You and Pa and even Paul are on commando, fighting for our farm and family. You are heroes and Paul is only ten. Did you know that when you left to defend Naauwpoort Nek, Paul packed his bag and moved into the barn? He said he couldn’t stay in the house like a baby or a girl. When Pa came back that last time, I remember Ma standing on the stoep watching Pa cross the yard to the barn. He called Paul down. I can see them now in the encroaching twilight, one tall and tired, and one little and fierce. He promised Ma that Paul would stay with him. That he would keep Paul safe. He’s probably safer out there with you in the veld than in camps like us. I wish Pa would come for me.
There are so many ways to die here. Children are going the fastest. Once you are weak from hunger, you have almost no chance. Lists of names with measles, measles, measles. People start with a cough and a runny nose; then a rash comes. Then a fever hits them, and they start coughing up green phlegm; then they shiver uncontrollably and then they die. That’s the way most go.
At least our water is clean. I hear the newcomers speak of bad water in other camps, water that makes your stomach so sick you vomit yourself to death. We have a good well, at least. They need water for the vegetables and we carry buckets to water them. Guards let families have a bucket a day. We drink and cook and wash with that one bucket. I carry the buckets for anyone who asks, so the guards at the pond know me and lose count of the times I come. This is the way I sneak extra, and the women are grateful – they think kindly of me. But I am not kind. I am a schemer, and everything I do is about what I can get, how much longer I can last.
Hannah looked up from where she had settled at the kitchen table. Her mind elsewhere, she stared out the window at the garden, now dim in the last light of the evening. She couldn’t help feeling that Rachel’s voice was too compelling to be fiction. It touched Hannah across the years, real and honest and oddly familiar.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hannah waited for the book club ladies to arrive. Even though she stood nonchalantly at the till, her stomach curled at the thought of being on display for the curious. She was good at putting on a casual front, having learnt to do so with Todd and his endless social gatherings. But small talk in a crowd of new people did not come naturally to her.
She had laid the reading-room table with one of Tim’s embroidered cloths and set out his mismatched antique cups and saucers. Glass jars filled with herbs and flowers from the garden brought a light waft of scented geranium and rosemary. Maybe she could pull off the afternoon, despite her inadequacies.
‘Oh, Hannah, this looks gorgeous. You’ve put so much effort in – far more than I ever do,’ said Barbara when she arrived.
‘Is it too much? I wasn’t sure.’
‘No, honey, it’s lovely.’ Barbara put her arm around Hannah’s shoulders and squeezed her. ‘You’ll be fine here, you know. People are kind and mostly gentle.’
Hannah felt her eyes prickle with tears. It surprised her. She hadn’t expected a maternal gesture from Barbara; she couldn’t remember the last time her mother had done anything like it. Wiggling away, she clapped her hands together and said, ‘Right, I’ll just go and put the kettle on. We still need to fill up that urn.’
By three o’clock, the reading room was buzzing with laughter and chatter. Dainty cake plates were piled with tartlets, scones, and savoury pastries, the women tucking in with gusto. Hannah thought of the girls her age in Cape Town who picked at half a health muffin, leaving the nuts while sipping their compost-smelling matcha. They might be in skinny jeans showing flat stomachs but they certainly didn’t have as much fun as these older women. Past the point of worrying about their thighs, the book club members were relishing being together, away from their housework and their husbands.
One woman, dressed in three-quarter beige trousers and a classic white-cotton shirt, approached Hannah. Her hair was silver white and styled in a sleek bob to her shoulders.
‘Welcome to Leliehoek, Hannah. I’m Sarah Barlow. I think you met my husband, Neil, the other day.’
Hannah looked at this lovely woman and wondered how two such warm, secure people could produce a son as grating as Dirty Harry.
‘Yes,’ said Hannah, ‘Neil was so helpful. Well, more than helpful really. He got me out of a jam.’
Sarah looked at Hannah with interest. ‘Would you like to come to tea on the farm? Perhaps see it in less stressful circumstances?’
Hannah’s eyes lit up at the thought of getting back onto Goshen. ‘I’d love that, Mrs Barlow. Thank you.’
‘Please, call me Sarah rather.’ Her eyes creased gently. ‘Mrs Barlow was Neil’s mother and a tricky woman to like.’
‘When would it be convenient for me to come?’ Hannah hoped she didn’t sound overeager.
‘Are you busy in the shop tomorrow morning?’
Barbara had clearly been eavesdropping, her voice carrying from across the table as she said, ‘I’ll be here, Hannah. You go on ahead.’
‘There you are, then,’ said Sarah. ‘Come at ten o’clock.’
Hannah smiled at the older woman. ‘I look forward to it.’
The next morning Hannah was up early. Having put a good few hours into entering the new stock from the cardboard box she’d unpacked a few days earlier, she had registered the shop with an online book auctioneer and already had responses to the books she’d put up for auction. Some of the bids were surprisingly good. Perhaps she should also go through the second-hand stock on the shelves – there were bound to be books of value which would do well on auction. A trip to Bethlehem would be necessary soon to buy packaging so that she could ship the sold items to their buyers. The Leliehoek post office might become busier than they realised. She smiled at the thought of the historic post office with its equally ancient postmaster managing a flood of new work.
At half-past nine, she stood in her bedroom deliberating over her white T-shirt and old jeans. She looked down at her flip-flops and wondered again if she should buy some proper shoes, pretty sandals maybe, that would look less scruffy. Eventually opting for a cotton knee-length skirt, she twisted her hair into a plait that brushed her neck. The flip-flops would just have to do.
By twenty to ten, she was on the road, her palms sticky on the steering wheel. She wondered if she should have bought flowers. Something as a gift for Sarah. But then she remembered the exquisite garden growing around Sarah’s cottage – arriving with a sad bunch from the supermarket would be embarrassing. Hannah turned off the road at the Goshen sign and drove up the farm road, glancing up at the donkey pasture as she passed it and shrinking a little at the thought of her antics a few days before. She hoped Alistair was out this morning.
Sarah came down from the stoep to greet her and they stood for a few minutes while Hannah tripped over words of admiration for the view and the garden.
Sarah brushed off the praise gently. ‘The sad thing is, when you have lived somewhere your whole life, it just is what it is, no matter how beautiful. Does that sound horribly ungrateful?’
‘No,’ said Hannah, liking this woman. ‘I felt the same about Cape Town. I looked at Table Mountain every day, numerous times a day, and I stopped seeing it – let alone hiking up it.’
‘Exactly. Come on in. Would you like to see the cottage before we have tea?’
‘I’d love that.’