12 1947 – 1952: The Headmaster’s House in Seven Oaks

12 <> 1947 – 1952: The Headmaster’s House in Seven Oaks

The Headmaster’s House was a normal three-bedroomed house which was much easier for Dad to handle and, I imagine, the rent was a lot less which was probably a good thing because by this time Dad was running out of money. While the Hotel was functioning properly with Mum in charge it provided sufficient ‘profit’ for the family’s needs (which were by no means extravagant), but without the income, Dad’s savings were almost exhausted. I didn’t think in those terms at the time. All I knew was that the faithful house servant who had moved across with Dad was gone after a while and there weren’t many extras in the house.

As I explained earlier, at some time during my Standard 5 year, Mum came home again and the house took on the aspect of a normal home once more. It must have been toward the end of the year because the conversation soon turned to what I would do about school the following year there being no high school at Seven Oaks. Greytown, 12 miles down the railway line, was the only real option. In January of 1948, Mum took me on the train to register me at Greytown High School and got me settled into school to which I was to travel by train daily.. .

I don’t remember much about Mum at home during this period except that she became friendly with Mrs. Sander and visited her frequently at the Hotel. The next thing I remember is the argument which precipitated Mum’s final departure from Dad. It was the only time they ever argued about anything in my hearing, and it was over something rather petty. My names are Herbert Jessop Sutton and Mum thought it would be good to call myself Herbert Jessop-Sutton. I couldn’t see why but Mum kept on pushing it — she thought it would sound posh — until I started to get upset. Dad then broke in rather sternly with “Leave my boy alone!”. Mum got up, and threatening to commit suicide, took her vegetable knife from the kitchen and walked down to the bottom of the garden where she seated herself on the log used for chopping wood for the stove. Dad remained in his chair in the sitting room, saying nothing. After a while I went to her to persuade her not to do it. I suppose I said sorry about being so obstinate (that would be typical of me — sorry, not because I thought I was wrong in not wanting my name changed, but because it had caused the upset). It was not long after that that Mum left for good. I really can’t remember, but I probably arrived home from school one day to find she had gone. If she did tell Dad where she was going, he didn’t tell me.

From this time onwards, Dad prepared his own meals — usually bread or cream-crackers and cheese — and I catered for myself from what was there. What was there was normally a half loaf of bread, a small bag of mealie meal, a few eggs, butter and milk in the ‘safe’ (I’ll explain!), and the cheese. My diet then became mealie meal porridge for breakfast, bread and cheese for lunch, and eggs — fried, scrambled, or in french toast — for supper. I can’t remember much deviation from that although the order could be changed around. A little variety was provided by the occasional meal with the Sanders at the weekend when Errol was home, and sometimes some braaied meat at the butchery with Eddie and the staff there. That was delicious! Eddie would select a piece of prime steak, cut a long narrow strip and snick it along the length at one-inch intervals. Bhegindlela would then place the lid of a three-legged pot upside down over the coalsand place the length of meat in a circle in the lid. Then we would stand around one of the chopping blocks in the shop, cut off a section, dip it in some coarse salt — and eat the most delicious ‘dish’ imaginable. No braai in my subsequent life ever tasted so good.

I also did my own washing which consisted mainly of my school shirt and socks. And very occasionally a sheet from my bed.

About the ‘safe’: We never had a fridge in the house although paraffin fridges were in general use among the more affluent at that time. Dad built an open-brick structure outside with charcoal packed into the space between two rows of bricks and a water-tank on top, Water dripped from the tank onto the charcoal and, with the wind blowing through the structure, effected some cooling even on the hottest days. The system did help to keep milk, butter and meat for a while, but it was nothing like a fridge. There was a padlock on the door to keep any ‘interested’ parties out when no one was around.

To continue with the poverty-theme, when I later went to board in Greytown, my pyjamas were a set made by Dad out a previous pink garment (what, I have no idea but probably something left behind by Mum) which he cut up and sewed together by hand with huge stitches. I quickly learnt to swallow my embarrassment and pretend that I was very proud of my Dad’ s handiwork.

But that was not all — when my shoes started to gape, I sewed the soles back into position using a length of copper wire taken, I guess, from the coil of an old motorcar generator. There was no electricity in Seven Oaks at the time so it couldn’t have been stripped-down electric wire which someone had pinched from a supply-line somewhere!

And to complete my tale of woe, later when I needed something to wear for the Matric dance, Dad took in the back seam of a tweed jacket he had in his wardrobe from way-back and matched it with a pair of grey woollen trousers that he kept for best. They were miles too big for me but it would have been a major undertaking for Dad to take them in at the waist so I had to ‘clamp’ them in with my belt.

