‘Bring some paper.’ Mevrou cunningly fashioned two little boats from strips of newspaper. She then put the paper boats in the tackies and instructed me to insert my feet into them and tied the laces. This time they fitted snug as a bug in a rug. Though I must say they felt very strange and when I walked they made a phlifft-floft sound where the tackies bent at the end of my toes.
I had never felt as grand in all my life. ‘We will take them,’ Mevrou announced triumphantly. She reached into her handbag for her purse.
Harry Crown sighed. ‘Those tackies are no good, Mevrou.’
If Mevrou had had her sjambok she would have made fat old Harry Crown bend over the counter and she would have given him six of the best.
‘How much?’ she said curtly, her lips pursed.
‘Half a crown, for you only two shillings,’ Harry Crown said, adjusting the price automatically, his heart obviously not in the sale.
I tugged at the end of a lace and to my relief the bow collapsed. I did the same for the second tackie then slipped ever so carefully out of the newspaper boats and handed the tackies to Harry Crown.
‘You poor little bugger,’ he said in English. He slipped the tackies back into the soft brown cardboard box and when he saw Mevrou wasn’t looking, quickly put two green and two red suckers into the box and handed it to me. ‘I wish you health to wear them,’ Harry Crown said in English. Speaking out of the corner of his mouth he added, ‘Can she understand English?’
Not daring to reply, I shook my head almost imperceptibly, indicating no.
‘Inside is for the journey, green and red, the best! Believe me, I know. So long, Peekay.’ He patted me on the shoulder. His eyes widened and drawing up to his full height, his hands clasped over his belly, gold teeth flashing, he grinned. ‘Maybe the tackies don’t fit, but I think your new name fits perfect. Peekay! Ja, that is a nice name for a brave person who is travelling by himself to the lowveld to meet his granpa.’
Mevrou, who was practically snorting with rage, threw two shillings on the counter and marched out of the shop. I followed along with the precious box of loot under my arm. At the door I turned to say goodbye to Harry Crown.
‘Goodbye, sir!’ I said in English. The two English words sounded strangely out of place, like a language newly learned.
Mevrou turned furiously. Grabbing me by the ear, she hissed, ‘Do not talk to that… that dirty Jew in the accursed language. You will hear from my sjambok when we get home!’
‘Ouch! You have my sore ear, Mevrou.’ I knew immediately she’d feel guilty grabbing me by my recently damaged ear, even though it was completely healed.
Mevrou let go of my ear as though it were a red-hot poker. You’ve got to be quick on your feet in this world if you want to survive. Though, once you know the rules, it is not too hard to play the game.
Mevrou stormed ahead and I fell some five paces behind her. After I’d given her what I hoped was enough guilt for her to withdraw the promised thrashing, I dropped back another fifteen paces and took the raspberry sucker out of my pocket. Taking off the Cellophane wrapper I licked the tiny bits of crimson sugar crystal which had stuck to it before throwing it away. I then settled down to suck my way back to the hostel.
I was right about the sjambok, which was not mentioned on our return. I spent the remainder of the afternoon putting more stones on Granpa Chook’s grave and making a border around the pile of rocks with white pebbles which took ages to collect from all around the place. I must say, the toughest damn chicken in the whole world had a very impressive grave, a stone cairn which would probably last forever, hidden by successive generations of khaki weed and black jack.
The cook boy had packed me a big brown paper bag of sandwiches for the train journey. We left the hostel about five o’clock to catch the seven o’clock train. My suitcase, though large, contained very few things. Two shirts, two pairs of khaki shorts, my pyjamas, the four suckers which I’d hidden in a pair of shorts and my new tackies with the paper boats in them. There was plenty of room for the sandwiches. While the suitcase banged against my knees, it wasn’t really heavy and besides, with all the iron bar torture sessions, my muscles were pretty big. Mevrou was completely puffed out from making two trips into town in one day, and with the suitcase banging against my knees it took us almost an hour to get to the station.
The station turned out to be a raised platform about thirty yards long upon which sat a building with two doors facing the railway line. On one door Station Master was written and to the right of this door was a window. Above the window it read Tickets. On the remaining door it said Waiting Room. Outside the station master’s office there were three truck tyres painted white and in the middle of these grew red cannas, their long, flat leaves dusty and shredded, with the blooms equally torn and bedraggled looking. Mevrou seemed to know the station master. He opened the locked waiting room for us and brought her a cup of coffee in a big white cup with SAR monogrammed on it.
‘Don’t worry, Hoppie Groenewald is the guard on this train, he will take good care of the boy.’ He turned to acknowledge me for the first time. ‘He is champion of the railways, you know. That Hoppie,’ the station master grinned at the thought, ‘he laughs all the time, but if you get into a fight, I’m telling you, man, you better pray he’s on your side!’
I wondered what a champion of the railways was, but I clearly understood, and greatly liked, the idea of having someone on my side who was good in a fight. My life seemed to be made for trouble and it would make a nice change to have a champion of the railways beside me when the next lot hit, as was bound to happen.
Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a circumstance, a random moment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swivelled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark. Hoppie Groenewald was to prove to be a passing mentor who would set the next seventeen years of my life on an irrevocable course. He would do so in little more than a day and a night.
‘The boy is a Rooinek and also too small to fight yet,’ Mevrou said, as though it were only a matter of time before my bad English blood would turn nasty. She produced a ticket from an envelope and inserted a large safety pin into the hole at one end. ‘Come here, child.’ She pinned the ticket to my shirt pocket. ‘Listen carefully to me now, man, this ticket will take you to Barberton but your oupa only sent enough money for one breakfast and one lunch and one supper on the train. Tonight you eat only one sandwich, you hear?’ I nodded. ‘Tomorrow for breakfast another one and for lunch the last one. Then you can eat on the train. Do you understand now?’
‘Ja, Mevrou, for the next three meals I eat the sandwiches.’
‘No, man! That’s not what I said. For tonight and for breakfast tomorrow and lunch tomorrow. And also eat the meat first because the jam will keep the bread soft for tomorrow. Do you hear?’
‘Ja, Mevrou.’
She took out a small square of white cloth about the size of a lady’s hanky and placed it on her lap. In the centre she placed a shilling.
‘Watch carefully now, Pisskop. I am putting this shilling in here and tying it so.’ She brought the two opposite corners together and tied them over the shilling and then did the same with the remaining two. She took a second large safety pin from her handbag, then, pushing the doek with the shilling into the pocket of my khaki shorts, she pinned it to the lining.
‘Now listen good. It is for an emergency. Only if you have to can you use some of it. But you must tie up the change like I just showed you and put it back in your pocket with the safety pin. If you don’t need it you must give it to your oupa, it is his change.’