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Good heavens, Milla, Jak exclaimed, tell me more!

There’s a sentinel before my mouth, you teased.

Just you wait, Jak said, you’ll end up with the sentinel in your sweet-talking mouth.

You weren’t altogether sure what he meant but you laughed along with him.

Jak was right about your mother. She had finished off your father. He’d become ever more silent with the years. Must have been ill already the evening of the engagement. You could tell from his reticence while your mother took out the maps and spread the papers of Grootmoedersdrift on the dining room table. It had been her ancestral land for generations back in her mother’s line, from the Steyn and the Spies lines. They were the ones, according to her, who planted the wild fig avenue there and traced the foundations of the homestead with lynx-hide ropes.

You don’t throw away your birthright, your mother said to Jak, that which your ancestors built up in the sweat of their brow, that you look after and that you live up to.

Yes, you said and winked at your father. You knew he knew, like you, what her next sentence would be.

Those were people who had to hack bushes and stack stones. There was no time for sweet talk and twaddle, you said, all three of you.

It was your mother’s favourite expression.

You could see Jak glancing around, puzzled, not knowing what was happening.

It’s in Kamilla’s blood, you must realise, Jak, she steamed ahead. Her great-great-grandmother farmed there all alone for thirty years after her husband’s death, way before the days of Hendrik Swellengrebel. There was a woman who could get a grip and hit home, blow for blow. She fixed Jak with a glare like a bayonet. If you can’t do that, young man, then you’d better stand aside because then you won’t do, then you’re just a nuisance to others.

You were ashamed. You twined your fingers through Jak’s and leant over him, so that your breasts rested on his shoulder while you were pretending to study the map. You knew the map by heart. Ever since you were a little girl your mother had slid it out of its long sheath to show you the farm that would be yours one day.

Jak heard her out meekly, his face expressionless. Now, as you entered the pass, he was openly mocking.

Once upon a time, long ago, when the world was young, in the time of the Lord Swellengrebel, he commenced, there was a great-great-grandmother Spies, a boer woman without equal . . .

He changed down to a lower gear on the uphill.

. . . And she called her farm Grootmoedersdrift after herself and laid out its boundaries with, can you guess with what? With lynx-hide thongs!

How does that sound for a beginning? He looked at you.

I particularly liked the bit about the woman who could get a grip and hit home, blow for blow. Tell me more about that.

You started rubbing his groin. The first time you’d ever done a thing like that. Jak lost his head completely, caught off guard, he took the pass as if were a race track. The car kicked up stones. It was still the old pass, in 1946, with narrow hairpins, nowhere a kerb. Every now and again Jak would glance at you and you glanced back. If you had so many things in your head, you wondered to yourself, what must he not make of it all?

Slow down, Jak, you said, it’s a pass.

What will you give me?

Anything you ask.

Don’t you know?

I can guess, you said. You tugged open the buckle of his belt.

He looked at you in surprise, groaned.

So, and what are you going to give me in exchange? You wanted to know.

Anything you ask.

And don’t you know?

I’m not as clever as you.

Well, in the first place you must slow down.

But you’re making me want to get somewhere very fast!

You removed your hand. He took it back and you resisted, but not too much, so that he could put it where he wanted it.

Right, I’ll slow down, he said, and in any case, it looks as if you’ve got a watermelon lorry on your side.

Some way ahead on the pass, with a long line of cars following, a lorry filled with spanspek and watermelon was trundling along.

No, it’s