Open Writing

Driving with Fry and Rachmaninov

Next morning, we left Kuruman fairly early, after being woken by the roaring of massive trucks beginning their Sunday's drive immediately outside our bedroom window.

About thirty-five kilometres from Kathu, we drove up to a high point on a pass and looked out on a massive plain leading to high and ragged hills in the West. Leon reminded me that in total we would be travelling about a thousand kilometres West - but that as we were driving and not flying, I had NO excuse for suffering from jet-lag due to the change in time.

The countryside was green and gold with autumn-ripe grasses and rain-rich bush blowing to the southern horizon in a strong wind. The sky was huge, scuffed with clouds of all shapes and sizes - feathers, streamers, dirty rags, puffs and piles, billows and swirls. Thorn trees were covered with hard, white seed-pods. Gradually, we overtook each of the trucks that had woken us earlier.

Then the car started to make a really strange noise. As Leon slowed, there was a puff of smoke from the back of the car. We stopped. My love looked under the bonnet, but couldn't see any specific damage, though he thought a drive-belt on the fancy climate control's air-conditioner had snapped and burnt off. Bravely, we drove on - without a cooling system, as the clouds drifted away, suddenly uninterested in keeping the temperature comfortable for us.

The previous day, I'd noticed many tree-skeletons, their arms writhing to the sky in fantastic shapes. These were all pointed out to Leon as "blasted trees", and he remonstrated with me about my language a couple of times. On this huge plain there were many blasted trees. The road ahead and behind was a long ribbon of yellow and white striped tar. Rachmaninov's first concerto poured in all its glory from the car's speakers.

Sishen appeared on our right - machines and house-size shovels, a water tower and flat-topped dumps looming red over a massive red scar on the earth. At the side of the road, there was a clump of red, dead, blasted trees. We must have driven, at a hundred and twenty kilometres per hour, for at least twenty minutes with the mine-dumps and the huge open pits continuing at our side. Thirty or more years ago, Leon worked on diesel-electric locomotives built for the railroad from Sishen to Saldanha Bay, the only route that carries the iron ore from the mines to the port for onward shipping to Japan.

On the main road in Olifantshoek (Elephants' Corner) we passed the concrete elephant with its red glass eyes that stands in front of the municipal buildings. This village is built amongst the hills called Langberg, or Long Mountain. It took less than a minute to drive through the town, then we were on the open road again. We overtook a truck carrying a load of logs, which had been treated with bitumen. The pungent smell poured through our open air vents and window.

We passed the turnoff for Witsand Nature Reserve, somewhere I definitely want to visit - maybe on our way home in July. Around us, the country was thickly wooded - described in a pamphlet we had as Acacia Forest. Lots of dark green thorn trees, though none too tall.

For my fiftieth birthday earlier this year, friends Pearl and Gordon gave us a copy of Stephen Fry's Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music. As we drove onwards, through a patch of golden grassland, sparsely dotted with low, dark bushes, I read the Foreword of this wonderful book out loud to Leon, with many chuckles.

There were mountains on the left, splodged with cloud-shadows. Three or four vultures circled lazily over the car, perhaps sensing that we were slowly melting of heat-exhaustion inside. We noticed increasing numbers of huge hanging nests on the telephone poles at the roadside, looking like thatched roofs over empty space. Their builders, Communal Weavers, fluttered in and out of the entrances under the thatch in great numbers.

Suddenly, in the middle of the increasingly arid countryside, we were surrounded by grape vines. We'd joined the Orange River Wine Route. Just on the other side of Upington, there were lovely splashes of yellow autumn flowers carpeting the ground.

Before we left home, Leon contacted some old friends of his, friends I'd met once while we were on honeymoon. Mike and Daphne Timson live on Kanoneiland, an island in the middle of the Orange River and in the heart of this unexpected wine country. They are raising their granddaughter, Tyla, whose mother died about eight years ago. When he spoke to Daphne, Leon arranged that we'd arrive there to visit them at about two on Sunday afternoon. This would, Leon explained to me, be after the church services, which Mike led with such dignity and pride. Mike is a lay priest in the Catholic Mission on Kanoneiland.

We arrived just after one, and decided it was far too early. If Daphne said "two o'clock", I thought she'd be inconvenienced if the Bradleys, for once, appeared well before the appointed time. So we drove up and down Kanoneiland a little, Leon pointing out the many huge concrete floors laid for the drying of the grapes for the raisin industry. Eventually, at about ten to two, we drove into the yard of the manse and parked in the shade of a large tree. As we climbed out of the car, we felt as if we'd been steamed!

Daphne greeted us both with warm hugs, and looked a little startled when Leon gave her a bottle of wine to put in the fridge for Mike. Tyla was a little shy. She's twelve. Last time we saw her, she was five and just about to begin "big school". We moved into the lounge, where a portable air conditioner blew coolth into the room. After chatting for a while, Leon asked Daphne, "Where's Mike - still taking a service?"

Daphne hesitated. "You don't know, do you?" I went cold. She continued quietly, "Mike died three years ago." What a shock.

We said all the right things, then Tyla went off to the kitchen to make tea, and brought it through and poured for us, and Daphne told her gently not to pour the tea first, it must be milk first, and we caught our breaths. Mike, a diabetic and a heavy smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer in May three years ago. He went to hospital in Cape Town for treatment and chemo-therapy, went into a diabetic coma, and died in the July. Adding to the grief and pain of losing another much-loved family member was the fact that he left Daphne and Tyla with no income.

The Bishop allowed them to return to the mission station on Kanoneiland, where they live rent-free, and where Daphne helps with the administration. Unfortunately, this arrangement will end soon with the appointment of a new priest, who needs the house. They'll be moving to Port Elizabeth to be near Daphne's brothers, sister and mother. She's hoping her two surviving daughters will help her financially. Later in the afternoon, much saddened by the news, yet warmed by Daphne's and Tyla's warm welcome and happy smiles, we left them with promises to keep in touch.