Thorny issues

Thorny Issues

Lynn J Smith

Š Lynn J. Smith First published in 2015 by BK Press P O Box 47055. Greyville 4023 ISBN: 978-1-928245-14-8

Cover Design and Typesetting: Ginny Porter Although every effort is made to ensure accuracy, the publishers, personnel, printers, distributors and/or other related parties do not accept any responsibility whatsoever for any errors or omissions, or any effect arising therefrom.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, translated or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.

The author may be contacted on Email: lynns@dbn.stormnet.co.za

Dedication To my sister, Leigh, and my son, Terry who between them gave me the idea for the book.

Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge Ginny Porter and Colleen Shearer for assisting me to bring my book to fruition.

Thorny Issues

T

1

annie Hentie threw open her bedroom window and breathed in the cool, crisp air appreciatively. In the distance she could see the hazy blue mountains, perfectly framed by the acacia trees at the bottom of the garden. Underneath her window, the flower beds were ablaze with petunias and snapdragons, putting on a colourful show just for her benefit, or so she thought. On a morning such as this, Hentie forgot to be disagreeable and hummed quietly to herself as she got ready for the day ahead. ‘Ja, die ou lewe is nie so sleg nie,’ she mumbled to herself as she brushed her hair. ‘Die plek is nie so erg nie, and not even Mrs Sinclair is going to get me down today,’ she promised herself. With that in mind, she hastily finished her morning preparations, opened her door and hurried down the passage on her way to the dining-room, eager for her breakfast.

Tannie Hentie wasn’t the only person who was grateful to be living where she did. Most of the residents of Die Dorings Retirement Home woke up and thanked their lucky stars that they were residents there. They were, in the main, a conservative lot whose incomes varied from comfortably well-off to those relying on state pensions. Although Die Dorings could not be termed ultra-luxurious, it was comfortable and well-run and all residents had their own room and bathroom. Another factor was that the accommodation was subsidised, a boon for those living on state pensions. The biggest plus of all, most residents felt (though it was never openly acknowledged) was that the Home had, so far, remained determinedly for whites only. For most of the residents, 1994 had gone unnoticed, helped by the fact that the Home was situated on the outskirts of a small town in northern KwaZulu-Natal and far away from the mainstream of political activity.

The dining-room which was Tannie Hentie’s destination, was part of the main building which had been built in 1892. The house had originally been owned by an Englishman who had come to South Africa to make his fortune on the gold-diggings. He’d had some luck and on the strength of his hopeful finds, had built an enormous house, which he called Swindon, after the town from whence he had come. Unfortunately his diggings did not live up to his expectations and before the house was completed, he found himself pestered 1

Thorny Issues

by builders, architects and other contractors knocking on his door, demanding their money. He took the easy way out, did a moonlight flit, and fled back to England. The house was then sold and the next owner was a retired transport rider who had made a fortune transporting goods to the diggings. Mr van Waggenaar (for that was his name) had a wife and seven daughters. He referred to his household of women, albeit affectionately, as ‘the thorns in my flesh’, hence the name he gave the house, shortened to Die Dorings. After his death, two of the unmarried daughters ran the house as a boarding-house and when they got too old, they sold it to the present society who turned it into Die Dorings Rest Home for Retired Persons (to give it its official name as printed on the glossy brochure).

Die Dorings could accommodate fifteen residents; at this stage, there were four men and eleven women. All of them were in various stages of decrepitude, with varying degrees of aches and pains. Health was an avid topic of conversation and each ache, pain and spasm was analysed, discussed and debated at breakfast, over the morning toast, soft-boiled eggs and tea/coffee.

Mrs Sinclair, however, who prided herself on being a ‘lady’ (she had gone to a ‘good school’ in Natal, after all, and still thought of England as ‘home’) would take no part in such conversations. ‘Disgusting’ she was heard to murmur whenever the words ‘bowel movement’ were mentioned. Tannie Hentie couldn’t abide Mrs Sinclair’s ‘hairs and graces’ as she called them and she tried, whenever possible, to avoid sitting next to her at mealtimes. These two were natural born enemies, as the lion and the antelope are, but it would be difficult to say who the lion was and who the antelope, as they were pretty well-matched when it came to hurling insults. This instinctive enmity could be traced back to the Boer War – Tannie Hentie (born Henrietta Maria Jacoba Joubert) was a direct descendant of the mighty General, while her husband, Oom Fanie Hertzog (God rest his soul) was the great-great-grandson of General Hertzog. Mrs Sinclair, on the other hand, had ancestors who had fought on the British side and she never let Tannie Hentie forget who the victors were, in that long- distant, but never forgotten, oorlog.

