Spud (37 page)

I told Gecko about the dream over breakfast but I was unfortunately overheard by Boggo, who gave me his own unique interpretation of it. Needless to say it involved rape, foot fetishes and the loss of Amanda’s virginity. Boggo then leaned in maliciously and said, Although I heard Emberton popped her virginity last night.’

The mere idea of it was impossible. She had never once mentioned Emberton, nor had I seen her with him before. Still I found it difficult to get the idea of it out of my mind.

The girls have now officially moved into various teachers’ homes and will be joining us for classes each day. During English, Christine made a determined effort to sit next to me, but Gecko swiftly cut her off and plonked himself down in his chair. He then winked at me and said, ‘Just doing my job, Spuddy’

English was sheer comedy. Eight girls elected to take The Guv’s class and half of them nearly fell off their chairs with his first volley of foul swearing. We studied the Andrew Marvell poem To His Coy Mistress, in which the poet is trying to get his girlfriend to have sex with him. The Guv made Angela (small, shy and mousy) read the poem out loud. The poor girl looked like an overripe tomato, especially after Rambo and Boggo started chortling in the back row. The Guv hurled a blackboard duster at Boggo and then tried to strangle Rambo with his tie. The girls looked terrified – welcome to the jungle!

It’s official. Emberton and Amanda are an item. I saw them holding hands in the quad on my way back to the house after lunch. I ducked behind a pillar before she could notice me. (There is no way she was going to see me in pain.) I ran back to the dormitory and tried to read a cricket magazine but I couldn’t concentrate. I decided to spend the afternoon in bed – a session with Dr Zoo is too much for this heartbroken fourteen-year-old to handle right now.

16:30   Mom phoned in a panic to say that Dad is considering quitting the dry-cleaners and going into illegal alcohol full time. He now gets fifty cents a bottle (Innocence has hiked the price up to R1.50). Dad’s bought Innocence a huge cauldron and is investigating the possibility of plastic bottles, which will raise the profit margin. Mom’s terrified Dad will be arrested again.

Two ridiculous girls from the London Town chorus have elected to take PE. What kind of masochist elects to see Mongrel at 06:40 on a Wednesday morning? Today’s lesson was shot-put and just because two girls had rocked up, Mongrel wasn’t about to change his plans. To see Elizabeth Smith and Jenny Sparrow throwing a 5 kilogram lump of lead around was worth getting up for. To see them both hurling it further than Gecko was priceless.

22:00   After rehearsal, Christine and Jenny Sparrow asked me to walk them back to Mr van Vuuren’s house where they are both staying. Somewhere along the walk Jenny disappeared and Christine stopped me at Cartwright’s gate and kissed me. I didn’t object and
surrendered my tongue for dishwashing. The more I see Christine, the more I like Amanda. I walked back to the house shaking my head and wondering what Amanda and Emberton were up to right now. Jealousy is a terrible disease. At least I know for certain that Christine isn’t the girl of my dreams and that I won’t let her kiss me again.

19:30   Our first rehearsal with the full stage set was a complete disaster. Mrs Lennox (playing the part of widow Corney) stepped back off a platform and fell. She had to be stretchered to the sanatorium with a suspected broken ankle. Viking was so enraged that he kicked one of the chairs in the auditorium and spent the rest of the rehearsal limping around in a foul mood. He was later seen limping off in the general direction of the san.

The set itself is fairly impressive, with a high platform that is able to lift up and down. Viking reckons that with some intelligent lighting the platform will look like Tower Bridge in London. Unless it’s genius lighting I can’t see a two metre high block of wood being confused with one of the world’s great bridges.

Starting to get nervous. In less than two weeks I’ll be standing onstage and performing to 500 people. The realisation that after months of work it’s all coming down to one single moment is terrifying!

Have a gum boil. Wondering if Christine passed on some terrible mouth disease. From now on I’ll carry my toothpaste in my pencil case as a precaution against bad breath. Still no sign of Amanda and Emberton.

