8. Pretoria, 1987 - Black sheep, white sheep

In which Eleanor is caught between a school's image and a country's reality.

Oct 26, 2024

∙ Paid

Behind the immaculate lawns of Eleanor's school, St Anne's, lies an unsettling reality. The lines between right and wrong blur as Eleanor tumbles into an unlikely friendship, and inhales belonging.

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Eleanor

The last bell for the day rings, and 450 of us in our checkered blue and white dresses, white ankle socks and brown Mary Jane’s pile out of the classrooms and onto the immaculate lawns and courtyards of St Anne’s.

I know St Anne’s like the back of my hand. It’s the only school I’ve ever been to. Before I moved up into the senior school two years ago, Mum and Dad asked if I’d rather go to Girls High, the best public all-girls school in Pretoria, but I declined. I’m grateful for the full scholarship I’d earned—at least I’m not worried about the cost of staying at St Anne’s. Even paying only partial fees as a teacher's kid, I know it adds up for Mum and Dad. And while I hate the feeling of being in a fishbowl, both because St Anne’s is so small and because I’m a teacher’s kid, I know I’m getting a better education here as St Anne’s is private, and part of the Anglican Church, so we don’t have to follow the apartheid government’s curriculum.

There are parts of St Anne’s I hate; but there are also parts I love, like the dignity of chapel services and the choir’s glorious singing. Even bored teenagers and fidgety youngsters can’t completely eclipse the beauty of chapel services.

The buildings and grounds are definitely also in the “I love” bucket. The main building, I-shaped and graceful with its red brick first story, cream-stucco second story, and red tiled roof studded with chimneys, is over a hundred years old. It echoes the sweeping majestic colonial form of the Union Buildings. To anyone who lives in Pretoria, the Union Buildings, set on Meintjieskop and overlooking the bowl of Pretoria, are deeply familiar. We can see them from all over town. And we show off their classical beauty and stunning gardens to all visiting family and friends.

They’re also the seat of the apartheid government.

Ugliness can live in beauty.

And right in wrong, I remind myself, thinking of André Beckham. He believes in change from within. Although soon he’ll be doing that from London, rather than the depths of the Union Buildings.

Black South Africa has lost its patience for waiting for change from within, though.

I look around at us all tumbling carefree out of the classrooms and onto the lawns. You wouldn’t know from looking at us that beyond the serenity and orderliness of St Anne’s, and the leafy, quiet suburbs of white Pretoria, the apartheid government is raining down brutal oppression on the protests erupting in the troubled townships and squatter settlements. Our black and Indian classmates, who us white girls far outnumber, share little about their experiences—even when asked. And they rarely are.

I pause for a moment while I wait for Natasha to catch-up with me, to take in the familiar buildings. St Anne’s and the Union Buildings are products of the same architectural impulse we’ve been studying in Art History. Their stately classical beauty radiate power and class and privilege. They are both icons of an empire long gone. But what Empire left behind—a white upper class and a black underclass of which we rarely speak in the privileged classrooms and corridors of St Anne’s—seems as enduring as the Drakensberg mountains, as woven into the architecture of our school as it is into the fabric of South Africa.

St Anne’s espouses principles of democracy, liberalism, representation. The board and headmaster point to the black and Indian girls who attend to show we walk, not just talk, non-racism. But the fact that the school has a ninety percent white student body, hundred percent white teaching staff, and hundred percent black custodial staff reflects our real reality: we are built on the same foundations of injustice as the country.

I’m 15 and in Standard 81 now. As the daughter of Mrs Williams, head English teacher, I have been schooled to be a “Daughter of the King2”, from Grade One. That means we are schooled to be lady-like, proper, well-spoken, well-educated, and the “future of South Africa”, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.

I chafe under the propriety that is St Anne’s, but also cannot imagine being in one of the public, co-ed schools. It’s why I chose to stay. My solace is the academics—which I adore and excel at. Rose, who transferred in from a co-ed school, and with whom I am in constant competition for academic first place, revels in the academic freedom of our all-girls school too. She can let her brain flourish absent the gaze of teenage boys. Having always been in an all-girls school environment I can’t imagine what it’s like to hold yourself back academically rather than best a boy and take the social punishment for that.

At least I don’t have to add that to the weight of social punishment I carry on my shoulders for being the nerdy, brainy, bespectacled, gangly teacher’s kid. I am endowed with no cool-girl attributes: money, desirable brothers, connections, the right clothing, the right hairstyle, beauty.

