When Time Fails (Silverman Saga Book 2) (4 page)

Annamari looked up from putting fish fingers and chips on a plastic plate for De Wet and glanced questioningly at her husband. Thys never came home at lunchtime. It was just a short walk from the main school building across the road to their new house, but he preferred to eat sandwiches in his classroom and get some marking done before practice. And today the first team was playing Sentraal Hoër. He should be with them. But she hadn’t heard the school bell yet, so why...

‘Papa!’ De Wet yelled, sliding off his chair and hurling himself at his father’s legs.

Thys didn’t pick up the stocky child and swing him around, eliciting shrieks of delight, as he usually did. When Arno was home, he would also join the fray and all her men would eventually collapse in a heap on the couch.

But not today. Today Thys looked grim. Even more grim than when they’d heard about President PW Botha’s stroke on the news.

‘
Nou hier kom
’n din
g
,’ he said. ‘This is trouble. Mark my words.’

‘But they said it wasn’t serious. Anyway, I thought you didn’t like PW.’

‘I don’t. But he’s weak now. He’s finished – you’ll see. And then who knows what will happen.’

So far, Thys had been right. He was always right.

‘De Wet, go play outside,’ Thys said.

A cold hand froze her heart. She put the pan down on the stove, and turned to face her husband.

‘Arno,’ she said.

‘Arno? No. No, he’s fine.’

‘Then what?’

He took her hand and led her to the couch.

‘Sit,’ he said.

Her legs buckled.

‘Annamari...’ His eyes welled with tears. ‘Annamari – there’s been... there’s been a... Your parents...’

‘There’s been an accident, hasn’t there? They’re hurt? Where are they? Which hospital? They’d bring them to Bloemfontein if they were badly injured, wouldn’t they? Or Bethlehem? I’m going to phone Ouma to come and look after the boys. Then we can go.’

She started to stand up, intent on reaching the phone. Thys pulled her back down, onto the couch.

‘Annamari listen. It’s bad. It’s really bad.’

She wanted to hit him. Now tears were spilling down his face and he was squeezing her hands in his giant paws.

Arno drifted in through the lounge door, his backpack slung over his shoulder.

‘Ma, De Wet is rolling on the grass outside in his uniform. You said we weren’t allowed to play in our uniform – oh, hello Pa.’

‘Arno, put your bag down and go join your brother outside.’ Thys’ voice was a bit muffled but Arno dropped his backpack and retreated.

Thys took a shuddering breath, wiped his eyes and gripped her hands so hard she winced. He didn’t seem to notice.

‘Annamari, they’re dead.’

Who? What was he talking about?

‘O
h
liefi
e
. I’m so sorry. Pa and Ma. And Christo. They’re all dead.’

All of them? Pa and Ma?They couldn’t be. She’d spoken to Ma just last night. Ma said she was makin
g
boontjiebredi
e
stew for supper. She hadn’t said they were going anywhere today. They were at Steynspruit. She started to get up, to get to the phone, to call the farm and show Thys that this time he was wrong. He pulled her down again. She opened her mouth to object. Christo would never have been in the car with them. Not today. He was too busy with the ploughing. Her throat was stuffed with cotton wool. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t breathe.

‘Annamari, did you hear what I said?’

‘When... where... what happened?’

‘Terrorists. They cut through the security fence, broke in to the house and shot them. Must have been last night some time. Stefan Smit found them this morning when he got back from Pretoria.’

‘Christo too? In the house? What about the dogs – why didn’t they bark? Warn them? Have they caught them? How many broke in? Why did they shoot? Pa always said they wouldn’t resist if, when, if someone broke in. He said all they usually wanted was food and money and weapons. That’s why he didn’t keep a lot of ammo on the farm, just in case. And Christo... Ma never said he was going to be there, he shouldn’t have been there, he wasn’t supposed to be there, he...’

She couldn’t go on. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t possible. It was a lie. It was a horrible, disgusting lie. It was just like Stefan Smit to phone Thys and lie, just to upset her because he knew she didn’t like him and he was just the kind of slimy bastard who would do something like that.

‘When did Stefan Smit phone you? He’s a fucking liar, you know he is,’ she said, wrenching her hands free.

For once, Thys didn’t object to her swearing.

