5
For the second time running, Kramer awoke startled and lashing out. He was being kneed in the groin.
“Hey, watch what you’re doing!” someone yelled.
He pulled the sheet off his face. A delighted boy of five was advancing up him on all fours.
“Good morning, Uncle Trompie,” the child said, grinning round at his mother who stood by the wardrobe.
“You nearly took poor Piet’s head off,” chided the Widow Fourie.
“I don’t mind, Ma,” Piet said generously.
And the noise brought his siblings scrambling into the room to bounce on their Uncle Trompie. They were all older and that much bonier, but Kramer would have willingly put up with it for longer than their mother.
“What’s all this?” she demanded. “Out you go and let your Ma dress in peace. She’ll be late for work in a minute.”
“How long is a minute, Uncle Trompie?” asked Marie, the eldest, who knew anyway.
“Out!” shouted Widow Fourie.
“Hold it,” said Kramer, sitting up and reaching for his cigarettes. He had bought them from a machine and there was some change slipped into the cellophane wrapping. He added it to what was in his trouser pocket.
“Yes?” Marie moved eagerly forward.
“If you can tell me how long a minute is, then all of you can have a fizzy drink down at the Greek shop, it’ll be open by now.”
“Sixty!”
“Seconds! Right first time-now you lot get out of here and don’t come back till you’re burping.”
The flat emptied like a greyhound trap.
“You spoil them, Trompie.”
“I spoil myself.”
Unwarily, the Widow Fourie had wandered too close in a search for her stockings. One hand was all Kramer needed for the wrist lock which brought her tumbling on top of him.
“Hey! You bloody police think you can do what you like!”
“Don’t you like it then?”
She giggled and nuzzled.
“I’ve been late twice through you.”
“I’ll give you a lift.”
“That’s lovely,” she said as she went under.
Lust was a many-splendoured thing, Kramer decided, as he watched the enchanting ritual of a full-bodied woman jigging her way back into a tight corset. Pure lust that was, none of your permissive society muck the Government banned from the news stands. He had seen a Playboy magazine once in the Vice Squad’s office and it left him thinking of dogs watering lamp-posts to excite other dogs they would never know. Filthy, degrading muck. But real lust-
“Isn’t it about time you started thinking about getting up?”
“Uhuh.”
“Just because you’re mad at the Colonel doesn’t mean I’ve got to be late for work, after all. Marie will have to give the kids their breakfasts as it is.”
“Uhuh.”
“Come on, Trompie, there’s a razor I use for my legs in the bathroom.”
With a groan, Kramer staggered out of bed and went through into the bathroom. The Widow Fourie threw his underpants in after him and was gratified to hear the sound of the wash-basin taps running. She hooked up her bra and looked around for her stockings again.
“Seen my nylons?” she called.
Kramer appeared in the doorway, scrubbing his chin with a bar of laundry soap in a final bid to get a good lather. He had his underpants over one shoulder.
“What colour are they?”
“Pink,” she answered, hurriedly pulling on her spare overall-she would never have time to change in the locker room at Woolworth’s.
“Pink,” Kramer repeated. “That’s not for stockings.”
“Fat lot you know. We’re all wearing them in haberdashery, the counter’s so high the customers can’t see.”
And then the thought struck him. Kramer dropped both soap and underwear in his rush across the room. The Widow Fourie glanced up irritably.
“Come on,” said Kramer. “Undo your buttons.”
“Keep your hands off me, they’re wet!” she protested. “Have you gone crazy, Trompie?”
“Undo them!”
She looked frightened, which he regretted, but the matter was too important to waste words.
“This must be how they see you,” she said softly as her fingers worked down the row of large white buttons on the plain blue uniform. “Please don’t do it again, that thing with your mouth.”
Kramer was not listening. He was intent on examining her undergarments as they appeared longitudinally in the gap. The low bra was a brilliant red, trimmed with a black lace frill with a dot sewn into it. The corset was scarlet with a bold pattern in deep crimson. The panties were an odd pair in poster green, cut very high at the hip and embroided on the more substantial areas with yellow roses.
The Widow Fourie was standing stiffly as if she expected to be touched where her flesh would crawl.
“Relax,” mumbled Kramer, finding a smile.
“I just wanted a look.”
“Oh, yes?”
She began rebuttoning. Her expression was grim and obviously her mind made up.
“I think we must have a talk in the car.”
“Tell me something: why do you wear those things? It’s very important.”
Now she was completely taken aback. “What do you mean?”
“Why such fancy stuff? Why not the ordinary white you see in the shop windows?”
“I dunno. I suppose it’s because I have to wear this uniform all day long.”
“Go on.”
Kramer scooped the stockings off the floor right at her feet and handed them over.
“Oh, ta. Well, all the assistants at Woolworth’s wear the same one and it’s a horrible blue. Drab, I call it.”
“Yes?”
“ Ach, work it out for yourself, man.”
“You tell me.”
“If you wear the bright undies you like then-even though no one can see them-you’re still different. That’s it: I put them on because they make me feel more the person I really am.”
Bull’s-eye.
The stocking on her left leg had got itself twisted. Kramer gave her his arm as she hopped over to sit on the bed while adjusting it.
“So what would you say about a dolly of twenty-two who is her own boss, can do what she likes, but goes around in drab frocks with a rainbow underneath?”
“I’d think there was still something forcing her to.”
“ Forcing her?”
“Of course. What woman wants to give the wrong impression of herself?”
“True.”
Flattered now by the rapt attention being paid to her every word, the Widow Fourie added: “What I say, and I’ve told the manager this umpteen times, I say that a little colour cannot hurt anybody.”
It seemed, however, that Miss Le Roux had feared it might. Hurt her very badly. And as she had been, it was something else to think about. But not now.
“I’ll shave at the office,” Kramer said, dragging on his clothes. He was dressed before the Widow Fourie had found her other shoe. He scrounged it from under the bed, slipped it on her foot, and said: “Okay, Cinderella, the Pumpkinmobile is downstairs waiting.”
She found herself laughing fondly as they reached the passage to the lift.
“You’re a nasty bit of work, Trompie Kramer,” the Widow Fourie said. “But come around again soon, hey? The kids like you.”
“Poor little bastards,” he chuckled-and ducked.
The way Mrs Perkins looked at Kramer when she opened her door made him uncomfortable. So did the dried lather which felt like localised rigor mortis.
“My Bob’s been up all night,” she said reproachfully. “I had no idea.”
“I’m sorry, but I’ll see he is looked after properly.”
“It’s not that. It’s his health. He isn’t very strong you know. Asthma.”
That figured. It also accounted for the yoga books.
“I’m sorry,” Kramer said again. “It’s just he was the only man who could do the job.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, your Bob’s a very clever bloke,” he confided, gaining his entrance and starting off down the corridor to the workroom.
“Lieutenant?”
“Yes?”
“Er-have you had breakfast?”