Broken (10 page)

“
Is that
correct, Miss?” he asked.

I took a deep breath and sighed.
I looked down at the floor in front of me, realising that I had no
chance of escaping.

“
Yes.” I said
as I reached under my skirt and withdrew the packet of stockings. I
noticed Mister Harris staring at my legs.

“
Put the
packet on my desk.” he said.

I stepped forward and placed the
packet on the desktop.

“
Okay,
James.” Mister Harris said to the security guard. “Well done. You
can leave the young lady with me and go back to your post. I’ll
take the matter further from here.”

The security guard turned and
left the office, closing the door behind him.

“
What’s your
name?” Mister Harris asked.

“
Cindy
Bedford.” I replied.

“
Cindy.” the
manager said. “You do realise that shoplifting is a criminal
offence, don’t you?”

“
Yes.” I said
softly, still staring at the floor in front of me.

“
Having a
criminal record at such a young age can ruin your whole life.”
Mister Harris said. “And have you given any thought to how your
family and friends will react when this incident becomes
known?”

I continued to stare at the
floor.

I heard Mister Harris get up
from his chair and I watched him walk past me to the office door.
He locked the door and walked back to his desk and sat down in his
chair.

“
How old are
you, Cindy?” he asked.

“
Thirteen.” I
said.

“
You look a
lot older.” Mister Harris said and I saw him studying my body, lust
filling his eyes. “Do you know what a “blowjob” is,
Cindy?”

I shook my head.

“
Well, I’ll
tell you what it is and if you give me one I’ll forget about this
whole shoplifting thing and I’ll even give you the stockings as
part of the deal.” Mister Harris said.

“
What’s a
blowjob?” I asked.

“
Come here
and I’ll explain it to you.” Harris said.

I walked around the side of the
desk and stood next to the manager. He swivelled his chair so that
he sat facing me.

“
Get down on
your knees, Cindy.” Mister Harris said.

I stared at the man not really
understanding what he meant.

“
Just get
down on your knees.” Harris said, his voice turning menacing. “If
you don’t do as I say I’ll be forced to lay a charge of shoplifting
against you and you don’t want that to happen, do you?”

I knelt down
in front of Mister Harris and watched as he unzipped the fly of
trousers. His hard, rigid penis pushed itself into view.

“
Now all you
have to do is take my cock in your mouth and suck it gently.”
Harris said. “At the same time tickle my balls. That’s all you have
to do.”

I took a deep breath and blanked
out my mind just as I had done whenever my father had abused me. I
leant forward, closed my eyes, and took the hard piece of flesh in
my mouth. I heard Mister Harris gasp with pleasure. I sucked and
tickled him gently. I heard his breathing quicken and suddenly his
whole body tensed as he gasped and shuddered. I felt a hot sticky
fluid burst into my mouth. I drew back.

“
Swallow it!’
Mister Harris gasped.

I closed my
eyes and swallowed. I looked at Mister Harris. He sat in his chair
with his eyes closed and then he zipped up his fly and smiled at
me.

“
That was
wonderful, Cindy.” he said. “For your first blowjob you were
fantastic! Okay, you can stand up now.”

I stood up and so did Mister
Harris. He walked to the office door and unlocked it.

“
Bring your
stockings, Cindy.” he said. “I’ll walk with you to the front of the
store.”

I followed the manager to the
front of the supermarket.

“
Okay,
Cindy.” Mister Harris said. “You can go now.”

I turned and walked away along
the pavement.

CHAPTER 4

“
Your
Honour.” James Foster said to Judge Bester. “I’m going to interrupt
Miss Bedford again at this stage as my colleague, Paul Greave,
would like to recall Garth Gilmore.”

The Judge
nodded and Cindy left the witness stand. I got up from where I’d
been sitting and walked towards the witness stand. As I passed
Cindy she smiled faintly. I stepped onto the witness
stand.

“Garth.” my attorney, Paul
Greave, said. “You were telling us about your discovery of your
parents’ tragic demise. What happened after that?”

***

While the
estates of my parents were being wound up the Child Welfare
authorities arranged for me to live with my
mother
’s only sister, Rosemary Cooper who
lived in a small two-bedroom house in the suburb of Rosettenville,
only a few houses away from where Cindy Bedford lived with her
parents. My aunt had been the secretary of the nearby South Rand
Hospital and had retired three years ago on a very generous
pension. She now spent much of her time reading, cooking and
tending to the small garden in front of the house.

My parents’
funeral was a small affair as neither of them had many friends. As
for my own friends, the only person that I knew from school who
attended the service was Cindy Bedford. I found this surprising as
we had hardly ever spoken to each other and we weren’t even in the
same school class.

The
w
elfare authorities helped me move my
clothes and other items to my aunt’s house. Like most houses in
Rosettenville it had been built nearly eighty years ago to
accommodate the immigrant miners who came to the country to work on
the gold mines.

The house
faced north with a deep veranda spanning the whole of the front of
the building. The walls were built of a dark brown face brick and
the corrugated roof was painted a dark red. A narrow central
passage ran from the front door straight through to the back door
and on the one side were the two bedrooms, the bathroom and the
kitchen while on the other side were the lounge, the dining room
and the laundry. A small neat garden consisting mainly of daisies
and other annuals filled the area between the brick front wall and
the house. A single garage with brown wooden doors had been built
onto the left side of the house. As Aunty Rose had no need for a
car, the garage was used as a storeroom.

