Murrayfield
after a recent visit to Nieu Bethesda
I see four or five men opposite Murrayfield, across the gravel road. Two of the men are involved in painting the shutters for the front room on the left side. Their voices drift on the still morning air; it’s already hot.
On my first day here I walked past Murrayfield, and noticed all the shutters were freshly painted except the far-left ones which were faded, grubby with ingrained dust, weathered. I wondered if they’d be done or forgotten. You see more when you walk.
I’ve stayed in that room a few times. For more than twenty years we spent most of our December holidays in Nieu Bethesda. I can see myself packing up my dark blue Golf outside Murrayfield. Strapping the bikes to the back of the car. Hugging my friends who were staying longer.
The men are about 200 or 300 metres away. I’m hesitant to interrupt them to ask, to intrude on their ordinary working day. Would they want to be the subject of a tourist’s photo? While I walk towards the corner, a silver bakkie drives past leaving a cloud of dust, obscuring the men.
This morning I am walking to the Fugard1 house where the first day of a writing workshop is about to begin. The white paint on the back of the sports club is eye-hurtingly bright. A sprinkler ticks over the narrow front lawn of the big house with the low white wall.
I’m in a different time in my life now. Those holidays are over. They were always going to come to an end. Perhaps as we roasted turkey and crispy roast potatoes at Christmas, or gathered rosemary and peeled garlic for the Karoo lamb on the spit for New Year’s, we knew it.
I remember lying in the hammock between two trees at Murrayfield, swinging softly in the shade, reading, reading, almost napping. The children cycled between their houses, and volunteered to do chores so they could buy ice-creams from the Village Inn.
Each holiday came to an end. And then the holidays as we knew them ended. The children have grown up. There have been divorces, marriages. The people have dispersed. It is a long drive from Cape Town; my old Golf a dicey bet for the road trip.
I’ve taken photographs this time, but not of the men. The shutters are all painted now. The men have gone. Murrayfield is dressed up, waiting for new guests.
The house we were writing in used to belong to Athol Fugard, who wrote the play, The Road to Mecca, about Helen Martins who created her home into The Owl House.
I love the rhythms of your reflections, they hammock me, reading.
Sense of wise nostalgia