Whitethorn

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘But you haven’t explained the other reasons why you’re here,’ I protested.

  ‘Another time! If I tell you now I’ll just end up drunk and morbid.’ He grinned. ‘Anyway, I’m your senior officer, Fitzsaxby, it would never do to be seen arriving back at the barracks legless, carried past the guardhouse by a bloody rifleman.’

  ‘Come to think of it, that wouldn’t do me a whole heap of good either,’ I said. ‘Fraternising with a permanent-force officer wouldn’t exactly impress the guys in my hut, much less Sergeant Minnaar.’

  Mike grinned. ‘Minnaar, eh, one of the old school, as blinkered as a brewer’s horse. Rather die than be an officer, they think as sergeants they run the army and to some extent they’re right.’

  As we left the bar, Mike Finger put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Tom, I’ve been meaning to talk with you about that. Colonel Stone is anxious to have some of the brighter guys among your lot go through officer training; we made a list and your name is on it. What do you think?’

  ‘You mean after I’ve done my basic training?’

  ‘Yeah, we’d start after you’d completed the first two months, which is in a fortnight. That’s all the stuff every recruit has to know. Then a further three months of officer training. It would mean an extra two months in the army.’ We stopped on the pavement outside. ‘What do you think?’

  It wasn’t a hard decision to make. It would mean two more months away from a grizzly, and only a month before I would be due to leave the mines for good. It would certainly be more intellectually stimulating. I would have to check to see if the mines would continue to grant me my copper bonus. But in life it’s never a good idea to accept a proposition too eagerly, that is, unless it is plainly stupid not to do so.

  ‘May I think about it?’ I replied.

  ‘Sure thing. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it when I’m half-pissed anyway. When it comes from the commanding officer, kindly appear surprised.’

  The dance at the YWCA was the usual polite meeting of the sexes with all the girls carefully chaperoned. A stout, somewhat imperious-looking elderly matron with pouter-pigeon breasts moved among the dancers to ensure there was a degree of daylight to be seen between the chests and thighs of each dancing couple. We arrived back at the barracks just before midnight curfew – Mike and I, officer and rifleman, sitting on separate seats in the bus.

  You’re probably wondering by now what happened when I finally confronted Pissy Vermaak? Well, let me begin by saying every barrack hut has one: the inept and stupid guy who is the butt of everyone’s jokes and the bane of every sergeant and, in particular, Sergeant Minnaar who ran our hut. It became abundantly clear in the first month of training that Pissy Vermaak was the cross we were destined to carry. Pissy spent more time on CB, reporting to the guardhouse in full kit, or on jankers with full pack or trudging around the parade ground, than the rest of us combined. He was always exhausted, so his kit would be in disarray, his locker untidy and his bunk a mess. Parts of his uniform, such as a single gaiter or a piece of webbing, would go mysteriously missing or he’d forget to shave or to polish his boots and, as well, he possessed two left feet. He used his hands a lot in order to communicate and possessed a high-pitched and simpering tone of voice, coupled with a somewhat effeminate manner, so that everyone was convinced he was a queer. He was also an Afrikaner, where being a sodomite is regarded as the one irredeemable sin in the eyes of God, and meant automatic consignment to hell, repentance and salvation being out of the question. In other words, the poor bastard hadn’t a hope in the company of young, mostly Afrikaner guys who, often as not, found themselves on the receiving end of a group punishment brought about by some Pissy misadventure.

  I shamefully confess that at first I didn’t give a shit. While I don’t think I took pleasure at seeing him suffer, I can’t say I was over-sympathetic. But after a while it was plain to see that someone had to help the poor bugger. That is, bring some semblance of order into his life. In other words, do what the army was trying to do but was failing miserably in the attempt. In fact, the more Pissy was punished the more exhausted and disheartened he became, and therefore more of a hindrance to the progress of our hut. Carrying Pissy Vermaak was becoming an unacceptable burden.

