THAT TUESDAY, not through General Knowledge for once but a set of Chinese whispers initially, certain potentially catastrophic events unfolding on the other side of the globe began to make themselves felt at St Luke’s.
A pale-faced matron awoke them. Usually, this was done cheerfully: she would joke about how lazy they all were, threaten those who didn’t leap from their beds with a dose perhaps of castor oil. That Tuesday, however, not only was she pale-faced, she was tight-lipped too. No jokes of any description were forthcoming, not even feeble ones.
And at breakfast, Stanford, who was reading that day’s paper while keeping an eye on them all from his vantage point on the stage, took particular care, if anyone approached, to fold his paper over, obscuring the headline.
Throughout the morning, too, whenever any teachers crossed paths and thought they were out of earshot, there was much whispering, all very urgent.
‘Something’s up,’ said Horton in the queue for lunch. ‘Otherwise why is everyone acting so strange?’
‘I saw Stanford’s paper at breakfast,’ said Slug. ‘There was something in it about a blockade.’
‘And I heard old MacWilliam in the corridor,’ volunteered Kintock, ‘talking to Botma about Castrol.’
‘The motorcar oil?’
‘I suppose.’
‘My father,’ said Labuschagne, ‘thinks Valvoline is better.’
Not that this was to the point, but, when Kintock spoke, Labuschagne always had to add something.
‘Maybe there’ll be an announcement at lunch,’ said Bentley major hopefully.
‘You think?’
‘If something’s happened that we ought to know about,’ said Strover, ‘sure.’
‘But if everyone’s whispering, then isn’t that because they don’t want us to know? Duh!’
And indeed, no announcement was made at lunch, other than what old MacWilliam had to say about that afternoon’s games.
Only in the moments just before lights-out did they finally discover what was afoot. Spier was on duty that night and so, Spier being Spier, as he stood by the door with one hand on the switch, Lombard felt emboldened enough to ask, ‘Sir, please, sir, before you turn the lights out, sir, can you tell us what’s been happening? Why is everyone acting so strange?’
Lowering his hand, Spier looked appraisingly from bed to bed. Then he said, the words as clear as they were grave, ‘This morning we heard that President Kennedy went on television last night to announce that Soviet missiles have been discovered in Cuba.’
An alert silence greeted this revelation, broken eventually by Eedes, who asked, ‘Soviet, sir?’
‘Russian, Eedes, Russian! You really ought to know these things.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘Of both the medium- and intermediate-range ballistic variety, it seems.’ The words were still clear; still grave.
‘Ballistic, sir?’ ventured Strover. ‘What’s ballistic?’
‘Rockets, basically, that have some nuclear capability.’ Again Spier scanned the beds. ‘And Cuba, of course, for those of you who don’t know even this much, is an island in the Caribbean, very close to America, but with Soviet sympathies.’
‘When you say nuclear, sir,’ persisted Strover, ‘do you mean like the atomic bomb? Like Hiroshima?’
‘I’m afraid that’s exactly what I mean,’ said Spier. ‘Fingers seem to be very much on the button. Sorry.’
An image came to Paul of two men, both in uniform, glaring at each other across a desk that featured, on its surface, a red button of cartoonish proportions. Then one of their fingers suddenly jabbed down on the button and the cartoon exploded into a fireball, a mushroom cloud; screaming people with skin peeling from their backs. Images from a film they’d been shown once about the Second World War. He glanced fearfully about him. The other boys seemed to be seeing things too, for no one spoke and it was left to Spier to conclude, ‘But the headmaster will talk to you in more detail tomorrow. Meanwhile, just remember, hey – we’re actually on the other side of the world. Not in the immediate firing line. Not even close.’
Then, as in Paul’s cartoonish vision, his finger jabbed at the light switch and they were plunged into darkness.
