Whitethorn

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘I’m sorry to have been so longwinded,’ I apologised, coming to the end of the story.

  ‘No, man, you told it very good. You a born storyteller, Tom. What can I say? Such a terrible thing happening to you. I can hardly believe it.’ He reached over and extended his hand and I shook it. ‘Tom, from the first time I saw you I liked you. You a ware Boer.’ Then suddenly growing misty-eyed, he added, ‘I would be proud to have you as my son and Hester thinks the same.’ He drained the last of his bottle of beer from his glass in an attempt to hide his emotion. ‘Skattebol, when she came the other day all the way from Cape Town to say hello to you, you could see she was sorry she didn’t wait. Ag, I should have given her a blast of birdshot up the arse so then she couldn’t lie on her back for that Cape Dutch Rooinek! But what can you do? These days children don’t listen to their parents, they always know better.’ His free hand flew up into the air. ‘Boom! Another shotgun wedding happens!’

  ‘Thank you, Oom Jannie,’ I laughed, handing him the bottle he’d given me, which was still two-thirds full. ‘I would also be proud to be your son. But I must remind you, I’m not an Afrikaner . . . and that’s where all the problems began.’

  ‘If anyone tells you that you not a ware Boer, you tell them to come and see me, you hear?’ He shook his head slowly and refilled his beer glass. ‘How can somebody call a boy Voetsek?’ Oom Jannie clucked his tongue. ‘That’s terrible, man!’

  Oom Jannie was plainly feeling sorry for me but not quite knowing how to adequately express his feelings. Before he could sympathise any further and at the risk of sounding impolite, I said, ‘Now, Oom Jannie, as an Afrikaner and a boer, I have to ask you an important question.’

  ‘You the lawyer, Tom. Feel free, ask away,’ he said, grateful to escape the prolonged task he may have felt sympathy for me demanded.

  ‘That’s just it, you see. I intend to bring the Van Schalkwyk brothers to trial for murder. Do you think this is the right and just thing to do?’

  Oom Jannie looked momentarily puzzled. ‘But they didn’t kill him! He just lost his face in the explosion and they didn’t make that explosion happen, he did that himself, an accident. No, man! No way, Tom! They Stormjaers, they our freedom fighters in the war, hit and run!’ He drew a quick breath. ‘Frikkie Botha took his chances, in war bad things happen.’ He paused. ‘But I admit they shouldn’t have run away and left their comrade lying by the railway.’

  ‘No, Oom Jannie, I meant Mattress, on The Boys Farm.’

  ‘Who? Oh, the kaffir boy?’ Then it dawned on Oom Jannie what I was suggesting. ‘You want to do a murder trial for a black kaffir?’ he asked, not quite believing his ears.

  It had grown dark and the vast expanse of the Karoo sky was pinned with myriad stars, such a beautiful, beautiful firmament and such a totally fucked-up world below it.

  I was fortunate enough to have been given the choice of joining several leading law firms. Pirrou, knowing I was returning to Johannesburg, had done her usual lobbying and when I arrived back at my Hillbrow flat I discovered half a dozen invitations from leading law firms suggesting that I come in to see them. Most of these were predictably Jewish with their practices heavily business-based or dealing predominantly with white-collar crime, whereas I wanted a firm that was mostly concerned with criminal law so, after attending every interview, I ended up refusing all the offers made to me.

  Pirrou, probably prompted by her alter ego La Pirouette, was growing increasingly impatient and less than impressed that I seemed uninterested in the illustrious legal firms she’d worked so hard to influence. In a final effort to knock some sense into my head she convened a special dinner party, which included a judge of the Equity Court and a famous Johannesburg QC, Mervyn Rappaport. ‘Tom, how you are perceived at the very beginning of your career will largely determine your future,’ he advised me. ‘People judge a young barrister as much by the name of the legal firm appearing on his letterhead as by his reputation. Besides, as a young advocate you won’t have a reputation. Furthermore, you are unlikely to be briefed on any big cases from the confines of some unknown hole-in-the-wall legal firm.’

