‘You don’t have to justify it, you can do both!’ Hymie yelled.
‘You know me better than that. Let me tell you something stupid, Hymie. If I had to choose between becoming welterweight champion of the world and taking a law degree at Oxford, the boxing would win.’
He looked stunned. ‘Why? You’re not the sort of guy who wants to be famous that way. In fact, you’re exactly the opposite.’
‘It’s got to do with something which happened when I was very young. I can’t explain it, it’s just got to be that way.’
‘Peekay, the money you’ll make as a professional, even a world champion, will be nothing compared to the two of us together in a law practice.’
‘It’s not something I can explain. I’ve worked for this since I was six. It has nothing to do with the importance of being the welterweight champion of the world.’ I chuckled inwardly. How the hell could I explain to him that I was doing it, in part, for a dead chicken!
‘Look, Peekay, you’re only just a lightweight, it will be two, maybe three years before you become a welterweight, you can take your degree, or a good part of it anyway, and then go on with your boxing career. I’ll help you. We’ll even make a lot of dough out of it.’
The interview with the selection board was a fairly harrowing experience, the first hour taken up with the board talking to Singe ’n Burn while I cooled my heels in the waiting room of University House. The waiting was the worst part. The selection committee was comprised of three fairly elderly men who simply started to chat with me. One of them, a thin man with round steel-rimmed glasses which slid down to the tip of his very long nose and whose hair was parted precisely in the middle and slicked down with brilliantine, looked like Ichabod Crane. He peered at me over the top of his glasses and quoted the first line of three verses from Ovid, then asked me to complete them. I had to laugh, it was stuff I’d learned from Doc when I was nine.
‘Not bad, not at all bad, only one small mistake.’
‘Please, sir, I disagree,’ I replied, my heart in my mouth. The three poems had been among Doc’s favourites and I knew them intimately. I was certain I’d not made a mistake.
‘Bravo, young man!’ Ichabod said. ‘You’re quite correct and, besides, you had the courage to say so.’ He pulled his glasses back to the top of his nose and wrote something down on a tablet of lined bright yellow paper.
The three examiners looked positively musty with learning and not at all like sporting types. But, after they’d chatted to me seemingly about this and that, they fixed on my boxing. Why, they wanted to know, was I obsessed with boxing? My submission showed me to be a brilliant student, a very talented musician, a good rugby player and a brilliant boxer. One of them read from the submission, ‘Has the ambition to become a professional boxer and to win the welterweight championship of the world!’ I could see he was quite taken aback.
‘Surely a boy of your obvious intelligence, or according to your headmaster, brilliance, must see that a vocation as a professional pugilist is not compatible with reading law at Oxford?’
‘Lord Byron was a pugilist, sir. No one doubted his intellectual integrity,’ I answered. He grunted and wrote something down on the pad in front of him. Ichabod Crane had a slight smile on his face.
‘Ah, I do not recall whether Byron was an Oxford man!’ he said, which caused his two colleagues to laugh.
‘Your point is well made, Mr… er, Peekay, but as I recall he was an amateur.’
‘There is considerable evidence that he fought on occasions for a wager which today would make him a professional, sir.’
‘Be that as it may, a small wager on the side amongst friends is hardly the same thing, is it?’
‘No, sir,’ I replied, unwilling to press my luck any further by pointing out that quite large sums of money were involved.
At the end of the interview I was asked to wait with Singe ’n Burn in the waiting room. The head seemed even more nervous than me and made me repeat every word of the interview. When I got to the bit about Byron he was delighted. ‘Excellent!’ he said, clapping his hands, but then when I told him about Byron fighting for a wager and the somewhat brusque reply I had received, he frowned. ‘That’s Lewis of Natal University, a man who doesn’t care to be contradicted.’ When I concluded my account he simply said, ‘Well done, Peekay, you have acquitted yourself well.’
We were then ushered back in and it was Ichabod Crane who announced that I had been listed in the last five candidates and would be required to sit for the Oxford University entrance examinations.
‘The Prince of Wales School which you attend has an enviable reputation, and if you are an example of its product, the least I can say for myself and my colleagues, is that we have been impressed.’ They then stood up and shook hands with us both.
Singe ’n Burn was elated, we were over the major hurdle.
They had taken my schoolboy candidature seriously. Several days later I sat with Hymie for the Oxford University entrance examinations the results of which would be announced before the Rhodes scholarships.
I arrived home for the Christmas holidays to find my picture was on the front page of the
I found myself a local hero once again. As far as the town was concerned my elevation to Rhodes scholarship status was all over bar the shouting. In the month it took for the results of the Oxford entrance examinations to come through, Miss Bornstein became a nervous wreck.
Down at the prison they were much more impressed with Solly’s thirteen-punch combination. If they could have chosen between a scholarship to Oxford, a place they’d never heard of anyway, or a thirteen combo, there is little doubt they’d have plumped for the latter. Once again I won the Eastern Transvaal featherweight title and also best boxer of the championships. With this, my fourth successive win, Captain Smit, in what he later described as one of the great moments in his life, was able to claim the trophy permanently for the Barberton Blues.
My examination results arrived in late January and stated that I had received a distinction in all subjects. Miss Bornstein was beside herself and it was such big news around the place that old Mr Bornstein contrived to lose the first ever game of chess to me while denying hotly that he had purposely done so. Four days later a letter arrived from the Rhodes scholarship committee.
The people around me had become accustomed to my winning, it was a habit they shared, an indulgence they took for granted. I could see they were shocked and bitterly disappointed that, having done their part, I had somehow failed them. Miss Bornstein and Mrs Boxall were distraught beyond belief, having quickly convinced themselves of some sort of plot. My mother, after shedding a few tears, soon concluded that the Lord had decided it was not His will for me and that, if only I would accept Him into my heart and into my life, His purpose for me would become clear. Two days later she announced at the dinner table that the Lord had guided her quite clearly and that I should give up boxing as it displeased him. When I had done so, I would be guided in the Lord’s special plans for me.
When I replied that boxing was too important to me, she had burst into sudden tears. ‘That is the devil in you