Speculative whispering, a great deal of it, should have started up at this point; it usually did after earthshattering announcements. But that night, strangely, there was pure silence, within which Paul lay staring dumbly at his personal oblong of starry sky. Was it his imagination, or had the stars come nearer somehow? As if they too wished to tell him something.
It was after breakfast the next morning that the headmaster delivered his promised address, with everyone at their tables still, emptied bowls of porridge in front of them and a few maids just beginning to gather near the door. Normally, when Mr Wilson made a speech from the stage like this, the boys would sit facing him on benches specially lined up for the occasion. This morning, however, they were left facing each other across their empty bowls and the headmaster’s words were a sort of broadside, fired in contravention, as it were, of standard procedure – rather like the missiles he was telling them about.
Quoting from President Kennedy’s speech, he said the Cuban missiles had been termed: a reckless and provocative threat to world peace by the Soviet Union which required: a full retaliatory response. Kennedy was asking Khrushchev, the communist leader, to abandon his course of world domination in order to move the world back from the abyss of destruction.
Then, lest all of this frighten them unduly, he went on to say that America had already instituted an arms quarantine against Cuba. Any ship bound for the island with a cargo of offensive weapons would be turned back by the American navy, who had the island surrounded. In addition, they were sending reinforcements to a base there called Guantanamo Bay. And, last but not least, they were calling for an emergency meeting of the Security Council of the United Nations, keeper of world peace.
The headmaster even smiled, not something the boys often saw him do, as he ended with, ‘People talk about die rooi gevaar, to use a vulgar phrase. And with reason, obviously. We, however, can count ourselves lucky, I think, that we live where we do, in a country determined to hold communism at bay. Nothing horrible is going to happen at St Luke’s. You have my word. So let us just get on with our lives, okay, like good South Africans. Without fear, without hesitation. Trusting to God.’
Which was, of course, asking the impossible, and the speculation that had failed to start after lightsout the night before began in earnest after breakfast, leaping from group to group like a veld fire until, by evening, the entire school was ablaze. Even in class, be it science with Botma, maths with Stanford (Stanford’s class too), art with Miss de Villiers, or geography with old MacWilliam, rumour spread virtually unchecked, and the headmaster’s exhortation for them to get on with their lives like good South Africans lay smouldering in its wake, quite burned out.
Those who knew about aviation talked knowledgeably of a plane called the U-2, since that was how the missiles had first been spotted, apparently. While those who knew about missiles spelled out in ever greater detail the differences between medium- and intermediate-range. Others debated the weather. What would it take, windwise, they wondered, for any fallout to be carried to South Africa? How many days after a bomb dropped before their world changed forever? Stories were swapped about both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, using more images from that film they’d seen. Not so much the buildings that splintered – they knew they weren’t close enough for that. But people’s skin peeling off. Or people just walking along one minute, falling down dead the next, sommer so. Because that was how lethal fallout could be: lethal and invisible, like a virus. Black rain, as it was also called, according to Strover, who’d heard his father use the expression once. The world’s ultimate nightmare.
Another question, perhaps the most crucial of all, was: how would they actually know if a bomb had been dropped? How exactly would the start of a nuclear holocaust be signalled?
Lombard had the answer.
‘We’ll see it in the sunset,’ he proclaimed. ‘If there’s a nuclear explosion on the other side of the world, what happens in the atmosphere there will be reflected in ours.’
They were standing in a group of four in the playground: Lombard, Horton, Slug and Paul.
‘How?’ asked Horton.
‘The sunset’ll be redder. More intense. If you like, more beautiful.’
‘That’s weird,’ murmured Slug, almost into Paul’s ear, he was that close. ‘Just as the world’s coming to an end.’
‘So I vote we all keep watch,’ continued Lombard, warming to his thesis. ‘In groups is best and someone should also keep a log.’
‘Harvey’s good at that,’ said Slug, still close. ‘Aren’t you, Harvey?’
‘Ag, I can do a log,’ said Horton. ‘There’s plenty space in my old geography book.’
