Whitethorn

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Tom, why are you in this reading class? Your reading is far better than any of the other children,’ my teacher said.

  ‘I don’t know, Juffrou, maybe because I’m a bigger seven than they are.’

  ‘Did you all start learning to read at the same time?’

  ‘Ja, Juffrou.’

  ‘So you think you’re more mature, is that it?’

  ‘What’s mature mean, Juffrou?’

  ‘No, I don’t think that’s it,’ she said, as if she was speaking to herself. ‘I’m going to put you up with the eights, you’re a lot better reader than most of them.’

  ‘Juffrou Marais said the Government won’t allow it,’ I replied.

  She laughed. ‘In this class I am the Government,’ she said, then added, ‘I’m not holding a bright child back because of what the Government says.’

  So I was put up with the eight-year-old readers where I seemed to go pretty okay and then Juffrou Phillips put me up a class with all my other subjects as well. But nothing helped. Now I was reading well but still no words appeared that I could find in my red book.

  Up to that time I hadn’t really trusted anyone who was a grown-up, except Mattress. You couldn’t count Sergeant Van Niekerk because, like Doctor Van Heerden, while they’d been nice to me I didn’t really know them except for two occasions over Mattress with the sergeant and only a stitched-up finger with the doctor. They were both high-ups and people like me couldn’t really count them as grown-ups we knew as someone to trust. I talked to Tinker about Juffrou Phillips and asked her what she thought, should I show her the red book? I know that’s stupid because a dog doesn’t talk or anything, but sometimes you can just tell what they’re thinking and Tinker was a very clever dog, I can assure you. You’d ask her something and she’d cock her head and look at you and often she’d give this little bark, so you knew she knew what you were saying. We decided to trust Juffrou Phillips.

  During morning break when we all got a small bottle of milk and a bun, because of the rural malnutrition program the Government had, I asked if I could talk to her after school. When she said yes, I also asked if she’d give me a note to say it was all right for me to come back to The Boys Farm not in the crocodile.

  After school I showed her my red book with the gold-edged pages. It was getting a bit dirty and old-looking from me always turning the pages, and I suppose my hands weren’t always clean.

  ‘What’s this, Tom?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a book I found, Juffrou.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that, but why are you showing it to me?’

  ‘Please, Juffrou, can you teach me to read what’s in it?’

  She picked up the book and read the gold words on the spine that had faded a bit. ‘Abolition of Slavery 1834,’ she read aloud.

  ‘None of the words are the same as you’re teaching us, Juffrou,’ I declared.

  She laughed. ‘I don’t suppose so, this book is written in English!’

  ‘Can you teach it to me, please, Juffrou?’

  ‘Can you speak English, Tom? Your name, Fitzsaxby, is that English?’

  ‘I think I could once before I came to The Boys Farm, but I’m not sure.’ In the hope that it might influence her, I added, ‘Everybody says I’m English and a verdomde rooinek.’

  She sighed. ‘Children are so cruel. You can’t even speak the language and they call you a damned redneck.’ She seemed to be thinking for a bit, then she sighed again. ‘I’m only here for another month or two at the most, it’s not enough time.’

  ‘Please, Juffrou!’ I begged. ‘Just so I can find some words in my book.’

  She looked at me and took both my hands in hers. I could see her red nails were quite long and shone up at me bright as anything and I thought her hands looked so beautiful they shouldn’t ever be used for writing things on the blackboard.

  ‘Tom, this isn’t the kind of book you can learn to read,’ she said softly. She must have seen the look of disappointment on my face because she quickly added, ‘until you’re a lot older.’

  ‘How old must I be?’ I asked tremulously. The idea that I might never be able to read the dancing words was unthinkable.

  ‘Just older,’ she said kindly. ‘In the meantime I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to see the headmaster and ask him if I can put you on the English lessons the ten-year-olds in grade five do when it is compulsorily in the curriculum for English to be taught as a second language. I feel sure you’ll manage their books quite easily.’

  ‘Then will I be able to read my red book, Juffrou?’