And right on cue, Natasha blows into view, like a wild Highveld thunderstorm, looking somewhat disheveled as usual. On an impulse, she threads her arm through mine and whirls me across the lawn, until we fall down, laughing in a thoroughly unladylike heap.

No-one saw our friendship coming.

Natasha McMahon, the bane of school: the rebel who’s been expelled twice from other private schools; who gets a detention practically every week—if not more—which she just laughs off; with Eleanor Williams, daughter of Mrs Williams, who has never gotten a detention in her life, who is a model “Daughter of the King”.

Sitting up, I pull my dress down over my knees, suddenly aware I could be showing too much. With a mischievous laugh, Natasha promptly pushes it back up. “Be a daughter of the king,” she sings sweetly at me, “just not a stuck-up princess,” as she flicks an imaginary strand of hair with a snooty expression on her face, chest proudly stuck-out, in perfect mimicry of one of the most stuck-up of the princesses in our class. I laugh so hard I have tears in my eyes, her mimicry is that spot on. I take off my glasses and dry my eyes with the hem of my dress. Then let it stay rumpled—and a few inches above my knees.

It’s a gorgeous mid-autumn day, the crystal deep blue dome of Africa above us, and the still bright emerald green of immaculate English lawns under us. The two majestic Italian Cypresses on the terrace between the eastern arms of the I puncture the bright blue sky, their dark green columns striking against the building's low, broad red-roofed sweep.

Winter will be here soon, when the classrooms on the first floor will turn drafty and frigid. Our uniforms will change from summer dresses to blue knee-length skirts, white button-down shirts, blue ties, brown jerseys and thick ribbed stockings. But today we are still in our summer uniforms. Maternity dresses we call them, for their shapeless tent shape. And because one of the boarders did actually once hide a pregnancy under that dress for many, many months.

The rest of Natasha’s tribe gathers around us. They’re all boarders, like her. I’m the only day-girl in the group. We drift down to the track fields, away from girls milling on the lawns and courtyards, away from the prying eyes of teachers. The fields sit below the tennis courts and are screened on three other sides by tall Eucalyptus trees. We spread out on the bank above the fields, hidden by the rise of the tennis courts behind us. Natasha stays standing, the queen among her courtiers. She and I are almost identical in height, which makes us the two tallest girls in our year. But where I try to hide my height, Natasha moves with an easy grace, posture erect and confident. With Natasha I don’t feel so self-conscious and awkward.

I look at her now, hair pulled back in a regulation ponytail that somehow still manages to look sloppy and unkempt. Her broad and open face is alive with mischief and trouble. Where many of the other girls somehow still manage to convey in our identical uniforms that they pay close attention to how they look—in the height of their hems, how tightly their dresses fit, how they do their hair, their immaculate nails—Natasha could care less. Her uniform is loose, like it’s a size too big for her. Her brown Mary Jane’s are scuffed and dull, her socks pushed down rather than neatly folded down to show a flash of ankle.

At St Anne’s we’re allowed no jewelry, makeup or nail polish, except a crucifix or St Christopher’s necklace and discreet ear studs. Hair must be pulled back in a neat ponytail, bun, or French knot. Fringes must not come below our eyebrows. Hats and blazers are worn whenever we are off the school property and in public. Our entire image is policed and set by the school. We are to represent the school with dignity and respect at all times. I accept this. It is all I have ever known. But Natasha chafes at it and fights it at every turn. She has waged a pitched battle with Mrs Vermeulen, deputy headmistress and head of the boarding school, to keep wearing her three studs in her right ear, but that was one fight she’d lost to Mrs Vermeulen. Natasha was furious, and has plotted to get back at her ever since.

Natasha has paint on her blue and white dress. Paint on her hands. Paint in her hair. And a paint smudge on one cheek. We had double art today, so she’s in an exceptionally good mood. She’s a genius at art. And if she cared enough, she would probably be among the top of the class and challenge Rose and me. But she doesn’t, so I’m safe on that score. She has natural athleticism and whether it's a tennis racket, hockey stick, softball bat, volleyball or netball, she insouciantly gets the ball wherever she wants it, whenever she wants to. Which is not often. Which infuriates the PE teacher, who has tried to get Natasha to join the competitive teams to play against Girls High and the other area schools, dangling team captain as a carrot. Natasha has just brushed the teacher off as an annoying mosquito.

