Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [14]
Jak listened to your father with wary respect, they didn’t really take to each other, you could see that. However fond you were of your father, you were irritated with him that weekend with his sentimentality and his reserve, there was a new kind of energy running now, and new priorities.
You’re not scared of becoming my farmer boy, are you, Jak, I said as you drove away through the main street of Barrydale in the direction of the pass.
You were on your way to show him the farm over the mountain for the first time. You knew you’d have to open on a high bid.
Your ‘farmer boy’! Jak snorted, but he looked down at the keys between your legs, and you knew he was snared, tail and trotters and all.
My Farmer then, with a big F, you said. You placed your hand high up on his thigh and leant over and kissed him in his ear.
You’re a slypuss, he said. Move closer. I have my own schemes for you.
And you intend to tame me, if I understand rightly, you teased. You stroked his thigh.
So, Milla Redelinghuys, your story was launched. The situation provided you with an interesting kind of titillation. So here you have two fish hooked, you thought. A farm and a husband. But you didn’t feel entirely at ease. Without the bait, would you have caught the fish?
So tell me again everything we’re going to farm with, you and I? Jak asked.
You counted your words, you fed him a few trivial facts that wouldn’t alarm him. You paddled your hand lightly, to the beat of the information you were feeding him.
Ma kept a couple of hundred merinos and a few Jersey cows on Grootmoedersdrift. There was a foreman on the farm, OuKarel Okkenel, of the Suurbraak Okkenels, and his half-grown son Dawid, who also lived on the farm. OuKarel was a widower, a respectable man, distant descendant of the Scottish mechanics who came out in 1817 under Benjamin Moodie. OuKarel sowed a few morgen of wheat for Ma every year for a share. She was worried that the farm was being neglected. After Pa inherited his land and they went to farm on Goedbegin, they used to go and check every week that everything was running smoothly on Grootmoedersdrift. Ever since you were small, she and Pa drove over the mountain at shearing time and lambing time and harvest time, and stayed on in the old homestead for weeks on end to keep an eye and to take things in hand. Often it was only you and Pa, those were your best times, he taught you opera arias and took you on expeditions in the veld. Your father with his long stride and his perfect hearing, you couldn’t believe that he had turned into the lopsided old gent with the shuffling gait.
They’re getting old, you said to Jak, they can no longer keep crossing the mountain and manage two farms. We’re getting married at the right time. We have to take over the wheat farming from the Okkenels, the local market is famished for fine white flour now after the war, we have to extend the sheep and cattle herds, there’s excellent grazing next to the river for a dairy herd, we must make of Grootmoedersdrift what it can be, a textbook example of mixed farming, we have to live up to the name.
You moved your hand and massaged the inside of his thigh.
You’re driving me mad, Jak said. He squirmed in his seat and accelerated even more.
Don’t get carried away, darling, stay on the road, you said.
He tried to keep himself in check. He shook his head, brought up last night’s conversation.
Lynx-hide thongs! What kind of story was that last night, he asked, I hope you don’t take after that mother of yours too much, you’ll finish a man off.
You laughed, you pinched the soft flesh of his inner thigh.
Well, I don’t know who you take after, you teased back. You took a deep breath and said it, you were shy, but you said it.
You’re very close to finished before I’ve even started, was what you said. With your eyes you gestured towards his fly.
You knew what the effect would be. He was the kind who liked off-colour comments. At times he said things to you that made you blush, but you never went too far when