  ‘Probably not right away,’ she paused and smiled. ‘Now, Tom Fitzsaxby, when we talk English together you don’t call me Juffrou Phillips, you call me Miss Phillips or just Miss.’

  ‘Ja, Miss,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, Miss,’ she corrected.

  I couldn’t explain it but I sensed this was an important moment. As it turned out, it was more important than I could have possibly imagined. Far beyond being a carpenter or a boilermaker or a lorry driver or a bulldozer driver on the roads or an engine driver on the railways – all the things we were told were good skilled grown-up jobs for us if we worked very hard.

  Miss Phillips forgot to give me the note for Mevrou and I was so excited that I didn’t remember either so I got four of the best when I got back to The Boys Farm. You see, I couldn’t tell Mevrou that I’d stayed back so that I could ask to be given reading in English lessons because then I would have truly been in the deep shit.

  You could hear already what she’d say. ‘So Afrikaans isn’t good enough for a certain person who’s a rooinek, hey?’ Whack! ‘You think we, the true volk, are not good enough for you, hey?’ Whack! ‘You kill our women and children and then you think you a better type of person.’ Whack! ‘You just a verdomde rooinek!’ Whack! ‘Ever since you come here, Voetsek, you nothing but trouble, man.’ Whack! ‘And if that’s not bad enough, you a kaffirboetie making friends with that pig boy who ran away up into the mountains!’ Whack! ‘Take six of the best!’ Whack! ‘It’s seven I know, but I’ve given you one extra because I’ve had genoeg!’ No whack.

  So I told Mevrou I’d gotten into trouble and my teacher made me stay back. It was worth the four new bits of Chinese writing on my bum because soon I’d be reading my red book. You see, I couldn’t believe I’d have to wait until I was grown up to understand it. Not that Miss Phillips said that exactly, but sometimes you can hear what grown-up people are thinking in their heads.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Not Having a Friend for Love or Money

  NOW I THINK I have to spend a little time telling you about Tinker who had become the champion ratter around the place. So much so that she was allowed to go everywhere with me, and both Meneer Prinsloo and Frikkie Botha would boast about her to people who visited The Boys Farm. I’m not saying that she was more of a pride than the shiny-feathered, crust-eating Black Orpingtons because Tinker had never won a ribbon at an agricultural show or anything like that. But Meneer Prinsloo kept a tally of the rats she’d caught and he’d say to visitors, ‘See that little dog, so far he’s caught 120 rats.’ He never did understand that Tinker was a she, because you had to be a he to have done something good like that. Frikkie Botha would tell him the tally for the day and on two occasions Tinker had appeared in the after-supper news when she’d got eight rats. Not that her name was mentioned with mine. She’d all of a sudden become The Boys Farm official ratcatcher, like that was her job and everyone owned her and both times she got the eight rats she got a dining-room clap.

  Frikkie Botha would refer to Tinker as ‘my little rat trap’ and brag about her prowess to everyone. They all seemed to have forgotten that they wanted to wring her neck in the beginning. In their heart of hearts they knew Tinker was a one-man dog and I was that man. Frikkie Botha did one really good thing for Tinker. This big dog from Doctor Dyke’s farm, the vet who pulled out our teeth with his horse pliers, came sniffing around Tinker’s bum and tried to mount he
r. But he was an Alsatian like Sergeant Van Niekerk’s dogs and Tinker was a very small fox terrier and luckily it didn’t work. Frikkie Botha saw what was happening and he called Doctor Dyke who, for once in his life, came over to The Boys Farm to do his real job and fixed Tinker up so she couldn’t have puppies.

  When I was eight Tinker started coming to school with me and she’d wait outside the classroom all day. At morning break when we got our bun and milk for malnutrition, the kids who brought sandwiches from home and didn’t want their buns would try to give her bits to eat, but unless I said so she wouldn’t touch the food they offered. The password was ‘Izinyawo ezinkulu zika Mattress’ which means ‘Mattress’s big feet’ in Zulu. I know that’s a bit of a mouthful but I didn’t want Tinker to ever forget Mattress because if it hadn’t been for him putting her on the sow’s teats she wouldn’t be alive. It also constantly reminded me of Mattress whom I had loved. Unless I said this password Tinker would simply lie with her nose next to a nice piece of roast beef from a rich kid’s sandwich or half a boerewors that I would have liked to eat myself and she’d not move an inch.

