Spud (4 page)

We had won! The fielder had dropped the catch and the ball had trickled over the boundary line. I hate to admit it, dear diary, but I am a hero!

After handshakes all round, The Guv took us all into the changeroom and recited the Asiancaw speech again. Unfortunately, due to all the wine he was slurring quite badly and forgot some of the lines, making up most of the second half of the speech with swear words. Simon was awarded man of the match. The Guv put his arm around me and said, ‘Destined for greatness, Milton, you have the luck of the devil!’

17:30   I finally discovered that my father had been arrested for indecent exposure. He wouldn’t go into the details but it seems that he was caught naked in the neighbours’ garden at three in the morning. He says it’s all a load of bull and that he’s getting the best damned lawyer in the country to represent him. My mother remained tight-lipped at my father’s explanation and then abruptly got into the car and announced that they were leaving. My father packed away the chairs, shook my hand and got into the car. After half the team pushed the old goat for about two hundred metres it started with a bang and a plume of smoke and roared off down the driveway.

If I had the money I would buy my folks a Mercedes for Christmas.

20:00   Watched Pretty Woman, starring Julia Roberts, in the common room. She is perfectly beautiful. Wickedly envious of Richard Gere. When I leave school I will drive
around looking for prostitutes like Julia.

For the first time this week I didn’t feel worried before dropping off to sleep. Can’t believe I have only been here for six days – it feels like a lifetime.

07:30   Awoken by some obscenely loud chapel bells, which seemed to be ringing from inside my locker. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that the giant bells are within a stone’s throw of my window. To prove the point, Mad Dog shot one of them with his catapult, which struck a horrible note in the middle of Amazing Grace.

08:00   Full school Eucharist. Reverend Bishop rattled off a whole series of Latin verses which sounded something like ‘Bent the speakers, kill the cat’ but like everything in this place I didn’t dare question. I just looked serious and as holy as possible. The chapel is brilliant – like a huge old Gothic cathedral with stained glass windows and an impressive altar which has a sculpture of a man with a sword stabbing a giant lizard on it.

A squeaky fart from somebody in our row interrupted Glockenshpeel’s second New Testament reading from St John’s Gospel. Simon giggled, Fatty blushed, and Rambo elbowed Boggo in the ribs. And then as one they all glared at Vern, who hung his innocent head in shame. Glockenshpeel paused, the chapel fell silent and for an instant it looked like The Glock was about to blow his lid, but after a few deep breaths and a wicked glare, the great man continued with his reading on forgiveness.

On Sundays all the boys have to leave the school for the afternoon (excepting matrics and post-matrics). This is called free bounds. According to Luthuli, free bounds is apparently enforced so that we will explore the surrounding areas. The real reason, says Boggo,
is to give the teachers some peace and quiet and allow them to use the tennis courts. Not sure what to do or where to go. Will I get lost again and never find my way back to school? Think I’ll follow the crowd and see where it leads me.

Spent the afternoon swimming at the dam. A friendly game of water polo with a tennis ball dissolved into an inter-house mud fight. Standing proudly like soldiers from one of Mr Crispo’s old war movies we pelted the first years from Barnes House, driving them back into the reeds. The sight of Rambo, Fatty and Mad Dog leading the charge made the Barnes cowards take flight. Unbelievably, Vern panned one of the enemy in the eye with a mud ball and the wailing wreck had to be carried to the sanatorium. Rambo gave Vern a pat on the back causing my demented cubicle mate to grin like a psychopath.

17:00   Gecko has returned from the sanatorium. His arm has been set in a cast with a sling around his neck. Mad Dog was so relieved to see him that he gave Gecko a friendly thump on the back, which unfortunately propelled him right off his feet and into a nearby locker. Luthuli led the bloody-faced, broken-armed, snivelling Gecko back to the sanatorium.

Mad Dog has packed his trunk and said his last goodbyes. He’s convinced that this night will be his last. With tears in his eyes he gave me his lethal catapult and told me I was his best friend. We shook hands and felt embarrassed.

