Free Swimming with Cobras by Rosemary Smith Page A

Smug with his Brylcreemed hair and his comb in his sock, he proceeded to assure us that the bureaucratic process had been followed to the letter. Dockets had been made out in triplicate and sent up and down the line. I couldn’t help picturing these useless notes being dropped from engine cab windows as trains few through remote rural stations, perhaps to be picked up by a porter or more likely, the wind. We pressed him for further information. No, no attempt had been made to speak to anyone on the telephone, the civil police had not been summoned, and the railway guard who had undertaken the custody of the child had not been interviewed. Instead we were treated to a tirade on the inefficiency of railway officials in the Transkei and the unreliability of blacks in general. Then his hectoring took on a salacious tone as he lent over the desk towards my colleague and me. “I needn’t tell you what I think has happened,” he said with a wink. “She is probably … you know…” and he resorted to hand gestures to imply a buxom lass, nodding in the mother’s direction. I was appalled by his insensitivity and resented his conspiratorial tone. The mother gave no indication that she understood his innuendo but we all rose and left his office.
    Outside, trains shunted back and forth, belching clouds of grey smoke. We were getting nowhere, so we shepherded the mother back to the advice office, where we decided that the best route was to alert the press. We assured her that the story of her daughter’s disappearance would be made a top priority and immediately got in touch with the local newspaper correspondent, who was a member of the Black Sash, and she distributed the story as widely as she could.
    Returning home to my own children that afternoon, I knew just how frantic I would have felt if one of them had disappeared. I also knew that the disappearance of a white child would not have been treated with the same callous lethargy as we had witnessed that day. The case had a deep effect on me. I could not imagine what it must be like to have so little control over one’s own life.
    The following Monday morning we heard that the girl had been found in safe care in a small town between Grahamstown and Umtata. Someone had read the story and alerted her rescuer. She was unharmed and able to proceed to school. Five years after this encounter, the girl and her mother visited us at the advice office again. She had finished school and trained as a dressmaker and we were able to put her in touch with a potential employer.
    The Sunday morning following the incident, Malvern and I went to lunch on a farm in the district. The girl and her mother were in the forefront of my mind as we drove out of town under a vast winter sky. In the distance the blue humps of the Amatola Mountains loomed, and flame-coloured aloes, like candelabra, illuminated the rocky landscape. As we turned off the tarred road onto a bumpy track, a leguan slithered across our path. It was the first one I'd ever seen and with its scales and mighty tail I thought we were meeting a crocodile! We passed a cluster of small labourers’ houses and a trading store before reaching the farmhouse.
    The large homestead smelt of polish and wood smoke from a roaring fire in the grate. Ornate dark sideboards and comfortable old sofas furnished the rooms while bearded ancestors and women in poke bonnets looked down from oil portraits on the walls. Our hosts were charming and lunch of guinea fowl and venison was splendid. The talk was of crops and the weather, children and schools. Plates and glasses were whisked away by a silent army of maids summoned by a bell that dangled from the ceiling above the dining table. Looking out from the farmhouse windows towards the distant mountains, I was struck by how dislocated we were from the shack dwellers and their problems. We toured the lands, saw exotic birds imported from faraway places and buck leaping in