Kitchen Boy by Jenny Hobbs

ashamed of his people, who are now superseded by the oppressed and complaining about being oppressed themselves. Again. God in die hemel, Afrikaners have a lot answer for. Not as much as the Germans, though.
    He grew up with Germans, Northern Natal farm boys schooled at Hermannsburg near Greytown. Tough kids with shaved heads and veld sores daubed with gentian violet. Impatient riders at one with their horses, stumbling up stony koppies where they made fires to cook guinea fowl shot with the rifles their fathers gave them when they turned twelve. He’d also been given a rifle so he could be one of them; his father taught him to use it, warning only, ‘I hold you responsible for your own safety, Retief. If your friends are not disciplined enough to be trusted, you will come home. A Boer does not take unnecessary chances.’
    That he would not have to fight against friends was his only solace when he wasn’t allowed to join up. Now he wishes that he’d made more friends because there are so few left. If it weren’t for his beautiful Bonsmara cattle – three parts Shorthorn to five parts Afrikaner – it would be lonely sitting on the farm under the brooding bulk of Majuba, his wife long dead, and his family scattered to the cities. They no longer want to farm. The love of the land is being lost.
    Herbie Fredman looks at Retief. Poor old guy, he thinks. Even past eighty, Herbie will not admit to being old. He feels like a spring chicken most days and can still pleasure his wife, their lovemaking as familiar and comforting as a pair of old leather gloves clasping together.
    He knows he’s lucky. Always was. First being dragged out of the burning plane by J J, and again when the SS Hauptsturmführer at Stalag Luft VII tapped the SAAF wings on his flying jacket with a riding crop, which he jerked towards a train heading for a labour camp with no gas ovens.
    ‘For man walks in a vain shadow and heaps up riches,’ accuses Reverend George, glaring at Kenneth.
    ‘He trimmed another verse to get that dig in,’ Lofty murmurs.
    Kenneth shrugs. ‘Water off my back. Lefties are all the same. Like that boy of J J’s there.’ He inclines his head towards Hugh in the family pew. ‘No chip off the old block. Just an academic who takes up with a younger black woman after his wife leaves him. Married her to make a point, if you ask me. She won’t last.’
    ‘J J couldn’t understand it. Told me he thought Hugh was puss-happy.’
    Lofty smiles at the memory of J J muttering over the photograph taken after the registry office ceremony to which only Lin had been invited. Shirley had been hurt but J J said, ‘If they didn’t want us there, stuff them,’ and to make up for the snub, swept her and Barbara into Durban for dinner at the Royal Hotel.
    Nelisiwe was a surprise to her in-laws: self-assured, shrewd and affectionate with Hugh, and she hadn’t been impressed by the double-storey house overlooking the sea. ‘But it’s so big,’ was the first thing she’d said when he brought her to meet them; after shaking his father’s hand she’d stood back, appraising.
    ‘We wanted the children to grow up in a garden with access to the beach. They loved swimming.’ It was J J’s standard reply to envious comments.
    ‘Lucky kids. I grew up in a shack with an outside tap.’
    J J went on, ‘We needed a house with entertainment rooms. My job demanded a lot of socialising. Dinners, and so forth.’
    ‘I heard. Hugh told me about the cook – Mtshali, nè? I’m looking forward to meeting him. My mother was a domestic worker.’
    ‘Was?’
    ‘She’s late, I’m sorry to say.’ Nelisiwe went up the steps to join Hugh who stood hovering by the front door, unsure which parent to try and placate first: his mother, who had refused to talk to him since the wedding, or his bemused father in the driveway.
    Kenneth raises the Order of Service leaflet to shield his mouth from the priest and says to Lofty, ‘Hugh made it his mission in