Welcome, Jane!
Sue, thank you for having me back
on this auspicious day – you talked about family histories on my blog
a few weeks ago. We writers are taught to tell of what we know, and our
families are ingrained into our very beings. I’ve often said that my family is
my life.
And my life is a patchwork of
catching up with the past. I’ve come to writing books late because of the
demands of family, but along the way have stumbled upon some extraordinary
icebergs.
I only met my father a couple of
times. He had an Austrian surname, which changed when he became naturalised
British. I’m told that General Orde Wingate is a vague ancestor. There must be
a semblance of truth, because Wingate was my father’s second name. But I’m too
busy to go digging.
In the year 2000 I found a
half-brother (I’ll call him Jim) in Cape Town and enjoyed supper with his
family. It was weird; we started arguing with each other over a triviality, just like
typical siblings. He has two younger brothers living in South Africa, and we
have a half-sister from yet another mother. “Our father,” as we called him, had
passed away the previous year, which unsurprisingly was news to me, and then
this sister appeared out of the blue…
I wondered if Jim thought she was
after an inheritance, and I quickly quelled any similar thoughts he may have
had about me, the first-born (I think…).
He told me that when he was
twenty-one, he went on a long car drive with our father through the South
African desert from Cape Town to Johannesburg. Jim had been brought up to
believe he was the eldest son. They picked up a newspaper from a wayside eating
place and Jim opened it as they continued their journey. Spread across the
inside pages was a glamorous photograph of a woman hanging on the arm of a film
star.
“Sue C-,” said Jim. “Dad – I wonder
if she’s a relative of some sort…”
Our father braked hard and pulled
into the side of the road. He snatched the paper from Jim’s hand and studied
it.
It turned out Sue C was a
half-sister, from his second wife in what was then Rhodesia. The remainder of
the journey was spent in outrage and recriminations. Jim never did get on with
our father. He told me as a small boy he was made to play tennis, but in a fit
of temper, smashed the wooden racket over his knee and refused point blank to
carry on. Our father used to attend Wimbledon every year; I now know the source
of my love of this game – it must be in my blood.
The story gets weirder, but I’m not
divulging any more, as the seed of another book is germinating in my mind. Truth
is indeed sometimes stranger than fiction.
People ask me how much of BREATH OF AFRICA is
autobiographical. I say the story is made up, but the scenes draw from my
experiences in Kenya. But a close friend pursed her mouth when I told her this.
“It’s not fiction,” she said, with
a knowing look. But even she cannot know everything.
Which brings me to the present.
Today - Tuesday 7th October - my second book, a novella, I LIFT UP MY EYES is
launched!
There is no hint of Africa in its
pages, but there is a sense of loss and frustration and an attempt at coping
with some of the hard knocks which life can throw at you. There is also love
lost and found, and a life-changing situation.
Here, the characters are a fictitious
conglomeration of people who may have crossed the paths of my life; but who is
to say how much of the emotions are mine and those of my family?
Wow, Jane - what a fascinating story! Thank you so much for sharing it!
To buy Jane’s new book, click here.
Jane Bwye’s website: www.janebwye.com
