Odd how much one forgets even though it’s only about pots & pans. Had to add or correct things everywhere. Then I had a sudden inspiration to write the dedication that had been in my heart all the time but the time was not yet ripe for it but now it seems as if all my trouble with A. has after all been rewarded. So sweet-tempered nowadays. Three attempts before I was satisfied. Difficult to sound heartfelt on paper but that’s how I feel. Must still copy it neatly into the front of the first book.
10 September 1960
Can place my trust 100 % in A. She has a remarkable way with Jakkie that much is definite. The first weeks she sat up by his cradle hour after hour & even now still every day. Is patient helpful quick to learn knows her place. Has undergone a major change of attitude it seems. Honestly didn’t think I was going to stick it out with hr. Before Aug. still thought I’d be forced to find some other refuge for her because I could see nothing but hardship ahead. But what on earth would I have done without hr now? She picks him up when he wakes up & changes him when he’s wet & cleans him when he’s dirty & bathes him & dresses him as if it’s the child of her own blood day & night immediately she’s on the spot when he cries & she sleeps with hr window open to hear him at night. Says she’s awake even before he can as much as squawk & then she comes in at the back door & soothes him & sings to him that always calms him down. I’ve told her she can sleep on the camp sretcher with him in the nursery while he’s so small it would be more convenient she pretends not to hear me suppose she doesn’t feel comfortable with the idea & so I just dropped the matter because I suppose Jak would also have something to say about it. The Hottentot Madonna of the Langeberg he says St Agaat of South Africa the halo is in place when can we expect the canonisation. If only A. hadn’t gone & overheard him.
It’s not an easy child. Ma says firstborns just are like that. Beatrice has all sorts of theories. He’s scared of my hands scared of my face & I have trouble suckling & as it is I have so little milk. A spring lamb says A. always has more whims than autumn lambs but with her she says he behaves himself as if it were April all the way.
She’s always cheerful & tireless. Often watch her when she doesn’t know I’m looking so tender & hr mouth so soft & hr body even though she’s no more than a child herself (have now written her name on the birthday calendar 12 July exactly one month before Jakkie. Won’t forget it again!) so protective of the helpless little creature. Feel myself in her shade her inferior by far in terms of patience & ingenuity. Feel weak in the face of the task. Still often weepy but at least somewhat less than at first. Often sit in my chair in front of the glass door feeble & listless then A. comes & lays the baby fragrant in his little white blankets & soft clothes gurgling in my arms. As if she wants me to share in the well-being she awakens in him or if she wants me to be kindled by the first little smile she gets out of him. But his little face clouds over immediately when he notices me & he frowns as if he’s seeing a dreadful problem on my face & he grimaces & he cries fit to break my heart so then I return him to A. she always has a plan. Let’s push him in his pram to the dam let’s sit there for a while in the shade of the willows let’s sing to him so he can grow human let’s go for a drive with him over the ridges so that he can feel the lie of the land up & down over the hills sikketir sikketir over drift & fields all the way to the old bridge of Vaandrigsdrift let’s take him over the plain to Malgas & sail with him over the river on the ferry so that he can get used to crossing the deep & dark places.
14 September 1960 afternoon
Allowed myself to be carried along with A.’s proposals this last week & every day today again we packed the baby-case & packed a picnic for ourselves & got into the car & followed our noses. A. doesn’t want to sit in front wants to sit in the back with the child in his crib. Watched hr in the rear-view mirror how she looks at him every now & again & rearranges a little blanket or covers a kicked-open little hand or foot & then gazes out again this side & that side over the land in its light-green spring attire the lambs playful on the dam walls the crops hand-height the fennel — her fennel! — in flower next to the road (once she opened the window to smell it & smiled with me in the mirror) the tops of the bluegums sprouted shiny-red what is she thinking? but I’d rather not ask. She rocks & she soothes the child.
I drive & show hr the world. Over the ridges over the plains over the rivers. Storms River, Breede River, Korenland, Buffelsjag, Karnemelks, Duivenhoks. We have picnics with hr favourite food cold sausage & bread with apricot jam & red cooldrink & sago pudding on dam walls & banks in the shade. Even dug up my Oxford Collected Poems & read to her & taught her a few new English words. It’s all really to console hr & to mollify hr to remind hr of the good things which should not come to nought. I look at hr & I cry secretly because I know it’s my little child in hr arms there that makes her now at times totally forget the quick steps & the stiff formal air that she affected & in unguarded moments become again as she was.
14 September evening
Reread the little books from the beginning. What is it with me this need to go over everything again now as if I’m searching for something that I lost? Tell myself I’ve lost nothing. I have what I’ve always wanted. And I’ve also got A. back & it’s all good it has all come to good as the Lord wanted it. So then I wrote the inscription that I composed the other evening in block letters in the front of the first booklet with today’s date so that I can remember one thing: That I owe it all to the coming of little Jakkie.
17 September
It’s been 3 days now & I still don’t know how to write it up & if I should write about it at all if writing can countenance it. J. would murder her if he were to know. Can’t tell it to anybody.
Have been seeing wet patches on the uniform for a while now & when I ask she says he must have drooled on me or he most have burped a wet wind will go & change. Without twitching a muscle. After the first few times she must have taken precautions. She knows the rule child-minding or not the uniform must be spotlessly white every moment of the day. So then last Wednesday one of those little spring mizzles & I had a nap in the afternoon & I wake up there’s a silence in the house heavy & deep & I stay lying on my bed listening to the dripping & looking over the stoep scattered with flowers from the wisteria like little blue butterflies in the wet & the gutters are dripping softly a turtle dove calls it’s almost done raining & I feel happy & grateful that I’ve always in spite of everything been able to keep everybody on track on Gdrift & when at last I get up & go to have a look there I find the cradle empty. Feel the covers still lukewarm from his little body & I press my nose into the blankets they’re so sweet & I know A. has come to fetch him to give him the bottle everything is so quiet.