In the car, Mrs Mostert is sniffing into her handkerchief. Walter pats her knee gently.
‘We’re OK,’ he says. ‘No real harm done. We’ll be fine when we get back to Parow.’
Terence, who has been sitting quietly next to me, asks, ‘Who were those two men?’ and his mother says, ‘Just nasty men, silly men. Don’t worry, we won’t see them ever again.’
‘Your face is all puffed up,’ Mrs Mostert says to Walter. ‘Does it hurt a lot?’
‘It’s OK,’ Walter replies. ‘A pity all the ice melted. It would have been good as a little icepack to keep the swelling down.’
‘You want to go back home Jackie, instead of coming to stay the night with us?’ asks Mrs Mostert kindly, twisting in her seat to look at me. ‘You upset by what’s happened and want to be with your Ma?’
I shake my head. ‘I want to stay the night with Terence and you,’ I say.
‘Good boy,’ says Mrs Mostert. She turns back to face forwards again. There is a little pause. Her voice is light, breezy but I sense something important is being said. ‘Perhaps don’t tell your Ma and Pa about what happened, then, eh? No need to worry them with nonsense like that. Better for them not to know. We’re all fine aren’t we? All done with now. I’ll make a nice chicken pie for supper when we get back and it’ll all be forgotten.’
I nod my head. All will be forgotten. All will be forgotten. Nothing will be said.
*****
When I got back to the store the next morning, Ma asked me how the trip went.
‘Was it fun?’
I nodded.
‘Did you swim a lot?’
I nodded.
‘Did you eat a nice picnic?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did Mrs Mostert drive you there?’
‘No.’
‘Oh,’ said Ma, surprised. ‘So who drove you all that way out to Hout Bay? Not Mr. Mostert, I suppose. He’s still sick in the sanatorium with tuberculosis from what I’ve heard. Been there for months now.’
‘Walter.’
‘Walter?’ said Ma. Her face flushed red. ‘I didn’t know Walter was going with you to Hout Bay.’ There was a moment of hesitation and then, ‘Does Walter often go on trips like this with May Mostert?’
I shrugged.
‘Is he around with you a lot, when you go to visit Terence at the garage?’
I said nothing.
‘Does he sit and eat with you at the table, for instance.’
I nodded. Was that the right thing to do?
‘And come and go in the house as he pleases?’
I looked at her and said nothing. Why did this matter? Why was Ma asking all these questions?
‘How friendly is he with her? With Terence?’
I shrugged.
‘What on earth is going on between May Mostert and Walter?’ Ma said under her breath.
‘Ma, is Walter Mrs Mostert’s other husband?’ I asked. It was a question I had often wanted to ask and it didn’t seem to me to be a dangerous one. I didn’t think Ma would mind and since I couldn’t ask May or Walter or Terence, Ma seemed like my best bet. She would know.
Ma frowned. ‘What sort of question is that?’
I went on, undeterred. ‘Is Walter Terence’s pa?’
‘Of course not, silly boy. What put that into your head? Walter’s coloured. He’s the paid boy at the garage. How could he be Terence’s father? Terence is white and Walter’s a kaffir. And anyway it’s none of your business. That’s something for you to think about when you’re a big boy, not now.’
There was a little pause.
‘Was everything nice at the beach Jackie? No problems or anything?’
I nodded vigorously in response to her first question and shook my head firmly to her second.
Mrs Mostert had told me not to say a word. I had followed her instructions. Whatever trouble she wanted me to deny, whatever revelations she was concerned to prevent, I felt sure that I had succeeded in doing as she said. I’d not given anything away. As far as I was concerned, Ma was none the wiser and I had done my job of staying silent. Ma’s frowns and questions didn’t worry me too much. May Mostert had asked me to keep a secret and I was pleased that I had managed to achieve that.
