Umbilicus: An autobiographical novel

BETH'S STORY

I knew Dylan from the age of thirteen. I always had a crush on him, but of course I was too young for him. He was a very talented artist, and a natural musician. I deeply admired those qualities about him, and fell in love with his gentle and sensitive nature. We were good friends for a long time.

I think one of the things that drew me to Dylan was his stable family life. His folks were happily married, and he had a younger sister Janine, and a younger brother Ralph. I, on the other hand, came from a broken home. My parents got divorced when I was seven and my older brother Koos and I stayed with my mom. My upbringing was a crazy and unstable one. There were always different men in and out of my mother's life, she loved flashy cars, and we were always moving home. She got re-married and divorced twice after my dad. My dad also re-married. In my Matric year, just over a year after Dylan and I officially started going out, my step-mom Annamarie had a daughter, my half-sister, Annatjie.

Dylan and I got married in the December of the following year. I was three months shy of nineteen. The first two years of our marriage were happy, carefree and precious. Our mutual love, faith and closeness were very dear to both of us. He started his own little signwriting business and did freelance design work for a local newspaper in Port Shepstone. He also played in rock bands earning extra money while enjoying his hobby in music. Then he was offered a contract to join a group professionally. We both decided this would be exciting and a lot of fun. We packed our bags and toured a number of places in and around South Africa.

At this stage, Dylan and I had become very close with one of his bandmates, Anthony. Ant was very charming — good-looking and funny. We used to smoke a lot of dagga together, and, at times, things between the three of us got a little, well, a little too intimate, for my liking anyway. I confronted Dylan about it. I told him I wasn't exactly comfortable about this happy little threesome thing that seemed to be developing between us, and where I felt he, as my husband, was expecting it to go. He laughed it off and said everything was fine, that I was reading too much into the situation.

One day not long after that, Dylan sent me and Ant to the shops to get something. On the way home, Ant decided to take a bit of a detour and drove down to the beach. He tried to seduce me and, although I was very attracted to him, I pulled away at the last second and thought — What the hell am I doing? Then, when we tried to leave, the car got stuck in the sand, and we ended up getting home much later than expected. Dylan said we had a lot of explaining to do, and I jokingly, stupidly, said that Ant and I had gamise — a Greek slang word we all used for making love. Dylan saw red and flew into a violent rage. He destroyed all of his artwork in the cottage, including lots of portraits he'd done of me. That was pretty much the beginning of the end. Ant left immediately and went back to Rhodesia, and I went to stay with my granny in Pietermaritzburg. It was the only safe haven I had at the time.

Over the next little while, Dylan and I tried to get back together. But it was too late. The trust was gone, and we were constantly fighting. It was during this period we tried LSD for the first time. I had no idea I was already pregnant. By the calculations we use in midwifery, you would've been conceived in late November 1973. My mother was becoming increasingly concerned about how much dagga I was smoking, among other things. Behind the scenes she was busy orchestrating a sting operation, using some of her cop connections, to have Dylan busted for dagga. In January 1974, he was arrested and spent a month in jail, during which time she had divorce papers served on him. Our split was so sudden and unplanned. We were young and impulsive. It was a time of tremendous upheaval and uncertainty. We parted with broken spirits, emotionally bewildered.