  Once I must have been playing or something and someone gave her a piece of biltong, which would be a super special treat for any dog, and the bell went for us to go back into the classroom. After school Tinker wasn’t outside waiting for me. I called out and she came running up, then she ran back a bit and waited and gave this little bark and cocked her one black ear to encourage me to follow, and did it again and again until we’d reached the piece of biltong and then she lay down with her front paws on either side of the biltong, her nose next to it, and looked up at me pleadingly until I said, ‘Izinyawo ezinkulu zika Mattress.’ She was suddenly the happiest dog in the whole world as she chewed on that piece of biltong as if all her Christmases had come at once. She’d waited three hours beside it, the delicious smell of the dried meat going up her nostrils, driving her crazy with desire.

  Tinker knew when I was sad. She’d come and sit on my lap and lick the back of my hand. She could do tricks like balance on her hind legs and dance or jump up into your arms from a standing position and, of course, fetch a ball and return it. Here’s the best thing she could do. Every morning she’d lay the rats that she caught during the night neatly in a row on the dairy steps and when Frikkie Botha would come to open the dairy he’d say, ‘How many today, Tinker?’ If there were six Tinker would bark six times, if four, then four barks and so on and so forth.

  But here’s the funny thing. If Frikkie Botha put six stones in a row and asked Tinker how many, she’d simply ignore him. If I asked, she’d bark the number of stones. You see, she knew Frikkie Botha was in charge of the ratcatching operation so she’d oblige him because that was her official job. Tinker wasn’t bred on The Boys Farm for nothing, she knew when to fall into line. For everything else she only listened to me. I have to admit she couldn’t count past eight and I think that’s because that was her ratcatching record for one night. Now I know I said earlier that I’d send her to the kitchen to get her scoff, but I’d always say the word before she went so she knew she could eat the food the kitchen boys put out for her and then, after a while, I got them to say ‘Izinyawo ezinkulu zika Mattress’ so she knew that she could take her food at the kitchen when she heard the words from one of the kitchen staff. I even taught Tinker to say thank you when she’d finished her food. She would sit up on her hind legs and bark two woofs – ‘Woof! Woof!’ – and the Shangaans in the kitchen would clap their hands and laugh and they’d remember to save her a nice bone or something. Old Mevrou Pienaar the cook who had four cats loved Tinker. Even the cats liked her as much as cats can. You can see, while she remained a one-man dog, she was an all-round hit with just about everyone except Mevrou who associated Tinker with Mattress and me, so Tinker couldn’t be liked by her and Tinker’d always give Mevrou a wide berth.

  As I said before, there wasn’t much love going on around that place. Plenty of sjambok, but no love. I can say this for sure, I loved Tinker so much I would sometimes burst into tears just thinking about how much she meant to me. You’d hold her in your arms and her little heart would be going boom-boom-boom and you’d feel this big lump rising in your throat and there’d be tears in your eyes and before you knew it, you’d be sobbing.

  I would spend another three-and-a-bit years at The Boys Farm until I was eleven and still too small to really have an influence around that place. Thanks to Miss Phillips who went to see the headmaster I was elevated two classes to learn English and he decided to try me with the other lessons as well. I must have satisfied him because I remained two years ahead of my age group. This act of generosity by the headmaster didn’t help me an awful lot at The Boys Farm, because suddenly I was in the same class as Gawie Grobler and I was supposed to be just as smart as him because I was in the same class. But I was still a verdomde rooinek so being smart didn’t count, nobody was going to ask my opinion anyway. I’d still get the sjambok lots – ‘You think you so clever, hey, Voetsek! Take four of the best!’ Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack!

