PATRICIA MAY CLARK (Nee LYLE)
Pat was born to JOHN BOYD LYLE and GLADYS MAY LYLE (Nee von Schlicht) on 22 October 1948 in WINBURG O.F.S. She was baptized in Winburg in the Anglican Church on 19 December 1948.
Pat spent very little time in her place of birth because soon after she entered this world, we were transferred to Trompsburg. The rosy-cheeked little “Moonface” in this accompanying picture of her with her glowering elder brother (Angry because he had to be photographed with this squalling little monster!) had eczema and probably wasn’t feeling wonderful either. I can’t recall whether Gentian Violet was for her eczema or for her budding teeth but it was actually strange not to see her mouth all purple. I remember resenting the fact that she would sleep during the day, during which hours, I had to be very quiet in her vicinity.
Granny used to take Pat out in her Pram for long walks and I used to tag along. Granny was very proud of her granddaughter of that there can be no doubt but less so of her grandson. As time progressed, Granny used to make a beeline for the cemetery with us on a Sunday afternoon. She seemed to be drawn to the place and we’d play happily among the tombstones. Another port of call beloved by Pat was the Botha’s house, around the block from us. They had a pond with a gnome sitting in the middle which Pat called FatherKoekens and she was fascinated by him.
One thing is certain, she shot up like a weed and before I knew it, “my” backyard territory was being invaded by a really yakky, chubby creature wearing a kappie. One of the maids had a little kid called Georgina and they would happily play together, neither able to speak the other’s language. Pat would babble away in what might have been Sesotho or Xhosa but no-one was able to say for sure. It certainly sounded like a language but the maids could not follow it. Dad took some of the finest snaps ever with a Kodak Brownie camera when Pat was well into her toddling phase. I think these snaps wonderfully illustrate how mercurial her moods could be. I don’t know which came first – one hopes that beatific smile followed the querulous face and not the other way round.
Apart from the little black kid, I don’t recall Pat having other friends until she went to school. One girl that stood out was Mariana Rautenbach – a girl who often wore ribbons in her hair. The two of them were great buddies until we left Trompsburg in 1957. Mariana’s mother made the most unforgettable gingerbread ever and to this day, she can remember them being given slices, thickly spread with butter, while the gingerbread was still warm from the oven. Oh yes, it doesn’t get better than that. Pat made contact with her just a few years ago after all that time but she died not long after. Pat started school in 1955 and her teacher in Sub A was Mrs Nel. There was no English medium so Afrikaans it had to be. I remember her coming home with the book she would be learning to read. It was all about “Sus en Daan”. (My own first reader had : “O S = OS and O T = OT” to start us off.)
In Sub B, Pat had a teacher by the name of Mrs Uys. One Friday she had forgotten to bring her sandwiches which were lying on the kitchen table, to school with her, so she sent Pat and Driena Erasmus to fetch them. On the way back, Driena decided that they had to know what teacher had on her “sarmies” and they peeped. What they found was thinly sliced biltong and despite everything SCREAMING that what they were doing was wrong, tried a sliver, before carefully closing it all up again. Pat was deeply troubled by what they had done and convinced Mrs Uys would find out. Imagine her horror when on the Saturday morning, she spotted Mrs Uys coming through the front gate. She must have been absolutely sick with dismay that her dreadful crime had been discovered and that Mrs Uys was there to demand some sort of retribution. To prolong her agony, Mom and Mrs Uys sat down on the stoep and companionably enjoyed a cup of tea, all while talking quietly and amiably. Try as she may, Pat could not pick up the gist of the conversation but her little bottom was already a-tingle with the hiding she was sure was headed her way. Her relief must have been something to behold when Mom revealed that the reason for Mrs Uys’ visit was to advise that she planned to make Pat a fairy in the school concert and wanted to know if Mom needed help with the costume. There you have it – from Pupil Errant to Fairy in one fell swoop.
Pat’s first appearance on the stage was with a bunch of other little girls in nighties each with a similarly attired doll, who together sang lullabies to their “babies”. Pat remembers her nightie being pink with rosebuds, while the buttons were also shaped like rosebuds. (Examples have survived in the tin of buttons in Heather’s custody) Her next appearance was in the following year when she was cast as fairy by her teacher. A photo of her in this get-up has survived, with her wearing white socks and sandals, totally against her wishes. Dad had insisted that she wear them but she was adamant fairies did not wear sandals and socks. Grumpiest fairy ever!
