I checked out the team sheets three times during the tea break just to confirm that my eyes weren’t deceiving me. But there it was, typed in at number 6 on the list for the Third Eleven versus Woodridge on Saturday.
J Milton
14:00 Called Dad to tell him the good news. Got Mom instead. She said Dad was down at the pub wrapping up the lunchtime session and gave me the number for Franky’s.
Finally got through to my father, who sounded completely sozzled. When he heard the news about my double promotion, he roared with delight and rang the gong for a free round of drinks. There was a huge cheer from the bar patrons and I heard my dad shouting, ‘To my son! The next great Springbok legspinner!’ There was another roar of men’s voices and then the line went dead.
14:30 Norm (I don’t believe in spinners) Wade was hardly friendly to me at the thirds’ net practice. All he said was, ‘Welcome, Milton. You’re in the team to bat so don’t expect many overs.’
I don’t care. Even just batting and fielding for the thirds is an honour.
I was very nervous about bowling in the nets. It felt like my shoulder exploded when I released my first delivery. Everything was out of whack and disconnected and I felt slightly dizzy and faint. Of course it didn’t help that Norm (I don’t believe in spinners) Wade was standing right behind me with dark sunglasses and a grim expression on his face.
It took me a few balls to get back into the old rhythm, but pretty soon I began to find my length and it became apparent that most of the third team batsmen had no clue how to face spinners. This shouldn’t come as a surprise since their coach has had spinners ruthlessly banished from the team.
Even Rambo and Martin Leslie, who have faced my bowling many times before, seemed to be confounded by my spin and bounce. The coach didn’t mention that I got just about his entire team out over the course of the afternoon, although surprisingly he was extremely friendly to me when I was batting and offered me numerous pointers for improvement. After I had finished my batting stint he said, ‘Well done, Milton. You will bat at 6 on Saturday.’
I’m in! Rambo didn’t say a word to me for the entire practice and seems a bit miffed that he’ll have to lower himself to play in the same team as me.
I strode back to the house with my cricket bag slung over my shoulder. The grass was lush and green underfoot, with the gentle afternoon sunshine on my back. Listening to the pleasant cooing of the Cape turtle doves in the trees above me, I suddenly realised how much I have missed the exhilaration of competitive cricket.
Friday 16th October
Boggo charged into breakfast looking like he had some important news to share.
‘There’s a new slave,’ he said, before he had even given himself a chance to sit down. ‘His name is Christopher Walton – how fag is that?’ He chortled to himself as he drenched his fried eggs in a puddle of tomato sauce.
‘Then it’s a christening tonight,’ said Rambo, smiling and looking eager. There was much murmuring and chewing but nobody actually replied in the affirmative.
‘Cool,’ said Rambo, and took a large munch of his toast.
We all ate in silence for a while, and then Boggo finally said, ‘It won’t look good getting bust in the first year dorm.’
Rambo stared at him and Boggo mumbled on hesitantly. ‘I mean, after the meeting when Viking said we have to be more responsible and stuff …’
Rambo finished swallowing his mouthful of toast and then in a teasing voice said, ‘I think someone’s pushing for prefect.’
‘Bullshit!’ replied Boggo to the sound of loud and derisive sniggers.
Then Rambo’s smile faded and his voice was suddenly laced with menace. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t be a prefect anyway, Boggo.’
Boggo snorted. ‘I know I’m not going to be a prefect, I’m gonna be head of house!’
Rambo burst into loud laughter.
‘You wanna bet?’ challenged Boggo immediately.
‘Yes, I do want to bet,’ replied Rambo.
‘Cool,’ said Boggo in a strident voice. ‘Tonight then.’ With that he crashed his knife and fork together on his plate and left the hall without so much as touching his eggs.
22:00 BOGGO’S BETTING PTY LTD
HEAD OF HOUSE ODDS
BOGGO 2-1
RAMBO 3-1
SIMON 5-1? (50-1)
FATTY 20-1
SPUD 25-1
GARLIC 100-1
VERN 1000-1
‘What does the question mark next to Simon’s name mean?’ asked Garlic as he studied the list on Boggo’s three-legged chalkboard with a frown.
