LETTER FROM JOHANNESBURG

What was supposed to be a boring night in an airport hotel in Joburg takes a surprising turn, writes Sophia van Taak.

“The atmosphere in the hotel lobby is a mix of the feigned nonchalance of a high school reunion, and the melancholy of tea and cake in a church hall after a funeral.”

The late-afternoon Highveld thunderstorm was pretty spectacular, but now the walls of my Southern Sun hotel room are closing in on me. There has to be a bar or a stoep somewhere where I can read until dinnertime. The lift glides down without a sound, until a robotic voice announces, with a hint of surprise: “Ground… floor.”

What do we have here? The foyer is filled with groups of guests, drinks in hand, helping themselves to food platters. Am I gate-crashing a private function? But then a waiter offers me a glass of red wine. Pre-dinner drinks for everyone, it seems.

The atmosphere is a mix of the feigned nonchalance of a high school reunion, and the melancholy of tea and cake in a church hall after a funeral. There’s a lounge around the corner and I spot an open couch across a coffee table from an older couple. I sit down and smile at them, lifting my book apologetically. The man barely makes eye contact over his newspaper, but the woman is suddenly right next to me, her plate of savoury snacks thrust under my nose.

“Love, you should try the camembert, it’s divine!”

I timidly take a wedge, thank her and open my book. But that doesn’t stop her. She’s Wendy Saunders, she tells me, and that over there is her Jimmy. “Oh, just taste the olives!” Again I’m fed like I’m a small bird.

Wendy says they always stay here when they come to Joburg. Jimmy worked for Southern Sun for decades, so they’re always welcome here. Tomorrow they head back to Durban so Jimmy can rest up properly. He recently had two operations and lost so much weight that she had to take in his swimming costume.

That’s very specific information, I think to myself.

“Do you swim for exercise? For physio? After the operations?” I ask the man behind the newspaper. He doesn’t move or respond.

“No, we’ve always been swimmers,” says Wendy. She tells me she’s 83 and Jimmy is 81, and they’ve just competed in their umpteenth Gauteng Masters gala this past week.

You see, swimming is something they can still do together. Like dancing. They loved dancing! She met Jimmy in the 1950s at the Vogelstruisbult uranium mine near Springs. He was a geologist; she worked in the lab. They became dance partners – strictly platonic. Well, back then.

When she turned 25, she had saved 10 pounds and wanted to see Europe.

“That’s when Jimmy asked me to go steady with him,” she says.

But she said no because she wanted to explore the world. Off she went and worked for the Overseas Visitors Club in London for a while. In the meantime, Jimmy accepted a job offer in Northern Rhodesia and got engaged to an Irish girl. “He was a handsome sod at the time,” says Wendy with a wink.

The newspaper says nothing.

Wendy keeps stuffing me full of cheese and olives and anecdotes. At one point, she was a maid in the Queen Mother’s household. One morning, Queen Mum exited her room earlier than usual. Imagine: Wendy had to do her best curtsy while holding a vacuum cleaner!

But the Queen Mother wasn’t as strict as the rest of the royals. She even jived at a party in the castle once. “Oh, and that prince Philip… So sexy in a kilt.”

Wendy also travelled to America on a grain ship, chaperoned young couples in Rome, and visited Morocco where she had to be rescued from a brothel by the British consulate after a big misunderstanding and a lost passport. Her eyes twinkle with mischief.

“King Hassan II was also a handsome man – despite his politics…”

A waiter comes over to tell us that dinner is ready.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Wendy stops me from getting up.

She has one more thing to tell me.

When she returned home after many years overseas, her friends threw her a surprise party at her parents’ house. A few days before, Wendy had sent Jimmy – then a hotelier in Tanganyika – a telegram to say she was back, and he showed up at her party. But an old flame called Patrick wanted another chance with her and he kept lingering after all the other guests had gone home. But he wasn’t a match for Jim. “Isn’t that true, Jimmy?”

The newspaper is finally lowered, and Jim says: “I could out-sit any man.”

You see, swimming is something they can still do together. Like dancing. They loved dancing!