The conversation was making me increasingly uncomfortable. What the reason was, I could not say, but for Abraham to talk this way about Jill, of all girls, seemed wrong. He seemed to be misunderstanding her place in our lives. ‘Do you want to sleep now?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I think so. I think I’ll dream about Jill all night.’
This was even more surprising. ‘Have you dreamt about her before?’
‘I dream about her nearly every night.’
‘Since when? When did you start dreaming about her?’
‘Since she kissed me at Merle’s party.’
‘I think you should go to sleep now,’ I told him.
‘I will.’
‘And sleep well.’
‘I will. I definitely will. Good night, Chrissie.’
After he had fallen asleep, I lay in bed looking at his face for some time. It seemed so strange for anyone to fall in love with Jill, especially Abraham. She was not the kind of girl you fell in love with. And, as for Abraham, I had not given a thought to the possibility of him falling in love with anyone. Falling in love was not the kind of thing you expected of him. He had not ever done it before.
That night it rained harder and longer than any rain I had ever experienced. The little stream that emptied itself into Oupa’s dam was flowing strongly and by morning the dam was overflowing at the concrete outlet Oupa had built. There would be no more fish hunts on this visit.
We had breakfast in the kitchen, but the rain poured down, uninterrupted all day. Even Oupa said he had never seen anything like it. With no hunting, motorbike riding, fish spearing or even braaiing possible, we set off home early in the afternoon. The only point of light in the gloom was that, as he had prophesied, Abraham was feeling better. I put the nonsense he had been talking about Jill down to his physical condition. He had probably not known what he was saying.
Mama did not seem to mind the bad weather. She always insisted that we leave early enough for all of us to bath before going to bed. ‘We’ve enjoyed ourselves. Now it’s time to go back to our normal lives,’ she always said at times like that.
On the way home, I soon fell asleep in the car, only waking once to see the broad Tugela gushing beneath the bridge as we crossed it. Through my sleep, I heard my father say, ‘If this keeps up, we could lose some bridges.’ Michie had fallen asleep before me. By the time we drove into our own gate and I started waking up, Annie was also snoring softly through her open mouth.
twenty-five
Whatever I thought about Jill Burgh, I had to admit to Abraham that she was a singular girl. The excitement I felt that first time I kissed her or, rather, the time she first kissed me was one of the highlights of my life, and remains one. Even then I was aware that, while she had taught me to kiss, she had also taught a few hundred other boys in our school and most likely others I did not know existed.
I wondered at times if kissing was just a natural gift with her or if some boy had taught her to kiss with that much skill. One of the boys at school said he thought she had experience with adult men, but when you considered her family, that seemed unlikely.
Jill was pretty, by far the prettiest girl in our class, probably the prettiest in the school. That her father was the dominee of a nearby church just made her all the more exciting. At our age, all girls were forbidden fruit and a dominee’s daughter all the more so. But a dominee’s daughter who was so clearly enthusiastic about boys aroused all manner of wonderful conflicts in me and probably every boy in the whole Durban North area, certainly every boy in our school.
She had arrived in Durban North the year before, when her father had answered the call of God to the wealthy La Lucia congregation. He had been ministering to a poor rural one that paid badly when he heard the call of God and moved out so fast that, Uncle Stefan said, his old congregation was without a dominee for two months.
On Jill’s first day in town a strange, new awareness seemed to be transmitted through the ether like a radio signal. The antenna of every boy picked it up, a clear, perfect signal that seemed to be beamed only to him. The condition that infected us all spread faster than the bubonic plague in the Middle Ages. There was no escaping it.
I think it is realistic to say that no teenage boy is especially objective on matters of sex. Even at that age, I believe I realised that the condition caused by girls like Jill affects, or infects, all young males, perhaps all males of any age. Most boys at our school knew that, although Jill was unimaginably exciting, she was everyone’s girl and was always going to be.