‘So let’s start tonight,’ said Lombard. ‘And I’ll also ask Eedes, he’ll be good, to organise some other groups, then we can take it in turns.’
‘What about Eedes?’ The question was put by du Toit, who’d appeared alongside them. ‘What’s Eedes organising?’
There was a moment’s silence, during which Paul experienced a miniature revelation. Just as the stars had seemed subtly altered the night before, in the wake of Spier’s first giving them the news, so he now saw du Toit differently as well. The stars had appeared nearer; du Toit, by contrast, loomed less large suddenly, despite the fierceness with which he was asking, ‘So are you going to tell me, Lombard, or do I have to force it out of you?’ More urgent matters had diminished him.
‘You and whose army?’
‘We’re forming a group,’ said Slug nervously, ‘to watch the sunset, that’s all.’
‘Why?’
‘Because if there’s a nuclear explosion on the other side of the world,’ Slug continued, parrot-fashion, like when reading the club rules, ‘what happens up in the atmosphere will be reflected in our sunset here. Isn’t that right, Lombard?’
‘I see,’ said du Toit, cool eyes assessing each of them in turn. ‘Okay, so in that case I reckon I’ll join you.’
But Lombard wasn’t having it.
‘Form your own group, du Toit,’ he said. ‘You’re not welcome in mine. Got that?’
Under normal circumstances, du Toit would have lashed out at this point, and a scuffle might have ensued. There were, after all, three club members on hand to lend support. But, amazingly, he did no such thing. Instead, he just stared hard at Lombard before eventually turning to Slug and saying, ‘So, are you coming, or aren’t you?’
Furthermore, he didn’t try to encourage Paul or Horton to leave as well, a fact which Lombard noted gloatingly as he watched du Toit and Slug move off. ‘That’ll teach him,’ he said. ‘And at least he didn’t pick on you too, hey, even though you’re also under his command. You know something: I’m really glad he chucked me out. What sort of friend is it, hey, who always has to be on top?’
Now was the moment, Paul thought, to ask what Lombard had been meaning to tell him in the pool; but with Horton present he didn’t quite dare – and anyway, Horton had already returned them to the subject of the sunset.
‘If we meet between supper and prep,’ he was saying, freckled face aflame, ‘we can start tonight. Carp the deus. Am I saying it right?’
Word of Lombard’s plan had spread as fast during supper as all the day’s other rumours, with the consequence that maybe half the school, broken up into small groups, gathered in the playground before prep to scan the sky for each nuance of that day’s sunset: the position and shape of any clouds, the speed with which those clouds changed colour, the colour not only of the clouds but of the sky itself, every gradation of it as the heavens underwent their twilight transformation: red to orange to pink to purple to black.
Of course, there was, on this first evening, nothing as yet with which to compare any observations; but careful notes were nonetheless made so that, tomorrow, the fearful business of assessing whether or not their days might be numbered could properly begin.
Paul stood with Lombard and Horton and Bentley major, who’d also joined them. No Slug – doubtless he was in the clutches of du Toit still, except not to watch the sunset apparently, since the pair of them weren’t anywhere in evidence. Only as everyone was vanishing into prep did he appear – du Toit too, in the distance – to inform Paul, having waddled up to him, that on Friday there was to be another club meeting, immediately after games. Got that?
‘Where have you two been?’
But Slug had a more pressing question of his own. ‘How did it go? Scope anything?’
‘You should have joined us, if you’re so keen.’
‘I would if I could’ve, like a shot. But it isn’t always my choice. You know that.’
‘Choice!’ exclaimed Spier at the start of next day’s General Knowledge Club. ‘Today I want us to consider the question of choice. How we make choices and what happens sometimes if we don’t when maybe we need to. Or if people don’t like our choices, once made. Ourselves included.’
An uncertain murmur greeted this prolix introduction. For what they were burning to talk about rather was, of course, missiles.