I must say, in honour of all at school, that no one ever teased me or even commented on my odd clothing. Thank you, all my old school friends.

I have happy memories of this period of my life at Seven Oaks and I suppose it is entirely because of the freedom that I had. Dad never rebuked me or pulled me up, as the saying goes. I came and went as I pleased at any time of day or night. But the time spent in Dad’s company was always pleasant even though there was not over much conversation — he generally sat with his book and I with mine. But there were also times in the evening when he would relate to me the stories of books he had read, books of marvellous adventure, famous seafaring stories from the days of sail, stories of classics by Dickens, Kipling, Jack London, Dumas, and the detective stories of Conan Doyle and many others. The tales enthralled me and in time — not immediately — set me onto reading the books on his bookshelf for myself. Until then I hardly read anything other than the occasional comic book that I borrowed from one or other of the Sanders, and, later, the Boy’s Own Paper which I used to get from my friend Boet in Greytown. I also had a year’s-worth of “Car Magazine” (the British version — it was long before the launch of the SA Car magazine in 1957) and “Autocar” that my brother-in-law Tokkie brought for me one year on their visit. I paged through those over and over and gloated over exotic models such as the E-type Jaguar which was launched about then. But it was Dad’s story telling which in time sparked in me the habit of reading which persists even to this day — I am never without a book, usually three books on the go at the same time from every conceivable genre. At the moment you will find the latest Harry Potter downstairs beside my chair, Bertand Russel’s History of Western Philosophy beside my bed, ‘The Savoy Declaration Of Faith And Order’ (which I have just finished re-reading) in my study. Lined up to read are Chapman’s Homer, The Dialogues of Plato, Dostoyevsky’s Crime And Punishment, Dante’s Inferno, Jesus — the Unauthorised Version, and — and — and several books by Christian writers which have been sent to me from all over. In between all the other reading, my constant companion-book is the Bible (several editions, of which my favourite old leather-bound King James Version is so marked, underlined, and highlighted that the required verses no longer stick out from the rest). I fear I will run out of Life before I have read all I want to read. Needless to say, my favourite shop in all the malls is Exclusive Books.

There were some notable events during this phase that I will tell you about.

Errol’s father had a double-barrelled shot gun and his cousin, who lived on a farm out along the Upper Umvoti-Rietvlei road, had an automatic .22 Hornet Mauser. The Hornet variety took a shell with an expanded base to take a bigger charge. On the farm there were flocks of guinea fowl. From somewhere I had received some money, so we took a train to Dalton, bought a box of cartridges for the Mauser and took the train back to Seven Oaks. That was probably an all-day affair. Armed with the 12-bore shot gun and the box of bullets, we set off after breakfast the next day to walk to the farm, walking through plantations on the way in hopes of getting a bird or rabbit (we didn’t!). Arrived at the farm, we borrowed the Mauser, filled the magazine and went into the plantation looking for the guinea fowl. We emerged into open grassland and stood looking around for sign of the flock. Errol had the shot gun cocked ready to fire at a moment’s notice with his finger on the trigger and the barrels pointed upwards at an angle. There was a sudden whoosh! past my ear and the loud explosion. I don’t know just how close I was to having my head blown off, but I felt it and heard it loud enough to know it was close. We were both shaken, but soon put it behind us and went on looking for the guinea fowl which we eventually spotted crossing the road into Len Braithwaite’s farm (Len was brother to Ben who I told you about in an earlier chapter). Errol and I climbed through the barbed-wire fence, crossed the road into a deep storm-water drain which would conceal us as we approached the fence to Len’s farm and the guinea fowl. We didn’t hear the car stop, but next thing Len was on the bank above us saying “I want you! I want you!” I think Errol offered that we were just following the guinea fowl from his uncle’s farm but Len didn’t buy that: “When they are on my farm, they are my guinea fowl!” He took the guns from us and ordered us into the car, threatening that he was taking us to his house from where he would call the police! I think I was more scared by the thought of him calling the police than I was shaken by nearly having my head blown off! I can’t remember how it all happened but he didn’t call the police and he did let us go with the guns. I have an idea that Uncle Ben (from his farm next-door) had persuaded Len to let us go. That was probably the last time I went shooting with anybody’s gun.

It might have been in the same school holiday that tragedy struck the Sander family.