Chapter 16
April 1958
‘Clara Joubert has arrived,’ Vera said, speaking from the outside office on the internal phone. She sounded more alert than usual, as if the events of the morning had affected her, given her a bit of a jolt out of her usual sluggishness.
When Jack had earlier reprimanded her for mentioning Clara’s name, she had replied instantly with what seemed like a heartfelt apology. Jack was taken aback by her genuinely contrite tone.
‘Those men,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have told them a single thing, nothing at all. I’m mortified, Mr Neuberger, really I am. It was a bad mistake. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a bullying Afrikaner policeman. Those Special Branch men, they think they can walk all over you.’
‘How do you know they’re Special Branch?’ He’d worked it out for himself easily enough but wondered how Vera, who always seemed more interested in her nails and her bouffant hair than anything else, seemed to cotton on to the situation so quickly.
‘Ag, they’re all the same. I can tell ‘em a mile off. I used to work as a secretary in the police station in Rondebosch and the Special Branch men used to come in and throw their weight around. Thought they’d been put on this earth to tell everyone else what to do. Us secretaries tried to keep out of their way. All except Babs McGee that is – she married one of them and boy, did she live to regret it. She had two kiddies in quick succession and then what do you know, he’s off chasing fresh skirt and she’s…’
He had carefully steered the conversation back to phone calls to be made, jobs to be done, but he was pleased to see that Vera had a bit more to her than he had imagined, that her basic instincts were decent ones. Perhaps that’s why Isidore had recommended her to him.
Now Clara Joubert was sitting waiting to be called in. He wondered what he was about to hear; it seemed that some kind of revelation was coming but he had no idea what it would be, nor the impact it might make on the case for his client. He felt nervous and hoped that Vera hadn’t noticed the little stutter as he asked her to bring Clara in to his office.
Vera opened the door and led her in. Jack jumped up from behind his desk to greet her and shook her hand. It was cool in his grasp, slender and light. She was wearing a pale-green suit, with a fresh white blouse. She had clearly got dressed up smartly for the occasion and was looking much more composed than when he’d last met her at her home, though it was hard to tell how deep this went. Maybe she was just managing to disguise her nerves particularly well. He wondered how much work he was going to have to do in order to draw out the story from her; in his experience it often took quite some time to put people at their ease and establish a relationship of trust and even longer, if they had something to hide, to catch them with their guard down; you heard a lot of irrelevant or deliberately evasive detail before you really got to the nub of it. He placed his elbows on the desk and laced his hands together, taking a brief moment to decide on a good, unthreatening place to start but before he could open his mouth to ask a question, the young woman had spoken.
‘I saw Johannes van Heerden embracing Mrs Small.’
Jack tried to maintain his composure. He felt wrong-footed by the suddenness of it all and unsure what to say.
‘He said nothing of this to me,’ he said finally.
‘Why would he? It would put him in a bad light. He must be desperate. He wants to be found innocent.’
‘And you’re sure about this? There could be no doubt?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘An embrace that was
– how should I put it – affectionate? Not the embrace of a pastor to a woman in distress?’
‘No. Not that of a churchman to one of his flock.’
‘I’d like you to tell me all about it, so that I understand exactly what happened.’
‘You won’t tell Johannes that it was me, will you? I’m only telling you because I think you should know. You will know how best to deal with it, how best to help him but I don’t want him to find out who told you. For Laura’s sake, you understand, not his; he’s betrayed my dearest friend.’
‘I can’t make promises like that I’m afraid Miss Joubert. You must already realise that it will come out in court – you’ve already talked to others. Francois de Klerk suggested I speak to you on the basis of what you’d told him.’
He thought that she would remonstrate with him, that there would be tears or that she would simply clam up and refuse to say more but she seemed remarkably calm and it quickly became clear that she had decided in advance that she would tell him everything, come what may.
‘OK Mr Neuberger. I trust you to do what’s right. I’ll put my faith in you, and in the Lord above, who watches over all that we do.’
