The Power of One (58 page)

It was clever stuff. Every boy believed he knew at least three certainties and so had an excellent chance to share in the thirty-pound pot. Most punters couldn't resist doubling their bets for a crack at the big money, one hundred pounds if there was only one winner and a guaranteed twenty quid if there were more. Many of the kids, in particular day boys, put ten shillings and a pound on in an effort to get as many combinations right as possible. Even in this haven for little rich boys, a hundred quid represented a fortune. There wasn't a kid in the school who didn't have at least two bets going.

We set up office in the main school bogs for an hour before school and at lunch break every day for a week before the final selection of Sinjun's People. The queue outside the toilet stretched well into the playground, and anyone observing it must have wondered whether an outbreak of the runs had struck the school.

Morrie took the money while I acted as pencil man, who is the guy who writes down the bets. Tension was high on the last day before the morning assembly when Sinjun's People were to be announced. The excitement had helped a little to quell my fears for us both. Morrie, by his own admission, considered himself a doubtful candidate. “Shit, Peekay, it's obvious, I'm too much of a gunslinger and not enough of a poet to please Singe ‘n' Burn.” Privately I agreed; his wheeler-dealer reputation and my boxing preference counted heavily against us. In Morrie's case the betting showed this; not once did his name appear in the one-two combination, whereas mine did so frequently.

We'd taken bets totaling a staggering 190 pounds; win or lose, we'd make a profit of sixty quid. We'd worked out the odds on someone taking out Levy's Remarkable Multiple of One Hundred and they were small but certainly not impossible, whereas we knew we'd have several winners in the thirty-pound pot. A perfect scam and good business to boot. A guaranteed profit, a number of satisfied winners, and the chance to make a huge profit in the event of Levy's Remarkable Multiple of One Hundred not having to pay out. You had to hand it to Morrie, it was copybook stuff.

I could hear my heart beating furiously as I stood next to Morrie in headmaster's assembly the following morning. The hymn chosen before morning prayer was “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” a school favorite, although today it seemed to go on for about twenty minutes. The prayer that followed was a long-winded affair about humility in honor and fortitude in times of disappointment. It had obviously been carefully chosen by Singe ‘n' Burn for the occasion. Then followed a host of trivial school housekeeping notes, including an admonition to stay away from the swimming pool, which was being emptied for repainting over the Easter break, and an aside about more boys signing up for their beginner's lifesaving certificate.

At last Singe ‘n' Burn cleared his throat for the major business of the day. Standing on the platform in a black gown with purple lining, he had removed his mortarboard so that the light caught his snowy white hair. At a time when short back and sides was the national norm, his hair fell almost to his shoulders, and a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles sat on the end of his long, impressive nose. St. John Burnham, M.A. (Oxon) was the most headmasterly-looking headmaster I have ever seen, better even than anything out of a Billy Bunter comic.

The entire school was deadly quiet. There wasn't a boy present who didn't have money resting on the outcome of the next few minutes. Singe ‘n' Burn cleared his throat and began.

“Each year the school council allows me a very special personal indulgence. I am allowed to choose from the third form those half dozen boys who will become Sinjun's People.” He paused to look up into the stained glass windows at the rear of the hall, as though asking for divine guidance. “Now, you will all know that I do not take this task lightly. It is, after all, as much a sadness as it is a celebration, for while six are to be chosen, nine who have made it to the finals will be asked to step aside. It is these nine good men and true who make my task an almost impossible one. After all, who is to say I'm right? I feel sure someone else, choosing in my place, might select six boys equally equipped and talented, though different to those I have chosen. All the candidates this year are exceptional young men, all deserve to be included, but alas, there are only six places. My congratulations to you all and a word of solace for those of you who do not become Sinjun's People.” He paused and directed our attention to the 1926 scroll of honor painted in gold leaf on a panel in the center left-hand side of the hall. “The name at the very top of that 1926 scroll of honor belongs to the present South African High Commissioner to London, a brilliant diplomat and scholar and the youngest man ever to hold this position. I shouldn't be at all surprised if someday he becomes our prime minister.” He paused again to gain maximum effect for the words to follow. “This brilliant boy was not elected in his day to be among Sinjun's People.” His eyes seemed to travel across each row as he looked down at us over the tops of his spectacles. “I had intended to read Rudyard Kipling's great poem Tf to you at this juncture but was reminded that it is a part of your English curriculum this term and therefore well known to you all. I shall spare you a repeat performance. Let me conclude by saying, in my experience the glittering prizes in life come more to those who persevere despite setback and disappointment than they do to the exceptionally gifted who, with the confidence of the talents bestowed upon them, often pursue the tasks leading to success with less determination.” He paused, and from inside his gown he produced a sheet of paper.

“The following boys from the third form have been chosen to be Sinjun's People for the remainder of their tenure at the Prince of Wales School. My congratulations to you all.” He glanced down at the piece of paper he was holding and commenced to read: “Levy M., Lyell H.R., Quigley B.J., Minnaar

J.R “I had punched Morrie in the ribs when his name came

up, but now I could feel my face burning, and a huge lump grew in my throat. I was sure I would suffocate. “Eliastam P.J.” The head paused to clear his throat and then looked up over the assembled boys. Time hung like cobwebs in the air, and the paper he'd been holding seemed etched like a white tombstone floating in space.

“And Peekay,” he said finally.

I felt weak in the legs, and it took all my strength of will not to start crying on the spot. I had made it. I was the sixth part of Sinjun's People.

Atherton, Cunning-Spider, Pissy Johnson, Morrie, and I had celebrated by feasting on Perk's pies, cream buns, and Pepsi-Cola all that afternoon before Atherton, Cunning-Spider, and Pissy Johnson had to leave for four o'clock roll call. Sinjun's People were not required to attend roll call and as they left, playfully cursing us, we looked suitably upset, though secretly we felt enormously privileged.

