Читать книгу Going Back to Say Goodbye - Kenneth de Kok - Страница 7

After Gill was born we moved from Joburg to Stilfontein. I was four and Ingrid was two. Dad had worked at Rand Leases but now was going to a new mine called Hartebeesfontein. Everyone was excited, but I knew we were going a long, long way away. Both our grans and grandad came to say goodbye. Scruffy, our dog, didn’t come with us because he wandered off one afternoon and never came home. I kept looking back as we drove off just in case he suddenly ran round a corner.

The moving van got lost and we stayed at someone’s house for days until it came. De Mist Avenue was a brand-new road then and wasn’t even tarred. The houses were new too. We moved into number 9 and Mom let me help her unpack the boxes. There were giant boulders and rocks in the front yard that gangs of natives first covered with piles and piles of ground and then planted with grass seed.

Dad was building a thing called a pilot plant and he had to work so hard that some nights he stayed at the mine. But always, just before he came home, Mom combed her hair and took off her apron.

She found the hall that the Methodists used for a church and Sunday school and started making friends and also finding new friends for us. She walked everywhere, pushing Gilly in the pram. We lived in the same house for the whole year before I started school. Then we moved just around the corner to 113 Van Riebeeck Drive. Even though we were close to the school I never, ever wanted to go. I begged to be allowed to stay home, but Dad said he’d go to jail if they didn’t send me.

Mom took and fetched me the first week, but after that my friend Nev and I would walk to school after breakfast and hang around the door to our classroom. It was way safer there than in the playground. Gangs would chase you if you didn’t watch it, and after the last bell sounded we’d run home, looking over our shoulders the whole way.

When I tell my mom what I remember from when I was little she says, “Aren’t memories wonderful? They’re so mysterious. They appear from simply nowhere!” She laughs and holds out her hands.