  I guess, as in the School of Mines, it didn’t take too long for the guys in the hut to single me out as perhaps a bit more educated than most of them. When Pissy had finally been the cause of both our first and second weekend leave being cancelled, the first two we’d been granted since arriving at Llewellyn Barracks, I knew it was time to do something. The guys were going stir-crazy and were ready to lynch Pissy. I felt I probably had the unspoken authority, so I called a late-afternoon meeting. Pissy, as usual, was running around the parade ground with full pack as punishment for yet another misdemeanour. We all knew the drill, he’d return in an hour or so and lie on his bunk sobbing, and often enough would go without his evening meal. In my opinion he was getting close to a complete mental breakdown.

  ‘Okay, you guys, what are we going to do about Vermaak?’ I asked.

  ‘Kill the fucker!’ someone replied to all-round laughter and a general nodding of heads.

  ‘No, seriously, it’s affecting us all.’

  ‘He needs a fuckin’ nanny,’ someone called out.

  This was exactly what I wanted to hear. ‘You’re right, there’s thirty of us in the hut, we’ve got two-and-a-bit months to go, that’s two days for each of us.’

  ‘What are you saying, man? We got to look after him, wipe his arse? He’s a fuckin’ queer, man!’ a big boer named Piet Kosterman yelled out.

  I ignored this remark. ‘It’s not a big deal, hey. Just see he cleans his boots, check his gear, see he tidies his locker, showers, shaves, his bunk is in order, rifle cleaned . . .’

  ‘Wipe his nose, take him for a shit, wipe his arse,’ Gert Boeman added. ‘I wouldn’t touch him with a fucking barge pole, man. The bastard smells of piss!’

  ‘Look, I’ll go first and nanny him for a week, see if it helps, if it doesn’t work we’ll try something else.’

  Piet Kosterman shook his head. ‘I dunno, man. He’s a fucking homosexual, why don’t we just break his arm, hey?’

  At six feet seven inches Kosterman was the biggest guy in our hut and fairly thick, but he had the support of most of the Afrikaners, who comprised two-thirds of us.

  ‘Because if he blabs to Minnaar we’ll all be on a charge, Piet. Grievous bodily harm, that’s six months minimum in the bloody military clink, man!’

  ‘Bullshit, Tom!’ Kosterman objected. ‘He won’t talk, we’ll tell him if he reports us because of “the unfortunate accident falling over his own feet”, we’ll break his other arm and both his fucking legs.’ Kosterman was pretty typical of his kind, where blatant intimidation is considered the subtle approach to solving a problem.

  ‘Ja, that’s definitely one way,’ I agreed, ‘but we’ll try my way first.’ I looked around. ‘Any objections?’ I was using influence I wasn’t sure I possessed.

  The hut fell silent, the Afrikaners waiting for Piet Kosterman to react. After a few moments he said, ‘Ja, okay, Tom, as long as you go first. Two days, hey?’ He turned to the other Afrikaners. ‘Tom does a week, we only do two days, that’s fair enough, do we say okay?’

  They nodded agreement.

  ‘Right then! It’s Operation Pissy Vermaak,’ I announced cheerily, and then realised that I’d referred to him by his Boys Farm nickname. It was too late, the men in the hut all laughed and that was that. Poor old Pissy was certain to be back to being called ‘Pissy’.

  I could have backhanded myself, to say the least, it was a stupid slip of the tongue. You see, I hoped to get some further information from Pissy about what actually happened between Frikkie Botha, Fonnie du Preez and himself when they’d concocted the story of Mattress sexually assaulting him. There was also a part of his blatantly lying confession to Mevrou and Meneer Prinsloo that I hadn’t heard. While I had Frikkie’s version of even
ts written down in detail, if I could only get Pissy to corroborate Frikkie’s confession of a conspiracy to murder Mattress, then I had a potential live witness on my hands.

  I’d tried on three previous occasions to approach Pissy, and while he’d not rebuffed me outright he was obviously cautious, and when I’d mentioned The Boys Farm he simply didn’t want to know.

  ‘Ag, I’ve clean forgot about all that a long time ago, man,’ he said.

  Then, later, when I asked him again if he’d talk to me about the time we’d been together as kids, he’d looked me directly in the eye. ‘Whatever you ask me, Tom, I’ve already forgotten, you hear?’

  I’d tried a third time, and on the last occasion he’d grown very agitated and threatened to call me Voetsek in front of the others guys in the hut. When I’d laughed and told him to go ahead, he’d spitefully remarked, ‘Now, even more than before, I’ll forget anything you ask me, man!’

