‘I will get it, Baas,’ he said, ‘but the other people mustn’t see.’ He moved away to the rear of the marquee and returned with a bottle wrapped in a damask napkin.
I dipped into my pocket where I had a bit of loose change and up came a shilling. It was too much and I’d hoped for sixpence, but he’d stuck his neck out, so dipping back in again would have seemed churlish. ‘I am grateful,’ I said quietly.
I confess I returned to Tinky and Pirrou somewhat triumphantly. I wanted to hold the bottle aloft and say, ‘Da-da-da-dah!’ Instead I unwrapped the napkin to reveal the champagne, which by some miracle happened to be Bollinger.
‘Nice work, Tom!’ Pirrou exclaimed as if she really meant it. I had the feeling that I’d passed some sort of important test. But I wasn’t to know that the real trap for young players lay immediately ahead. I had absolutely no idea how to open the bottle and I stared at it completely bewildered.
‘Remove the gold foil covering the cork,’ Pirrou instructed. I did as I was told, tearing the foil from the neck. Now I was confronted with a large cork held in place with, I couldn’t believe it, wire. ‘See the little wire loop, turn it anticlockwise.’ Again I did as she said. Suddenly there was this loud bang! and the cork shot into the air and landed with a plop in the middle of the stream. My heart missed several beats and Tinky’s ears pricked up and he let out a sharp bark. ‘Well done, Tom!’ Pirrou exclaimed, clapping her hands.
A small effervescence composed of white bubbles emerged from the bottle and spilled slowly over the lip and down the side of the neck, halting about three inches down.
‘Done like an expert, see, you haven’t wasted a drop!’ She leaned over suddenly and kissed me on the cheek.
Now I’d like to tell you what happened after that. But the next thing I vaguely remember is street lamps whizzing by, strips of elongated light almost joined together, and looking up into the canopy of leafy trees hurling past me at great speed. Or so it seemed, because everything was spinning as well as rushing by. I remember my hand searching for Tinky and finding him against my side, but after that, complete oblivion. I had finally joined the brotherhood as a drunk in my own right.
I woke to the most incredible feeling of softness, or was it smoothness? Whatever it was, it was a sensation I’d never experienced before and it was happening to ‘you know what’ immediately below my waist. I opened my eyes slowly to see the sun streaming through a large picture window that faced out into a garden where a Jacky wagtail perched on the head of a small bronze statue of a naked cherub on a stone pedestal, its tail moving up and down. My head was perfectly clear and to my surprise the sensation continued – velvety smooth and rhythmic, absolutely exquisite. I let go an involuntary moan, the feeling from below sending sensations up through my body that completely dissolved the loneliness stones. They just melted and were gone, finish and klaar. I felt a sudden indescribable lightness of being. With my ecstatic moan the rhythm stopped abruptly and a female voice said quietly, ‘Oh, you’re awake, Tom.’ I didn’t answer, I couldn’t answer. Then there seemed to be some disruption of sheets as a head of shining dark hair emerged from between my thighs and suddenly I was looking into a beautiful pair of green eyes. ‘Shush!’ the voice said, even though I hadn’t spoken. Soft lips closed briefly over my mouth, and I felt a hand taking me and I entered a new kind of glorious tightness, then the rhythm started all over again. It continued and continued, soft and then urgent and soft again and gradually it became more and more urgent until I cried out and my body heaved and flattened and heaved and flattened again and again. The green eyes above me filled with laughter and then they too seemed to lose focus and the rhythm above me became increasingly urgent and I moaned and shouted out and clung to warm, smooth, wonderfully soft flesh. Then something inside of me burst as if I was witnessing, at some primordial time, the great cascading waterfall in the high mountains as it tumbled for the very first time into the vast canyon below. The green eyes above me became very still, it was like looking into deep, clean water, and the rhythm slowed down and, with a soft sigh, finally ceased. ‘Oh, Tom, my beautiful, beautiful boy,’ the voice above me whispered, then sighed deeply once more and Pirrou’s lips came down to touch my own with a softness so delicate that I began to weep.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Labour of Love
AS I LAY IN Pirrou’s bed with the morning sun streaming through the window I wept for the many things in my childhood past. Now, with this first intimacy, this first-ever touching, the loneliness stones within my breast had disappeared, the demons were cast out and I became clean. I wept that such a miraculous power to heal existed in the body of a woman. In a single act of spontaneous loving I had at last been born again and baptised in the name of five softly spoken words, ‘Tom, my beautiful, beautiful boy’. In gratitude for this benediction, I also wept.
