Nazis. Everyone must pull their weight, and she is pulling her weight with her knitting needles. Then Kleinboet puts a rolled-up piece of newspaper in his mouth to represent Churchill’s fat cigar, and says in a deep voice: ‘We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the fields, we shall fight them behind our knitting needles, we shall NEVER surrender!’ Ever the clown in the family, Mammie always says.
But her father asks, what have the English ever done for us? Why should we help them in their war? Deddy was born in the year 1900 when a handful of Boers were battling the mighty British Empire, as he regularly reminds his children. And ever since he started working at the big new hospital in the city and they came to live among the English in Rondebosch, he has become awfully preachy about Afrikaans.
‘Do you realise, Letty, that our language wasn’t officially recognised until just before you were born? Do you have any idea how long we had to fight the English to accomplish this? When I was at school I was punished if I spoke Afrikaans. Then I would have to stand in a corner wearing a paper hat with “dunce” written on it.’
‘What does “dunce” mean, Deddy?’
‘Go look it up in the dictionary. It is important that you learn to speak good English as well. We shall speak the language of the conqueror as well as the conqueror,’ Deddy says with a grand English accent, and gives her a wink. ‘That is our revenge, Lettylove.’
‘But Deddy …’
‘And you may as well stop with this Deddy business now. It was cute when you were small but now you are growing up. Call me Pappie or Pa or Vader or whatever is easiest for you.’
She has been trying for months, but ‘Vader’ sounds too much like praying, ‘Pa’ is so curt, like a dog barking, and she hasn’t managed to get used to ‘Pappie’ yet. Deddy is still the easiest. When she remembers, she calls him Deddy-Pappie. Or Pappie-Deddy.
But however annoyed Deddy may be with the English, at least he hasn’t sided with the Nazis like his brother on the farm. The last time they visited Somerverdriet, her father and Oom Kleingert had argued constantly. About the war, about Mammie’s English relatives and, while they were at it, about Mammie’s dresses that had become so short.
Back at home her father had astonished them all by shaving off his short black moustache.
‘Just so no one will ever make the mistake again of thinking that I admire Adolf Hitler,’ he had announced. ‘My enemy’s enemy is not necessarily my friend.’
Te-dum, te-dum, te-dum, Colette’s heart beats with anticipation when the train pulls into Cape Town. She no longer feels quite such a country bumpkin as when they were still living in Wellington, but the crowds rushing everywhere, the hooting cars, the busy streets and the green-and-creamy-yellow trolleybuses still frighten her a little. And now there are soldiers, too, from all over the world, in all kinds of uniforms she doesn’t recognise, men in kilts with ugly knees that give her the heebie-jeebies, boys who seem younger than her sixteen-year-old Ouboet, old men with rows of shiny medals on their chests, even women in uniform!
She keeps a tight grip on her mother’s gloved hand and walks with quick little steps to keep up with her mother’s clacking high-heeled shoes. Her own black mary janes are polished to such a shine she can see her own reflection in them if she bends over far enough.
‘Colette!’ her mother scolds when she almost collides with a lamppost. ‘Pick up your chin and watch where you’re going. Don’t act so provincial.’ But Mammie does walk more slowly now, which means Colette has time to study the advertisements on the sides of buses and buildings properly. Burlington Shirts and Sportswear, she reads above a picture of a boy with a shining white smile in shining white cricket clothes who reminds her of Kleinboet. How lovely the city must look at night when the slogans on the sides of the buildings are lit! It is something she has only ever seen in photographs in newspapers and magazines.
At the start of the war, like everyone else in the suburbs of Cape Town, they got blackout curtains for the house. To Deddy the dark streets at night had been almost like a gift. He fiddled with his telescope every night. To a stargazer a pitch-black night sky is of course something wonderful. Three years into the war no one really believes that Cape Town will come under attack any more, and once again most of the buildings are lit. It is only Mammie who maintains one should rather stay at home in the evenings and knit. Colette wouldn’t tell her mother, of course, but there are times when she rather enjoys the war. At school there are drills in case of a bomb attack, then they must dive under their wooden desks with their arms held above their heads, which usually ends in giggling and joking. Much more fun than arithmetic or Bible study.
Fletcher & Cartwrights for Fashion and Foods, she reads on a building on the corner opposite, but Mammie is already tugging at her arm to cross Adderley Street quickly before the traffic light turns red. She is not yet used to the red-orange-green lights you have to obey, or to the overhead electric wires powering the trolleybuses, nor to the Coloured men in smart suits. She gapes at everything. Close your mouth or you’ll swallow a fly, Mammie says when Colette tries, with her head tilted way back, to count how many storeys there are in the enormous Stuttafords building. Four, five, six … She gets no further, because her mother has seized hold of her shoulders and is steering her through the large entrance into a crowd of people.
Inside the store her jaw drops even more. She doesn’t even care anymore if she swallows a fly. Not that she can imagine ever seeing a fly inside such a smart store. Even Mammie, who doesn’t like to look ‘provincial’, slows down to a snail’s pace on the way to the elevator so they can examine and admire everything along the way, the wonderful wares displayed in shiny glass cabinets, the smart shop girls behind the gleaming wooden counters, and the elegant shoppers, of course. At the elevator they are joined by a woman with long red nails, wearing a whopper of a diamond ring and a black fur coat. Colette wonders if she isn’t sweating an awful lot because the spring day is far too warm for such a coat, but she cannot smell any sweat, just a heavy scent that smells completely different from Mammie’s eau de cologne.
‘If you look around you would never guess there is a war on,’ Mammie says with a sigh. Colette cannot figure out if it is a happy or a disapproving sigh. Then the elevator’s sliding gate opens with a crunching sound. The old man who pushes the buttons greets the fur-coated woman like an old acquaintance. He is also wearing a uniform, a wine-red tunic with a cap on his head, but he looks too old and too jolly to be a soldier, more like someone who works in a circus. Every time the elevator door stutters open, he announces the floor as if it is some place he has always wanted to go, a white beach with palm trees or another planet, and then all the shoppers squeeze out through the doors even more eagerly. When Colette and Mammie get out at Ladies’ Lingerie, he winks at Colette and she quickly covers her mouth with her hand to hide her grin, so Mammie won’t think she is acting provincial again.
‘Can’t I go look at the toys so long?’ she asks while her mother inspects the umpteenth step-in. Mammie holds up the strange contraption, fingers the straps for the stockings, tugs at the fabric to test the elastic, and wonders aloud if she should choose the white or flesh-coloured one. It gives Colette the creeps to think that in a few years’ time she will also have to wear a thing like that.
‘No, not on your own. What if you get lost?’ Mammie says. ‘And we have to get you bloomers, yours are all worn out.’
Colette instantly starts to sulk. She didn’t come to town to try on stupid bloomers for school, she came for the Judy Garland paper doll she desires with all her heart. Shirley Temple was supposed to play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz but then of course she was replaced by Judy Garland – not only in the film but also in Colette’s heart. She is mad about The Wizard of Oz, although Mammie predicts that after today’s matinee she
