SAM
Sam, our teenage daughter, was a lovely girl. after attending the ‘laerskool uitkyk’ she went on to the rhenish girls’ high school in stellenbosch. this convinced us that our young lady would be prepared for the great outdoors, well equipped to take on the world and make her way.
she was an easy child and a great help around the house. she was a grand sister to kate, some ten years her junior.
it would be true to say that ginny and i thought that butter wouldn't melt in sam’s mouth. we were more or less right. or less, sometimes.
there was always a turnover of residents in the village. half the population lived elsewhere. mostly the weekenders came from cape town, and the population would double at weekends. some came to make their fortune, and left pretty smartly when they discovered that a permanent population of about 500 could not support more than the local supermarket.
one day a young woman and her children, plus granny, arrived in the village and set up house in oak street. the family were seen wandering around the dorp, taking in the country air and chatting to all the locals who wanted to find out who they were, where they came from, why they had come and what they were going to do. was the mother single? why? whose fault was it? and so on. all the important stuff.
sam filled us in on all these details within days. we were a little surprised. time and again families had come and gone after years, and sam had never registered their existence. ever.
i was thrilled that, at last, observation and general interest in village life had kicked in and sam had arrived on planet earth. saturday dawned and i literally bumped into sam in the kitchen making tea at 6am greenwich mean time! wow! this was extraordinary. my heart swelled and a lump developed in my throat. yes, mum would love a cup of earl grey, and a weak coffee would do me fine. i scampered back to bed and leapt in, explaining that tea was on the way.
ginny looked thoughtful.
tea arrived and ginny looked even more thoughtful as sam, squatting on the end of our bed, curled her long hair with her finger — a habit that worked in conjunction with her state of mind, and still does to this day.
ginny's radar was on full alert when sam left the house after breakfast and began nonchalantly patrolling the market place hours before the bell rang for saturday market trading to begin.
things became a little clearer when a young man arrived on a bicycle and the two wandered off into the village. so now we knew.
some time later we met the mother of the young man and introduced ourselves as sam's parents. she said she knew sam and had entertained her in her house. she had evidently met our little angel under somewhat curious circumstances, as we were to find out.
nothing in our old cottage worked. broken locks, window latches and door handles. after 150 years of use, some had seen happier times. including sam's window. in the dead of night, our young lady had gone awol on a visit to the bicycle rider. plans had been made to allow sam access through a bedroom window. the latch was to be left off the hook. all went according to plan, except for one minor point. the family’s sleeping arrangements had changed.
sam did indeed find the window. it was a little more difficult to climb through than anticipated and she wriggled through and fell onto the bed below.
granny awoke screaming and yelling for help, fighting off the intruder with all her might and trying to put her teeth into her mouth at the same time. the old girl gave a good account of herself. when the family burst in to see what granny was up to, they found sam fighting off an enraged old lady while apologising for her mistake. the old girl was having none of it and had to be hauled off sam.
great plan, wrong window.
today sam is a top broker consultant. she used some of her skills that night to defuse a fairly tricky situation.
hey sam! i hope i am around to see what happens when georgina grows up.