Pirrou moved to my side and reached out and silently held me so that I lay with my head against her breasts. It was the first time I could remember having been held in a woman’s arms like this. My earliest memory was of standing in a corner somewhere, trembling and fearful, knowing that I must make some kind of gesture to please a huge woman towering above me and not knowing what this should be. Perhaps it happened at The Boys Farm when I first arrived and that mountain of indifference may have been Mevrou. This was because I sensed that at some earlier time, however briefly, I had been held with love and in tenderness, rocked in a woman’s arms.
With the tears for a childhood past finally gone we lay together silently for some time. Then Pirrou moved me gently aside and propped on her elbow beside me, so that she could look down into my face.
‘I’m sorry,’ I ventured softly.
‘Shush! I thought we decided yesterday not to use the “sorry” word, Tom Fitzsaxby,’ she chided. ‘Besides, of much greater concern, blue and green should never be seen.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ I sensed that she was attempting to change the mood.
‘It’s something my mother says about fashion. These two colours, according to the dictates of her day, were never to be used together.’ She smiled. ‘Our eyes, yours so startlingly blue and mine green. Mine the colour of envy and yours of serenity and trust. Do you think this is a bad omen, Tom?’
‘Nature wouldn’t agree, after all they are the colours of the sky and the land. Does that mean the firmament and the earth beneath it is out of fashion?’ I asked, trying to add a little to her frivolous tone, but only succeeding in sounding pompous.
‘Nice reply, neatly put, you’ll make an excellent handbag, Tom.’
‘Handbag?’
Pirrou laughed. ‘We could make a deal.’
‘What sort of deal?’
She rolled over onto her back, kicking one shapely dancer’s leg into the air and holding it aloft, her instep arched, painted toenails pointed to the ceiling. It was my turn to prop onto my elbow and it was now, for the first time, that I observed her entire dancer’s body. I couldn’t believe what happened next. As we looked at each other my entire body began to tremble with desire. It wasn’t a conscious thought, the moment my eyes rested on her loveliness, my mind took over and delivered a set of instructions to my inexperienced body, urging it to do something it had contemplated a thousand times before. But now that the opportunity had finally arrived, I hadn’t the slightest idea of how to accomplish it.
‘My goodness, I am impressed!’ Pirrou exclaimed, bringing her leg back down.
‘What sort of deal?’ I asked again, trying to contain my desire, though I could feel my throat constricting and my voice sounded different, even to me.
‘This is part of it,’ she sighed happily, her arms reaching out.
I had no idea love-making could be such hard work! Mind you, nice hard work, but a person’s hips were practically worn out by the time Pirrou started to jerk and moan and arch her back to physically lift me into the air, her convulsive strength quite astonishing, and with me hanging on for dear life. This time it was tumbling
arse over tit over the imaginary waterfall, such a thrashing around you’ve never experienced in your life before. Well, you probably have, but I hadn’t and it was altogether wonderful.
We lay side by side, panting, not saying anything, then Pirrou turned and placed her head on my chest, and I put my arm around her and this touching and the stillness that followed was almost as nice as what had just happened. It was the first time I’d held a woman in my arms, and I felt such a strong sense of needing to protect this beautiful creature that I wanted to cry out. Though, if I’d done so, I have no idea what kind of primordial sound might have issued from my mouth, whether a grunt or a howl or maybe even a growl. Although, I must say, a growl didn’t seem all that likely coming from me. What, in fact, I could do to protect such an assured, worldly and sophisticated ballet-dancer-type of person, I simply couldn’t imagine.