14:00   Sitting in the hairdresser reading ladies’ magazines with my curly locks covered in blue gunk. I’m
trying my best to blend in but it’s a little difficult to when you are a fourteen-year-old boy in full school uniform with permed hair getting blond highlights thrown in for good measure. A Lincoln schoolboy came in with his mother and smirked when he saw me. No doubt he thought I was a fag.

The end result, I think, is slightly less catastrophic than I thought. I now look a bit more like a girl – but a pretty girl at least. Unfortunately, I also look far more like a sheep than I did before. I avoided dinner and asked Gecko to bring me a peanut butter sandwich instead. The first person I saw when coming out of the house was Julian, whose jaw dropped. He then looked me up and down like a hamburger and said, ‘Oh, hello, Oily!’ Unfortunately, things got worse and soon the whole house was taking turns to look me up and down before bleating loudly and then sniggering into their prep books.

19:30   The girls crowded around to examine my hair. There were all sorts of questions about roots, conditioners, moisturisers and colour codes that I was completely unable to answer, but I loved being the centre of attention. Viking examined me under bright lights in the dressing room. After some time he said, ‘Splendid,’ thumped me on the back and screamed at Gecko for his cup of coffee

Mrs Lennox has fractured her ankle. Viking has cracked a bone in his heel. Both have vowed to fight on and see this monstrosity through to its end.

Sparerib strode into the theatre during our morning run-through and whispered something to Viking. Viking nodded seriously and then Sparerib left. Viking then screamed in agony, brought the rehearsal to a stop and
ordered me back to the house. Luthuli was waiting for me when I arrived and told me to wait by the telephone. My heart was thumping. I knew by all the expressions that something was wrong – badly wrong. I could taste the bile rise in my throat. I ran to the toilet and vomited. While I was vomiting the telephone rang. I spat and ran back to the phone booth, saliva still dribbling down my chin. It was Mom. She was safe but her voice sounded sad. In the background I could hear whistling. Dad was safe. I started breathing again. Through her sobs I worked out that Wombat had had a stroke overnight and that things looked bad. I tried to hide the relief in my voice but it was useless. They were safe, that’s all that counted. Mom said she would phone later and keep me updated.

I went back to the bathroom. My face was white and my eyes were red. Somebody had left his toiletry bag on the basin. I stole some toothpaste and squeezed a finger-full into my mouth. As I walked back to the theatre I sang the song that Dad was whistling in the background. It was from The Wizard of Oz. The song – Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!

Back at the theatre. Viking had told the cast that my grandmother was on the verge of death. When I returned I was swamped with emotional hugs from various girls and a few thumps on the back from the guys. I got straight back into it, singing my solo Where Is Love to tumultuous applause. (Hold thumbs I get that in a fortnight.)

17:00   No change in Wombat’s condition.

For the umpteenth time this year, I’m pleased to announce that Vern is back. At a first glance, he looks well. His hair has grown back a bit and his eyes look clear and less demented. He seemed very pleased to see
me and shook my hand formally, saying, ‘How do you do?’ like a programmed robot.

Luthuli has asked us to be nice to Vern for as long as we can. He even bribed us by saying that if Vern hasn’t flipped out by the end of term we can all have tea and snackwiches in the prefects’ room. Fatty got so excited he offered to make Rain Man’s bed and gave Roger a stick of biltong.

Wombat still hanging on.

Boggo has smelled blood. With great glee he informed me that he saw Emberton and Amanda in a clinch under a tree near the dam. He also told me that the giant first team rugby prop Richard Moolman is infatuated with Christine, who has told him that she’s in love with me. Boggo reckons it’s only a matter of hours until I’m assassinated. (Apparently, Moolman was nearly expelled two years ago for sticking a shampoo bottle up a first year’s bum.)

20:00   Debra Whittaker (ironically playing a London prostitute) has been sent home. She was discovered in Ben Cotterel’s room in her underwear. Cotterel has been de-prefected and beaten six. Viking gave the cast a savage speech about discipline before shouting, ‘From the top with gusto!’ and hobbling back into the auditorium with his cigar, coffee and clipboard. Every day the plot thickens.

