My childhood home: Blinkbonny

My childhood home: Blinkbonny

It was the Queen’s Coronation Day, and I was sitting at our dark oak dining room table colouring in a white cardboard crown which Mummy had made me. Red for the rubies, green for the emeralds and blue for the sapphires, just like the Crown Jewels which the Queen was wearing for this special occasion. She was in England, where Daddy had lived before the war, but she was also our Queen because we were part of the commonwealth which made us the same as Australia, New Zealand and Canada, magical names for places very far away.

Mummy and I were listening to the Coronation on the wireless which was rather crackly but you could hear the echoing voices of the people – the Queen herself and the Archbishop of Canterbury, both of whom were in the pack of cards I had been given for a game called Crown the Queen. The cards had fairytale pictures such as the golden coach she rode in, waving to the people, and a bobby, a policeman dressed in a blue uniform with a tall roundish helmet who would always help you if you were stuck. Two cards showed buildings: one was Buckingham Palace with a brightly coloured flag which flew on the roof when the Queen was there, guarded by soldiers who wore red jackets with shiny brass buttons and huge black busbys. Another card had the Houses of Parliament where Winston Churchill used to speak to all British people particularly during the war: we had a record of his speeches and one said that he had nothing to offer but blood, sweat and tears. Daddy said you got all of those in a war. I wondered why they had a war, but this one had been because of a bad man called Hitler (although he did give Germany good roads and he liked dogs, especially German shepherds). The first war had been because of Kaiser Bill who had to retire afterwards and live on a farm in Holland with the yellow and red tulips although he didn’t really like it. Sometimes Mummy sang Tulips from Amsterdam, and also Wonderful wonderful Copenhagen.

When Daddy came home from work that night we played with the cards and he told us some stories about London. His family lived at 78 Parliament Hill, Hampstead Heath and it took only a few minutes to walk up the steep road onto the Heath (a very big Rondebosch Common but with English trees like elms and oaks). It was fun to fly kites there as the children did in Mary Poppins. Auntie Margaret was Daddy’s sister and she still lived in London. She used to live with their mother, my Grandma called Molly although her real name was Mary, until Grandma died in 1951. Auntie Margaret used to walk across Hampstead Heath to go to King’s College, London, where she “read French”, with her friend Lucia Wassilissin who had been born in Russia, a sinister-sounding country with very solemn people who had killed their King and Queen (called the Tsar and Tsarina) and all their children. Their son had been called Tsarevich Alexei but he had a disease which meant that he couldn’t stop bleeding and the blood welled up inside him like a dam and was very sore. I felt sorry for him and his sisters who looked pretty in the photos, wearing frilly white dresses and big hats.

When Auntie Margaret and Miss Wassilissin walked across the Heath during the war, they held their breath when they reached the highest part of the path in case St Paul’s Cathedral had been destroyed in the night when the Germans flew across the English Channel to drop bombs on London. Every day, they were able to breathe again because St Paul’s was still there although most of the buildings round it were just heaps of rubble, some still burning and some sizzling because of the water the fire engines had sprayed on the hot bricks. After the war was over Daddy had arrived in South Africa on a ship called the Aquitania. Mummy had met him at the docks, and he gave her a little black seal called Sally made of the softest real sealskin.

Daddy and Mummy were pleased with our family because the children were a girl (me) and a boy (Campbell). When Mummy went to the Kingsbury Hospital (which was also where I had been born), I went to stay with Granny, my South African grandmother who was my mother’s mother, rather bony and wrinkled and quite strict as if the last children she had known were very old now, like my mother and Auntie Enid (they were sisters). Granny had a beautiful rosewood piano with three gold diamonds decorating the front. Both she and my mother could play – “tickle the ivories” was how it was described. They also sang, and Granny taught me a new song called The Campbells are coming hoorah hoorah. We sang it all the time because the new baby was going to be called Campbell. Daddy fetched me in our car, a black Chevrolet (pre-war) called Waltzing Matilda because “her shocks were shot”. (Tildy often didn’t start, sometimes because her engine was “flooded”, other times because the engine had got wet. That seemed to be the same thing, but they were always too cross to ask. Tildy had a running board and huge headlamps.) I was taken to see my new brother who looked quite crunched up, with reddish hair. He slept all the time and seemed very boring, but I supposed he would grow out of it. He was called Campbell after my father’s brother, Edward Campbell, who had gone to the Grammar School in Appleby and enjoyed reading Shakespeare. I was told that he had died in the war.

Our family lived in the upstairs of a house called Blinkbonny in Montrose Avenue near Claremont Station. It had a huge magnolia tree in the front garden with big white sweet-smelling flowers and low wide-spreading branches with dark, mysterious plants underneath. Some were agapanthus, and there were more of these round the back next to the concrete stairs we used to get to our home. One day, Mummy told me not to go down the stairs, but I didn’t know why and went all the way down to see if I could see any danger. She leaned over the balcony and told me there was a big spider on the side of the steps halfway up. Then I could see it easily: it was massive with a black body, not at all shiny but a deep terrifying black, and thick black angled legs. It was the most frightening thing I had ever seen, and I couldn’t get back up as I was sure it would jump on me as I passed it. My mother said they did jump, and they lived in the overgrown agapanthus plants, hiding in the thick yellowish roots. Luckily my father came home from work and killed the spider, but I used to dream about it and its family which were still in the agapanthus plants.

