Liongold

What Others have Said about Liongold

Alden bears witness, and in offering her clear-eyed memories, she also subtly explains how quickly and firmly injustice plants itself and comes to seem normal.

- - Natalie Danford, author of Inheritance, Co-Editor, Best New American Voices.

"In language rich with mood and atmosphere, delicately unfolding the intricate relationships of gender, class, ethnicity and race, Liongold tells the story of one family, their deep personal problems, and an entire way of life doomed necessarily to give way to immense change."

- - Susan Bernardin, Associate Professor of Native American and American Literature, State University of New York, Oneonta.

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Liongold

by Bea Alden

Copyright 2011 Bea Alden

Smashwords Edition

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

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Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Sunlight and Shadows

in the Era of Apartheid

A South African Memoir

by

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" To deny one’s own experience is

to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life."

Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

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Liongold is a vivid chronicle of the life of a troubled white family during South Africa's pivotal years of apartheid. The family lives in the suburbs of Johannesburg -- a tall, lively city founded on a vast wealth of gold that is mined day and night by an army of black laborers deep underground.

No-one in this rigid society escapes its strictures. Not only are race relations governed by harsh laws, but there are also a multitude of unwritten rules defining everyday conduct, the significance of class and income, and the roles of men and women. The question What will people think? seems to loom over every thought and action.

A young couple, Jack and Peggy, think of themselves as basically English, although they were both born in South Africa, and neither has set foot in England. They listen breathlessly to the BBC News, and admire the British royal family and Winston Churchill. This little family, complete with small daughter, Beatrice, baby Christopher and Letty, the black maid, seems picture-perfect. But when Jack begins to develop the frightening symptoms of mental illness, the family's life becomes shadowed by a dark secret that must be kept at all costs.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

MAP OF SOUTH AFRICA AT THE TIME PERIOD OF THE BOOK

PROLOGUE

Chapter 1: PLEASE BRING YOUR NANNY

Chapter 2: GOING TO TOWN

Chapter 3: THE BUSHVELD

Chapter 4: FAIRY TALES  

Chapter 5: MOSSEL BAY

Chapter 6: DON'T YOU KNOW THERE'S A WAR ON?

Chapter 7: THE DREADFUL TIME

Chapter 8: RETIEF'S KLOOF

Chapter 9: THE ENCHANTED SEA

Chapter 10 :SISTERHOOD

Chapter 11: CITY OF GOLD

Chapter 12: THE LOCUST SUMMER

Chapter 13: JUST CHILD'S PLAY

Chapter 14: NEIGHBORS

Chapter 15: SUNSHINE - -

Chapter 16. - - AND SHADOWS

Chapter 17: BRAMLEY DAYS

Chapter 18: GOLD, FRANKINCENSE AND MYRRH

Chapter 19: HEART OF GOLD

Chapter 20: KNOWING YOUR PLACE

Chapter 21: HARD LESSONS

Chapter 22: PASSBOOK

Chapter 23: MOODY BLUES

Chapter 24: CASTLES IN THE AIR

Chapter 25: HOBNOBBING

Chapter 26: ORANGES AND LEMONS

Chapter 27: TEENBEACH

Chapter 28: MARY'S DAY

Chapter 29: TENNIS, ANYONE?

Chapter 30: SMOKE

Chapter 31: NEVER MIND!

Chapter 32: BARAGWANATH AND BEYOND

Chapter 33: THE FAR HORIZON

EPILOGUE

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Map of South Africa at the Time of this Book

PROLOGUE

This book is as much about my country, South Africa, in the two decades from the early 1940’s to the early 1960’s, as it is about me and my family.

South Africa’s infamous apartheid system was a regime of legalized segregation imposed by a white minority government. The dramatic story of apartheid’s downfall, with Nelson Mandela’s 1994 release from prison after 27 years, and the attainment of black majority government, is now well-known. Also well-known is South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission which followed, spearheaded by Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (set up under the 1995 Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act) created a fine model that has since been used by other countries where terrible legacies of cruelty and hate required some form of resolution.

I grew up in the white suburbs of Johannesburg, South Africa before all of these changes occurred, during the time when apartheid was still the ruling principle of the country.

For a long time now, I have made my home in the United States. When I meet new people here, they invariably ask, when learning of my background, What it was really like to live there, at that time? I have given many public talks about South Africa over the years; but this memoir, now, is my truest, most personal answer to that question.

The book is composed of a series of vignettes, each focusing on a certain aspect of my childhood and youth. In each vignette, you, the reader, are invited to enter that other time and place, to experience a particular moment; perhaps, in a way, to make it your experience, too.

Following many of the chapters, you will find a brief note, or Afterthought, looking back at the topic of that particular chapter from today’s vantage point, with an additional sprinkling of facts and reflections.

Because this is my own growing-up story, it necessarily presents a subjective view. Of course, children generally accept the world in which they find themselves; for what choice have they? I invite you, the reader, to imagine while you read that you, yourself, are there, in my youthful situation, or that of the adults around me. How would you feel? What would you do? Would you sense the burden of secrecy, of some darkness lurking in the sunny warmth of a beautiful place which has, arguably, one of the most delightful climates in the world?

