In 12 weekly workshops, we’ll be looking at specific writing skills for fiction, non-fiction (or even scripts and screenplays). We spend part of each session discussing or brainstorming problems in the writing projects of participants.

In the past, our workshops have generated lively discussion and led to on-going friendships while we’ve wrestled each other’s characters over a glass of wine.

Richard brings his unique skills, which have certainly helped me in my writing – using scenes and arcs to “show” rather than “tell”, using detail, and his brilliant grasp of dialogue.

I bring all my mistakes and attempts to become a better writer over the years. Richard and I love our Circles for quite selfish reasons. We always take something out.

Both of us have been writing trainers for some years, at Wits University and privately. We’re not trying to tell you we’re the best at the writing game. There’s always someone better or more qualified.

But perhaps because we know how hard it is, we’ve given a great deal of thought to what might make it easier.

Those who’ve attended in the past seemed to enjoy it. In fact, past participants requested an on-going “maintenance” Circle to continue the process. If you’re interested in attending, write to allaboutwriting@worldonline.co.za.

We will also be running a writer’s retreat, with the emphasis on skills and creative exercises, in the small agricultural village of Vrede, in the Free State during March, as well as a weekend “getting you going” course in Johannesburg over the weekend of January 31 to February 1st February.

Here are some comments from past Workshop participants:

The facilitators were just great together. They complemented one another beautifully, and gave a perfect mix of hard (though always constructive) criticism, and encouragement. Jo-Anne and Richard are nothing short of inspirational. But also so down-to-earth and approachable. – Tara, media specialist and trainer.

Thank you for opening doors for me. I have walked away from the workshop with an open heart and a willingness to take risks . . . Thank you for your gentle creative spirit. – Warren, actor and lecturer.

The course allowed me to release the long pent-up flow of creative writing that has been gummed up, for some years, with academic convention and footnoting imperatives. Incidentally, my academic writing has benefited too from this detox treatment. – Cynthia, senior lecturer.

“I’ve learnt really helpful, objective things – like you don’t fill your work with exposition.”
- Kate, talkshow host and travel writer

“It gave us a chance to practise – it was great to just write something and not to feel a dreadful sense of insecurity.” -Zann, publisher.

The nice thing about working with Richard and Jo-Anne is that they never impose their own voice on you, even in a subtle way. Working with them, you always get the feeling that they are trying to help you uncover your own voice, your way of telling the story and understanding the characters. They seem to weigh their suggestions very carefully against your vision and against where you want the story to go. I can only imagine that this comes from their own unique understanding of the position of the writer, and their sensitivity towards that. They are great teachers, and I have benefited immeasurably from their advice which is always practical, and always constructive. – Jackie, journalist.

He was most concerned about his mother’s reaction. Would she forgive him? Would it split the family, and make him an outcast?

Shortly after it appeared, his mother summoned him. Sweaty palmed, he appeared to receive her judgment.

“Excellent book, darling,” she said. “Your sister is absolutely true to life. And a brilliant portrayal of Uncle William. Utterly searing.

“But do tell me, darling … Who on earth did you base that awful mother on?”

I have a somewhat different experience. People constantly see themselves or their acquaintances in my books – mostly erroneously. When my first book, The Innocence of Roast Chicken, appeared, my mother took the failings of my mother-character very personally.

“It wasn’t meant to be you,” I said, which mollified her only slightly.

When the mother in my next book appeared only at the end of a telephone, it made things even worse. She thought I was expunging her from my life, if only in fantasy.

Just recently, I was forwarded an anguished email from someone I’d known at university, asking whether she was the “boring and judgmental teacher” in my second book.

Readers often get voyeuristic kicks from an assumed glimpse into the author’s life. In our reality-show world, whether “it’s real” gives more of a thrill than whether a piece of fiction speaks to us.

A case in point is the real-life soap opera created by Yasmin Kureishi’s very public scrap with her brother, Hanif, over his fictional depiction of their family.

