16 1955: A year in Johannesburg

16 <> 1955: A year in Johannesburg

Before you ask, I will answer: No, I never did find Clee. I phoned one Catholic institution and was answered cautiously — “No, Clee is not here”… pause — then “It would really be better for her if you did not try to find her or make contact with her”.

I heard from her again in Durban a couple of years later when she phoned me at my office at the Bantu Administration Department where I was working at the time in connection with a domestic servant. She had not become a nun after all but was married and living in Durban. I didn’t press her on the subject so I have no idea what went wrong or why she changed her mind. By that time  DorothyAnne and I were happily married and I could only hope that Clee was also happy. I never heard from her again but it would be nice to know how life turned out for her.

I had made no arrangements for accommodation in Johannesburg, neither did I have any money to pay for any, but providence lent a hand — the building supervisor of the branch was going on leave shortly and he let me use his flat in the building that went with the job. I spent the first few nights with him and then he left for the coast and I was on my own for two weeks. He also let me eat what food he had in the fridge and the cereal in the cupboard — and I think that was about all I had to live on for those two weeks, except for one evening when another bank clerk invited me over to his flat for dinner. I regret that I made a very bad impression on the supervisor because I didn’t replace any essentials in the fridge for him to return to, neither did I wash the bed linen before handing the apartment back to him. The remembrance, the regret and guilt of such ‘sins of negligence against humankind’ never really leave one, do they?

It was the end of the month and my salary was in my bank account so I was in a position to get accommodation at a private hotel (that is what they were called in those days, hotels in all respects except that they didn’t have a liquor licence). I suppose someone recommended the place to me, a private hotel just off Twist Street near Joubert Park.

There is not much to tell about the work in the bank except that I was in the Share Transaction office where my duties were to enter transfers in the large Share Registers. There were, of course, no computers in those days and all transactions were entered in large ledgers by hand.

I had developed a liking for classical music over the years, starting with the film version of ‘Tales Of Hoffman’ which I saw in Greytown, then, in Pietermaritzburg at Mrs. Wiggins’ boarding house I heard some classical pieces in the room of one of the residents, a Mr. Carlsen, a technician in the Post Office, who had built his own ‘hi-fi’ record-player on which he played his collection of classical pieces. (Tonight even as I work on this biography, I hear Puccini’s ‘O, mio babbini caro’ playing in the background on my computer and I remember that this was one of Mr Carlsen’s records and a favourite of mine!) Later in Estcourt, Neville Ardendorff had a record player and a selection of records that he played regularly. It is part of the story so I can’t omit it — there was another man who worked in the Standard Bank who invited me to his room in another boarding establishment to listen to his classical records. He had a good collection and I would have enjoyed listening to them but he made a pass at me. When he saw that I am not that way inclined he desisted. Though I didn’t get up and leave immediately, he never repeated the invitation. That was my introduction to the classics but it was in Johannesburg that I really had a feast of classics at the regular Thursday Evening concerts in the City Hall. The library also, which was not far from the bank, gave a record recital during the lunch hour one day a week which I and a woman from the bank used to go to. I mention it because, though I am not expert in music, it has always played a big part in my life, the chief form of escape in those years.

In Estcourt I had met Mick Fairhurst who gave me the address of his brother and sister-in-law in Johannesburg and urged me to look them up, which I did soon after my arrival there. Noel and Merle Fairhurst received me and made me welcome in their home, a flat in Yeoville. Noel was a graduate – his subjects being, and this is a guess, English Literature and Drama. I paid a regular visit to them each week and was completely stimulated by discussions with Noel about music and literature. This association with Noel aroused in me a yearning to return to University one day, this time to study for an Arts Degree. The opportunity to do that came sooner than I could have expected.

A man who was a messenger at the bank, responsible for carrying documents to and from the Stock Exchange, sold tickets in the Rhodesian Sweepstakes. I didn’t have much money to spend on such things but on one occasion I handed over the ten shillings for a ticket — and won a thousand Pounds! A thousand Pounds was equal to about three-year’s salary at my rate of earning at the time. I received the notification at the end of December 1955 and immediately made the decision to return to University in Durban. I notified the bank that I’d be leaving at the end of January, and also notified the private hotel. The man who sold me the ticket let me know that, as the seller of the ticket, he would expect something of the winnings. Believing it was the normal thing to do I told him I would give him £100 when the money was received. When the time came I regretted making the promise of a hundred and offered to give him fifty instead. He obviously wasn’t happy about that so I reluctantly made out the cheque to him for one hundred pounds feeling rather embarrassed by the whole episode, but I learnt a valuable lesson — ‘say what you mean, mean what you say, and when the time comes to make good, do the right thing even if it hurts’. I feel ashamed even now as I think about it.

