PRINCESS
‘Seën, Heer, wat ons eet en laat ons nimmer U vergeet.’ When Deddy says grace before lunch on Sunday, he pronounces every word slowly and clearly, as if he has just thought it up that instant. He likes to remind his children that the first Bible in Afrikaans wasn’t published until after Colette was born. To them praying in Afrikaans is a matter of course; to him it remains a privilege.
Then he rolls up his shirtsleeves, flexes his shoulders like a conductor just before he raises his baton, picks up the razor-sharp knife and a large fork – at this point Colette always imagines she hears the thundering opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony – and starts to carve the roast beef.
Mammie is convinced that, because he is a doctor, he can carve meat better than anyone she knows. Deddy says he learnt everything he knows about carving meat from his father and grandfather on the farm, not in medical school. Nonsense, Mammie says, he has the hands of a doctor, not a butcher. Then Deddy grins and says he’s afraid Mammie has always been a snob.
On the table along with the roast beef and gravy there is a chicken pie, as well as pumpkin purée, sweet potatoes, cauliflower with a white sauce, baked beans and beetroot salad. And of course rice and potatoes. Mammie dishes up, and holds each plate in front of Deddy so he can arrange a slice of meat half on top of the other food, because by then the plate is full to overflowing. It’s two years after the war has ended, and white bread and decent meat are still scarce in many homes, but thanks to Ouma Trui who regularly sends fruit, vegetables, home-made bread, honey, butter, eggs, chickens and red meat from Somerverdriet to the city, the Cronjés of Rondebosch never go hungry. On weekends, when Colette’s brothers are home from boarding school, they eat as if there is no tomorrow.
‘Is the roast beef in honour of the British king?’ Ouboet teases when he takes his plate.
Vexed, Mammie clicks her tongue. ‘As if we never had roast beef before the king came to visit.’
‘I’m just asking. The way Colette has been carrying on about the princesses recently, I thought …’
‘I haven’t been “carrying on”,’ Colette objects. ‘I wouldn’t dare while you’re around. Everyone knows you don’t like the royals!’
‘Children,’ Mammie admonishes.
‘Would Her Royal Highness graciously pass me the salt?’ Kleinboet asks Mammie, an entire potato stuffed in his cheek, his British accent so exaggerated that everyone bursts out laughing.
Thank heavens for a brother with a sense of humour, Colette finds herself thinking frequently, because the eldest one is becoming more and more difficult. Kleinboet is in matric, in Deddy’s old school in Paarl, and Ouboet became a Matie last year. He is so proud of the university’s maroon striped blazer, he even wears it at home on weekends. A promising student, everyone says, and a natural leader, a young man for whom a Bright Future is being predicted. But to Colette he is above all a pedantic spoilsport. Ever since King George and his family stepped ashore in Cape Town two months ago, he hasn’t stopped taunting her. All because she and Mammie joined thousands of people on the sidewalk that day to wait for the royal procession.
All right, perhaps she had been a little too excited about the long black car with the Union Jack in which they cruised through the city streets, and the funny way the queen waved at the crowds, with the back of her hand, like an elderly ballerina. She may also have chattered rather a lot about Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, and their hats and gloves and hair and everything that had seemed so gloriously beautiful. Still, that didn’t make her a rooinek or a traitor!
‘I was at the Youth Rally on Monday,’ she says, ‘and it wasn’t just an English affair, not at all. There was folk dancing too. They sang “Jan Pierewiet” and “Sarie Marais” and …’
‘All in honour of the mighty British Empire,’ Ouboet says, shaking his head.
‘No, in honour of the princess’s twenty-first birthday. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to her, and the orchestra played “For she’s a jolly good fellow”, and there were Coloured children dancing in white dresses, the cutest little one on tippy toes right out in front. I so wished you were there to see it, Mammie!’
‘You weren’t there, Mammie?’ Ouboet sounds surprised. ‘Tired of the royals already?’
‘It was a Youth Rally, Ouboet,’ Mammie says. ‘Sadly I no longer rank among the youth.’
She smiles coquettishly and pats her blonde curls, which these days she dyes to hide the threads of grey, and looks at Deddy expectantly. It is his cue to say something like, ah, my dear, to me you will always be young and beautiful. But Deddy is looking at his plate, chewing his meat, his thoughts elsewhere.
It is true that Mammie looks rather good for someone who is already in her forties, but plumper than when Colette was small, she moans and groans while trying to fasten the hooks on her step-in girdle. Still, nothing a good step-in can’t hide, she frequently assures Colette. Today she is wearing a blue-and-grey checked wrap dress with a wide belt in the style of the American designer Claire McCardell which, as usual, she has sewn herself. Girls like us can happily wear blue every day, she tells Colette, it brings out the blue in our eyes. Colette no longer finds it all that cute when her mother talks about ‘girls like us’. Mammie is far too old to be calling herself a girl. She is now a tannie, and sometimes Colette wishes she would act her age and be a little less like the silly flapper she was twenty years ago. Yet, she has an idea that Mammie will still be a flapper at heart when she is eighty. A pathetic little grey-haired woman waiting with a toothless grin for her husband to tell her that she will always be young and beautiful in his eyes.
At the thought of this, Colette becomes so anxious that she carries on talking with a mouth full of roast beef. ‘The princess made a speech too. She speaks the most beautiful English!’
‘I am very glaaad to see so many young people heaahr todaaay.’ Kleinboet imitates the princess’s high-pitched little voice and royal accent so well that everyone starts laughing again.
‘Well, I for one am very glad she’s now boarded the ship back to England,’ Ouboet says, and he takes an enormous bite of chicken pie. ‘Now we can hopefully forget about the British royal house and for a change start concentrating on our own problems in the Union.’
‘Until next time,’ Colette teases. ‘She said she hoped to come back soon.’
‘We will see,’ Ouboet says in an ominous tone. ‘That will depend on who will govern the country in the future. Or what am I saying, Pa? Pa!’
Deddy blinks as if someone has suddenly shone a bright flashlight into his eyes. ‘Sorry, I just can’t stop thinking about Peers’ Cave where we were yesterday. The Fish Hoek Man’s brain was so much bigger than we have believed until now. We actually still know so little about our prehistoric ancestors, don’t we?’
‘Tsk, dear, you worry far too much about what we do and don’t know. All I know is that the view from the cave took my breath away. The entire Peninsula and both the oceans. Whoever the Fish Hoek Man was, he was clever enough to choose a magnificent view for his home.’
‘What I would like to know, Pa,’ Kleinboet says, ‘is how you managed to talk Mammie and Colette into climbing all the way up to the cave. They must’ve complained the whole way.’
‘Actually, they didn’t.’ Deddy smiles. ‘I didn’t talk them into it. In fact,
