There was a look of terrible sadness on his face. ‘Why?’
‘Shot down over Romania on a bombing run. Nineteen like me, and missing in action. They never found him. His name is on the Malta Memorial for Missing Airmen. I’ve seen it. Shameful waste.’
He was quiet for so long that Sam thought he might have fallen asleep. Then he heard him mutter, ‘We were learning the mathematics of destruction. And we got punished.’
Looking at his grandfather’s coffin now, where it rests under his medals and his country’s new flag in a church filled with people come to honour him, Sam wonders what his punishment was.
‘– and make me not a rebuke unto the foolish.’ With a curling lip, Reverend George aims this admonition at the fat-cat Durban businessmen in their expensive linen and lightweight woollen suits and silk ties. There is uneasy shifting in the pews.
Bishop Chauncey formulates a vow: when I’m in charge, this one will be posted to a distant parish where he can’t do us any more damage. Kuruman, perhaps? Pofadder? Die Hel?
Only Purkey, a regular observer of clergy, notices the shadow of a smile on the bishop’s face. Clyde’s eyes have slid sideways to Nelisiwe again as he wonders what it’s like to fuck a black girl.
We trusted each other implicitly. There was never even a question of someone who could not be trusted. In other words, I would put my life on the line for somebody else and they would do the same for me.
– Pilot in
Thunderbolts: The Conquest of the Reich,
on the History Channel
1. Wait until you see the whites of his eyes. Fire short bursts of one to two seconds only when your sights are definitely ‘ON’.
2. Whilst shooting think of nothing else; brace the whole of your body; have both hands on the stick; concentrate on your ring sight.
3. Always keep a sharp lookout. ‘Keep your finger out.’
4. Height gives you the initiative.
5. Always turn and face the attack.
6. Make your decisions promptly. It is better to act quickly even though your tactics are not the best.
7. Never fly straight and level for more than 30 seconds in the combat area.
8. When diving to attack always leave a proportion of your formation above to act as a top guard.
9. INITIATIVE, AGGRESSION, AIR DISCIPLINE and TEAMWORK are words that MEAN something in air fighting.
10. Go in quickly – punch hard – get out!
Adolph Gysbert ‘Sailor’ Malan, DFC, DSO & Bar, of the Royal Air Force 74 ‘Tiger’ Squadron was a South African and one of the outstanding fighter pilots of WWII, and the top scorer at the end of 1941 with 32 kills plus two unconfirmed.
They slept on the carpets that night and the next. Their guards spent two days rummaging through every room in the lodge – in chests, cupboards and drawers – for portable treasure. It’s the Kommandant’s exit stash, Kenneth guessed as they wrapped silver goblets and platters and cutlery to stow in trunks loaded onto wagons.
T
OWARDS THE END OF HIS LIFE
, J J
BEGAN TO THINK
that he’d had to face more moral dilemmas than most people.
Deciding to join up straight after school wasn’t one of them. He burned to be fighting Hitler and to get as far away as possible from his father, only wavering when his mother’s eyes filled at his announcement. But all she said was, ‘You must do what’s right for you, Johnny.’
Victor had yelled, ‘For God’s sake, think about it first, boy! You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. And I don’t want a dead son.’
He straightened with the self-conscious dignity of an eighteen-yearold. ‘Maurice and I
have
thought about it. We’re not boys any more. We’re joining the Air Force.’
‘You’re lusting after war like all the other bloody idiots who don’t know any better. Did it myself, but got away with it. Showered in glory for doing peanuts. This war is a different kettle of fish. You’re fucking mad.’ Victor would not talk to him again until the train to Durban pulled out of Eteza Station, when he called out, ‘Don’t do anything stupid, you hear?’
J J and Maurice were effervescent with the joy of being young and keen and on their way to live combat, and he called back, ‘No I won’t, Pa. Promise!’
But he had done plenty of stupid things in his life. Driven too fast, too often. Voted at a rugby selectors’ meeting for a player he knew wasn’t good enough, just to please the chairman, a business client. Lusted after his blonde private secretary Valerie, though he’d stopped short of getting involved. And there’d been a time when he’d foolishly taken a kickback that almost cost him his life and wrecked another man’s: at Stalag VIIA, Moosburg, in April 1945.
That was when the nightmares began. The medics put them down to shell-shock compounded by malnutrition, but he knew it was plain guilt.