  Rappaport’s advice, of course, was absolutely correct, but I decided to ignore it and join the small, and by no means leading, Afrikaner law firm Kriegler, Cronje, Beyers, who specialised in criminal law. I was on a singular mission and wanted to establish a legal background for myself that couldn’t lead to speculation that my case was politically motivated. By choosing an Afrikaner law firm I was also eliminating any accusation the Afrikaner press might take up by suggesting that the case wasn’t truthfully about obtaining justice for the murder of a humble pig boy. Instead, they might assert that I was simply wreaking revenge on the Afrikaners, and Mevrou in particular, for the treatment I had received at their hands on The Boys Farm. I was also determined to conduct the trial in Afrikaans as this was the language spoken by most of my key witnesses and, of course, would be the language chosen by the defence.

  Even though the Nationalist Party, predominantly representing the Afrikaner people, was in control of the country, they were totally paranoid that the world was against them and that liberal English-speaking South Africans were the internal enemy. A case such as the one I intended to bring against the Van Schalkwyks could easily be seen as a political attempt to show Afrikaners in a bad light and would definitely have a sinister political motive. The world was turning on South Africa, and in particular on the Afrikaners. The age-old racist division between the two groups of different-language-speaking white South Africans was being keenly exploited by the international media while, truthfully, the doctrine of apartheid had as many adherents who spoke English as it did among the Volk. Bellicose as the Nationalist Government appeared to be, they were nevertheless conscious of being made a pariah nation in the eyes of the world. The simple fact that I had been partly educated at Oxford would have been sufficient to send the Afrikaner press off on a witch-hunt, as it was a university that had often been referred to in the past as a hot-bed of communism.

  The idea that six freedom fighters, for that is how the Van Schalkwyk brothers were seen by most Afrikaners, might be prosecuted for a murder of an unbelievably brutal and barbaric nature would have been anathema to the government in Pretoria. The Afrikaans press would immediately try to put a political spin on my motives, while the English-speaking newspapers couldn’t be relied on to give unbiased reportage either. For instance, my attendance at Oxford would be given the obvious implication that my motives had nothing whatsoever to do with justice for an African peasant. Paradoxically, my stint against the Mau Mau would appear to be a contradiction to this almost certain accusation, and so was likely to be ignored.

  In reading this, I sound somewhat paranoid. But as it turned out, all these precautions were well justified. I knew I would get only one shot at running the case and when the press, and possibly the Special Branch, came asking questions, to use an American baseball expression, I needed to have all my bases covered.

  However, I am getting ahead of myself. My first task was to become a barrister or advocate, not an easy task for a neophyte lawyer. I also needed to earn an income and so was obliged to spend the next eighteen months as a lawyer learning my profession. But if I was to conduct the murder case myself, rather than act as a junior to a barrister, it was essential that I be appointed to the Bar. To achieve this I would need to be accepted by the Bar Council and while the quality of my degrees and the fact that I was of good character made this a possibility, my relative lack of experience in law suggested that achieving my aim might be very difficult indeed. The three senior partners in Kriegler, Cronje, Beyers were prepared to endorse me, but freely admitted that they had no contacts and influence or any capacity to lobby on my behalf among members of the Bar Council.

  Cap in hand, I went back to Pirrou. Although we’d remained friends, she hadn’t forgiven me for rejecting her efforts to get me into a decent law firm. She listened to me and then, somewhat purse-lipped, went into La P
irouette mode. In La Pirouette body language this was a flat refusal, she wasn’t prepared to forgive me for allowing her to lose face among the cognoscenti of the Johannesburg Jewish law firms.

  Thinking how I might overcome her antipathy, I decided to come clean. ‘Pirrou, would you say I am someone who acts impetuously?’ I asked.

  ‘No, Tom, why do you think I threw you out of my bed?’ She didn’t wait for my answer but continued. ‘You were technically the best lover I’ve ever had, but you were no Piccasso.’ La Pirouette had lost none of her asinine expertise.

  ‘You mean I’m not an original artist?’ I said, parrying. ‘I guess that’s why I’m a lawyer – get all the essential details right and at the same time see the big picture, but don’t get too emotionally involved with the client.’

  ‘Not bad, you really have come along,’ she said, an arched eyebrow almost touching her hairline.

  ‘Pirrou, I want to confide in you, tell you a secret,’ I began.

