Kitchen Boy (14 page)

She pitches her voice at the dangling microphones.

‘Greetings to you all. For those who don’t know me, I am Nozithembile, mayor of this great city of eThekwini, also known as Durban. Themba is a verb meaning to hope, trust or expect. The name Thembeka means the trustworthy one. Thembela means the reliable one. Thembisa means hope. Nozithembile means the confident one. That’s me. I am confident that KwaZulu-Natal is a great province made up of mostly good people, which is why I am speaking to you now.’

The councillors in the VIP pew have heard this before. Often. The mayor likes to weave Zulu lessons into her speeches to educate those who only speak one of the official languages – usually English.

A journalist once described her voice as being ‘as rich and rolling as the Thukela River in full flood’. And it does have that effect, Bishop Chauncey concedes. He is pleased that she has accepted his invitation to give the first eulogy at this funeral service for a distinguished old white man. He can see the TV and press cameras focusing on her, and hopes that the evening news and weekend newspapers will have wide-angle shots that include him too.

She opens her hands wider, a storyteller drawing in her audience. Even Clyde, whose attention has wandered during the psalm, is watching her.

‘People call me Thembi for short, nè? Mayor Thembi. I am standing in front of you today to talk about John Joseph Kitching and to praise him. He went to war for his country as a very young man and saved the life of at least one person who is with us now.’ She nods at Herbie Fredman, who raises a hand in acknowledgement.

‘John Joseph Kitching was taken prisoner, like some others here too,’ she smiles in turn at the veterans of the more recent struggle, ‘and like them, he suffered for it. When he returned home broken in spirit, he did not give in to despair. Hayi khona. No way.’ She dismisses such behaviour with a downward slash of her right hand.

How did she know that? Shirley wonders. The mayor wasn’t even born then. Somebody must have told her about the shell-shock. But who? Herbie. He’s been blabbing. John would have hated so many people hearing about it. I hope he’s not turning in his –. She quashes the thought.

‘No way,’ the mayor emphasises. ‘John Joseph Kitching pulled himself up by his very own boot-straps and became a great sportsman for our nation. A rugby Springbok, like some of these fine young men,’ she indicates the rugby pews, ‘who include our own KwaZulu-Natal players, the Sharks. All men of achievement through much hard work and dedication, of whom we are very, very proud.’

There is scattered applause, quelled by the bishop’s frown.

‘One and a half minutes.’ Lofty has slipped out his pocket watch.

‘So. John Joseph Kitching lived in our city and gave his time and energy to many charities. I pay tribute to him as a good man who honoured his commitments to society. Unlike all the tsotsis out there.’ Her voice rises as she glares first at one TV camera, then at the other, ‘Tsotsis who do not understand what it is to be a real man. Or indeed what honour means.’

There is a startle of flashes from the news cameras. This is news. Her next words ring out to every corner of the big stone church.

‘I make a promise to all of you in this holy place in the presence of the late John Joseph Kitching: we people of this city, this very province, will not suffer tsotsis from now on. We will not suffer rapists. Knives and guns. Drug dealers. Drunk drivers. Lazy teachers. Those who trash schools and libraries. Those who steal from the poor. We will not suffer abusers of women and children. No way. Hayi khona!’

Bishop Chauncey struggles to keep his expression neutral. The mayor’s outburst is beyond inappropriate for a funeral service. She’s using it as a press conference. He should have known. This woman with her blatant political ambitions could scupper his chances with the church hierarchy.

‘People, look at a hero’s life,’ she implores, opening her arms wide to encompass everyone. ‘Ask yourselves what you can do to deserve such a tribute when your sun goes down. Ask yourselves what you can do for your very own community, your city and your country. I say hallelujah for John Joseph Kitching, and may his soul rest in eternal peace. Amen.’

She bows her head as camera lenses zoom in, catching the grey and white starburst on the orange headwrap. So popular is the mayor that, within days, orange kangas patterned with pigeon splishes will be on sale in the Durban markets. And within months it will be the emblem of the Hayi Khona movement sweeping the country like an army of new brooms.

During combat, every night when you go to bed, the prayer I would say would be: ‘Just let me make it through tomorrow.’

– Pilot in
Thunderbolts: the conquest of the Reich
, on the History Channel

‘Hayi khona!’ is what Maurice used to say when he point-blank refused to do something. Whenever J J saw a fire out of control in a gusting wind licking through long dry grass and flaring into pine and gum plantations, he thought of him. Maurice had been the observer on a Liberator shot down by Luftwaffe night fighters while bombing marshalling yards in Romania.

