Spud - Learning to Fly (9 page)
Read Spud - Learning to Fly Online
Authors: John van de Ruit
Didn’t sleep very well. My mind was churning about yesterday’s lunch and all the other things that occupy most of the space in my brain. I suppose I can’t blame The Guv for helping a new boy who’s scared and homesick – after all that was me two years ago. It doesn’t feel the same with Rowdy there so perhaps that will be an end to our lunches and our crazy discussions about women, cricket and literature. And perhaps it’s also time to accept that Mermaid will always be out of my league and I should probably settle for somebody with smaller boobs and a better personality.
The entire Crazy Eight has enrolled in confirmation classes with Reverend Bishop! Our first lesson is this afternoon – I bet the Rev is dreading it …
CONFIRMATION CLASS 1
‘Be God’s Sheep’
God knows what persuaded the school chaplain to select this title for both his first lesson and as a controversial way of attracting new recruits. If it wasn’t for the fact that everyone appears to be pushing for prefect, I don’t think a single member of the Crazy Eight would have signed up to be religious livestock.
After a long and heartfelt opening prayer, Reverend Bishop opened up his arms in welcome and asked us if we would like to ask him any questions. Vern immediately thrust his hand into the air and asked the Reverend if he could go to the toilet. The chaplain smiled and said, ‘Of course, Vern.’ Vern grinned at the Reverend but didn’t leave his seat. This confused the school chaplain because he stammered quite badly over his next line and fumbled awkwardly with his papers.
‘Father?’ said Rambo, raising his right hand. The Reverend’s face broke into a gentle grin and he said, ‘Robert, there’s no need to call me Father. Reverend will do fine.’
Rambo looked wistfully out of the window and then back at the chaplain. ‘I would rather call you Father, Father because I don’t have a father …’ Tears immediately sprang to the chaplain’s eyes and he charged over to pat Rambo on the back in sympathy. Boggo snorted derisively from the back of the vestry but didn’t mention the fact that Rambo was overheard at breakfast saying that he and his dead father were going to win the father and son golf day.
Overall our first confirmation class wasn’t as bad as expected thanks to a fierce debate on the meaning of life and the meaninglessness of school.
Reverend Bishop says that without a deep commitment to and belief in God, no man or woman will ever lead a fulfilling existence. This obviously accounts for why I’m unfulfilled.
Boggo volunteered for every single Bible reading, all of which he carried out with a superior look on his face. His routine was to close his eyes at the end of each reading as if consumed with religious spirit and then whisper, ‘Amen.’ He would then return to his seat with his Bible pressed closely to his heart. The chaplain was mightily impressed with Boggo’s religious passion although Simon lost his cool after Boggo’s third performance and blurted out, ‘Reverend, I think you should know that Greenstein is Jewish.’
‘So is Spud,’ said Garlic, pointing at me with a pencil.
Boggo threatened to show everyone his penis, but the chaplain doused the flames by saying, ‘Boys, I don’t care who or what you are. What I care about is that you are here now. After all, let’s be reminded that our Lord and saviour was himself Jewish.’
‘Jesus was Jewish?’ boomed Garlic in confusion. The chaplain didn’t answer Garlic and launched straight into his closing prayer, before raising his arms aloft and saying, ‘Now go forth into the world and become God’s sheep.’ The Crazy Eight bleated all the way back to the dormitory.
Dad phoned to say our house is infested with termites and that it has to be fumigated immediately. He reckons this is a sure sign that the timber industry has fallen into the hands of incompetent leftists. ‘Swines!’ he shouted, although it was unclear whether he was referring to the termites or the leftists.
After English, The Guv called me aside and said, ‘Milton, I’m sorry I sprang Simpson on you the other day.’
‘No problem,’ I said.
‘The boy became hysterical after class and I’m terrible with tears,’ he said as if reliving the moment in his mind.
‘It’s fine, sir,’ I said.
The Guv studied me over the top of his spectacles before saying, ‘So as an apology …’ He strode over to his bookshelf. ‘I’m giving you this.’ He dropped a book into my waiting hands and with one hand on my shoulder said, ‘I want you to have it. Read it once a decade until your restlessness dies and you become an old drunken hermit.’ He then guided me out of the classroom with his hand on my shoulder. He said, ‘It defined my generation, old boy. It awoke my wanderlust and made me ceaselessly unhappy. I wish you greater fortune with it.’