So it was that I was alarmed when Abraham again raised the matter of his love for her and that he was going to marry her as soon as he was old enough. He thought twenty-one was about the right age, so he had another six years to wait. We were sitting in the shade of the avocado trees down at the bottom of the back garden, at the place where the fence was rusted away, when he told me this.
At that age, the idea of actually having sexual intercourse with a girl was beyond imagining. That every pretty girl I saw was an object of desire was without question, but to be naked in the presence of her nakedness and then to accomplish this ultimate act of human relations was not within my frame of reference. It was something that happened later in life, when you were twenty-five maybe, at least older than twenty, definitely not younger than eighteen. Despite having two sisters, girls were mysterious creatures that were beyond the reach of physical contact. The thought of carnal relations with them was, at the same time, intensely desirable and strangely forbidding. ‘We’re too young to think about marriage,’ I told him. ‘That’s crazy. Think about all the girls you’re going to meet before you’re twenty-one.’
‘I’ve already met Jill and she’s the one for me.’
I felt it was my duty to try to talk sense into him. I wanted to say that all the boys at school felt something like that for her, but that he was probably the only one who wanted to marry her. But somehow I could not bring myself to suggest that Jill’s passion for our gender was far more general than he would have liked. ‘How do you know?’ I asked eventually.
‘The way she kissed me. It was the most wonderful thing. I didn’t know that a kiss could be like that.’
‘You don’t want to marry a girl just because she kisses well,’ I said.
‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘It’s not just because she kisses well.’
It was true. I really did not understand. ‘You just said that it was about the way she kissed you.’
‘It wasn’t that she kisses wonderfully,’ he explained. ‘She does kiss wonderfully, but it’s the feeling that went into the kiss. I could feel that she felt the same way about me.’ I could not imagine that there was anything different about the way Jill kissed Abraham from the way she kissed me or anyone else. But he was both convinced and in love. ‘I want to marry her, but I can’t wait six years.’
‘You can’t get married at fifteen,’ I said. ‘It’s against the law.’
‘Not getting married,’ he said. ‘I can’t wait six years before I make love to her.’
I could not believe what I was hearing. ‘You mean, go all the way.’ I had heard the expression from boys at school.
‘She’s the one I love. There’s nothing wrong with it.’
He seemed to be missing the point. ‘What if Dominee Burgh finds out?’
Everyone knew that if you did that to a girl and her father found out, you were in the biggest trouble you could ever imagine. And how much more trouble could you get into with the daughter of a dominee? Your problems could be eternal.
I asked him how he intended to set about getting Jill to agree. But he told me that he did not need to persuade her, he knew she was willing. Not only was he sure of it, but she thought about it the same way that he did. I was beginning to think that Abraham had gone completely crazy when he started explaining. ‘I felt her boobs,’ he said.
He was producing one astounding revelation after another. ‘What did she do?’ I could hear the awe in
my voice.
‘She said I was brave. She said no boy had ever done that to her before. She said I was braver than any boy she had ever met and that she liked it.’
‘She liked that you were brave?’
‘Yes, and she liked that I felt her boobs.’
‘What did they feel like?’
‘They felt soft and very nice. I’ve never felt anything like them before. And the nipples were harder.’
‘Didn’t the bra feel stiff?’
‘I got my hands inside the bra. I had them both in my hands.’
I knew this could not be true. ‘While we were playing Postman’s Knock?’ Awe had turned to scorn. ‘You and Jill weren’t out long enough.’
‘Not while we were playing Postman’s Knock. Afterwards, behind Merle’s father’s house, where the fruit trees are. You were all dancing.’ I tried to remember if there was a time when Abraham and Jill disappeared together, but could not. ‘It’s true. I swear it,’ he said.
In the days after that, Abraham seemed to think only about how he could arrange to be alone with Jill. I saw him speaking to her in the passages at school more than once and I had to admit that it did look as if she was party to the conspiracy.
