Ma Talbot, the Cow and Great-Grandpa Rex

Lesley Temple Jess Kure

 This is a story written by my mother, Lesley Kure, of her grandfather, Rex Gerald Camp, and Ma Talbot, who lived in Ixopo village, and the Cow.

Ma Talbot baked and cooked divinely, and whenever anybody had to wait in the village for a vehicle to be repaired etc. they would visit Ma for tea and the best of home baked.  She listened avidly to all the local gossip, and as Nils said about his friend's mother - the story went in her ears this big ___, and came out her mouth _________________that big.  One could see her green eyes gleaming, and her mind embroidering the facts even as she listened.  As she was likely to have at least three visitors in a day, the stories grew and grew.

We were such an innocent group, all the funny stories had to come from the eccentricities of our elders and their forebears.

Ma’s interpretation of someone who was in angry turmoil was that, "He's as mad as a bee in a tar barrel."

She would only knit white garments for babies because "they are so peew-ah dee-ah".

Ma exclaimed about the local telephone exchange girl, who wore the clothes of the temptress - plunging necklines, swayed her hips, that "her jeans were so tight you could crack a flea on them" and said she had "had" to marry Jannie Engelbrecht, Mick Christie's drinking friend.

The Cow Story

Ixopo village had acres of Commonage round it.  A few people in the village kept cows, which grazed on the commonage during the day, and which were brought into their little sheds on the properties at night.  Ma Talbot was one of these people.

My grandfather's Jerseys

When my grandfather (your great-grandfather), Rex Gerald Camp, sold his portion of  Southdowns (the farm), he moved in to Ixopo.  In the mornings, after breakfast he went into his study.  This was a room off the back veranda.  He would sit there in his maroon dressing gown, his cigarette firmly pushed down below the second joints of his index and second fingers and peruse the stock market shares with a very severe expression on his face.  All his money was in gold shares, and he didn't move them about and they went down and down.

After that he relieved his feelings by cleaning all his beloved guns very thoroughly.  I can still smell the gun oil.  He then moved onto the veranda with his weapons; everything moving gleaming sliding and gliding in perfect synchronicity. He then executed a few lightning moves, snapping the stocks up to his shoulder, sighting along the barrel and squeezing the trigger at a swallow, an orange, a cloud.  Snap, snap, snap - just to keep his eye and reflexes in.  The chambers were empty of course, but he needed to keep his eye in.

He then changed into stout shoes with laced leather calf protectors, longish khaki shorts, khaki shirt, and his old felt hunting hat, and went to survey his vegetable garden.  He then returned to place a blanket on his desk to play patience until lunch time.  He had been a fine Bridge player in his time.  Claimed he paid his boys' through school with his winnings – this while working his way up through the Civil service.

Then in the evening when Sue returned from School, they would decide that the “sun was over the yard-arm”, that the “hour of sacrifice was nigh” and it was clearly “time to roll out the bottles”.

In the meantime, the food slowly lost its really fresh taste in the Aga warming oven, and we at second or third row of the small fire slowly froze.  Eventually we sat down to food that had that strange over-warmed flavour, over-dried food, served with extremely greasy gravy.

After one of these evening, when Ma Talbot and her youngest daughter, Chick (the danger of nicknames, particularly as she went on to marry a Bulcock) had been to dinner, grandpa and great-grandpa repaired to the garden for the usual reason I suppose.  It was the night of a full moon, and as they stood there contemplating the night, grandpa saw something emerge from the background.

He said to great-grandpa, "Look Dad, there's an enormous hare eating your cabbages.”  Great-grandpa couldn't focus.

"Where?  Where?"  "Good God, Temple, I hope you now what you are talking about.”  Great irritability.

Finally the shape took form: Ma Talbot's Cow.  Great-grandpa did not have a sense of humour on these occasions.

He marched in to accuse Ma of not securing her cow.

Ma Talbot - "No, no dear - it can't possibly be mine".

"It is, Violet.  You cannot deny it."  Best Magisterial Manner.

Vi Talbot in tears, daughter Chick in tears, Rex Camp determined that a fact is a fact;  Sue trying to intervene   Great-grandpa's view that Ma must admit truth, then all could be resolved.  Vi Talbot determined to defend the honour of her cow.  I don't know how it ended.  I was terrified of conflict.

I suspect someone slipped across to find Ma's cowman/gardener to remove the cow quietly.

The end of the cow story.

Great Grandpa being Judge and jury in the passage. Ma weeping her heart out - "No, no, Rex it wasn't my cow, Dumisane would never let my cow stray or out of her shed.”

"I'm afraid Vi, that it was most definitely your cow.  There is no doubt whatsoever about it.  I can prove it without doubt."

"No, no, Rex darling ........ "

By this time, Chick, Ma's daughter had joined the Greek chorus ... "Oh no no Uncle Rex"  

"Where were you my girl, and how could you prove the whereabouts of THE COW?”

Great Grandpa suddenly the Magistrate, with the quivering, unprepared perpetrators before him.

Sue tried to soothe things over next day.  He snapped his Patience cards down. Said he had no patience with the silly women.  It didn't matter whether it was the cow or not it had done no damage.  All they had to do was ADMIT it was their cow for heaven's sake, and all could be forgotten.

Rex Gerald Camp, the Magistrate

Story by Lesley Kure, written to her daughter, Kathryn, when she was living overseas in Saudi Arabia in early 2001.