110) Hillcrest Presbyterian Church

After Dominic’s accident, I started going back to church and was enjoying it. The minister was a young man called David Grey and he and his wife Rosemary had three small boys. The people were friendly and I began meeting people in the area.

David, the minister, told me that his secretary Beryl Stockel was going to start an afternoon bible study group and asked if I would like to join it. That first week, besides Beryl there was myself, a woman called Cissy Crosby, we were all about the same age and another younger woman called Sharon if I remember rightly. Ten years later Beryl, Cissy and I were still meeting every Tuesday afternoon, still sitting in the same chairs most of the time but Sharon moved away and had not stayed with us long.

Of course, like all groups people would come and go but Beryl, Cissy and I were the foundation members and we were teased about our choice of where we always sat. After we had been going quite a few years and we had more regulars like Sally Van Der Merwe, Ruth Granger, Tove Macintosh, Leigh Dunstan, Gusta Tyrer, Betty Rees and Dorothy Yetten. One day we were all sitting together at some church function, I don’t remember what it was and Beryl brought another woman across to introduce her to us. She was thinking of joining our group in the coming New Year. Beryl introduced her to each of us. Her name was Merle Hayes and it was pretty obvious that she had a good sense of humour and did not take herself too seriously. When Beryl introduce Merle to Cissy, Cissy put on her most snooty face and said “Don’t call us we’ll call you”. For a moment I don’t think Merle knew how to take it but we all burst out laughing and so she realised that Cissy was joking. After that when anyone wanted to join we would tell them that they would have to have Cissy’s approval and of course Cissy would say “Don’t call us we’ll call you”.

My Bible Study Group

Cissy is Afrikaans by birth, she is married to an English South African by the name of Trevor and they had a son called Llewellyn. I think the story was that they had been introduced to each other by mutual friends who were Welsh and that was why their one and only son had such a Welsh name. Cissy told us that Llewellyn was rather ashamed of his ancestry and told her not to tell people that she was a country girl from “a farm in the Free State”. “You can tell them about the Free State Mom, but please don’t mention the farm.”

Another member of our group was Tove McIntosh. She was Danish married to a South African from a Scottish background. They had three children that she called her “wunderkind” Her husband Blaize owned the Mercedes agency in Pinetown. One year Tove’s aunt said that she wanted to go back to Denmark to attend a large family gathering but as she was in her eighties she did not want to travel alone and asked Tove to go with her. They were away for about a month and on the day that they were due back I got an agitated telephone call from Sally to say that Tove had had a heart attack. I was stunned and asked how bad it was, Sally told me that she had died on the plane. Apparently when the flight was nearly over and they were flying over Zimbabwe Tove started feeling very ill. As there was a doctor on the flight he attended to her but unfortunately he could not save her. When the pilot heard that there had been a death on board he said that he was supposed to land at the nearest airport and have the body taken off the plane. The doctor was shocked to think that not only would her poor family lose her they would probably have a terrible time getting her remains back to South Africa for burial because of the chaotic situation in Zimbabwe. He asked the pilot to fly over the border before he reported the death so that the family would be saved that ordeal, which he agreed to do. It was realised that Tove would have someone at the airport to meet her so the pilot got in touch with the Scandinavian Consulate to ask him to get in touch with the family to prepare them so that it would not be such a shock to them, arriving at the airport to meet the plane and finding out that Tove had died. The awful thing was that the Scandinavian Consulate was Tove’s brother. It must have been a great shock for him. Tove and Blaize were a well-known and well loved couple and I have never seen such a well attended funeral. All of us in the group missed her greatly.

Over the years we all became very close and shared a great deal, we told each other many of our secrets, our hopes and dreams and our hurts and hang-ups. I learnt so much from all of them, they taught me that people are not always what they appear to be and that many people who have had great troubles in their lives still manage to rise above these problems and not become hard and bitter. I miss them very much.