It was just before I won the money that I met up with an old lady who lived in a flat just round the corner from the hotel. One evening as I alighted from the tram on my way home after work, she got off after me, missed her footing and crashed onto the tar. It was raining and the step of the tram was slippery. I helped her up, guided her across the road and helped her up the stairs to her flat. She offered me a cup of tea but I said I would come some other time to see her and have the cup of tea — which I did a couple of days later, and then fairly regularly after that until I left for Durban. I won’t go into the details here because I will give them to you in the next chapter as a short story I called ‘One Good Turn Deserves Another’ but I mention the episode here because, at that stage in my life, I was very superstitious so that when I won the money I figured that fate had rewarded me for my concern for this old lady.

My parting from Noel and Merle when I left Johannesburg was with some considerable anguish. On the day I left I lost a manuscript of a play that Noel had written (entitled Absalom and Ahithophel). It was the original document and the only copy he had. In 1953 the photocopier had not yet been invented and the only way to get a copy was to type the original document with carbon paper between two or three sheets, or to type it onto a waxed sheet to use to print multiple copies on a duplicating machine, through a process much like screen-printing, producing sheets one copy at a time. (Amazing how difficult it is to explain something like that when we are so used to slipping the original into a copier and pressing a button!) The manuscript was stolen out of my bedroom by someone who probably had no use for it and didn’t even know what it was he was taking. My room at St. Bees was in an annexe with a window at street level opening directly onto the sidewalk. On the day of my departure, after I had packed my bags, I left the manuscript lying on the bed ready to return it to Noel after breakfast. The window was open, as it always was, the opening being protected by a wire screen with a section at the bottom edge to accommodate the stay that held the window in the open position. When I came back to the room after breakfast, the manuscript was no longer on the bed where I had left it. The servant who cleaned the rooms had been there so I hoped he had removed the document thinking it was to be discarded, but he knew nothing of it. The document was not on the bed when he came to service the room. Very obviously some opportunist passing by had seen it on the bed and reached for it through the opening in the wire screen. I searched up and down the pavement hoping that the person would have found no use for it and dumped it in a rubbish bin, but with no luck. Sadly I had to tell Noel that I had lost his manuscript when I went to see him and Merle for the last time. It is something I can never forget and is not helped by the fact that Noel and I ceased communicating not long after I had returned to University in Durban.

There was another circumstance that added sorrow to my departure from Johannesburg — I had met June. A group of residents at the Hotel were on friendly terms, the connection mainly being the horse races which some of the group frequently attended. I got to know them but was not generally part of their company until one day after I had won the money when I was invited to Al’s room, in the second annexe across the road from the main building, to have a drink. Al had bought a half-jack of brandy. In the group were a New Zealander woman and her brother, and June. Prior to this, June and I had barely spoken to each other but after we had had a few drinks I walked her across the road to her room. We kissed at her door and were launched into a romantic relationship with each other. It was completely unexpected by either of us — in fact, up to that evening I had thought she and Al had something developing between them. June and I were completely involved with each other but it was a doomed relationship because I was fully committed to leaving for University in Durban at the end of the month. I did think that eventually I could return to her in Johannesburg but that was rather sketchy. We made the most of the time we had, going to the concerts in the City Hall together, visiting Noel and Merle and the old lady in the flat round the corner, and generally spending time together. But the day came for my departure and June and the Fairhursts came to see me off at the station. June and I kissed goodbye and we waved as the train pulled out of the station. We would write to each other and keep our relationship alive until some unknown future, which, I suppose, was rather nebulous thinking since it would take me all of three or four years to get a degree, and then maybe more afterwards. I left with a sore heart: first Clee had left me a year ago and now I was leaving June behind. June and I did exchange letters for a few months but by the middle of that year I knew that the situation was hopeless, not because of her but because of me and the course my life had taken (more about that in the next chapter). I wrote to tell her that I could see no positive future for myself, let alone for her and me together, and correspondence between us came to an end. (Some years later, I ran into Al in Cape Town and he told me that June had got married, news that pleased me very much.)

I arrived in Durban in the evening and booked into the Royal Hotel for a night (I had money, remember!), with registration at the University and booking into the Residence due to take place the next day. A surprise awaited me at registration in the person of Boet who had dropped out that first year not long after I had left and was now returning to do his Engineering degree. Both my life and his were due to take a turn that neither of us expected.