Hannah jumped as Barbara peered into the room from the doorway.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.’
‘No, I’m just silly. I was so engrossed, I forgot you were here.’
‘Nice to hear I’m forgettable,’ Barbara said with a grin. ‘I’m off. Going home to make myself some lunch and have a little siesta before the rugby. Don’t stay locked up inside all day.’
‘What rugby?’ said Hannah, her eyes glued to the screen.
Barbara rolled her eyes. ‘When I said it’s good to be eccentric, Hannah, I didn’t mean there are no limits. If you are going to make any kind of conversation with any men in the district, you had better keep up with the rugby. Eccentric to them means supporting the Sharks instead of the Cheetahs.’
‘I’d better do some research, then. I mean, my primary motive in coming here was to meet men after all.’ Hannah looked up, a smile tugging at her mouth.
With a grin and a wave, Barbara let herself out the door.
Hannah returned to the screen, clicking on maps and finding directions from Leliehoek to Goshen. A flag appeared, not far out of town. She took note of the road to get to the farm and then shut down the computer.
As she retreated to her apartment, Hannah’s stomach reminded her that it was past lunchtime. She took her chicken and rocket sandwich out onto the deck where Patchy hadn’t moved an inch since early that morning. Pulling a wrought-iron chair into the shade of the umbrella and drawing her feet up, Hannah reimmersed herself in Rachel Badenhorst’s story.
As the wagon rolled away from the house, I stared at the crate of jars from our pantry, some with shaky labels written by Ouma Anna before she died last year. Pickled green beans and chutney and stewed peaches we would never taste. My mouth waters now at the thought of those jars, the sweetness and bite I’ve almost forgotten after weeks of camp food. Her berry jam on hot, thick slices of my bread. Remember Ma saying I had the touch when it came to baking bread? Somehow my kneading hands could draw the dough to rise light and soft as air. Oupa Jakob called it Rachel’s Best Bread. My mouth has forgotten it now, even though my mind has not. I came with no money, so I can’t buy extra rations, and the work I do in the latrines just pays for mealie meal once a day.
My old dress hangs on me. It may be just rags, but I’m better off than most. I work in the camp fields some days. The soldiers bring us seed, and we grow decent vegetables, but most of the produce goes off in wagons to the army. Only people with money get to buy from the soldiers. I sneak a carrot or a cabbage leaf. I see the children who only eat mealie meal. Their gums swell and their teeth fall out; the babies’ joints ache so that they cry when they move. They don’t last long. I’m strong and clever, and now I’m a thief. Would Ma and Pa be proud of me? Pa’s Bible reading haunts me. We knew passages by heart, and sometimes I say them over and over. It takes me back to the voorkamer, to the candlelight and our family’s voices saying the Psalms.
How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? For ever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long shall mine enemy be exalted over me? Consider and hear me, O LORD my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death; Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him; and those that trouble me rejoice when I am moved.
But I can’t finish it, Wolf. I can’t say I trust in His mercy. My heart cannot rejoice. I will not sing to the Lord. He has not dealt bountifully with me. Ma would slap me for that. It is ungrateful and blasphemous, but I am angry and I don’t know how I will ever be peaceful again. I am alone. I am useful but alone.
Hannah surfaced to the slight chill on her skin. Great charcoal clouds now obscured the sun. The light had shifted to a surreal green. The garden had a glow to it she had never seen in the Cape. And she thought of Rachel, who would have lived through afternoons just like this, but seen them through a pall of hungry misery. The aloneness of Rachel’s voice pulled at Hannah. It drew a deep recognition, a feeling Hannah knew well but refused to let surface. Even in the midst of a family, a full and busy life, Hannah sometimes felt it too. Not being invisible exactly, but living unacknowledged.
Fat drops of rain began to fall around Hannah, spotting the deck slowly at first, and then faster and harder. Hannah gathered her things and ducked into the kitchen, leaving the French doors open. The earthy scent of the rain infused the room. Sheets of white rain now drummed on the corrugated-iron roof, punctuated by flashes of lightning. Thunder rolled in the distance.
Half an hour later the storm had moved on, leaving lighter flurries of rain which then dwindled to nothing. The sun ventured out and cast flashes of reflection off every dripping branch. Who wouldn’t prefer this to the days and days of grey winter wet that the Cape weathered? She glanced at the journal lying open on the table. Rachel had prodded something in her, something tender, like a bruise you couldn’t help pressing. What on earth would come of it?
April 1901, Goshen Camp, Orange River Colony
Dear Wolf,
Goshen. This is not what I pictured when Pa read to us from the Bible. Goshen was the best land in Egypt, given to Joseph to settle his family, wasn’t it? A blessed place, a refuge from famine. Here I am, in Goshen, with no family. I have to spend every effort to find food. What horrible joke is this?
The camp is so close to home – we travelled just a short distance on the cart to get here – but it is a wild, hidden place, a plateau with a hill between us and the road. No one will find me, even if you and Pa went back to the farm, why would you look here for me? The wind whistles ice across the hillside; there is no escape from it. I have a coat now. It does not fit me well, but it is thick and warm enough. Gone are the niceties of burying people in their best. Survival trumps respect, doesn’t it? Wolf, will you still like me when we meet again?
We found a bag of tree seeds yesterday, in amongst the other seed. Another delivery error. I joined the camp children and we planted those seeds in a line across the edge of the camp, a windbreak none of us will see grown. I tend those trees, though they have no benefit for me. Just a tin of water and they have taken. Tiny, spindly baby trees that grasp on life. They are like me, thirsty and desperate to cling on, but tough, showing a tenacity absent in the people around me. Something draws me to keeping those little trees alive, though it seems impossible even to think of a time beyond this camp. I know that so many of us won’t survive to see it.
People dig graves every day. Mothers burying children and children burying mothers. There are now rows of graves outside the camp. The British like to order everything, even death. The strength of those left behind determines how the graves look. Some are marked with flat stones from the veld, names carved in deep grooves into the stone. Some are heaped with small stones. And then, for those who have no one to mourn them, the earth mounds are just left to flatten over time. I don’t have anyone to bury, and when I’m dead it won’t matter who buries me. I’ll be piled into one of those holes with the other unclaimed dead. No one will visit my grave with a stone for every visit, a mark of memory. Perhaps this journal is my mark. Perhaps someone will read this and think of me, Rachel Badenhorst, of Silwerfontein, aged thirteen years.
I wish it to be you, Wolf.
CHAPTER SIX
Hannah opened her eyes and reached over to the bedside table, checking the time. Eight o’clock. And Sunday. No reason at all to get out of bed. She rolled over and closed her eyes again, smiling at the prospect of another hour in bed.