Tandia

by Bryce Courtenay

  In winning against Habib, Peekay had received the worst beating in his life. Despite his protests, Hymie insisted he check in to Guy's Hospital for a thorough examination. Apart from bruised ribs and bruising to the back of his arms, where he'd taken a lot of Habib's punches, the examination showed him to be in a sound condition. The young Australian intern summed up. 'We've given you a neurological examination; your reactions seem okay, the X-ray shows no broken ribs. You won, I believe? Bloody hell, I'd hate to see the other bloke. Okay, mate, if you start getting headaches, throwing up, that sort of thing, get back here fast. Blood in your urine is nothing, you can expect it for a few days, but if it persists, come back. You'll have a couple of beaut eyes for a week or two, but other than that, if you take it easy for a few days, I reckon you'll be right as rain.'

  They returned to the flat and Harriet spent the latter part of the morning sketching Peekay's battered face. 'This is marvellous stuff, darling. I may never get the chance to see you like this again.'

  'Christ, I hope not,' Peekay cried.

  Harriet laughed. 'You're too pretty. From a sculptor's point of view you've definitely changed for the better.' She grew suddenly serious. Leaning over, she gently kissed both purple, swollen eyelids. 'Please, Peekay, darling, don't ever get hurt this badly again!'

  Peekay brought his hands up to hold Harriet's head, then brought her face towards his swollen lips and kissed her deeply on the mouth. When at last they pulled away from each other they observed Hymie, propped against the door jamb, watching them from the doorway.

  'Kissing it all better, are we?' He seemed to hesitate for a split second. 'Is the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation only for the boxer? There's a manager over here who's fading fast, about to expire from a terminal hangover.'

  Harriet threw her head back, grinning. She didn't appear in the least embarrassed. She crossed to Hymie and kissed him on the mouth, lingering long enough for the kiss to be intimate, before drawing away. 'How about some coffee for everyone?'

  She turned and walked from the room without looking back. She was wearing trousers as usual and a green cashmere sweater which showed the swell of her breasts. Despite his hangover, Peekay found himself wanting her.

  'Hymie, we must talk,' he said the moment Harriet had left the room…

  'Later, Peekay.' Hymie flopped into a chair. 'What we both need is a glass of champagne…hair of the dog.'

  'Not for me!' Peekay said quickly. 'Hymie, I really need to talk to you. It's important!'

  Hymie shrugged absently. 'I know you do, Peekay. We'll talk in the car on the way back to Oxford this afternoon. Last night was a mis-match. I've never seen you fight better, you were bloody marvellous. But we won't do a stupid thing like that again, will we?'

  Peekay nodded silently. He knew Hymie understood why he'd agreed to fight Habib. A win against such a fighter automatically eliminated about seven opponents. These were fighters Peekay would normally have to box to get to the professional level represented by Habib. It could possibly mean getting a crack at the world title a year earlier. On the other hand, had Habib beaten him, say played with him and then knocked him out in an early round, it would have set them back disastrously, perhaps forever.

  'Ja, you're perfectly right,' Peekay said finally and then added, 'For once I've got a saying, it comes from Geel Piet. I once asked him how he managed to stay alive in prison. 'Ag man, klein baas,' he said. 'When you're skating on thin ice you may as well tap dance.' Peekay shrugged. 'We got lucky last night.'

  Hymie sprang from his chair and grabbed Peekay fiercely by the shoulders. 'For Christ's sake, Peekay! That French bastard nearly took you out. You took a hiding into the bargain and finally you had to offer him a clean shot at your jaw so you could gamble on a Geel Piet eight to take him out of the fight. That's not winning tactics! That's fucking suicide!' He paused, catching his breath. 'You're probably the most intelligent boxer in the world and certainly amongst the most skilful. If we can't win using your wit and your skill, then let's get the fuck out of the game before you suffer brain damage!' He drew back, releasing Peekay's shoulders. 'You know something, man? Dutch was right to blast you!'

