Pieter-Dirk Uys: The Echo of a Noise - Pieter-Dirk Uys

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gramophone – which I was allowed to use for my personal 78 rpm record – Peter and the Wolf. The two spoons as accompaniment were optional.

      Who could have guessed that in our lifetime the sacred LP would become a museum piece, an antique, a vinyl to treasure because grams wouldn’t ever come back in the digital age? Certainly no one back then in 1959 at 10 Homestead Way, Pinelands, where the Uyses lived.

      We all hopefully have that special place where we grew up safely, where our dreams became ambitions and where many lessons were learnt, often the hard way. A few people might have had a Downton Abbey; many had a White House. We were in ‘Sonskyn’, a thatched-roof, double-storey cottage like those often seen in many British films. This was home for me, Pa, Ma, Tessa and our cat Boeboe, with Sannie in her outside room.

      Pa bought the house in 1949 with money he borrowed from a wealthy relative. Every month he had to pay off the loan, which came with a cruel interest rate. The relative was arguably one of the wealthiest members of the Afrikaner Broederbond. Maybe subconsciously that’s when I started loathing everything the man stood for. I recall those dreaded times we as a family were obliged to go to the mansion in Cape Town for lunch in our best and behave gratefully and humbly towards the cousin and his third wife, while Pa was expected to grovel with gratitude. It was such a joy when I could take over all the debts and costs of Sonskyn. But hang on, there are still many flooded rivers to cross before we get there.

      1958: Pa’s first LP – Die Heer is my Herder with the Maria Callas of the choir on the cover!

      Dis Kersfees came out in 1960 and celebrated an Afrikaans Christmas in many tongues.

      I don’t remember if I was nervous listening to my voice on track after track on Pa’s children’s choir LP: Hannes Uys se Kindersang-kring. It was the second record we’d made. The first one had me on the cover, smiling and looking angelic, something Pietertjie Uys did easily and too often. This new cover for Dis Kersfees showed the entire choir in the church gallery, next to the organ with its silver pipes in the background, like tall, leafless cypress trees in a deserted graveyard. Pa is posed at the organ pretending to play. We kids are all frozen for the snap, singing with mouths open like hungry sparrows because we knew God was watching. Jesus was tapping his foot. The Devil wouldn’t dare show his face.

      November 1959: Rehearsing round Pa’s piano in our sitting room. Right in front next to Tessa is a young Laurika Rauch.

      19 August 1961: The programme for the concert in Bellville’s NG Kerk hall.

      Pa looked pleased as he listened to the results of his hard work, his discipline and his demand for perfection. Ma wore her pinned-on smile, slightly skew on one side, and I knew she wasn’t that thrilled. There were many mistakes in Pa’s organ accompaniment and often we kids hit a false note. But this was the first Afrikaans children’s choir attempting spiritual songs from Bohemia, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and England, now translated into Afrikaans by Hannes Uys. Gosh! Accompanied by Hannes Uys. And all conducted by none other than Hannes Uys. Even Mozart, and Latin, and proper German. Gosh! Who would have thought it?

      September 1959: Another concert, with added orchestral instruments, for the Epworth Music Society.

      Pa’s choir of ‘big people’ at the NG Kerk in Parow.

      Pa’s stories fed my imagination and I saw them in blazing colour, even though most films I saw as a child were in black and white. Detailed tales of how he and his two sisters Hannie and Anna would club together their pocket money and treat their stern mother, who loudly disapproved of the bioscope – ‘die voorportaal van die hel’ – so that they could go to see an afternoon film at the local cinema in Paarl. Ouma Uys, hoping that no one saw her enter the place, visibly bristled and sighed deeply throughout the action of a Western, but the serial that preceded it was another story. She was hooked. So she sent the children back every week with firm instructions to find out how that ungodly weekly serial was developing. Clever kids; clever mum.

      Pa’s 1920s jazz combo.

      Pa played jazz easily on the piano. He had his own jazz band while studying at the University of Cape Town. Did he finish his degree? We never found out. He travelled by ship to England in the early 1930s and, as he told it many times, was offered a film contract by none other than Ivor Novello. Or was it Noël Coward? Maybe both. What did it matter?

      The tragedy was that his mother wouldn’t hear of it and ordered him back home, so allowing him to constantly remind me before an opening night that he had sacrificed his film and acting career to start a family. His flair for storytelling and keeping those stories fresh showed what a good actor he would have been.

      The Uys family of Paarl in 1912: Tielman Marais Uys and Gertie Malan Uys with Johanna (Hannie) leaning against her father, little Anna in the chair, and son Hannes on the rocking horse.

      Our family still has timeshare in Paarl. It’s in the graveyard next to the Berg River. Most of the family is already there. A headstone for Hannes Uys and Helga Bassel. Pa’s parents Tielman and Gertie. His sister Anna. Me and Tessa there one day too? Who knows.

      Pa’s father was an engineer in Paarl during the First World War, probably one of the first of his kind, a Steve Jobs of the Boland. He had a motorbike and would put his little son on the back seat and they would drive off on the gravel roads to the various farms in the district so that Tielman Uys could fix the dorsmasjiene.

      The Uys family also owned what Pa proudly called the first motor car in Paarl, a Maxwell. They lived next to the Toringkerk, the Dutch Reformed Church where Pa started playing the organ at the age of twelve. He soon became the official organist, but his teenage legs couldn’t reach the pedals. So his youngest sister, Anna, would be down there pressing the correct ones at the right time with both hands.

      These stories were told over and over again, each recital including a diversion of ever greater drama and detail. One had all three of them playing in the dry riverbed down the road when they were nearly killed. The rest of the story was always an unexpected variation on the theme – a flash flood would swoop down like a tsunami, making a noise like thunder, or sometimes it was like an exploding Vesuvius, or the end of the world. They barely escaped with their lives. We’d ask Pa to tell that story to our friends and he would embroider a little bit each time. I think I got that from him, and I’m glad. Embroidery in storytelling can lead to a War and Peace, or even the legacy of William Shakespeare.

      From an early age I was aware of Uncle Jack. Pa would often mention his best friend who had shared a flat with him. Pa said it was the happiest time of his life. They did such exciting things together, travelling and laughing and being happy. Together. Ma would just knit and maintain an interested smile, as she did whenever the stories of Uncle Jack came up. Pa’s memory of their friendship and how wonderful it was, and how devastating it was when his best friend died suddenly, made Uncle Jack the fifth person in our family. Discussion never went further than that.

      Clever old Pa. Passionate about teaching me to play the piano but I just didn’t get up to scratch. He gave up eventually, but always said, ‘You’ll be sorry one day.’ I am.

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