10 1940 – 1946: The Old Hotel in Seven Oaks — (Part 3)

Chapter 10

1940 – 1946: The Old Hotel in Seven Oaks — (Part 3)

In this chapter I reminisce about a tragedy and a near tragedy, the girl I scarred for life, some of life’s lessons I learnt, some bouts of puppy love, dream fantasies — and the beginning of the final break-up of our family.

I am using actual names in this book because I have nothing disparaging to say about anyone. By naming them, some may happen to read this and have some pleasurable recollections of other events in those long-ago days because even with the bad times we did have more fun times together. If they do read this, I say Hi! to them and wish them well in their advancing years.

The tragic death of Roy

One of my school friends from a farm in the area was Desmond Crookes. He and I were the champion three-legged race team. Desmond had a young brother called Roy and a younger sister named Dawn. Most of the farmers’ sons had a gun of one sort or another: so did Desmond and Roy. One school holiday the two of them were out shooting on the farm. They came to a barbed-wire fence through which they needed to climb. Roy climbed through holding the loaded and cocked .22 rifle by the barrel. As he dragged the gun through after him, the trigger snagged on a barb on the wire and the gun went off shooting Roy through his thigh. I don’t remember how events unfolded after that, but Roy died as a result of blood loss through thecwound. It saddened us all considerably — they were a lovely family.

I nearly kill or cripple Louis!

Louis Nel and his sisters, Deborah, Cecile, and a ‘laat lammertjie’ whose name I forget, were the children of the government dipping inspector and his wife who lived in the Station Foreman’s house behind the railway station (the Foremen who were posted to Seven Oaks were generally single men who boarded at the Old Hotel and didn’t need the house). They were related to us, in some way that I can never work out, through my mother. Louis and Deborah were some years older than Mace and I. Deborah may have been at High School in Pietermaritzburg. Louis had already finished school and had a job as Goods Clerk at the railway station at the time of the near disaster. One day Louis was with us messing around on bicycles on the road in front of the hotel. There was a wattle tree sapling lying beside the road, having fallen from a passing lorry, and someone came up with the idea of laying it across the road while another rode the bike over it. The trick was to pull the sapling out as the wheel of the bike passed over it and bring the cyclist crashing down. It was fun for a while and then it was my turn to yank the sapling while Louis rode over it. Instead of pulling the front wheel sideways, the sapling rose up and lodged where the tyre passed through the front fork. The wheel locked and the bike somersaulted throwing poor Louis over the handle bars and headfirst onto the road. Louis lay there and we thought he was in a serious condition, but he eventually got up, rubbing his neck. Louis usually had his head tilted to one side as he worked, but I don’t remember if that was as a result of my folly or not. My folly? Yes, I must have lifted the sapling as I pulled it otherwise it would never have happened. Louis didn’t hold it against me, but the family did get their revenge on me unintentionally one day when their collie dog bit me on the ankle as I rode from their house! Their little girl, with whom I had been playing, started to cry because she didn’t want me to leave, so the collie took exception to me and sank his teeth into my left ankle, striking an artery so that the blood squirted out. Mrs. Nel stopped the bleeding and bandaged it for me and I was okay, but I was very wary of that dog after that.

I scarred Lesley Llewellen for life.

This was another of those foolish things I was doing that resulted in hurt to someone. Lesley Llewellen was the little daughter of a couple staying at the hotel for a while. Lesley was about three or four at the time. I think her father may have been relieving at the post office while Mrs. Nel, the regular post mistress, was on leave. The inane thing that I was doing was bashing at the corner of the wall of the shed with the back of a chopper, trying to knock a brick out or something for no reason at all. I didn’t see Lesley coming up behind me and I didn’t know she was there until the chopper on the back-swing made contact. I turned round to see Lesley lying on the ground with blood streaming from her forehead above her right eye. I could have died of remorse seeing her lying there screaming as the blood poured forth. Her mother was on the scene immediately and stopped the bleeding and dried the tears. I would have liked the earth to open up and swallow me! Fortunately the chopper, which stayed by the firewood pile where it was used for splitting wood for the stove, was rather blunt otherwise it would have split Lesley’s skull. Lesley’s parents were not very cross with me, which was nice of them. I never heard any more of the Llewellens after they left but I always hoped that Lesley would be okay with the scar on her forehead — so much so that I much later wrote her into a short story called “Scar” as part of the Wednesday Coffee Club series. You’ll find that story in a later chapter.

