life to do the opposite of what his father wanted. It’s a reflex with boys.’
‘J J can’t have been easy.’
‘No. It’s tough living up to a hero. My father got a DSO for rescuing two wounded men at Delville Wood and never let me forget it. Never. When I told him I didn’t want to join up, at least until I’d finished my degree, he said I was a fucking coward.’
‘And?’ Lofty has never heard this.
‘What choice did I have? I volunteered like the rest of us poor suckers.’
‘You’ve done all right, though.’
‘Have I? Three years in the bag, buggered fingers, and damaged plumbing that couldn’t be fixed, so no family. Have I really done all right?’
Lofty looks away from his glare. Jesus, the poor bastard couldn’t get it up afterwards. So that’s why he didn’t marry. Never dreamed I had it better than Mister Altogether Vanity.
‘No. S’pose not, if you put it that way,’ he mumbles.
‘Deliver me from all my offences,’ fulminates Reverend George, his eyes switching from Kenneth to the bedizened old woman who sits in the right front pew with the family, dressed in a turquoise-and-yellow kaftan with garlands of tusks and seeds tangled round her neck. She looks as though she intends to make incantations to pagan gods beside the grave.
Where did Hugh find this righteous bozo? Barbara wonders. She’s fond of Hugh who has a good heart, though none of Johnny’s charisma. That seems to have gone to Lin and young Sam who both have a spark to them – as she does. Small consolation, now that she’s a hard-up pensioner living alone. She hopes like hell that Johnny hasn’t forgotten to leave her a few bob.
Their mother always talked about ‘a few bob’: ‘They only cost a few bob, Vic,’ she’d plead when he ranted over new shoes for the children or glasses to replace the ones he’d smashed.
The brutal truth is that Barbara will need more than a few bob to keep going. If Johnny hasn’t seen her right in his will, she’ll have to ask Hugh and Lin to help out. She could never ask Shirley, who for some reason thinks she’s extravagant.
It’s so unfair that her drab sister-in-law should be left a well-off widow with a huge house and two cars while she has to live in a poky flat on Berea Road scrabbling for bus fare to get anywhere.
Her mother had warned her that life was unfair, and she didn’t believe it until her own sad chickens came home to roost.
The finest sport in the world is hunting the Hun. Join up and
have a cut at the beggar.
– Quoted in ‘South Africa’s Yesterdays’, Reader’s Digest
As a young man, Victor Kitching had the luck of the devil: born into a well-off Durban family and considered a dashing fellow by the girls. When he volunteered to join what was left of the South African Brigade in France in June 1918, half a dozen young ladies were at the docks with lace hankies to wave goodbye to him and his fellow officers as they embarked – a cohort of Natal’s finest in scratchy khaki uniforms.
Thanks to a minor leg wound that became infected, Victor only served a few weeks in the trenches before returning home to a blizzard of flags, jubilant cheers and a free farm on the Umfolozi Flats.
Sugar cane was the recommended crop and there was plenty of help for returned soldiers, who also qualified for generous bank loans. The farm prospered and he took up polo, which the girls considered even more dashing than soldiering. One of them was Dorothy, nicknamed Dot, granddaughter of the sugar baron Joseph Herald of Two Rivers. Their son John Joseph was born in 1925, and their daughter Barbara three years later in 1928.
Life was good. Victor was captain of the local polo club and played matches all over the province, while Dot looked after the children and ran the farm with one of her father’s trusted indunas, Landela. Having grown up in the caramel air of sugar mills, both understood the combinations of soil, rain, temperature, ratoon stock and labour that
‘J J can’t have been easy.’
‘No. It’s tough living up to a hero. My father got a DSO for rescuing two wounded men at Delville Wood and never let me forget it. Never. When I told him I didn’t want to join up, at least until I’d finished my degree, he said I was a fucking coward.’
‘And?’ Lofty has never heard this.
‘What choice did I have? I volunteered like the rest of us poor suckers.’
‘You’ve done all right, though.’
‘Have I? Three years in the bag, buggered fingers, and damaged plumbing that couldn’t be fixed, so no family. Have I really done all right?’
Lofty looks away from his glare. Jesus, the poor bastard couldn’t get it up afterwards. So that’s why he didn’t marry. Never dreamed I had it better than Mister Altogether Vanity.
‘No. S’pose not, if you put it that way,’ he mumbles.
‘Deliver me from all my offences,’ fulminates Reverend George, his eyes switching from Kenneth to the bedizened old woman who sits in the right front pew with the family, dressed in a turquoise-and-yellow kaftan with garlands of tusks and seeds tangled round her neck. She looks as though she intends to make incantations to pagan gods beside the grave.
Where did Hugh find this righteous bozo? Barbara wonders. She’s fond of Hugh who has a good heart, though none of Johnny’s charisma. That seems to have gone to Lin and young Sam who both have a spark to them – as she does. Small consolation, now that she’s a hard-up pensioner living alone. She hopes like hell that Johnny hasn’t forgotten to leave her a few bob.
Their mother always talked about ‘a few bob’: ‘They only cost a few bob, Vic,’ she’d plead when he ranted over new shoes for the children or glasses to replace the ones he’d smashed.
The brutal truth is that Barbara will need more than a few bob to keep going. If Johnny hasn’t seen her right in his will, she’ll have to ask Hugh and Lin to help out. She could never ask Shirley, who for some reason thinks she’s extravagant.
It’s so unfair that her drab sister-in-law should be left a well-off widow with a huge house and two cars while she has to live in a poky flat on Berea Road scrabbling for bus fare to get anywhere.
Her mother had warned her that life was unfair, and she didn’t believe it until her own sad chickens came home to roost.
The finest sport in the world is hunting the Hun. Join up and
have a cut at the beggar.
– Quoted in ‘South Africa’s Yesterdays’, Reader’s Digest
As a young man, Victor Kitching had the luck of the devil: born into a well-off Durban family and considered a dashing fellow by the girls. When he volunteered to join what was left of the South African Brigade in France in June 1918, half a dozen young ladies were at the docks with lace hankies to wave goodbye to him and his fellow officers as they embarked – a cohort of Natal’s finest in scratchy khaki uniforms.
Thanks to a minor leg wound that became infected, Victor only served a few weeks in the trenches before returning home to a blizzard of flags, jubilant cheers and a free farm on the Umfolozi Flats.
Sugar cane was the recommended crop and there was plenty of help for returned soldiers, who also qualified for generous bank loans. The farm prospered and he took up polo, which the girls considered even more dashing than soldiering. One of them was Dorothy, nicknamed Dot, granddaughter of the sugar baron Joseph Herald of Two Rivers. Their son John Joseph was born in 1925, and their daughter Barbara three years later in 1928.
Life was good. Victor was captain of the local polo club and played matches all over the province, while Dot looked after the children and ran the farm with one of her father’s trusted indunas, Landela. Having grown up in the caramel air of sugar mills, both understood the combinations of soil, rain, temperature, ratoon stock and labour that
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