Spud (19 page)

Suddenly a large blonde woman in a dressing gown walked out of the front gate of the house and onto the road. When she spotted Frank and Dad, she let rip with a gut-wrenching, blood-curdling screech. They both aimed their guns at her and she screamed again and then fainted. Once the lady had recovered she became angry with Frank and Dad and told them to leave her husband alone. Dad was immediately suspicious and ordered her to place her hands on the car. Frank frisked her and came up with a box of Smarties (a bizarre weapon for a criminal’s accomplice). Dad looked like one of those Vietnam soldiers who had just captured a leader of the Vietcong. He kept his gun in the face of the criminals and spoke in a gruff voice. (A bit like Robert De Niro with a mud pack.)

Then a police van screeched up and two policemen jumped out and immediately pointed their weapons at Frank and Dad. The cops forced them to lower their guns and lie down on the road. I ducked down behind the driver’s seat and watched the drama unfold through a crack between the driver’s seat and the door. After some lengthy debate and much gesticulating it was finally established that the ‘criminals’ were trying to break into their own vehicle because the blonde woman had locked her keys inside the car. Therefore, the criminals weren’t criminals at all, but law-abiding citizens going about their own business. For a while it looked as though Dad and Frank were going to be arrested (for aggravated assault) but finally the policemen dissuaded
the irate man with the dental equipment and the angry lady with the Smarties from pressing charges. The man finally agreed to let Frank and Dad off with a wave of his toothbrush. To add insult to injury the policemen confiscated Dad’s and Frank’s guns and took down their details.

Frank and Dad were fuming when they returned to the car. Dad ranted on about how the country was going to the dogs and Frank threatened to emigrate to Fiji. To add to their woes, the station wagon started making a horrible clunking noise and the entire engine seized just 100 metres from our house. Dad kicked a tyre savagely and then limped home in silence with me following a few steps behind, desperately trying not to laugh.

I swear I could see tears in Dad’s eyes as the tow truck drove past with the poor old station wagon dragging behind. After watching his pride and joy dragged around the corner, Dad limped inside and screamed loudly. I was about to run after him to see if he was okay but Mom stopped me and said he was just letting off a bit of steam. Suddenly there was an enormous crash and then the tinkle of broken glass. Mom leapt to her feet and said, ‘Right, that’s it!’ She then stormed into the house to find that Dad, in his rage, had ripped the bathroom cabinet out of the wall, forgetting that it contained all of Mom’s expensive perfumes.

The language that flew around our house for the next twenty minutes would have made The Guv blush. Eventually, Dad said he was moving out, packed a suitcase, grabbed the car keys and headed to the garage. There was a howl of frustration when he realised that the car was gone. So he set off on foot, limping down the road with his suitcase dragging behind him.

I returned to my room and wondered why this always
has to happen in the holidays. They’ve had all term to fight! I closed the door but I could still hear Mom sobbing in the bathroom.

Mom says Dad’s moved in with Frank and as far as she’s concerned, the marriage is over. Mom wouldn’t say whether this was because of her perfume or because Dad has moved in with another man.

19:10   Operation First Date! Black shoes, blue jeans, white T-shirt, spiky gelled hair. The movie – Ghost, with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. The mission – to seal the deal and have my first proper kiss (called a grab).

Marge picked me up in her Mazda and dropped us at the cinema. The Mermaid was wearing a short black dress, high heels, and with her make-up on, she was terrifyingly beautiful. I prayed that I’d meet somebody from school and they would see me with her. I struggled to think of anything to say. I was completely intimidated by this goddess walking beside me. After an awkwardly long silence we sat down at the Pizza Hut for a cooldrink. The Mermaid asked me about the Namibian trip, and pretty soon I had her in stitches, telling her about Wombat and her missing clothes. (She thinks the yoghurt story is hilarious – perhaps she hasn’t heard it enough…) I have never been so thankful for my weird dysfunctional family before. In front of me, the most beautiful girl in the world was laughing so much that her make-up had run and turned her perfect face into a honey badger!

Her make-up continued to smudge during the movie. We held hands all the way through. I only broke her grasp twice (to wipe my sweaty palms on the underside of the seat). The movie was a real tearjerker so I decided to look manly and rugged and unaffected throughout.
We chatted about Ghost over vanilla milkshakes at the Milky Lane and then, holding hands, strolled outside and sat under a big green leafy tree on the verge of the road.

Suddenly the talking stopped. The Mermaid was looking at me with that same intense stare that she had given me that day on the pool steps. This time there was no swimming away. I stared back and hoped she didn’t hear the big thumping snare drum in my chest. Our lips met, my eyes closed and then I felt her tongue in my mouth. After a moment’s shock my own tongue met hers and we were joined in a mad tongue wrestle of love. We seemed to kiss for some sort of eternity and when it was over I was instantly overcome with the most wonderful feeling of accomplishment. All I could think about was charging back to school to casually tell the Crazy Eight that I had kissed the Mermaid and she was now my girlfriend.

