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‘I don’t know,’ he replies. ‘Of course, in the midst of this’ – he does not gesture, but she knows what he means: this sky, this space, the vast silence enclosing them – ‘I feel blessed, one of a lucky few. But practically speaking, what future do I have in this country, where I have never fitted in? Perhaps a clean break would have been better after all. Cut yourself free of what you love and hope that the wound heals.’

A frank answer. Thank heaven for that.

‘I had a chat with your father yesterday, John, while you and Michiel were away. Seriously, I don’t think he fully grasps what you are planning. I am talking about Merweville. Your father is not young any more, and he is not well. You can’t dump him in a strange town and expect him to fend for himself. And you can’t expect the rest of the family to step in and take care of him if things go wrong. That’s all. That’s what I wanted to say.’

He does not respond. In his hand is a length of old fencing-wire that he has picked up. Swinging the wire petulantly left and right, flicking off the heads of the waving grass, he descends the slope of the eroded dam wall.

‘Don’t behave like this!’ she calls out, trotting after him. ‘Speak to me, for God’s sake! Tell me I am wrong! Tell me I am making a mistake!’

He halts and turns upon her a look of cold hostility. ‘Let me fill you in on my father’s situation,’ he says. ‘My father has no savings, not a cent, and no insurance. He has only a state pension to look forward to: forty-three rand a month when I last checked. So despite his age, despite his poor health, he has to go on working. Together the two of us earn in a month what a car salesman earns in a week. My father can give up his job only if he moves to a place where living expenses are lower than in the city.’

‘But why does he have to move at all? And why to Merweville, to some rundown old ruin?’

‘My father and I can’t live together indefinitely, Margie. It makes us too miserable, both of us. It’s unnatural. Fathers and sons were never meant to share a home.’

‘Your father doesn’t strike me as a difficult person to live with.’

‘Perhaps; but I am a difficult person to live with. My difficulty consists in not wanting to share space with other people.’

‘So is that what this Merweville business is all about – about you wanting to live by yourself?’

‘Yes. Yes and no. I want to be able to be alone when I choose.’

THEY ARE CONGREGATED ON the stoep, all the Coetzees, having their morning tea, chatting, idly watching Michiel’s three young sons play cricket on the open werf.

On the far horizon a cloud of dust materializes and hangs in the air.

‘That must be Lukas,’ says Michiel, who has the keenest eyes. ‘Margie, it’s Lukas!’

Lukas, as it turns out, has been on the road since dawn. He is tired but in good spirits nonetheless, full of vim. Barely has he greeted his wife and her family before he lets himself be roped into the boys’ game. He may not be competent at cricket, but he loves being with children, and children adore him. He would be the best of fathers: it breaks her heart that he must be childless.

John joins in the game too. He is better at cricket than Lukas, more practised, one can see that at a glance, but children don’t warm to him. Nor do dogs, she has noticed. Unlike Lukas, not a father by nature. An alleenloper, as some male animals are: a loner. Perhaps it is as well he has not married.

Unlike Lukas; yet there are things she shares with John that she can never share with Lukas. Why? Because of the childhood times they spent together, the most precious of times, when they opened their hearts to each other as one can never do later, even to a husband, even to a husband whom one loves more than all the treasure in the world.

Best to cut yourself free of what you love, he had said during their walk – cut yourself free and hope the wound heals. She understands him exactly. That is what they share above all: not just a love of this farm, this kontrei, this Karoo, but an understanding