‘You’re not interested in my choice of subject?’ asked Spier, giving the word an ironic emphasis.
‘Well, sir,’ said Bentley major. ‘If you don’t mind, sir, we do actually have quite a lot of questions about what’s been happening in Cuba and is there going to be a bomb, sir?’
‘Again, a matter of choice,’ said Spier, re-emphasising the word. ‘But okay, I guess we should put all of this into some sort of context.’
Then, as I remember, he explained in detail about Cuba and Batista and how America felt about Cuba’s new ruler, Castro. ‘The United States regards communism pretty much as our own leaders do. Die rooi gevaar, to borrow your favourite phrase, du Toit. And now a favourite of our esteemed headmaster’s as well, it would appear.’ Then came a bit about the Bay of Pigs and how that failed American invasion had worsened an already tense situation. ‘The rest you know from the headmaster,’ he concluded, coming to rest like always against his untidy desk. ‘Pretty much. But the background is important. It affects, or should, how we view what is happening today. So, with this in mind, I’d like us, please, to try to look at the situation in terms of the choices that have been made. Is it inevitable, what’s happened, or could it have been avoided? Do we accept what President Kennedy says at face value? Or do we also want to know the Russian point of view? And, at the risk of navel-gazing, do we let what’s happening outside our borders make us forget what’s happening at home?’
Here, I’m fairly sure, he made reference to a black man wearing a jackal-skin kaross in a nearby court. Oh, and I also remember that he had rings under his eyes and had cut himself shaving. There was a small plaster on his cheek.
‘I have a friend,’ he said next, or words to this effect, ‘a sometime friend, who’s paying dearly – like Helen Joseph, with actual house arrest – for what he believes in. Should he have made that choice? Or should he have kept his mouth shut? Because I’m sure that’s all he did: shoot his mouth off. And what would I have done, in his place? Instead of hiding away in a posh boys’ school, teaching a partisan version of this country’s history. What sort of choice is that?
‘And you? What are your choices, boys? As our country’s future?’
Which is upon us finally, in all its complexity, from silly things like my spurious fear of dusty Fords to overdecorated B&Bs to the negligible distance still remaining on this particular section of my journey. Not that coming to the end of it will necessarily provide, in modern parlance, closure. Any more than our second sunset watch provided certainty.
As before, the group scanned the horizon intently, asking:
Were there any changes from yesterday?
(None they could discern.)
Except weren’t the shades of pink in the sky maybe pinker?
(Just fractionally perhaps.)
Tending towards red?
As Horton made a note, Lombard said, ‘Wasn’t that weird this afternoon? With Spier? And what’s with du Toit, hey, and die rooi gevaar? Doesn’t everyone say that?’
Paul wondered if he should explain about the note du Toit had once tried to pass him. However, since this would have been to put into words how cruelly du Toit used to treat him, he chose instead – here was a choice! – to remain silent. It wasn’t as if Lombard and Horton didn’t already know about his treatment at du Toit’s hands – almost everyone in the school, even juniors, must have known about the theft of his diary – but still, no need to spell it out.
‘Spier doesn’t like du Toit,’ said Horton. ‘He’s always looking at him skeef. It should be Slug, actually, in General Knowledge. I know he’s a bit of a drip, but Spier doesn’t mind Slug so much and Slug’s not stupid. It just looks like he is.’
‘Something else that should happen,’ mused Lombard, ‘is that you should sommer leave du Toit’s club.’
‘Me?’ said Horton.
‘Ja, of course. After what happened last time, like you were telling me.’ He turned to Paul. ‘This isn’t against you, Harvey, you don’t make the rules, but du Toit shouldn’t change them just because he feels like it. The tasks are never secret. That’s half the fun. So why yours?’
For one chilling moment, Paul feared he would have to explain what du Toit had asked him to do. But in the event Horton interposed with, ‘Ja, maybe you’re right. I mean, who cares about his stinky club anyway! Now that the world’s about to end.’
