‘It’s raining, you can’t go outside.’
Harman looked at him with big eyes.
‘Raining,’ Twa said again.
Harman watched his mouth and repeated the word.
Twa laughed from the back of his throat.
‘You’re Kudu’s child all right. Tomorrow Twa will take you to the river and we’ll look for tortoise.’
‘You’re teaching him all this nonsense,’ Wynand said. ‘The whole day he clucks like a turkey. He can’t speak his own language yet.’
‘He’ll be like his father,’ Twa chuckled.
What was the use, Wynand thought. Twa was good-hearted, fond of Harman, and Roeloff encouraged it, speaking to the child only in !Khomani.
A sudden cry from the bedroom made them look up. Roeloff came out of the room for more hot water for the doctor.
‘Is everything all right?’ Wynand asked.
Roeloff’s face was covered in perspiration. He had been running back and forth for hot water and towels, finding the experience a whole lot different from that in a foaling barn. This was his wife, it was her first child. With contractions coming almost every minute, her pain had increased. His own panic rose. He had never heard of a man being in the room with his wife when she gave birth, but Neeltje wanted him there, and there was no one to give Otto Lieberband a hand.
‘Oom Otto says it will soon be over.’
Wynand didn’t say anything. He was thinking of a night eighteen years ago, only it hadn’t been raining, and his wife didn’t live to hold her own child. This was different, he told himself. Neeltje was strong. She had her mother’s looks, her father’s toughness. Everything was going to be all right. They sat close together, he on the bench with Harman on his lap, Twa squatting on the floor near the hearth, drinking endless beakers of coffee. An hour later, a loud scream broke the silence.
Roeloff came out of the bedroom.
‘It’s a girl!’
‘And Neeltje, how is she?’
‘Neeltje’s fine. She’s holding Beatrix and waiting for her Pa to come and see his grandchild.’
The day of his departure, ten days after he’d first arrived, Otto took a farewell drink with Wynand in the voorkamer.
‘Thank you for coming and taking care of Neeltje. I won’t forget it. I’ve put two sheep on your wagon.’
‘That wasn’t necessary, but thank you. So, Wynand, I will go. Your Neeltje’s settled with her baby. You’re a grandfather. You’ve found yourself a good son-in-law.’
‘I have. You just don’t know who the Almighty will send to your door. Neeltje’s happy with him. And look what he’s done—the sheep have increased, even after that terrible raid, there are a dozen workers, and crops.’
‘Don’t leave yourself out of it. If it wasn’t for you, there wouldn’t be anything at all.’
‘Maybe so. But he kept this place going during my illness. Last year at the wedding, you drank your brandy in the kitchen. Now, we’re sitting in a voorkamer. He built it. That, and an extra room, and that stall in the back for privacy.’
‘He’s good with his hands, I’ll say that for him. And he’s mad for Neeltje. All that remains is you, eh? What about the widow, man? She looks like she’s lost some of that fat around her neck. She’s not bad, and she likes Neeltje and Harman.’
‘We don’t need two women in the house and I’m too old for a woman’s nonsense. A man gets selfish in his later years.’
‘Perhaps so, but the fire’s not out in the galley. Neeltje might not be here forever.’
Something in his voice made Wynand look up.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I saw Stoffel. He told me an interesting story.’
‘We haven’t seen him since the wedding. Where is he?’
‘He travels, he hears things. The field cornet was called out to a place a week north from here. A murder in cold blood, self-defence, some say. Talk is that there was trouble over a son cast out over the killing of a stallion. Wrongfully accused, as it turns out. The kommando’s out looking for him.’
‘Why?’
‘The father’s ill. He wants him to come home.’
‘You waited all this time to tell me?’
‘You had other things on your mind; Neeltje, the baby. I wasn’t sure.’
‘What makes you sure now?’
‘I’m not.’
Wynand went to the window and looked out. He didn’t speak for a long time.
‘It’s him. He told me the day he came. “I want you to know I stand accused of a crime I didn’t commit.” I believed him. I would have believed anything he said, there was just something about him. He didn’t have to tell me. He didn’t have to tell me many things. There was also that bosjesman girl, Harman’s mother. He didn’t hide what he felt. It was his eyes and his honesty that drew me to him.’