‘That question mark means what it is,’ said Boggo. ‘It depends on whether he’s lying about his nervous breakdown or not.’
‘What breakdown!’ roared Simon, really losing his temper for the first time since his return.
‘All I’m saying,’ said Boggo with raised hands, ‘all I’m saying is all that lying on your bed and crying and weird behaviour and shit, didn’t look like faking to me.’
‘Anyway,’ said Simon, ‘what difference does it make? The staff all think I had a nervous breakdown anyway, and they are the ones who choose the heads of houses.’
‘Ja, but do they?’ questioned Boggo.
‘I have to see Eve twice a week, just to assure her that I’m not suicidal,’ Simon said bitterly.
There was a silence and Boggo nodded slowly as if digesting this news.
‘True,’ said Boggo at last. He then changed Simon’s odds to 50-1.
‘I only wanted you guys to know the truth because you’re my mates,’ said Simon into the hushed and uncomfortable silence.
Whiteside’s door was open the entire evening, although it was impossible to see if he was inside or not. Rambo eventually postponed the Fragile Five christening until tomorrow.
23:15 All this talk of prefects is unsettling. Everyone seems so urgent and desperate about it. It makes me feel like I should be out there doing something to improve my chances, but I can’t help escaping the feeling that pushing for prefect is somehow a little bit shameful and pathetic.
Saturday 17th October
Thirds Debut
I managed 22 runs with the bat, which was a solid enough start to my new career as batsman and part-time spinner. I didn’t think I was going to get a chance to bowl, but when the Woodridge batsmen smashed all our seam bowlers around the park, I eventually received a terse nod from Norm (I don’t believe in spinners) Wade, and the order to bowl from the other end.
The coach refused to comment on my three wickets for just eleven runs, but he did say, ‘Well batted, Milton,’ when I passed him in the passage outside the change room after the tea break.
Despite the result being a draw, I’m most happy with my debut in serious cricket. I also scored double the runs of Rambo and took three times the wickets, so it was no surprise that he refused to talk to me for the entire evening and the rest of the weekend.
22:30 Christopher Walton is a perfect Fragile Five re-placement for Gastro. Not only is he timid and painfully thin, but he’s also cursed with a nasty stutter and an Adam’s apple the size of an Easter egg. His stuttering and stammering seemed to become worse when confronted by Rambo’s aggressive and intimidating questions. Thanks to his unfortunate speech problems, he was unanimously christened STUTTERHEIM, which Simon assured us was a small town in the Eastern Cape. Since nobody else had a better name to offer (Boggo suggested Gastro 2 …) we settled for Stutterheim, which both Plump Graham and Rowdy thought to be an excellent choice.
Why do parents think they can just send a boy with obvious problems to a school like this? What do they expect – that he’s going to thrive? Mind you, nobody ever gave Vern much of a chance at survival, and he’s made the school play and is now whispered in some quarters as a potential prefect!
Stutterheim was deeply embarrassed by his name. I wanted to take him aside and say, ‘Get out while you still can, buddy, or it’s going to be a very long four years!’ But I didn’t
want to start a conversation in case he got stuck on a word and kept stuttering like a lunatic. In the end I settled for a sympathetic smile and a nice warm, ‘Welcome.’
Poor Stutterheim will no doubt try his best against all the odds, but he’d better get used to feelings of terror and embarrassment. I wish him well but fear the worst.
Sunday 18th October
Fatty spent two and a half hours on the phone to Penny this morning. Things turned nasty when Boggo reported his former friend to Whiteside for permanently blocking up the house line. Whiteside tore downstairs and tried to force Fatty off the phone but Fatty refused and said he was speaking his last words to his dying granny. Whiteside paled and retreated with apologies to Fatty. He then gave Boggo a stern lecture on respecting people’s right to grieve.