There were six children in the family of which Errol was the youngest — Milda, Wilma, Gustave (Gander), Edgar (Sam), Inez and Errol. Errol and I had been round and about in the village. We came back to the hotel and there was a pickup (bakkie) standing in the yard at the front door. As we approached it we saw the two feet sticking out from under a canvas in the loadbox. It was obvious that someone was dead and Errol and I speculated a bit about who it might be. Errol then went into the house and came out a short while later to say, “It’s Gander!” Gustave had come off his motorbike and died instantly. It happened not far out of Seven Oaks while on his way to Dalton where he was a motor mechanic at the garage. I don’t remember that we had watched him leave home but it wasn’t long before the accident. There were no witnesses and apparently no other vehicle involved. The dirt road at the place of the accident was over a patch of shale which suddenly presented a slightly rougher and more slippery surface than the firm red soil which he had been riding on before he reached the point. That may have accounted for Gustave, who was not of a reckless dare-devil sort, being thrown off. In those days few, if any, wore crash-helmets. Gustave, along with the rest of the Sander family was well liked in the area and his death caused a pall of sadness over the village.

Either just before or just after the Sanders came to the hotel, the family of Mrs. Sander’s brother, Mr. Redinger, erected their own sawmill on the siding between the hotel and Mr. Comins’ mill. Both mills had large single cylinder horizontal diesel engines to drive the saws, so from morning to sundown (and sometimes into the night) from all over the village could be heard the constant duff-duff of the engines and the zing . . . zing . . . zing of the saws passing through the logs. The diesel engine, via a canvas belt, drove a long shaft, mounted on concrete pillars, at several points from which individual belts drove the four or five saws arranged on the other side from the engine. The shaft consisted of several sections joined at intervals along its length. It was necessary for persons moving to and from the saw-benches to climb under the spinning shaft, which was dangerous and did result in some tragic accidents where hair or clothing got caught in a bolt on a joiner. The new mill was managed by one of the Redinger sons who boarded at the hotel. That gave Errol and me free access to the mill, which we visited frequently until an incident with Kista changed everything for me. Kista was a driver of one of the lorries that carted wattle and gum poles from the Redinger plantations to the mill. We were quite friendly until one day when he took out his pocket knife and said he was going to emasculate me. He was joking, of course, but at that age I didn’t know how far he would go before the joke stopped, so I ran away while he and other bystanders were laughing. It should have been over, but next time I approached the mill and he was there, he made as if he was about to take his pocket knife out and repeat the joke. After that I kept away from the mill completely and never spoke to Kista again. People have no idea what harm a silly joke can do to an impressionable child — this one gave me a horror of knives to the point that I am convinced that I would sooner face a gun than a knife. In my lifetime I did have several other encounters with knife-wielding men all of which I incorporated into a short story called “Fear Of Knives”. I will include that in the book at an appropriate time.

By this time in my life I was a regular smoker and Mrs. Sander, a prolific smoker along with her husband, very generously offered me a cigarette from her pack of 50 Poliansky cigarettes whenever she had one. (I was then smoking openly at home with Dad — more about this in the Essay below.)

There are two other memories I must share with you. There was no such luxury as hot-water geysers in any of the houses we lived in in those days. At the hotel, Dad had improvised a system using an oil drum, laid on its side on a brick-work oven he had built outside the bathroom wall, with a pipe leading through the wall straight to the bath. (The bathroom was an add-on in an enclosed area at the end of the back verandah). The fire was stoked up sometime in the afternoon to provide hot water for the guests to bath. But at the Headmaster’s House there was no such luxury. If I wanted a warm bath, I had to chop the required wood and stoke up the kitchen stove to boil a kettle of water. One kettle didn’t make much impression on the cold water in the bath in the middle of winter which meant I ended up having it lukewarm. I gave up trying and started having cold baths, summer or winter. The winters at Seven Oaks could get quite cold, so much so that there was often heavy frost in the mornings, and frequently the little pool of water where the outside tap dripped would be iced over. It was in that sort of condition that I took my cold baths. I developed my own technique which was to first wet my hair, then plunge straight in, quickly stand up and soap myself before plunging in once more! I actually got quite used to it and for many years after that I took cold showers in preference to a hot bath. (No — I don’t do that these days and haven’t for many years!)

The other memory is of sleeping on the verandah. I’m not sure what surge of bravado inspired it, but I did it for some time. Before I moved the bed out, I had in any case, been sleeping with the bottom sash of the window wide open, so any burglar or animal could have climbed in. Years later the memory of it sparked off an Essay that I wrote about beds for our now-defunct e-zine, “Southtown Magazine” (of which I was the writer and  DorothyAnne the Editor). The Essay follows in a separate chapter [in the full version prepared for publication in a book] but in the meantime, here follows a piece about my Dad that I wrote also for Southtown Magazine: