Whitethorn (59 page)

It wasn't unusual for me, first thing on a bitter winter morning, to have to go to the public phone to call an ambulance to cart one of the boys to hospital or even sometimes to the mortuary. I don't mean to say they were dying all over the place, drunks are amazingly resilient and these were men who, even in the sober periods of their lives, did it tough and lived rough. But every winter you'd say goodbye to a couple of the boys who'd ignored their conditions just one cold night too many and lost what Lofty referred to as ‘the big gamble called life'. ‘
Ag
, Tom, it's short and sweet and hard and bitter all mixed up together, it's the big gamble called life.'

I don't want you to think I was some sort of hero. These were not the kind of men who show gratitude or even respect and I expected neither. The Bishop's College was teaching me how to be a gentleman but my roots still lay deep in the red soil of the high mountains, even if I was determined never to return to them. In a strange way, the school holidays spent with Frikkie and his fellow alcoholics were an opportunity to relax and to drop the pretence of being a somebody when you knew you were a nobody. The term ‘a nobody' does not necessarily derive from a sense of low self-esteem, though I confess I'd had my moments in this emotional department of life. I was already beginning to understand that I had a modicum of brains and that opportunity awaited me in the big wide world. Rather, it was the sense of having no continuity, of emerging from a dark space, a void, a place where no loving or touching existed, a perfectly blank background.

Here among the brotherhood of drunkards there was no need for explanations or antecedents, they too had divorced the past, I was accepted and regarded with, at most, a benign acceptance or, at the very least, with a complete lack of curiosity. Here I was Tom, without even a surname. It was good.

Frikkie Botha remained my friend. Although, despite his initial kindness to me, I was to discover, perhaps not surprisingly, that he'd become a very lonely and bitter man. He was also in constant pain. The
dagga
he used at night helped him cope with the pain but coupled with a nightly bottle of Tolley's brandy, he was a spent force quite soon after we'd had our dinner. Communicating with him was a painfully slow process that took weeks and months and finally even years.

Towards the very end of the school holidays when I'd first found him and Tinky outside the railway station, he'd slipped me a note.
Tom, do you want to know what happened to
Mattress?

My heart started to beat rapidly. ‘Frikkie, please tell me, I
really
need to know!' I'd replied urgently.

Not now, man. It's a long story.

‘Can you write it all down, please, Frikkie? I don't care how long it takes. I'll bring you paper . . . everything!'

Those bastards, we'll get them, hey,
he wrote.

‘Please, Frikkie, it's very important for me to know,' I begged.

But somehow Frikkie could never quite get around to writing the details down. I took to picking him up after work from outside Park Station whenever I could, although I couldn't always get away. He'd wait for me until six o'clock, milking the commuters, and then we'd usually go to Mr Naidoo or some other cheap café or eatery that had a back room where he could take off his hood in order to eat. Frikkie ate with great difficulty, jabbing the spoon into his little scarred arsehole of a mouth and spilling food everywhere, but he was a proud man and wouldn't let me feed him. He always left a terrible mess behind and we were often requested not to return. It was only Mr Naidoo's Indian eatery that always welcomed us.

This was the only meal Frikkie ate all day, though he would consume a dozen bottles of Pepsi-Cola to get high on the caffeine. Whenever he required a Pepsi he'd tap Tinky four times on the head, and the clever little terrier would trot off to the kiosk 20 feet away and bark twice to get Stompie the proprietor's attention. How Frikkie managed to train him to do this trick was a complete mystery. Stompie would then deliver an ice-cold Pepsi with a fresh straw to Frikkie, but then I discovered he was charging him a threepenny premium for the service. I thought this unfair and remonstrated with the little Cape Coloured, who immediately went on the defensive.

‘
Ag
, man, Tom, what we got here is a tit for tat situation,' Stompie protested.

‘Tit for tat, how come?'

‘When my friends come and also the family and they want to see what's under the hood, Frikkie won't do it for nothing, it's one shilling every time!' He spread his hands. ‘I'm only trying to get my money back,' he explained.

