lady, you won’t burn your lips.”
She shifts her bum in her seat and then continues. “Put your hand in front of your mouth when you cough and have a handkerchief handy in case you sneeze.” She stops for a second.
“Sniffing is very unladylike,” she says, looking straight at Desiree and me, “and don’t forget to eat with your mouth closed. As for you young man …”
Gabriel is bored and he’s fiddling with his penknife under the white starched tablecloth.
“Stop fidgeting!” Grandma says in a stern voice.
Gabriel suffers from nerves and I hope he won’t start stuttering, but Grandma doesn’t give him a chance.
“You, Gabriel, must see that the ladies in the party are comfortable. You must pull their chairs out and then push the chairs gently under their bottoms when they sit. Do you understand?”
While Grandma is lecturing Gabriel I whisper in Desiree’s ear. Grandma guesses what it is we need and she fishes in her leather purse for a penny.
“It’s bad manners to leave your companions high and dry. You must choose your moment.”
We don’t understand what she means, because when your pee comes there’s not much you can do. Desiree stands on tippy toes and drops the penny into the brass slot. “Open sesame!”
She slides the bolt aside. Together we cram inside and take turns to hover over the white pan the way Mommy taught us, because of the world being full of germs. Grandma doesn’t know it, but we hover over her lavatory pan just the same, because Aunty Katarina went out with the sailor men. Desiree reaches for the lavatory chain and she gives such a mighty pull that it almost hits the ceiling. To loud gurgling sounds, we leave and get back just as Grandma says the tea is getting cold.
Our hands are getting pins and needles from sitting on them to stop ourselves from grabbing the little cakes.
“Have a petit four,” says Grandma at last. Her arthritic hands strain to hold the posh teapot steady as she fills the delicate white cups with the gold rims. “Girls first.”
When tea is over we go down the wooden escalator. The steps come up out of nowhere. Gabriel has seen Popular Mechanics at the Selbournes’ house and now he wants to know how everything works. Last week he took the alarm clock apart, but the bits and pieces got the better of him and he couldn’t put it all back together again. Daddy was late for work and Gabriel got a scolding for his trouble.
“I like children who ask intelligent questions,” says Grandma. “We can look it up in my encyclopaedia when we get home.”
I’m frightened as the floor comes towards me and the steps disappear again, but my grandma and Gabriel each take a hand firmly and lift me off my feet. “One, two, three!”
Hot air surrounds us as we step onto the pavement. To keep up with our grandmother, striding along on her varicose-vein legs, we dart between the people busily going about their business. Soon we reach the leafy green tunnel of the Company Gardens, where there’s a man holding the most impossible amount of teasers between his fingers.
“Tickey a teezaah! Tickey a teezah!” he shouts through the gap in his teeth as he shakes them. The wind swirls the bright strips of crinkle paper round and round, making a soft shushshush sound.
Grandma sits on the bench to rest her sore legs. When she feels better she eases herself up and drops a surprise on us. “Time to see your new school,” she says.
Desiree and I look at each other, but we cross the road behind the National Gallery and gaze through the barred gate of the convent. I imagine myself in my school uniform, the strict nuns rapping me over the knuckles.
“I hear the ghost of a nun! Run!” shouts Desiree suddenly.
I’m already halfway down the street when Grandma calls me back. “Don’t be daft! That’s only leaves rustling in the plane trees. Don’t look so worried. Everything is going to be all right. You’ll see.”
I’m not so sure, so when we make our way back down the road, I trail behind.
Back at the house, Grandma unlocks, and we slip into the coolness of Number 82.
“Were you born in a cave?” Grandma shouts at me when I forget to close the door behind me.
As soon as she steps into the kitchen, my grandma puts the kettle on, even though she has just had a bucketful of tea.
“Grandma, why do you want more tea?”
“Because it doesn’t taste the same as the tea from my magic cup.”
“Why didn’t you take your magic cup to Stuttafords?”
“That would be bad manners.”
Her teacup has a big star in the bowl and squares with pictures in the middle. There’s a heart, a glass and an envelope, and an eye, an arrow, a cross, a bell and a bird, but that’s not all. There are funny signs and Grandma says they are called the signs of the zodiac. If you turn the cup upside down you can read words:
The Cup of Fortune.
Would’st learn Thy fortune with Thy tea
this magic cup will show it Thee.
“Please, Grandma, can I have some tea?”
“You know my opinion on telling children their fortune. You must wait until you are eighteen.”
“But it’s such a long time to wait!”
“Don’t be cheeky. Why don’t you three go to the museum so I can have my tea in peace?”
Once we’re safely across Queen Victoria Street, Gabriel leads us to the big cannon left over from the war. He sits astride it and blasts away at the play-play enemy. Then we dash through the arched doors of the museum a
nd up the wide stairs with the high ceiling above our heads.
“Let’s go and see the magnified flea.”
Gabriel loops his arms around my skinny body and lifts me. I cling to the big eyepiece. The flea looks huge and I feel sorry for all the dogs and cats of the world.
“Come on, Skinny Legs.”
The communal nest is next. How can birds make such a big nest and all live together in peace without any fighting? Then there’s a big glass showcase on legs filled with millions of tsetse flies and pictures of people sitting under trees, clutching their heads in their hands. I’m frightened of catching sleeping sickness, but Gabriel says they all live up north and the flies can’t fly all the way down to Cape Town. We thrill at the sight of pygmy falcons, snakes, bobbejaan spiders, hornets and butterflies by the dozen, brown, cream, orange, turquoise and green.
The stern-looking man in his black uniform paces back and forth, his hands firmly clasped behind his back. When he isn’t looking, we slide down the wooden banister that ends in a lion’s head with open mouth. But we save the best part for last. When Gabriel wanders off to see the lion skeletons and the guard is doing duty in another room, Desiree and I duck away and run to the big showcase with the Bushmen crouching inside. We giggle at their drooping, yellow tits, but most of all we want to see what the men have inside their leather skin pouches. They don’t wear underpants and we wonder if their things are different. I get down on all fours and just about stand on my head to try to see, but the gap is never wide enough. We stifle rude giggles.
Mommy’s going to miss us and she wants us with her until the last minute, so we go back to the Doll’s House and sleep in our own bed for the last time. When the weak sun peeps out from behind the morning clouds, Desiree pushes the faded chintz curtain aside. She helps me dress in my Crawford school uniform and the navy-blue jersey that my mother lovingly knitted. Once again, Mommy takes us on the train and then we walk up Plein Street past the Houses of Parliament and St Mary’s Cathedral and through the gates of our new school.