Sarge looked at him and gave a meaningful sigh. ‘And, Mr Cunningham-Ryder with an ’ifin, do we have a Christian name to go with our double-barrelled moniker?’
‘Yes, Sarge. George Andrew Sebastian, Sarge.’
‘Well, now, that’s more like it, ain’t it, lads? Cunningham-Ryder has three Christian names and two surnames and Peekay has none. What do you say to that?’ The relief I felt at being passed over was short-lived, the bastard was going to have another go.
Levy gave me a small dig with his elbow. ‘Perhaps Cunningham-Ryder can give Peekay one of his names, Sarge?’ he said. We all turned to look at him, stunned at his audacity.
‘What’s your name, lad?’ Sergeant Major Bolter asked softly, which did nothing to conceal the terrible menace in his voice.
‘Levy, Sarge. Hymie Levy, and I’m not a gentleman or a Christian. I’m a Jew. My dad had to pull all sorts of strings to get me in.’ He wore an ingenuous expression as he looked directly at the sergeant major.
We all fought back our laughter, but to our surprise Bolter didn’t explode. Turning to his notepad, he said, ‘Levy, here at the Prince of Wales School everyone is a Christian and a gentleman and that includes both you and Mr Peekay.’ He glanced up. ‘Johnson!’ We all looked over at a small freckle-faced boy with red hair who stood next to Levy with his mouth slightly open. ‘Johnson!’ Sarge repeated, raising his voice several decibels. The kid with the open mouth had to be Johnson, he was the only as yet unnamed one among us, but he remained silent, his terror- stricken gaze fixed on the large man. With a sort of stop-start jerky movement he raised his hand.
‘Do we want to do wee-wee, lad?’ I could see Sarge was growing impatient with us all.
‘No, sir,’ Johnson gulped the words out.
‘Do not call me sir, you piss-wit!’ Sergeant Major Bolter yelled and several people walking along the platform stopped to stare at him. And that’s how ‘Pissy’ Johnson came to get his nickname.
I was enormously impressed with Levy. I had never met a Jewish person my age or someone who couldn’t become a Christian even had he wanted to. I knew instantly I liked him. As it transpired Hymie Levy was to become my closest friend, while Paul Atherton, Pissy Johnson and ‘Cunning-Spider’, which is how Cunningham-Ryder was to become known, were the group with whom I mostly went around.
The school charabanc driven by Sarge had taken us through the sky-scrapered streets out through a place called Hillbrow where we followed a tram down into increasingly quieter suburbs. We left the tram at its terminal and drove into a leafy suburb named Houghton where the houses, set in perfectly manicured lawns and brilliant gardens, were bigger than any I had ever seen. The top of the charabanc brushed against the cool dark oak trees that lined the quiet streets. We passed an occasional nanny wheeling a baby carriage with large wheels that even sported springs. All the nannies wore identical black dresses with a starched white pinny and all the baby carriages seemed to have come from the same factory. I wasn’t much for symbols, my life had somehow contrived to be a mixture of people so that social status meant very little to me. Nevertheless I sensed that I was entering a new kind of world with a different set of rules.
We turned into a gateway, through a huge open gate with the crown and three ostrich feathers outlined in its wrought-iron design, and continued down a roadway bordered on each side by giant English oaks. On the way to Wellington House, one of the three boarders’ houses at the Prince of Wales School, we passed an emerald green cricket pitch with a rotating hose chit-chit-chittering a jet of water in a large circle around the pitch. On the far boundary, neatly enclosed by a white picket fence, stood a small white pavilion, behind it grew another row of giant oaks and beyond them rose several sets of rugby posts, still further yet the neo-gothic clock tower of the main school rose above the trees. It seemed the perfect place for a posh school but I was not at all sure that it was the perfect place for the future welterweight champion of the world.
