reading again, the Lord hasn’t got all day you know!’
I went on reading the list and also showed the Lord the swatch of green melton blazer cloth. When I got to the bit about school badges being obtainable from John Orrs, 129 Eloff Street, Johannesburg, Marie whispered again.
‘You don’t need to give Him the address, He knows where it is.’ I finally got to the blue serge suit. ‘That’s his Sunday suit for going to church, Lord,’ she said, to remind the Lord that I was still within his grasp every Sunday. My mother threw in a few more ‘Praise the Lord, praise His precious name’s and the request for the contents of my clothing list was over: the rest was now up to the Precious Redeemer.
Marie’s eyes blazed with faith and I could see she was pretty pleased with the way she had asserted herself. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that the Lord would provide. My mother also seemed considerably cheered up and called for Dum to make tea. I must confess, not being a Christian, I didn’t share their confidence. There seemed to me to be a whole heap of clothes in that list and all I had was three pairs of grey socks, two pairs of gym pants and the tackies. These latter items had appeared in a separate list titled ‘Sport and Recreation’, which included two rugby jerseys, house and school colours, rugby socks, rugby boots, white cricket shirt and shorts form one and two, cricket longs form three onwards. The optional section on this list included cricket boots and white cricket sweater with school colours. It seemed an amazing collection of clothes for one person.
I mentioned the clothing crisis to Doc. Not that he could have helped. Doc, at best, lived hand to mouth with just enough over for an occasional book and film for his Leica camera. But he mentioned it to Mrs Boxall and Mrs Boxall mentioned it to Miss Bornstein and the two women went into action.
Miss Bornstein called me over at the end of class and asked me to copy out the clothing list. I did so and handed it over to her. She read it for a moment. ‘What about these swatches, can you get the grey and the green swatch, Peekay? Even if you cut off a little, it’s absolutely necessary for me to have them.’ I promised to get hold of the swatches somehow, feeling pleased that the matter of my school clothes wasn’t singularly in the Lord’s hands any longer.
‘We don’t have very much money,’ I said, for the first time in my life realising that money was important. I knew we were poor but it hadn’t seemed to matter much. I’d had the occasional penny to spend on nigger balls, large black and extraordinarily hard balls that sucked down into layer after layer of different colours and which would last a good two hours in the mouth. My friends were generous with their sweets so I’d never really felt poor or needed money. I always somehow managed to save up four shillings for Christmas and old Mr McClymont at the drapery shop would give me four ladies’ hankies and a man’s one as well as a bandanna for Doc. The ladies’ hankies would go to my mother, Mrs Boxall and Dee and Dum while the man’s was for my granpa. They always looked surprised when they got them, but I don’t suppose they were. The only alternative to a handkerchief was a cake of Knights Castile soap and I couldn’t see the value in something that wore out after a few baths. When they went to clean Doc’s cottage on a Sunday Dee and Dum spread their hankies carefully over the top of their heads in the African fashion, they could never understand why white people would blow the stuff from their noses into such a pretty piece of cloth. Sunday at Doc’s cottage was their big outing and they liked to look pretty. When they got there they removed the hankies of course, but they never once used them for blowing into. I think they liked their hankies better than anyone, although I know Doc liked his bandanna which was always a red one.