Two lessons learnt.

The first one: Be slow to repeat what you hear!

Francina and Joey were the daughters of the provincial roads maintenance man, Mr. Labuschagne. They lived in a prefabricated house beside the main road not too far from the village but too far for Francina and Joey to walk to school daily so they came to board at the hotel. They were related to us in some way on Mum’s side of the family. Something went wrong. I heard Mum telling someone that she had asked them to leave. At school the next day I told someone else. Then the following day when we were lined up at little break for our mug of cocoa, Francina came up to me and gave me a thorough tongue-lashing. The rest of the school, all ten or so of them (that was about the complete pupil body!), stood in awe as she ranted. If the ground had opened up to swallow me, I would gladly have dropped in. Saying sorry didn’t help in the slightest. But Francina and Joey did leave the hotel soon after that and I saw little of them thereafter. Before that I had had no concept of gossip and of telling tales, but I certainly did afterwards. Ever since then I do not talk about any person in an unkind way, and I shy away from anyone sharing gossip with me or in my hearing. I just switch off.

The second lesson I learnt was about curiosity of the wrong sort. A man came to board at the hotel while relieving the stationmaster or the goods clerk. He was a tall, good looking man and everyone hung onto his every word at tea-time at the hotel. On one cold winter’s day, the guests and boarders were gathered in front of the log fire in the sitting room. The man started to draw on a sketch block he had with him. He warned us, the children mainly, that no one was to attempt to see the drawing before it was done, the consequence being that the peeper would not be allowed to see the picture after that. I foolishly went round behind the settee as if I was making my way down the passage to the bedroom. As I passed behind him I tried to see the page but he was one jump ahead of me and had turned the pad down onto his lap. He said to me, “That is it. I warned you. You will not be allowed to see the picture when it is finished”. I think I hoped that he would relent, but he didn’t. I never saw the drawing, and he forbad anyone to tell me what it was. Something like that is staggering for a child — at least, it was for me — but I learnt the lesson. Even today, I will not pry where I am not invited. Not that I do not follow my curiosity about the world about me, but if it is not public and I am not invited, I do not satisfy that natural curiosity — in fact, I don’t even feel deprived if I am not privy to information that is not for me.

Puppy love

My history wouldn’t be complete if I kept from you that I was a romantic from the beginning, and the nearness of a girl stirred me in a most marvellous way. There were at that stage no thoughts about sex — in those days I don’t think any boy-children even knew the word or had any knowledge of the subject until after puberty — it was just a natural stirring of the love-gene at the sight of a girl, a stirring which went wild if there happened to be the slightest contact. So — the girls that came to stay at the Hotel with their parents from time to time invariably smote me with the love-bug, sent me spinning, and left me utterly lovelorn and dejected when they returned to their homes in the cities. I mention just two of them but there were others. There was Petal from Isipingo Beach. I wrote to her after she left and she replied — for one or two letters. Then it was over. The other is Joan. I say ‘is’ because our paths crossed again on three occasions. I went to spend a few days during a school holiday at her home in Durban while still at high school in Greytown, and I saw her again when I went to Natal University in 1956 — I was invited to a party which her parents had organised for her. And then many years later,  DorothyAnne and I met up with her and her husband. We were sitting in a coffee shop in a Cape country town when a couple came in. I saw the woman looking at me and then I heard her saying, “Jessop? Jessop Sutton?” It was Joan. She and her husband later moved to Cape Town and we lost track of them.

