A Handful of Summers Read online

  We did that, Jack and I, those far-off summers – roamed the wheatlands and the river banks on summer days soft with heat and the hum of river insects; while all the time, in the north, the towering thunderheads reared up, solid and white and soft-grey as marble. You could find dozens of interesting things in the rivers. Wagtails’ nests and lazy carp and fat turtles that widdled when you held them up. Everything smelled of muddy water.

  My father was less enthusiastic than we were about the birds that swarmed in the wheat. Finches mainly. ‘Cheeky little devils,’ he would say, and let fly with a few charges of number nine. We would crouch behind him, waiting, and when the twin echoes died away, we would dash ahead to collect the victims. Sometimes we’d collect as many as thirty; gather them up into little heaps, broken little bundles of feathers, the bright finch-eyes clouding over, the cheekiness gone. After the gunshots the little black boys would instantly arrive. They clicked excitedly at the little heaps, and then, settling on their haunches, they plucked the birds and grilled them on open coals, turning them over with pointed sticks.

  In dry summers, the clouds piled up but wouldn’t rain. The wheat would wilt and the older people would look at the sky and mutter that the weather had changed. Farming people often get pessimistic about the weather, because their lives are ruled by the seasons.

  Diary Notes: Summer 1942

  Sometimes on Sundays there are tennis parties on our court. Some of the ladies wear long dresses and serve underarm. Uncle Harry is nearly eighty. Today he was playing with Aunt Ellie, also old. When volleys come to her, she hoots and makes excuses. She missed an easy shot, and called out, ‘Oh, tut! There was hair in my eye. That makes it forty-love.’

  And Uncle Harry said, ‘Yes, and if there had been hare in your mouth, it would have been game.’

  We were farming folk – a close-knit little family of six, held together by a name. Our farm is on the edge of the Karoo, hot in summer, bitter in winter, and only sometimes, at dusk and in autumn, sublime. On the edge of the Karoo, the mountains begin – dreary, old mountains, unless you knew them well. We knew them well. Climbed them over and over, with the little troop of black blokes at our heels. Joseph, Absalom, Walk-Tall and the rest of the gang, tapering down to Webbcorn, who was only about two-and-a-half feet high.

  Joseph was our right-hand man – Jack’s and mine, that is. He was shiny black with white teeth and eyes and a permanent grin. In addition to being our friend, he was, being a black boy, at our beck and call night and day. In those days, that was the scheme of things in South Africa and we, as children, knew no other world. He was also the vanguard for many of our more uncertain adventures, like testing the ice in winter to see whether it would take our weight, or test-sailing our experimental rafts, boats or canoes, which often broke up and capsized due to our lack of experience at building floating things. We also used him for such things as leading the way on pitch-dark nights, lighting the fuses of our various explosive devices, climbing to hawks’ nests on slender-looking poplars, pushing his hand into holes which looked as though they might contain:

  Starlings’ eggs; baby crabs; sand martins

  hedgehogs; mole snakes

  or big green frogs.

  It was also requested of Joseph to be the first down the tree-slide for a speed test, or to find out whether the willow fronds would take the weight of a boy swinging out over the river pools and back. Thus, when Jack returned from the mountain one day to announce with great excitement that the black eagle had finally laid its eggs, I was not surprised when, in answer to my question ‘How do we get at them?’ he replied briefly: ‘We lower Joseph.’

  I might add at this point that Joseph had not yet been consulted – nor was he, until we three, equipped with a coil of rope normally used for the wool-bale hoist, stood atop the lonely cliff that the black eagles liked. Lying in a row on our stomachs, we peered over the edge.

  ‘There they are,’ said Jack, with deep satisfaction. ‘The eyrie of the great black eagle, rarest of birds except for the golden eagles of the West.’

  He was given to these impressive bits of oratory (the factual accuracy of which was unimportant) on what he considered to be special occasions. I was too excited to enquire as to the exact whereabouts of the ‘West’, or what golden eagles were like. Thirty feet below us on a rock ledge lay the great nest, and in its centre nestled the two marvellous, freckled, creamy eggs. Below the nest, the cliff fell vertically for a full hundred feet before burying itself in a mass of scrub and broken rock. The two eagles wheeled and screamed above us, riding the updraughts with their huge wings. Jack regarded them.

