In later years, when Lambert began to swear and get wild, breaking all their stuff so that Treppie would drag Pop out from behind the bathroom door where he was hiding and say to him, come, let’s pack our stuff so we can get out of this bladdy madhouse for once and for all, then she would say to Lambert he must come and lie down with her in the back room so he could find some peace for his soul.
She would rub his thing until he was finished and then everything would be fine again. But after a while that wasn’t good enough any more. He wanted to put it in. He wanted to do it himself. What could she do? She lay down for him. She went and lay herself down. Housecoat and all.
This was the way she’d kept them all together, Pop and Treppie and Lambert and herself.
’Cause they can’t do without each other. What would happen if something made them split up and they lost each other? They’d fall to pieces, the whole lot of them, like kaffirdogs on rubbish heaps.
So she’d lain herself down for them. For Pop, but he was good to her. He was gentle. Always has been.
And for Treppie, the devil, who’s been stuffing her all his life. From the front, and later, God help her, from the back too. He says it’s ’cause she’s stretched beyond repair.
It’s a little more than a month since he last wanted it. That business of Peace Day must be working on his conscience. If he has such a thing. She just hopes it lasts. He can write his little verses, anything. But he must just cut her out.
Mol looks up at Treppie’s poem on the wall where she pasted it, along with all the other things.
‘“And, not least, at last there is peace”,’ she reads. It’s the last part of the poem.
Hmph, she’s never believed Treppie would change his ways.
‘But never say never, hey, old Gerty,’ she says to the dog at her feet. ‘That’s what Treppie always says.’
And then there’s Lambert. Lambert, who’ll still be the end of her. The bloody end.
Lambert doesn’t know when to stop. No, nowadays he wants stories too. Stories she doesn’t know, about spy women with guns in their suspenders, in trains, in tunnels, under mountains in other countries, overseas. And stories about cowboy women.
At least she knows these stories a bit better. Poor cowboy women with long dresses who live alone on farms and shoot Indians with long rifles through the kitchen window. Lambert watches too many videos. And now she has to watch, too, so she knows what stories to tell.
’Cause otherwise, if it doesn’t work, it’s all her fault. Bitter, bitter is her lot in this house.
So, when the time for drinking comes, she joins them for a shot. Klipdrift and Coke. And then they say, ‘Hey, old Molletjie, you jolly old thing!’ and they smack her on the bum. ‘Tell us a story, girl!’
Then it’s different. Then it’s the really old stories they want to hear.
She tells them about the roses. They know the story but she tells it anyway, it’s her best story. It was the best time of their lives. Just after they moved into this house, and out of Old Pop’s house in Fietas. Triomf was full of new people. They didn’t know anyone and no one knew them, but that was okay. Everyone was young and they all wanted to make a fresh start in this new place. It was nice and jolly. The location was bulldozed and the kaffirs were gone. In those days kaffirs still knew their place. The National Party used to do the things they said they were doing. Not like now, when they say one thing but do another thing and she doesn’t know what’s what any more. But she couldn’t really be bothered. The National Party has never been able to stop three men from getting the better of her in one morning. If they really want to help, the National Party must provide some prostitutes. Well-paid, plump, fancy broads to save women like her from their lot in life. If they have enough money to pay state murderers, as Treppie says, then why can’t they also pay state whores? At least it won’t kill anyone. It will just stop women like her from getting stabbed with knives and shut up in fridges with Peking Ducks. Maybe if she’s had enough Klipdrift to drink one day, she’ll say it to those two chickens from the NP who come here to do their canvassing. Those two are asking for it anyway. Maybe then she can have some fun too. It’s not just Treppie and Lambert who can bugger around with people. Or make speeches. Maybe they need to see her in action for a change. Maybe then they’ll have some respect for her. She’ll stand up and make a speech, and she’ll say: ‘If you want to win the election for the New South Africa, then you must build a brothel here in Triomf. Painted on the outside and tiled on the inside, like a bathroom. With a nice garden in front, and pot plants in the reception with big shiny leaves. The HF Verwoerd Whorehouse. A brothel that does its business in the clear light of day, where no one will need to feel ashamed. Then all the buggering around in South Africa will come to a stop.’ Ik heb gezegd, as Old Mol always used to say.
Shame, she can just see that little girly with the bare shoulders staring at her in shock. Knows nothing about life. As it is, her eyes look like saucers when she walks in here with her pamphlets. Then it’ll be her turn to laugh. Then everyone, including the NP, will see what a jolly old girl she really is.
She’s always been jolly. She’s always been game for some fun. It was big fun to go with Pop to the market early on Wednesday mornings in the old Austin lorry. That was after she lost her job in Fordsburg, after they got the idea about roses. Those days it was still Hybrid Teas, Old Hybrid Teas, as she remembers it. Lady Sylvia, Madam Butterfly, Ophelia. And then there were the Prima Ballerinas and the Whisky Macs. Old-fashioned roses with a beautiful scent. She and Pop used to walk around for a long time, sniffing the different roses before they decided. Just for the joy of it. ‘Like peaches,’ Pop said about some. ‘Like vanilla,’ she’d say. They could spend hours like that, telling each other what the roses smelt like. A nice scent was important, and so was a long, sturdy stem, with a bud that was just beginning to open. The market was a lovely place. All those people, and the flowers, and all the mixed-up smells of vegetables and fruit and roses under that high roof. And so cheap. In those days you paid two shillings for a bunch of thirty Red Alecs. Red was everyone’s favourite. Not hers, she went for yellow, but her customers wanted the reds, the ones she sold for a sixpence each to people in restaurants, or on the steps of the city hall after concerts, or late at night when the bioscope came out.
They’d buy three bunches, and sometimes Pop said, ‘Don’t tell Treppie, but aren’t you also a little thirsty?’ Then they’d go and sit in the café with the roses on their laps and order cream-soda floats.
And then they’d go home. She’d take Lambert from Treppie and put him in his walking ring, and she’d sit on the little step outside the kitchen, making up the roses, each with its own Cellophane and a ribbon around the stalk. Pop and Treppie helped. Treppie used to cut the Cellophane into strips and Pop pulled the ribbons over the scissors so they curled up. As soon as there were enough ribbons curling like that, Pop would go fetch his mouth organ so he could play them ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’. He played it nice and fast so Lambert could jump up and down in his walking ring. And then he’d play sadly and slowly and sway from side to side, and Treppie would get fidgety and leave everything just like that, saying this was no job for a man, that he and Pop should go fetch fridges now.
Treppie’s the one who started with the fridges. He brought them along, to Triomf. If she could carry on selling roses, he said, then he could go on fixing fridges. Forget the fact that Triomf was supposed to be a more decent place than Vrededorp. Those days he still thought he was going to get rich.
And just look at him now. He sits and boozes with the Chinese all day long. She still doesn’t believe he does a stitch of work there, no matter what he says. Gambling, yes. Horses, yes. But why should he need the Chinese for that kind of thing? Other people are a mystery.