Some of the key ladies in Pat’s early life were Mrs van Tonder, Mrs van Wyk and Mrs Victor. Mrs van Tonder used to make Pat’s dresses, while Mrs van Wyk was responsible for the divine birthday cakes we had for our birthdays. There was always a chocolate cake, slathered with chocolate icing inches thick and the white cake was also usually a magnificent example of the confectioner’s art. It was multi tiered with enough icing to make the hardiest little savage seedy. Also of great importance was Mrs Victor who was on the sweet counter at Tromp & Kie. If she liked you, you could rely on her to tuck an extra bokdrolletjie or two into your packet, for which you paid a tickey or if you were flush, a sixpence.
An early Irish ancestor of Pat must surely have kissed the Blarney Stone and somehow passed on the gift of loquacity to her down the line because Pat used her word-making equipment to very good effect in her lifetime. Take the occasion when she was not yet long acquainted with language. Mom was having tea on the stoep at Trompsburg and Pat called out to her from the lounge, which lay between the kitchen and where Mom was, “Mommy can I have a biscuit?” Mom kept quiet and next came, “Oh, OK. Annie (the kitchen maid) my ma se ek kan ‘n biscuit kry”. Cute as a button was little Patty but devious too. (My facetious remark about the Blarney Stone bounced back on me, when Pat revealed that she DID in fact kiss the flippin’ stone but much later in life during a visit to Ireland. I suppose that was to freshen up the spell a bit.)
The fact that the pre-school Patty had no friends did not slow her imagination down. The Human family, the bank people in the house across the road, often used to see her acting out little dramas and playing happily on her own, on our stoep. Blanche, the Human’s daughter would sometimes play “Glowworm” on the piano and Pat would dance to it, “choreographing” as she went along.
When Dad went to introduce us to the Volkskool in Ladybrand, he asked Headmaster Heckroodt if his kids could stay in the Afrikaans medium because that is where we had been in Trompsburg. “Das” Heckroodt refused and insisted that because our home language was English, we had to join the English medium. Poor Pat could not read a word of English and her new class teacher, Miss Brisley, had to start her off with beginner readers. It must have been an unhappy experience because Miss Brisley was not the most patient of teachers and when she bellowed at the kids, which she often did, the whole school would know about it. She tells of a particularly dramatic day when Miss Brisley was in high dudgeon at poor little Dawn Watson, for having spelled Peter “Petter”. At the very height of her tirade her dentures flew out of her mouth and landed on Dawn’s desk, scaring the poor kid rigid. Seeing a full set of clackers suddenly coming for you is likely to unnerve just about anyone and Dawn probably carried those scars right to her untimely end.
Her stage career continued once we got to Ladybrand, where she was cast as a fairy queen.
But “acting” was not all at which she was a dab hand – at an eisteddfod at the Volkskool, she won several diplomas for her artistic endeavours which included :
B ++ Solo song Girls 10; A – For English Recitation; A – for Afrikaans Recitation, A – for Art; B – for Art
It was no accident that she shone at the “elocutionary arts” because she had been developing her skills informally from a very early age. She crowned her primary school oral achievements by winning the Orator’s cup in her Standard 5 year. I’m ashamed to say I never heard her speak, recite or sing but I’m happy to accept the judgement of other people of the time. I suppose I must have been green with envy because I had absolutely zero talent in those aspects.
Any pastime that called for the full use of her vocal apparatus fell within her sphere of interest. On her many walks with Granny, she would pass the telephone exchange and through an open door, would gawk at the telephonists plugging and unplugging cords while talking madly on telephones. We had no phone in our home so Patty could not in all fairness, imagine a play-play one but she had a mental model of the exchange which sorted out all the calls and this she was able to replicate faithfully. She would use any length of cord as a phone cord – gown cords or whatever was around. Even two pullout drawer supports on Dad’s desk served quite well as things to push in and pull out. She wore something on her head for headphones and one of Dad’s old pipes served as a mouthpiece which would put her in touch with all the “subscribers” out there. That was one healthy little imagination to say the least.
Quite early on, Pat decided that this knitting thing that Mom was always doing, was something worth emulating, so she got Mom to cast on a few stitches on a needle and set off down the road, furiously clicking her needles with the ball of wool in her pocket. Needless to say, she had not bothered with the tiresome step of learning HOW to knit but so what? When she encountered a neighbour Mrs Brakie in the street she proudly proclaimed upon being questioned, that “she was knitting a tea cosy for Mom”. Pat was certain she was impressed and maybe she was for all we know.
Pat did eventually learn to knit though perhaps not as avidly as Mom did but she managed a couple of jerseys in her teen years. She once knitted a dark pink one to which she fully applied herself and produced a fine looking garment, complete with a fancy cable pattern and a rolltop. She actually finished it while sitting in Dad’s car at the rugby in Ladybrand and right there and then tried it on. To her utmost chagrin, her head would not go through the hole and she would have had to pull her ears off if she was to get it on. She simply burst into tears of frustration at having wasted all that effort and not having come up with a finished product. Mom had a go at fixing it but sadly, Pat seldom wore as it never actually fitted properly.