  I didn’t really learn much English at school. This was because it was taught to us by the Afrikaans language teachers with little enthusiasm. The Government made it compulsory so they had to do it. Their dilatory lessons were received with even less inclination from their pupils. It made no sense to an Afrikaner kid to learn the language of the enemy and they all failed at the end of each year except Gawie Grobler and me. Nobody could see the point of learning a language they were forbidden by their parents to use, the same language that had condemned 27 000 women and children to death in the British concentration camps only a little while ago so that their grandmothers could still remember what went on.

  What really happened concerning me learning the English language was this. After three months Janneke Phillips completed her temporary teaching and returned to Johannesburg. When she told me she had to leave I tried very hard not to cry.

  ‘Can’t you stay just a bit longer, Miss?’ I stammered.

  ‘Tom, I’m only a temporary, and I still have six months in teachers’ college,’ she explained.

  ‘But you don’t need to learn more, you’re the best there is already,’ I protested.

  She smiled and took my hand. ‘Thank you, Tom, but I have to get my certificate or I can’t teach. But let me say, it’s been a real pleasure teaching you and I wish it could go on too. Who knows, maybe it can, we’ll see, hey?’

  In the time she was at Duiwelskrans she’d given me English lessons every day, but in three months you don’t learn a whole language, although after every lesson she’d write down notes on my progress and was a source of constant encouragement to me. I was getting praise all over the place, and I must say I lapped it up.

  Now, before I tell you the rest I don’t want you to think that because her surname was Phillips that she was English, because she wasn’t. Her great-great-grandfather or even earlier came from the Cape, which is right at the bottom of South Africa. You see, the English had owned the Cape of Good Hope since 1795 when they took it over from the Dutch. There must have been a Phillips who came out from England way back then. But he married a person who spoke the Dutch language and that soon put an end to where he came from. Miss Phillips’ ancestors from then on had been Afrikaners. Eventually they joined the Great Trek when the Boere left the Cape because of the laws the English were making that they didn’t agree with. They crossed the Fish River in their ox wagons and kept going into unknown territory to eventually establish their own republics in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. There must have been lots of sons in Miss Phillips’ family because the surname persisted.

  Although she was proudly Afrikaner, Miss Phillips spoke English fluently because she came from Johannesburg, where mostly English was spoken. It’s important that you know all this, because I don’t want you to think that this English teacher suddenly arrived in the town and rescued the little should-have-been-an-English boy who couldn’t speak his own language. Nothing of the
sort happened. What really happened was that I got called to the headmaster’s office one morning.

  I knocked on the open door.

  ‘Come in, Tom,’ Meneer Van Niekerk said in English, which was the first big surprise.

  ‘Dankie, Meneer,’ I said, thanking him in Afrikaans. ‘Jy het my geroep, Meneer? You called for me, Sir?’

  ‘Yes, Tom, come and sit down,’ he said in English again, which was very puzzling coming from a high-up Afrikaner like him.

  I walked in and stood in front of his desk.

  ‘No, sit down, Tom, I have a nice surprise.’ He looked up and smiled. ‘From now in this office we will always speak English. Outside my office, it’s Afrikaans. Inside here, English. Do you understand me?’

  I still didn’t much like sitting down in front of him but you have to do what a headmaster says, so I sat on the chair in front of his desk. ‘Ja, Meneer,’ I stammered.

  ‘No, Tom, what did I just say? Your reply to me is “Yes, Sir.” ’

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ I said tentatively. It was like any moment God would strike me with a bolt of lightning. It would come right through the roof and I’d be the same as the man in Pretoria that Gawie Grobler’s uncle said was still snoring when the fire brigade came and couldn’t get in, and then afterwards they found only ashes where he’d once been. But nothing happened except one thing; my feet now touched the floor when I sat on the chair.

  He pointed to a big brown envelope on the desk in front of him. ‘This came for you, Tom.’

  ‘Ek, Meneer?’ I said in surprise, clean forgetting the agreement we’d just made. I’d never received anything from anybody in my life and all of a sudden I’m receiving parcels from all over the place!