“Where to, Captain?” he asked. Viljoen raised an eyebrow at Preston.
“The railway headquarters,” said Preston. “More particularly, the administration building.”
The driver nodded and set off. East London’s modern railway station is on Fleet Street, and directly opposite stands a rather shabby old complex of single-story buildings in green and cream, the administration offices. Viljoen’s open-sesame identity card brought them quickly to the director of the finance department. He listened to Preston’s query.
“Yes, we do pay pensions to all retired railway staff still living in this area,” he said. “What was the name?”
“Brandt,” said Preston. “I’m afraid I don’t have a first name. But he was a shunter, many years ago.”
The director summoned an assistant and they all trooped down dingy corridors to the records office. The assistant burrowed for a while and came up with a pension slip.
“Here he is,” he said. “The only one we have. Retired three years ago. Koos Brandt.”
“How old would he be?” asked Preston.
“Sixty-three,” said the assistant after a glance at the card.
Preston shook his head. If Frikki Brandt had been the same age as Jan Marais, and his father about thirty years older, the old man would be over ninety by now. The director and his assistant were adamant. There were no other retired Brandts.
“Then can you find me,” asked Preston, “the three oldest pensioners still alive and in receipt of their weekly check?”
“They’re not listed by age,” protested the assistant, “they’re listed alphabetically.”
Viljoen drew the director aside and spoke urgently in his ear in Afrikaans. Whatever he said had its effect. The director looked impressed. “Go ahead,” he told his assistant. “One by one. Anyone born before 1910. We’ll be in my office.”
It took an hour. The assistant produced three pension slips. “There’s one who’s ninety,” he said, “but he was a porter at the passenger terminal. One of eighty, a former cleaner. This one is eighty-one. He’s a former shunter from the marshaling yards.” The man was called Fourie and his address was given as somewhere up in the Quigney.
Ten minutes later they were driving through the Quigney, the old quarter of East London, dating back fifty years and more. Some of its humble bungalows had been well kept up; others were shabby and run-down, the homes of the poorer white working class. From behind Moore Street they could hear the clang of the railway workshops and the shunting yards, where the big trains are assembled to haul freight from the docks of East London up to the landlocked Transvaal via Pietermaritzburg. They found the house one block off Moore Street.
An old Colored woman answered the door, her face like a pickled walnut and her white hair drawn back in a bun. Viljoen spoke to her in Afrikaans. The old woman pointed toward the horizon and muttered something before firmly closing the door. Viljoen escorted Preston back to the car.
“She says he’s up at the institute,” Viljoen told the driver. “Know what she means?”
“Yes, sir. The old Railway Institute. Now they call it Turnbull Park. Up Paterson Street. It’s the social and recreation club for railway workers.”
It turned out to be a large, one-story building adjacent to three bowling greens. Beyond the doors, they passed an array of snooker tables and TV rooms before arriving at a flourishing bar.
“Papa Fourie?” said the barman. “Sure. He’s out there watching the bowling.”
They found the old man by one of the greens, sitting in the warm autumn sunshine nursing a pint of beer. Preston put his question.
The old man stared at him for a while before nodding. “Yes, I remember Joe Brandt. He’s been dead these many years.”
“He had a son. Frederik—Frikki.”
“That’s right. Good heavens, young man, you’re taking me back quite a bit. Nice kid. Used to come down to the yards sometimes after school. Joe used to let him ride the engines with him. Quite a treat for a lad in those days.”
“That would be the mid- to late 1930s?” asked Preston.
The old man nodded. “About then. Just after Joe and his family came here.”
“Around 1943 the boy Frikki went away to the war,” Preston suggested.
Papa Fourie stared at him for a while from rheumy eyes that were trying to look backward through more than fifty years of an uneventful life. “That’s right,” he said. “The boy never came back. They told Joe he had died somewhere in Germany. It broke Joe’s heart. He doted on that boy, had great plans for him. He was never the same, not after that telegram arrived at the end of the war. He died in 1950—I always reckoned of a broken heart. His wife wasn’t long
after him—couple of years, perhaps.”
“Awhile ago you said, ‘Just after Joe and his family came here,’ ” Viljoen reminded him. “Which part of South Africa did they come from?”