The “revenge memoir” by Michel Houellebecq’s mother, Lucie Ceccaldi, who termed her son “an untalented social climber” probably did more to sell books than all the critical accounts of his works as a “cruel illumination of a troubled era”.

Novelists do draw from life. Pat Conroy is said to have no contact with his family as a result. Iris Murdoch apparently felt herself less of writer for not being able to create her characters purely from imagination.

And I suppose I do too – to an extent. When I first began writing, I found it comforting to imagine someone I knew, or perhaps an amalgam of two or three.

But the narrative process is different from life. Characters provide conflict and drama. We place them in situations the real people may never have faced.

Before two pages are written, my characters have developed their own personalities; become their own people. They even look different in my head.

In my first book, I borrowed from my own life the relationship between a young girl and her two older brothers. The elder is protective yet remote. The younger is gentler and more sensitive, but struggles with those qualities in a society that prizes “manly” traits.

The events that overtook these characters never happened to my family. The situations I placed them in drew strengths and outlined weaknesses that were never apparent in our lives.

In four books, most of my protagonists have been women. There’s no feminist agenda behind that. I’m a woman and I find it easier to think myself into the head of another woman – even one that is different from me.

I’m not a campaigning writer. I have no ulterior purpose. I don’t build in subliminal signposts to pop up between the lines. I believe that, if you begin writing with a “message”, your characters will become cardboard symbols of your intention.

I have no special dispensation, no answers more valid than anyone else’s. I have no desire to grab my readers by the throat and force them to understand what I think I know.

My intention is to explore the actions and motivations of imperfect people. I am simply not interested in characters that represent some desired or perceived attribute.

I was once criticised for showing a black character as a “victim” of apartheid, rather than strong, brave and in charge of his own destiny.

What the critic failed to mention was that all my characters are flawed, and many are damaged. This is as true of my white characters as it is of black, my women and men.

I write about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, which is how I see South Africa. It has formed – and sometimes damaged – us in fascinating ways.

My writing is a seeking to understand. I rummage among the mistakes and quirks of, hopefully, “real” people.

I couldn’t bear to depict the bad guys without vindication and the good guys without flaw. I have no interest in writing people as they “should be”.

It’s not my job as a novelist to build a nation by depicting all women as powerful and brave, nor to imbue all black characters with the dignity and strength we long for in our society.

It would be disingenuous of me to deny having a world view or that this comes through in my writing. If anything, it is this. I don’t believe in good and evil, and certainly not as embodied in people.

I am fascinated by people’s weaknesses, as much as their strengths. Every person is capable of actions that either harm or help others, depending on the pressure of circumstance.

In my third book, Sad at the Edges, I became obsessed with why a man might become a spy and, having become one, how he would view himself in our new society.

I once knew an activist who was later exposed as a spy, and became an interrogator. But since I had known him only as an activist, I knew only a fragment of him.

Writing the book, I tried to climb inside someone like him, to explore his motivations. To feel what he felt, I had to suspend my personal judgments, or he would have emerged a stereotype.

Readers have told me they had empathy for this character, but felt guilty for it, since he was clearly an “evil” man.

But surely this is the only way we will ever understand ourselves – as individuals or as a nation. That’s the beauty of fiction. It allows us the latitude to look unflinchingly at people’s thoughts and behaviour, without the tyranny of “what really happened”.

There’s no longer a struggle to be fought. Surely we needn’t lump people into boxes to prove how “right on” we are, or that we’re “for or against” the right people.

I like people. I have empathy for their weaknesses, and a belief in human courage when the chips are down. But it’s the job of the novelist to rummage around in people’s less savoury aspects as much as their good sides.

As I grow in writing experience, I draw as much from imagination as from life. The protagonists in my latest book, My Brother’s Book, are drawn purely from the imagination.

Oh sure, Lily probably has some aspects of me. But in other respects, she’s very different. I like Lily. She’s a colourful, attractive personality – but she is very far from perfect.