‘It’s the Kommandant’s exit stash,’ Kenneth guessed.
He’s planning to sneak away before the Yanks arrive.’
‘Hard to sneak this lot. You can bet they’re watching each other.’
‘They’ll collude and hide it. Plenty of caves in this area.
After we’ve loaded it all up, then what?’
R
EVEREND
G
EORGE AIMS HIS NEXT BROADSIDE AT A CLUSTER
of dressedto-kill women with conspicuous handbags. The widening gap between rich and poor is his crusade and he denounces big spenders with grim zest. ‘Take your plague away from me!’ he commands.
The bishop purses his mouth and tries to look as though his colleague’s righteous rage has nothing to do with him. A number of the old people in the congregation have fallen asleep. Two pigeons are cooing and flirting with each other up in the rafters; a dropping plummets onto the mayor’s orange headwrap in a splish of grey and white. In the organ loft above the VIP pew, a former civic manager nudges his neighbour and points downwards.
‘Her high and mightiness is in the poo, now.’
‘Shit happens, my grandson says.’
‘I still can’t believe she fired us.’
‘Retrenched, they said, as if it made any difference. After twenty-nine years working for eff-all.’
‘I did thirty-seven. Eight years off full retirement.’
‘It’s a bloody disgrace. Where would this country be without us?’
‘And my job goes to a poppie in high heels who hasn’t a clue about municipal systems. They don’t have logical brains.’
‘That’s no lie. Can you believe Kitchen Boy’s son who’s at the university marrying a black girl?’
‘Everything’s changed.’
‘People shift according to how the wind blows. Nobody admits to voting Nat now.’
Leaning closer, the other ex-civil servant says, ‘Kitchen Boy wasn’t a Nat, I know for a fact. He was Torch Commando.’
‘You don’t say?’
Though they keep their voices low, people nearby are listening. Psalms do tend to drone on.
‘I’m telling you. My Pa saw him with his own eyes outside the City Hall one night in 1952. Hundreds of ex-servicemen carrying flaming torches marched down Smith Street and fetched up by the Cenotaph. It was something to do with coloureds voting and they were shouting ‘Down with the Nats’. A lot of people thought it was the end for Dr Malan and them. But the Torch Commando went phut soon after.’
‘Why?’
‘Too liberal. Some of the marchers even said that natives should get the vote. In 1952, I ask you.’
‘Never! They’d only just come down from the trees, man.’
‘Would you like to repeat that?’ The demand comes from a man behind who has leaned forward and speaks into a hairy pink ear. Its owner swings round to find himself inches from the furious face of the CEO of the empowerment consortium that manages the Durban Municipality Retirement Fund.
‘We didn’t mean – not you, sir.
‘Did you mean the kaffirs? The munts? The coons?’
‘No, it’s just – it wasn’t –’
‘Were you talking about the lucky Bantu who were allocated their very own Bantustans?’
The speakers cringe.
‘You apartheid remnants make me sick. We’ve let you get away with too much. I will personally make sure that all retrenchment payouts are scrutinised with a magnifying glass.’
His pew creaks as the CEO leans back in his seat and the woman next to him whispers, ‘Don’t let them get to you, bhuti. They’ve lost, nè?’
‘When you rebuke and chasten man for sin, you make his beauty consume away like a moth fretting a garment,’ thunders Reverend George, glaring up at the organ loft.
Down below in the congregation, a red-faced former major glances sideways at the wife he’d married when she was a pert corporal in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. That’s a fact, he thinks. Her beauty has been consumed. Looks like a blinking tramp. Food dropped down her front. Petticoat hanging out. Hair all over the show. Wouldn’t have brought her today if she hadn’t insisted. Said she wanted to wish J J luck as she waved him goodbye. Said at least there was one decent man left to honour. Getting sarcastic in her old age. Losing her marbles, too. I’ll have to make a plan. Strategise. Manoeuvre her into a home that doesn’t cost too much, and then regroup my forces. Find a reliable batman to do for me. No stickability, women.
He pats and smoothes his tie, oblivious of its gravy stains.