‘So what exactly happened?’ asked Paul, finding the courage at last, ‘that made him expel you, Lombard?’
‘I was going to tell you the other day,’ said Lombard. ‘But then you dive-bombed us,’ he added, addressing Horton.
‘Sorry,’ said the dive-bomber. ‘I was still quite voes at becoming number four.’
‘So anyway,’ Lombard went on, ‘it was his sister actually, when I got invited to the farm once, who gave me the idea. All I told him was not to get so angry. With his mother and stuff. My parents are getting divorced too and so okay, it isn’t my mother who’s leaving, it’s my dad, he’s moving in with his secretary, and sure, it isn’t nice – but same diffs. It’s not like it’s du Toit’s fault his mother ran away. And he does still get to see her. Hell, I’d be glad if my mother wasn’t always around to boss me about. He should count his lucky stars.’
‘So you just told him,’ said Paul, making sure he’d understood, ‘not to get angry with his mother because she’s left his father? And he expelled you?’
Lombard nodded, glasses flashing with the last of the light. ‘I was only trying to help. Because of how unhappy he can get. But I suppose I got too close.’
‘And now it’s Slug!’ snorted Horton, ‘who’s close. Yissus!’ He closed his notebook and returned his fountain pen to his pocket; the evening’s watch had ended.
‘I’ll check with the other groups after prep,’ said Bentley major, who’d been largely silent up to now, as the four of them turned towards the classrooms. ‘See if anyone’s maybe noticed something we didn’t. But so far, so good, hey! No bomb yet. Maybe the world won’t blow up after all.’
In the distance, not far from the school’s perimeter, stood one other group whose watch still hadn’t ended, or so it looked. The group comprised du Toit, Slug, Labuschagne, Kintock and Strover. The rest of du Toit’s club, in other words, excepting only Paul and Horton.
Going on appearances, Slug was the group’s record-keeper; at any rate, he had in his pudgy hands the clipboard he used for club meetings. So maybe they hadn’t only been watching the sunset? Maybe du Toit had called an impromptu club meeting ahead of the scheduled one, without using the club house for once or informing the other two members, who had shown such awful disobedience by daring to be part of Lombard’s sunset watch.
For a split second, Paul was tempted to run over and ask. But then the bell rang and the group dispersed, revealing as they did so that, parked outside in the street, near to where they’d been standing, was an occupied car. He could tell it was occupied because, in its interior, there were the glowing tips of two cigarettes, one where the driver would be sitting, one for a passenger. Although he didn’t, in fact, give either the car or its smoking occupants much thought as he went with the others towards their classroom and that evening’s homework: an essay (fifty words minimum) on the establishment of the first Boer Republic.
The club meeting would inevitably be where, Paul imagined as he made his solitary way there the next day, he and Horton would face any chastisement. Was further expulsion on the cards, perhaps, because of their joint disrespect? Or a severe dressing-down? An especially difficult task? To his surprise, he then discovered that he didn’t greatly care. It might even mean he didn’t have to go with du Toit on Sunday – a blessing.
Truly, something fundamental had shifted in the course of the week; the world was no longer quite what it had been. A development for which, even though it came at a potentially fatal price, he was ultimately quite grateful.
He descended into the ditch to find – another surprise – that he was in advance of the others. The club house appeared empty; only a couple of the smaller huts, further off, showed signs of occupancy. Faint scuffling came from one, a snatch of high-pitched giggling from another. He took a few steps forward, whereupon – cicada-like – the giggling stopped. Those juniors certainly knew to be wary in the presence of a senior! Even if by all accounts this still hadn’t stopped them from daring to venture inside du Toit’s hut when no one was there. Did they not realise that they might, as a consequence, face attack? He could warn them, of course; but why on earth would he do that? Seniors never involved themselves in junior affairs. Not unless they had a screw loose.
