Peter Curle would appear two or three evenings a week on his way home, settle into a chair with a glass of wine, and we'd talk. He was about twenty years older than me — British born, Oxford educated, had come out to South Africa decades earlier and built a successful financial services company. A difficult marriage had cost him the business and left him, by his own account, with a speech impediment that made his deep plummy voice anything but smooth. He'd landed on his feet regardless. Altec, the electronics company that had taken him onto their board, had done extraordinarily well, and Peter's share options had made him quietly, substantially wealthy. He had numerous properties all over South Africa as well a a plane, a Jag and a Porsche.
He was particular about the house. Understandably so — it was beautiful and it was his, and I could occasionally catch him doing a subtle inspection when he arrived, checking that I hadn't been hosting anything too hectic. I hadn't. The poker nights were civilised, the Bose system was loud but not antisocial, and Herlimon's garden remained intact. We got on well.
It was during the tax marathon that I met Betty. She was Peter's personal assistant — a lovely Zimbabwean woman, efficient and warm, who clearly kept his professional life in some semblance of order. I liked her immediately.
One evening, over a second glass of wine, Peter confided that he and Betty had become an item.
Now, writing this in 2026, that shouldn't raise an eyebrow. But this was 2010, and Peter Curle was a certain kind of Englishman of a certain generation, and South Africa, for all that apartheid had ended sixteen years earlier, retained its own complicated social textures. He'd taken her to a few office functions. She was attentive. One thing had led to another. He seemed simultaneously pleased and slightly amazed at himself. I was happy for him and told him so.
When the time came for Mikey and me to move on — I'd found a place in Northcliffe — Peter said it was probably good timing. He had being thinking of moving Betty into Forest Town , and our departure rather settled the matter.
On the day Mikey and I moved out, Betty moved in.
She did not move in alone. She moved in with her entire family from Zimbabwe. And the family, it emerged, included livestock. Specifically chickens.
I want to be clear that I have nothing against chickens. But Peter Curle's immaculate national monument, with its double-vaulted ceilings and claw-foot bath and grand piano, was about to be transformed into something considerably closer to a Zimbabwean homestead than its Afrikaans architect had envisioned.
Mikey and I drove away trying not to laugh. We failed.
I don't think the relationship survived very long after that, though Peter and I kept in touch less and less as time went on, so I never got the precise details of the ending. Some things you don't need to know. The image of those chickens in that entrance hall was really quite enough.