Theodora muses, What’s happened to the moths that used to thump against our khaya windows? Those big golden-brown ones with beautiful cream-and-black markings? My embroidery customers often chose moths over butterflies, maybe because they were our companions at night when our time was our own. Us ‘girls’ in the back rooms, sitting on our beds sewing or writing letters on lined pads to our kids back in the reserves (postal orders enclosed). Gazing often at their photos stuck up on our walls, the black-and-white ones with fancy edges sent by our mothers who were looking after our children.
There seem to be fewer moths these days, though the back rooms are still there, each with a light hanging from the middle of the ceiling and a plug for the kettle to make tea – sometimes even a hot plate to cook on. ‘Staff flats’, the estate agents call them. Have all those servants’ toilets been replaced, the ones with a hole in the floor between two footplates, and a high cistern with a chain and a pull-handle? She can’t conceal a smile at the memory of Madam instructing her on the proper use of a toilet brush and Harpic. Madam had been handier with the toilet brush than she’d expected. She only learnt later that her employer had trained as a nurse in the early days when nursing staff had to scour their patients’ bedpans.
Looking at her, Theodora thinks, Shame, her hair is thinner on top and her scalp is shining through the stiff curls that never change. She must have been at Salon Jolene this morning for a shampoo and set. Will she go back to her lover now, that Englishman who came every few years, always when Master was out? The one who must have written those airmail letters in the emptied sanitary-pad box under her panties in the chest of drawers.
Theodora had seen her from the doorway of the bedroom once as she sat with the box on her lap. When she went in saying, ‘Tea’s ready in the lounge, Madam,’ Shirley tried to hide the box behind a cushion. Theodora saw her in a different way after that, as a woman like her with love secrets rather than just an employer.
In the front pew, Shirley remembers John’s moth-fretted old sweaters which she’d tried to persuade him to put in the charity pile. But he’d clung to them, saying that you must never throw away warm clothing. As well as the burning nightmares, he’d had freezing ones where his feet were in bloody rags, hobbling through snow. Nothing she could say would convince him that it wouldn’t ever happen again.
He’d lie shivering during hot Durban nights with the curtains barely stirring at the windows, and if she touched him, she’d feel his skin as cold as a dead fish on ice. It wasn’t easy living with a man whose terrors never went away. After Vietnam, they gave it the fancy name Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but she knows it as shell-shock.
After one of John’s worst attacks when the children were little, his psychiatrist told her what Jean Amery of the French Resistance had written: Those who are tortured remain tortured.
‘Yes,’ she’d said, knowing it already.
‘The trauma is always there,’ the psychiatrist had gone on. ‘He’ll just have to become more adept at managing it. And time gradually whittles it down.’
What about her? Would she have to manage it too? For how long? But Shirley hadn’t asked those questions of the doctor-god.
John had been a good husband to her, and she his loving wife, but there was anger buried in her love. He was always the one everybody noticed and wanted to talk to, the one who made the decisions about what he called ‘the big things’, while she was fobbed off with the trivial ones. He could walk into a party feeling grumpy, having snapped at her in the car for making him get dressed-up and go out, but when people gathered round him he was all smiles. She was used to fading away from knots of admirers to find other ignored women to talk to until he remembered that she was there. At least Durban waiters were efficient at bringing round drinks, so she was spared having to ask for one at the bar to take the edge off her annoyance.
Now she sits mourning the loss of John, but she also remembers his diminishing of her. Once she’d been somebody, a registered nursing sister, and not a mere handmaiden to a hero.
Mr Rabindranath Pillay had been one of those Durban waiters, spruce in khaki drill set off by a broad red cummerbund with matching turban, though he wasn’t a Sikh. The beachfront hotel knew the attraction of colonial trappings – lush bamboo palms, slow rotating fans, brass tray tables, staff uniformed like a maharajah’s servants – and handsome, assiduous waiters with ready smiles.
He wasn’t a waiter for long: he knew the value of savings and had a large family that worked towards a common goal. Twenty years after starting off as a washer of glasses behind the bar, he had succeeded in buying the hotel and now owns a chain of upmarket inns and coastal resorts.
J J had been one of his earliest suppliers. ‘Best business decision I ever made,’ he often said, ‘backing him when my bosses said they couldn’t by law supply liquor to a non-European hotel owner. “That’s not just any old charra,” I told them, “He’s solid as a rock and more ambitious than Sol Kerzner.” Then I went to Pillay and told him to put in a white manager with a nominal share in the hotel, so they had to go on supplying him. Great guy, Pillay.’