Fatty reckons that Geoff Lawson is suicidal because of Amanda and Emberton. I laughed loudly – misery loves company.

Wombat no worse than yesterday.

Christine was playing footsie footsie with me during Lennox’s history class on the Great Trek. The Afrikaners celebrate the Trek as a cornerstone of their civilisation and the great Voortrekker monument was built in memory of these brave Boers who travelled across the wild and savage country to get away from the English. Because the Afrikaners run the country we are expected to get all excited about oxwagons and ‘the volk’. If you ask me, I find the messages scratched into the toilet doors a far better read. Lennox reckons that the truth of it is that many of these trekkers were actually scaly buggers on the run from the law and took the break and gapped it across the great Karoo! Although he said if we want to pass our final exams and one day get a matric then it would be best not to mention this. Unfortunately, I missed half the lesson while trying to avoid Christine who seems to have more legs than an octopus.

14:30   Decided that I couldn’t miss Dr Zoo twice in a row. He sent a letter to Sparerib, telling him that I had missed last week’s session. I told him about Wombat and her stroke (of bad luck). He then rabbited on for ages about grandmothers filling a crucial role in a boy’s development. I switched off my engines and allowed his whistled words to float over my head while I thought about standing ovations, cheering crowds and signing autographs for first team rugby players.

Great news! Because of late night rehearsals, the entire cast and crew has been excused from first lesson every day. No more Mongrel and his torturous PE for two weeks!

Dad called and sounded very down and depressed. He reckons Wombat’s condition has improved and that it looks like she’s gonna pull through. I tried to cheer
him up by saying that she’s probably on her last legs and can’t have too many years left. He snorted and said something about Wombat outliving us all. Felt wickedly guilty when I hung up. Hope my grandchildren don’t talk about me like that when I’m a Wombat.

Viking stopped us in the middle of a run-through and told Kojak that the band sounded like an inbred cat being dismembered by Cape hunting dogs. Kojak didn’t take this lying down and said it was impossible for the band to play when the actors had no feel for pitch and tempo. Rehearsal was temporarily suspended while the heavyweights slugged it out in the theatre green room. After half an hour they returned all smiles and the rehearsal continued with the band sounding exactly as it did before the interruption.

During the break I couldn’t help but notice Amanda looking terribly distressed. I asked her if she was okay; she squeezed my hand and said she was fine. My hand tingled for half an hour and I acted like a dynamo for the rest of the evening. My temporary elation was destroyed after the rehearsal when I saw Emberton hanging around the stage door with an armful of flowers. I’m beginning to despise this idiot – part of me wishes that he had been expelled for sodomising The dock’s car with a banana.

14:30   Despite the thick mist and the chilly wind, Gecko and I scuttled up the hill to Hell’s View. We had important things on our minds and hardly noticed the steep climb to our lookout. In fact, Gecko’s health has been so good of late that he didn’t even miss a breath. His skin is now a healthier yellow beige colour (instead of its usual transparent milky white). When I congratulated him on his health, he beamed broadly and announced that he hadn’t been to the sanatorium
all term and hadn’t vomited in over two weeks. He’s vowed that he will never take another pill again in his life. He reckons whenever he takes pills and medicine he gets sick.

Gecko says I’m wasting my time on Amanda. I told him that I’m in love with her and dream about her all the time. (The problem with my dreams is that she always ends up kissing me and then when I wake up I’m gutted by the reality.) Dr Gecko shook his head, whistled to himself and then prescribed me a double strength sleeping pill.

19:00   Our first rehearsal in full costume. I begin looking like a girl in rags in the first act to resembling a complete fruitbat in the second. My second act costume is a green suit and something called a ruff or a fluff around my neck. Viking assured me that’s what aristocratic boys would have worn in that time.

More bad news is that Dodge is losing his voice. At present he is speaking/singing in a husky groan. Viking is a wreck.

Amanda has split up with Emberton. Boggo was spreading the news at breakfast. Apparently, Emberton is suicidal and has permission to go home for the weekend. To say that I’m bouncing off the walls is an understatement.

Dodge’s voice is now a heavy whisper.