‘It wasn’t Stefan who phoned. It was Wynand. Wynand Vorster. He’s in the Murder and Robbery Squad now. Stefan called the cops as soon as... He thought they might be able to catch the bastards before they crossed back into Lesotho. Wynand said they were searching but so far they’ve found nothing.’

She thought she heard De Wet crying outside. Arno’s fault probably. They all tended to forget that the tough-looking little boy was still just a baby.

‘Thys, we have to tell the boys. How are we going to tell the boys? What are we going to say?’

***

The Corolla ate up the road. Bethlehem disappeared behind them. Thys changed down, overtook a truck, changed up again. They stopped at a road block. A police officer came over. Thys wound down the window. The officer muttered something. Thys nodded. Camouflaged soldiers cradling R1 rifles removed the barrier. The Corolla pulled off, sped up. Thys reached out, switched on the radio. It crackled. He turned it off. She looked down at her hands. She unclenched them. The Corolla hummed. It passed a tractor. It passed a donkey cart. It passed a car. She looked down. She unclenched her hands.

They were in Driespruitfontein. They stopped at the ne
w
robo
t
at the corner of Potgieter and Kerk Street.

‘They said the Mayor insisted on it. Apparently, there’s so much traffic here now, it makes him late after he’s dropped his kids at school in the mornings,’ Thys said.

Th
e
robo
t
changed to green. The Corolla pulled off. Past the dam. Driespruitfontein was behind them. The Corolla went faster now. They were on the Steynspruit road. She didn’t look back but she knew there was a massive dust cloud behind them. The gate was open. Thys got out and closed it behind them. They drove up to the main house. There were five cars in the driveway. And a police car.It looked like there was another police car down at Christo’s house. It looked like it was parked next to Christo’s ne
w
bakki
e
but she couldn’t be sure. It was too far away.

A man was standing on th
e
stoe
p
, smoking. He ground his cigarette out on the red stone floor before hurrying down the steps towards them. Stefan Smit. He opened her door. She couldn’t move. He stepped back. Thys let go of her hand and got out. He came around the car to her door and took her hand again.

‘Come on
,
liefi
e
,’ he said. ‘We better go and find out what’s going on here.’

Stefan Smit was jabbering like a monkey. ‘It’s terrible. Fucking terrible. I got such a fucking fright, when I found them, you know. I just got back from Pretoria... my wife and daughter, you know. I knew something was wrong as soon as I ...’

She walked around him, up the stairs onto th
e
stoe
p
, thankful for Thys’ support. There was an overflowing ashtray and empty mugs on the old table, and what looked like a fresh coffee stain. Why hadn’t someone wiped it up? Th
e
lappi
e
was right there. A man came through the French doors, a detective, from the look of him with his short hair and brown shoes. Who had unlocked the security gate? Pa put in that gate only last year, after Viljoenspruit was burgled. The detective put his arms around her. Wynand. Did he still have a crush on her? He shook Thys’ hand. Murmured words, so sorry, doing all we can, we’ll get the bastards, huge search through the entire district, roadblocks, they can’t get away.

‘Where are they? Where’s Ma and Pa? And Christo? I want to see them.’ She didn’t recognise her own voice.

Wynand blocked her way. ‘No. You can’t go inside. It’s a crime scene. The mortuary van is on its way.’

She turned away and stared out at the wheat fields beyond the garden, past the poplars towards the Malutis. So beautiful always, but not anymore.Now the distant mountains seemed to be mocking her, providing refuge to her family’s murderers. She heard Wynand telling Thys that the fuckin
g
kaffir
s
had fucking slaughtered them, pumped bullets into them like it was target practice. That there was no way anyone could have survived an attack like that.

Why? Why hadn’t Kaptein barked? And the other dogs. Warned them. Given Pa time to get the shotgun.

Stefan handed her a mug of weak, milky coffee. Rosie knew she didn’t take milk. But Rosie hardly ever came in anymore. But Pretty also knew how she liked her coffee. Where was Pretty?

‘I’ve confined th
e
kaffir
s
to th
e
khay
a
,’ Stefan said. ‘They’ve been questioned. They were probably involved. They say they didn’t hear anything. They’re lying.’

‘Rubbish. None of our people would do something like this,’ she said.

Most of them had worked for her family for years and years. This was their home. Rosie. Petrus. They were family – almost.

A young constable came running up th
e
stoe
p
stairs. He looked pale.

