A Safe Meeting

Summer, for students, has always been a chance to work, to earn, and keep the wolves at bay, forsaking those trips to the beach. It was 1978. I was completing the final year of my Bachelor of Commerce degree, majoring in accounting.

You see, I come from a long line of accountants.

It was the right thing to do, finding work that summer with a firm of accountants, one of the big five. For a week, in that hazy spell, I was assigned to audit the number of physical share certificates owned by a mining house. The manager, who supervised us was a fellow from France, at least I think so, as he spoke with a funny accent. He introduced me to my co-worker, a girl, called Lili.

Somewhere in the depths of that mining house was a special room where the two of us were allocated a desk, from which to work. Four or five people worked in that “L” shaped room looking after the “script”. Strict procedures were in place. For one thing, the certificates were kept in a walk-in safe. A vault if you like. Our manager introduced us to the staff working there, explained what we were to do and left, leaving us to our own devices. To keep us honest he popped in several times during the week, just to check. Good man.

The work involved checking what was recorded in the books against the actual share certificates, which meant walking in and out of the safe. It wasn’t long before the tedium of the work was relieved by our conversations, albeit intermittent under the circumstances. A random allocation of two people to complete a task, in a safe environment, unknowingly took a life of it’s own.

Both our surnames began with “T”, and unknowingly we had attended the same lectures at university. Soon, we shared notes, went to the library together and sought each other’s company on campus. Lili lived at home with her parents and I shared a house with a bunch of town-planners and a doctor, as my parents had retired.

Her folks left Holland a couple of years before I was born and settled in South Africa. Lili’s folks owned a photographic retail business. She grew up in the shop. My parents on the other hand were the descendants of English settlers, mostly accountants.

The Dutch are direct, create checklists and are organized. The Brits are formal inoffensive and polite. None of that seemed to matter. The Boer war had ended.

Sometime after our tedious task in the safe, logic prevailed and Lili sidestepped accounting to become a computer programmer.

Three months after our safe-meeting I turned to Lili and asked her to accompany me to a friend’s twenty-first birthday bash. She had a perfect excuse in that she had recently fallen off a horse, but although hobbled, she agreed. Months later she reciprocated asking me to join her at her friend’s party.

A friendship had assumed a serious intent, a meeting of the minds, to merge, to share, so much so that almost a year later a Christmas gift somehow turned into an engagement ring.

Years later, no amount of persuasion could convince any of our three daughters to become accountants.

So much to be said, for a safe meeting.