Read on!

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Chapter 1: PLEASE BRING YOUR NANNY

Letty

Letty is both the tortoise and the hare, with dark turtle-brown eyes gleaming out of her forward-leaning head, swift padding feet, and perpetually busy hands. Her glossy, chocolate skin is taut-stretched over high cheekbones and a wide arched nose. A dress that once belonged to my mother hangs loosely under the voluminous white apron swathed around Letty’s skinny frame. On her head is a starched white maid’s cap, held in place with a tight elastic band that cuts a painful-looking dent across the nape of her neck.

Letty is all sharp elbows and spiky energy. Her voice, too, is sharp and loud. Her bright brown eyes survey the world suspiciously, with a nuanced, guarded look of discontent.

When Letty kneels to burnish a waxed floor, or sits toes-up on the lawn to polish the silver, the naked soles of her feet look like shoes, so thick and hard are their cracked calluses.

Raised rivers of veins striate the dark skin on the back of Letty’s hands. Her palms are pink, her fingertips stone hard. Mommy often complains that she herself works her own fingers to the bone. I imagine, shivering, this gruesome possibility, thinking, not of Mommy, of Letty, whose hands are busily engaged from morning until night. Surely, Letty’s fingers are too tough, too well protected by calluses, to be worn away by all that work?

Letty’s multilayered smell combines the clean scent of her crisply laundered cap and apron, the sweat dampening her brow and armpits, and the mustiness of the old dresses and cardigans she wears under the apron. On warm days she sweats profusely as she works, with a sharp ammoniac odor. Phew, Letty! exclaims my mother, When you have finished here, my girl, you must take a bucket of hot water out and have a really good wash. (In the backyard servants’ quarters there is, of course, a regulation cold shower enclosed on three sides, affording little privacy.) Later that day, I see Letty staggering down the kitchen steps, leaning sideways against the hot weight of the bucket.

Thursdays are Letty’s days off. After making the beds and setting the house in order, she bustles purposefully out back to her room, to emerge wearing a clean cotton dress, her face shining, and her dark head, with its tight, fuzzy little knots of hair, swathed in the Bantu style in a bright "doek." It is taboo for a native woman to expose her naked head. Once or twice, when caught by surprise with her head bare, Letty is desperately embarrassed, wrapping her two hands around her head in a futile attempt to cover the short woolly knobs of her hair.

Other mothers, when inviting me to a birthday party, sometimes add smilingly; Oh, Peggy dear, if you would, please, do bring her nanny; that way, we can all enjoy a peaceful tea while the children are playing.

So, although she is not, strictly speaking, a full-time Nanny, like some other families have, Letty is obliged to accompany Mommy and me to the party. She looks a little uneasy, but very fine, in her best white apron and cap. Mommy has curled my hair and dressed me in a party dress, of course, with a full, starched skirt, and a big bow at the back. I’m not very happy about all this, dreading the prospect of being made to play pointless party games, like Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses.

All the guests seem to arrive at once, in a pastel flutter of skirts and ribbon-wrapped gifts. After this, we, a bouquet of timid little girls in pretty party finery, and a pink-scrubbed litter of small boys in white dress-up shirts and snake-buckled gray flannel trousers, are rounded up to play Find the Thimble, Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Oranges and Lemons and most intimidating of all, Musical Chairs. I join in with a knot in the pit of my stomach.

Now, the birthday child, flushed and heady with stardom, is allowed to approach the pile of presents; dolls, picture-books, painting boxes, games of Ludo, Dominoes and Snakes and Ladders are torn from their wrappings. Say thank you, dear, to Helen. What a lucky girl you are! After which, in a glow of warm infant sweat, we are led by our respective Nannies to seats at the daintily decorated table. The birthday song is sung, and the birthday child, with a wet, energetic gust, blows out the five candles on her pretty pink and white frosted cake. Our nannies tuck napkins under our chins, and heap our plates with sweet delights; then take their stand, upright and vigilant, behind each of us, their brown hands resting on the backs of our chairs. At this point, forgetting shyness, we lean forward to tuck with enthusiasm into plates piled with birthday cake, a delightful assortment of biscuits charmingly iced with pictures of pink and blue elephants, mounds of pearly-cold ice cream, and quivering, jewel-bright molded jellies of ruby, emerald and amber.

Our mothers, meanwhile, scented and pretty in floral cottons and linens, their hair in fluffy waves, have gathered on the wide verandah, where they drink tea and smoke cigarettes. Some of them gesture elegantly with ivory cigarette holders held between red or rose-pink pointed fingernails.

To begin with, the ladies exchange polite snippets of good and bad news about their families and their garden plants. But the conversation soon turns, as always, to the most fertile topic; the so-called servant problem. Fervently, they compare notes; some are eager to complain about the inefficiency and laziness of their respective household servants; while others prefer to boast of their own servants’ perfection, their superlative conscientiousness, the high standards meticulously upheld. All of these high-pitched, confident voices carry easily to where we sit at the table in the next room, flanked by two rows of still, stone-faced nannies.