‘We found the dogs. They were down there, behind the tractor shed. Looks like they were poisoned. And they even fucking slit the little one’s throat!’

For the first time since Thys had walked through the kitchen door at lunchtime, a lifetime ago, tears welled. Angrily, Annamari blinked them away.

It had been accidental, really – finding out that Beauty couldn’t read. Annamari had been shocked. After all, the girl was a year older than Arno and Arno was a voracious reader. She always put at least two or three new books in his suitcase before she and Thys drove him back to school in Bloemfontein on Sunday afternoons after his fortnightly weekend visit. She was very grateful to Thys
’
oum
a
for buying them for her at CNA and posting them down: the few books on the shelves at Silverman’s General Dealer were hardly appropriate reading material for an almost twelve-year-old. Or even for her, although she didn’t have time to read books nowadays. She was too busy being a farmer’s wife – except that Thys wasn’t a farmer, would never be a farmer and didn’t want to be a farmer. But he seemed to be content, living on Steynspruit and teaching at Driespruitfontein Hoërskool.

‘I know you want to live on Steynspruit,’ he’d said. ‘And if that’s what you want, then it’s what I want. I love you.’

Dominee van Zyl had gone ballistic when Thys told him, but Thys had stood his ground. ‘Steynspruit is Annamari’s heritage, our children’s heritage. We belong there,’ he’d said and winked at her as his father huffed and puffed and snorted.

Annamari kneaded the dough and smiled at the girl painstakingly practising “real” writing at the other side of the big wooden kitchen table. Beauty was amazing. She’d literally galloped through the Grade one and Grade two reading and writing syllabus. Now she was tearing through Grade three at a rate of knots, all thanks to what they now laughingly referred to as “Beauty’s bread”.

The recipe i
n
Huisgenoo
t
had caught her attention: Tannie’s Health Loaf. It looked really delicious in the photograph. Annamari seldom made bread but she had needed to do something to ease her pain and frustration at the murder investigation that was going precisely nowhere. She’d smacked De Wet the day before, just for breaking a saucer. And it had probably been an accident. He’d looked at her with his big brown eyes, bewildered. She never hit her children. She knew the move to Steynspruit, and the loss of their grandparents and uncle had been traumatic for them. It had all just got too much. Kneading bread seemed a great solution.

Then she got stuck. She couldn’t remember how much bran she had to add. She should have measured it out before she started mixing the dough but she’d never been the most methodical cook.

‘Beauty,’ she’d said to the girl who was sitting on Rosie’s old stool in the corner, peeling potatoes for supper, ‘just check the recipe for me, please. How much bran must I add? And perhaps you could measure it out for me?’

She liked it when Beauty came into the kitchen in the afternoons to help Pretty prepare supper. She was good company, bright and cheerful. Someone to speak to because Pretty didn’t speak at all, except to acknowledge instructions. With Rosie now officially retired, the kitchen – the farmhouse – was hauntingly quiet until Thys brought De Wet home later, after they’d both finished school.

Beauty didn’t move.

‘Just have a look at the recipe for me,’ Annamari said sharply. ‘My hands are dirty and I don’t want to get dough all over the magazine. There – it’s the one at the bottom of the page – Tannie’s Health Loaf. The ingredients are listed at the top.’

Beauty glued her eyes to the floor. She seemed to shrink into the stool and her cheeks flushed.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t read.’

***

That night Annamari had fumed at Thys. It was so wrong, she said, that a bright, pretty little thing like Beauty couldn’t read. She was thirteen years old, for heaven’s sake. It wasn’t as if she was stupid, or anything. It was just crazy, crazy that she hadn’t been sent to school. What had Pretty been thinking? What had Petrus been thinking? Petrus was a sensible man. Why hadn’t he made sure Beauty learned to read?

She got even angrier when Thys reminded her that Pretty and Petrus had tried to send Beauty to school, but the school had refused to accept her because of her blue eyes and pale complexion.

‘Ja, well they should have sent her to the Coloured township so she could go to school there.’

‘And who would have taken care of her there? She may look Coloured but her family is black. Do you really think Pretty should have sent her child away, to strangers – just because of the way she looks? Made Beauty into another Sandra Laing?’

Annamari stared at her husband, horrified. She remembered reading about Sandra Laing in the newspaper – about how she’d had white parents but was really Coloured and had been thrown out of her white school and then she’d run away with
a
kaffi
r
which just went to prove that she really wasn’t white after all.

