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    We're Not All Like That
    We're Not All Like That
    We're Not All Like That
    Ebook146 pages2 hours

    We're Not All Like That

    By Jeanne Goosen

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    About this ebook

    What does a pretty Afrikaans wife in the 1950s do when the walls start closing in? When her husband is an embittered Ben Schoeman-supporter who struggles with an asthma pump, and her father sees communists and Catholics behind every bush. When the only relief is the annual ATKV concert in Hartenbos? And – especially – when her salt-of-the-earth neighbours are suddenly forced to pack up and move away? Jeanne Goosen tells the story of how Doris van Greunen tries to break out of her world: with her job as an usherette at the bioscope, with her Cavallas, with friends like Aunt Mavis and Uncle Tank – and with Barnie, the swank. Through the eyes of a child – Doris’s daughter, Gertie – the story explores the universal yearning for love and romance.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKwela
    Release dateAug 15, 2007
    ISBN9780795704369
    We're Not All Like That

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      Book preview

      We're Not All Like That - Jeanne Goosen

      cover.jpg

      JEANNE GOOSEN

      We’re Not All Like That

      Translated from the Afrikaans by

      ANDRÉ BRINK

      KWELA BOOKS

      Continually I try to write it down,

      this sense of family life. For it seems to me

      that the funny voices we make with our mouths,

      or the squiggles that we put on paper,

      are only for ourselves to hear, to prove

      there’s someone there.

      BERYL BAINBRIDGE

      PART ONE

      My mom and Aunt Mavis pull up beside the chicken run in my dad’s Plymouth. They’re kicking up such a row laughing and talking that old Mrs Haasbroek’s dog opposite starts barking.

      ‘Shoosh!’ shouts Aunt Mavis.

      They come in through the back door.

      ‘Have you been a good girl?’ asks my mom. She takes a parcel from her bag, holds it up against the light and reads: ‘Which twin has the Tony?’

      Aunt Mavis puts on the kettle for tea. ‘Gee, Doris,’ she says, ‘you promise you going to make a good job on my perm, hey?’

      ‘Don’t fear when Doris is near,’ laughs my mom. ‘Gertie,’ she tells me, ‘go and get us some small plates.’ She takes three doughnuts from a paper bag.

      Aunt Mavis sets out the cups and my mom puts a doughnut on each plate. We sit down at the kitchen table.

      ‘Nothing to beat the Homepride’s doughnuts,’ says Aunt Mavis through a full mouth.

      ‘Is my girlie enjoying it?’ asks my mom, leaning over to kiss me.

      Aunt Mavis lightly taps my head with her teaspoon. ‘Little Blue-eyes!’

      I laugh. My mom and Aunt Mavis can be so funny.

      ‘Gertie,’ says my mom, ‘go get us the tall mirror from our bedroom, then you can sit there on the floor with your puzzle. We’re going to perm Aunt Mavis’s hair.’ She touches her own hair, her eyes huge. ‘Old Tank won’t know his girl when he sees her tonight. He’ll be seasick from all the waves.’

      My mom and Aunt Mavis work evenings and one Saturday afternoon a month at the matinées in the Victoria bioscope in Parow. They’re usherettes.

      Aunt Mavis is my mom’s best friend. They wear black skirts and white blouses when they usher. They also wear flat round hats on the back of their heads, held in place with hairpins. They’re not really hats. It’s more like the small round baking pans in which my mom makes cake when my grandpa comes to visit. Only deeper.

      Aunt Mavis is fat and jolly. When she lights a Cavalla she blows the smoke out through her nose. She drops in almost every morning. Sometimes she and my mom sit on the floor in the sitting room listening to records on our Pilot. What they like is musicals like Showboat and Naughty Marietta.

      My mom has every record ever made by Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Every time she plays ‘Maytime’ she and Aunt Mavis join in when Jeanette MacDonald comes to the bit about ‘Sweetheart, sweetheart’. Then their eyes get full of tears.

      ‘Nothing like true love,’ Aunt Mavis says every time.

      My mom doesn’t say anything, she just sits staring in front of her. My mom also has a record of Richard Tauber singing. The song is called ‘For you alone’. When my mom is really feeling sad, that’s the record she plays. I once heard her telling Aunt Mavis that my dad bought her the record when they were still engaged.

      ‘Piet was such a romantic, you know, Mavis. You’d never think it was the same man you see there today.’ She wipes the tears from her eyes and blows her nose.

      ‘Ag shame, Doris man,’ says Aunt Mavis. ‘Who knows, perhaps it’ll all come back once he’s over it all. You never know.’

      ‘Whenever he came over he always brought something. Always a surprise. Like chocolates, Black Magic, or sometimes flowers, once even a bowl with goldfish in it.’ My mom gets up, takes two glasses from the shelf and says to Aunt Mavis, ‘Ag man, let’s have a drink.’

      At other times my mom and Aunt Mavis spend their time knitting at the kitchen table. Aunt Mavis is forever knitting pullovers for Uncle Tank, complaining about his long arms. It’s cables they knit, with three needles. They count the stitches in English, marking off the rows on the Woman’s Weekly patterns in pencil. Sometimes my mom pours them rum from the bottle my dad uses for his chest before he goes to bed at night.

      Uncle Tank is Aunt Mavis’s boyfriend. I think he’s younger than her, at least that’s what I heard my mom tell my dad. He has a big belly, and a moustache, and he parts his hair in the middle. He and Aunt Mavis always mix their English and Afrikaans. They’re renting two rooms from Mrs Bonthuys a bit further down, in Watering Street.