  So my volunteering to be the first to play nursemaid to Pissy wasn’t exactly going to be welcomed by him with open arms. On the other hand, it was plain that he’d reached the end of his tether, and I didn’t want him to have a mental breakdown and be dismissed from the army before I could get the vital information I needed.

  So you can see my little talk to the guys in our hut about helping Pissy was, in a large part, not brought about by any sense of kindness or pity, but by my fear that I was going to lose him before he’d talk. When we’d had our weekend leave cancelled for two weeks in a row because of Pissy, I was aware that it was possibly my last chance to get to him. Approaching him on my own hadn’t worked, whereas he’d have to buy our collective decision to keep him out of trouble and might just decide to talk to me. It was a long shot, I knew, but one well worth trying.

  Pissy arrived back at the hut well after sundown, and only half an hour before the bugle was due to sound for dinner parade. He could barely drag himself to his bunk and his fatigues were completely soaked, the camouflage pattern turned a single shade of dark by sweat. His face, coated with parade-ground dust, was a deep orange colour, with twin skin-coloured streaks down either side of his cheeks, cut through the dust by recent tears. A sticky wash of mucus ran from his nose, covered his upper lip and crossed his mouth and chin.

  ‘Jesus Christ, look what the cat brought in!’ Steven Hudson, seated on the bunk nearest the door cleaning his rifle, called out.

  Arriving at his bunk, Pissy simply let his rifle free-fall to the polished cement floor with a clatter that made us all wince, removed his pack and dropped it beside his weapon, followed by his cap and webbing. He then threw himself onto his bunk without removing his dirty boots. Lying on his stomach, his head cupped in his arms, he commenced to sob into his pillow. Pissy Vermaak was completely knackered and beyond caring what we, or the army for that matter, thought of him. If Sergeant Minnaar had entered the hut at that moment, the rifle on the floor, together with the careless disposal of his hat, pack and webbing would have earned him a similar punishment to the one he’d only just completed. The never-ending vicissitudes of Pissy Vermaak were once more in progress.

  ‘Hey, Tom, the cry-baby snot-nose queen is all yours, man,’ Kosterman called gleefully from his bunk.

  All eyes turned to look at me. This, I guess, was the moment of truth. We’d showered, polished our boots back to the required see-your-face-in-them shine demanded by the army, and put on clean fatigues in preparation for dinner parade. The hut was spotless but for the sobbing, pathetic human mess that lay upon, and the disarray of government equipment lying beside, Rifleman Vermaak’s bunk.

  I walked over to Pissy’s bunk and retrieved the rifle and placed it against his bunk number in the rifle rack. Miraculously, the hard cement floor hadn’t damaged the sight or marked the butt. I returned and opened his locker and removed a set of clean fatigues, hung up his webbing and pack, and pegged his hat. Then I moved to the bottom end of the bunk and removed his boots, yanking them off his feet in an unnecessary pantomime of disgust. Meanwhile Pissy remained inert and continued to sob quietly. The boots were too dusty to wipe indoors, so I took them and placed them on the back step of the hut, and returned to consider what to do next. Grabbing a towel from his locker, I placed it over my shoulder, then bent down and touched him on the shoulder.

  ‘Get up, Vermaak,’ I said quietly.

  Pissy didn’t move.

  ‘C’mon, get up, I’m here to help you, man!’ I said, raising my voice somewhat. Pissy remained as he was, his shoulders jerking with a sudden sob. I could sense everyone was waiting to see what would happen next. Shouting at him army-style, I sensed, wasn’t going to help, he was way beyond caring. I bent over so that my lips were close to his ear. ‘If you don’t sit up I’m going to tell them about you at The Boys Farm,’ I whispered. Then to cover myself I said in a loud, near-threatening voice, ‘I won’t ask you again, now sit up!’

  Pissy rolled onto one elbow and then wearily moved to sit on the edge of his bunk, his khaki-stockinged feet planted on the floor, his dirty face a mess of dust, mucilage and tears, eyes puffed up and almost closed.

  ‘You have to take a shower,’ I said. ‘C’mon, man, I’ll help you.’

  ‘Why you doing this, Voetsek?’ he said, too weary to realise what he’d called me.