…She’s just devoted to us!

…Been with us for years..so loyal!

…So good with the children..

…A treasure!

…We treat her just like one of the family!…

…So hard to keep good servants nowadays!

…Ours is one of the old school – knows how things are done..

…She is absolutely bone lazy ….,

…Came to us raw, completely raw, straight from the country….

…Naturally, their standards are not our standards!

…Of course, they are just like children, really!

…Breaks only our best dishes, my dears, I swear to God..

…You have to be really firm; it’s the only thing they understand!

…My Eric was quite cross with her, and, truly, who could blame him…

...Of course, I had to tell her to pack up her things and go, right away, that very day!

…Not at all like they used to be…

…Shocking lack of respect nowadays..

…Of course, we always keep our liquor cabinet locked!

…She does have her faults but on the whole…

…I have to keep a constant eye on her, or else she…

At the age of four, going on five, I am trying to understand my own little niche in the big world around me. In an inchoate, childish, way, I wonder why people, too, are arranged in neat layers, like the separate-but-together layers of this birthday cake, or the sparkling, fragile leaves of the chunks of mica and vermiculite that my father sometimes brings home? Why are we children all sitting here, while our Nannies stand silently behind us, our mothers talk to each other in another room, and our fathers are away, as they are every day, at work?

Everywhere, it seems, people are careful never to step out of their special place. Mommy inquires from time to time, in a tone laden with doom, What will people think? I wonder, as well, why that matters? I recall those games we played before tea, and how the children giggled when someone stepped out of line, or succeeded in pinning the tail on the donkey’s left ear. Yes; belonging, fitting in, doing the right thing, do seem to matter.

Late in the afternoon, galvanized by the sound of wheels in the smoothly raked gravel of the driveway that signals the return of the birthday child’s father from his day at the office, all the ladies gather up their handbags, their children and their Nannies, and depart in a twitter of effusive thanks. My dear, we had such a lovely time!

Afterthoughts…

This was 1942, while World War II raged and our South African forces were fighting and dying in distant lands, side by side with soldiers, sailors and airmen of every country under Allied Command, to defend the countries of Europe, the British Empire and its allies against German ambitions.

At home in our country, and in the suburbs of Johannesburg, we were far from any scenes of battle. Daily life continued peacefully, while the war remained in the background.

The Union of South Africa, as it was called then, was a proud member of the British Empire, with a government headed by Field Marshal General Smuts, a distinguished international statesman of the time. Within our class-conscious set of English-speaking white South Africans, a British background, no matter how remote, conveyed automatic respectability, even superiority.

The British Empire had been the dominant power in the world for some time. In outposts of Empire all over the world, numerous native peoples were subservient to their British colonizers. Indeed, other European countries followed exactly the same pattern in their colonies. In that same spirit, it seemed entirely necessary and appropriate to maintain white rule in South Africa.

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Chapter 2: GOING TO TOWN

Jellicoe Avenue and Rosebank Road, two quiet streets lined with charming flower-gardened houses, meet abruptly at Oxford Road in a pie-slice point. Oxford Road sweeps past this point with the perpetual thrum of cars, trucks, vans, and high-browed double-decker buses zooming back and forth, to and from the chaos of the multilayered city. Our little house is tucked neatly inside this quiet-noisy, slice-of-pie corner, and screened from view by a tall hedge. We have lived here for always, as far back as I can remember, which seems like forever, even though I am not yet old enough to go to school.

There are three people in our family: Mommy, who is also Margaret, Peggy, Peg, Ped, Peddah, Dear and Darling; Daddy, who is Jack, Jock, John Ernest, and Dear and Darling, too; and as for me, I’m called Lovie, Childie, Girlie, Dearheart or Darling when I’m good; and Beatrice Elizabeth! ! when I am not. Of course, there are really four of us in this house, for Letty is always here. Letty keeps the house clean, cooks our meals, and takes care of me when my parents go out. Letty’s full name is Leticia Lekotoko; this is also what Mommy calls her when she is cross. Of course, Letty has other native names, but those names we can neither pronounce nor remember.

Each night Letty locks the kitchen door behind her, and retreats across the walled yard with its rows of laundry lines, to the small, separate building that all houses have, called the servant’s quarters. In her room is an iron bedstead with a hard coir mattress. A chipped enamel bowl and a large pitcher stand on a wooden box covered with a piece of bright chintz. A spotted mirror hangs on the wall. There is an upright kitchen chair, and a small, rickety chest of drawers with a peeling coat of bright blue paint. Letty’s two dresses and her three aprons hang on a rail fixed across one corner. A threadbare piece of carpet covers part of the cold concrete floor. Next to her room are the only toilet and shower she may use; these, too, have cement walls and icy floors, and there is no seat on the toilet’s bare porcelain rim.

Most days, except for those when we Go-to-Town, roll around with a sure sameness. Daddy whizzes away in the old high Austin to the University and his job at the Government Metallurgical Laboratories. Letty clears the breakfast dishes,