3. A GIRL CALLED CELESTE.
THE LIFE OF A SEVENTY-PERCENTER
A GIRL CALLED CELESTE.
The romantic fantasy to the episode of the ‘button’ with the word CELESTE.
Since my final ‘retirement’ from all forms of business in about the Year 2000, I have spent some of my time regaling myself (having fun) writing short stories — having fun but also hoping I would come up with something acceptable to this or that magazine. I have succeeded in the first — I have had fun — but have been woefully unsuccessful in the second. It appears that magazine Editors just do not have a sense of the real short story art. (Joking!). Some of the short stories or essays reflect real instances in my childhood and early life. Should THE LIFE OF A SEVENTY-PERCENTER ever see the light of print, these stories and essays need to form part of it because they are part of my story. Here, then, is my later romanticising of a ceramic button named CELESTE found lying in a wattle plantation by a nine or ten-year old..
A GIRL CALLED CELESTE
Romance has no rules; it blossoms where it will and when it will. Alice C. Crookes found her romance at the Wednesday Coffee Club before the eyes of everyone, and became Mrs Alice Kimber. She was approachimg twenty-seven and was beginning to despair of any Mr Right ever appearing on her horizon. And how would she know him when he did appear? She remembered how Abraham’s faithful servant was sent to find a wife for Isaac, and he didn’t know how he would know which was the right one. So he prayed, ‘God, when a girl comes to the well and I ask her for a drink, and she says, Yes, drink, and I’ll give your camels some water also, then Lord, let her be the right one’. Alice couldn’t think of any better way to do it than that, so she often sent little requests up to heaven — Dear Lord, let my man appear, and let me know for sure!
Then one day love and romance came her way right there at the Coffee Club when she didn’t expect it. It started when Scar, who is the sort of unofficial chairperson of the Club, said, ‘Come on Roy, your turn to tell us a story. What about puppy-love — were you ever smitten when you were very young?’
‘Yes’ said Roy. ‘I was very much in love once when I was only seven or eight years old. Her name was Celeste, but then I threw her into the lake.’
‘Wow!’ said Scar. ‘Tell us — we want to hear all about it.’ So Roy told the story.
It started one weekend in the summer-time in the rural area where he grew up. The day was hot and windfree, and the water lay calm up to the reeds at the edge of the mealie field. Roy skirted round the pond making his own footpath in the moist and muddy ground beside the first row of mealies. He stopped for a moment to send a flat stone, which he took from the pocket of his khaki shorts, ricocheting over the surface of the water. He counted the number of times it bounced off the water before it sank. “Six! Wow!” he exclaimed to himself, for he was quite on his own except for Rex, his fox terier, who followed him everywhere.
He carried on along the edge of the lake — it was called ‘The Lake’ but it was really a swamp, a hollow in the earth replenished by the recent summer rains — until he reached the shade of the first trees in the wattle plantation beyond the mealie field. There he sat on the trunk of a large tree which had fallen many years before and had been allowed to dry up and start decaying where it lay. It was a favorite spot where he often sat to think in the hot days of the summer. Eventually one or other of his little black friends would find him there and they would go off further into the plantation to shoot at birds with their catapults which they always carried with them.
Now and then he got up from his seat and wandered around, kicking up stones and sticks lying on the ground. It was on one of these occasions that he saw it lying there in the mouldering twigs and leaves fallen from the trees — a white, rounded button with blue writing on it. The writing said: CELESTE. Roy picked it up, wiped it clean with his hands and gazed at it. CELESTE? What could that be, he wondered as he stowed it away in his pocket with the other little stones and his Joseph Rodgers pocket knife.
His friend Mfanyana arrived in a while, and the two walked off into the plantation, moving silently, listening for the sounds of birds. Mfanyana was the son of the local Nyanga, that is to say, the Medicine Women, or Witchdoctor as those of her profession were normally called by the white people. Though they came from vastly different homes and cultures — Roy white and English, Mfanyana black and Zulu — and though Roy at ten years of age was a full two years older than Mfanyana, the two were firm friends and spent many happy hours together.
During the morning, Roy pulled the button out of his pocket now and then, gazed at it and replaced it. He showed it to Mfanyana, but Mfanyana could offer no suggestions.
That night, Roy showed the button to his mother. “Celeste?” she said, “sounds like somebody’s name to me.”
He showed it to his Dad who usually knew most things, but his Dad was also a bit puzzled. “‘Celeste’ means ‘heaven’ in French ” he said. “I don’t know where that button comes from.”
At supper time Roy placed the button on the table beside his plate. The school teacher, who actually boarded with Roy’s parents, for this was a farming village community and Roy’s home was the only place where out-of-towners could stay, saw it and asked Roy: “What is that you have there?”
She took it from him as he passed it across the table to her, looked at it and said: “Oh, CELESTE. Thats’ a girl’s name. I have a friend called Celeste.”
The button took on a new meaning for Roy from that moment. Celeste. A girl! He was at that age when the thought of a girl had started to mean something. Not that he knew anything about sex. No, it wasn’t that, but a girl was different to a boy, and the sight of a girl, the nearness of a girl, the accidental touching of hands with a girl, sent shivvers of excitement through his body. There were girls out here on the farms, and he saw them at school, but it took a lot of courage to talk to one. Even when one spoke to him, for some reason that he could never fathom, he found it difficult to speak without swallowing his words. With his button, he could wonder what Celeste looked like, and of course he visualised her as a striking little princess from some faraway land, with the most heavenly blue eyes and pale blonde hair, and the sweetest, kindest voice — and she was not afraid to speak to him, and he to her. Celeste.
The next day, being Sunday and no school, he went again to the fallen tree in the plantation where he sat for a long time, holding his button and wishing ever so hard that Celeste would suddenly appear from behind a tree in the woods. But, alas! Mfanyana and his cousin Gcina arrived, but no Celeste. Nevertheless, with his button back in his pocket, Roy went off with the other two to hunt birds in the plantation.
The blow came the following Friday when some weekend guests arrived at the boarding house. Jonathon Summers was an organist in a big Church in the city. When he saw the button, which Roy made sure he did at dinner that Friday night, he took one look at it and said: “Hey, that’s from an organ. CELESTE is an organ stop — Celeste gives a particular soft tone or sound. I wonder how it got here?”
Roy didn’t bother to wonder how it got there. His disappointment was massive; his princess had vanished into an organ stop. The next morning he walked once more beside the swamp towards the fallen tree. As he passed the middle of the stretch of water, he stopped and felt in his pocket for a stone to send ricocheting across the surface, and his hand came out with the button. He looked at it and hesitated only for a moment before throwing it as hard as he could out over the surface. It bounced only twice before disappearing under the water. Roy whistled loudly to himself as he continued to the tree trunk to sit and wait for Mfanyana.
In the Coffee Club gathering, Roy finished telling his story, and Alice’s prayer was about to be answered! All the time that Roy had been talking, Alice had been gazing intently at him. Was this the sign she had been waiting for? When he stopped, she said, taking a deep breath and her courage in both hands, ‘Hey, Roy, do you think I could be your Celeste?’
‘You, Alice?’ said Roy, but now his eyes were scanning her long blonde hair and her heavenly blue eyes, and his ears were taking in her lovely, soft voice, as if he’d never noticed those features in her before.
‘Yes, Roy. My name is Celeste — I’m Alice Celeste Crookes.’ She was smiling, but her lips were also trembling slightly.
‘Maybe you are,’ said Roy, smiling back at her, his princess of the Celeste button having suddenly materialised before his eyes! ‘Maybe you are! Maybe you are.’
Jessop