J J had witnessed planes going down in flames before and, in the chaotic fury of battle, only had time to think ‘Poor sods’ and ‘Thank God it’s not me.’

After Maurice’s death, he couldn’t get the terror of falling and burning out of his mind. It seethed through his worst nightmares. He’d be on a wing trying to keep his balance in the rushing darkness so as not to fall into the cauldron of fire-bombed buildings below. Hanging onto the front edge for dear life. There’d be a blast and his hands would blow off and his helpless body tumble over and over, screaming, with his skin bubbling off and a fiery mouth opening below to gulp him into hell. Or he’d be sitting on a roof ridge watching Maurice’s fingers lacerating corrugated iron as he slithered feet-first towards a fire, roaring like a wild beast and shouting, ‘Help me, J J! Help, you bastard! Don’t just sit there. Can’t you see I’m dying?’

He and Maurice and Bobby had been notorious climbers and roof runners, their veld-toughened boys’ feet clattering over the loose sheets above the veranda as they worked up speed for a leap over to the trading store roof. They only did it when Victor was out. If he caught them, he’d thrash the living daylights out of them in the storeroom, where Dot couldn’t hear. J J can still remember the hessian smell of the sacks of stampmielies that Victor made them bend over, buttocks in the air, and Bobby’s sniffing, and the fixed smile on Maurice’s face denying pain.

Had he smiled like that as he plummeted to his unspeakable death? Had he cried out, ‘Help me, you bastards’?

J J is hounded all his life by two questions: Why all of them and not me? and What made me chicken out that day at Moosburg’?

He dies hoping that he’s been forgiven. He’d spent a lifetime trying to make up for it.

J J backed away, but the guard had heard him and swung round with a guilty scowl. For a long moment they stood staring at each other – both young, both frightened. Then the guard hurried towards him, holding out a coin. J J took it, the silent transaction over in seconds, before he brushed past and was gone.

T
HERE ARE SPORADIC AMENS WHEN THE MAYOR’S SPEECH
ends, but the congregation sits stunned until clapping starts at the back. People rise from their pews in a clamour of applause. Lofty gathers his crutches to struggle up and join Kenneth and the Moths in the standing ovation. He’s impressed: it’s ten seconds under three minutes and the mayor has wowed them all. He hopes his contribution won’t be an anticlimax.

Purkey leans towards Clyde and murmurs, ‘Ex Africa semper aliquid novi. Pliny. Always something new from Africa. Not your average eulogy, eh? Mr Digby Senior won’t like it.’

‘Does he have a say over who talks at funerals?’

‘No, but he’s got a range of obituaries on the computer, written so the speaker just has to fill in personal details. Five hundred rand each.’

‘The boss sure knows how to rake it in.’ Clyde clinks his tongue stud in homage.

‘Don’t be cheeky.’ Purkey turns back to the unprecedented sight of cheering at a funeral.

‘Jeez.’ Clyde wonders how much longer the service will take. He’s almost decided this isn’t the job for him: having to deal with dead bodies, and all the standing around dressed up in vampire gear. He’ll miss the perks, though. Besides needles and drugs, he scores cash and sometimes jewellery from bedside tables. And at wakes, the food is kif and he can sneak bottles of booze from behind bar counters. Once he even got to feel up a sexy granddaughter in the pantry. Just thinking of her gives him another hard-on.

Reverend George stands to one side of the dais, watching the commotion with a smirk that says, Tut-tut, who would have guessed it?

Bishop Chauncey, goaded into action, advances on the mayor who stands revelling in the applause. ‘Madam, if you could just take your place again?’

‘Of course. And it’s Mayor Thembi, not madam, please. We are no longer a colony.’ Raising a majestic right hand to still the hubbub, she cries out, ‘With all my heart I praise this hero!’ adding a cordial, ‘Your turn, bishop,’ before sailing down the steps and back to the VIP pew.

She’s
giving
me
permission, he fumes, closing his eyes to shut out the sight of the cameras following her down the aisle. He must take charge again. Who’s giving the second eulogy? He feels down the side of his robe for the pocket that isn’t there. Where’s the Order of Service?

‘Here, Your Grace.’ He opens his eyes to find Reverend George holding out a pamphlet. ‘Mr Lionel Munn is due to speak next. He’s one of the Moths. I told him three minutes, but he might go on a bit. You may have to –’

‘Don’t you start. I know what to do.’ The bishop snatches the pamphlet and raises it up to one of the spotlight beams so that he can read the introduction. ‘Ah … The next eulogy will be given by Mr Lionel Munn, a Member of the Order of Tin Hats and a wartime comrade. Mr Munn.’ He beckons at the Moth pews.