Returning thoughtfully to du Toit’s hut, he stood for a moment by the door, half listening to the giggles start up again. Then – again a surprise; he hadn’t known he wanted to do this – he took hold of the wonky doorknob and stepped inside.
No huddled forms now; no Slug with his clipboard; no captain seated on his wooden crate of a throne; just the sad smell of damp earth. In the gloom, Paul’s eyes assessed the strip of shabby carpet with its design of six interlocking rings; Slug’s all-important clipboard, propped against one wall; du Toit’s plastic helmet, lying in pride of place on the wooden crate. Kneeling, he picked the helmet up, causing the visor, which had been pushed upwards in order not to obscure the wearer’s face, to come away in his hand and fall to the floor. All that had been holding it in place was a strip of brittle, yellowing sticky-tape.
He remembered Slug’s warning: Duck, hey, or you’ll catch the support and the hut will collapse. It has happened.
Fumblingly, he set the helmet and visor back on the throne, pressing the useless sticky-tape into place as he did so, then left again, carefully closing the door behind him. He didn’t want the knob falling off as well!
Peering above the rim of the ditch, he saw that the rest of the club, Horton included, were advancing towards him around the edge of an otherwise empty field.
‘Finally!’ said du Toit on reaching the ditch. ‘We’ve been looking everywhere!’
Was it Paul’s imagination, or did Horton look particularly pleased to see him?
‘Where else would I be?’ he countered. ‘Slug did tell me. I got the message.’
‘You see!’ cried Slug.
But du Toit just pushed ahead of them into the hut, Slug at his heels, and the door swung shut, leaving the others outside. Then Slug reappeared, clipboard at the ready, to sign them in.
‘John Henry Labuschagne?’
‘Present and correct.’
‘Peter Angus Richard Kintock?’
‘Present and correct.’
‘Howard Strover?’
‘Present and correct.’
‘Present and correct.’
‘Paul Thomas Barnabas Harvey?’
Also present and correct, of course.
‘Come on!’ murmured Slug, nudging Paul through the door. ‘We don’t have all day.’
The captain, securely helmeted, was on his throne; the broken visor must have been tucked away somewhere, out of sight. Except Paul wasn’t given time to ponder its whereabouts, since no sooner had they settled themselves at du Toit’s feet than Slug began proclaiming the day’s business. In particular, the fact that, far from being dressed down, Paul was to be promoted again following another successful task.
A revised order of precedence was read out: ‘One: Murray. Two: Harvey. Three: Strover. Four: Horton. Five: Labuschagne. Six: Kintock.’
So! Paul was just behind Slug now. In this of all possible weeks. Or should that be impossible weeks? Almost number one. Within spitting distance.
‘And before you start complaining again, Horton,’ said du Toit, ‘or you, hey, Strover, I want you both to demolish the hut next door. And it has to be done without the juniors seeing. Or even knowing. Okay? They must think it just fell down, sommer so. Like an act of God. Or the Bay of Pigs. Out of the blue. Understood?’
That evening, after supper, Paul found himself in need of the toilet before setting out for the day’s watch. He chose the downstairs ones – they were closest – and it was here, on emerging from the stall, that he bumped into Slug, washing his hands at one of the basins.
‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ he said suspiciously.
‘I’m only washing my hands,’ said Slug. ‘Is it against the law for an ou to wash his hands?’
In the mirror that ran the length of the wall, the two of them regarded each other.
Then Slug came out with something like, ‘It isn’t always easy, hey, or tit, being his right-hand man. I thought it would be nicer. Anyway, soon it’ll be your turn and …’
But here he stopped, leaving unfinished whatever it was he’d been trying to say: building up perhaps to asking again if Paul could get him an invitation to the farm. Or was he wanting something less concrete? Friendship? Understanding? Protection? Now that Paul was on the up.