Tannie Hentie’s living at Die Dorings was surprising in itself; she and Oom Fanie had farmed all of their married life. When Oom Fanie died, their three children were scattered far and wide – two were living overseas and the third was unmarried and lived what Tannie Hentie thought of as a degenerate, scandalous life – she wouldn’t have lived with him even if he had asked, which 2

Thorny Issues

he hadn’t. Left comfortably off after the farm was sold, Tannie Hentie, fiercely proud and independent, took herself off to Die Dorings, in the face of much vocal disapproval from her friends and farm neighbours. ‘Alle magtig, Hentie,’ Sannie van Zyl, her next-door neighbour had said, ‘why do you want to live with all those snaakse mense? Stay on the farm, get yourself a good manager and you can still enjoy yourself.’ But Hentie was determined and putting the past behind her, she settled herself at Die Dorings.

The residents were allowed to furnish their own rooms if they so wished and Tannie Hentie’s room bore all the hallmarks of her pioneering ancestors.

On one wall (despite vociferous objections from the Home’s handy-man) she had affixed a pair of kudu horns, the unfortunate animal being one of Oom Fanie’s trophies – on the opposite wall, there were framed portraits of Joubert ancestors - grim-faced in their sepia splendour. On the table next to her bed, beside the family Bible and the glass which held her comfortable night dentures, were the pictures of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, some of whom she had never seen in the flesh. Tannie Hentie, if not exactly happy, was reasonably content at Die Dorings. She derived a great deal of satisfaction from making her presence felt and her opinions heard.

Die Dorings was run by a Board of Trustees who met bi-monthly with the residents, to hear complaints and suggestions and to admonish those recalcitrant offenders when the two nursing sisters in charge felt it was necessary. These offenders were politely asked to mend their ways or else, and invariably they did. A case in question was Mr Hapworth who was caught with his lit pipe in his mouth, in the passageway, right in front of the No Smoking sign – although he had protested that the pipe was not alight and had put it in his pants pocket to prove his point, the smoke issuing from his trouser leg belied his argument. He was given a gentle reminder that there were many people on the waiting list and most of them non-smokers. Mr Hapworth, from that day onwards, developed a hunted look and a lopsided gait, which spiteful people attributed to blisters on his thigh. Eventually he could not live down the shame and left to go to the Government old-age home, which was a huge come-down in the eyes of Die Dorings residents and resulted in fervent whispering behind clenched dentures. The vacancy left by Mr Hapworth’s departure was immediately filled by the next male on the waiting list.

The two nursing sisters in charge of the home, Sister Letitia Swart and Sister Mabel White, were as different from each other as it was possible to be.

3

Thorny Issues

It was sheer coincidence that their names were at opposites ends of the colour spectrum in two of the official languages (though this helped to show that the Board did not favour one language over the other and that both Englishspeaking and Afrikaans-speaking residents were catered for). Surprisingly, Sister Swart was English-speaking, while Sister White’s home language was Afrikaans. This anomaly, in Sister Swart’s case, had come about when she, then Miss Smythe-Jenkins, had run away with the local plumber, one Jannie Swart, when she was barely eighteen. Her family, outraged at her foolhardiness, had cut her off without a cent or further ado. Barely two years after their marriage, Jannie found that Letitia’s bony attractions and cooking skills weren’t up to much after all and he left her for someone much more rounded in every sense of the word. Letitia, left high and dry and without recourse to family and friends, enrolled at the local hospital and embarked on a career in nursing. She never remarried, but became firmly wedded to her career. She was often heard to remark, ‘My patients are my family.’ Mrs Lambert, when she heard Sister say this one day, said, ‘Sotto voce’ to Mr Entwhistle: ‘It’s all relative’. Mr Entwhistle wasn’t quite sure what Mrs Lambert meant by this remark, but gave her a conspiratorial wink anyway.

Sister White was short and stout, rather like the little teapot in the children’s rhyme. She had an abnormally long neck and with her head cocked to one side and her hand on her opposite hip, her resemblance to the teapot in the rhyme was uncanny. Her hair was white and tightly permed, which made her look as if she had been tunnelling under the vegetable patch and had accidentally come up beneath a cauliflower. She did, however, have a very sweet smile and was far more liked than poor Sister Swart. She called everyone ‘Skattie’ or ‘Liefie’ (depending on the gender) and was very patient and understanding when it came to changing bedding. For a small consideration, she could be relied on to keep mum about unfortunate night-time accidents.