  ‘Pirrou is not present, Tom. You’ll have to tell it to La Pirouette,’ she announced crisply, pulling back slightly and folding her arms over her small breasts.

  ‘I can’t, it’s not a secret La Pirouette would be allowed to know.’

  ‘You always were a clever little bastard!’ she exclaimed. ‘I taught you far too much about how a woman’s mind works.’

  I grinned. ‘No, seriously, it’s something I have never confided, never told anyone, except the farmer to whom I sold the three Steinways all those years ago, and then only recently on my return from Oxford and for a particular reason. It’s something that up to this moment has driven my entire life, given purpose to everything I’ve ever done.’ Throwing in the ‘farmer and the three Steinways’ caper I knew would be irresistible, even to La Pirouette.

  La Pirouette, her curiosity suitably aroused, turned back into Pirrou. ‘You’ll have to take me to bed then. It’s the only true confessional.’

  ‘What about Marino the Supremo?’ I said, surprised at the unexpected invitation, having on several occasions met her new, tall, tanned, good-looking and very attentive Italian handbag.

  ‘Too much nea in the Neapolitan,’ she exclaimed. ‘I suspect he’s a couple of generations South African with an Italian grandfather thrown in for good measure,’ she said, grinning. ‘Besides, it’s not being unfaithful if it’s done with an old faithful.’ As always, Pirrou managed to condone her self-indulgence.

  Afterwards in bed, where I must have performed adequately because there was no sign of La Pirouette’s imminent return, I told Pirrou the story of Mattress’s murder and of the railway explosion. This time I included the details I hadn’t mentioned in the Oom Jannie version – Meneer Prinsloo’s constant sexual assault on Pissy Vermaak and the contents of the canned-fruit jar.

  ‘You poor darling, you’ve kept all this to yourself all these years. Oh, Tom, you are a strange one. Don’t you realise that was quite a different world and that you don’t live there anymore? You can’t bring this Mattress back and nobody will have noticed his death, much less be affected by it.’

  ‘Joe Louis and his mother would,’ I replied.

  ‘Joe Louis? Remind me, who was he again?’

  ‘The son of Mattress, his Zulu name is Mokiti Malokoane,’ I replied.

  ‘Whom, by your own admission, you’ve never met?’

  ‘Not yet, I have nothing to tell him or his mother.’

  Pirrou leaned over and kissed me. ‘Tom, my beautiful, beautiful, boy!’ Then she drew back and sat up in bed looking down at me. ‘Darling, you’re a Rhodes scholar with a double first at Oxford. You can be anything you want. A brilliant barrister, chief justice if you want . . . you speak Afrikaans as fluently as the Prime Minister. You’re going to throw it all away because of what happened to a black farm boy who looked after pigs when you were seven years old!’ She shook her beautiful dark head, her lovely green eyes plainly confused. ‘You must be stark, raving mad.’ Pirrou had just given me the white liberal, English-speaking version of Oom Jannie’s reaction.

  There seemed no point in trying to explain. Besides, how do you explain stuff like that without sounding excessively self-righteous? ‘Pirrou, will you help me?’ I asked instead.

  She seemed to be thinking. ‘What did the boer who bought the Steinways say?’

  ‘Oom Jannie?’

  Pirrou nodded. ‘Ja, him.’

  I imitated Oom Jannie’s thick accent, trying to get the inflections in English that had been present in his Afrikaans. ‘He asked incredulously, “You want to do a murder trial for a black kaffir?” ’

  Pirrou clapped her hands. ‘Well, I never thought I’d agree with a backveld Karoo sheep farmer, but he’s right, Tom.’

  ‘Pirrou?’ I left the implied question hanging.

  ‘Stoppit, Tom! I’m not buying the poor little English boy from the orphanage shit! You’re one of the most brilliant young men in South Africa and now this! You always had a stubborn streak; you should never have gone to those ridiculous mines or Kenya! Christ! What the fuck are you trying to do? Is this some sort of misconceived revenge? You’ve ignored the advances of some of the most prominent law firms in this country and spurned the advice of some of the most pre-eminent lawyers and joined, of all things, a second-rate, unknown Afrikaner law firm. Now, in one hit, you’re going to destroy your entire future in order to bring to justice a family of backveld japies who murdered a Zulu pig boy!’