Nine punters had won on the first bet, sharing the thirty-pound pot among them. There were no winners on the second bet. Morrie himself had been the wild card, and while some of the punters might have selected him for inclusion in their first bet, none had thought to place him first or second in Levy's Remarkable Multiple of One Hundred. The fact that my name had appeared most often in either the first or second slot meant that most of the bets were not even close. We had cleared 160 pounds on the deal.

After the others had left for roll call, I turned to Morrie. “Okay, smartarse, how did you do it?” I said, delicately licking the excess cream squirting from the side of my last cream bun.

“How did I do what?” Morrie said dreamily, upending a Pepsi into his mouth in an attempt to hid his grin.

“You know what I'm talking about! You knew from the betting that your chances of being selected in the number one spot were considered zero. Even I wouldn't have put you there. With you in the number one spot, we had to win the big money. How did you do it?”

He removed the Pepsi from his mouth and placed it on the floor beside him. “It was partly luck, but mostly my usual good judgment,” he said in his unassuming way.

“Christ, you're a humble bastard, Levy! Okay, tell me the good judgment part first.”

“Well, I guess we should have been happy with a sixty-quid profit, with a reasonable chance of winning the big money as well. But there was still an element of luck involved. I had to somehow work out a way whereby the betting was completely honest, but the punter's chance of winning was cut down and ours increased.”

“You greedy bugger, Levy.”

“No, not greedy. I just don't like to gamble, but I do like to win, and to win you have to make the odds negligible. Now, you take the horses. There are roughly fifteen horses in a race, and over the whole of last year I analyzed the results of every race run at Turfontein race course. In that entire time the first and second favorites won in correct sequence one hundred and four times in eight hundred and thirty-two races. That means the bookmaker has eight chances of winning to one of losing. That's good, but not good enough.”

“Yeah, sure, but we had sixty quid marked off for a profit anyway. That's a damn good week's work.”

“I know, but the whole thing lacked intellectual excitement. It didn't depend on my wits.”

“Morrie, you can't have it both ways. You want a totally safe scam, but you still want to get an intellectual kick from winning.”

“That's what I've told you before. With a Jew, making money for its own sake is a matter of intellectual survival.”

“Okay, I accept that. So tell me, man, how did you fix it?”

“Fix it!” Morrie exploded. “Are you calling me a cheat?”

Morrie's outburst was totally unexpected, and I was shocked. “For Chrissake, Morrie, you know what I mean,” I said quickly, trying to hide my embarrassment.

Morrie sighed. “In the end it's always the same, the Gentile believes the dirty Jew is cheating. That's right, isn't it?”

“Bullshit, Morrie! That's not what I meant. I'm truly sorry. You know how I feel about you.”

Morrie held my gaze for a long time. “Yeah, I do,” he said finally, giving me a grin, “but thanks for saying it anyway.”

“Well, go on,” I said, greatly relieved and anxious to leave the incident and continue the conversation.

Morrie continued, “It does rather seem like a fix, doesn't it? But all I did was tamper a little with human nature.”

“You'll have to explain that.”

“Well, when you told me about your interview with Singe ‘n' Burn—how he had questioned you about your boxing—”

“I don't understand. What had that to do with setting up the Multiple of One Hundred bet?”

“Well, you know my theory of a winner. Find one winner, and you can build everything around him. Well, you've always been my one winner, and with the strong likelihood of your placing in the number one slot for Sinjun's People, Levy's Remarkable Multiple of One Hundred would have been much too risky. It meant the punter had only to get one more correct name to win.”

“But I told you the boxing issue could have eliminated me all together.”

“Not a chance, old buddy! There was never any chance that you wouldn't be chosen, but I was willing to bet that Singe ‘n' Burn wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to give you your first lesson.”

“My first lesson??”

“Christ, Peekay, sometimes you're thick. Singe ‘n' Burn is a self-confessed liberal thinker, deeply suspicious of the obsessive personality. That's the whole point of his Renaissance man; moderation in all things, even in moderation. He was signaling his disapproval by placing you in sixth possie.”

“Jesus, Morrie, you took the trouble to think all that out?”

“Thinking is never any trouble. You should try it sometime.” He grinned suddenly. “Besides, I might have been wrong. Singe ‘n' Burn might have just dropped you one slot and you'd still be up there in one of the top two positions. I had to put us completely out of danger. I had to get myself chosen—not just chosen, but elected to the number one slot. You see, even if you were in the number two position and as a rank outsider, a noncontender, I was in the number one slot, that would make it impossible for anyone to get a correct sequence. Nobody in his right mind would combine a hundred-to-one shot with a certainty when both places counted together for the win.”

“You've got me. How the hell did you make it happen?”

“Well, I'd figured out how Singe ‘n' Burn was going to react with you, and when you know the man you know the thought process. The opposite to an obsessive personality, in this case yours about boxing, is a well-adjusted one. The epitome of a well-adjusted personality is modesty and a willingness to sacrifice your own ambition for the greater good of the whole. What was it that Christ said? ‘No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for a friend!'” Morrie gave a little laugh. “So when Singe ‘n' Burn discovered personal sacrifice together with generosity of spirit to be a fundamental part of my character, I knew I had the number one possie in the bag.”

“And just how did you prove this to him? I mean, those two personality traits are not exactly obvious in you,” I added with a
tinge
of sarcasm.

Morrie turned to me, an embarrassed look on his face. “I don't think you're going to like this next bit much. We were talking about the importance of friendship, and I brought up my friendship with you. Singe ‘n' Burn then asked me about your obsession with boxing.” He paused. “Are you sure you want me to go on?”