  Peekay didn't speak. There was nothing to say. Hymie was right. But he was also wrong. Peekay knew that he hadn't just got lucky. He'd picked his way through no-man's-land before. Sometimes you're only saved because you are prepared to die, prepared to negotiate the minefield. Sometimes danger is your friend and only ally. How could he explain, even to Hymie, that he knew with absolute certainty when he'd offered Habib his jaw, that the best punch the French Algerian was capable of throwing wouldn't knock him out. In his head Peekay was fighting for the welterweight championship of the world, whereas Habib was fighting for a purse. They are not the same thing; a dream is often lonely, but providing you're prepared to prevail, it's invincible.

  It was also why Peekay knew Oxford wasn't going to give him what he was going to need in South Africa. They were going into a fight in which you had to be willing to put your life on the line every time. There could be nothing but a total commitment. He was going to go against people who wouldn't play by the tidy rules of jurisprudence, the laws set down like markings on a football field. They would change the playing field to suit themselves and the only way to beat them was to venture everything you were and everything you had to offer every time you stepped into the arena. He would always have to offer his jaw, take an instinctive risk. South Africa was going to be the final round against Habib all of the time and there was nothing at Oxford that could prepare him for that.

  Harriet decided to remain in town for a few days. E.W. left shortly after breakfast to catch an early train to visit a friend in High Wycombe. He would return to Oxford in the evening in time for evensong where he always read the message at the college chapel. E.W. was quietly religious; he saw the tenets of the Christian faith as part of his life. They fitted like a pair of well-worn shoes and he made no attempt to proselytise. His God was an Englishman who wore sensible Oxford brogues, a good Irish tweed jacket and was a scholar and a gentleman.

  Hymie and Peekay set out for the return to Oxford about mid-afternoon when the effects of the fight and their hangovers were less severe. The snow of Christmas had long disappeared. The countryside on the way to Oxford was ploughed and looked winter worn, with birch and elm lining the horizon like upturned witches' broomsticks against a pewter sky. Peekay thought of it as 'a crow-lonely landscape'; every once in a while the only sign of life would be a lone black crow resting high in the filigreed branches of an elm or birch, its raucous caw the one sound above the wind and engine noise.

  It's funny that, he thought to himself. Africa too has its crow-lonely landscape, but instead, it is hot and harsh, with the midday sun beating the bush into silent submission, blackening the shade so that where it throws, under a tree or rock, it looks like a deep, cool hole in the sun-leached landscape. Only the anthracite crow is game enough to caw into the squinting African stillness.

  'Hymie, I think you know what I'm going to say? It's about Harriet.'

  'But you're going to say it anyway?'

  'I can't even say it happened by mistake. That we were thrown together.'

  'I'm glad you're not trying to blame it on the irresistible forces of nature.' Hymie glanced quickly at Peekay. 'Jesus, we're lucky!'

  It seemed a curious remark and Peekay didn't know quite how to respond. 'Lucky?'

  'Ja, for Harriet to deflower you.' He paused momentarily.

  'At least we have that in common.'

  Peekay sensed that Hymie wasn't angry. There was no sarcasm in his voice. 'Hymie, I know she's yours but I can't help it. I can't keep my hands off her. I can't say I'm sorry. I'd be lying. I don't know what to do.'

  Hymie kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead. 'You don't understand. I'm bloody glad she accepted you and that, unlike me, you were able to make 'love to her.'

  'Shit, H
ymie, what are you saying?'

  Hymie gave a wry little snort. 'I'm a phoney, Peekay. In the sex department I'm two sandwiches short of a picnic.' Peekay was too shocked to respond. Hymie seemed to read his thoughts. 'You needn't worry, I'm not a homo!' He glanced quickly at Peekay, who despite himself, was unable to conceal his relief. 'Even that would be something. Alexander the Great was a homosexual, Michelangelo…the list of the greats who preferred their own sex is ten miles long. I wouldn't mind being included on it one day. You can live with knowing what you are. That's the trouble. I'm nothing. I'm fucking nothing!' He slammed down hard on the brakes and the little Ford skidded crazily for a moment, its back tyres bumping before it stopped.

