Spud (6 page)

Reverend Bishop came out firing with a passionate sermon about discovering the Lord and opening the door when He came knocking. He then called on Fatty to relate the story of his miraculous conversion. The entire school watched the mortified Fatty mumble on about seeing Jesus and taking off his clothes and speaking in tongues. He read off a piece of paper and didn’t look up once. (Even when Mad Dog guffawed and tried to pretend it was a sneeze.) After Fatty finished his mumbling, Reverend Bishop embraced him with tears in his eyes. We then prayed to thank God for His miracle. I noticed Glockenshpeel didn’t close his eyes.

23:10   Rain Man has fallen asleep with a khaki sock in his mouth. Hope it is a clean one.

06:15   Entered the showers to find Julian examining Gecko’s bum. Bert and Julian shared a wink and then Julian ordered Gecko back to the sanatorium immediately. Gecko’s wound has gone septic and he’s
still convinced it’s a dog bite. Rambo warned him not to tell the sanatorium sister that he was bitten by one of the guard dogs and told him to say it was a bite he got in the holidays.

06:30   Rain Man wasn’t at roll-call. His bed was made but there’s no sign of him.

08:00   Word has spread of Rain Man’s disappearance. Everybody has their own story. Mad Dog reckons he’s hiding somewhere in the hills. Rambo says he could be under the house and Simon is convinced that he’s an alien and never really existed in the first place.

Boggo played a nasty trick on Mr Crispo during our double history lesson. After watching the video of Dunkirk again, Boggo asked the kindly old fossil a question really loudly. Crispo immediately adjusted his hearing aid, but Boggo then spoke in a soft whisper. Rambo joined Boggo in the ruse, which eventually turned the lesson into a complete farce. Poor Crispo became so upset that he ripped out his hearing aid, threw it on the floor and jumped on it in a fit of blind rage. (Deaf rage?) He then dismissed us sadly. Once again I could see his eyes grow watery as he watched us trudge out of his classroom.

After English, I returned Waiting for Godot to The Guv and told him how much I liked the play. He was thrilled that I loved it and we got into a long conversation about the themes and characters. He asked me who I thought the mystical Godot character was. I told him I reckoned he was a slave trader.

His theory is that Godot is actually God, and that the entire play is about the modern man who has gone spiritually bankrupt and destitute. According to The Guv human beings are forever waiting for a spiritual entity to give some meaning to their lives. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about God or other things like ghosts
and spirits but I didn’t have the guts to ask because he might have laughed at me and called me a cretin. He called this double meaning allagree and told me to write the word down and use it as often as possible.

Our discussion went on for ages only for me to realise that I had completely missed lunch. The Guv invited me back to his house where his wife (a sweet lady, with blue eyes and warm smile) had made roast lamb. The Guv insisted that I have half a glass of wine, saying it’s not every day he has the great John Milton round for lunch! By the time I’d finished my half glass, The Guv was already onto his second bottle of Boschendal Cabernet Sauvignon 1987 and was reciting Shakespeare’s sonnets with his terrified cat (Ophelia) clinging to his cardigan.

After his second bottle of wine he led me to his study, which was covered wall to wall with books. He gave me Catcher in the Rye by an American called JD Salinger, and said he wanted it finished within the week. He made me rinse my mouth out with toothpaste before leaving and ordered me not to tell anybody about the wine. I walked back to school, holding my book close to my chest and trying not to breathe.

Earthworm threatened me with punishment for neglecting my afternoon duties.

18:00   Still no sign of Rain Man. Sparerib has called his mother. (According to Boggo his father died when he was young – which could explain why he’s demented.)

20:00   Sparerib called us one by one into his office to ask us questions about Rain Man. I told him that he was quiet and a bit weird and that he was eating a sock last night, but that I didn’t think he was on the verge of a breakdown (which is a lie, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Vern is plain demented). He asked me if Vern was ever bullied emotionally or physically. I shook
my head. (Another lie. This place is turning me into a complete fraud!)

Pike paid his nightly visit and told us we were to blame for the disappearance of Rain Man. He reckoned that Rain Man had committed suicide and that his ghost would return to the dormitory for vengeance. He spat a huge greeny onto the wall and then left making eerie ghost noises.