  ‘Stupid birds,’ he said. ‘We’ll leave one for you.’ Then, turning to me: ‘Gordon! Pass the rope!’ Together we uncoiled the rope and tied one end to the stem of a mountain tree.

  ‘Now we tie the other end to Joseph,’ said Jack, completely in command. ‘And you and I simply lower him over the edge. Joseph, you will have the excitement of actually getting the egg.’

  Joseph’s grin disappeared, and the whites of his eyes showed rounder. He shook his head, whistled through his teeth and muttered to himself in Xhosa while we looped the rope around a second tree, then formed a sort of bos’n’s chair for him.

  He never complained.

  He firmly believed that we were the children of a great white god, and that if we considered it wise to lower him over a cliff, no harm could possibly befall him.

  ‘Tie plenty of knots,’ instructed Jack, though he himself was doing the knotting. ‘We don’t want anything to come loose or slip.’

  With a final whistle, Joseph disappeared over the edge while we grimly paid out rope, running it around the second tree as a device for braking. The rope seemed to pay out forever. At last a yell floated up from below.

  ‘He’s there,’ said Jack. ‘Have a look. I’ll hold the rope.’

  I peered over the edge. Joseph was on the ledge beside the nest, his grin back in place, holding an egg up to me. He looked surprisingly small.

  ‘He’s got it,’ I cried.

  ‘He mustn’t break it!’ said Jack.

  ‘Don’t break it!’ I shouted. ‘We’ll pull you back.’

  In ten minutes the egg was in our hands, far bigger than we had ever supposed, a full ten centimetres across the long axis. I will never forget the feel of it; satin-smooth yet rough as we fondled it, nor the thrill of that achievement. Joseph was the complete hero. The precious egg was ours at last. It would be the ninety-third species in our collection. Our aim was one hundred, and there were still the herons and the blue hawks and kestrels, not counting the nightjars and the snipe.

  Diary Notes: Summer 1945

  Today I forgot to unload the air-gun before I carried it into the house, and Jack left the shed gate open so that the cows got into the vegetables, ate all my mother’s cabbages and lettuce and then made steaming heaps in the kitchen yard. That meant cleaning up the heaps, and then two hours of tennis straight after lunch when it was boiling hot. We started out making Joseph collect the balls for us, but my father soon stopped that.

  ‘You fetch your own damn balls,’ he said, ‘and don’t stop playing until I tell you to.’

  Jack was furious.

  On Saturday morning we have to replant, and Jack has to write out a hundred times ‘I must not allow the cows into the cabbages’.

  Forcing us to play tennis for hours at a time was a punishment, devised by my father, which in his opinion killed two birds with one stone. It gave us time to ruminate over our sins while at the same time teaching us ‘something useful’. My father was obsessed with utilising spare time for ‘something useful’. Given half a chance, he would recite in an earnest voice:

  The heights by great men reached and kept

  Were not attained by sudden flight,

  But they, while their companions slept,

  Toiled upward in the night.
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  The words impressed us only later in life. At that time we were much more interested in ‘sudden flights’ than ‘toiling in the night’.

  Memories that lie in the mind like old photographs, to be unpacked, dusted, examined and replaced . . .

  Of the War Games we invented:

  ‘Joseph!’ Jack’s stern voice. ‘You black guys are the German army in Tobruk. Gordon and I will bombard you. You will lose ground, then counterattack and finally be completely annihilated – all of you dead or dying.’

  Joseph, quite used to being surrounded, swarmed, bombarded, shot down, imprisoned, routed, sunk or sacked, merely nodded and began entrenching himself, beckoning to the others to do the same.

  ‘Right, Gordon,’ said Jack. ‘I’m Montgomery. You are my second-in-command. The divisions move out at dawn. Good luck!’