Her brother Tom is nothing like me, nor anyone I know. Tom is a person of great strength, but his strength becomes his great flaw, in not permitting the slightest acknowledgment of human weakness. He tries to be good, yet he is harder to like and get to know than Lily.

I climb inside my characters. I daydream them and intuit what they will say and how they will respond. They become real to me. My plots grow largely out of the actions of my characters and these actions can sometimes take me by surprise.

In order to make them real, I research them to death – and then forget it. I swallow my research, digest it and then write from my gut.

I hope that my research is invisible – that it becomes as much a part of a character as one’s own history does. I want my characters’ reactions to spring naturally from the people they are.

My greatest challenge, in the second half of My Brother’s Book, was writing from Tom’s point of view. I had to become a man – and a man who was as unlike me as anyone could be.

All I can say is that I sucked people dry of the experiences that mirrored Tom’s. I read the books Tom would have read, and immersed myself in his spiritual life.

I must admit though, I’ve been around men enough to have a little fun with him. I thoroughly enjoyed writing the passage in which his girlfriend tells him, in the middle of a rugby game nogal, that he needn’t accompany her to an appointment … (I won’t say what it is. It gives too much away.)

Tom absently thanks her, which causes her to dissolve into tears that are totally bewildering to Tom. “But if you wanted me to come, why didn’t you just say so?”

Just because I’m not a campaigning writer, doesn’t mean issues won’t emerge through my characters. But I hope they emerge intuitively, without fanfare.

If you remain true to yourself and your characters, issues that ordinary people grapple with will naturally appear. In my first book, the child Kate is too full of hope, while her adult self feels herself incapable of it. I am probably more like the child Kate, but I suppose both embody our bi-polar South African experience. We never plod along like other societies. We’re always in euphoria or despair.

My Brother’s Book deals with different truths. We are a society obsessed with truth-telling, yet we seem incapable of accepting that everyone needs a different truth to make sense of their lives.

Lily and Tom clash over the “truth” of their upbringing. Tom longs for a universal truth to aspire to, but both cling to the individual histories that make it possible to face the very different people they’ve become.

Different writers treat characters differently. Writer James Wood says people tend to judge characters on whether they are flat, unlikeable, or “real”.

Yet many post-modern creations are “not real”. And writers like Houellebecq routinely produce thoroughly unpleasant characters that show us things about ourselves and society.

EM Forster said of Charles Dickens: “Dickens’ people are nearly all flat … Probably the immense vitality of Dickens causes his characters to vibrate a little, so that they borrow his life and appear to lead one of their own.”

I believe it’s an effect of perspective. If a character is shown to us from the outside, as a fly on the wall would see them, their inner life is implied. We are intrigued. We imagine it for ourselves.

Through the roughly sketched strokes of a person’s aphorisms, or through small telling details, we assume an inner life that need not be spelt out.

Three of my four books were written in the first person, which allowed me to display a depth of inner life. I am comfortable in the first person, since I enjoy exploring uncomfortable aspects of my characters’ inner lives. That’s just my style.

We often treat characters like the people we meet. We like them if we identify with them, or respond emotionally to them.

But books are different. Instead of worrying about how much is “true”, or whether they represent traits that are good for nation-building, we can choose to judge them on how compellingly they draw us into their world. Do they ring true? Do they move us?

After all, fiction isn’t falsehood, any more than history is the truth. And as My Brother’s Book shows, there is no one truth anyway. Fiction allows us a view into many worlds, and many truths, in a way that transcends fact.

This article ran in the September issue of Wordsetc, Women & Words. Please support this beautifully conceived and produced literary magazine. We need initiatives like this. Check it out on www.wordsetc.co.za and subscribe for R170 for four editions.

In 12 weekly workshops, we’ll be looking at specific writing skills for fiction, non-fiction (or even scripts and screenplays). We spend part of each session discussing or brainstorming problems in the writing projects of participants.

In the past, our workshops have generated lively discussion and led to on-going friendships while we’ve wrestled each other’s characters over a glass of wine.