‘It’s not the same,’ she said.

‘It’s exactly the same,’ Thys replied. ‘The race classification system is cruel sometimes. I’m sure things like Sandra Laing and Beauty go on a hell of a lot more than we realise. And it’s wrong... it’s wrong when children like Beauty are the victims. I mean, why couldn’t she have gone to school in the township? Well, things are going to change now, that’s for sure, so perhaps there won’t be too many more Sandra Laings or Beautys in future. And it’s about bloody time.’

Annamari was shocked. Thys had never said anything like that before. Not so emphatically. He knew how she felt, especially now, after the terrorist attack and everything. Sometimes she teased him about being a bit of
a
commi
e
. He was always going on about those poor kids he used to teach in Thaba ’Nchu, and how he wished he’d had the same equipment and facilities to teach them as he had at BHS, or even now at Driespruitfontein Hoërskool. Other than that, they hardly ever spoke about politics, not at home.

Thys hadn’t even said much when President FW de Klerk unbanned the ANC and all the other terrorist organisations back in February. She’d gone hysterical when she heard the news on the radio. She’d been horrified. Terrified.But Thys just said FW knew what he was doing. And when they were all watching Nelson Mandela’s release from prison on the big colour TV in the lounge and Stefan Smit called him a fuckin
g
kaffi
r
and made some crude remarks about Mandela’s dreadful wife, Winnie, Thys had told Stefan never to use that language again in his house. Stefan walked out and she was pleased because she hated it when Thys invited him to join them. Thys was kind like that. She never told him that Stefan Smit always made her uncomfortable. They needed him. Stefan was virtually running Steynspruit now because Thys obviously couldn’t. But there was no way, no way on this earth, that she’d allow Stefan to move into Christo’s house. Christo had disliked him too, he’d told her so.

But Thys was right. Stefan Smit shouldn’t have used foul language like that, not even about Mandela, not even if he was a terrorist – not in front of her. Stefan had slammed the door hard on his way out
.

Later, Thys had laughed at her when she expressed her surprise at how smart the tall, greying man looked as he addressed a huge mob of bayin
g
kaffir
s
an
d
commie
s
in Cape Town.

‘What did you think Nelson Mandela would look like?’ Thys asked.

‘Not like that. He looks so ordinary. Maybe it’s the suit and tie.’

While he certainly didn’t look like how she’d pictured the men who’d come into the house and butchered her entire family, Mandela still frightened her. He was a terrorist. Had been a terrorist.Otherwise why would they have kept him in jail for so long? And if FW just handed over everything to th
e
kaffir
s
, like Stefan Smit said he would, then none of them would be safe.

***

‘What are you going to do about it?’ Thys asked as they got ready for bed.

‘About what?’

‘Beauty – not being able to read. Why don’t you teach her? You’re a teacher.’

‘Very funny. I’m a nursery school teacher. Beauty isn’t a baby. I wouldn’t know where to start.’

So Thys had given her some of his teaching books; and he brought home some lesson plans and workbooks from the Driespruitfontein primary school; and he even found some old Grade one reading books.

Beauty’s eyes had nearly popped out of her head when she walked into the kitchen the next day and found a little classroom had been set up at the end of the kitchen table, just for her. You could have lit a candle from the glow in her bright eyes. Annamari and Beauty were so engrossed in their lesson they didn’t notice Petrus standing in the doorway, tears in his eyes.

Every afternoon, after De Wet came home, he and Beauty sat on th
e
stoe
p
stairs and practised their reading together. On weekends, Arno helped Beauty and De Wet with their sums.

The only person who clearly wasn’t happy with the new arrangement was Stefan. ‘You’re asking for trouble, Mrs van Zyl
.
Kaffi
r
kids should know their place. That girl is getting too big for her boots. And you’ve got Arno to think about – he’s getting to the age when boys and girls... you know.’

‘No Stefan, I don’t know,’ she said, and continued marking Beauty’s spelling test.

At the end of the first year of her little Steynspruit kitchen classroom school, Annamari was delighted with the improvement in De Wet’s school report. Arno, of course, was top of the class again. It was such a pity that he had chosen not to go to Greys in Bloemfontein but rather to Driespruitfontein Hoërskool so he could come home every weekend. But she knew he would excel anywhere. Just like his father
.