Spud (22 page)

17:00   The entire school gathered on the stands at the far side of Trafalgar (the first team rugby field). The first team rugby gods, with their coach Mr Hall, ran through some complicated drills while Luthuli (who’s been appointed warcry master) stood in front of us with a red flag. The afternoon was dark, damp and misty. The surrounding hills had been swallowed up by heavy greyness and only a faint twinkle of light could be seen from the school buildings up on the hill. The whistle blasted shrilly and the first team put on their tracksuits and sauntered over to the assembled school. They stood heroically in front of us, wrapped their arms around each other’s shoulders and shouted something in unison. Suddenly the flag swung down and the entire school chanted back in response. A great wall of sound shot around the field and then… silence. And then the echo – even louder than our chant – rippled around the valley like a gunshot. The school erupted with cheers and shouts. Luthuli held up his red flag for silence and said, ‘If you think that was good enough then think again. This is 1990, gentlemen, a new decade – this team deserves so much more!’

The warcry was repeated, this time doubling its volume. It was impossible to know what the warcry meant, or even to make out the words – the first line sounded a bit like A bunny got cello…’ although that can’t be right – no half-decent warcry would have the word ‘bunny’ in it.

‘Gentlemen, who are we?’ demanded Rob Gillson, the rugby captain. Six feet and four inches of pure
muscle stood proudly before us. The school all shouted back at him. A second year lost his footing and fell off the stand. His mates jeered until Gillson silenced them with a threatening glare. ‘So here we are back again on Trafalgar, ready for the start… the start of what will be the greatest season of rugby in this school’s history.’ His voice was deep and rich and with his steely-eyed looks he instantly hiked up the atmosphere to breaking point. The school stood, arms over shoulders, listening to the captain speak. The rain fell more heavily, but nobody seemed to notice.

‘We are no longer boys. Tomorrow we fight like men. We will only win if you are with us. And by this I don’t mean some of you, or most of you, I’m talking all of you! (Loud cheer and stamping of feet.) We need you! It’s in those minutes of struggle that you will carry us with your voices. Now let me hear the warcry again!’

The school cranked up the volume again – now the echo sounded like a fighter jet scorching through the valley. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins. I felt like smashing something. My teeth were clenched, my hands gripped over Mad Dog’s shoulder on the left and Vern’s on the right. Spud Milton was ready to kill!

The first team melted away towards the school. The team kicker, Oliver Brown, returned to the field to practise his place kicking. The rest of the school, pumped with spirit and half-frozen by the miserable weather, chased each other around. Mad Dog crash-tackled Vern and Gecko as they watched Brown hoof a ball through the posts. Rambo then flattened Mad Dog. Mad Dog chased after Rambo and was tripped by Simon who was dumped by somebody else. Boys were running and shouting and laughing and trying to hurt each other. School spirit has never been better.

PJ Luthuli pulled me out of breakfast and said that Glockenshpeel wanted to see me in his office immediately. At first I thought it was a practical joke but one look at Luthuli’s face told me differently. I marched across the quad towards the great man’s office, my heart thumping and my body breaking into a sweat. I began replaying the last few days over in my head. I had to be in some sort of trouble or else this wouldn’t be happening. The Glock’s secretary ushered me into the headmaster’s office and, no doubt noticing my terror, patted my shoulder before closing the door on her way out.

‘Have a seat, Milton.’ The Glock was seated comfortably in his leather armchair with the newspaper spread over his desk. He gestured to a chair on the opposite side of the desk. ‘Can you believe this idiot actually believes Lincoln could beat us this afternoon? Gone are the days when the local paper was run by old boys.’ He sighed, folded his paper and looked me squarely in the eyes. ‘Don’t look so worried, boy. You haven’t done anything wrong, have you?’ I shook my head and uttered a squeak.

‘Good. Now you seem to have made some sort of impression on my dear friend Johnny Crispo. He requested that you sing a verse from his favourite hymn, Jerusalem, at his funeral service. Ms Roberts will coach you after chapel tomorrow morning. The funeral will be on Tuesday. Thank you, Milton, that will be all.’