Richard brings his unique skills, which have certainly helped me in my writing – using scenes and arcs to “show” rather than “tell”, using detail, and his brilliant grasp of dialogue.

I bring all my mistakes and klutzy attempts to become a better writer over the years. Richard and I love our Circles for quite selfish reasons. We always take something out.

Both of us have been writing trainers for some years, at Wits University and privately. We’re not trying to tell you we’re the best at the writing game. There’s always someone better or more qualified.

But perhaps because we know how hard it is, we’ve given a great deal of thought to what might make it easier.

Those who’ve attended in the past seemed to enjoy it. In fact, past participants requested an on-going “maintenance” Circle to continue the process. If you’re interested in attending, write to allaboutwriting@worldonline.co.za.

Here are some comments from past Workshop participants:

The facilitators were just great together. They complemented one another beautifully, and gave a perfect mix of hard (though always constructive) criticism, and encouragement. Jo-Anne and Richard are nothing short of inspirational. But also so down-to-earth and approachable. – Tara, media specialist and trainer.

Thank you for opening doors for me. I have walked away from the workshop with an open heart and a willingness to take risks . . . Thank you for your gentle creative spirit. – Warren, actor and lecturer.

The course allowed me to release the long pent-up flow of creative writing that has been gummed up, for some years, with academic convention and footnoting imperatives. Incidentally, my academic writing has benefited too from this detox treatment. – Cynthia, senior lecturer.

“I’ve learnt really helpful, objective things – like you don’t fill your work with exposition.”
- Kate, talkshow host and travel writer

“It gave us a chance to practise – it was great to just write something and not to feel a dreadful sense of insecurity.” -Zann, publisher.

The nice thing about working with Richard and Jo-Anne is that they never impose their own voice on you, even in a subtle way. Working with them, you always get the feeling that they are trying to help you uncover your own voice, your way of telling the story and understanding the characters. They seem to weigh their suggestions very carefully against your vision and against where you want the story to go. I can only imagine that this comes from their own unique understanding of the position of the writer, and their sensitivity towards that. They are great teachers, and I have benefited immeasurably from their advice which is always practical, and always constructive. – Jackie, journalist.

I had just arrived at the launch of Exclusive Books Homebru list, and was thrust, sweaty-palmed, into the booms and mics of a small TV crew.

“Okay, this won’t take long,” the young woman told me. “Name?”

“Jo-Anne Richards.”

“Title?”

“Ms.”

“What?”

“Ms. You know, like, M-S.”

“Okay, rolling. Good afternoon. We’re here at the Homebru launch, and we’re talking to author, Jo-Anne Richards. Jo-Anne, tell us a little about your new book, Ms.”

Naturally I still feel like a total idiot. But I work at a university where people are touchy about titles. I thought she meant professor, doctor, whatever … (And, I suppose, silly me, I thought she might already have looked up what we’d all written.)

My new book is actually called My Brother’s Book, and I chose it because it seemed to suit the story. The first line reads: “I was born on page 23 of my brother’s book. On page 52, before the whole world, I betrayed him.”

I could only hope it would be intriguing enough to tempt readers to pluck it from a shelf. You can never tell what will entice, and what will just end up irritating.

Naturally, it did spawn a few poor attempts at humour: “But if it’s your brother’s book, why did you say it was yours …?”

And a few misunderstandings. “Whose book is this, then?”

The publicist for Picador wrote an email to the proprietor of a local book store, headed My Brother’s Book, and was surprised when it was ignored, even after resending. Later, she discovered the poor man thought she was trying to importune him to read a manuscript by her real-life brother.

Titles are tricky things. Sometimes they jump out at you, and sometimes you cast about in vain, searching for something that resonates.

My first title, The Innocence of Roast Chicken leapt from a phrase in the book, and it did prove to be a good title. Few people forget it, even if people often say:

“Oh yes, aren’t you that Chicken woman? Or, didn’t you write The smell of Roast Chicken / that Chicken Soup book / The Soul of the Roast Chicken”?