Paul could plainly see, in Slug’s magnified pupils, a vast and desperate longing. The longing to be liked, to be other than what he was, no longer fat and wobbly, but slim and good-looking, just like du Toit. That and the beginning of tears, which was probably why he now turned away.
The week’s events were having an effect on them all – and, as Paul followed Slug into the playground, he was trumped by some unexpected thoughts.
Why had he never seen how similar he was to Slug? Both of them outsiders. Both wanting to be other than how they were. To belong.
Which was what made them so vulnerable, of course, to du Toit.
When in fact they already did belong. Everyone did. For that had been another effect of the week: to bring Spier’s much vaunted ‘outside world’ within – well, spitting distance.
And if no outside, then by default, no outsider either. Everyone was part of a greater whole. Willy-nilly, as his mother liked to say. All cohered. All were being held to account. No matter how insignificant or small (like the distant stars) they might imagine themselves to be.
He looked about him at the playground. The ochre earth, the line of equally red classrooms on the one side of it, the tuck shop at its centre, the white arch from which hung the school bell, the fields beyond. The compound where the masters lived, the compound for the servants, the ditch containing the club house. And sky, of course, the darkening sky. All cohering also. All linked.
It was, he told himself, against the natural order to keep forming clubs. Clubs just threw up barriers.
‘Come on, Harvey!’ he heard someone shout. ‘Over here!’ Lombard was waving at him from where he stood by the fence with Horton and Bentley major, thus encouraging Paul into an obliging run during which he also noticed that on the other side of the fence, parked more or less exactly where it had been the night before, was a recognisable car, its interior still lit by the glowing tips of two cigarettes.
It wasn’t until the Saturday, though, that things came to a head, starting with the moment when Paul remembered to return the handkerchief Mosa had washed for him to its owner. He’d forgotten previously – not surprisingly, perhaps, given how the week had turned out – and it was only during that morning’s Afrikaans lesson that thoughts of the handkerchief surfaced.
Afrikaans was the province of a part-time master called Marais, a youngish man, younger than almost all the other teachers, with the exception of Spier, though to link Marais and Spier was not an obvious thing to do. For, where Spier was slapdash and untidy, Marais always wore a perfectly pressed blue blazer, no matter how hot the weather, in the front pocket of which he kept two perfectly aligned gold pens. His trousers were always perfectly pressed, too, his dark hair precisely parted, his shoes vigorously polished. He looked less like a teacher, in point of fact, than a shop mannequin.
That morning, he was explaining the origin of certain Afrikaans terms. He did this by telling them about a group of religious refugees from France, known as the Huguenots. In 1685, during an earlier October – to the week, as it happened; the 22nd, to be precise, which Marais always was – Louis XIV of France had revoked something called the Edict of Nantes, by which the Huguenots had been guaranteed, as Protestants in a Catholic country, freedom of religious expression. Accordingly, they’d fled, some of them to the Cape.
On the blackboard, Marais wrote out a few names. His own to start with, followed by: Franschoek. Franschoek, he explained, had once been a ‘French Corner’. Literally. Whilst many typically Afrikaans surnames also had unmistakably French origins.
François Villon = Viljoen
la Buscagne = Labuschagne
Le Clercq = de Klerk
du Toit
Another example of linkage, stretching across time in this case, not that Paul registered as much, since this was when he recalled the handkerchief. But then couldn’t think where he’d put it. Until, just before the lesson’s end, it came to him: in his locker, hidden under his tuck tin. Of course!
He resolved to collect it when changing after lunch to tidy up in the pavilion – those seniors not picked as spectators at the away game were instead always expected to make themselves useful about the school – during which time, either before or afterwards, he knew he’d almost certainly come across Pheko going about his own duties. And indeed, no sooner had Paul stepped on to the playing fields than there he was, the owner of the handkerchief, away in the distance, bent over his roller, making it a relatively easy matter for Paul to run over to him.