08:50   Mom and I filed into St Margaret’s Anglican church and found Dad already seated and seemingly deep in prayer. When he sat back in his pew he looked totally dishevelled. He was unshaven and his shirt was all wrinkled. (I guess living with Frank isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.) I enjoyed the hymns, many of which I had learned in the choir and sang at the top of my soon-to-be famous treble voice. The old bat in front of me turned around during the sermon and told me that I had a splendid voice. The priest was much more charming and relaxed than our Reverend Bishop and didn’t show any signs of psychotic behaviour or any manic hand gestures during his sermon.

After the service Mom and I jumped into her rented car and headed off to Wombat’s flat for the traditional Easter egg hunt. (This used to be exciting until I turned
eight, but has since become a bit of an ordeal.) As we were pulling out of the parking lot I turned around and saw Dad waving pathetically. Mom bit her lip, pretended not to see him and sped off down the lane.

Wombat was in a state of great agitation when we arrived. She said she’d hidden all the Easter eggs last night but couldn’t remember where she’d put them. I checked all the usual places (booze cabinet, underwear drawer, window-sill, under the sink) but couldn’t find them. Mom had to restrain Wombat from calling the cops and accusing Buster Cracknell of aggravated Easter egg theft. We assured her that they would turn up in due course (hopefully before they went mouldy). After all, Easter Sunday is meant to be the day when things come back to life.

Wombat (in keeping with tradition) treated us to lunch at the Royal Natal Yacht Club. While eating my roast chicken, and trying to ignore the shrill nattering of my grandmother, I watched a gigantic cruise liner sailing into the harbour. Four tugboats were leading it to its berth. I pointed it out to Mom who reckoned it was the QE2 – the most luxurious boat on the sea. Wombat then became all snivelly and said that she had spent six glorious days of her honeymoon on the QE2. Mom winked at me – Wombat spent her honeymoon in Margate!

Dad was waiting for us when we got home and he and Mom went to their room for a chat. I called the Mermaid and wished her happy Easter. We chatted for ages until Dad started cooking and singing opera in the kitchen (his sneaky way of keeping the phone bill down). Dad fried up an English breakfast for dinner after which I escaped to my room to join Frodo on his journey towards Mordor.

Mom woke me up at 08:00 and said there was a man
on the phone who needed to speak to me urgently. I answered the phone, my greeting rather croaky

‘Rise and shine, Milton, this is no day to be oversleeping!’ The voice needed no introduction – it was Viking.

‘Yes, sir, I mean, no, sir, I was awake.’ Viking chuckled and then told me that I may have got the part of Oliver, but that didn’t mean I was a good enough actor to fool him.

‘Listen, Milton,’ he continued in his great booming voice, ‘I wanted to congratulate you personally for landing the big fish! To think, after your abominable first audition I wasn’t even going to line you up for the chorus. It was that little vixen wife of your housemaster’s who insisted. And blow me sideways, that slapper was right!’

I thanked Viking for giving me the chance but he cut me off with, ‘Now listen, Milton, we need to do something with your look. How would you feel about curly blond hair?’ I stammered out something and he said, ‘Good. Now whatever you do, do not cut your hair! I have obtained permission for you and the Fagin’s gang chorus to grow your hair long. So if you cut your hair, you may as well go the whole hog and cut your head off as well!’ I assured him that I wouldn’t cut my hair and he told me we would start rehearsing as soon as we returned to school next week. Then he abruptly hung up.

My hands trembled as I put down the phone. Blond hair, thousands in the audience. Let’s face it, dear diary, I’m only months away from being a star! Spent an hour looking at my features in the bathroom mirror. Unfortunately, a round face and a button nose are hardly the right assets for a heart-throb – perhaps the blond hair will turn me into a Patrick Swayze!

I decided to prepare myself for the limelight with twenty questions that the world will need to know about me.

As you may have gathered (by the serious lack of diary entries), my holiday hasn’t been as exciting as I’d hoped. The Mermaid is away on a Girl Guide camp. Dad is at work and Mom always seems to be out on some errand. I’ve also decided against calling up old friends from my primary school. (After all the emotional goodbyes and handshaking I still haven’t heard a peep from any of them.)

Instead, I have spent the last few days practising Oliver songs and reading The Lord of the Rings. I’m now well into the third book of the trilogy, called The Return of the King. The Guv’s right – it is an amazing book that almost can’t be explained. It gets five stars on the soon to be famous Milton book rating system.

It has just sunk in that on Monday night I return to school and, unbelievably, I can’t wait to go back. The desire to start rehearsing and find out what everybody has been up to has me wishing that the weekend would
just fly by. Also three weeks of hanging out with my loony family has started me questioning my own sanity.

Dad took me off to the Crusaders’ club rugby ground to prepare me for the coming rugby season. On the way (in the newly repaired station wagon) he was firing various bits of advice at me like, ‘tackle low and aim high’ or ‘the bigger they are the harder they fall’. When we arrived he brought out an old rugby ball with bits and pieces of shredded leather hanging off it. He ordered me across the field, threw the ball up in the air, swung at it with his left foot and collapsed. By the time I reached him he was writhing around on the ground clasping his injured left thigh and shrieking with pain. I ran to the clubhouse to call Mom who arrived with Marge in Marge’s car about half an hour later. The three of us loaded Dad into the station wagon and Mom drove us home. She spent the afternoon applying ice to his injured leg. He moaned on for hours about the pain until he’d finished half a bottle of Johnnie Walker and then fell asleep.