Hymie Levy had seated himself beside me on the ride to school and had set about explaining his theory of survival. We were, he decided, odd-bods, he a Jew and me with only one name. Odd-bods, he asserted, were always singled out by plebeians, the worst kind of which were middle-class, Anglo-South African Protestants, who undoubtedly made up the remainder of the school. I wasn’t quite sure whether belonging to the Apostolic Faith Mission qualified me as a Protestant but I had to agree with him that my background was probably different from that of the other guys in the bus. From my previous bout of boarding school I had already learned that being different doesn’t pay off. This time I was determined to enter the school environment on my own terms. There wasn’t too much I was frightened of and I was fairly confident that I could compete intellectually. It was time to remove my camouflage, all my life I had let others provide for me and while I loved the people who had nurtured and built me intellectually, I felt that emotionally it was time to provide for myself. Everyone on the intellectual side of my life seemed to agree that an exclusive private school education was what I needed, while those on the physical side, mainly the boxing squad, were more than a little dubious about an elitist Rooinek school education. I had been torn between the two, never clearly deciding who I was, changing my camouflage to suit. I had accepted an education at an elitist boarding school while at the same time nurturing my ambition to become the welterweight champion of the world. It didn’t take too many brains to figure out that world champion boxers are not spawned within a system designed to educate upper middle-class Christian gentleman.
I placed less importance on my intelligence than on my prowess as a boxer. If the Prince of Wales School tried to disabuse me of my ambition to be the welterweight champion of the world, then the intellectual nourishment it might furnish as compensation would not be sufficient incentive for me to remain. But I wasn’t about to let this happen. No more camouflage for Peekay, I would simply be the best. I hadn’t discussed this with either Doc or Miss Bornstein. I was on my own again and I had to do my own thinking, so when Hymie started on about beating the system I knew immediately what he was on about.
He passed me a stick of Spearmint and commenced talking again. ‘Now my theory is that to beat any system you have to know it intimately. Rebellion is senseless and being pointedly different only leads to persecution, the only way to control any system is from inside it the way the Jews have always done.’
‘It didn’t seem to help them with Hitler,’ I said. I didn’t know much about the Jews in Nazi Germany but Miss Bornstein had told me a little and had added that Old Mr Bornstein actually felt guilty for escaping the Holocaust.
‘A-ha, that was different. Hitler’s Nazi party presented an impossible problem for the Jews of Germany. After all, you can’t undermine a system from within when you’re excluded from it in the first place, can you?’
Hymie’s point was not well made. I was to learn that he was obsessed with the Holocaust, that it sometimes clouded his otherwise excellent judgement. I could never quite understand why he possessed this obsession, his parents had escaped from Warsaw before the Jews were incarcerated in the ghetto or were even unduly persecuted. Hymie had never known any real racial prejudice, yet he had a strong sense of alienation as well as, it seemed to me at times, of guilt.
Doc had taught me well and I wasn’t about to let Hymie get away with a cheap shot like that.
‘Every system tends to be mutually exclusive, they’re all about keeping someone or something out, by keeping the Jews out of the Nazi party Hitler was acting typically. No system wants to be undermined or abused and therefore it is constantly on guard to exclude those who would destroy it. If, as you say, it is a common Jewish tactic to invade from within then this should have been possible even with the Nazi party. We have to conclude that the Jews failed to defeat Hitler, failed to defeat the system and as a consequence paid a terrible price. It wasn’t an exception at all.’
Hymie grinned. ‘Hey! You can think. I’m not used to that in a goy. Here, shake a paw.’
I allowed the compliment and shook his hand, although I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. ‘What’s a goy?’
‘A Christian, a gentile. Hey, can we be friends, I mean proper friends, Peekay?’
‘Sure,’ I said, not really meaning it.
‘You see, you’re different. I know that now. And I’m certainly different, I always have been, but being a Jew at a school like this makes me even more so. I reckon we’ll need each other.’
‘What for? You mean to beat the system?’
‘No, no, to use it. I’ve got a hunch we’ll be a terrific combo.’
I wasn’t sure he was right. I still had a problem. While I had all the physical and intellectual equipment needed to succeed within the system, I lacked one thing. Money. The only way I could succeed without money was by being a loner. Friendship with this particular tribe of Christian gentlemen required resources. You were expected to pay your way. The only other way was by ingratiation, but I was damned if that was ever going to happen to me again. Pisskop was still the dark shadow of Peekay, still alive in my mind; come what may, I would never again