I have survived January. One month down – only ten to go!

Still no sign of Rain Man. Sparerib seems to spend all his time in meetings with Luthuli and Glockenshpeel. Reverend Bishop even held a prayer session in the crypt for my missing cubicle mate. We all felt obliged to attend – which predictably moved the Reverend to tears. He was especially happy to see Fatty, and invited him to read from the Bible.

After spending ages poring over the gigantic library dictionary, I finally discovered that The Guv’s word is spelt ‘allegory’. It means a parable, symbol or metaphor.

Julian informed us at lights out that Gecko has had a large stone removed from his bum at Greys Hospital in Pietermaritzburg. He asked us to keep Gecko’s bum in mind, adding that it was never far from his own thoughts. With a chuckle he flicked off the light switch and skipped away singing ABBAs Gimme Gimme Gimme a Man after Midnight.

Still no news of Rain Man. The school is split on the issue. Half the boys believe Pike and say he’s dead. The other half believes Simon who says he’s an alien and never existed in the first place. I reckon he jumped the
night train and headed towards home, but with Rain Man I have learned to expect the unexpected.

The entire school was ordered to report to our common rooms because the new president, FW de Klerk, was delivering his opening of parliament speech. The bald Afrikaner told the country that he’s going to change South Africa and dismantle apartheid. With one flick of his podgy finger he unbanned the African National Congress and declared that he would free Nelson Mandela. Mostly for the white kids staring at the TV this didn’t seem to matter much, but judging by the faces of the four black boys, including our head of house Luthuli, this was something huge and incredible. After the speech groups of older boys stood outside the house, with hands in pockets, deep in conversation about the speech. Gavin, the prefect under the stairs, looked angry and spoke quietly to Greg Anderson while absentmindedly stroking Barry, his pet frog. Luthuli and the other black boys marched across the quad as a group, chatting excitedly to each other. A hot wind blew papers and leaves around the cloisters and everything seemed sticky and on edge.

15:00   Played a practice match against the under 15As. I took four wickets with some sneaky legspin bowling. The under 15A coach is none other than Sparerib, who seemed mightily impressed with my display. He was less impressed with my batting. (I was bowled first ball, and this time no no-ball to save me.) We crashed to 56 all out with Simon not out on 41. The Guv told us we had tried our best but lost to a better and older team. He warned us that if we lost to Drake College on Saturday, we’d all be dropped and decapitated.

Rushed through my homework so that I could get back to Catcher in the Rye. It’s a great book about a guy who doesn’t fit in and runs away from school. Makes me think about Rain Man. I wonder where he is right
now, and whether he’s happier there than he was here. It could be so easy to be a Holden Cauffield – to run away and venture out into the great beyond. My wild imaginings were brought to a screeching halt by Bert challenging Rambo to an arm wrestle. Rambo won, and an irate Bert ordered him to write a five thousand-word essay on respect.

Glockenshpeel called an emergency school assembly in the Great Hall. Expecting some tragic news of Rain Man, we trudged into the hall fearing the worst. Instead our headmaster unleashed a tirade about vandalism and destruction of property. He looked wickedly savage as he studied the rows of faces in front of him. Nobody could meet his gaze, which made us all look as guilty as hell. He roared on about how someone had stuck a banana in the exhaust pipe of his Toyota Cressida and when he had switched on his car, the engine exploded. I stared at the floor for fear of catching somebody’s eye and bursting into fits of laughter. The staff seated behind him looked grim, although I could detect a hint of a smile on the smacker of The Guv who was as desperate to crack up as we all were.

Glockenshpeel demanded that the vandal raise his hand immediately and take his punishment like a man. Surely nobody in his right mind would raise his hand in the face of this raging madman. A long silence followed as everybody looked around the hall for the culprit. No confession was forthcoming so the enraged Glockenshpeel sat in a chair and said we would all wait in the hall until the criminal came forward.

09:00   Still no sign of the vandal. The school sat in awkward silence except for The Guv who cheerfully unrolled the morning newspaper. Great news is that
we’ve already missed twenty minutes of Psycho’s double maths class.