So, those were things that were happening to me, but my intellect told me Pirrou was probably experiencing quite a different set of emotions. Taking the known facts into consideration, the evidence of her potential high regard for me wasn’t in the least promising. She’d come across the two of us, a teenager out of his social depth and his dog, sitting alone absently throwing pebbles into a stream. With a garden party filled with talented and eligible guys roaming around I wasn’t exactly the catch of the day. Whereupon, possibly for her own amusement, she’d proceeded to get me drunk on champagne and then, out of kindness perhaps, she’d carted me home and put me to bed like a naughty schoolboy.
Then I reminded myself, What about what happened this morning?, but I quickly saw through this argument as well. Taking my virginity was obviously yet another feather in her cap. Not exactly an exotic trophy, not anywhere near as shiny and bold as the tail feathers stolen from Piet Retief, Meneer Prinsloo’s prize Black Orpington rooster, and finally featuring resplendent on Miss Phillips’s Easter bonnet. But why, having extracted the virginal tail feather, had she allowed me to make love to her a second time? More amusement, perhaps?
Then, as suddenly, I realised that it was Voetsek the Rooinek who was thinking all this stuff. Not the born-again Tom Fitzsaxby, brand-new lover and recipient of a blessed five-word benediction, where the past had been forgiven and now everything was new.
Almost as if she’d read my thoughts Pirrou said quietly, ‘Tom, I do hope you’ll stay in my life, for a little while at least?’
‘Why would you want that?’ I asked, astonished, having just decided that what I’d been through, glorious as it turned out, was a one-night stand or, more accurately, a one-morning stand.
She pulled away from my arms, and jumping on top of me proceeded to land several kisses on my face. ‘I told you! Because I need a smart new handbag!’ Then she sat up, straddling my torso.
I grinned, trying not to look confused. Despite the laughing tone in her voice ‘handbag’ didn’t sound a very propitious word, even to a recently born-again, former low-down, suddenly turned-upside-down-by-recent-events-type person like me. Besides, I hadn’t yet grown accustomed to a naked woman sitting on my stomach. Too much was happening too soon! ‘You said earlier we could make a deal?’ I said, in an attempt to cover my confusion.
She didn’t answer, remaining seated with her knees bent, legs neatly tucked on either side of me. Then she reached down, picked up a pillow and started to lambast me across the head until I laughingly brought my arms up to protect my face. ‘I’m selfish,’ Bam, ‘and bitchy,’ Bam, ‘and as a prima ballerina,’ Bam, ‘overindulged,’ Bam, ‘and horribly, horribly spoilt!’ She threw the pillow aside, her green eyes looking down at me. ‘Besides, I like to get my own way,’ she pronounced happily.
I thought for a moment, then said, ‘And having your own way is having me as your handbag?’
‘Tom, it won’t be like that!’ she said, suddenly serious. ‘But we might as well face it. That’s what people will say. This may be a big city but it’s a small town, and full of careless gossip, especially in art circles. You’ll be called my handbag and I’ll be called La Pirouette, the cradle-snatcher! Seventeen doesn’t go into twenty-eight.’
‘Nearly eighteen!’ I replied brightly. ‘And anyway, it just did!’
Pirrou laughed at this half-good quip. ‘Tom, my beautiful, beautiful boy, you’re probably wondering what’s in all this for you?’
Which I wasn’t at all! What was in it for me was sitting naked on my stomach, and it was more than I could have possibly imagined happening to me in a hundred thousand years! Even if it only happened once, I mean, twice.
‘Well, as a matter of fact, at a recent ballet reception with my grandfather, I met Professor Mustafa and your law professor, what’s his name? I should remember, both of them are good friends of the Johannesburg Ballet.’
‘Professor Rack, Shaun Rack,’ I said quickly.
