It is a chilly Saturday afternoon in spring when I decide upon walking the quiet streets of Woodstock. The houses are quaint and mostly date back to the Victorian era. Several are now adorned with colourful graffiti. From across Victoria Road I catch sight of an attractive woman. Something in my foggy memory tells me to follow her as she turns up the steepish Roodebloem Road towards the mountain. Before long she has entered a small restaurant from which music and laughter can be heard. I must speak to her. Something is telling me that she is leading me towards unlocking certain unresolved issues from my past. I look up and note that this place is called The Hog and Rose.

Inside there must be all of a dozen patrons. Some eating, others drinking. All appear to enjoy the folksy sound of the girl on guitar who resembles a youngish Joni Mitchell. The song is funky folk and I hear the words, “for the show, for the show…” Am I myself here in this place to be put on show?   I look around but the woman whom I followed is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps she is in the bathroom. I draw a stool from the bar counter and settle down. 

“Your pleasure, sire?” asks the cheerful barman who looks and sounds like he’s from the Congo. “Hum… I think a glass of cream sherry in this weather, thanks.” He obliges my request with a generous whisky tumbler filled almost to the brim. 

“On the house,” he proclaims proudly. 

“That be most generous of you.” 

“Unfortunately, we are closing soon. Permanently. Covid dragon…” I shake my head in empathy. 

“Did you, perhaps, notice a woman come in just now… she was wearing a green dress….?” The barman smiles as if in the knowledge of one who holds a secret. 

“I must have been back of house, sir. Enjoy the sherry.” He turns to serve another patron. The Joni lookalike then began a new song. After a few bars of strumming she began singing the first line and I went cold. In an instant I was transported back to the prison yard outside of Santiago in Chile. It was 1973.

“Dare I say unto you… that you remind me…” She almost whispered into the microphone. I broke into a sweat. I felt she was doing a Roberta Flack on me… Killing me Softly. The only difference was that this was a song that no one would have heard before. Certainly no one in Woodstock, South Africa. Why..? Where did she learn it..? And why did she sing it with such poignancy..? Almost as if she wrote it herself… and where the hell did that woman in the green dress disappear to..? Surely women don’t spend that long in the bloody bathroom… I gulped down the sherry and held out the empty tumbler for Mr Congo to top up. He smiled… his black shiny face almost mocked me… as if… as if he was taking great pleasure in the deliberate holding of his secret… I wonder if he’s into muti… maybe… maybe they’re going to kill her and use her body parts for witchcraft… they are those type of people… are they not..? That’s how we were trained to think back in ’73, working for the Bureau of State Security…

He filled my glass once more and once more shook his head when I brought out my wallet. Well no wonder they’re bloody well closing, I thought. Handing out all of their sherry stock for free.

I sipped slowly this time. The singer ended the song and put down her guitar. She then sat in a corner alone and proceeded to check her mobile cell phone. 

“Her favourite,” said Mr Congo. He passed me a glass of Pimms no. 1, mixed with cranberry juice. I nodded, placing the glass in front of her. She did not thank me but instead looked up at the barman and winked as if in private collusion.

“May I join you?”

She nodded and I shuffled onto a rickety wooden stool. 

“That song you played… it’s… well I don’t believe it’s ever been on the radio… sort of one of those that don’t make the commercial top forty charts…” She looked up, unsmiling. 

“I cribbed it off an old cassette tape.” 

“Oh” I said, pretending to be horrified. 

“No one else who has heard me play it has ever commented on its possible origin.” 

“Where did you get the tape from?” 

“I have this somewhat aloof aunt. She said I might like to listen to it… said it was becoming too painful for her… brought back… too many unwanted memories.”

I stared at the musty wooden floor not wanting for this young troubadour to see the expression of shock on my face. Surely, it couldn’t be her..? What was her name?  Verde… green… but then it must surely be an apparition of her… she hasn’t aged in fifty years… and not forgetting that she went missing … what was her name..?  V… V… Violin… no… Violet… no… Violeta!! Violeta Verde.  

I looked out the window facing the road where an old tramp stood begging from the outgoing patrons. His presence had created a convenient distraction from our conversation, giving me time to consider my next question. She sipped on her Pimms and smacked her lips afterwards. 

“Is it possible?“ I asked, looking up at the heavy curtains in the room… “if I could meet… this aloof aunt of yours?” She looked at me with an element of surprise. 

