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it was useless; even this would be denied her by the triumphant old bitch. She wiped her tears and entered the shed and pulled the large enamel basin out from under the cot.
    Tandia knew enough to realise that her life, despite Mrs Patel, despite the loneliness, had been a fortunate one by the standards of a great many Indian and coloured families and almost all the urban black ones. Natkin Patel had been, by Durban Indian standards, a wealthy man and he had used his wealth and position to give her a chance in life.
    She had expected Mrs Patel to send her packing and after Patel's funeral she'd worked out a plan. She had five pounds exactly, an amount that had taken her nearly ten years to save. She would take the bus to Clairwood; blacks as well as Indians lived there. At Clairwood or perhaps Jacobs, she would find a nice clean black family with whom she could board. Her five pounds would buy her food and board for six weeks and leave enough over for train fares so she could go in to town to look for a job. She would be" sure to find a job of some sort in that time. She could clean, cook - Indian food anyway - wash and iron and work a sewing machine, so she could work as a housemaid or she might even get a job as a junior clerk or a sales assistant in an Indian shop in Victoria Street. She spoke both Tamil and Hindi as well as Zulu and, of course, Afrikaans and English, so that should help a lot. Before she had fallen asleep the night before, Tandia had decided that she wasn't entirely helpless and that when she got settled she'd complete her matriculation at night school or by correspondence school.
    But now, back in the tin shed, a terrible fear struck her and Tandia started to cry again. She had used the last scrap of her courage in the kitchen with the old lady; she had no more left as she began to pack her things into the basin. Her stomach churned and she realised she hadn't eaten since lunch the previous day when the old lady had locked the house up to go to the funeral and removed the key from its usual hiding place under a loose brick in the back wall. Tandia packed her school books first, then leaving one cotton shift on the bed she rolled the other two up and placed them in the basin. Mrs Patel hadn't said anything about shoes so, technically, she was entitled to take them. She left them on but removed her blouse, gym frock and school beret and hung them together with her spare blouse on a wire hanger which she then hung on a nail protruding from one of the two wooden roof beams a foot above her head.
    It didn't take long to pack away the fifteen years of her life. She had accumulated almost nothing of personal value other than a few trinkets, ribbons and bits and pieces which were all contained in a biscuit tin. The last thing she packed was a small kewpie doll someone had given Patel for her when she was a small child. The paintwork on its face had almost totally rubbed off and only a suggestion remained of the doll's large, wide-open painted blue eyes and red bow lips. She'd named the doll Apple Sammy, although she'd long since forgotten why she'd given it a boy's name or even such a silly one. The worn but much loved little doll had rested on her bed for as long as she could remember and now she hugged it briefly, wrapped it carefully in the third cotton shift and put it into the basin. She now set the basin into the centre of a square of cheesecloth and, in the African style, drew the corners over the top and knotted them.
    Tandia, an African of very recent persuasion, did not know how to hoist the basin onto her head and walk away, straight-backed and proud with her hips and arms swinging free. She managed to carry the basin out of the shed into the yard where she set it down. It was much too heavy to continue to carry in her arms, and she quickly decided she would have to fashion a head cloth and rest the basin on it, keeping it steady by holding on to either side.
    Tandia returned to the shed to fetch the