The Crazy Eight were still trying to figure out why I’d been summoned to The Glock’s office by the time I arrived back at the breakfast table. Boggo had already taken two official bets. Rambo had placed one rand at 10-1 odds that I was being thrashed. Simon had also put two bucks on me reporting Pike for bullying at 20-1 odds. They all seemed astonished that I had been asked to sing at Crispo’s funeral. Whilst pocketing his profits,
Boggo admitted that he would have given 100-1 odds on singing at Crispo’s funeral. (In Boggo’s opinion I’m five times more likely to be a rat than sing at a funeral!) Fatty confessed to eating my scrambled eggs and bacon while I was away, saying that he didn’t think I would feel like eating after seeing The Glock. In truth the idea of singing a solo at Crispo’s funeral had devoured my appetite anyway.

11:00   My first rugby match. By half time the score read Lincoln 52 – us 0. Mr Lilly did his best to try and psyche us up for the second half, but our coach’s decision to ignore the art of tackling seemed to have backfired rather badly. Also our players weren’t used to the shrill blast of a whistle and often got startled by the referee and dropped the ball. The ref kindly shortened the match after Lincoln clocked up a century of points. I didn’t get a chance to kick for goal and trudged off the field relieved that my parents weren’t there to witness the carnage. Lilly gathered us under a tree and told us he was proud of the way that we carried ourselves under pressure and that we’d lost with great dignity. He was thrilled that nobody was injured (a foregone conclusion considering that nobody attempted to tackle the opposition or push in the scrums).

The first team match was a completely different bag of onions. Captain Gillson led the team out, in their splendid red and white jerseys, to the sound of a powerful warcry by the school. The atmosphere was grand and we all shouted ourselves hoarse while our boys took control of the match. Rob Anderson scored an intercept try and Oliver Brown didn’t miss a kick the entire afternoon. Final score: a 28-3 victory. The only dodgy moment was when Bert broke out of a ruck, dived over the line, and then threw the ball up in the air to celebrate his try, only to realise that he had scored on the 22-metre line and not the try line. Luthuli was
stricken with laughter for at least five minutes, during which time no warcries were heard. The school was buzzing after the match and all the talk was about a possibly unbeaten season and the chance to beat the great Kings College.

More good news was that Devries (who plays centre for the sixth team) broke his arm and has been seen wandering around in a cast and sling.

As good as his promise, Luthuli roused us for our 03:00 start to conquer the infamous Inhlazane. My legs felt like lead and my teeth chattered as I stumbled out of my warm bed. Roger whined in anger as he realised that Vern was moving out. We were each given a small plastic bag filled with supplies – a juice, a bun, an apple and a bar of chocolate. In the pitch black we set out, following Luthuli, who marched ahead. All we could see was his white cap in the darkness. Our head of house set a cracking pace and Vern, Gecko and I almost had to trot to keep up. Luckily for Fatty, his peptic heart had allowed him to stay at school.

We climbed out of the valley and onto the hill above the school. Unfortunately, it seemed that the path led ever upwards. As the sun rose we were tackling a range of mountains called the Seven Sisters (soon renamed the Seven Bitches). The Seven Sisters were surely created by God to torment hikers. As soon as you climb the first sister then the next one rears up in front of you. And so it goes on – seven mountains and each one higher than the last. I can imagine what poor Frodo Baggins must have felt setting out towards Mordor in The Lord of the Rings – although I doubt the Misty Mountains were as savage as this!

Soon it started getting warm, and then hot. Our supplies were finished and there was no sign of any
fresh water. The lack of water didn’t seem to worry Luthuli who kept up his cracking pace, making no allowances for uphill or downhill. Boggo was held back after getting tangled up in a barbed wire fence and Gecko, who had strayed off the path to take a slash, was charged by a randy bull with a giant boner and dived into a thorn bush.

