and hardship. Jack had been in the automobile-coachworks industry and lost his job during the Depression. He was forced to join builder crews that often worked on sites in other provinces, such as Nelspruit in the Transvaal. On his return home he became restless and morose. Soon after his fifth child Rose was born in 1930, he started an affair with Lizzie, a woman from Black River and a good friend of cousin Dolly.
It took only eleven years to sour the safe, secure and rather idyllic home life Joe wanted to create for his family. Jack’s infidelity with Lizzie lasted for decades and led to extreme levels of stress and tension in the house.
Joe remained optimistic in spite of his difficult son Jack. He extended the living room and the kitchen and built a fourth bedroom, expanded the bathroom, toilet and pantry, all of similar dimensions, namely 4 x 3 metres.
He closed off the veranda area for rooms for the three boys and Sophie’s nephews from Somerset West, and even friends of friends who needed a place to stay for a while. They found refuge there until they could establish themselves in the city.
Jack was always away, courting his goose. Joe was disappointed in his son, but he dared not voice this to Sophie, who would have ripped out his guts for extra-extra-large garters.
When things got too much, Joe walked to Kirstenbosch Gardens and climbed up Skeleton Gorge. He often saw General Jan Smuts up on Table Mountain – many mountaineers of the day could attest to be on greeting terms with then Prime Minister of South Africa.
In 1932, Stella was born, Jack and Florie’s sixth child and third daughter. Five years later, on New Year’s Day 1937, Mavie followed, bringing the family to seven children. Jack continued his affair with his mistress, whose jealousy he pacified by claiming that Mavie was not his child. He lied and said that his wife had, in fact, cheated on him with an Indian. After all, look how much darker the child was compared to the other girls!
He distanced himself from the baby and when Mavie grew into a toddler, he was often deliberately spiteful and hurtful by pushing her out of the way. In time, she placed her trust only in her mother and her sisters. Her grandfathers and her brothers became her many fathers.
Florie was a nervous wreck and, what with her husband’s atrocious behaviour and seven children to look after, she aged faster than was necessary. After finishing the household chores at Heatherley Road she spent much of her time with her parents José and Minnie, who by then had moved to a cottage in Chichester Road, Claremont, a twenty-minute walk away.
Florie fretted about what would happen to her and her girls when her father-in-law wasn’t around anymore. Where would they go? How would they live? The boys were in their teens already and would soon be able to carve out their own lives.
The Great Depression of the 1930s flowed into World War II. It was a time of scarcity and fear, but people remained hospitable. They did not close themselves off. They adopted an attitude of ‘just because things are bad, doesn’t mean we must drop our standards’.
Florie endured two big knocks in a row. In Claremont, her mom Minnie died after a short illness. A few months later she learnt her husband’s mistress Lizzie had given birth to baby Kenneth, Jack’s fourth son.
Over time, Florie and Kenny would become good friends. They first bonded when he was ten years old. Jack brought him along one day and left him in the car in the yard while he came in to have lunch. Seeing the boy, Florie insisted that he join them at the table. Kenny became part of the family’s life. He grew up to be a kind man, a person of principle and ethics, independent of his parents’ lifestyle. Kenny always said that he did not know that his father never stayed with them. When he was little, Jack would be there in the morning and he would be there when he went to sleep at night. It was only from the time that he was taken to Heatherley Road that he realised things were not what they had seemed to him.
But all those years before that, without the benefit of hindsight, it was hard for Florie to hide her misery from her children, especially the younger ones who had not yet started school. They were always around to witness Florie calling Jack out into the yard to give voice to her many grievances, including failure to provide money for food and clothing for the children.
All Jack’s money went to supporting his second family and Joe had to keep everyone fed and clothed. Sophie had never been an easy person to live with, and that was another matter that Florie had to grapple with daily. She loved her mother-in-law’s Somerset West family, though, and always kept in contact with them.
Florie was grateful that she could find solace in her religion. Being scorned, enduring mockery, humiliation and hurt, strengthened her faith. She and the girls could also seek refuge during the day at her father’s new home in Lawson Road just down Heatherley Road, in a granny cottage with a separate entrance. They would walk along a narrow pathway past the small lakes, marvelling at how every vlei was being filled in with rubble. They watched the roads being extended and houses being built. And eventually they met the people who moved into their new homes, happy and full of optimism.
As the war progressed, a family friend who was in the Royal Air Force wanted to take Florie’s oldest son Joey with him to England to join the RAF. Joe and Sophie flatly refused to let him go. Florie recognised it as an opportunity, but she didn’t want to see her boy go to war either.
Around that time José Antonio became ill and Florie nursed him. He died just before the end of the war.
The loss of her father renewed Florie’s fears. She thought that without him there, she would surely be facing divorce and homelessness. Her anxiety about where to go with her girls knew no bounds. Fear of ending up in the gutter played on her mind. But her greatest fear was losing her place in church and being denied communion if she was divorced. It was considered a sin for a Catholic to be divorced and it meant you could not receive communion, nor could you remarry in the church. To this day, there are Catholics who will tough out an unpleasant marriage rather than get divorced.
Joe assured her that she and her daughters could stay and that there would be no divorce from Jack in his lifetime. He kept peace with his son too by going along with Sophie to meet Lizzie and her family.
The old man had always been more of a father to his grandchildren than Jack and they worshipped him for it. He taught them how to build and garden and fix things. Some days he’d walk all his grandchildren and their friends to the Youngsfield airstrip, which was busy during and immediately after the war years, to watch the planes come and go.
Some days he would just sit outside the kitchen door on a wicker chair, smoking his tobacco pipe, reading the Cape Times in the morning and the Cape Argus in the afternoon and drinking coffee, waiting for visitors. Somebody would always pop in for a chat eventually.
Hospitality was important to Joe and his family. ‘Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.’ Hebrews 12, verse 12. When he bought his big Bible, which was kept on the sideboard in the lounge, it was one of the first verses he paged to and read aloud to himself.
He missed his Portuguese amigo. The fruit trees and the vegetable patch delivered bounty after bounty. Whatever the season, the McBains had plenty, a blessing with so many mouths to feed.
When Joe sat outside like that, the pergola overhead hanging heavy with bunches of grapes, he would become nostalgic for the times he and the grandchildren would take the train from Claremont to Kalk Bay with José Antonio to visit the Portuguese friends José had arrived in Cape Town with. They had done well for themselves in the fishing community. Joe missed the sound of their strange language, their friendliness and the fact that they did not judge him and his people.
One by one Jack and Florie’s