  Of pastimes which we loved:

  I closed the lid of the box containing our egg collection and turned to Jack. ‘We have ninety-six different kinds,’ I said, ‘and the herons have nested in the poplar bush.’

  We’d wanted a heron’s egg for months, but they nested on the very tops of the poplars, where even Joseph couldn’t climb.

  ‘He’ll get killed if the branch breaks,’ muttered Jack, as we inspected the nest from below. ‘And it will, for sure.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said wistfully, ‘it will hold Webbcorn.’ Webbcorn immediately rolled his eyes over backwards and disappeared into the undergrowth.

  ‘Not even Webbcorn,’ said Jack, ‘although I suppose we could all stand underneath him in case the branch breaks, and catch him in a quilt. Like firemen, you see.’

  We all digested this new idea. ‘Why don’t we tip the nest and catch the eggs in a quilt?’ I said.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Jack. ‘Cut and trim three long bamboos. Lash bamboos tightly together. Place end of third bamboo to underside of nest. Poke gently to tilt.’ Jack was a great one for instruction manuals.

  With laborious care the bamboos were cut, tied and hoisted. They collapsed, were retied, rehoisted and, finally, placed against the underside of the nest.

  ‘Right,’ said Jack, grunting under their weight. ‘I’ll tip it, and you and Joseph catch the eggs in the eiderdown. Ready?’

  Blue eggs spilled from the tilted nest. One hit a branch and broke, splattering us with egg. A second hit Joseph on the head, and two more fell obediently into our stretched-out eiderdown, where we pounced on them with a shout of delight. The operation had taken us a full day.

  ‘Joseph,’ said Jack, recounting the story to our father, ‘was damaged by falling bombs.’

  Of Reconnaissance Cruises on Hostile Waters:

  Jack raised an eye above the gunwale of our homemade canoe and scanned the horizon as we nosed around the little headland of reeds.

  ‘Enemy shipping!’ he whispered, his voice almost a scream. ‘Point-blank range.’ In a frenzy of whispers, the old .22 rifle was brought to bear.

  Forty yards away, the convoy of spurwing geese began their raucous cries of alarm just prior to their flying off.

  ‘They’re diving!’ whispered Jack. ‘Fire at will! Shoot, shoot, shoot!’

  A pair of geese came into line along my sights and I pulled the trigger. The birds rose with a tremendous clamour of wings, but one fat one lay flopping on the water.

  ‘Heavy casualties,’ cried Jack. ‘Good shooting, guns. Joseph! Prepare to take survivors on board!’

  Effects of the war again. All the farm wildlife had to adopt the role of ‘The Enemy’. Certain of the enemy were open game, and free to be hunted. Other species were rigidly protected (our father’s laws), and could only be taken prisoner. The big hawks and vultures which attacked the lambs were the ‘Luftwaffe’, while predators such as jackals and lynx were ‘Panzers’. These had to be fired at on sight. There were to be no prisoners.

  Diary Notes: Summer 1943

  Uncle Harry forgets things. He put .22 bullets into the same pocket as his pipe tobacco, and then stuffed his pipe and lit it. There was a great bang, his pipe flew to pieces and a hole appeared in the brim of his hat.

  Jack and I laughed when he told the story, but he glared at us and said that it wasn’t so damn funny.

  In inventing games we would go to great lengths to remain what we considered to be authentic. Foraging in the loft above the shearing shed one day (ours was a sheep farm), Jack came upon a canvas bag full of blasting powder. It consisted of fat granules that looked like graphite and went off with colossal bangs when you placed them on an anvil and gave them a whack with a hammer. Also in the bag was a coil of dynamite fuse. It was a tremendous discovery, and opened a completely new field of enterprise. We began blowing up things almost immediately.

  With the graphic BBC war accounts each evening at six, we were seldom short of inspiration. We built several Möhne dams across the irrigation furrow and devastated those. Whole squadrons of German tanks were destroyed, the Reichstadt was razed, the Kiel Canal blocked, the Siegfried Line badly mauled, Tobruk relieved for the fifth time and several fortresses sabotaged. We even mined the fierce red rooster that used to sneak up behind us and peck at our ankles. We blew him up by planting a charge beneath his favourite roosting spot, and had the satisfaction of seeing him run around in dizzy circles for some time, squawking blue murder before realising that he was not badly hurt and that he still had his undercarriage.