  Hymie cut the engine and pulled on the handbrake. 'I can't get it up! I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to fuck. Not a male or a female or even a bloody duck! Not you, whom I love more than anything in my life, not Harriet, whom I adore. Not anyone…' His voice trailed off. He paused, then gave a bitter little laugh. 'How does my world end? Not with a bang but with a wimp.' Even in his pain Hymie couldn't help joking.

  'But you said, Harriet…you know, had taken your virginity?' the expression seemed old-fashioned.

  'Yeah, she did. No matter how bizarre the experience, you can only lose your virginity once, thank God. We were both blotto and somehow, Christ knows, I managed to get an erection.'

  'Jesus, Hymie! That means something, surely?' Hymie shook his head. 'I don't recall what it was like. I was too pissed. Shortly after we'd done it, or at least I think we'd done it, I threw up all over the sheets. Being sick was the more memorable of the two incidents. At least I remember that part. I guess I can technically claim I'm no longer a virgin,' but to be honest Harriet might as well have been a knothole in the ironing board.'

  'Hymie, I'm sorry. I'm sorry on two fronts, for your predicament and for blowing your cover. It goes without saying…'

  'Well then, don't say it! The truth is, I'm glad. I'm glad you kow. It's worried me since school that you've never questioned my obvious lack of libido. Now you know the truth,' Hymie looked up at Peekay and shrugged his shoulders, 'For what it's worth.'

  'A doctor? There must be something?'

  'Ja, sure, one day maybe.'

  That seemed to be the end of it. In all the time Peekay had known him, this was only the second time Hymie had admitted a weakness. The business with the Odd Bodleians and now this. He knew there was no point in persisting with his sympathy, Hymie didn't operate that way. He was the most clear-eyed, clear-minded person Peekay had ever known, even more so than Doe. He would put this thing aside and get on with his mercurial life.

  Hymie turned on the ignition and they pulled away, saying nothing for a while. They passed through a small village of thatched cottages just like the ones on the lids of Hymie's father's chocolate boxes. The air smelt vaguely of wood smoke and wet hay and the gardens were clothed in sombre winter greenery. In one garden, where they'd stopped at an intersection, the dry spines of summer's hollyhocks stood stark against a grey cottage wall.

  'What about Harriet?' Peekay asked at last. 'We haven't resolved anything.'

  Hymie grinned. 'On the Richter scale of sensitivity you haven't even made the graph-line waver. What do you mean, what about Harriet? You sleeping with her? I thought we'd discussed that?'

  'Well no, not really, not our mutual relationship.'

  'Ours? You mean mine? Do you want it to change?'

  'No! I'd hoped things would, you know, continue,' Peekay hesitated. 'But I couldn't see how.'

  Hymie grinned. 'And now you can?'

  Peekay flinched inwardly. 'Yes, and now I can,' he echoed softly.

  'Peekay, you have to get rid of the male notion that you own a woman. Harriet can't be owned. When sex isn't a big deal you get to see things a bit differently. You don't think with your cock all the time.'

  'I say, that's a bit unfair!'

  'Not at all,' Hymie contradicted. 'Consider the hours you've spent thinking about losing your virginity. About having your famous whipped cream experience.'

  Peekay was becoming distressed. While neither of- them were raising their voices, they were plainly quarrelling. Harriet was squarely positioned between them. How nearly Hymie could have been right.

  'Hymie, you're wrong, I didn't lose my virginity to Harriet.'

  Hymie's foot involuntarily came off the accelerator and the car veered momentarily towards the wrong side of the road before he hastily corrected his steering and pushed down on the accelerator again. 'Shit, Peekay, what are you saying?'

  Peekay told Hymie about the night with Togger, retelling it in some detail, taking the time to move away from the quarrel, including the funny bits, forcing Hymie to laugh.

  It was a vastly expanded version of the story he'd told when he'd arrived back at Oxford with a broken nose. Then he'd simply recounted to Hymie how he and Togger had been involved in a fight in a nightclub. It had been the truth as far as it went. Peekay couldn't explain exactly, even to himself, why he'd kept the full story from Hymie. It had been so wonderful with Carmen, he instinctively didn't want to debase it. He knew Hymie would want every detail and that, in the retelling, the components of the evening would be reduced to what they probably were: a sleazy nightclub for perverts serviced by a bunch of hard-faced female drink hustlers who were willing to take off their clothes to a taped sound track so they could make the rather sad claim of being in showbiz. It hadn't been like that at all. To Peekay it had been a magical evening which could never happen again. In losing his virginity to Carmen he had also lost his innocence. Henceforth he would see the peeling paint and the purple bruises on fleshy thighs, the greasy satin skirts and shark-tooth lines of black thread where the fishnet stocking had been drawn together in hasty repair.