After the lecture, Boggo and Garlic returned to the phone room and began banging on the door and shouting nasty taunts at Fatty who was seated on the floor with the phone cord wrapped around his body. When the banging and taunts failed to prise Fatty out of the phone room, Boggo and Garlic resorted to making loud orgasm noises and shouting things in a mock Penny voice like, ‘Oh yes, touch me there, Fatty!’ or ‘My, my, Fatty, what a big shlong you have!’
Fatty came storming out of the phone room in a seething rage and pushed Boggo against the wall. Garlic took one look at Fatty’s face and sped off like his life depended on it. Fatty had Boggo pinned up against the wall and looked ready to punch his lights out. Boggo covered his face with his hands and started whimpering. But just when it looked like Boggo was going to receive the knockout punch that he so richly deserves, Fatty’s anger abruptly left him and he ended up whining, ‘Just grow up, Boggo!’ and storming off in a sulk.
‘You see!’ said the now livid Boggo as he staggered to his feet. ‘Chicks! They screw everything up!’
Free Bounds
13:00 ‘It’s outrageous, Spud,’ whined Boggo. ‘The oke has completely lost his personality. It’s like he’s not even my friend any more.’
I nodded sympathetically and looked up at the swaying pine trees above us. It’s been a while since my last free bounds and I was ideally hoping to spend it alone reading and writing and perhaps thinking, but Garlic spotted me leaving the house and soon he and Boggo were charging after me with a blanket and a lunch pack shouting, ‘Wait up! Wait up!’
‘Fatty’s changed completely since Mad Dog’s farm,’ said Garlic with large eyes.
‘It’s Penny,’ said Boggo with a look of disgust.
‘He used to be so friendly like,’ agreed Garlic.
Boggo shook his head for the umpteenth time and said, ‘When last did you hear him fart, or see him eat too much, or talk about ghosts?’
‘Mad Dog’s farm,’ replied Garlic immediately.
‘He’s becoming anorexic,’ said Boggo seriously.
I asked Boggo if he was worried about Simon becoming a prefect.
‘No chance,’ said Boggo. ‘You can’t have a manic depressive in a leadership position.’ Boggo reckons Simon’s excuse about playing cricket in England is a lame attempt at saving face.
‘He’s certainly not prefect material,’ he concluded.
When the time finally came to return to school, Boggo shouted, ‘Come on, buddy, let’s go cause shit with Stutterheim!’ He wasn’t talking to me. He and Garlic charged off giggling and gossiping without so much as saying goodbye. I stayed out under the pine trees until five minutes before roll call. Any time not spent talking about prefects should be treasured.
Monday 19th October
17:20 A terrific storm blew up out of nowhere and unleashed a torrent of hailstones onto the school. I watched it blow in from my perch on the windowsill. Lightning flashed constantly against the blue-black sky and not a voice could be heard against the pelting stones that smashed onto the tin roof of the dormitory.
Roger tore into the dorm with his eyes wild and his fur standing upright. Vern immediately leapt off his bed, where he was tapping away at his calculator, and ripped back his mattress. Roger leapt into the bowels of Vern’s bed and Rain Man carefully folded back the mattress, stashed his calculator in his locker, and then lay flat on his bed to protect his cat from the violence of the storm.
The furious wind drove me off my perch eventually and onto my bed and sounded like it was repeatedly whipping the school buildings.
And then the electricity failed and we were plunged into darkness with the rain pounding down and nothing to be done but sit and wait.
We were each given a candle to do our homework, but it was useless and the idea was abandoned after Thinny and Runt set fire to a carpet in the second year classroom after duelling with lit candles.
Amidst the chaos, Spike and JR Ewing were also thrashed by Viking because he caught them mocking Stutterheim in the first year dormitory.
Lay in bed listening to the roar of the generator and the pelting rain. Pissing Pete’s fountain has overflowed into the quad.
Tuesday 20th October
Power still out, although it’s no longer raining. Rogers Hallibut, who has recently been promoted to School Maintenance Supervisor, reversed a bakkie into the main quad and began offloading paraffin lamps, which he lined up in neat rows outside the houses. The school is a mess. Flooded and defeated.