‘How often do your friends want to see what's under the hood?' I asked him.

‘Lots of times, man. Two, three times a week, sometimes more.'

I did a quick calculation. ‘You're robbing him blind, Stompie! Three times a week is three shillings. Frikkie drinks twelve Pepsis a day, so you're making a tickey every time, that's three shillings just for a day!' I quickly calculated. ‘One pound one shilling per week, less three shillings, that's eighteen bob profit you're making. That's daylight robbery, man!'

‘
Ja
, but what about transport and everything?'

‘Transport! It's 20 feet!'

‘
Here
, man, Tom, I also got to bring water for the dog,' Stompie protested, but then, suddenly in a fit of remorse, added, ‘Okay, fair's fair, if he's game, I'm game.'

But Frikkie wouldn't hear of giving Stompie three free facials. He replied to my request in a long note in misspelt Afrikaans. Here is a rough translation of what it said.
He's
a half-
kaffir
, man! I'm not going to show my face for nothing to a
half-
kaffir
! Personally I got my dignity, you hear? I'm in showbiz and
he is in selling cold drinks. I pay him so he must also pay me for my
performance!

My argument that his dignity was costing him money didn't wash with Frikkie. When a
Boer
goes stubborn on you, you might as well try to shift Table Mountain. So I was forced to go back to Stompie and tell him the bad news, but I also decided to take things into my own hands in an attempt to obtain an outcome fair to them both.

‘Now, listen here, Stompie, I'm allowing a penny extra a bottle for transportation, so if you pay for three facials a week that's still 100 per cent profit. You way ahead, man, at the end of the week you've got three shillings extra in your pocket.'

Stompie shook his head vehemently. He wasn't taking Frikkie's refusal to make a deal at all well. ‘That
Boer
can go
fok
himself!' he exclaimed.

‘Now, come on, Stompie, fair's fair, you'll make three bob for taking a few steps and you still got the normal profit from selling twelve Pepsis a day.'

‘What about the water for the dog?'

‘Water is free, Stompie, it comes out of a bloody tap!' I exclaimed indignantly.

But Stompie's feelings had been hurt and he wasn't going to give up without a fight. ‘
Ja
, but the tap is inside the station wash room, that's another long walk. I'm a busy man, you hear.' Then he looked at me shrewdly. ‘So tell me, where is the
Boer
going to get his Pepsis? I'm the only one who's got this personal service going,' he said, smiling like a crocodile.

It was time to play my trump card. I pointed to Mary, the African flower lady who sold carnations from a stall nearby. ‘Mary, she'll do it for two shillings a week
and
she won't buy the Pepsis from your kiosk, she'll get them from the café over the road. She's
very
happy to do it,' I added for emphasis.

Stompie shook his head sadly. ‘Now you
really
playing dirty, Tom. You giving my Pepsi business to a
fokken kaffir
woman who sells carnations that's four days old already. You can ask anyone, she always buys the old stock at the market that hasn't already been sold and is four days already in the water. I know, man, my family's in the flower-selling business. Take a look at the stems, you can see she's cut them above where the water stain on the stem is. It's a fresh cut. A good carnation will last ten days, with her you lucky if you get three before their heads already dropping like a Zulu night-watchman's!'

I refused to be distracted. ‘Three shillings, 100 per cent profit each week and you continue to bring the dog his water.' I looked him directly in the eye. ‘Take it or leave it, Stompie. I'm serious, it's my final offer.'

‘
Ja
, okay, man, Tom, for you I'll do it,' Stompie agreed unhappily. ‘I like the little dog.' Then he suddenly jabbed a finger at my chest. ‘But you tell that
Boer
I want him to take the hood off for more than five seconds, you hear? He takes it off and then he puts it back so fast you can hardly see anything properly. You looking at the no-eye and before you can see the no-nose it's finish and
klaar.
It's not fair, all my friends are complaining, and sixpence is too much for a child, it should be only a tickey!'

