Whitethorn (41 page)

At this remark Mevrou, seated with her arms crossed over her huge breasts, jerked her head backwards and sniffed, and I knew instantly that the clean-clothes business was far from over.

Meneer Prinsloo went on. ‘Now, as you can see, I am not a small man, but in this 450-pound body is not hidden one single jealous bone.' He held up his fist with the small finger extended. ‘Not even one the size of my pinkie.' Which, when you think about it, on him would have been quite a big bone. His hands started to whirl around again. ‘But what we talking about is respect. Respect for other people who have to represent other people in this
dorp
. Government-appointed fathers and mothers that are churchgoers and have a good standing place in this town. But now you see what happens? Respect is thrown out the window like piss in a chamber-pot! Tom Fitzsaxby is going to this so-called wedding and the people who, out of common respect,
should
be invited have to stay home and feed the chickens and read about it in next week's
Zoutpansberg Nuus
!'

Saturday, the wedding morning came, and still Mevrou hadn't called me. After breakfast I summoned up the courage and went to the sick room and knocked at the door.

‘
Ja
, come!' she called.

I turned the big brass door handle we sometimes had to shine and went in. Mevrou was sitting at her table doing her embroidery and she looked up. ‘What do you want,
Voetsek
?'

‘I came about getting my clothes early, Mevrou. Can I have them please and also have a hot shower with some soap?'

‘Oh, so now we going all hoity-toity, hey. It's a good thing all your hair is cut off or next thing you'll be asking me for some Vaseline Hair Tonic and a comb.' She smiled, but it was her crocodile smile. ‘Now we the wedding boy?' Her lips turned down. ‘I don't think so, we can't go around making special clean-clothes rules just because someone has been going tippy-toes around our backs!'

‘I didn't go tippy-toes, Mevrou. I just got asked all of a sudden. It was a big surprise.'

‘We can't have you making friendships all over the place without permission, next thing you speaking to
kaffirs
again, like the last time,' she said, referring to Mattress.

‘They not
kaffirs
, Mevrou,' I said quietly. I'd never realised that you were supposed to ask permission to make a friend.

‘Of course not, I didn't say they were, but we are responsible to the Government. What do you think that high-up inspector who doesn't get his leg of ham this year is going to think when he knows one of our boys is making friends with people who are non-churchgoers, like a certain doctor and a certain police sergeant? Or even people who open their café and sell tobacco on the Lord's Day?'

‘That's because people like to go to the café to have a mixed grill after church,
die boere
, that come in from the farms, it's their Sunday treat,' I replied. Marie had told me that Sunday lunch was the big day for mixed grills with the farmers after church, many booking their places and having permanent chairs they always sat in.

‘You trying to be cheeky, hey?' Mevrou shouted, unable to think of a reply. I was beginning to do this a bit lately, use stuff called logic, but you had to be careful, like now with Mevrou, people don't like it when you've got them stumped for words.

‘No, Mevrou. It's just that if
boeremense
think it's okay to go into the Impala Café after church then they must have asked God, and He would have said it was okay. These are very religious people, you know? The best churchgoers there are, the
Dominee
is always saying that.'

Mevrou sniffed. ‘The mixed grill is the devil's temptation. You can smell it when you passing by that café, and next thing Satan is pulling your arm into that place for ice-cream also. But the coffee, you can't drink it! You'd think a good Afrikaner woman could make a decent cup of coffee for a change.'

I thought getting Mevrou onto other subjects would soften her up a bit. I was wrong, she went back to the clean-clothes business.

‘Meneer Prinsloo has to say yes to a high-up like Doctor Van Heerden, so that's the reason why you got his permission to go to this old people's wedding,
Voetsek
,' she explained.

‘
Dankie,
Mevrou,' I said, thanking her. ‘Can I go get —'

‘Hey, not so fast, man! You can go but you go dirty, you understand?' She laughed. ‘A dirty little
Engelsman
!' She suddenly turned grim-faced. ‘You think I'm frightened of that doctor?
Ek is ‘n Van Schalkwyk
! We Van Schalkwyks are frightened of no-one! Ha! Let him see he can't go around giving me orders. I'm not in his theatre where he's cutting up black baboons any more, he can stick his scalpel up his bum!'

