Magistrate of Gower, by Claire Robertson

Magistrate of Gower, by Claire Robertson. Penguin Random House South Africa. Imprint: Umuzi. Cape Town, South Africa 2015. ISBN 9781415207642 / ISBN 978-1-77-022764-4

Magistrate of Gower, by Claire Robertson. Part One: The withering Loft

Claire Robertson  

In the end, you choose to say no more than this: that in the high summer of 1938, in a courtroom in the town of Gower in the Union of South Africa, a case of arson came to an abrupt and irregular end, confounding those who had followed the matter and prompting speculation that approached, but did not quite deliver, scandal. Even before it ended so suddenly, the case had been variously interpreted, and to its end likewise were ascribed reasons that reflected the view of the person holding the floor far more than they did the facts of the matter. The magistrate was corrupt. The magistrate was afraid. He was in league with the sorry creature in the dock or at least bent on rescuing the reputation of the people that the accused, and the magistrate, could be said to belong to: the theories veered from venality to cowardice to a clannish and ignorant break with form. They agreed only in that none admitted any part for honour - but then honour was not in fashion that year. The magistrate before whom the case was heard was only three years in his post at the time in question, a circumstance that may suggest a younger man. He was in fact well into middle age, having come late to the office, and both the lateness of the honour and its eventual conferral, like the opinions about the court case, had as much to do with the place as any lack or ability in him. The place, and the time. His fifty-four years had straddled the turn of a century and the end of an age. Impossible as it is to imagine him as a baby, he had been born in his parents' bed in the low second room of a farmhouse by the light of oil lamps and at the hands of the cook and his own aunt, in the mature years of Victorias reign (although she was his mother's queen, not his), a time that claimed to recognise in itself the destination of mankind. The farm was so remote and white men so sparse that the eventual magistrate had been on this earth for fully nine months before his family's wagon was inspanned for a veld communion where he could be put before a dominee to be baptised, under a white sky in a circle of thorn trees. They wet his head as Hendrik for his father's side and Buchanan for his Scots dam. He was by family Vos. His eventual courtroom, under the portrait of Victoria's great-grandson, was the prized building of a modern town. It was lit by electric light, and among the sounds that reached it were those of telephones and motors and the wireless. There were paraffin refrigerators in some of the homes and a bioscope on Friday and Saturday nights. Many of these things were not that new to the wider world; they had come forth in the years just before or after he, among the women's strong hands, had drawn breath and bawled his toothless bawl at the reed ceiling, but most of them had only recently reached the town where he presided. A place accustomed to catching up to the world, it had, however, quickly grown used to such wonders. [...]

This is an excerpt from Magistrate of Gower, by Claire Robertson.

Title: The Magistrate of Gower
Author: Claire Robertson
Genre: Historical novel
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Imprint: Umuzi
Cape Town, South Africa 2015
ISBN 9781415207642 / ISBN 978-1-77-022764-4
Hardcover, dustjacket, 14 x 22 cm, 328 pages