  ‘I’ll explain in the shower, now come on, the bugle for dinner parade is about to go.’

  ‘I don’t want any fucking dinner!’ he sobbed suddenly.

  ‘C’mon,’ I urged. ‘You’ll feel better after a shower.’ Maybe he suffered from a leaking urinary tract or he’d pissed his fatigues, but Boeman was right, Vermaak did smell – stink is a better word – of piss. The same smell he’d carried at The Boys Farm, although, in fairness, I hadn’t noticed it on any of the previous occasions I’d been close to him.

  Pissy stood up slowly, sniffed back a glob of snot and tried to look defiant. I put my arm around his shoulder, his shirt still sweat-damp, his body giving off the strong smell of urine. He shrugged and pulled away. ‘I can walk by myself!’ he protested.

  I took this to be a good sign, so I grabbed his clean fatigues and a pair of underpants and socks, and handed him the towel that hung from my shoulder. ‘Ja, okay, but hurry, man, we haven’t got a lot of time.’

  All eyes were on us as he shambled out of the barracks to the communal ablution block that fortunately happened to be situated directly behind our hut. While Pissy showered and changed I returned and removed his snotty pillowcase and walked through to the hut laundry, and placed it with his dirty fatigues in one of the washing machines, then polished and buffed his boots. We re-entered the hut to all-round clapping and cheering. Moments later, the bugle sounded for dinner. I had passed, it seemed, the initial test involving the nannying of Rifleman Kobus Vermaak of the Rhodesian Territorial Army.

  Keeping Pissy on the straight-and-narrow wasn’t easy, he was a walking disaster, but by the end of the week he hadn’t received a single hour of punishment. I must say, by the weekend I was exhausted. We drew straws for who was to be the next nanny and the short straw went to Angus McClymont, Rhodesian-born and the son of a magistrate in Kitwi, a decent sort of chap who would take the job of nannying Pissy seriously. My fear had been that it would be Piet Kosterman or one of the other Afrikaners who might help Pissy get organised, but with an extremely ill grace.

  If I hoped that Pissy would talk to me about what happened at The Boys Farm I was mistaken. While we’d grown quite close, Pissy was as cunning as a shithouse rat and knew what it was I wanted from him. Not giving me the information I craved gave him some sense of being in control, and I guess he enjoyed having someone looking after him. I admit, I had it coming to me, but I confess that the coincidence of running into him again had seemed like a minor miracle and now it was proving nothing of the sort. I had one more ploy up my sleeve. If I could get Pissy out of the army he might agree to talk to me. One big favour granted in exchange for another. Afrikaners have a deep sense of honour and don’t like to be beholden to anyone. Al
though I didn’t expect Pissy would have inherited this characteristic. Where from? The Boys Farm, or the reformatory in Pietersburg? Hardly likely. Nevertheless it was worth a try.

  So, in the process of playing nanny I’d asked him about his epilepsy. ‘How come the army called you up when you’re an epileptic?’ I asked.

  ‘They don’t know about that,’ was his reply.

  ‘Don’t know? Why didn’t you tell them?’

  ‘My job.’

  ‘What do you mean?

  ‘I drive an ore train underground at Nkana Mine, if they find out I can get fits they’ll fire me,’ he said simply. ‘But I haven’t had one for five years,’ he added.

  ‘Ja, but you could have one at any time, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Ja, I suppose, but I haven’t and maybe it doesn’t happen, hey.’

  ‘So letting the army know you’re an epileptic is out of the question?’

  ‘Ja, definitely, man.’

  Even though he wasn’t on jankers or being punished Pissy still smelled of piss, and I’d make him change his underpants several times a day. At night all four pairs of army-issue underpants went into the washing machine and dryer. ‘Look, Pissy, I don’t want to be personal, but you go for a leak lots. Yesterday, for instance, sixteen times.’

  Pissy looked embarrassed. ‘So now you counting how many times I take a piss, Voetsek?’

  Now that he was known as Pissy by one and all he’d taken to calling me Voetsek. ‘No, it’s not that, you seem to have an insatiable thirst too, and I think there might be something wrong with you. It’s not normal to piss that much.’

  ‘You mean I’m sick, hey? What’s insatiable?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘You can’t drink enough water. It could be some sort of renal failure.’