That’s Flossie’s milk. She’s not had any today,’ I accused.
‘We’ll milk again tonight. There’ll be more tonight,’ and her eyes begged as if she were addressing the cow herself, as if her life depended on the change of routine.
Father did not report back to the kitchen. He was shown to the front seat of the car in order to accompany Mr Weedon to the gypsum mine on the edge of the settlement. Mr Weedon’s cigar smoke wrapped itself in blue bands around Father’s neck. He coughed and marvelled at the modesty of the man who preferred to sit alone in the back seat of his own car.
Children tumbled out from behind the schoolroom or the ghanna bushes to stare at the departing vehicle. Little ones recited the CA 3654 of the number plate and carried the transported look throughout the day. The older boys freed their nostrils and with hands plunged in their pockets suggested by a new swaggering gait that it was not so wonderful a spectacle after all. How could it be if their schoolmaster was carried away in the Mercedes? But it was, because Father was the only person for miles who knew enough English, who could interpret. And Mr Weedon had a deep fear of appearing foolish. What if he told a joke and the men continued to look at him blankly, or if they with enamelled faces said something irreverent or just something not very nice? How they would laugh later at his blank or smiling face. For Mr Weedon understood more than he admitted, and was not above the occasional pretence.
With Father by his side Mr Weedon said the foreign Good Afternoon to the miners, followed by a compliment on how well they looked, their naked torsos glistening with sweat, rivalling only the glory of the pink desert rose that they heaved out of the earth. Distanced by the translation, the winged words fluttered; he was moved to a poetic comparison. A maddening rhythm as the picks swung with a bulge of biceps in unison, up, cutting the air, the blades striking the sunbeams in one long stroke of lightning; then down the dark torsos fell, and a crash of thunder as the blades struck the earth, baring her bosom of rosy gypsum. Mr Weedon, so overcome, was forced to look away, at a cloud that raced across the sky with such apparent panting that in all decency he had to avert his eyes once again.
And so midst all that making of poetry, two prosaic mounds rose on either side of the deepening pit. One of these would ultimately blend in with the landscape; fine dust cones would spin off it in the afternoons just as they spun off the hills that had always been there. There was no telling, unless one kicked ruthlessly and fixed an expert eye on the tell-tale tiredness of the stone, that this hill was born last year and that had always been. The other mound of gypsum was heaved by the same glistening torsos on to lorries that arrived at the end of the week. These hobbled over gravel roads to the siding at Moedverloor from where the transformed plaster of paris was carried away.
Mr Weedon turned a lump of jagged gypsum in the sun so that its crystal peaks shimmered like a thousand stars in the dead stone.
‘For my daughter,’ he said, ‘a sample of nature’s bounty. She collects rocks, just loves the simple things in life. It’s nature, the simple things,’ he said to Father, who could not decide whether to translate or not, ‘the simple things that bring the greatest joy. Oh Sylvia would love our Brakwater, such stark beauty, and his gaze shifted. ‘the men are doing a marvellous job’. as his eyes settled on a rippled chest thrown back.
‘These man-made mountains and the bowls they once fitted into, beautiful and very useful for catching the rain, don’t you think?’
So he had no idea that it never rained more than the surface of the earth could hold, enough to keep the dust at rest for a day or so. Father decided not to translate.
‘Tell them that I’m very happy with things,’ and he turned, clicking his fingers at the man who opened doors. An intricate system of signals thus triggered itself off. The boot of the car flew open, a cardboard box appeared, and after a particularly united blow at the rock the men laid down their picks and waited in semaphoric obedience. Mr Weedon smiled. Then they stepped forward holding out their hands to receive the green and white packet of Cavalla cigarettes that the smiling man dealt out. Descants of ‘Dankie Meneer’ and he flushed with pleasure for he had asked many times before not to be called Baas as the Boers insisted on being called. This time not one of the men made a mistake or even stuttered over the words. A day to be remembered, as he reviewed the sinewed arms outstretched, synchronised with simple words of thanks and the happy contingent of the kind angle of sun so that a bead of sweat could not gather at his brow and at a critical moment bounce on to the green and white Cavalla packet, or, and here he clenched his teeth, trail along the powdered arm of a miner who would look away in disgust.
‘I don’t smoke thank you, sir,’ Father seemed very tall as his rigid arm held out the box. Mr Weedon’s musings on harmony splintered to the dissonance of Father’s words, so that he stared vacantly at the box of one hundred Cavallas held at him between thumb and index finger. Where in God’s name was the man who opened doors?
Was the wind changing direction? Moisture seeped on to his brow and little mercurial drops rolled together until a shining bead gathered dead centre then slid perpendicularly to the tip of his nose where it waited. Mr Weedon brushed the back of his hand across the lower half of his face, rubbed the left jaw in an improvised itch and said, ‘Well we must be off.’ The box of cigarettes had somehow landed in his free arm.
The men waited, leaning on their picks, and with the purr of the engine shouted a musical Goodbye Sir in Afrikaans, words which Mr Weedon fortunately knew the meaning of. The wheels swung, a cigar moved across the back window and a cloud of dust swallowed all. The men screwed their eyes and tried to follow the vehicle. When it finally disappeared over the ridge they took up their picks once more.
‘Here he co-omes,’ the children crooned, as they do about all vehicles flashing in the distance. I ran to meet Father who would be dropped just above the school. From behind a bush I watched the Mercedes move on. A cloud of dust shaped itself into a festive trail following the car. A dozen brackhounds, spaced at intervals along the road and barking theatrically, ran in the manner of a relay race alongside the vehicle until the next dog took over.
I trotted to keep up with Father’s long stride, my hand locked in his. His eyes like the miners’ were red-rimmed in his powdered face. He handed me a lump of gypsum which I turned about in the sun until its crystal peaks shimmered like a thousand stars in the dead stone.
‘That was quick,’ Mamma said. Obscure words of praise that would invite him to give a full account.
‘Funny,’ Father replied, ‘Mr Weedon said that the mine was like a bowl in the earth. Bowl like hole, not bowl like howl. Do you think that’s right?’
She frowned. She had been so sure. She said, ‘Of course, he’s English, he ought to know.’
Then, unexpectedly, interrupting Father as he gave details of the visit, she turned on me. ‘And don’t you think you’ll get away with it, sitting under the table like a tame Griqua.’
But revenge did not hold her attention. A wry smile fluttered about her lips. She muttered. ‘Fowl, howl, scowl and not bowl.’ She would check the pronunciation of every word she had taken for granted.
I knew that unlike the rest of us it would take her no time at all to say bowl like hole, smoothly, without stuttering.