  Then we became more sophisticated and spent a week building a cannon which I called a mortar, but which Jack insisted was a siege gun, and planned a naval action. As the Graf Spee had been gloriously sunk by the Royal Navy, I can’t imagine why we didn’t choose her as our victim. Perhaps it was because we had just been to see Tyrone Power in The Black Swan, or perhaps because building an actual iron-clad dreadnought was beyond our capabilities.

  Once a month we were allowed to go to the pictures. The Town Hall was converted into a cinema, and on a piece of white canvas draped across the stage, people like Loretta Young and Clark Gable and Dan Dailey did extravagant things in black and white, often rudely interrupted by sudden breakdowns and blackouts. We watched, riveted. God, how marvellous were Betty Grable’s legs in our smelling-of-dust-and-polish little hall.

  But the naval action:

  We built a galleon out of willow and painstakingly rigged her out to the last detail before conveying her to the launching site one morning and floating her out onto the dam.

  The cannon was brought to bear. The scene was set. Joseph and the minions stood in a straight line behind us, having been told that they were deckhands.

  ‘Load with grape,’ said Jack in a naval sort of voice.

  ‘Loaded with grape, sir,’ I replied mechanically.

  ‘Double the charge.’

  ‘Charge doubled, sir.’

  ‘All cannon to bear.’

  ‘All cannon to bear, sir.’

  ‘Aim.’

  ‘Cannon aimed, sir.’

  Slowly the ominous muzzle of the piece was raised, lowered fractionally, then steadied. Ten yards away the galleon rode the dam surface, graceful as a swan, her sails just filling, her rows of deck ordnance clearly visible.

  ‘Steady on target,’ said Jack in a flat voice.

  ‘Steady on target,’ I echoed.

  ‘Fire!’

  ‘Firing now!’

  I lowered the glowing twig to the primer. With a great roar the gun exploded, turning a back somersault and ending up with its smoking muzzle pointing directly at the deckhands, who disappeared, instantly, into the bulrushes. A cloud of black smoke rolled out over the dam, and a pair of startled moorhens trod water frantically for safer places. Slowly the smoke cleared.

  ‘Good God,’ breathed Jack, as our galleon came into view. ‘A direct hit.’

  A row of black heads rose up out of the rushes. Jack was right. Never before had a naval operation produced s
uch spectacular results. The galleon was ravaged, crippled, drifting helplessly. Large rents showed in her balsa frame, her aftermast trailed to starboard and her sails were in tatters. To our infinite delight, instead of riding the breeze, she now drifted in tight helpless circles and seemed to be making water fast.

  ‘By George, sir,’ said Jack, quickly reassuming his naval voice. ‘I think we have her. Well done, guns! She’s drifting. Steering’s shattered.’ He raised his voice to the deckhands. ‘Cutlasses, lads. Cutlasses and pistols. Prepare to board!’

  ‘Boarding party at the ready, sir!’ I echoed.

  In these games of action it was always Jack who took command, and the rest of us automatically became whatever was needed, singly or collectively, in the way of seconds-in-command, troops, sergeants, messengers, platoons, anything in fact that the action required. Now, with the dreaded and deadly pirate ship Black Hawk brought to book, I was as eager as he to deliver the coup de grâce.

  ‘We’ll swarm ’em, men!’ Jack went on. ‘Show no mercy. Never again shall Silver live to ravage the seas.’

  ‘You silly damn fools!’ The voice of my father brought the whole thrilling action to an abrupt halt. ‘Don’t you know that if you overload that cannon you’ll blow your bloody heads off?’

  He approached through the willows, hiding his smiles, and we hung our heads. The double charge of black powder had been Jack’s idea, because, as he said, we’d taken a full week to build the pirate galleon, and we wanted a ‘good show’. As it was, the violence of the blast had half-scared the wits out of me.