‘That’s me.’ Lofty has remained standing and is poised between his crutches, ready to hobble towards the dais. His blazer hangs off coat-hanger shoulders; his medals are skew; his pants are held up by a belt tightened above tilted hip bones. He has a sheaf of papers in his right hand.

‘You said three minutes only?’ the bishop whispers.

‘I did. He promised to stick to the limit.’

‘If he ever gets this far.’

The congregation watches Lofty labouring up the dais steps. His stump is chafed from standing for half an hour at the bus stop on his way to the service, and it’s giving him stick. He should have left the stupid leg off and just pinned up his trouser bottom. He wishes the organ was playing to mask the clomp-clomp of the crutches and the rhythmic squeaks of his plastic joints, conscious that to trip would send him sprawling. When he reaches the lectern, he has to hang on for a while to calm his breathing and steady himself before he is able to lay out and smooth the papers, put on half-moon glasses and fish out the pocket watch, which he places where he can see it.

‘Get on with it, Granddad,’ the bishop mutters so the microphones won’t pick it up. But Lofty hears. It’s just the nudge he needs to give him the nerve to start: a nasty crack from someone who thinks he’s superior.

Lofty’s chin goes up. ‘Ladies and gentlemen. I’ve been given three minutes to speak on behalf of the Moths in honour of J J Kitching. One and all, we salute him as a brave man, a good friend and our Old Bill. Ten seconds. Don’t think this is a long speech.’ He smacks his hand on the papers. ‘It’s not. It’s the names of our mates who didn’t make it this far. We think they should also be mentioned here.

‘I have two things to say to you about war. First, it doesn’t stop when it ends. I lost my leg to gangrene in a POW camp in Italy. It putrefied till nobody could stand the stink. They cut it off while someone held a cloth soaked with chloroform over my face. Hurts like hell, to this day.’ He checks the watch. ‘Thirty-five seconds.’

Some of the women look sickened. The businessmen shift in their pews. The rugby players begin to fidget, too young and healthy to comprehend the loss of a body part. But the ex-servicemen and women are intent.

Lofty goes on, ‘Second, about these blokes.’ He smacks the papers again. ‘All sacrificed – for what? A war they didn’t start. They didn’t have a chance at a decent life. None of them got a row of medals like the rest of us. War is a bugger.’

He looks at his watch again. ‘One minute flat. I’m going to use the other two minutes for a roll-call of Natal men of our generation who died Up North. As many as I can get through, anyway.’ He starts to read. ‘Maurice Fenton, 19, South African Air Force. Ernie Yelland, 20, Royal Natal Carbineers. Wally Quinn, 18, South African Engineer Corps. Eugene Dippenaar, 19, Umvoti Mounted Rifles. Tom Daley, 19, Royal Durban Light Infantry. Vernon Goble, 21, South African Air Force. Oscar Olsen, 18, South African Field Artillery. Ron Dwyer –’

As the names and ages are called out, one by one, the congregation stills. All eyes are fixed on Lofty. Bishop Chauncey is appalled. The prestigious funeral service is turning into a rally: a politician climbing on her bandwagon, and a cripple fulminating about a rotting leg and men who died more than sixty years ago. Reverend George has adopted a judicious listening pose, head to one side.

The bishop strides as fast as his skirts will allow across the dais and clamps a ringed hand on Lofty’s shoulder. ‘Desist, please.’

‘I was given three minutes.’ Lofty taps his watch.

‘This is supposed to be a eulogy, not a tally of the dead and gone.’

‘But not forgotten. By us, anyway.’ Lofty raises his head to address the congregation. ‘Do you want me to go on?’

There are scattered yeses and a mumbled no.

‘Right. Majority vote. I’ll stick to the time limit, no more, no less. Okay, Your Holiness?’

‘That’s the pope.’

‘Who?’

‘Your – His Holiness. I’m Your Grace.’

‘Okay, My Grace.’

‘
Your
Grace. Not
My.
’

Bishop Chauncey swings away. This is turning into a farce. He is sweating, and his mitre slips to one side of his head. He feels for his handkerchief, but of course it’s in the pocket of his trousers under the robe. He’ll have to use the linen cloth kept on the altar for wrapping round the silver goblet while serving communion wine. He’ll need to go up the altar steps and isn’t sure that the mitre will stay in place when he inclines his head to genuflect. He hovers, weighing up the options. It’s worse than a farce, it’s a nightmare.