I thought my second title Touching the Lighthouse, suited the story and, for those who know South Africa, it refers to Mouille Point lighthouse in Cape Town.

When I first suggested it, I asked my publishers, Headline in London, whether it wasn’t perhaps a little too Virginia Woolf. They scoffed at the idea.

“Oh go on, dear,” they said. “No one could accuse you of trying to be Virginia Woolf.” (I wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or pleased.)

But true to form, however, one of my first reviews spent much of 500 words trying to prove how unlike Woolf I was, no matter how much I was vainly trying to be.

When my third book was due, I was told by a bookshop executive that it was bad luck to have the word “Sad” in a title. It did worry me a little, (I’m pathetically superstitious about books) but I went ahead and named it Sad at the Edges.

It was originally supposed to be “Karma City”, which is what one of my characters called Jo’burg – the place where your karma hunts you down, no matter how you try to avoid it.

I was persuaded that it sounded a little new-agey, and I went along with the decision although I do think it’s perhaps a little … sad.

I know titles are important but since I’ve been in the business of titles, I’ve also become a great believer in the Law of the Unintended Reader.

The Innocence of Roast Chicken really did end up on quite a few cookery shelves. (In fact, I’m told it very nearly made it onto the Myrna Rosen list of approved kosher cookbooks.) And it ended up selling well enough.

Lighthouse was a story of the wild 1980s – full of sex, drugs and politics – but I once found it in a Christian shelf of a local bookshop. There’s just something about lighthouses, I suppose …

And a friend once found Sad in the Psychology and Self Help section, probably rubbing shoulders with Deepak Chopra.

I told the person who saw it just to leave it there. He sells a hell of a lot more books than I do.

I was born on page 23 of my brother’s book. On page 52, before the whole world, I betrayed him.
There was so much in between though. So many days plumped by doves roasted on fires, and fruit straight off the tree. Dusty days, doused in heat, that we explored breathlessly and well. Yes, well, you bastard. How could you have crushed all that into fewer than thirty pages?
You don’t mention it, but on page 62 I tried to make amends. And again on page 110. And twice more on 243 and 285. No reason you should, I suppose.
My brother hasn’t spoken to me for thirty years.