He asked her if she would be willing for Vera to come in and take notes, to which she agreed. He called through to Vera on the intercom and, while they were waiting, took a moment to collect his thoughts. He had been thrown by the rapidity of her revelations, ones that wholly contradicted his client’s own protestations of innocence. But he was also taken aback by Clara’s willingness to speak out and wondered what lay behind this and her possible motivations. Clara was clearly well regarded in her community – Francois de Klerk had spoken highly of her. The van Heerdens were like family to her; she had no reason to do them harm. If anything, her instincts would be to protect them from the terrible fall-out of a guilty verdict. And yet here she was, in the name of enlisting his support, giving him the worst news of all, confirmation that his client was bound up with Mrs Small in ways that went well beyond the charitable offices of a pastor to a woman in need.
As she sat patiently, with her hands resting still in her lap and her eyes lowered, he wondered what Renee would make of her. His wife had a keen eye; she was a good judge of character and seemed able to read people well from even the briefest of encounters. ‘She’s a little church mouse,’ he could hear Renee saying, ‘but don’t underestimate the quick wit and tenacity of mice, or mistake quietness for timidity. Mice often get the cheese.’
Vera bustled in with her biro and notepad, straightened her skirt with one hand and sat down.
‘Let’s make a start, then,’ Jack said.
The story Clara Joubert told was detailed but clear, the kind of account he always wished for from his clients, but rarely got. She had gone out with Johannes and one of Laura’s group of women in the church, Mrs Fourie, early one evening in March. Johannes’s car was being repaired, so Mrs Fourie had agreed to drive them there herself in her husband’s red Chevrolet. They had been a smaller than usual group – Mrs de Villiers was sick and Clara’s aunt and some of the other women were busy preparing for the annual Bring and Buy sale at the church – so it was just the three of them. They had stopped by the church to collect the bagged-up parcels of provisions from the store room – tinned food, tea, sugar, biscuits, rice, ground mealie flour – bags that had been put together from donations from the small congregation.
Mrs Fourie had driven them out to Elsie’s River and they had parked first on Main Street, then followed a snaking trail through the town. They worked as a three, stopping off at each of the houses they had on their list and delivering their parcels. With some, it was a quick and simple handing over of the bag, with a brief exchange of words and a grateful look. Others took longer; when a lonely old woman, Mrs Mann, invited them in, they felt obliged to accept and waited while she filled her kettle, placed it on the stove and prepared them a cup of milky tea. Mr Cassim, who had had his arm sliced clean off in an accident at work, insisted on taking them on a tour of his newly dug vegetable patch, giving them a lengthy account of every variety he had so painstakingly planted.
By early evening, they were running late and still had four visits to make: to Mrs Jacobus, a single woman bringing up eight children on her own; to Lucky Marais, an alcoholic they had been helping for almost two years; to the Martins family; and to Agnes Small. Darkness was falling fast and Mrs Fourie looked at her watch anxiously. She needed to be back in time to prepare her husband’s dinner and didn’t want to be late. Dirk Fourie didn’t much like his wife’s activities with the church, especially if they made him wait for his evening meal. He had, on several occasions, threatened to forbid her having anything more to do with the Elsie’s River project and coming back late yet again would give him just cause to finally put his foot down and put an end to her activities. Everyone at the church knew that Dirk Fourie was a tricky customer and that his wife tiptoed carefully around him.
Mrs Fourie was becoming agitated and pressed them to leave the last few houses, suggesting that they come back with their deliveries another day but Johannes had insisted that they continue; these people are relying on us, he had said. Tensions had mounted; there had been an argument, and tears. Finally Johannes suggested that the women go straight to Mrs Jacobus’s house on their own, then drive back to Bellville leaving him to take the bags of food to Agnes Small, the Martins and Lucky Marais. He would get the bus back to Bellville when his work was done. When Clara protested, he insisted – it was the only sensible option. He would find a public phone and ring Laura to tell her that he’d been delayed.
