REVEREND GEORGE HEADS FOR THE PSALM’S FINISHING LINE. ‘Hear my prayer, O Lord, and hold not your peace at my tears.’
How long can I hold my peace? Rick is still fuming at being called Kaffir by the oaf sitting next to him. He’s sick and tired of the stupid nickname. Doesn’t the wanker know that journalists are always on the lookout for skinderstories they can blow up into major shit in the newspapers? Coach has drummed into them that Springboks have to be ultra careful. They represent their country at all times, not only when they’re overseas or singing the national anthem on TV before matches with their right fists clenched over their hearts. At all times.
He personally goes out of his way to toe the line and be friends with the black guys on the team, conscious of his responsibilities as a Springbok. His father Ian was so proud when he made the team. He’d said, ‘Your grandfather would have claimed it’s in the Savidge blood, but I know it’s more than talent. It’s also major effort and training. Well done, man.’
‘Thanks, Dad. But it was Grandpa Percy who taught me the secret of success.’
‘And what is it?’
‘Get the fuckers first, before they get you.’
‘I don’t remember him saying that.’
‘It was just before he died, when you took me to meet him. He was talking about the Hun and the Jap. I just psych myself up to think of the other team as Huns – specially the All Blacks. Tackled the hell out of them in the Tri-Nations.’
‘So you did,’ his father said, adding, ‘It’s all modified warfare.’
‘What do you mean?’ Rick is not given to reflection.
‘Sport. Competing to see who’s better. How else would we channel young men’s testosterone? Trouble is, speed and money are becoming addictive and skewing the contests, along with drugs. I hope you aren’t taking any.’
‘Me? No chance.’ Rick knows his body is a temple and nourishes it with the high-energy diet prescribed by the Sports Science Institute, filtered tap water, and the occasional Windhoek Light – though never before matches. On top of the training sessions, he goes to gym every day. He’s sorted.
Ian Savidge thinks: This generation believes so naively in logic. They’ve never had an irrational crisis like war. He remembers his old man’s letters from Up North before he was captured, cheery scribbles decorated in the margins with sketches of camels and pyramids and Egyptian mummies. Grandpa Percy’s sense of humour is one great gift Rick hasn’t inherited. Pity that the boy only knew him as a morose loner who didn’t like anyone touching him.
Ian has come to St Ethelbert’s to pay tribute to the confident father who marched off to do his duty, rather than the broken man released from a POW camp. He is sitting two pews behind the Moths and studies each of them in turn, wondering how they were damaged by the war. The old guy with crutches is holding papers in a wizened hand like the end of a stick of biltong. Yet he too must have clumped up a gangplank to board a troopship that steamed out of Durban Harbour, with Perla Siedle Gibson standing on North Pier belting out ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ through her megaphone.
Percy Savidge had written home that he would never forget the Lady in White singing her boys off to war with the wind whipping her dress and one hand holding onto her hat. ‘She gave us hope all right. What a dame! And here we are sailing up the Red Sea towards the Suez Canal. Look after your dear mother whilst I’m away, Ian boy. Won’t be long. They say it’ll all be over by Christmas. You can bet your boots we’ll have a party then. Love, Dad.’
There’d been a second letter for his mother that made her cry. But when his father came home after four years, he was someone different: a husk of a man shrunk round a bitter core.
‘Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.’ Reverend George gallops up the home straight, reaching the finishing line with a triumphant neigh: ‘Amen!’
And thank God for that. Bishop Chauncey gives him a nod and waves him back into his place. There will be two eulogies before the lesson, limited to three minutes each. On paper, anyway. In the bishop’s experience, people get carried away, lavishing praise on the dead despite its being too late for them to hear it.
All glory is fleeting, he reminds himself, smug in the knowledge that he is quoting General George Patton.