We left Cathcart in the middle of the night. That’s the part of my life I remember most clearly – which just shows how differently we turned out. No-one told me why we were leaving, but somehow that didn’t bother me. I was used to it.
Tom woke me, shaking me with his left hand while he fought Pop over his right shoulder. Pop lifted his arms in the huge shrug he used when Tom nagged at him.
“But you never much cared for Cathcart, Tom-boy. I don’t know why …”
“That’s not the point. At least we’d managed to stay here a while. We’d grown … Lily was settling.”
“It’s just a village, Tom. A tiny outpost in a drought-ridden province of an old colony. The rest of the world is out there waiting for us.”
Tom rubbed his arm across his face. It was all flared up with fury, espe¬cially around the pimples on his chin. He could never get rid of them, no matter how he scrubbed at them twenty times a day.
I sat up and yawned. The boy I was crazy about was away in Port Eliza¬beth swimming in the provincial team. I loved him about as much as I loved Air Force Captain Borman, who was soon to orbit the moon in the riskiest space venture ever attempted.
I’d probably never know how it went now – the swimming, that is. Not that he’d have told me. But it would have filtered down from the older kids. Tom would have told me, for sure.
I did like Cathcart, although it was much more hoity-toity than Fort Beaufort. At least in Beaufort most of the kids spent their time trawling the Kat River for eel and mudfish. They ended up looking about as grubby and grazed as us.
I wonder if you still picture those small towns the way I do. Built by merchants and farmers, Cathcart was set in its ways, its solidity set in the stone of its churches. And yet, it had the whiff of something more. There was hope there, in the ethereal tracery of eaves and pediments. It whispered of a new start where life would be better, where children would grow in sturdiness and their respect of the world.
I wasn’t that bothered about leaving though. There was an excitement to new starts, as the settlers of Cathcart had known. Like Pop, I was ad¬dicted to beginnings, to the possibilities that floated like fairies in the veld. If ever you trapped one, grabbing it by the wings as it flew by, it always turned out to be a thistle seed. I still liked them, but they were better before you knew.
I’m fairly sure I was excited. I do remember that Pop gave another of his great shrugs. His shrugs had shaped in me a sense of patience with whatever fate tossed our way. I still believe it was Pop’s way of saying we’d be okay, no matter what town we skipped at midnight, or new life we plunged into. He was wrong, of course. That’s what you’d say. Yet I believed him.
You were always such an intense boy, your battle against teenage tears waged over dry cheeks and aching throat. I wonder why you took that move so hard. You never fitted in, in Cathcart. If you’d been a hotshot at rugby or cricket it might have been different. But your awkward lope never suited you to the heroic sportmanship of small-town life.
The night air was buttery, thick with spring, smeared with stars. Pop tucked a blanket around me as I slid across the bench seat.
“The bikes, Pop. I don’t care about the other stuff. Please bring the bikes.”
Pop placed a finger across his lips. He and Tom wheeled the rattly bikes almost noiselessly around the side of the Grosvenor. We’d spent the last year there among the travelling salesmen and the boarders who worked in the banks and the post office.
I watched him carry out the precious transistor. He went back one more time for Tom’s pellet gun and my dictionary and scrapbook. That was okay. Now I was happy. I didn’t care much for all the other stuff.
We’d become rich when we left Fort Beaufort to come here. Pop had ar¬rived piled with gifts. He’d been away, as usual. But this time he’d come back with bikes and toys, bell-bottoms for Tom and a daisy-covered hand¬bag for me. All that stuff, pouring down on us like a thunderstorm in summer. And now Pop free-wheeled the bakkie down the hill, leaving it all behind us.