I began reading Jack Kerouac’s novel called
On The Road
on the cobbled path back to the house. I think I’m going to like it.
Spent all afternoon with Fatty in the archives. Perched up in the northern turret overlooking the quadrangle I felt strangely peaceful and protected from the general madness of the school. I complimented Fatty on the work he’s done fixing the place up. He blushed and led me past a shelf labelled POSSIBLE MYSTERIES. The shelf above it was called DEFINITE MYSTERIES and the very top shelf was COMPLETE MYSTERIES.
Other shelf headings included SCANDALS, LIGHTNING STRIKES, MCARTHUR SIGHTINGS, GENERAL GHOST SIGHTINGS, and SEXY BABES. (Fatty admitted that he only made the SEXY BABES shelf to keep Boggo busy while Fatty works on the archives.)
‘The teachers never come up here,’ said Fatty. ‘In fact nobody really ever comes up here except for Boggo and Sidewinder.’
The small gingery face of Sidewinder suddenly appeared from behind a shelf called SUICIDE & UNEXPLAINED DEATH. Fatty pointed at the small boy and said, ‘Oh, Spud, you know Sidewinder.’ Sidewinder waved nervously and said, ‘Afternoon, sir.’
‘Afternoon, Sidewinder,’ I replied in a formal voice. Fatty explained that the new boy was helping out with general filing and then ordered him off to make us tea and an egg mayonnaise sandwich. Sidewinder seemed desperately eager to please and scampered down the thin turret staircase like his life depended on it. When the first year was gone, Fatty winked at me and whispered, ‘He thinks I’m a prefect – how cool is that?’
Turns out that Sidewinder is being bullied by Pike, JR Ewing and Thinny and is more than happy to help Fatty with his archives in return for a place of safety for the afternoons and early evenings. Fatty collapsed into an old armchair with a groan and said, ‘Feel free to pull in. It makes a good hideaway when things in the house get a tad intense.’ I tried to thank Fatty for the open invite but he interrupted me with: ‘You can even write your diary here. I mean … if you want to. It’s nice for me to … you know … like, have some company.’
He then pointed out a quotation that he had stuck to the wall with pink chewing gum.
‘History does not repeat itself. Historians repeat each other.’
A J Balfour
‘How symbolic is that?’ he said proudly like he had written the words himself.
Bad news for Boggo was that the choir was singing at Evensong. He looked mortified and buried his head in his hymnbook as the choir processed down the aisle. I enjoyed his embarrassment immensely.
I nailed a hole-in-one during a high stakes putting competition just before lights out. Rambo said my putting stroke resembled that of somebody called Dick Faldo. Everyone packed up laughing after that, so now feeling less positive than before.
After lunch I retired to the bogs to examine my face. I have a nasty looking pimple on my forehead and a smaller one in the cleft of my chin. There seems to be no good reason for bringing my razor back to school and my hair is dull and brown and a little on the thatchy side. No wonder girls are giving me bat left, right and centre. I wouldn’t want to kiss this face either.
To make matters worse, Vern skulked out of the bogs tapping his stopwatch as if I had committed some dreadful sin. Then he fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a pad of yellow slips. He furiously began scribbling and signing, before handing me my first ever yellow slip for Loitering in the Bogs and Surrounds. He then crept back into the toilet stall to wait for his next victim.
Before Spike’s thrashing last week for Bad Form in the Bogs and Surrounds, Vern’s blue chits were a minor nuisance and mostly quite funny. In these suspicious times who knows what a new yellow chit might dish up? If Vern gets me thrashed for investigating a pimple, that might be the last straw.
Mom called to say that the house is being fumigated as of tomorrow. This means I’m staying elsewhere for the long weekend. There seemed to be an argument going on about whether Mom and Dad were staying at Marge’s or Frank’s. I told Mom I would rather stay at school than have to sleep in the same house as the girl who gave me consecutive Valentine’s bat and has ruined my fragile self-confidence. Mom obviously knew about Mermaid dumping me again because she didn’t ask any probing questions. My mother ended the call rather abruptly because she said she had just spotted Dad leaping off the top of a ladder and disappearing into Amber’s garden armed with a 5 metre long pool scoop.
On a more positive note Dad has just bought an M-Net decoder so that he can watch the Cricket World Cup. My mother is naturally terrified that Dad’s going to have another attack if things don’t go well with our cricket team down under. Mom’s also not sure how Dad is going to pay the monthly instalments for the decoder since he hasn’t worked in months – she suspects that he’s squirrelled away a sizeable nest egg somewhere in the depths of his garage.
