so the radio should only be used for important stuff! Viccie plays the piano and manages to get the sheet music for some of the love songs of Jeanette and Eddie but hearing them on the radio is a temptation too lovely to resist, so it is worth the wrath of the gods. Bill is predictably in the trading store for most of the day managing the buying of sheep and goats’ wool and selling consumables, blankets and coffins to the natives living across the Kei River.
Viccie carefully separates the milk from their three cows, churns the cream into butter to sell with the eggs from her little Rhode Island Red hens.
‘Ah so lovely to have my own pocket money, ’ she thinks, as she totals up the amount at the end of the month. Perhaps next time we go to East London, there will be enough cash over, after buying laying mash for the hens, that I can get some more sheet music and a little something for our new baba.
My placenta is buried in Komga (the traditional African way of saying where one is born), a small rural town on the banks of the Great Kei River in the Eastern Cape, on 17th day of April in 1945 (in isiXhosa the name is Qumra meaning red clay or ochre). The farm’s name is Dallas. There are 13 gates to open between Dallas and Komga. As Viccie and Bill leave for the clinic, Viccie opens the gates because, as she tells me later, labour had already started and it was more uncomfortable to sit behind the wheel, than to be in and out of the car opening gates. Although Viccie had phoned the doctor before they left, when they arrive, the clinic is all closed up, and I - Jeanette Ann Hartley - am almost born on the lawn. The midwife arrives just in time to open the clinic, and the doctor arrives during the delivery. Viccie spends the night and the next day in the clinic before Bill comes to fetch her home over the dusty 13 gate journey. This small respite gives her time to write to her parents Ellie and Harry Collet,
‘Jeanette is the cutest wee thing, with big brown eyes and the straightest brown hair, possible for a human being’.
Ian, Bill, John, Viccie, Ginny, and Rover
I am only three weeks old when Mommy races to the trading store, to tell Daddy that she has just heard on the radio, that the war has ended. After five years and eight months, with the unconditional surrender of the Germans on 8 May 1945, World War II comes to an end in Europe; although, it continues in Asia, that is far away. There is a wild celebration with what little food and drink are available because of rationing.
Apparently from the start, I show an unquenchable curiosity and once I start talking the questions bubble up incessantly,
“Why does my black toenail take so long to come off after I’ve kicked my toe? Why did my donkey drown in the dip tank? Why do my older brothers Ian and John fight so much?” And, I’m determined and willful,
“John, don’t argle with me – just go fetch my dolly outside by the chicken run!”
Our Hartley grandparents, Joey and Bunny, live on a farm, Peninsula, next door to Dallas. Later, after we move from Dallas, we often go back to visit them for holidays and ride our donkeys with our cousins. Granny would give us a bekile; a tin can with a lid of nkobes na mbontjie - dried maize seeds and sugar beans, cooked together forming a delicious sop1. We would also spend days with our Xhosa friends riding donkeys and venturing away from the homestead.
Ian is four years old, and John is two when I am born. By the time I am four we have moved to a Trading Store in Basutoland - now called Lesotho. The nearest town is Wepener, in the Orange Free State, and our home and store are called Helspoort- the entrance to Hell. I have few memories of the place except that we have a tennis court and swimming pool – distant neighbours and friends from Wepener come to play tennis and swim on Sundays, which means we have playmates – such fun in our otherwise isolated life. Ian goes to the small school in Wepener as a weekly border with a friend of the family. Mother has taught him up to this point, and he tells us how awful it is to be away for a whole week at a time. A favourite memory is of Dad going on a business trip and bringing back a box of chocolates just for me. I feel elated and gobble them all up, without sharing a single one.
James, David, and Boxer
My brother David is born in Wepener when I am four – he sleeps in my parents’ room, while the rest of us share a bedroom, down a long passage from theirs. The bathroom is on a veranda outside their bedroom. There are no electric lights after everyone goes to bed because the generator is switched off. One night, John says he needs to pee; the bathroom is far and dark, so he asks me to accompany him,
“Are you scared?” I ask.
“No” he replies, “come with me, and you’ll see I’m not scared!”
Although baffled by his seeming logic I go with him anyway – my buddy.
We move again when I am about seven to a place called Mapoteng, also in Lesotho. It is two miles from Maluti Hospital, an Adventist mission which offers great help to the surrounding villages; this means that we are now able to go to Church and Sabbath School at Maluti which is rather dull. Every Saturday morning, we drive over there at about 9 am and after church spend the rest of the day there with our friends.
We learn to ride horses when we are very young. Daddy has horses wherever we live; they are a part of who he is as a polo player, so often after he has closed the trading store, he schools the ponies. Ian goes to a weekly boarding school in the nearest town of Ficksburg and John is homeschooled. John and I spend many hours riding on the bridle paths of the surrounding Maluti Mountains. Sometimes we are in search of our dog; Boxer is a dalmation who is drawn by pheromones, wafting on air currents from nearby villages into his twitching nostrils. The Sotho people we meet along the way are friendly – they generously share their food with us when we are hungry, and they can usually tell us which direction Boxer has taken. John speaks fluent Sotho, so I don’t bother to learn because he is an excellent translator for me, and secretly I enjoy relying on him - my Big brother.
In the summer months on Sundays, Mommy and Daddy take us to Leribe so they can play tennis, it’s about an hour’s drive. I love to play with the other children and take my dollies along, hoping there will be girls. Although at home my brothers play dolls with me, when there are boys at the tennis courts, I learn to leave my dollies in the car.
One hot, sunny day there are only boys at play when we arrive. We join in to play cars in the shade of the surrounding pine trees. Between watching our parents play tennis and our brr-brring on makeshift roads, John says to one of the boys;
“My Daddy plays better tennis than your Daddy!”
“My Daddy’s bigger and older than yours!” comes the retort.
“So, your Daddy will die before mine!” is Johns’ confident reply.
My chest swells with my big brother’s smarts. I don’t remember Ian being with us on this occasion. Sometimes I go to the Sunday school in the Catholic Church near the tennis courts, where the Nuns in their black habits give a sticker for being present and another for learning a scripture. I enjoy the rewards and can’t recall being given awards for anything before. It’s a brand-new feeling; in fact, up till now, my learning has all been over John’s shoulder, as Mommy teaches him. John doesn’t fancy going to the big stone church at all, once a week to Maluti is more than enough for him. On the way home I wonder out loud why it is so important to go to church on Saturdays as we do. Daddy responds,