Much later in life she learned to crochet and happily, she was jolly good at that. She crocheted a couple of bags (Sakkie-sakkies as they came to be known!) out of string for my bathroom kit and to store odds and ends like cupboard locks, light sockets etc. Both served me admirably well for many years on the road and may still be somewhere around, if they didn’t get thrown out in the move to Cape Town. Pat still complained bitterly at the time about how harsh the string had been on her fingers. We also have a framed example of a panel of cross-stitching which Pat created, depicting a number of flower varieties and a picturesque English cottage. It is a beautiful piece of work which is earmarked for Heather’s house when we no longer are around.
I have no idea what Pat’s high school scholastic achievements were, not that it matters. She definitely did not fail any classes so I guess she assimilated all the education she needed – nothing else matters. She did well in Primary School, sharing top spot with Mienie van Zyl for the best Standard 5 pupil at the school. She had enough superior personality traits to make her stand out in life and be employable. Her leadership qualities still mark her today. For example she almost singlehandedly arranged a 50 year reunion for her Matric Class some years ago – more about that later - and I mention the fact because she was a well-rounded human being by the time she left home.
From an initial dearth of friends in her early life to today when even the word “plethora” hardly covers all her friends, Pat has had an innate ability to fit in wherever she has gone, to make friends and even more remarkably, to retain those friends. When we first got to Ladybrand, she befriended two girls from Miss Pohl’s classes – Elize Pietrucci and Dawn Watson. They were younger than she was but they enjoyed a friendship which in Elize’s case, persists to this very day. (Dawn, most unfortunately died many years ago). Birthday parties at our house were a riotous affair at which an amazing cross section of kids attended. Apart from the hardcore pair mentioned above, Pat had friends even in the Kinderhuis who used to spend time with us over week-ends and school holidays. I think her deep rooted empathy endeared her to all who met her and ensured that so many have remained friends with her throughout all the intervening years.
The Watsons lived a block away from us at one stage and Alan Watson & I were friends, as were Pat and Dawn. A family feud blew up between Mom and Jack Watson about the fridge we bought from Josteds, the shop that he managed. I don’t recall the details but it ended up with him banning Dawn & Alan from coming to our house or indeed, us from going to their house. This did nothing to end our friendships with Alan & Dawn – the ludicrous situation was we freely mixed with them at school and in fact, on any neutral ground around. Dad really despised Jack Watson and also thought the ban was plain stupid but Jack persisted with it for many months. He eventually relented and apologized to Mom and normal relations were re-established between the families. Pat and Dawn must have sighed with relief.
One thing Pat was not, was consistently obedient. On their way home from tennisette at the Volkskool, Pat and her friend Elize, still resplendent in their white tennis togs, decided to enter taboo territory and have a quick look at the state of the Wendam. It was an area which our sensible parents wanted us to shun steadfastly, as none of us could swim. Gaining the top of the wall, they discovered their schoolfriends, Roger Howell, Errol Rottcher and Basil Hamer were having a jolly time on the murky waters, “sailing” a distinctly shabby looking old tin boat. That boat was barely able to carry three kids and five would be plain foolish, yet against all common sense the girls allowed themselves to be coaxed on board, to share in the adventure. Out in the dam they suddenly noticed their feet were getting wet and that the boat was slowly sinking. For once a little bit of common sense prevailed when they frantically paddled away from the wall where the dam was at its deepest. Effectively “beaching” the craft in the muddy end, they waded ashore, getting their pristine tennis things wet and muddy. At least they hadn’t DROWNED.
That was cold comfort as they had no explanation for the state of their tackies and socks that might stave off vengeful parents actually extracting painful retribution from their fragile little bodies! It was decided to get home, swiftly change into clean, dry clothes and hide the incriminating muddy stuff in the washing baskets at each house, for the maid to find on the following Monday. Alas, it was not to be. Mrs Martie Pietrucci had found the “evidence” which Elize had been careless in hiding and the kid had come clean about the whole sorry expedition. Martie wasted no time phoning Mom and detailing the awful thing the girls had done and Dad immediately administered a hiding. Not long after that episode, Elize was packed off to boarding school where she could be subjected to supervision and discipline.
I suppose that the outcome could have been a lot more tragic than it was, as neither girl could swim but I have never considered what they did to be a heinous crime myself. Still, the old folks were aware of a precedent, when Tollie Wilken, whose family had moved to Koffiefontein from Trompsburg, had constructed a canoe for sailing on a mine dam. A younger kid had been in the canoe when it toppled over and sank, the kid being drowned as a consequence.