“Why would you want to?” I was taken aback by her aggressive tone. 

“I… I’m just interested in… obscure music… she perhaps might have more…” I realised that my request would be fruitless. 

“You want me to take a total stranger to my aging aunt so that he can just go and scratch through all her paraphernalia… looking for obscure music, as you like to call it….” 

“No,” I answered defensively. “Not at all… in fact we could even meet on neutral territory… right here at the Rosy Pig… before they close it down…” My incorrect reference to the establishment brought a welcome smile to her pale face. 

“I can take you there… to meet her…” 

“Thank you.”  

“I must just warn you. She doesn’t take easily to strangers. And further to that, she’s in a wheelchair…”

”I’ll behave myself, miss…?” 

“Just call me Society. That’s my stage moniker.” 

“Another, Miss Society?” I asked getting up and gesturing towards her glass. 

“That would be nice. I’m playing one last set and then we can leave. Do you have the Uber app?”

“I do!” I said triumphantly. She picked up her guitar to check the tuning with her mobile cell phone. “And what do we call you, mister…?” I felt strangely caught off guard by the question. 

“I’m… I’m… Katanga… Jose Katanga…” She stared as if not believing me. 

“Your parents are named after that town in the Belgian Congo, are they…?” I couldn’t answer her. “Or did the name just spring into your head because you’d met Maurice, the barman… who hails from the DRC..?”

She wasn’t expecting an answer and continued with the tuning of her instrument. I made my way past a rowdy table towards the bar. I had to meet this wheelchair bound aunt of hers. I had to wait. I desperately needed the loo but was scared that she might just up and run out of the building…this elusive Miss Society… I waited at the bar counter and watched as she left her chair and made towards the microphone. The tramp was still outside but now he was staring inside…staring directly at me… Damn you, old hobo… be gone from my sight, I cursed softly to no one in particular. Miss Society started to play. It sounded like an old Bee Gees song. I needed to relieve my bladder… “Bathroom is that way,” Mr Congo said pointing to his right whilst sensing my urgency. I made my way in the direction to which he had pointed. Then, almost ghostlike, the attractive woman in the green dress passed me. The one who had led me here. Violeta. The one who had gone into bathroom hibernation. Violeta, from the past. 

“Excuse me,” I called out…” Miss… excuse me, miss, but…” She did not so much as turn her head. Before I knew it she was out the entrance and gone. Mr Congo just smiled. I ran outside but only the ragged hobo was there… “Did you see where that woman went,” I asked frantically… ”The lady with the green eyes….I mean dress…?” He would not answer. I took out a fifty Rand note which he gleefully accepted. He pointed towards a lane nearby on the opposite side of the road. But I could not follow her….Not now. I had an appointment with Miss Society’s wheelchair bound aunt which I dare not miss. “Does she come here often?” No answer. Another fifty Rand note. 

“Just tell the barman that you are looking to find Betty Davisson,” he said. 

“Betty Davisson..?” He waited for more of a cash injection to his grubby paws, but I was dammed if I would part with any more.

I made my way back to the Hoggy Rose or whatever it was called. Miss Society was playing what sounded like a Joan Baez song but I sensed it was from her original repertoire as I had never heard it before… and I needed more cream sherry. I waved to Mr Congo to draw his attention. He is very sharp and has a glass ready for me. “Do you know Miss Betty Davisson?” I ask above the noise of the room. He smiles but shakes his head in the negative. “You don’t know Betty Davisson?” I ask again. Once more he shakes his head and turns his back on me. I sip on the cream sherry, exasperated, while Miss Society strums and sings „…are you trying to make me jealous, babe…“ Yeah, sure I thought. As if I stood a chance.

Miss Society won’t let me carry her guitar. Perhaps she doesn’t trust me to drop it or maybe she’s just one of those young feminists. We wait in the cold night air and I start to call up the Uber on my mobile.

„Wait.“ she says suddenly.

„For what now?“ I ask ever frustrated.

„I think I should first check with Florence, Aunt Erica’s carer. It is rather late, you know.“ 

I shrug. It’s pointless to argue with her.

„Florence …“ she says brightly. „It’s me… yes, I know it’s late but I was just wondering if Aunty Erica would like to receive myself and a visitor“.

There is a long silence and her disappointed expression tells me everything.

„Not on your nellie. That’s what that old battle axe is telling me. „

„Another time, perhaps?“ I ask keenly.

She nods. „Perhaps tomorrow“.