I dreamed about Julia Roberts.

06:20   Mad Dog is still with us. Rambo told PJ Luthuli that Mad Dog bumped into Gecko by mistake and then made up a convoluted story about a stray rat in
the dormitory. Luthuli accepted the story with some suspicion. Rambo’s theory is ‘If you’re gonna lie – lie big!’ Rambo is now Mad Dog’s best friend and Mad Dog has reclaimed his catapult.

12:00   Eve (Mrs Sparerib) made us do the death scene from William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. She chose me to be the victim who is torn apart by the gang of crazed youths. She gave me an old T-shirt to wear and told the group that the shirt was a metaphor for my body. After being kicked in the ribs and badly roughed up, it soon became apparent that nobody knew what a metaphor was.

Eve told the class to engage with our feminine sides and to play with our chakras. Boggo’s convinced she wants us to bonk each other.

After the class Eve dabbed my wounds with cotton wool and disinfectant. As she leaned over me I could smell her sweet breath and couldn’t help but notice her beautiful breasts peeping out at me. I felt a strange shiver travel through my body – I could swear I nearly wet my pants! As I was leaving her classroom Rambo brushed past me and asked Eve for some reading matter on William Golding. Eve was thrilled and ushered him into her office.

17:15   The first years were called to a meeting with the prefects who told us that our week of grace was now over and that life was about to get tough. They said we now have to ‘slave’ for a prefect (this means perform menial chores and behave like a servant) and that we were now open for initiation from older boys. We were told that respect and honour were to be valued and it was immoral to tell on another boy or to admit to being bullied or initiated. Looks like we are quite literally slaves after all.

I’ve been assigned to a tall stringy prefect called
Grant Edwards (his nickname is Earthworm although I have to call him Mr Edwards). Earthworm is incredibly clever and a first team cricket player.

A horrible looking third year boy called Pike woke us all up and informed us that he was our worst nightmare. He ominously declared first year hunting season open, peed in our rubbish bin and left.

My first day of slaving. Here follows my daily schedule which Earthworm has written out in green, red and blue ink and pasted on his wall:

Earthworm doesn’t speak much, but watches me like a hawk while I’m working in his room. I suspect he could be a psychopath. (Could make a good combination with Vern.)

Vern and Gecko are slaving for Luthuli, Mad Dog and Fatty for Bert, and Simon and Boggo for Julian. Rambo is not happy about slaving for Gavin, the prefect who lives under the stairs, who, Rambo says, smells funny
and spends most of the time breeding cockroaches and blowing into a long pole called a didgeridoo.

Had a dream that my mother was Julia Roberts and then woke up feeling homesick. I had a powerful yearning to run away, jump on the night train, and go home.

06:20   Severely reprimanded by Earthworm for making his bed with the duvet buttons at the top. He says the cold buttons keep him awake and give him a rash.

06:40   The Guv instructed the class that lesbian writers are to be taken with a pinch of salt. He says they are ‘frustrated sex crazed rug-munchers with underarm fur’, and we should therefore dismiss the work of women called Woolf, Renault and Agatha Christie.

Rambo asked him if we should study Shakespeare since he was a pillow-biter. The Guv then accused Rambo of being homophobic, and said that he had nothing against dykes and faggots. He even confessed that he wouldn’t mind giving Martina Navratilova a jolly good rogering.

Discovered that King Henry’s speech was before the battle of Agincourt, which isn’t in Asia but rather in France.

14:30   Choir auditions. Although it’s seen as naff to be in the choir, it’s still regarded as a lesser evil than cadets, which involves marching around the fields in the blazing sun. All of the first years have to try out for the choir. The choir mistress Ms Roberts seemed embarrassingly excited about my voice and placed me in the treble section (also known as the Spud section). Julian is the head chorister and sings lead in the tenor section. He ruffled my hair and told me that he adored my voice and that he’d take me under his wing. (If it
weren’t for the nasty snigger that followed, I might have found his offer quite comforting.)