It took a few weeks before they came up with a plan. Abraham told me about it on the way back from school one afternoon. He had to tell me about it, because he needed my help. ‘Her parents go out every Friday night to the missionary society meeting. She’s asked them if she can invite some friends to play games, Monopoly and such. She’s sure they won’t allow her to invite just two boys, but they will allow two boys and a girl.’
It was becoming clear that I had a role to play in this. ‘Who’s the other girl?’ I wanted to know.
‘Greta.’
‘Greta?’ Greta was a skinny, flat-chested girl who had pimples all over her face and squinted. ‘I can’t stand her.’
‘All you have to do is talk to her.’
‘Where will you be?’
‘We will be in Jill’s bedroom. All you have to do is talk to Greta.’ His voice held a pleading tone I did not remember hearing before.
All I had to do was talk to old pimple-face while he was in the bedroom with a naked Jill, doing this unbelievable thing with her. And suddenly, for the first time, I was jealous. After all, she had kissed me too. She had taught me how you part your lips and the things you can do with your tongue, just the way she had taught him. And now I was the one who had to talk to the ugliest girl in the school, while he … but it hardly helped to dwell on it. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not doing it.’
In the week that followed, Abraham tried everything. He appealed to our friendship, he reminded me of all the things he had done for me, he recounted some of the many wonderful times we had together, he assured me that he would do anything for me in future, whatever I wanted, anytime, without hesitation. What eventually persuaded me was a strange anxiety, bordering on panic that I saw in him. ‘You have to help me,’ he pleaded. ‘I’ve got to do this. I know I have to. Please.’
Finally, I said yes, but could we get someone other than Greta? There were plenty of pretty girls at school, some of them almost as pretty as Jill. I would not mind being left alone under any circumstances with one of them.
As it turned out, we could get no one else. Dominee Burgh and Mrs Burgh liked and trusted Greta. They probably thought that any girl that ugly had to be a good girl and that therefore she would be a good influence on their daughter.
They were right about Jill needing a good influence, but wrong about Greta being the one to provide it. On the night of the big occasion, it immediately became clear that she was in on the whole thing. She showed no surprise at Jill and Abraham’s disappearance into the bedroom.
As soon as we were left alone, she found a book with pictures of the world’s cities or wild animals or something of the sort, and invited me to come and sit next to her on the couch so that we could look at them together.
I accepted, but sat down with almost a foot of couch between us. That was a strategy that failed almost immediately. ‘Let’s sit so that you can see better,’ Greta said and slid across the seat until she was pressing against me. At one point she moved her face so close to mine that the pimples and squinty eyes were out of focus. Both were still clear in my mind though. I think her intention at that point was that I should kiss her. A few days later at school Jill told Abraham that Greta said I was a funny sort of boy, not like the other boys. It was a statement that forever destroyed my opinion of my schoolmates. You could have no confidence in the powers of discernment of any boy willing to kiss that pimpled face.
When Jill and Abraham eventually reappeared from the bedroom, she looked victorious, a crooked little smile seeming to say that, try as they might, her parents were not going to stop her from having fun. Abraham looked altogether different. He was tired and happy. What he was feeling was clearly not the joy of conquest or even the exuberance of possibly being the first boy in class to achieve this miracle. He seemed to be relieved and filled with the wonder of what had just taken place. On the way home, walking slowly along the Red Hill streets, he spoke about it. He would never speak to me about it again. ‘I knew it was right,’ he said. ‘And I knew she was the one. It was so beautiful, the most beautiful thing I have ever done.’ In the light of a street lamp his face looked again the way I had seen it as he slept on the farm, at rest but too old for the few years he had lived. ‘I can feel that it will not be that wonderful again,’ he said. ‘I had to do it now.’