I passed Pike in the quad after breakfast. By the time I saw him it was too late to change course so I decided to flash him a smile and be as friendly as possible.
‘Hi, Pike,’ I said. Those green slitty eyes glared at me with menace and he didn’t answer.
08:00 The Glock called an emergency assembly and said the power failure might take some time to fix and asked the matrics to remain patient and focus on their exam preparation. He then gave us a stern warning about ‘opportunistic behaviour’ after dark and threatened to expel anyone who acted like a hoodlum.
14:30 Took a stroll around the school with Rambo and Simon to inspect the flood damage. Most of the fields are still covered in huge puddles where the hailstones have melted and pooled on the sodden earth. Branches, leaves and debris are everywhere and the ground staff were busy slicing up a tree that had fallen over at the far end of Pilgrim’s Walk.
We came across The Guv who was inspecting the overflowing bog stream and seemed to be prodding at something on the riverbank with his walking stick.
‘Freeze!’ The Guv shouted. ‘Move an inch and I’ll have your testicles for high tea!’
We froze where we were and The Guv mumbled on about us destroying his evidence. He prodded at the dark shape in the water and exclaimed, ‘Bah, humbug!’ He stepped back from the water’s edge and motioned for us to join him.
‘I thought I might have discovered a corpse,’ he declared and tapped the mud off his gumboots. He glanced at Rambo and said, ‘Never seen a dead body, you know?’ We then began to walk back through the mud towards Pilgrim’s Walk.
‘So, Milton,’ said The Guv eventually, ‘you’ve decided to perambulate with Black and Brown, I see?’ The Guv roared with laughter and fixed his gaze on Simon before saying, ‘Good to see you, Brown. How was the off season?’
Simon grinned back at The Guv and replied, ‘Better than expected.’
The Guv stared back at the gushing bog stream and the debris strewn all over the fields and said, ‘God’s wrath, boys!’ And with the slightest tip of his hat, he set off towards his house.
‘What a freak,’ said Rambo, although it was unclear if he was indicating the storm or The Guv.
It was a relief to reach the house. I hardly uttered a word for the entire walk and was never brought into the conversation. I was like a shadow to them – like I didn’t really exist.
‘Ass creeper!’ hissed Boggo on my arrival back at the house.
‘You just want to be seen as one of the heavies now,’ agreed Garlic.
Boggo informed me that hanging around with Rambo and Simon wasn’t going to improve my prefect chances.
I ignored his taunts and headed for an early shower because I didn’t feel l
ike talking to anyone.
The water was freezing cold.
Wednesday 21st October
Still no power! There’s a rumour circulating that this situation may last for over a week. I’m not so sure the school won’t break out into a riot before then.
All sports/games have been cancelled because of the waterlogged fields. We are expected to spend all day working in dim light despite the entire house, including the prefects, running amok.
Mr Bosch reckons we had over 8 inches of rain on Monday, and that the wind gusted over 80km/h! He called it a freak weather system, the like of which we may never see again in our lifetimes.
I passed Simon coming up the stairs – I’m not sure if it was just the dim light but it looked like he had been crying.
Thursday 22nd October
Getting used to living in the Stone Age. Boggo reckons the real reason we haven’t seen a newspaper or eaten anything other than cold meat and salads since the storm, is because the roads have been washed away.
Fatty said he wouldn’t be surprised if we were the last living beings left in South Africa and that the rest of the country has been washed away. He reckons the only reason they haven’t told us is because they fear a major riot.
‘Jeez!’ said Garlic in relief. ‘Thank God I live in Malawi!’
‘And the phone lines are still down,’ whined Fatty like this was far worse than the entire country being destroyed.
‘It would be the perfect time for a psychopath to strike,’ said Rambo, chewing thoughtfully on the end of his pen. ‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘No lights, no phones, no contact with the outside world …’ Rambo looked menacingly at Garlic and whispered, ‘You could just pop them off one by one …’
The dormitory fell silent. A feeling of unease spread about the place and mingled with the aroma of paraffin and candle wax.
Spud - Learning to Fly Page 31