‘That’s right, and the chamber orchestra conductor, David Levi, was there as well. My grandfather recounted the incident of his junior trainee salesman and the sale of the three Steinways, telling the story to amuse David, and in passing he mentioned your name. Mustafa and Rack reacted almost simultaneously, both calling out your name and exchanging glances in some surprise. Then each told us of the Tom Fitzsaxby they knew, Mustafa laughingly saying that law had stolen you from a potentially spectacular career in medicine, and Rack saying that you were the most brilliant first-year student he could ever remember attending the law faculty. Then, Tom, to everyone’s astonishment, Professor Mustafa told us about the way you attended to the needs of the alcoholics in Joubert Park. How they’d huddle for warmth among the steam pipes behind Park Station in the winter where you’d gather up the ones who were sick with pleurisy and other bronchial complaints, and bring them to his hospital’s Emergency Department. Then he added the equally astonishing facts that you were an orphan and a scholarship student at the Bishop’s College and from necessity spent your school holidays living with these destitute men. He also told us about the faceless beggar and your special care of him until he passed away earlier this year.’
By this time I had turned multiple beetroot, and grabbing the pillow I covered my head in an attempt to conceal my shame. All the hiding out in front had been in vain, people all over the place, the founder old Mr Polliack, Professor Mustafa, Rack, my law professor, and now the prima ballerina from the Johannesburg Ballet all knew everything there was to know about me. ‘Please stop!’ I cried out.
It may have been the miracle of the loneliness stones and all the loving earlier that had put me completely off my guard. Pirrou’s words had suddenly made me revisit the past and it consumed me. The air around me suddenly filled with the abuse I’d silently accepted at the hands of Mevrou and Meneer Prinsloo. I could hear the laughter and derision and saw myself knocked down, my mouth bleeding and my ears ringing, grovelling at the feet of some bigger kid, looking pleadingly up into his bully grin, apologising for being a murderer of Boer women and little children. I saw the light streaming from the window behind the Dominee, and the small child that I used to be, trembling at the back of the church as the promise of God’s punishment of my kind came in words as blunt as bullets from his thundering pulpit. As Pirrou recounted her conversation with these high-ups, all of this stuff was being resurrected, sharp images roiling around in my consciousness. My careful anonymity had vanished in a puff of magician’s smoke and the past had come rushing back to destroy me.
I know you may be wondering how this could be. That I was beginning to sound like some sort of a pathetic neurotic with a penchant for melodrama. But Pirrou’s words filled me with a terror that these people she’d mentioned would see right through me, see who I really was, Voetsek the despised Rooinek, untouchable and guilty. Why couldn’t I be left alone, just for a little while longer until I became a little stronger? Did they not see that my punishment forever was the harsh cruel words, the never-ceasing hurtfulness that cut deeper into my soul than any sjambok ever could my flesh? Did they not understand that the suppuration caused by constant hatefulness came
from wounds that never heal? I was unclean, wicked and unlovable, and if they hadn’t discovered this yet, they soon enough would, and then what? So much for my being born again and becoming brand-new. My lucky-day fuck had turned out to be my complete undoing. It wasn’t just my body that lay naked and exposed in this strange bed with the sun streaming though a picture window – it was my very soul.
Pirrou climbed off me and I immediately turned onto my stomach like a recalcitrant child, discarding the pillow. She lay beside me and began to gently stroke my back. ‘I’ve said something terribly wrong, haven’t I, Tom?’ she asked softly.
‘No, it’s just me,’ I replied. ‘It’s difficult for me to accept —’
‘What? Praise?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘But why, Tom, you have so much to be proud of. You’ve succeeded against all the odds.’
‘Ja, sort of.’ I couldn’t think of anything further to say. How do you explain all that stuff? ‘It’s just that here, today, it’s . . . well, it’s all so unexpected, overwhelming, like a wonderful accident.’
Pirrou laughed. ‘I have to tell the truth. It was no accident, darling Tom.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I confess, I asked my grandfather to invite you to the garden party. You see, I wanted to meet you.’
I turned and sat bolt upright. ‘But why, Pirrou? You knew all about me, all that bad stuff!’ I decided it was time I attempted to go on the offensive. ‘We come from entirely different worlds! We have absolutely nothing in common!’ I said, deliberately raising my voice.
‘I see, I’m the spoilt rich bitch and you’re . . . well, never mind . . . is that what you’re saying, Tom?’ Pirrou shot back, putting me firmly in my place. I lacked the courage to reply, and besides, there was some truth in what she’d just suggested. Then she added, smiling, ‘There you are, you’ve just caught a glimpse of La Pirouette, the nasty one!’
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