On every measure, Natasha and I inhabit different universes. Natasha, the black sheep rule-breaker; and Eleanor, the goody-two-shoes teacher’s daughter who has never been known to break a rule. We take a certain perverse delight in parading our incongruous friendship in front of the teachers and other pupils. I make Natasha look less bad. She makes me look less good. We’re both getting something that we want.

I keep my head turned away from the track fields. Just looking at them makes me wince. They are the scene of so many humiliations for me. I am always one of the last to be called to a team, when the PE teacher nominates two team captains (always one of the cool-girls) to pick their teammates one by one.

“Smoke?” Natasha now casually asks, taking out a cigarette pack from her school bag and holding it out for anyone to take one. Smoking in uniform is an absolute no-no, grounds for immediate detention, suspension even. Smoking in school uniform on the school grounds? My mind can’t even compute how the school would respond to that. I’ve never smoked, and stay silent, hanging back. Everyone else takes one.

“Try it,” Natasha says, holding the pack out to me, her smile warm. She taps the pack so a cigarette sticks up. Before I know what I’m doing, my hand reaches out to take it.

“Inhale it just into your mouth at first”, she instructs me, “don’t take a big pull. Just a little one.” She takes a puff to show me, and then lets it out languidly, the smoke hanging in the air for a moment, then disappearing.

She leans forward, lighter in hand, and lights the cigarette for me. I hold it gingerly, and bring it to my mouth in a movement I have seen a hundred times among the teachers and on TV, but never done myself. I pucker my lips and pull.

And double over in a fit of coughing.

“That’s normal,” Natasha says encouragingly, while everyone else doubles over in laughter, “everyone sputters at first. All of you did,” she glares around the group, who stop laughing immediately on her unspoken command. “Give it another try, take a smaller draw this time.” Her eyes sparkle with mischief, but are warm. I try again, sputter a little less. I take a few more puffs.

“This time, after you’ve taken a draw and held it in your mouth, breathe it all the way down into your lungs, like so,” she demonstrates.

I try. And land up coughing again. No-one laughs this time. Everyone is watching me. I try again. And again. I’m not coughing anymore.

And then it hits me, the sudden rush of the nicotine. My head light, my body abuzz. I’ve never had a feeling like this in my life. But at the same time my throat is burning. I take a deeper draw. Feel the high spreading throughout my body. I take deep, long draws, ignoring the burning.

“Don’t try to smoke the whole thing,” Natasha warns me. “It will make you feel sick. You’re not used to it yet.” Her prescience startles me. On top of the high, and the burn, I feel an incipient nausea rising. Grateful, I look around and hand the half drawn cigarette to one of the others, who takes a long, expert pull, tips her head back, and blows out languidly, the epitome of bad-girl coolness.

I bask in being part of the group, in being one of Natasha’s inner circle. During classes, she always picks a seat near me, and in art, we set up our easels side by side. In the evenings she has her boarding school friends; during the day, it's her and me. For the first time in my life at St Anne’s I feel like I have my tribe, like I belong and am welcomed for who I am.

Of all the teachers, Mum doesn’t seem the least phased by our friendship. “I think you can be a good influence on her,” Mum says. “I think she needs someone like you.”

If Mum could see me now, she’d have to take back her words.

Natasha

So she’s gotten Eleanor to try a cigarette. Natasha does a silent war whoop. It’s delicious to think that she can corrupt Eleanor Williams.

And yet, her heart isn’t really in it. She just wanted to see if she could. If she succeeds in making Eleanor like her, like the others—what would be the point? She’d become boring. The whole point of Eleanor is that she is different. Natasha doesn’t want Eleanor to change. She likes her just the way she is—with her quirky, off-kilter humor; her sharp, questioning mind; her intense seriousness and studiousness. Eleanor observes the rules, but doesn’t play by them. Yet she’s not a rebel either. She’s sensitive, but also fierce. A challenger, but also respectful. She’s a paradox. A paradox that fascinates Natasha. So no, she doesn’t want to change Eleanor.

And she also doesn’t want to lose Mrs Williams’ regard. Which she knows she will if Mrs Williams knows Eleanor has started smoking because of her. Mrs Williams is the first teacher she’s ever respected. She never raises her voice. She never gives out detention. In her first English class with Mrs Williams, she had attempted her usual strategies to get a rise out of a teacher: ignore instructions, talk to her neighbor, ask dumb questions, sarcasm—nothing had disturbed Mrs Williams. She’d simply, politely, requested Natasha to please refrain from disturbing her classmates, calmly repeated instructions, answered her dumb questions as if they were the most interesting thing in the world, and simply ignored her sarcasm. Natasha had felt that to Mrs Williams all her antics were just a mildly amusing act, and that she was just waiting for the real Natasha to please show up. And so, to her own amazement, she’s started to show up, and has been met in turn with genuine praise for good writing, and insightful feedback on where she could improve.