‘There are lots of ways to skin a cat,’ Miss Bornstein said. ‘This town isn’t going to let its
Between Miss Bornstein and Mrs Boxall the cloth for my trousers and blazer and blue serge suit just appeared, although I expect old Mr McClymont had a hand in it somewhere. Then Miss Bornstein sprung her surprise. Old Mr Bornstein, who had become Doc’s formidable opponent at chess, had been a tailor in Germany. He would cut the cloth and do the hand work if my mother would do the machine work. The suit was easy because ‘a suit is a suit, already’ but we needed a blazer to make sure that mine was cut and tailored in the same way as those purchased from John Orrs, 129 Eloff St, Johannesburg. Miss Bornstein said children tend to pick on you if you’re different and it was important to get everything just right. Mrs Andrews had sent two of her sons to the Prince of Wales School and she still had a school blazer which she gave to Mrs Boxall. Old Mr Bornstein took it apart to see how it was made and did a whole lot of tut-tutting about the poor workmanship. He then cut the blazer to my size and as the badge, which was three ostrich feathers sticking out of a crown, was almost new he cut it carefully around the edges and sewed it onto my new blazer so well that you would have needed a magnifying glass to see where he’d done it. Mrs Boxall sent to Johannesburg for two red, white and green striped school ties which were her special present. All my shirts were cut from a pair of cotton poplin sheets Miss Bornstein said her mother had never used. Old Mr Bornstein knew just how to make the collars so that the starch collars donated by old Mr McClymont fitted perfectly. Marie and her mother knitted me three pairs of socks for Christmas. Only the brown and black shoes remained, and at the prison Christmas party for all the warders Captain Smit handed me a large parcel from the boxing squad. Inside were a pair of new brown shoes and a pair of black ones and a brand new pair of boxing boots. ‘Magtig, Peekay, we are all proud of you going to that posh Rooinek school in Johannesburg, just don’t get all high and mighty on us all of a sudden when you get back, heh.’ Everyone laughed and cheered and I felt the sorrow of leaving people I loved. Even old Snotnose had become a good friend over the years and I would miss them all a lot. The Kommandant stood up and recounted the first day he’d met me and said that I had proved that English and Afrikaner were one people, South Africans. That perhaps with my generation the bitterness would pass. He said I was a leader of men and that even the prisoners respected me for my letter writing. There was some more clapping and, shaking at the knees, I thanked them all. I can’t remember what I said but I promised I would never forget them and I never have.
Only one more incident is worth recording in that long, last summer of childhood. My mother and Marie had already testified to the congregation about the Lord’s miraculous answer to their prayers. Only the requested V- neck long sleeve mid-grey jersey was missing from my kit, but as it was summer in Johannesburg, my mother knew that the Lord would provide in time for winter. Which He did. Four knitted jerseys were pushed into her hands by separate dear, sweet, Christian ladies less than a fortnight later.
On the same night my mother and Marie also testified that the Lord had once again blessed their work in the hospital. For several weeks they had worked for the salvation of a dear man who was dying of cancer of the rectum – a man still in the prime of his life, struck down by this terrible disease. They told how they had testified to him and had seen him wrestle with the devil, how they had wept for him and pleaded with him to take the Lord Jesus into his heart and how finally, after a massive rectal haemorrhage and with the hours running out, Lieutenant Borman had surrendered his life to the Lord Jesus and had gone to meet His Saviour in paradise.
Lieutenant Borman died knowing what it felt like to have a donkey prick jammed up your arse until your entrails spill out.
SEVENTEEN
It wasn’t until I went to boarding school the second time that I learned that survival is a matter of actively making the system work for you rather than attempting merely to survive it.
My partner from the very first day at school was Hymie Levy. Hymie was Jewish of course, which was a very rare occurrence at the Prince of Wales School.
I was wrestling my heavy suitcase off the train at Johannesburg Central Railway Station when he walked towards me.
‘Hey you, stop! If you want to build muscles take a Charles Atlas course.’ He signalled for the black porter to take my suitcase. ‘Howzit? I’m the token Jew. Who are you?’
‘Thanks, my name’s Peekay,’ I said, proffering my hand.
He took it almost absently. ‘Hymie… Hymie Levy, what’s your first name, Peekay?’
‘It’s just Peekay, first and second,’ I replied.
Hymie stopped in his tracks. ‘Just one name, you’re not bullshitting me now are you?’
‘Ja, that’s right, just one.’
Hymie seemed to be thinking as we continued together down the platform. ‘I like that, no complications. Me, I’ve got the whole catastrophe, Hymie, Solomon, Levy, you can’t get more kosher than that, kings and priests, not bad insurance for a kid whose parents escaped the Holocaust by pretending they were Roman Catholics.’