The engine choked itself awake when we passed the town hall. It was the last time I’d see its bell, smuggled off The Orient when it was wrecked off East London. Miss van Rensburg told us that in history class. The last time I’d see Windvogel, which we climbed nearly every afternoon to the caves where the big boys could smoke. The last time I’d see the Royal, where we’d ordered Hubbly Bubbly while Pop had a toot …
Just before we reached the main road, Pop jerked to the side of a road. An old Xhosa man was walking into town. He was the only sign of life in the village, except for the woof of a prowling dog.
“Have we got any money left?” Pop asked.
“We’ve only a couple of bob, Pop. Please. It’s all we’ve got.” Tom held a hand over his pocket. “Give it to me.”
Tom handed it over with the sliver of a shrug. There was no use arguing. Pop dropped from the truck and leapt over the furrow that would would carry the floods when the rains finally came.
“Molo, Tata, how are you?”
The old man gazed into the distance, his beard jutting fiercely in front of him. “Molo, Master. I am fine. Is Master fine too?”
“I am also fine, Tata. Life is good. I would like you to take this home with you. Spend it on your family because God has been good to me. He has given me a truck and these two children, both strong as yellowwood saplings when the rains have fallen.”
“Inkosi kakulu, Master. My grandchildren will eat well today. God has been good to me today, through you.”
Pop sprang back into the bakkie. Turning to Tom, who was ignoring
him, he slapped him on the shoulder and laughed.
“My zun, my zun. My beautiful boy. What a glorious life.”
Tom said nothing, but his body softened a little. I think he’d given up. When Pop was like this, there was no use fighting him. Leaning his arm along the back of the seat, he made room for me to sleep. I dozed be¬tween Pop’s warm tummy and Tom’s firm side. After a while he must have thought I was asleep because he said: “Why, Pop?”
“Why what, son?”
“Why did you play those guys? We aren’t in the same league as the doc¬tor and the chemist.”
“Don’t ever think that, son of mine. Don’t ever consider yourself less than the likes of them.”
“But Pop, the stakes were too high. You knew … knew they were.” Tom’s voice broke on the “knew”. He stopped and cleared his throat.
“But I’m better than they are.”
“Well, not this time, you weren’t.” Finally, I felt Tom’s ribs vibrate.
“Too clever by half, aren’t you?” Pop reached over me to cuff Tom’s cheek. “Everyone can have an unlucky run. Anyway, it’s good we’re leav¬ing. It’s time. The old Grosvenor’s about to be knocked down. They’re going to build something else there.”
I felt Tom nod. “That’s not the point though, Pop. It’s the way of leaving, without ever asking Lily and me if it’s okay. It’s always too much or too little with you.”
Pop just went on as if he hadn’t heard. “And there’s talk that some peo¬ple are against building the new location. Cost, of course. It always comes to that, doesn’t it? Always makes good men argue bad.”
“Ja, Pop, I heard, but I’m talking about us .”
“If they don’t build, they’ll have to send the ’surplus’ Africans back to the Transkei. Do you know what that means? The ones without work. Saves building schools, I suppose, to have a location without kids. Come on, Tom-boy, I’m not a political man, but we don’t want to be mixed up in a thing like that.”
Tom didn’t reply. There was silence before Pop spoke again.
“It makes you strong, you know, Tom. You’re strong and you’re brave and I know you’ll get on in life. I’m not a rich man – not often anyway …”
“Ja, and usually not for very long .” Tom laughed out loud now. Thank goodness. Oh, thank goodness.
” . Ja, Mr Too Clever. When you’re right, you’re right. But the thing is, I don’t know how to be another kind of man. So perhaps that’s all I can give you to get along in life. That, and the presence of something greater than us .
“And if I say to the mountain
Move, cast yourself into the sea,
And believe it will come to pass,
It will come to pass.
For eye has not seen,
Nor ear heard,
Nor heart felt,
What God has prepared
For them that await on Him.”