To try and list just some of Pat’s little friends would be a job. I remember Wilma van Rensburg whose father ran AVBOB; Minie van Zyl, a crippled girl whose father worked with Dad; Patsy Viljoen from the Kinderhuis (Who later became a magistrate); Lilian Elgar (Ex Kinderhuis) Jackie Cook, Hazel Hamer, Nellie Venter, Amber Dunn and of course the Bartleman girls, Anne, Joan and Mary, There was Jeanette Fourie (Adopted daughter of our butcher) who was mother to Annie Malan, well know actress and Petronell Malan, an equally famous concert pianist. It would probably be easier to try and come up with the name of someone Pat didn’t know in the Volkskool. She still has contact with some of those kids from long ago, testimony that they were not just casual acquaintances to her.
One of the girls was Idyll Brigg, the daughter of the Barclays Bank manager. She joined Miss Pohl’s class and Pat and Dawn befriended her. They were playing at the Briggs’ house and were striving to produce an “authentic” operation on a patient, who was to be Dawn. Idyll was the doctor, Pat the nurse and Dawn had to have her leg operated on. They had Dawn nicely laid out on the kitchen table and Idyll produced a pad onto which she dripped something – Pat thought in may have been nail varnish remover but no-one really knows for sure. Dawn was “knocked out” with their chloroform and the operation proceeded. Dawn had an impressive Indian ink line from knee to ankle, liberally doused with mercurochrome, to represent the “cut”. Eventually it was decided to “revive” Dawn but to their dismay, she wouldn’t wake up! It’s not known whether dreamy Dawn fell asleep or whether the fumes in the pad knocked her out but her pals were greatly relieved when Dawn finally sat up, after having had cold water sprinkled on her face.
Pat and Dawn were always thick as thieves and the stories about them are probably legion – if only they could be remembered. There was the occasion when they were playing in their favourite pear tree, at the old Voortrekker Street house. This tree served in many capacities, in Pat’s wild flights of fantasy. On this occasion they were pretending to be Hollywood actresses and the tree was a convertible Cadillac – Pat was Shirley Jones and Dawn, Carroll Baker. They began by “smoking” cigarettes – just sticks at first but as the folks were out, Pat decided to bring a bit of authenticity into the game by sneaking a cigarette out of a silver cigarette case in a little used handbag. They even went so far as to light up and puff the smoke, but there was a problem. Having been in that handbag for ages, the cigarettes had absorbed an unhealthy amount of Mom’s perfume. They could not have just puffed and must have inhaled a bit, because almost immediately both turned deathly pale and were sick as dogs. Dawn was so giddy that she fell out of the pear tree and very nearly broke her arm. She went home crying her eyes out and no, I have no idea how she explained away the smell of cigarette smoke to her parents when she got home because the Watsons didn’t smoke. By now that magnificent convertible Cadillac had forlornly transformed back into a leafy old pear tree – Shirley and Carroll would not be needing their car again soon!
Pat’s birthday parties were always riotous, fun affairs with girls in party dresses running madly in all directions, fuelled by lots of sugar from Sparletta and Coca Cola bottles and even more from the delicious icing which was always an inch thick of both the white and chocolate cakes. I’d usually invite a pal or two and we’d also chase around in our own games, separate from the girls. It was at one of these parties when Thomas Slaughter and I were chasing each other around a prunice bush, when Thomas suddenly reversed direction and we collided head on. His head hit my upper lip, my teeth cutting open the lip and we both collapsed on the ground, stunned. Turned out we were concussed and were unable to attend school for a day or two. To this very day, that scar can still be felt inside my upper lip.
As Pat grew into her teens, so did her previously amicable relationship with Granny cool off. They would often bicker mainly because tattle tale Granny would carry stories to Mom which would result in trouble. Pat was learning to ride her bicycle in the backyard one afternoon and wobbling, failed to properly negotiate the bend around the backyard shed. She went crashing headlong into a nearby figtree. Furious, she leaped up and blamed Granny, who was standing “spying” at the kitchen door for putting her off and telling her what to do.
That bicycle was both hated and loved by Pat. I had saved since I was 5 for my own bike and bought mine in time for my teen years. The folks bought Pat’s bike and so had full say over it. It was actually a very smart black Phillips girl’s bike but it still had an old fashioned, U-shaped crossbar, where girls’ bikes of the day were equipped with straight, diagonal crossbars. Pat believed the bike would make her look like some kind of “Old Maid” and would pale by comparison with Dawn & Elize’s bikes which were not only brightly painted but had diagonal crossbars. I think she did eventually overcome her dislike of that bicycle but I can’t recall seeing much of it in my high school years. I wonder where she parted company with it?
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