Driving towards the house of Mrs Small, Clara had noticed that Johannes looked uncomfortable and flustered. He was sweating profusely and seemed unable to keep still. He looked towards her from time to time and then turned his eyes quickly away. She wondered what was wrong but put it down to his still feeling upset by the argument with Mrs Fourie. The two women left him on the corner of Jan Smuts Drive, with his two big paper sacks of groceries to deliver, and drove off to the small house where Mrs Jacobus lived with her noisy brood.
Mrs Fourie looked anxiously at her watch, clearly fretting about her husband, but luckily Mrs Jacobus was busy giving the little ones their weekly bath in the yard and was in no mood to chat, so they dropped the bag quickly and returned to the car. They were just heading out towards Voortrekker Road and home when Clara noticed a wallet sitting on the back seat of the car. She reached for it and opening it up discovered that it belonged to Johannes. He had left it by mistake. They would need to get it to him before driving back to Bellville.
Mrs Fourie was in a state; she cried; she was all for heading homeward and returning the wallet to him in the morning but Clara reminded her that he would need money for the bus and for his phone call to Laura; they could not leave him stranded in a place like Elsie’s River without any money. It could be dangerous, even for a man wearing a dog collar, who was clearly a man of God.
Reluctantly Mrs Fourie swung the car round and they retraced their steps to Mrs Small’s house on Fontayne Street, hoping that he might still be there. Clara leapt quickly out of the car and ran up the steps to the front door. She knocked on the glass window. There was no reply, so she knocked again. Still no reply, yet the lights in the front room were on. She stepped off the path and went to look in. There were signs of life, tea on the table, a cigarette in an ashtray still burning, but no one there. So she walked round the back to see if they were out in the garden but there was only a single scrawny hen poking away at the dust. The kitchen light was on and looking in, from the growing darkness of the little yard, she saw a man and woman locked in a close embrace. To her horror, she realised that it was Johannes van Heerden and Mrs Small.
Flustered and confused, she hurried back round to the front of the house and retraced her steps down the path to the car. As Mrs Fourie drove off, she burst into tears.
Cl
ara finished her story with a little shudder, whether of sadness or disgust, or renewed horror at the memory of that evening, Jack found it hard to say.
‘I told Mrs Fourie what I had seen, our Reverend, Johannes, Laura’s husband, hugging and kissing the coloured woman. In my shock I forgot all about the wallet and we drove home to Bellville with me still clutching it firmly in my hands.’
‘What was Mrs Fourie’s reaction?’
‘She was angry. She said she always thought the Reverend and Laura were a bit soft on coloureds but she hadn’t thought he’d take it that far. A kaffir lover; it was shameful. I tried to tell her not to say anything to anyone else, not till I’d talked to Johannes, but I could see that she had no intention of listening to me. She would park the car, run into her house and call out to Dirk to tell him all about it. That’s what she’s like.
‘She dropped me at my house and I went straight in and had supper with my parents and my aunt. I didn’t say a word though I could hardly force myself to eat a bite of the food. At around nine o’clock there was a knock on the door and Francois de Klerk asked to speak to me privately. Dirk had been to see him. Mr de Klerk asked me to tell him exactly what I’d seen and I had no alternative but to do so.
‘The next morning I went to see Johannes to give him his wallet. He was out at the church, preparing for the Bring and Buy. Laura invited me in, but I refused; I made an excuse that I had errands to do for my mother. I couldn’t face seeing her, knowing what I knew, so I gave the wallet to her and left.
‘The rest you know. Dirk Fourie has been to see me on several occasions since that night. I don’t know who it was that went to the police but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were him. Others might have tried to sort things out within our community first, but not Dirk. He’s no liberal, you know, like Johannes and Laura. He was out on the streets campaigning for the Nats last time round.’
Off the Voortrekker Road Page 14