Unlike my
mother who had been short and blonde, Aunty Rose, as she insisted
on being called, was tall with short dark brown hair, dark brown
eyes, a large nose and a straight thin-lipped mouth. She tended to
dress in dark-coloured out of fashion clothes and, because she had
never married and had lived on her own all her adult life, it soon
became obvious to me that she resented my intrusion into her
privacy.

I had
expected that the deaths of my mother and father would reduce my
anger and hatred towards other people but as I walked away from the
cemetery I realised that, although I felt a certain amount of
relief that I would never again have to deal with them, my attitude
towards the indifference of the world towards me remained the same.
This surprised me somewhat as I had believed that they had been the
main reason for my antagonism.

I continued
to take offence at the slightest provocation and, if it hadn’t been
for the fact that the people who upset me knew of my unusual
physical strength and quickly backed away when I became angry, I
could quite possibly have found myself facing charges of assault.
Many of my fellow pupils shunned me or avoided contradicting
anything that I said. On many occasions I sensed that people were
agreeing with my point of view simply to prevent a
confrontation.

The
relationship between me and Auntie Rose started off on a very civil
level with both of us maintaining a strict distance from each
other. We established a routine that would avoid any accidental
embarrassment or disruption of the strict regimen that prevailed in
the house. I soon began to resent the strict schedule that I had to
adhere to mainly because I felt that I was entitled to more
freedom, having had so little of it while my parents had been
alive. Instead of coming straight home from school on the days that
I didn’t have extra-mural sports activities I began to frequent the
local corner café where I spent hours playing the pinball machines.
I also began playing snooker at a nearby snooker saloon. Because of
these afternoon activities I often arrived at the house late in the
afternoon and this angered my aunt as she usually prepared lunch
for me which was then wasted as it was too late to eat it before
supper.

Even on the days that I had
extra-mural activities I seldom went straight back home. This
wasn’t a conscious strategy though; it had become natural for me to
resist any kind of discipline that others tried to impose on me. I
also had no sense of guilt for the anger and anxiety that I caused.
If people didn’t like the way I behaved, that was just too bad. And
whenever I was reprimanded or punished for my indifferent behaviour
I stored the memories of these supposed injustices with a view to
exacting some kind of revenge at a later date. Even the smallest
censure or scolding became a reason to strike back. Anger was the
dominant emotion in my life. It had always been with me but I had
never been aware of it before. What I didn’t realise was that much
of this anger was directed at myself. The helplessness and
frustration that I had experienced during my formative years
persisted.

The three
boys that I played snooker and the
pinball machines with were all older than me and had been
frequenting the saloon for several years. At first we played
without betting and I was surprised at how competent I was
considering how seldom I had played. I often beat all three of the
guys and I soon realised that if I continued to play regularly and
we started betting I could very likely cover my share of the costs
for using the snooker table.

Ian Visagie,
the eldest of the three, was a tall thin boy with thick black hair
and a prominent chin who tended to become extremely nervous
whenever he found himself under pressure and needed to play a
difficult shot.
Bruce Smith was slightly
younger than Ian, with a short stocky build and blonde hair cut in
a crew-cut. He seemed to have difficulty following the snooker
games and often had to ask what colour ball he had to play. Vic
Brown, also short and stocky like Bruce, wore thick black-rimmed
glasses and his eyesight was so bad that he had difficulty
focussing on the far side of the snooker table. All three had
dropped out of school and none of them had the slightest interest
in trying to find work, happily whiling away their time in the
snooker saloon. They all lived with their parents and relied on
money from them to finance the cost of using the snooker tables and
the pinball machines. As I was still at school they usually paid my
share of the cost of using the snooker tables and playing the
pinball machines.

The fact that
Ian, Bruce and Vic paid my share of the costs worried me as I
wanted to avoid becoming indebted to them in any way. Although
Aunty Rose gave me a small amount of pocket money each week, it
wasn
’t nearly enough to support my
snooker and pinball playing. On top of this, I had also started
smoking, a habit that I really couldn’t afford but also couldn’t
break. I decided to ask my aunt to give me an advance on the money
that I would be getting from my father’s estate once it had been
wound up. I brought up the matter one evening while we were having
supper at the kitchen table.

“
What do you
need the money for?” Aunty Rose asked. “I know that you’ve started
smoking, and although I disapprove, I won’t try to stop you. What
else do you need money for?”

“
There are
lots of things that I need.” I replied. “I need new clothes,
toiletries, a computer and printer and a cell ‘phone. I also need
money for entertainment like the movies and going to football
games.”

“
How much is
all this going to cost?”

“
The clothes,
computer and cell ‘phone will probably cost about seven thousand
Rand and the clothes, toiletries and entertainment about four
hundred Rand a month.” I said.

“
That’s an
awful lot of money.” my aunt said. “Do you really need a computer
and a printer? Can’t you rather use the computers in the
library?”

“
No.” I
replied. “I need a computer and the printer to help me with my
homework and I can’t do that at the library.”

My aunt finished her meal in
silence and then stood up from the table.

“
Get some
quotes for the things that you need and we’ll take the matter
further.” she said as she picked up her plate and walked to the
kitchen sink.

Over the
following two days I visited some clothing shops and the computer
department of a large department store in the nearby shopping
centre. I got written quotes for the computer, printer and the cell
phone as well as sales brochures and prices for the clothes that I
wanted. I showed them to my aunt after supper that
evening.

“
Are you sure
that these are the best prices that you could get?” she
asked.

“
Yes.” I
replied. “The computer and the cell phone aren’t the cheapest
models but they’re also not the most expensive. The clothes are
from Woolworths, so they’re a good quality.”