  Finally Peekay got to the part in the story where he told Hymie of his seduction by Carmen. He had kept her relationship to Togger out of the story, sensing that Togger would want this. He painted the scene of her strip-tease, hoping that Hymie might isolate it in his imagination, the one contrast to the surrounding sleaze. But he knew, in reality, that this was unlikely. He retold the fight briefly and concluded with Carmen's offer to take him home.

  'And so you see, I never got what I wanted. I might as well have lost my virginity to one of the whores in the mines. I got laid by a stripper in a cheap nightclub for drunks and perverts.' Peekay felt the sudden sting of shame as he denigrated Carmen's status and generosity in an attempt to mend Hymie's hurt.

  Hymie glanced over at Peekay. In the darkness of the car cabin Peekay could only guess at his expression, but when he spoke his voice was relaxed. 'You bastard, Peekay! You kept all this from me?'

  'Ja, well, you know…' Peekay knew Hymie wouldn't pursue it. He'd conclude Peekay was ashamed of the manner in which he'd been deflowered. 'Which brings us back to Harriet,' Peekay said, knowing he must force the discussion to some conclusion.

  'I'm sorry, Peekay. I was wrong. I guess I was hurt. I wanted to think that your motive was simple penis blunder, the cock erect, blind to reason.' Then he added lamely, 'It helped explain my own inadequacy.'

  'You're in love with her, aren't you, Hymie?' Hymie was silent for a moment. 'Yes,' he paused. 'That must be hard for you to understand.'

  Peekay put his hand on Hymie's shoulder. 'It would almost help if it was. But no, it isn't. I feel like a proper bastard.'

  'Peekay, you are a proper bastard. Not because you stole my woman. Harriet makes up her own mind about her sleeping partner. Besides, as you now know, I was never a contender and never owned her. You're a proper bastard because you didn't see the possibility of my friendship with her outside of sex. What about all the other sensibilities? Sex doesn't make Harriet unique. Though I can't vouch for it, she's probably pretty interchangeable with a thousand women in that respect. Sex is the least unique aspect of a woman. Her uniqueness lies in dozens of other wa
ys which attracted her to me, made me love her. You're a bastard for not understanding this fully.'

  He grinned suddenly. 'Forgive me, Peekay, but when you've got an inactive dick you begin to realise that love has more to it than coitus. I hope you'll not spoil the relationship I have with Harriet by getting your aggressive cock in the way.'

  Hymie had spoken without raising his voice and with his eyes mostly on the road. The afternoon had closed in and he now turned on the car lights. The darkness within the car and the throb of the engine seemed to lock them together in time.

  'Pull over, Hymie. Stop the car,' Peekay asked.

  Hymie braked and pulled the car over to the edge of the road. They were close to the outskirts of Oxford. Peekay embraced Hymie silently, then pulled away smiling. Hymie laughed suddenly. 'Shit you look terrible!'

  'But I feel great!' Peekay replied. 'Bloody woman, she's got us both by the short and curlies.'

  Hymie laughed. 'She's only a woman. If we combine our resources and work together we may just get the better of her.'

  Harriet's 'Two Horses with Naked Man' and her boxer, 'Man in Peculiar Limbo', both finished with shellac for lack of money to cast them in bronze, were exhibited in Helen Lessore's Beaux Arts Gallery in London in the summer. This was recognition that here was a new sculptor to be taken seriously. On the strength of the exhibition she'd been commissioned to make an eagle lectern for a church in Dresden, a gift from Anglo-American Catholics as a gesture of appeasement for the fire-bombing of this most beautiful of medieval German cities during World War Two. Harriet had also received a commission for a big head of Christ for St Martin's Church in Swindon.