Coming to a sort of scarecrow attention in his tattered clothes, the young groundsman said, with a surprised smile, ‘The baas looks better. No more blood. I am glad.’
‘I’ve come to say thank you,’ responded Paul, arrested by the force field of Pheko’s smell. ‘Mosa has washed your handkerchief for me.’ He extracted it from his pocket. ‘She ironed it also. I hope you’ll be pleased. Here, take it!’
‘The baas is very good,’ said Pheko, releasing his grip on the roller in order to accept the proffered article. ‘Your Mosa also.’ With his other hand, he’d started fumbling in his own pocket, from which he now produced a second handkerchief, not as white, and something else besides. Something Paul recognised from both Spier’s and Mr du Toit’s desks.
‘Now Pheko has two handkerchiefs,’ continued the groundsman, folding them together before returning them to his pocket. The comb-like object, meanwhile, remained in full view; and, as a pole-axed Paul started to turn away, it was raised by Pheko to his head, to prod at the tight curls there.
So! It was a comb he’d taken! A comb moreover belonging to Pheko, for what else could it mean if the groundsman now had the twin of it in his hand? A comb that would then end up in the hands of Mr du Toit, who did things for the government. Which was also where something further had ended up: Paul’s report on seeing Pheko go with Spier into the master’s bungalow.
During last week’s exeat, Paul had thought (quite happily) that Spier should be stopped from talking politics to Pheko. And he hadn’t really minded either his putative part in bringing this about. But, on seeing the duplicate comb, everything abruptly changed. Changed utterly. Of course, he still didn’t know for sure what was happening. How could he? But he did realise he didn’t want to be responsible for it. Whatever ‘it’ was. Not if he could possibly help it!
He also realised he must tell Spier. Tell him everything. He didn’t know quite how he’d do this – in truth, he dreaded to think what the master might say in response – but what other choice was there, in the final analysis? (Choice! How apt.) If he wanted to go on living with himself?
The baas is very good, Pheko had said. Well, only if he screwed up the courage to come clean with Spier about his duplicity.
First, though, he must head for the pavilion, since Botma, who was keeping an eye on how useful the stay-at-homes actually were, would undoubtedly want to check on him at some point. Then he found that, with his thoughts still centred on what he’d seen in Pheko’s hand, it took him longer than usual to tidy things away. So that even when Botma did appear, there was still a mat or two in need of stowing.
‘Come on, boy!’ grunted the master, settling himself on a nearby piece of equipment in order to fiddle with and refill his smelly pipe. ‘Do hurry up.’
‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’ Whereafter he did at last manage to finish the afternoon’s task to his and Botma’s satisfaction.
‘Right!’ said Botma, looking up from his pipe. ‘Off you go, then. I’ll close up.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’
Emerging with relief from the pavilion, Paul immediately started towards the masters’ compound and his next task of the day – self-imposed this time. He hadn’t gone far, however, before he was brought up short by a most extraordinary sight. First, he noticed two policemen standing by the gate that led into the compound; then, as he slowed, two more policemen appeared from inside the compound. In their wake: Spier, his head lowered and wearing a jacket for once, dark blue, not unlike Marais’s.
Another figure followed: Pheko, in his tattered khaki, arms held out before him, wrists handcuffed together, the metal of the handcuffs glinting in the sun. Then a further few policemen, their uniforms all matching the colour of Spier’s jacket.
Why was it the clothing in particular that my younger self noticed? I can’t really say. Unless it was because of a previous sighting, just as vivid, just as troubling, in which Spier had dispensed with clothes altogether.
I also like to imagine that Spier might have glanced upwards; that a look might have passed between the two of us. But what would the look have contained, if so? And anyway, I was too far away. The scene was another semi-distant tableau. Closer was Botma, who’d emerged from the pavilion himself by now, pipe in mouth, match at the ready. Although he didn’t actually strike the match. Instead, like me, he just watched in stupefied silence as the police led Spier and the handcuffed Pheko away.