Pleased to announce that South Africa have thrashed Australia in the opening game of the Cricket World Cup. Thanks to M-Net holding all the rights and Australia having nonsensical time zones, the games aren’t screened in the common room. I have to rely on word from Simon who mysteriously knows the cricket score no matter what time of day or night.
Dad was ecstatic about thumping the Aussies and phoned again in the afternoon to share the joy. He sounded quite sloshed and sang the first line of Shosholoza before forgetting the rest of the words and then set off on a dirty song about Australian sheep farmers, which he had just learned from Frank.
Pike and Spike mugged Vern in the bogs and roughed him up pretty badly. To add insult to injury, Pike set fire to all of Vern’s yellow and blue chits. I’m not sure what the Pikes did to Rain Man but I heard him sobbing quietly into his pillow after lights out. I asked him if he was okay but he didn’t reply.
REASONS FOR FEARING LONG WEEKEND
1) Our house is now a gigantic circus tent
2) I could be living with my ex-girlfriend
3) I will then have to see her new boyfriend
4) This will make me fall in love with her again
5) Mom and Dad will definitely have a fight
6) I’ll be forced to visit my grandmother
7) Tomorrow is Feb 29th meaning this is a leap year ( Fatty said dark stuff will definitely go down tomorrow)
8) General creeping fear of impending doom
Pike was on the Durban bus. He forced some second years out of the seat behind me and then spent the next two hours tormenting me. I tried to ignore him but it was like sitting in front of a giant blood-sucking mosquito. When we reached the bus stop, I noticed Plump Graham charging across the road to where his tearful mother was waiting. They hugged for so long that Pike eventually shouted, ‘Get a room, fat boy!’
Mom met me in the station wagon and showed me some large scrapes on the side door of the car. Apparently Blacky completely freaked out when Dad tried to load him into the car en route to the kennels. My father only made the situation worse when he lost his temper and chased Blacky around the garden with the hosepipe. Blacky then had some sort of emotional dog breakdown, which made Dad emotional because he was feeling guilty about taking Blacky to the kennels in the first place.
‘It was a hell of a thing,’ said Mom as she stared out at the road from behind a huge pair of dark glasses. I noticed her jaw was clenched which means her mind was ticking and the mood wasn’t good. When I asked her where we were staying this weekend, she didn’t answer. After some time she said, ‘Now, boy, it’s all been a little difficult, and I don’t want you to freak out because God knows we’ve all had enough of that this week …’ It’s worse than I thought …
Much worse.
I’m staying at Wombat’s!
14:30 Wombat flagged us down on the street outside her block of flats. She then directed us up the driveway and into a parking space like we had never visited her before.
15:00 As soon as Mom left, Wombat turned into Gollum and accused me of coming round to steal her money. My grandmother also announced that my pimples looked revolting, and that I was eating far too many sweets. She then charged off to hide the sugar.
15:05 After hiding the sugar bowl and padlocking the fridge, Wombat became strangely pleasant again and we sat down to a long afternoon of tea and boudoir biscuits. I talked about school and Wombat prattled on about the war.
16:00 Made a gruesome find under my bed. A disgusting plate of fried fish, tinned peas and mashed potato – Wombat said it was my dinner and ushered me into her bedroom to demonstrate an identical plate lying in wait under her double bed. (?)
16:15 The phone rang and Wombat rushed through to my room to say that Graeme Pollock was on the phone. It was just Dad playing nasty tricks on Wombat – he says it’s one of life’s great pleasures. Once my father had finished his snorting and sniggering, he said he’d organised a braai at Frank’s on Saturday night and then a game of golf on Sunday afternoon to save me from the Wicked Wombat of the West.
16:30 My grandmother set off to buy the evening paper, brandishing a very long walking stick. She then made it very clear that when she returned she needed absolute silence because she had to listen to the news, weather, and shipping forecast on the radio. I didn’t argue and was just relieved to be alone.
16:50 Wombat returned from her walk with neither her walking stick nor the evening paper. I offered to run back to the shop to buy her paper and find her stick, but Wombat brought up my ‘drinking problem’ and said I couldn’t be trusted with her newspaper money.
16:55 Wombat set off again, this time armed with a yellow umbrella.
