Life Times Stories - By Nadine Gordimer Page 0,178

himself. ‘I’ll get you a new one cheap. Jewish chappies I know who run plumbing supplies, they’ll always do me a favour. Anything you want in that line, you just tell me.’

In the garden, finally (Naas never let clients linger in a garden before entering a house on a property that had been empty a long time – a neglected garden puts people off), he sensed a heightened interest alerting the young couple. They walked round the walls of the house, shading their eyes to look at the view from all sides, while Naas tried to prop up a fallen arch of the wire pergola left from the days when Mrs Kleynhans was still alive. To tell the truth the view wasn’t much. Apart from the koppie behind the house, just bare veld with black, burned patches, now, before the rains. Old Kleynhans liked to live isolated on this dreary bit of land, the last years he hadn’t even let out the hundred acres of his plot to the Portuguese vegetable farmers, as he used to. As for the garden – nothing left, the blacks had broken the fruit trees for firewood, a plaster Snow White had fallen into the dry fishpond. It was difficult to find some feature of interest or beauty to comment on as he stood beside the couple after their round of the house, looking across the veld. He pointed. ‘Those things over there, way over there. That’s the cooling towers of the power station.’ They followed his arm politely.

Of course, he should have suspected something. Unlikely that you could at last get rid of the Kleynhans place so easily. When they were back in town in Klopper’s Eiendoms Beperk and Juffrou Jansens had brought the necessary documents into his office, it turned out that they wanted to rent the place for six months, with the option of purchase. They didn’t want to buy outright. He knew it must be because they didn’t have the money, but they wouldn’t admit that. The husband brushed aside suggestions that a bond could be arranged on a very small deposit, Naas Klopper was an expert in these matters.

‘You see, my wife is expecting a child, we want to be in the country for a while. But we’re not sure if we’re going to settle . . .’

Naas became warmly fatherly. ‘But if you starting a family, that’s the time to settle! You can run chickens there, man, start up the pigs again. Or hire out the land for someone else to work. In six months’ time, who knows what’s going to happen to land prices? Now it’s rock bottom, man. I’ll get you a ninety-per-cent bond.’

The girl looked impatient; it must have been embarrassment.

‘She – my wife – she’s had several miscarriages. A lot depends on that . . . if this time there’s a child, we can make up our minds whether we want to farm here or not. If something goes wrong again . . . she might want to go back.’

‘To Australia.’ The girl spoke without looking at the men.

The Kleynhans place had been on Klopper’s Eiendoms Beperk’s books for nearly three years. And it seemed true what the husband said, they had money. They paid six months’ rent in advance. So there was nothing to lose, so far as Mathilda Beukes, née Kleynhans, who had inherited the place, was concerned. Naas took their cheque. They didn’t even want the place cleaned up before they moved in; energetic youngsters, they’d do it themselves. He gave them one last piece of advice, along with the keys. ‘Don’t keep on Kleynhans’s old boy, he’ll come to you with a long story, but I’ve told him before, he’ll have to get off the place when someone moves in. He’s no good.’

The couple agreed at once. In fact, the husband made their first and only request. ‘Would you see to it, then, that he leaves by the end of the week? We want him to be gone before we arrive.’

‘No-o-o problem. And listen, if you want a boy, I can get you one. My garden boy knows he can’t send me skelms.’ The young wife had been stroking, again and again, with one finger, the silver-furred petal of a protea in an arrangement of dried Cape flowers Naas had had on his desk almost as long as the Kleynhans place had been on his books. ‘You love flowers, ay? I can see it! Here – take these with you. Please;