In my head I said, Ouch! ‘Please, Mevrou!' I pleaded. ‘Just this once?'

‘Since when did I start changing my mind,
Voetsek
? With me, no is no, finish and
klaar
!'

I was too old now to try the trick of crying, anyway with her it didn't work.

‘If you've got any pride you won't go, you hear?' she said. ‘A person, even an
Engelsman
, can't go turning up at weddings all dirty and smelly in front of all the nice clean guests.' She stared at me for what seemed a long time. Then she sniffed, then sniffed again. ‘All of a sudden there is a bad smell around here. You can go now,
Voetsek
.' I turned to go with my eyes downcast and there, under her chair hidden behind her sewing basket, was the half-jack of Tolley's five-star brandy.

I must say I didn't usually take much notice of the state of my shirt and shorts. Dirt is dirt and boys get it. By Saturday we were all the same and you don't take any notice. But, because I knew there was the possibility of a refusal to let me get clean clothes, I'd done my best to stay clean all week. But life doesn't work like that. Only that morning when Tinker and I had been taking a walk by the creek, we had been playing, me throwing a stick for her to fetch, and I slipped in the mud and now I'm also dried mud all over the back of my arse and shirt.

So there was now a big predicament. What to do? The answer, of course, was nothing. Without saying you can't go to the wedding, Mevrou and Meneer Prinsloo had found a way to make it impossible for me to attend. But I couldn't just not arrive, that would be the worst bad manners. I had to let Marie know I couldn't come. The arrangement was that I would meet her at the Impala Café at one o'clock and we'd go on to the doctor's house where she was doing Mevrou Booysens' make-up, whatever that was, something to do with weddings, I suppose. So I decided I would walk the four miles into town immediately to tell her I couldn't come, so they would know well before one o'clock and not have to wait around wondering what had happened to me. I whistled for Tinker and we set off.

It must have been around ten o'clock when we arrived at the café, and Marie was in a real tizz. The little daughter of the woman who was doing the icing on the wedding cake had taken sick suddenly the night before and was vomiting all over the place. So, not only was the cake not ready, but also Doctor Van Heerden had been called. But that wasn't the problem because he fixed up the little girl with some
muti
and put her in hospital. Now the woman was shaken and upset and couldn't do all the squiggly bits and the writing on the cake. Marie had to do this, as well as sew some artificial flowers on her mum's to-be-worn-at-the-wedding hat. And suddenly Tinker and me turn up on the doorstep.

‘Tom, you're three hours too early!' she cried, bringing her hands up to cover her mouth. You could see from looking into her eyes that things were not going too well. Then she explained about the cake and the little girl and the hat and she hadn't even ironed her own dress and the toe of one of her high heels she suddenly noticed was scuffed. Boy! When things start going wrong, they go wrong all over the place!

I explained that I couldn't come to the wedding. ‘Now, Tom, things are bad enough already,' she exclaimed. ‘What's this now?'

‘I slipped in the mud and anyway I'm already too dirty, Mevrou wouldn't let me have clean clothes.'

‘Why, that stupid bitch! She's a typical Van Schalkwyk! They wouldn't tell you thank you even if you saved their life.'

I was beginning to realise, except for their legs of honeyed ham, Mevrou's family was not generally liked around the district.

Marie turned to me and said, ‘Off!'

‘Off?' I asked. ‘Must I go now?'

‘Your clothes, man! Hurry up, Tom, I haven't got all day.'

I hesitated. You don't just take off your clothes in a girl's mother's kitchen when you're nearly twelve years old. ‘My clothes? Take them off?' I asked stupidly.

‘
Ag
, man, I am a certified nurse, I have to wash grown men every day when they got nothing on, not even pyjama pants. Now hurry up, I got lots to do and we only got four hours before the wedding.'