  I remained silent. La Pirouette had reappeared, her green eyes hard as agate.

  ‘I’m sorry, I have no choice, it’s something I have to do.’ I sat up, pulling the sheets away from my naked body, preparing to leave.

  ‘All right! I’ll try!’ In the blink of an eye, La Pirouette was back to being Pirrou, her green eyes soft again. Then suddenly straddling me, she started to kiss me furiously, her tongue probing deep into my mouth. Then as quickly she stopped and sat up, arching her back and throwing her head back. ‘Oh God! How I’ve missed you, Tom Fitzsaxby!’ she cried.

  ‘No more handbaggery, Pirrou,’ I said firmly.

  She looked down at me and her green eyes flashed momentarily, but then returned back to calmness. ‘Just friends?’ she asked, sticking out her hand. She simply had to have the last word.

  Six months later, Israel Mausels, chairman of the Johannesburg Bar, signed a letter informing me that I had been admitted and could practise as a barrister. Advocate Tom Fitzsaxby was ready, at last, to take on Mevrou and the Van Schalkwyk brothers.

  While I haven’t mentioned this before, I have always been an inveterate letter-writer. Throughout the years I kept in regular touch with all those people who had influenced me on the way to adulthood and during my time in Rhodesia, East Africa and even throughout the two dark years at Oxford. I wrote to Miss Phillips in Australia, where her husband was the South African ambassador, on a monthly basis. And, while their own letters were few and far between, I wrote regularly to Sergeant Van Niekerk and Marie, as well as Doctor Van Heerden and Marie’s mother, his wife, and finally to Meneer Van Niekerk of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary ‘To thine own self be true’, school principal.

  I had never raised the subject of the murder with the sergeant. Oom Jannie and Pirrou were the only ones to know of my intentions. Now the time had come to talk to Sergeant Van Niekerk. I called him at the police station in Duiwelskrans, and then took the train to Pietersburg where he met me in the police van and drove me back to the little dorp where it had all started for me. On the journey into town I didn’t mention my reason for coming, instead we talked of old times and some of the better memories. The sergeant and Marie had moved into a more spacious but not overly large house with their four children. In calling him I’d used the excuse that I needed a break from work, and Marie had kicked two of the kids out of their bedroom and prepared it for me, despite the fact that I would have been just as welcome to stay at Doctor Van Heerden’s, where there was no accommodation crisis.

  When I’d suggested staying with her mothe
r and the good doctor, Marie protested, feigning outrage. ‘Tom, you must be mad to think we going to share you that easy, hey? Jannie and me, we’ve been looking forward to this day for years!’ With child-bearing Marie had grown fairly stout and, while still pretty, had turned into a typical-looking Afrikaner country woman: square-shaped, competent in all things domestic, outspoken, a strict, no-nonsense mother who did a fair bit of yelling at her rowdy offspring. Saxby, the daughter whom I had been famously credited with delivering, was a lovely young seventeen-year-old with a shy smile and she blushed furiously when she was reminded that I’d been present at her birth. Sergeant Van Niekerk looked somewhat older around the eyes, his hair turned partially grey, but otherwise he hadn’t changed a great deal. They appeared to still be very compatible and happily married.

  The first evening we all gathered for dinner at the doctor’s house where I was obliged to do most of the talking, trying to achieve a monster catch-up with everyone asking dozens of questions, mostly wanting more details on the things I’d mentioned in past letters. It was not until the following morning, when I visited the police station, that I was able to broach the subject of Mattress’s murder with Sergeant Van Niekerk.

  I should, in fairness, mention that he was no longer Sergeant Van Niekerk, but had been elevated to the rank of lieutenant. When I congratulated him he was quick to grin and modestly point out that this had come about from seniority and not from any special competence as a policeman. Although it was obvious a more able small-town police officer would be difficult to find anywhere. I had always known him as Sergeant Van Niekerk and even as an adult had never addressed him otherwise, despite several attempts he’d made to make me call him Jan. I asked permission to continue to address him as I had always done and he laughingly agreed.