So no, she doesn’t want to risk two of the few things she actually enjoys at St Anne’s: Mrs Williams and her daughter.

Natasha remembers the first time she really noticed Eleanor. It was in history class, a few weeks after arriving at St Anne’s at the beginning of the year. Natasha had been bored stiff as the history teacher had droned on about the French Revolution, and then Eleanor had asked a question that challenged the argument the teacher was making. Natasha can’t remember now what it was about. It was what happened next that had intrigued her, and which she still remembers vividly. Eleanor and the teacher had gotten into a debate—an actual real debate. A teacher and a pupil, arguing with each other, and the teacher allowing it—allowing it!

“Who is that?” Natasha had asked one of the boarders she knew, and who was sitting next to her.

“Eleanor Williams. Mrs Williams’ daughter. That’s why she gets away with it. Being a teacher’s kid and all.” The boarder had sniffed disgustedly. “She’s just showing off.”

Natasha had silently watched Eleanor over the next few weeks. It was her new game. She saw how some teachers—the one’s Natasha found the most stupid—found Eleanor tiresome. But others seemed to enjoy her—the ones Natasha thought were vaguely competent. Eleanor didn’t ask the stupid, obvious questions. She asked questions Natasha wanted to know the answer to as well. She asked the questions Natasha had. She asked questions Natasha hadn’t thought of, but wished she had. Eleanor wasn’t showing off; she genuinely wanted to know.

Then in biology class a month or two later, she noticed how the biology teacher just kept ignoring Eleanor’s hand. If Eleanor had a question, Natasha wanted to know what it was. To her own surprise, Natasha found herself raising her own hand. She didn’t know who was more surprised, herself or the biology teacher.

“Yes, Natasha,” asked the astonished teacher.

“Eleanor has a question, ma’am. I’d like to hear her ask it. Please,” she added after just long enough of a pause, and with just enough of an inflection, to convey her contempt.

Eleanor’s head whipped around, her eyes wide with surprise behind her glasses, and her mouth slightly open in a hilarious “What?!”

The teacher’s intake of breath was audible. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Pursed her lips. Started again. “Very well, go ahead Eleanor,” she said, clearly irritated.

Eleanor hesitated, lost for words for once. Natasha grinned back at her. The expression on Eleanor’s face was worth having just broken her own rule to show no interest, whatsoever, in any class she found pointless. English, Math and Art were her only exceptions. English—because, Mrs Williams. Math—because the math teacher, Mrs Springer, actually set challenging math problems. And art—because, art. Definitely not biology. Most definitely not.

The class was silent too, watching this exchange. One of her boarder friends looked hurt—like Natasha had betrayed something. Rose, the other girl as smart as Eleanor, looked wary. What was going on? Rose was smart enough to know Natasha was a whole lot smarter than she made out.

“Um,” Eleanor stumbled on her words. Then she recovered. “If females’ hippocampi are bigger than men’s’, and the hippocampus is critical to learning, why aren’t more women in science and academics?” Well the answer to that was perfectly obvious, but clearly Eleanor wanted to put the teacher on the spot. Natasha gives her ten points for cheekiness. The teacher had just been intoning some idiocy about why women were better suited than men to careers that involve caring for others due to blah blah blah. Clearly Margaret Thatcher did NOT fit the teacher’s idea of a good woman.

“Why did you do that?” hissed the boarder next to her.

“For fun,” Natasha shrugged. “The teacher’s a sexist. She deserved it.”

As class dismissed, Natasha ignored her boarder friends and waited for Eleanor outside.

“Why did you do that?” Eleanor asked when Natasha walked up to her. That was Eleanor—direct and to the point.

“Because the teacher’s a sexist and she deserved it.” Natasha shot back.

“She is, isn’t she?” Eleanor laughed. “How she’s allowed to teach at St Anne’s, where we’re all supposed to be destined for great careers is a mystery only the headmaster can explain.”

“And hi, I’m Eleanor. You’re Natasha McMahon, right?”

That was where it began.

Today she gets to count Eleanor as her best friend. Life at St Anne’s isn’t so bad.