The family starts to break up

I have told you about the death of Mace. That was the beginning of the breakup of our family. I wasn’t in on the detail, but things between Mum and Dad became strained. Mum started spending a lot of time at the butcher shop drinking with Eddie after closing time. Dad spent more time alone in his study, thinking, writing, and having a brandy and milk. It was a bad time. Then Mum left home. Dad and I were alone. The boarders continued for a while (there was nowhere else for them to lodge) with the household servants running the place.

Dreams of flying

I think it was during this time that I had the dreams of flying. There were several but there was one that was repeated more than once and another came often with variations. The first one was always located at the railway station. There were three sets of tracks running between the passenger platform and the goods platform. In the dream, I would crouch down on the one platform with my arms round my knees then lean over the edge and glide off. I would drift downwards a little and then glide over the lines and up onto the other platform. It was the loveliest sensation imaginable. The second dream was located anywhere. I would start to run and then lengthen my strides just touching the ground at ever-widening distances until I was completely flying through the air in the same running position but my legs no longer moving. I never went too high off the ground but could go any distance without touching. Then in another variation of this second dream, I learnt to just stand and will myself up into the air and move off in any direction. They were only dreams and I attach no particular meaning to them (a psychiatrist might!) but they left me with such a ‘feel good’ sensation that I would gladly go back to sleep and fly again. I say a psychiatrist probably could find some significance in the dreams but I would assume it was just a way of relieving the stress of Mum having left.

Dad is asked to move out of the hotel

Things at the Hotel were not working well without Mum’s expert hand on the job. Eventually Mr. Comins, the farmer who owned all of Seven Oaks including the Hotel, asked Dad to move to the Headmaster’s house which stood unused. There was no longer a Headmaster. The school had dwindled to about five or six of us and the only teacher was a young single woman who stayed at the Hotel. So we moved, Dad and I, and I thence forward had the privilege of arriving at school through the Headmaster’s Gate that opened onto the pathway through the farmer’s main mealy field.

Mr. and Mrs. Sander with their family came from her brother’s farm, where they had their home, to run the Hotel. They had four children one of whom, Errol, became my friend and playmate. Errol went to the German school at Wartburg but we saw each other at weekends and in school holidays.

One day Mum came back and life returned to some semblance of normality, but it wasn’t to last long. She applied for, and got, a job as Matron at a boarding school near Durban and left Dad once more taking me with her. I think that was in 1947, at the beginning of my Standard 5 year. I was so miserable there that I cried daily and unceasingly until Mum packed me up and sent me back to Dad. Later that same year Mum came home to us at the Headmaster’s house. She and Mrs Sander became firm friends with Mum spending most of her days at the hotel.

Thus started my life in the Headmaster’s House at Seven Oaks.

But before I end here, I should tell you about my sister. She was named Hilda Winifred but adopted the name ‘Toni’ during her wartime service. She didn’t figure much in my life in those ‘Success’ and Seven Oaks years because, when we left to live on the farm, she remained in Pietermaritzburg to continue her schooling. Then on the 8th of February, 1941, she joined the Army in the South African Women’s Auxiliary Services (SAWAS) which the women themselves named ‘Coastal Artillery Service’. She was first stationed at the Bluff in Natal, and then posted to Robben Island where she served until discharged on the 9th of September, 1946, after the war ended. On discharge, she left straight away for England on a study grant. In England she met her husband-to-be, C.J. (‘Tokkie’) Roux, who was serving his internship as a doctor in Guy’s Hospital in London. On their return to South Africa, they went to live in Gwelo in Southern Rhodesia where Tokkie took up a partnership in a medical practice. I saw Toni for short periods once a year when they passed through Seven Oaks on their way to Tokkie’s family farm in the Western Cape, and they got me up to Gwelo on one or two occasions for the school holidays. I really only got to know my sister after 1971 at which stage she and Tokkie were living in the Western Cape and  DorothyAnne and I were in Cape Town.