When I was growing up there were always a lot of people coming to our house for supper or staying in our outside cottage. Most of them were very important and clever and were ‘heroes of the struggle’ as people like to say. I was terrified of most of these people. Like the man who taught me to swim, by saying he would eat me if I didn’t go faster. I like him now, but I didn’t like him then.
Many of these people turned out to be okay, but not all. Some even revealed themselves to be Epsteins and Trumps and Mays and Gandhis. And then I wanted to shout out: I tried to tell you, but you were not listening. And to this day I very rarely trust anyone who thinks they are very very important and good. Or if they have messiah issues.
But there were some I really really liked. There was one couple in particular who came to stay with us from England. She was warm and buxom and comforting, and he was funny. During this time they were staying with us we were getting a lot of threatening phone calls. From a man who called himself Red Cats or Rooi Kat. Sometimes Red Fox. And sometimes other things. He said that he was going to kill us. Particularly he wanted to kill my dad. I had always been taught to answer the telephone very politely by saying “Hello, this is Jess speaking”, but after this happened, my mother said I could just put the phone down when Red Cats called. Or even tell him to Fuck Off.
Anyway this went on for rather a long time despite having our number unlisted and complaining to the police and the post office. I wanted to answer the phone because sometimes it wasn’t Mr Red Cats, but my friend saying, let’s go to the beach. Or sometimes it would be Aron van Staden who I really loved, phoning to say, shall we go and ride our bikes around the streets. Because we were only 14. Anyway the couple were always very empathetic and would say, ‘Don’t worry dear, he is just a coward and he will get bored soon. Just put the phone down.’
Then one day we went on holiday. And the couple stayed to look after our house and our animals. We had one dog called Tosca and two cats. The cats were both ginger. And we loved them very much. One of the cats was so chilled and so loving that in the winter you could wear her as a scarf. We also asked the neighbour, called Mick Ballard, to check on things, even though he hated the cats because he loved birds. And our dog used to dig up his roses.
And when we got back home everything seemed fine and normal. But then we noticed that the door to the study was broken and the paintwork was all scratched. And then the neighbour told my dad that he hadn’t seen the red cats around trying to catch his birds so he had come to investigate and found that they had been locked up in the study, without any food or any water. For quite a few days. So he bashed the door down. The couple had left. Perhaps my parents put two and two together then, but they didn’t say anything.
Years later my mother told me they had found out that the couple were spies. And by then so many other things had happened I was only slightly surprised. And then I forgot all about it. But just last week, I saw that Jonathan Acer has written Betrayal: The Secret Lives of Apartheid Spies. And I remembered about it again. And I thought about how much I had liked the couple and how completely and utterly wrong I had been about them.
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