      Uncle Tank has trouble finding a job and Aunt Mavis says it makes him depressed. He has only one foot and he hobbles along. My mom says it’s the enemy who shot off his left foot in the war. That was up North. He gets a war pension, but Aunt Mavis says it isn’t enough for them to live on.

      Almost every day Uncle Tank is out looking for a job. Sometimes when Isaac Levitt needs a driver up at the chicken feed factory he sends a message to Uncle Tank. Then he drives the lorry for a couple of days, just as long as they need him, dropping off chicken feed at the shops.

      Some mornings on his way back from looking for work Uncle Tank turns up at our place with a bottle of Old Brown sherry from which he pours for himself and Aunt Mavis and my mom at the kitchen table.

      Then Uncle Tank tells them how very nearly he got the job. ‘You might say I already had it in my hands, but at the last moment they found out about my foot and then it was tickets.’

      He takes another mouthful of sherry and gets up, leaning forward a bit. ‘It’s bad luck,’ he says. He blows his nose, fills up his glass again, and sits down.

      ‘Cruel world,’ says Aunt Mavis, lighting a Cavalla and blowing out the smoke through her nose.

      ‘You know, Doris,’ says Uncle Tank, ‘here I’m standing before you, a man with two hands, willing and able, but do you think there’s anyone in this life prepared to listen to another man’s story? Not a damn. It’s not enough for them to see you begging. Oh no, they’ve got to squash you. And then we’ve got this government too,’ adds Uncle Tank. ‘But you just listen to me, mark my words, I’m giving them another two years and no more. That’s all.’ He points a finger at my mom. ‘That’s not the way to treat people, not even if they’re kaffirs. What a life for the poor bastards!’ Uncle Tank gets up again, but Aunt Mavis pushes him back into the chair.

      ‘Don’t get so upset, Tank. Things will work out eventually, man.’

      My dad doesn’t like Uncle Tank and Aunt Mavis. I heard him telling my mom that they’re living together like man and wife. Mavis is bad enough, says my dad, but that Tank, he’s a bladdie communist.

      My mom says it’s the war that made Uncle Tank the way he is, but once you get to know him, he isn’t such a bad old stick, she’s got nothing against him. Actually she rather likes him.

      I must say, I’m also fond of Uncle Tank and it’s quite true, my dad doesn’t know him properly. When he comes to visit he always pinches my nose and says, ‘Hello, Monkeyface! Give us a smile.’ Sometimes he gives me money to buy cigarette sweets. Then I sit on the kitchen floor and every time my mom and them light their Cavallas I put a cigarette sweet in my mouth and start sucking, holding my elbow in my other hand.

      They say that once, just after the war, Uncle Tank spent two months in jail. He and another man caught birds in a trap, and then dyed them and sold them, telling people they were Australian sparrows. When it started raining the dye came off and that’s how Uncle Tank and the other man got caught. Actually the dye cost them just as much as they got for the birds, and if you add up all the trouble as well, he’s not so sure it was a good idea, says Uncle Tank.

      ‘It was just bad luck on my side,’ he says. ‘That’s all. Bad luck.’

      Aunt Mavis says Uncle Tank can get very down in the dumps. ‘This thing with his foot gets him down, Doris,’ says Aunt Mavis. ‘And you know what men are like, never show their feelings. I know Tank can get on one’s nerves at times, but he’s a good sort, really.’

      Uncle Tank is good at playing the guitar and singing. He can sing Italian opera and croon like Bing Crosby. And he can also imitate Al Jolson. When he sings ‘There was blood on the saddle’ or when he yodels you’d think he was a real cowboy. Like Gene Autrey.

      He and Aunt Mavis and my mom are sitting here at the kitchen table having a drink, and soon Aunt Mavis will be saying, ‘Tank, give us a song, chum. Come on, please man.’

      Then Uncle Tank starts singing and playing. He sings ‘Mammy’, his eyes filling with tears. Afterwards he sings ‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine’, just the way Bing Crosby sings it. And then he sings Italian. He sings ‘Back to Sorrento’, ‘O sole mio’ and ‘Santa Lucia’. Uncle Tank has to sing ‘Santa Lucia’ over and over. It’s Aunt Mavis’s favourite.

      When he’s finished singing he fills up his glass again and sits down. Then he wipes his face with his handkerchief.

      My mom says, ‘Tank, you’ve got a great talent. You’re a truly gifted man.’

      Uncle Tank says, ‘Doris, I could’ve gone professional, you know. But what do you know, then the war broke out and from then on it was just bad luck for this boy. Everybody says I ought to be on the stage, but Doris, be honest, who wants to see a performer with one foot missing? Tell me. Come on. Tell me . . .!’

      ‘Ag never mind, Tankie,’ says Aunt Mavis, touching his shoulder. ‘One day your ship will come. Just wait and see.’

      Aunt Mavis sits down on Uncle Tank’s lap, her arms round his neck. ‘Hey, cheer up, man, come on! Give your Mavis a kiss!’ She presses her nose into Uncle Tank’s neck and says, ‘Kissy, kissy, kissy!’ until he starts laughing again.

      He looks at my mom. ‘Doris, look at this.’ Then he sort of chuckles and says, ‘Woman . . .!’

      Shortly before lunch Uncle Tank and Aunt Mavis get up to go. Uncle Tank takes his guitar, slides his arm through Aunt Mavis’s, and off they

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