Estate Living Magazine Invest SA - Issue 41 May 2019 | Page 64

g O O d
l i f e
DARK
STORMY
NIGHT …
IT WAS A
AND
Museums are not about old crockery,
vintage clothes, beautiful furniture,
historical photos and rusty farm
implements. They’re about stories,
but sometimes you have to look hard
to find them. And sometimes those
stories illustrate an important principle
or moral.
Strolling down the Heerengracht on a beautiful
sunny morning, tall, broad-shouldered Johannes
Buyskes started at the sound of the Noon
Gun, and then instinctively reached into his
waistcoat to check the accuracy of his watch.
As he returned the timepiece to his pocket,
the unusual texture of the fob sent a chill down
his spine. He would never forget that dark and
stormy night.
He would never forget the booming thunder,
the wild water with its terrifying flotsam – and
the desperate screams that floated out above
the shrieking wind. And Rainie Dodds the next
morning, Ophelia-like, floating in the still, mud-
brown pool downstream – her torn wedding
dress caught on a thorn tree as she drifted in the
eddy with her long hair forming a halo around
her grazed and battered, once-beautiful face.
He hadn’t been in time to save her; he didn’t
even know her. And he had certainly been
unaware that she was standing in front of her
mirror trying on her wedding dress in joyful,
girlish anticipation of her imminent marriage.
She smiled at her flickering, candle-lit reflection
as she thought back to how her fiancé had