09:45   Still waiting. Very jealous of The Guv’s newspaper. Wished I had Catcher with me. Sixty-five minutes of maths gone. If the criminal could just hold out for another forty-five minutes…

10:06   A small boy near the front tentatively raised his hand. Four hundred boys, fifty teachers and Glockenshpeel fastened their eyes on the terrified youngster. Glockenshpeel was out of his seat. ‘Yes?’

The poor boy gulped and then said in a thin voice, ‘Please, sir, I need the toilet.’ Glockenshpeel’s eyes narrowed and without so much as a word he picked up his papers and stormed out of the hall! The teachers followed behind, and so the great siege was broken. The hero’s name was Ben Thomas, a first year in Woodall house, nickname Tadpole.

15:00   Sparerib ordered us to stay in our dormitory because the police were coming to investigate the disappearance of Rain Man. As soon as he’d left, Mad Dog dived into his locker and threw four pigeon heads out of the window. He reckoned they might think he was psychotic and had murdered Rain Man.

Two very big policemen with great bushy moustaches rifled through Vern’s stuff. The one called De Kock kept asking me questions and making notes. He was very interested in the fact that Vern wet his bed. Mad Dog asked if he could fire the policeman’s gun. The policeman refused. He then asked if he could handcuff me to my bed. The policeman refused. He asked the policeman if he’d killed anyone. The policeman stared at him and then said that he only kills people who ask too many questions. Mad Dog then (stupidly) asked, ‘Why?’ De Kock nudged his partner and said, ‘No wonder the
poor kid ran away.’

Simon caught Boggo wanking in his rugby sock. (Boggo’s sock, I mean, not Simon’s.)

18:00   The entire school sang the chanting song He’s a Wanker as Boggo entered the dining hall. Mr Crispo, no longer wearing his hearing aid, didn’t hear a thing and continued eating his macaroni unaware of the chaos around him.

Crept down to the showers after lights out and examined my willy in the mirror. Still no hairs and no sign of becoming like the others. Rambo told me that when my balls drop I’ll get another nickname. Wonder when I can start wanking? Pulled my willy a few times, but nothing happened so I went back to bed and read another chapter of Catcher under my duvet using Rain Man’s torch.

Gecko’s back from hospital. He can’t sit down, so he has to eat and attend class standing up. He proudly showed us the stone which was taken out of his bum, although he’s still convinced that it’s a dog’s tooth.

The story of Rain Man’s disappearance hit the front page of the evening paper. There was a big colour picture of him with a bizarre Christmas hat on. He looked completely moggy. The article took a dig at the school, trying to blame it for Vern’s disappearance. It said, ‘It is unbelievable that a boy could walk out of one of the top private schools in the country without so much as a trace. What kind of establishment is this, a school or a luxury hotel?’ (If this is their idea of a luxury hotel then they can’t have much of a life.)

18:15   Pike was lashed six strokes by Sparerib after Luthuli caught him smoking in the drying room. We
applauded every stroke and laughed like maniacs when he flew out of the office rubbing his behind. In his seething rage, he chased after Boggo and tripped and fell in the gutter. (There has to be a god out there!)

It’s been a week since the epic night swim and Fatty still hasn’t returned to his normal bubbly self. Every afternoon he lopes off to the archives room and busies himself amongst pages and pages of clippings, articles and pictures. He’s lost his appetite and doesn’t talk to us anymore. Maybe he really did have a conversion in the church after all.

After winning the toss, and batting, we scored 183 runs against Drake College. I managed 8 runs before being run out by Rambo, who refused any blame in calling for the suicidal run and told me to run faster next time. Simon was once again our top scorer with 78 runs. We bowled them out for just 89 runs with yours truly taking four wickets. I received two dodgy decisions from The Guv (who appeared to be already drunk by the start of play). One of the decisions was so bad that the batsman had to ask what he was given out for. The Guv refused to say and told him to get off the field before he took to his genitals with a rusty crowbar.

After the game and The Guv’s fine rendition of a speech by Richard the Lionheart (that’s what he told us it was – I reckon he made it up), I was made man of the match so I got to keep the match ball. Pity my folks weren’t there to see my moment of glory.