In that moment I was afraid for him. It seemed to me that perhaps he was going to pay terribly for the joy of making love to Jill. I came close to putting an arm around his shoulders in a gesture of protection. But that was impossible. We were boys, not far from being men.
twenty-six
Even old people, like Oupa, who had grown up in Natal, could not remember a year as wet as that one. My father’s prediction proved to be accurate. Bridges were washed away as their foundations were undermined, stormwater drains could not handle the amount of water rushing through them, many streets turned into streams and every hollow filled with water before it could run off. Great loads of vegetation came tumbling down rivers and into the sea to be washed up along the shore a day or two later, leaving some beaches looking like compost heaps. Cars jolted to a halt in lakes that appeared over depressions in suburban roads where the city’s drainage struggled and failed to deal with more water than they had been designed for. On the Bluff, which is nothing more than a big sand dune, slightly more stable than those along the beaches, entire houses crumbled down sand slopes when their retaining walls gave way. Some crushed other houses further down the slope. I remember seeing newspaper pictures of one house that ended in a neighbour’s swimming pool. In warm, seasonless Durban, no one had ever seen anything like it.
The biggest bridge to go that year was the road bridge over the Mhlatuze River, north of the Tugela and south of Richards Bay, about halfway between the city and Oupa’s farm. Within a week of the heavy rains starting, the river had dug away the sand under the foundations of one of the pillars that held up the bridge. When the pillar gave, great steel girders twisted and crumpled under the weight of the torrent, telephone cables stretched, held for a moment, then snapped and the road surface was swept downstream.
The telephone people needed to get their lines back immediately and a call went out to the harbour master’s office for help. On his way, Uncle Stefan picked up Abraham and me, ostensibly as helpers.
By the time we got to the scene of destruction, there were telephone people, road workers, electricity supply technicians and a team of riggers waiting for us. A more or less equal group had gathered on the far bank more than a hundred metres away. As for the river, it was still a surging, brown mass a metre or so below the level of the road.
Uncle Stefan had a wonderful device they were all waiting for. It was a flare gun from which you could fire a rocket. A light nylon rope, some four hundred metres long,
was attached to the rocket. The rope was folded cleverly back and forth in its cardboard container, so that when you fired, it whipped back and forth faster than the eye could follow, drawn by the rocket. When the rocket landed, you had a physical connection between yourself and the target. It was usually used to secure a line between vessels at sea, but it was perfect for spanning the river.
Uncle Stefan positioned three boxes, each containing a rocket and a rope, at the water’s edge. Then he called the technicians and others closer. A wonderful thing about Uncle Stefan was that, like Oupa, he never excluded me and Abraham. He motioned us to join the group. ‘All right, men. This is what happens. When I fire the rope across, I hope they will have the good sense to secure their end.’ He could not talk to them because, with the cable broken, there was no connection to the other bank. ‘The rocket will fly in a high loop so there will be a lot of slack. As they grab their end of the rope, we have to take our end and run away from the river to pull it tight. If it hits the water, it will snap.’
‘How’s that?’ a burly man, wearing an overall of the electricity company, asked.
‘If the rope touches the water, it will break,’ Uncle Stefan repeated.
‘Why?’
‘The weight of the water will break it.’
‘Like hell.’
Uncle Stefan sighed. ‘Stand by.’ He ignored the burly man and spoke to the rest of us. ‘The rope will be in the air for a while after the rocket lands. Then we’ve got to run back with our end before it hits the water.’
‘This is bullshit,’ the burly man said.
Uncle Stefan aimed carefully, his feet spread wide, pointing the gun at almost forty five degrees with the horizontal. He fired and we all watched the rocket soar in a high arc and come to rest on the far side, over the part of the bridge’s steel framework that was still standing. I could see the men on the other side running for the rope. On our side, Uncle Stefan was yelling, ‘Run, run.’
One of the young technicians already had our end of the rope and was running up the sloping bank. Abraham and I tried to help, grabbing onto the rope and scrambling up behind him. After a few steps I turned to look back. The rope was drifting slowly downwards, about to settle on the water. ‘Keep running,’ Uncle Stefan yelled again, probably at me.
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