When it was all over and they got back into the car, Pop turned around and asked her if she’d ever in her life heard of a coincidence like this, but that old man with only one leg whose hand she was holding was the very same man he gave money to in his tin, the one who said to him: God bless you, sir. It just shows you.
Lambert was over his shock by then, thank God, and he said he didn’t know what it showed, but he also felt it showed you something.
Treppie was completely speechless.
But completely.
It was like someone had cut out his tongue.
When they drove past the Spar in Thornton — no one was in the mood for office furniture any more — Treppie suddenly popped up with the strangest idea. She could hardly believe her ears; it’s the kind of thing she’d expect Pop to say, but Treppie said it was such a nice spring day and it was almost one o’clock, and weren’t they also hungry? Why didn’t they go buy something tasty and have it for lunch at the Westdene Dam?
Oh yes, the Benades have their moments. Even if they first have to stumble into peace, in the full light of day. In streets full of pealing bells.
That day just got better. They bought fresh bread and Springbok viennas and oranges and a litre of Coke and a coconut macaroon for each of them. Treppie paid for the lot from his back pocket. Just like that. They went and parked at the gate in Seymour Street, but she felt something was missing. It was Gerty, of course. Gerty was still alive then. Old and sick, but still alive. Shame, she’s been dead almost a month to this day. She misses Gerty all the time.
But on that spring day Pop drove patiently back to the house to fetch Gerty and Toby. He knew they didn’t always get a chance to play at the dam. When they got back to the dam they parked at the same spot and the dogs began wagging their tails and it was all very jolly. They took their lunch and found a place to sit in the slight shade of the willow trees that had just begun sprouting, opposite the island, where there were some more willows and a hadida.
It was all quiet and calm. The only other people there were on the other side, having a braai.
‘Must be policemen,’ said Pop.
‘Maybe they work night shift. Shame, they must also crave a bit of sun,’ she said.
So they unpacked their food and ate in silence there on the grass. Every now and again someone said something. Like: Look at the ducks. Or: Look where Toby’s running now. Or: I wonder what kind of bird that is?
Except for Treppie, who didn’t say a word. He just sat there, writing on his cigarette box. He’d write something, scratch it out again and then write something on the other side. After a while he was even writing on the macaroons’ paper bag.
‘What you writing there, Treppie?’ Lambert asked after a while, and then she and Pop also asked. But Treppie just bit the back of his ball-point pen and scratched his head. He didn’t say a word.
Then, after a long time, when they were passing around the Coke bottle for last sips and smoking their second cigarette, Treppie asked if they were ready to pay attention now, ’cause he’d written something special, for a special day. It was called ‘This is not wallpaper’ and this was how it went.
He stood up and smoothed down his clothes, and then he recited his little verse. So all that time he was sitting there writing a little verse, on his John Rolfes box, and on the macaroons’ paper bag.
He put on his stage voice, gestured across the water, and read from the paper. It’s the same piece of paper she can see now, pasted under the aerial photo of Jo’burg:
2 September 1993
THIS IS NOT WALLPAPER
The African coot creases the water
And the Egyptian geese shout wha! to the sky
And the hadida, that old bachelor
sits there on the fronds of a willow.
He shakes his feathers and stretches his leathers
and shouts ha! to his friends on the bridge,
ja-ha! They must look,
this is not wallpaper
not this time, no, not this time,
it’s spring, yes it’s spring
at the old Westdene Dam—
and, not least,
at last there is peace.
Treppie’s little poem left them speechless. For a long while all you could hear were the birds. Toby began to cry, ’cause Treppie kept standing there in that funny way with his one hand up in the air and the other still holding the macaroons’ paper bag. So Lambert started clapping and they all joined in. Pop put his fingers in his mouth like he used to when he was young and he whistled a whistle with a wild twist at the end. And then of course Toby started barking and jumping around in circles.
They all wanted to hear the verse over and over again. Treppie had to recite his poem four times, and each time it sounded better, and different.
‘A poet and you don’t know it, hey?’ Lambert said to Treppie as they walked back to the car.
But Pop said: ‘He knows it, all right, he knows it,’ and he put his hand around Treppie’s shoulder.
When Pop took the turn into Martha Street, past the prefab wagonwheels, Lambert said: ‘“This is not wallpaper, not this time, no, not this time”,’ and when they got to the house and she climbed out to open the gate, Lambert shouted: ‘“And the Egyptian geese shout wha! to the sky”.’ And when they walked in through the front door, Pop said: ‘“And, not least, at last there is peace.”’
That’s when she said to Treppie he must give her that paper bag, she wanted to paste it up nicely on the wall under the aerial photo, next to Mister Cochrane’s security fencing. He looked at her hard and then she smiled back at him. She couldn’t stop herself. She said: ‘So we make no mistake about where it is we come from.’ Then he also smiled and winked at her, giving her a little hug around the shoulders. Ja, can you believe it, a decent, brotherly hug.
It just shows you.
What a day like this can do to a person.
Now she hears Lambert wants Treppie to write a rhyme for his girl, before even meeting her. In English, too. But she’s not so sure about this business, ’cause by that time there won’t be any peace left. Then it’ll be elections.
CHRISTMAS 
Hell, but it’s a long wait for the Queen of England tonight. Still another quarter of an hour. It had better be worth the wait.
Maybe she should start throwing away the Christmas cards on the sideboard — if they’re still there by New Year she can just see the trouble it’ll cause again. Not that she meant anything by putting them there in the first place, one at a time, as she found them in the postbox. She stood them upright with their pictures showing to the outside, all of them with houses, houses, houses, except the one with a path to heaven and a little sun. She stood them there so Christmas would at least look like something, for a change. Most of the time their Christmases are just miserable bugger-ups.
But this year they were lucky. Christmas turned out much better than for a long time. They got together in threes and gave presents to the fourth one. Lambert carried on and on about wanting to have a braai with T-bones and watermelon, so they could all learn to be nice and sociable. He said that was something the rest of them were going to have to learn fast in the New Year, once he and his birthday-girl started going steady. They’d have to learn how to treat visitors nicely, and they’d have to start eating some decent food, too. They also needed to learn the meaning of hospitality. And no, she wasn’t allowed to fry those T-bones in the pan, on top of the Primus. They had to be done on a proper wood fire, in the backyard. Lambert actually went and bought five silver balls at Shoprite, and then on Christmas Eve he hung them up on the fig tree in the yard. He told them they must all come outside now, he wanted to practise making a jolly fire. He said he knew how to make big fires, but a braaivleis fire was a different story altogether. For a braaivleis fire you needed an audience.