‘Shake a paw, partner,’ Hymie grinned. ‘This one is going to be an intellectual masterpiece!’
Atherton, Cunning-Spider and I had been a combination on the rugby field from form one. I was a natural scrum-half with Atherton, following in the footsteps of his famous cousin, developing into a brilliant fly-half while Cunning-Spider was a centre with a lot of style. Hugh Lyell and Jean Minnaar, both Sinjun’s People, were also on the team. While I was still technically under fourteen I elected to play in the under fifteen team to keep the combination together. Pissy Johnson, who seemed to grow bigger every term, was a front row forward and, of course, Hymie only became interested because most of the Wooden Spoon Goons were in the team. The under fifteen team in any school is the nursery for the first fifteen and so the players in it are always carefully watched by the rugby masters who regarded this particular team as one with great promise.
Hymie, as usual, analysed the teams against whom we played and, like his boxing notes, we had a pretty good idea of their game plan and capability before taking the field against them.
As he had done in his swot spot in boxing, Hymie made us think and behave like winners. ‘Winners make their own luck but winners are also lucky,’ he said.
In the under thirteens and fourteens, when we had played Helpmekaar, the Afrikaans school where I had boxed my first bout to beat Jannie Geldenhuis, the much bigger Helpmekaar forwards had made mincemeat of us and the stronger, bigger backs had run us off our feet. Geldenhuis, playing scrum-half opposite me, had thoroughly enjoyed his revenge on each of these four occasions. In the last under fourteen match there they’d beaten us narrowly, as we left the field he’d given me an unnecessarily patronising pat on the back. ‘In the ring is one thing, on the rugby field is another. Rugby is more important than boxing, man.’ We’d met five times in the ring and while he was always a tough opponent, on each occasion I’d beaten him; he had a right to try and get even. We would play each school twice during a season and so in our personal score it was me with five boxing wins, Helpmekaar four rugby wins. Hymie, in particular, was anxious to change these rugby statistics when we met in the under fifteens. While the Helpmekaar team were still bigger than we were, things had evened out a bit in size. Hymie was convinced we could beat them. ‘Look at the statistics, Peekay, in the under thirteens they beat us twenty to nil and again fifteen nil, last year it was nine nil and ten three and we scored a try to two free kicks and a drop goal. Statistically we have to take them this year.’
I had my doubts, Helpmekaar with four wins to their credit in the preceding two years had a right to be confident. ‘Hymie, they’re Boers, they’d rather die than lose to an English school, it’s not simply a matter of statistics!’
‘Ja, I know, that’s what we’re going to have to fix.’
On the Wednesday afternoon two weeks prior to the match, when we were meant to be studying at the Johannesburg library, Hymie drew me aside. ‘Will you come to Helpmekaar with me this afternoon to see Jannie Geldenhuis, don’t ask any questions, just say, yes… it’s important.’
Sitting on the top deck of the Parktown bus he outlined his plan. ‘There are nearly twelve hundred kids at Helpmekaar and six hundred at our school, if we can get most of them to place a bet on Helpmekaar winning against our under fifteens we could really clean up, we’d have your Solly Goldman money.’
‘Christ, Hymie, we’re back to straight gambling! You’re crazy, this isn’t like those fist boxing matches when we took a few bets in the toilet before the fight. There I was a surprise factor in that scam, the punters from the other schools didn’t know we had a boxer who could fight. This is just the opposite, they know how good we are and what’s more we’ve never beaten them! This whole thing contradicts our business philosophy.’
‘You know what your problem is, Peekay? You worry too much.’
‘With you as a friend, that’s hardly bloody surprising. I hope you’ve got a plan?’
Hymie opened his hands expansively. ‘Does a bird fly? Of course I’ve got a plan, but I may have to tapdance a little when we get there so please excuse me if I don’t explain it to you in detail. But I promise you our business philosophy is intact.’
‘Hymie, listen! Picking up a dozen punters in the shit house is one thing; taking on a whole bloody Afrikaans school is another. You don’t know these buggers like I do, these guys don’t gamble, the Afrikaans are very religious, you know.’
