Balancing the books

My husband is busy doing some books for a friend.. the business kind, that is. At lunch he said, "I'm forty-five cents out on my balance" and just like that I could hear my mother lamenting 'I'm two pennies out. Can you believe it?'

Both my mother and her younger sister, who was actually like a second mother to me, were bookkeepers. As businesswomen, this stood them in good stead all their working lives, as well as being a large factor in the success of my father's salt business. He started this at the age of 42. At first my mom did his books and when she got tired of it, my aunt took over. How many evenings did I hear tales of one or both or them being 'out' a penny, a sixpence, three shillings or two and having to go through columns and columns of figures until they discovered the recalcitrant mistake.

From time to time I'd take the bus into Johannesburg and meet my mother at her office. She worked in an old building that housed an art gallery on the ground floor (much later in life I was to become friendly with the owner!). The lift was one of those iron cages that clanked up to the third floor. I'd step out and find Mom sitting on a high stool, the huge books on a sloping desk, open in front of her. I'd watch in amazement as she ran her pen down the neat columns of figures, adding up fast and, mostly, accurately.

This was also her place of employment during the second world war. I think she worked there for twenty years or so, and made lifelong friends of her fellow employees. The women kept the business going while the owner was 'up north', and my mother's skills grew as good as any accountant's. In spite of all, she remembered these as happy days, mostly because of the cheerful women of Italian extraction who worked alongside her. Good souls, good spirits, and I was blessed to know them.