I received a letter at school from a city law firm inviting me to the reading of Jellicoe Smellie's will. The housemaster gave me permission to go into the city after school, and I arrived at an old building in Market Street that had a birdcage lift. After a great deal of rattling and whining it took me to the fifth floor whereupon it stopped with a jar, a jolt and a clank.

I had been disgorged outside the chambers of Jacobs & Tremaine, Solicitors & Attorneys at Law. No secretary attended the front desk, there was only a bell and a sign that said, ‘Ring for service. Please be seated.' I pressed the buzzer-type bell and heard a faint ringing somewhere in the interior of the office. Then I sat to wait in a wicker chair as instructed. The waiting room was as old-fashioned as the building, old black-and-white photographs of mine dumps and shaft heads on the walls, and two law certificates, one for Jacobs and the other for Tremaine. The battered reception table contained ancient pre-war copies of
The Tatler
and
Punch,
two magazines I'd never seen before. I didn't understand any of the jokes in the cartoons in
Punch.

After some time, a short, fat, balding man came out. He wore a striped grey suit that might once have fitted him but it must have been a while since he had any chance of buttoning the jacket, under which he sported a brown cardigan with the third button missing. His trousers rested under his belly and at his rear the shiny-arsed material hung in two distinct drapes, all front and no arse. He also had these small glasses perched on the end of his nose that didn't have any handles and seemed to be stuck to his nose. Later I would learn they were called
pince-nez
, but at the time I thought to myself, What a clever new invention. He looked around the reception, his actual eye level was well above the glasses.

‘Mr Fitzsaxby?' he enquired, looking directly at me, yet he didn't appear to see me and was obviously looking for someone else.

‘Tom Fitzsaxby, Sir,' I replied, rising and standing in his presence.

‘Oh, a boy!' he said, looking me up and down suspiciously. His podgy little hands grabbed the lapels of his ill-fitting suit jacket, and they reminded me at once of a bunch of pink sausages. ‘Mr Jacobs,' he announced, introducing himself without offering me his hand. ‘Follow me, Boy,' he barked, turning and passing back through the doorway from which he'd recently emerged.

I wanted to ask Mr Jacobs why it was necessary for me to be present for the reading of Jellicoe Smellie's will. But his peremptory manner left me no option but to follow him into a small cluttered office. A large porcelain ashtray on his desk was overflowing with cigarette butts, each of them having been ground into the ashtray with such severity that they were bent double at the cork tip. The whole place smelled of stale cigarettes.

‘Sit!' he commanded, nodding towards a leather chair. He took his place at the desk opposite me, then reaching forward, his little pink sausages began to pluck at a small pile of manila folders, each tied with red tape. Finally he plucked one from the pile, pulled the tape, opened the folder and began to read aloud, the glasses on the end of his nose coming into play for the first time.

‘This is the last will and testament of Jellicoe James Wilberforce Smellie, of Parkington Mansions, Cross Street, Hillbrow.' He paused and appeared to be reading to himself, his eyes darting along the lines. ‘Etc., etc., etc., blah, blah, blah,' he said at last, as if I had been privy to the reading all along. ‘I leave the sum of ten thousand pounds to the Apostatical Society of Great Britain.' Mr Jacobs paused again and looked up at me over his perched spectacles
.
‘Do you know what an apostate is, Boy?'

‘No, Sir,' I replied, not certain.

‘It means non-believer.'

‘How can that be, Sir? Mr Smellie was a born-again Christian.'

He looked at me disapprovingly, peering over his nose glasses. ‘Stuff and nonsense, man! I am a Jew and an agnostic!'

I knew what an agnostic was. ‘That's not the same thing as an apostate, Sir,' I ventured, albeit in a subdued voice.

‘What? What did you say?' he barked. ‘No, it isn't. Quite right, absolutely, well done! Is there a semblance of a brain in that young head after all?'