‘Greed, my dear Peekay, transcends religion. Did not the Roman soldiers gamble for Christ’s garments at Golgotha? Besides, when those Helpmekaar guys see the odds I’m offering, their little Boer hands won’t be able to get a kitchen knife to their money boxes fast enough.’
‘Hymie, I hope this whole thing’s kosher. If it turns out to be a con and they find out, we’re dead meat!’ Hymie had taught us all the Jewish word ‘kosher’ and it had become the generic term for something being legitimate.
Hymie smiled. ‘I’ve racked my brains, in fact I’m rather ashamed of myself, but even with my considerable intellect, there is no way of ensuring the outcome other than to pay them off, which is patently impossible. We simply have to beat them on the day. Believe me, it’s as kosher as my granma’s chicken soup.’ He turned to me and gave me his most disarming smile. ‘Peekay, I know you’ve got a considerable rep with these Boers, no way I’m going to spoil that. You’re the only Rooinek Christian gentleman they respect,’ he paused. ‘Just get it into your head that we can beat the bastards!’
‘I hope you didn’t mean you’d pay them off if you could find a way?’
‘No, of course not, I was only kidding. The nicest part of a scam is the brains part. Anyone can learn to cheat.’
We reached the top of the hill and arrived at the Helpmekaar gates just as school was getting out. A sea of brown blazers piped with yellow braid engulfed our two green ones. Remarks were flying left, right and centre and things were getting decidedly uncomfortable.
‘What now?’ I whispered to Hymie.
‘We just wait here, you’ll see,’ he replied.
Just then a voice cut through the sea of brown blazers, ‘Peekay, howzit?’ It was Jannie Geldenhuis. ‘Sorry I’m late, man, I had to see one of the masters. Come with me.’ He extended his hand in the Boer manner and we shook it in turn and then followed him through the gates.
‘Magtig, I thought we were going to be lynched,’ I said to Jannie in Afrikaans.
‘No way, man, they all know you here, you a sort of hero.’
We had reached the school toilets where a couple of guys about our own age were having a quiet smoke. Jannie asked them politely to leave and they kicked at the ground with the toe cap of their shoes, then deciding to obey, killed their cigarettes by pinching the heads off and put the unused stompies in their blazer pockets for use later.
Hymie said he’d accept odds of three to one on the Prince of Wales School winning.
Geldenhuis gasped. ‘You’re crazy, man! We already beat you four games to nil!’
‘Those are the odds,’ Hymie said quietly.
‘That’s blerrie terrific for the punters,’ Geldenhuis said, ‘but what about us? We… you’ll be cleaned out! Fifteen percent of nothing is nothing, and I’ll end up with my arse kicked by twelve hundred bloody angry Helpmekaar punters.’
Geldenhius was not just a pretty face, I observed. Hymie’d gone crackers! Helpmekaar had to be favoured to win. Three to one odds was suicide.
‘Okay, Geldenhuis… Peekay and I will give you a written guarantee that we’ll honour our debts if the Prince of Wales loses.’ He reached into the inside pocket of his blazer and handed me a square of folded paper. I opened it to see that it was a guarantee by the Bank to pay in the event of a Helpmekaar win. There was a place at the bottom for two signatures. Hymie had already signed as one of them.
‘Sign it and give it to him,’ Hymie said casually.
I made a rough calculation in my head. Assuming two thirds of the punters bet against us at an average of two shillings a bet, we stood to lose around three hundred and seventy pounds. If we sold the Bank to a syndicate and our rights to Miss Bornstein’s
I breathed a sigh of relief, if it had been more than our total assets I would have had to turn Hymie down in front of Geldenhuis, causing us both no end of embarrassment. I borrowed Hymie’s Parker 51 and holding the guarantee against the toilet wall I signed it. But I can tell you I was not happy; Hymie Solomon Levy was going to be in a lot of shit when we were alone again.
Geldenhuis took the guarantee from me, read it and pulled out a small leather wallet from his pocket, as he