17:30 I began to worry that Wombat was either lost or arrested. I thought about calling Mom but decided against it, thinking it would only drive her into a panic.
I really don’t think Wombat should be living alone.
17:45 As I stepped into the bath there was a loud knock on the door. I then had to step out of the bath, dry myself, and get back into my school pants and shirt. The knocking became loud banging and general shouting. I eventually opened the door to a bald eighty-five-year-old man brandishing a bread knife. Behind him stood a large crowd of old ladies, including Wombat, who pointed at me with her umbrella and walking stick and cried, ‘That’s the rapscallion! I heard him using up my bathwater!’
The old man with the knife demanded my name. When I said it was John Milton he immediately looked suspicious. Another old duck glared at me and said, ‘They all operate under assumed names these days.’ Another old geezer wearing a cream safari suit joined the geriatric lynch mob and suggested the block should hire armed security men to keep the riff-raff out. His name was Mr Jeffreys and everyone agreed with him.
Thankfully, a woman about Mom’s age burst through the crowd and screeched, ‘Oh, look, it’s John Milton.’ The crowd began muttering among themselves, unsure what this latest development meant. The woman shook my hand and explained to everyone that I was Wombat’s grandson and that she knew Mom. Another old lady said, ‘Oh, he’s the one at the posh school with the beautiful singing voice.’
Wombat stepped forward as if seeing me for the first time and screeched:
‘It’s David!’
The old man with the knife kept his weapon raised and seemed to be getting a little hot under the collar. He looked at me savagely and barked, ‘Which is it, sonny – David or John Milton?’ I told him David was my middle name. Suddenly everyone broke into a cheer and began introducing everyone else to me. I felt like the prodigal son returning from years marauding around the desert on a camel. Turns out, the old guy with the knife is the block supervisor Buster Cracknell whom Wombat accused of yoghurt theft in 1990.
Then an old lady demanded that I sing a hymn. Everyone cheered and excitedly stepped forward to hear me let rip. I tried to explain to the old bat that my voice had broken and that I was no longer a singer but the growing crowd of geriatrics refused to let me go until I had given them a performance.
Jerusalem reverberated around the foyer and my voice sounded pretty impressive. Not quite up to pre ball-drop standards but solid enough to avoid disgrace. Soon the oldies joined in a rousing double chorus followed by applause and more handshakes. There were loud calls for a second hymn but Wombat chased everyone away because she said she was about to miss her beloved six o’clock news.
Once inside the flat, Wombat carefully locked her security gates before turning on me with tears flooding her eyes. ‘David,’ she gasped, ‘I wish somebody had warned me. I’m old now – it’s not fair of you and your mother to surprise me like that.’ Then the sound of the news pips could be heard from Wombat’s radio in her bedroom. Her eyes lit up and she stormed into her room before cranking up her news to a deafening volume.
I’m blaming too many news bulletins for my grandmother’s dementia. It can’t be healthy to be confronted with so much bad news on a daily basis.
18:15 After listening to the news, weather, shipping forecast and a dreary tune played on a tuba by a man called Nigel Galleon, Wombat re-emerged in an electric blue ball gown. She poured us both a whiskey and soda without asking if I even wanted one. She reclined in her armchair, took a great gulp of whiskey and began telling me once again how she met Winston Churchill. She went on for ages about the twinkle in his eye and how the prime minister had winked at her and complimented her dress. Wombat looked at me with a cunning smile on her face and said that the only way to win over a girl’s heart is to smoke a cigar and never leave home without a stiff collar and tie. She tapped her whiskey coaster with her fingernail and said, ‘It’s very manly to smoke.’
The night wore on and Wombat’s whiskeys made me feel light-headed.
19:56 My grandmother places the radio on a stool in front of us.
19:57 Wombat and I fetch our cold fish in unison and then sit down in front of the radio waiting for eight o’clock.
19:59 Wombat says an emotional grace.
20:00 Nibble a dinner of cold fish, mash and tinned peas while listening to the news.
20:15 After the news, weather and financial indicators Wombat cleared the plates, told me it was bedtime, and began switching off the lamps.
20:30 While Wombat’s radio droned on in the background, I settled into my grandfather’s bed with
On the Road
. It’s set in America in the 1950s. The main character hooks up with a wild bunch of mates and hitches his way across America and back. Kerouac’s world suddenly felt a long way from the one I’m living.
I’d take drifting around America like a bum over a life of cold fish and shipping forecasts.