face. They were identical twins and were reminding me of the names I had given them when I was much smaller. It had started as Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee and had simply become Dum and Dee. I laughed as they showed off their English.
The room smelt of fresh coffee and Dee moved over to a tall, brown enamel coffee pot on the back of the stove and Dum brought a mug and placed it on the table together with a hard rusk and then walked over to a coolbox on the stoep for a jug of milk. She returned with the milk and Dee poured the fresh coffee into the cup, both of them concentrating on their tasks, silent for the time being. Placing the pot back on the stove, Dee ladled two carefully measured spoons of sugar into the mug of steaming coffee, using the same spoon to stir it. It was a labour of love, an expression of their devotion. Dum brought me a
On the farm they had simply worn a single length of thin cotton cloth wrapped around their bodies and tied over one shoulder. Their wrists and ankles had been banded in bangles of copper and brass wire which jingled as they walked. Now these rings were gone and over their slim, pre-pubescent twelve-year-old bodies they wore identical sleeveless shifts of striped navy mattress cotton which reached almost to their ankles.
While I dunked and sipped at my coffee we chatted away in Shangaan. They asked me about the night water and I told them that Inkosi-Inkosikazi’s magic had worked and the problem was solved. They clucked and sighed about this for a while and we then talked about the crops and about the men who came in a big truck and lit a huge bonfire and killed and burned all the black chickens. The smell of burning feathers and roasted chickens had lingered for three days, but no one was allowed to eat the meat. Such a waste had never been seen before. How my granpa had sat on the stoep at the farm for a day and a night watching the fire die down to nothing, silently puffing at his pipe, leaving the food brought to him and letting the coffee beside him grow cold.
At last we reached silence, for the subject of Nanny had been standing on the edge of the conversation waiting to be introduced all along and they knew it could no longer be delayed.
‘Where is she who is Nanny?’ I asked at last, putting it in the formal manner so they could not avoid the question. Both girls lowered their heads and brought their hands up to cover their mouths.
‘Ah, ah, ah!’ they shook their heads slowly.
‘Who forbids the answering?’
‘We may not say,’ Dee volunteered, and they both let out a miserable sigh.
‘Is it the mistress?’ I asked, already knowing the answer. Both looked up at me pleadingly, tears in their eyes.
‘She is much changed since she has returned,’ Dum said.
‘She had made us take off our bangles of womanhood and these dresses make our bodies very hot,’ Dee added with a sad little sniff. Both rose from the floor and moved over to the stove where they stood with their backs to me, sobbing.
‘I will ask her myself,’ I said, sounding more brave than I felt inside. ‘At least tell me, is she who is Nanny alive?’ They both turned to face me, relieved that there was something they could say without betraying my mother’s instructions.
‘She is alive!’ they exclaimed together, their eyes wide. Using their knuckles to smudge away their tears they smiled at me, once again happy that they could bring me some good news.
‘We will make hot water and wash you.’ Dum reached down beside the stove for an empty four-gallon paraffin tin from which the top had been cut, the edges hammered flat and a wire handle added, to turn it into a container for hot water.
‘See, the water comes to us along an iron snake which comes into the house,’ Dee said, moving over to the sink and turning on the tap.
‘I am too old to be washed by silly girls,’ I said indignantly. ‘Put on the water and I will bath myself.’ Apart from wiping my face and hands with a damp flannel, my mother had let me climb into bed without washing, and I hadn’t really washed since the shower with Hoppie at Gravelotte.
The girls showed me a small room leading off the back stoep in which stood an old tin bath. Carrying the four-gallon paraffin tin between them, they poured the scalding water into the bath. Then they fought over who should turn on the cold tap positioned over the tub. Dum won and Dee, pretending to sulk, left the bathroom. She returned shortly with a freshly washed shirt and pair of khaki shorts. I ordered them to both leave the room. Giggling their heads off, they bumped and jostled each other out of the small, dark bathroom.