11:30   Luthuli led us around the back of the mountain and we began the final climb. We scampered along behind him, using rocks and grass to grip our way up through the crevices and dongas. Eventually, we hit the summit and were met with the most spectacular view I’ve ever seen. To the left lay the snow-lined peaks of the Drakensberg mountains. To the right, the huge Midmar dam was spread out like a giant hand. Everywhere there were green pastures and grazing animals, clumps of trees with beautiful old farmhouses peeping through the nearly naked plane trees. A cool breeze blew across the summit. Luthuli gave us half an hour to rest. I took the opportunity to sit and enjoy the view and spent my break gazing at the Drakensberg (which, according to Fatty, means the Barrier of Spears in Afrikaans). I thought about Frodo’s journey into Mordor again; I thought about the play, my birthday, the Mermaid, Crispo and The Guv. I thought about the thousands of men who’ve climbed this mountain and sat on this very spot and perhaps thought of similar things. I had a sudden longing for the Mermaid, to sit and talk and listen and breathe and kiss.

Mad Dog discovered a trig beacon and ordered us to slash on it as a bonding exercise. He said it would leave our mark and create a new tradition. We all stood around the poor trig beacon and let rip. (Except for Vern who was overcome with a severe case of stage fright.)

The return home was long and tortuous. Our legs were weary, our skin was burnt and dehydration had
set in. Luthuli led us on a different path in an attempt to find water. We eventually drank from a rather foul smelling pond. On we trudged into the setting sun. Simon fell awkwardly and twisted his ankle and had to limp most of the way home. Rambo helped him on the down slopes and privately worried that his under 14A flyhalf could be seriously injured.

At last we stumbled into the house at 20:45, exhausted and starving. Luthuli allowed us to make snackwiches in the prefects’ room and after eating and showering the Crazy Seven collapsed into bed and soon joined Fatty in slumberland.

Last thought before falling asleep: forgot to rehearse for Crispo’s funeral. (In fact I haven’t been to chapel either.) Have decided to refer all complaints to Luthuli.

Woke up and joined my limping dorm mates on the way to the showers. Bert had to carry Gecko down the stairs because he kept falling and crying and Simon’s ankle was still badly swollen.

The Guv spent half of English moping on about how the rest of the world gets a public holiday for Workers’ Day on May 1 except for us. He told us that if we were real men, we would organise a revolt and close the school down. Boggo stood up and told The Guv that our extra week’s holiday made up for the lost public holidays. The Guv accused him of being ‘Thatcher’s spawn’ and called us a bunch of miserable proles with no backbone, and then threw his dictionary out the window. I won’t tell Dad about The Guv’s Workers’ Day demands or he might accuse him of being a communist!

20:00   Kojak was at his psychotic best during rehearsals, waving his baton around like it was a knight’s lance. He spent most of the rehearsal screaming and thrashing
his baton on the music stand. The more hostile he was, the worse my singing became. Eventually, Viking brought the rehearsal to a close as he could see that our musical director was frothing at the mouth and looking on the verge of another stroke. (His last stroke happened two years ago during rehearsals for The Pirates of Penzance.)

Ms Roberts kept me behind after the rehearsal and coached me through Jerusalem, the hymn for Crispo’s funeral. I have to sing the first verse. The second will be sung by the choir, and the final three by the congregation. The thought of singing over a dead man’s body makes me want to vomit, quite frankly. (Made a mental note to ask Gecko for some of his anti-puking pills.)

11:00   Crispo’s funeral. The entire school answered the call of the bells and happily left their classes and filed into the chapel. The service was wickedly sad and Reverend Bishop was surprisingly composed and seemed to make a fair amount of sense in his sermon about Crispo’s loyalty, love and honour to the school. My solo was better than I expected, although it still sounded like my voice was coming from somebody else’s mouth. (I wonder if this had something to do with Macarthur?)

Crispo’s coffin was carried by a bunch of old codgers dressed up in army uniforms. Sitting in the front of the choir stalls I was no more than ten feet from the coffin and I spent the entire service trying to imagine what his body looked like. Was his tongue lolling out? Were his eyes open? What was he wearing? Was his face a picture of fear and agony? Was he even there?

Gloria sat in the front row with one of her arum lilies in her hand. She didn’t stop crying and placed the lily on Crispo’s coffin as it was carried past her.

One of the old codgers stumbled whilst carrying
the coffin out of the chapel. For a moment it looked as though the coffin would fall but The Glock jumped in and held up the tilting side, thereby averting a certain disaster. A sneaky smile slid across Pike’s snake-like face. (Was it a coincidence that he was sitting on the aisle seat where the old codger stumbled? I think not.)