Simon’s the only other boy from my dormitory in the choir. Fatty came close but I think the fact that he unknowingly drools when he sings counted against him.

23:15   Rambo informed us that he’s in the process of planning a highly illegal night swim in which we’re all invited to join. (For invited, read forced.) After some debate we agreed to listen to his plan. Once he’d casually mentioned the armed security guards and their savage Alsatian guard dogs, Rambo was hit with a flood of dissenters, led by Boggo Greenstein and myself. Order was finally restored when Rambo threatened to murder anybody being cowardly. (Needless to say we all cowardly backed down.) Rambo’s theory was that if we all took the plunge then there was unity in numbers – and nobody left to rat on us. Friday has been declared D-Day.

I watched Vern for ages as he chatted to his toiletries. It seems that each item in his toiletry bag has a different name. I pretended to be sleeping but couldn’t help listening in on his nutty chatter. Am I the only person that knows he’s mad? Am I mad for watching him? After what seemed like hours he bade all his toiletries goodnight, switched off his torch and went to sleep.

11:30   Witnessed my first beating during Afrikaans class. Fatty’s non-stop farting finally drove Mr van Vuuren over the edge and he gave him a furious beating of two lashes with a sawn-off hockey stick in front of the class. I found the whole experience shocking. Fatty was wickedly brave and took the beating without so much as flinching. This angered Van Vuuren even more, so he gave Fatty detention and the whole class extra homework.

Spent the afternoon reading Waiting for Godot. It’s a play about two tramps living in a ditch and waiting for a guy called Godot – who never comes. They meet a clown called Pozzo and his slave, Lucky, who come and go, then come back again, eventually leaving the tramps to their never-ending wait. The play is wickedly odd. (Irish?) I have no idea why The Guv suggested I read it.

A fight broke out as Pike (hiding in the rafters of our dormitory) spat on Simon’s head while he was listening to his walkman. Simon flew at the miserable Pike and bit his arm; Pike pulled out a Swiss army knife and tried to stab Simon in the leg. Luthuli broke up the fight and gave both of them three sessions of hard labour (washing Sparerib’s car and chopping firewood).

22:00   Final preparations and planning for the night swim. Boggo reckons we’ll receive four lashes each if we get caught. (Apparently Sparerib beats like a sadist. No doubt forever avenging his tragic encounter with the lion.) Vern looked terrified and began pulling out his hair by the clumpful.

05:30   Woke up to find Vern changing his sheets again – I pretended to be sleeping. I’ve decided to be nice to Vern. (My uncle Aubrey once told me to always stay on the right side of demented people.)

08:00   Discovered a small column in the paper about my father’s court appearance. I cut it out (and out of all the papers in the day room) and set fire to them in the prefects’ room’s toaster. Here follows the article which I copied before burning:

Magistrates Court, Durban.
Peter Edward Milton appeared in court today on a
charge of indecent exposure. He was not asked to plead and the case was postponed until March 6th. Milton was found naked on a neighbour’s property. Justice Leighton has ordered Milton to an undisclosed facility for a psychiatric evaluation.

Great. My father’s not only a sicko but a nutter as well! Why do I feel like I’m surrounded by dementia? They say the first sign of madness is thinking lunatics surround you… (Am very troubled.)

Think I may have destroyed the prefects’ toaster.

11:00   Haven’t been dropped from the cricket team. Rambo’s been included for the injured Steven George.

Read Waiting for Godot again and it made more sense. I actually found it quite amusing. Perhaps I’m falling into madness! (Make a mental note to keep checking if I’m talking to myself…)

Gecko’s back from the sanatorium again. He looked his usual self (including cast, sling, plastered face and unhealthy colour). I noticed a terror in his eyes when an overly concerned Mad Dog approached him to offer another round of apologies. Gecko seemed pleased to see me again and told me about his adventures in numerous hospitals, clinics and sanatoriums.