That was a bath and a half, I can tell you. It soaked a lot of misery away. The thought that Nanny was still alive cheered me considerably and made the task of asking my mother about her a lot easier.
After breakfast my mother retired to her sewing room and several people turned up to see her. They were women from the town and I could hear her talking to them about clothes. When I questioned the maids about this, they said, ‘The missus has become a maker of garments for other missus who come all the time to be fitted.’ On the farm my mother had often been busy making things on her Singer machine, and had always made my granpa’s and my clothes. Now she seemed to be doing it for other people as well.
Apart from a garden boy who came in to help my granpa, Dum and Dee were our only servants. They cleaned, scrubbed, polished, did the washing and prepared most of the food, though my mother did the cooking and the general bossing around like always. The maids slept in a small room built onto the garden shed behind the enclosed stone wall, which also housed the kitchen garden and an empty fowl run, the thought of chickens being too much for my granpa to contemplate.
At the time I was not concerned about how we lived, though later I was to realise that making enough to get by was a pretty precarious business in the little household. My granpa sold young rose trees and my mother worked all day and sometimes long into the night as a dressmaker. Between making dresses and serving the Lord she didn’t have much time for anything else.
I whiled away the morning and after lunch gathered up enough courage to venture into my mother’s sewing room. She had a new Singer machine with an electric foot treadle. It wasn’t like the old one where you had to treadle it up and down to make it work. You simply put your foot on the little electric footrest and the sewing machine hummed away stitching happily. Dee had given me a cup of tea to take in to my mother and I had hardly spilled any by the time I handed it to her.
My mother had looked up and smiled as I entered. ‘I was just thinking to myself, I would die for a cup of tea, and here you are,’ she said as I gave her the cup. She poured the spilt tea in the saucer back into the cup and then took a sip, closing her eyes. ‘Heaven, it’s pure heaven, there’s nothing like a good cup of tea.’ She sounded just like she used to before she went away. For a moment I thought all the carry-on with Pastor Mulvery was exaggerated in my mind because I knew I had been very tired. I sat on one of the chairs and waited. ‘Come in for a bit of a chat, have you? You must have so much to tell me about your school and the nice little friends you made.’ She leaned over and kissed me on the top of the head. ‘I tell you what. Tonight, after supper, when your grandfather listens to the wireless, we’ll sit in the kitchen and have a good old chin-wag. You can tell me all about it. I’m dying to hear, really. Granpa tells me fat old Mevrou Vorster who we sold the farm to says you speak Afrikaans like a Boer. I suppose that’s nice, dear, though thank goodness you won’t need to talk it in this town. Dr Henny wrote to say you’d got into some sort of scrape with your ear. Is that all right now?’ I nodded and she continued, ‘I’m better now, quite better. The Lord reached down and touched me and I was healed. It is a glorious experience when you walk in the light of the Lord.’ She stopped and took a sip from her cup.
‘Mother, where is Nanny?’ I asked, unable to contain myself any longer. There was a long pause and my mother took another sip and looked down into her lap.
Finally she looked up at me and said sweetly, ‘Why, darling, your nanny has gone back to Zululand.’
‘Did you send her there, Mother?’ My voice was on the edge of tears.
‘I prayed and the Lord told me, He guided me in my decision.’ She put down her cup and fed a piece of material under the needle, brought the tension foot down onto it and, feeding the cloth skilfully through her fingers, zizzed away with the electric motor. Then, with a deep sigh, she stopped. Lifting the tension foot, she snipped the cotton thread and looked down at me. ‘I tried to bring her to the Lord but she hardened her heart against Him.’ She looked up at the ceiling as though asking for confirmation. ‘I can’t tell you the nights I spent on my knees asking for guidance.’ She looked down at me again, and pursing her lips threw her head back. ‘Your nanny would not remove her heathen charms and amulets and she insisted on wearing her bangles and ankle rings. I prayed and prayed and