In addition to the two sisters, there were five African cleaning staff, three kitchen staff, two gardeners and a handyman/driver who did minor repairs and drove the Home’s Hi-Ace for the residents when they went to the town to do their shopping. In charge of the kitchen staff, was the little Chinese chef, Fu Yeng, who, though very slight, ruled the kitchen with a rod of bamboo and a sharp Cantonese tongue. Even the Sisters were wary of crossing him. Sister White had learnt this the hard way – one day she had dared to complain that there was too much salt in the consommé. Fu Yeng had drawn himself up to 4

Thorny Issues

his not considerable height, glared at her through his little brown eyes and let forth in a torrent of Cantonese, all the time brandishing the knife with which he was preparing the sweet and sour pork for the evening meal. He advanced on Sister White in a threatening manner and she turned a hurried (but dignified) tail and hotfooted it out the kitchen. After she had gone, Fu Yeng had a quiet laugh to himself – little did Sister White know that his ranting diatribe was actually the lyrics of the latest Cantonese pop song. He had, however, nearly got himself dismissed in the first week he was at the Home – he had written a grocery list of the things he needed for the kitchen and had given it to Sister Swart to get when next she visited the town. Under the last item he had written FU. Sister Swart, jumping to erroneous conclusions, shouted at him, saying. ‘I have never been so insulted in my life. What filthy language! We can’t have your sort here and I’ll see that you are dismissed immediately.’ It took quite a while before he could explain that FU was his name. He said that if FU annoyed the Sister, in future he would simply sign FY. However, this didn’t seem to please the Sister either. To this day, FU remained ignorant as to why his name had caused such an uproar.

Apart from the three meals, plus the two teatimes, the residents were entitled to per day, they were also supplied with other forms of entertainment.

Mealtimes were classed as one form of entertainment, as they often provided an opportunity for a laugh at someone else’s expense – take the morning Mr van Niekerk offered Bessie Oldham a chewy toffee at the breakfast table. The lady in question, who had a very sweet tooth, accepted it with alacrity and began chewing enthusiastically to show what a good sport she was. The toffee, once softened by saliva, plastered itself along the roof of her dental plate and, despite discreet tongue-probing, remained firmly in place. Thinking to dislodge it, she then compounded the problem by shoving in a mouthful of muesli which stuck to the toffee, thus making her palate look like the bottom of a barnacled boat, much to the delight of her detractors and to the disgust of those to whom she insisted on showing the phenomenon. Mr van Niekerk, who had fancied Bessie, lost all hope of his interest being reciprocated, after this debacle. The poor man (who, incidentally, was Mr Hapworth’s replacement) hadn’t had an easy time of it since he’d arrived. At the breakfast table, on his first morning in residence, he was seated next to Mrs Sinclair and, desperate to fit in and show that he was “one of the boys”, when offered

5

Thorny Issues

scrambled eggs, he declined and remarked to Mrs Sinclair, with a knowing smirk: ‘Eggs doesn’t make me feel sexy.’

‘Eggs DON’T make me feel sexy,’ corrected Mrs Sinclair.

He looked at her sadly and said, ‘Ag shame, lady, you have the same problem as me.’

Mrs Sinclair’s look said it all.

But to return to the other entertainment on offer. There was a large hall where much of the socialising took place. Every Friday afternoon there was Bingo. Mr Nelson was the caller and he tried his best to be amusing, but after hearing the same old, same old, every week for months on end, most people found it hard to raise the required guffaw. Nevertheless, the hall was usually packed as the residents all hoped to win the prizes, which were generously sponsored by the local bottle store/supermarket. The much-coveted first prize was always a bottle of champagne and a large box of chocolates. There were other smaller prizes which were also greatly appreciated. One evening a month there was a sing-song in the hall. Mrs Lambert played the piano and the residents sang songs from the musicals and hits from the fifties and sixties – loudly and off-key, but nobody cared, except those whose rooms were close to the hall and who were trying to sleep. At one time, there had been a lady who came to teach callisthenics, but she had creaked and groaned and wheezed so much when she was giving the lessons that her class became alarmed that she was going to expire there and then. Gradually, attendance at the classes dwindled and the lady eventually gave up coming. It was no surprise to the residents to hear that she had, in fact, expired while giving a class at the local Methodist Church hall. The late Mr Henderson (gone to be with the angels, or so his grave-stone read) had tried to get a Bible study group together once a week. This had worked for a while, but then arguments about Bible interpretation kept surfacing and one evening, the debate became so heated that Sister White hadto intervene. Privately, she hoped that all those present would become case-hardened atheists and leave religion to the N.G. Kerk ouetuis in the next town. Heaven knows what would have happened had Mr Henderson not shrugged off his earthly mantle. Once he departed, the study group heaved a collective sigh of relief and the idea was never resurrected.

There were also many things the residents could enjoy outside. The grounds boasted a huge expanse of lawn and for those so inclined (and fit 6