‘How do you know it was that song? You fucken bastard! How do you know? Did you fucken stand outside and listen?’
Treppie stumbles backwards over the newspapers. ‘Hold it, hold it!’ he says. It’s all just a coincidence. They all heard the song on the car radio, and if Lambert really wants to know, he should ask his mother, she’s the one who wanted to listen to the radio. She wanted to be with him in spirit, she said, and there was nothing like love songs, she said, to transport her spirit.
‘She said!’ Sis, Treppie! It’s not her who’s been looking for trouble here. Why’s he doing this to her now?
‘Not so, Mol?’ Treppie asks. Now he stands there looking all innocent. But he doesn’t really want her to say if it’s true or not. He wants to sing. He’s holding that little heel-less shoe tightly, with both hands, in front of his heart, and he puts on a face of love and yearning. He sways on his feet, like a little tree in the wind.
‘I hear the sound
Of bugles blown.
Far away, far away.
‘Tate-raaaa-tate-raaa!’ he blows on his trumpet inbetween the singing.
‘Lambert,’ Treppie calls between his singing. ‘Come show us quickly how you shuffled, man, or we’ll start thinking you’re telling lies again!’
‘I’m not lying!’ Lambert shouts. ‘We danced the whole fucken place to a standstill, man!’
Well, then there’s no need to be so modest, says Treppie, then he must come here and show them. God, what now? Now Treppie’s got Lambert round the neck and he’s making rude movements. He’s pushing his hips between Lambert’s legs.
‘Where’s the guava, where’s the guava? Oh shit! No guava and no cucumber either!’
Sis, Treppie, sis!
Toby jumps up against them. This looks like a nice game. If she’d been a dog she’d have thought so too. But she isn’t a dog.
Lambert shoves Treppie so hard that he almost lands with his backside in the fridge.
‘My goodness, Lambert, are you trying to send me to the cooler, old boy?’ says Treppie, as if honey’s dripping from his tongue, but he’s up on his feet again, ready for more. If only Pop would do something.
Well, says Treppie, if he’s not good enough, then Lambert must try his mother. ‘Nothing like a mother’s touch!’ he says. Treppie plucks her clean out of her chair. Now he’s putting that wig on her head! Here she stands, and no one’s even helping her! Pop just looks at her with those dead eyes of his.
‘Woman, behold thy son,’ Treppie shouts.
He shoves Lambert right into her. She feels Lambert’s arms going around her. He squeezes her so hard her voice goes ‘eep!’
‘La-la-la-eep!’ Treppie sings.
‘Shuddup! Shuddup!’ Lambert shouts.
Lambert’s pushing her across the floor like a wheelbarrow. Newspaper and glass under her feet. Lambert’s barefoot. Doesn’t he feel anything?
‘Shuffle, Ma, shuffle!’ Lambert shouts.
Pop’s holding his head in his hands.
Toby barks.
Treppie sings his song.
‘Just you shuddup!’ Lambert shouts at Treppie. He’ll sing his own song, he says, and she must keep her feet together, she must keep them flat on the ground so he can demonstrate, Lambert shouts. From the one side of the room all the way to the other side. All you hear are feet. Now Lambert starts singing.
‘Rock me gently
Rock me slow’
he sings, but his voice is low and tuneless. She can feel his voice trembling against her body.
‘Yippeee!’ shouts Treppie. He claps his hands and whistles. ‘Just check, Pop, just check how our old sis here can still soft-guava with this boy-child of ours. A person would swear they’re sweethearts. Our own sleep-in Cleopatra, queen of the hive. We needn’t have spent so much money at all ’cause what more does a person want now, hey?
‘Take it easy, don’t you know
That I have never been
Loved like this before.’
She squirms but Lambert’s holding her so tight she can’t even breathe. He shuffles her right up to her chair and then shoves her so hard she sits down with a ‘hic’.
‘Ai, ai, ai,’ says Pop. His eyes are wet.
‘So, are you lot satisfied now?’ Lambert asks. ‘I shuffled that darky until she couldn’t any more, ’cause that’s what she wanted. After a while she didn’t even know where she was.’
Darky? Why’s he calling her a darky now? Does Pop know?
‘Ja, Ma,’ says Lambert. ‘He knows, him and Treppie. They think they can bring me a Coloured floozy for my birthday.’
‘And then he kissed her!’ Treppie sings.
‘Fuck you, you motherfucking bastard!’ says Lambert to Treppie.
She’d better make herself scarce here.
‘There’s your mother, son, fuck her!’ Treppie points to her.
‘What do you say, brother?’ he asks Pop. ‘There’s a mother and there’s a son, even if the fathers were poorly shuffled.’
Treppie shakes Pop by the shoulder. Pop sits with his head hanging down.
So, has this been Treppie’s plan all along? Does he want to go and bugger up the whole perspective now? After all that practising? He’s still not ‘immune’. All for nothing!
Suddenly Treppie looks like he’s a video on fast-forward. He ducks to one side and quickly picks up something from the floor. It’s the little packet with the cowboy on top. He shakes it under Lambert’s nose.
They must just check, he says. Lambert took her with his bare hands. ‘Boom, boom,’ he shouts, pretending to shoot into the air.
‘As long as Lambertussie can shoot his load, hooray for the scent of a kill!’
Treppie quickly bends over again and picks up something on the other side. What’s that, now? Christ! A gun! It goes ‘pof!’ as Treppie throws it down on to the bed. It’s pitch black, with a curved handle. Where did that come from?
‘Oh, trusted steed, don’t fail me in my greatest need!’
Please, Pop, help! But Pop’s already seen it. Where’s the head that belongs to the hair? There’s a corpse here in the den! Lambert stuffed a corpse! No, God help us, was there really a murder here last night? While they were sitting so blissfully there on the koppie?
‘Grandpa rode a porker!’ shouts Treppie. ‘And then he went and pumped his floozy into her triumph and glory!’
Ja, Treppie, now all hell is loose, just like you wanted. She looks at him standing there and rubbing his hands, like he’s making a fire with sticks. The fire’s nice and wild now. Now things are going to start flying.
Just as she thought. Lambert grabs a long piece of iron from under his bed and swings it like a golf club, but he doesn’t hit a ball, he hits an empty GTX tin.
‘Hole in one!’ shouts Treppie as he catches the tin in mid-air. Softly, softly Treppie puts the tin back on the ground. He gives it a little tap on the lid, as if to tell it to sit there nicely now, ’cause there’s a lot of hustling going on and they must all sit dead still. That’s also the way she’s sitting, here in her corner. Dead still.
Doesn’t Lambert want a cigarette? Treppie asks.
Lambert doesn’t hear.
‘She brought her own fucken FL’s!’ he roars.
No, that’s fine, says Treppie, he was just teasing. You’re forty only once in your life, and it’s fine to have the night of your life with someone, just once in a lifetime.
Treppie’s breathing fast. It looks like his sentences are coming too quickly.
‘And then you took her for a proper spin, didn’t you, old boy? I see you parked Flossie in front, so she’s ready for us when we take back your girl’s wig and her shoe, later tonight.’
Lambert says nothing. He’s still holding on to his golf club. Treppie’s smoking hard.