I removed my shirt and shorts and cupped my hand over my cock. Marie had disappeared into a bedroom. I forgot to say the house was directly behind the café. She reappeared moments later with a pink kind of woolly-looking dressing-gown. ‘Here, wear this, Tom,' she instructed.

Talk about all business suddenly. Before you knew it there's hot water and bubbles in the sink, and my shirt and shorts are in them and out again, and rinsed and hanging on the washing line in the bright mid-morning sunshine. Even though she was so busy she couldn't scratch her bum, I think she was quite pleased with what happened, she came in from the washing line with this sort of half smile on her pretty face.

‘We'll show that bitch!' she sniffed.

‘What colour are your shoes?' I asked.

‘Black.'

‘Got any black polish?'

‘
Ja
, I think so, look under the sink.'

I found some that was a bit dried up and cracked in the tin. I managed to soften it, and after half an hour or so working on her black high-heel shoes, if I say so myself, no scuff to be seen, even if you looked through a microscope. They were also so bright they would have left Meneer Prinsloo's shiny brown boots in the dust.

The bush
veld
sun dried my clothes in no time flat, and then I had to take a shower and wash my hair and between my toes. By the time I came out of the bathroom there were my clothes already ironed. That Marie was a woman and a half, I can tell you. The cake was iced with all the squiggly bits and the writing in pale blue icing, and little statues of a man in a black suit and a woman in a long white dress all made out of icing sugar standing at the top of the cake. But Marie didn't make them, they came from Patel & Sons who'd sent for it from Pietersburg. Even the artificial flowers were sewn onto a white straw hat so it looked brand-new. Marie's dress was ironed, and it was now one o'clock on the dot. I was surprised to see Sergeant Van Niekerk arrive in the police van and blow the horn.

‘Tell him five minutes, Tom!' Marie shouted from her bedroom.

The police van was all shiny bright, and had white ribbon tied on the mascot on the front and stretched back and tied to the mirrors on either side of the van, but it wasn't the bridal carriage, Marie said, because they were both married before and it wasn't a white wedding, the Doctor and Mevrou Booysens were arriving together in his car. Mevrou Booysens had gone to his house just before I arrived and she was going to get her hat when Marie came to do her make-up.

‘Marie will be here in five minutes,' I said to Sergeant Van Niekerk.

‘Typical woman, hey, Tom, always late,' he replied with a grin.

This didn't seem fair knowing what Marie had just been through. ‘There's been disasters everywhere,' I said in Marie's defence.

‘
Ja
, man, put a woman and a wedding together and you got a disaster on your hands every time!' he laughed.

I was beginning to understand that men seldom see life through a woman's eyes.

Marie came out to the van and, I must say, she looked really pretty with a pink dress and a little white straw hat and white gloves also. She wore lipstick that was very red and she looked like a film star. Sergeant Van Niekerk did a whistle of admiration and Marie smiled. So it was Marie and the sergeant in the front, and me and Tinker in the back of the van that had been scrubbed and cleaned so Tinker didn't even smell the Alsatians, and she just sat quietly on my lap panting happily.

Make-up, it turned out, was putting lipstick and powder on Mevrou Booysens' face with something called ‘rouge for a bit of colour'. The hat looked nice and you'd never have known it was an old one.

To my surprise, Doctor Van Heerden said, ‘You and Tinker are in the dicky-seat, Tom.' So there I was with Tinker at my side arriving at the church with the bride and groom, and Marie and Sergeant Van Niekerk following in the police van. Oh, I forgot to say, the '39 Chevvie also had this white ribbon on the front and a big bow and a kewpie doll tied on the radiator. Marie said she'd also got it from Pietersburg and it was ‘a nice finishing touch'.

Remember I said it was only going to be a small affair. That's not what the
Boerevolk
thought. All the farm folk in the district and lots and lots of the people in the town had come to the wedding service, because you don't have to be invited to go into God's house any time you like. So, instead of a handful of invited guests, the church is full and there's people standing up at the back. Because, you see, Doctor Van Heerden is their doctor and they love him a whole lot because he brought some of their children into the world, and took out their tonsils, and so on and so forth. Afrikaners don't forget a good deed in a hurry.