At the top of the steps was a small balcony polished with red stoep polish which used to wear off and became a shiny whitish grey in slippery patches between the remaining red bits. My mother told Campbell (when he was three) that cats always fell on their feet. She didn’t see him pick up our new black cat called Noxy, carry her in his arms with her floppy black legs hanging down, and drop her over the balcony. She fell into the agapanthus leaves with a sploshing noise. My mother rushed down to rescue her and she was fine – after all, cats have nine lives. Poor Noxy had only one because she had another permanent accident. While my mother was sewing on her singer machine using the treadle which sounded like a model train, the heavy wooden  ironing board covered with cream sheeting was leaning up against a cupboard. Noxy stretched up to sharpen her claws on it and pulled it down on top of her. I went to the door, but my mother, white faced, told me to stay in my room because there was dark red blood coming out of Noxy’s little black nose. After a few minutes she came and sat on the bed next to me and said that Noxy was all right. I said, “But didn’t she die?” My mother said yes, Noxy had died, but it was all right and she was with Jesus. I asked why my mother was upset then (I could see she was trying not to cry), and was assured that everything was all right. I remained puzzled, frightened and alone because a terrible thing had happened and we had to pretend that it hadn’t.

When Campbell was a small baby, my mother used to rock him in her arms and sing to him, often hymns. She seemed sad although she liked this new baby very much: maybe it was because Grandpa wasn’t here any more (probably with Jesus, like Noxy). I used to go downstairs where I couldn’t hear her singing hymns and making me squirm, and climb about in the grey branches of the fig tree, except when it was full of fruit. The ripe fruit would fall on the ground, masses of it with a strong sickly sweet smell, and hordes of ants would come like the Assyrians in the poem, cohorts gleaming (in their case) in purple and gold. Loquats were not smelly even on the ground, and you could eat them. My mother had a friend she called Helen and I called Mrs Robinson. Her daughter, Dorothea, was my age, and we played together while the grownups drank tea from china cups and talked about the teachers at their school called Rustenburg. Dorothea and I used to climb up her loquat tree and eat the fruit if it was ripe and yellow. We picked some grass once and found some sticks and sat in the loquat tree playing knitting. I just wound the grass round and round the sticks, but she could knit properly which I thought was very advanced. She kindly showed me how to do it, but I couldn’t really catch on – my grass kept slipping off the twigs.

Dorothea’s granny was called Mrs Austin: she lived with them, having come from Scotland which made her very fierce. The first time I ever had a meal out was lunch at the Robinsons. Mrs Robinson dished up the food, and when I had mine, which included some good looking mashed potato, I picked up my knife and fork. Mrs Austin said loudly, “Uh uh uh!” so I put them down again. Then we all had to bow our heads and someone said a prayer about being grateful for what we were about to receive. This was my introduction to grace before a meal. Later on, I was invited to listen to Andrew (Dorothea’s older brother) playing the clarinet, and afterwards we were all given little cups of coffee. We never had coffee in our house, but I didn’t dare refuse my cup so I drank it and liked it. My mother was astonished to hear this as she hated coffee, but she said it was because her Sunday School was held in a room overlooking a graveyard on one side and a coffee factory on the other, so the smell of coffee got mixed up with the dead people in the graves.

Another family we knew were the Creeses. Mr Creese was the groundsman at Newlands and his children Evie (my age), Jenny and Frankie had the whole of Newlands cricket ground to play in, a huge luxury to me. We used to run up and down the wide steps on the Members’ Stand, and jump over the white picket fence. There were lots of used tennis balls around and we had fine games with these. The Creeses used to come to our birthday parties. I would have liked a sister, but my mother said that the war had meant that our family had started late so the sister didn’t arrive. To comfort me about not having a sister, my mother sewed me a red checked dress and my brother a red checked shirt attached to plain red short pants. Near the beginning of the party he was given a red fizzy cooldrink. He was too small to know how to drink this, so he blew into it by mistake and it fizzed up all over his new clothes and made the colour run. Obviously he was unsuitable as a substitute sister.

My father had worked with Mrs Van Ryneveld who served in the kiosk in the shape of a dog called Spotty on the Main Road in Retreat. My parents thought she was brave as she used to carry the money home with her at night to her small holding quite near by. There was a brown horse there, and one Sunday afternoon Campbell and I were looking as him when he suddenly blew down his nose with a loud, horsey sound. Campbell got a dreadful fright and ran back to Mummy, but she and Daddy were standing back laughing at us! Quite unkind really – it was a big fright for a little boy.

We loved going down to the sea. Mummy took us on the train, often to Dalebrook. I saw her start wading into the water with her clothes on, and it turned out that she had seen Campbell lose his footing and tip up into the water without being able to right himself. She picked him up and he coughed a bit before he could breathe properly again, but he has never really liked swimming and used to avoid it at school if at all possible. We enjoyed Fishhoek beach, and usually were given icecreams. I have never managed cones without messing, but that was all right at the sea – you just went back in. I was able to swim in very cold water, and once I nearly had to go the doctor because I was blue all over.

My mother could never understand why I had very happy memories of the time when we lived at Blinkbonny because it had been a really small upstairs flat chosen only because housing was at a premium after the war, but I was too young to understand danger and difficulties (except spiders), and there I experienced security, love and warmth in a united family.