You joined in then, I’m sure you did. You always said you didn’t believe in God, and certainly not Pop’s kind of God. But I remember feeling the flutter of your breath as you joined his refrain:

“In God do I live, In God do I love, In God do I breathe, In God do I move, In God I am.”

It was light when I woke. We had already passed through Fort Beaufort and were waiting to cross the narrow bridge on the Adelaide side. The moment is as clear to me as it was then. You would say that’s an illusion; that I’ve recreated it as I think it must have been. But you’d be wrong. I remember all of it.
The mountains were a blue smear, still clutching the last of the night. Pop rolled down the window, breathing deeply. The morning was sharp, tangy with orange-blossom from the citrus farms.
“Nice Chevvie,” Pop said as we waited for it to cross the bridge. We rat¬tled over the bridge in our turn, and on through thorn trees burnt brown and dusty by drought. Rising and falling through the kloofs, we smelt the khaki tang of droog my keels and suurbessies.
“Where are we going?” That was me. You probably knew better than to ask.
“Wait and see,” said Pop.
That journey was the beginning of the best times. But also, I’m sure you’d remind me (were you ever to speak to me again), the beginning of the end of childhood. The rooigras tinted the brush pink. And before the sun rose thick and heavy, Pop slammed his foot on the reluctant brake.
“Look, my children. Every day we are granted at least one thing that makes us happy to be alive. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
Flattened against the sky, a kudu stood to survey his kingdom. Horns thrust towards heaven, he lifted one hoof then the other, before tossing his head and trotting across the road and out of sight.
Pop was trying to give you something that day, Tom. I wonder if you grasped his sanctified little offering. He didn’t ever have much to give, but he was generous with what he had.
The heat dropped roughly across us before we reached Bedford, where it seemed we were to stay. They were working on the road again, so we took the detour past Malangskraal and came in on the Grahamstown road.
We rounded the bend past the railway station. The village erupted from the land with no scattered forethought of homestead, shop or shed. On one side of the road, cows tugged at sweetveld. On the other, shops and houses proclaimed the town centre.
Descending into a still drowsing Donkin Street, we drew up outside the Bedford Hotel, its batwing bar doors closed to passers-by. Somewhere, a bell pealed an invitation to Sunday worship.
“I’m really hungry, Pop,” I said.
“Shut up, Lily,” Tom said. “There’s no money left. It’s no good whining about it.” But he said it in a quiet way. I could tell he wasn’t really cross with me.
Pop waved his arm like he was about to bow. “What? Princess Lilibeth is hungry? Well that shall not be. Enter, my Princess. Enter your castle and you shall eat all that your royal stomach can bear.”
“Don’t tease her, Pop,” Tom said. “She’s only …”
“I am not,” I declared, before he could say what I thought he was about to say. I was very nearly a teenager. He knew that very well.
“Tom .”
“It’s not fair, Pop .”
“Tom . I was here last week.”
“Oh.”
“We’re paid up for two nights – dinner, bed and breakfast. So now, my beautiful children, we can eat.” “And after that, Pop?”
“Oh, ye of little faith. Tom, I’m astonished at you.”
“I’m only asking because of Lily, Pop. What’ll happen after the two
nights?”
“My zun, my zun, life is amazing. I have an idea or two. But let’s first eat and explore. Lilibeth, your practical brother is right about one thing. We have no money for lunch, so eat enough to last till supper.”
We stuffed our faces on eggs, bacon and baked beans on toast. I was crazy to explore, but we had to unload our stuff into the hotel Annexe, where the boarders stayed. Our neighbour’s name was Willem. He was a teller at Barclays and looked a bit like Paul McCartney, even though he was Afrikaans and his teeth stuck out a bit. It came to me that I might have been wrong about my kindred spirit being a provincial swimmer in Cathcart.
We wandered around Bedford, cool under its tent of jacarandas. I liked that it had dirt roads. Not everyone knew this, but they were much bet¬ter than tar. You could kick the dust into clouds that stuck to the Sunday skirts of the lah-di-dahs walking by. And when it was really hot, the roads couldn’t melt and glue themselves to your feet.
Bedford was much larnier than Beaufort, and maybe even Cathcart. There were at least four churches, and it had a tennis club as well as a gentleman’s club. It had loads of the usual houses, with curly, corru¬gated roofs over stoeps. But it also had grand double-storeys, with sash windows looking onto balconies and downstairs stoeps. It even had new houses, with hedges and stone walls.
“I had some luck here,” Pop said as we wandered past the old prison. “I found some fine old pieces in the location. And I have a fair idea that’s not the end of it.”
If you asked Pop what he did, which people sometimes did, he would say that he did and thought many things. If you pushed him, he would say he was a traveller and an adventurer.
But I knew that he bumped his V8 across the length and breadth of the Eastern Cape, swapping old yellowwood for nice new pine and melamine. It was tough work. He even said so himself sometimes, but that somebody had to do it. He laughed while saying it, though, to make less of it. Pop wasn’t full of himself.
I was proud of him. The one time we’d gone with him, I’d seen for myself how happy he made people. Finding some old kist that had been palmed off on a coloured auntie by her Madam, he’d swop it for a lovely new chest of drawers. Not only that, he’d give her five bob as well. Those aunties loved my Pop. They’d feed us all tea and koeksisters before we could ever be off to the next house.
“I’ll take as much as I can to Port Elizabeth tomorrow. That should set us up for a while, oh my son the worrier.” Pop paused to point out a bird with a really clumsy way of flying. A something coucal. I wasn’t listening. I think he just wanted to change the subject.
“So you knew we’d be leaving, even before last night.”
“Since I seemed to be having a run of luck, I thought I should take ad¬vantage … and that wasn’t the end of it. This drought has brought mis¬fortune. But when God strikes a blow to some, he makes sure it brings fortune to others.”
“To you, you mean.” Tom nudged Pop, who dropped into his fighting position.
I remember that moment so clearly. You were laughing, fending off Pop with the flat of your hands. You never would make a fist, no matter how often Pop tried to spar with you. The afternoon buzzed, smothered in jasmine. A Knysna lourie croaked frog-like from the bougainvillea in the park. That time we spent in Bedford, Tom, when Pop could still charm you into childhood, was the time I loved best of all.