Reggie and me, p.16
Reggie and Me, page 16
Under the bell tower the congregation peeled off into the rear of the chapel while the choir climbed the stairs past the old armoury, emerging into the gallery suspended above the rear of the nave. Hamish walked to the front, from where he would deliver the solo.
He inhaled the scent of incense and watched as boys and parents filled every available space. He spotted his mother and father talking earnestly just below.
‘What could possibly go wrong?’ Stuart asked, smiling uneasily. ‘If he makes a mistake, well, that’s nor a train smash. This is a school carol service, nor the Albert Hall.’
‘He’ll be inconsolable for weeks – you know that!’ Caroline hissed. ‘This is a chance for him to fit in and achieve something at school – it will give him a sense of worth here.’
Stuart sighed and then began to giggle.
‘What the hell is so funny?’
‘I’m just remembering his performance at Jumping Jacks seven years ago.’
‘That is precisely why I’m terrified!’
Back in the choir gallery, Mr Danhauser turned to Hamish.
‘Are you ready?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Hamish straightened his tie for the final time.
The lights dimmed and Hamish heard the back doors of the chapel open as the chaplain and his retinue prepared to enter. He heard the clink of the censer as incense dropped onto the coal.
The congregation went silent.
Mr Danhauser nodded to the organist. She played middle C.
The choirmaster looked at Hamish and raised his right hand to count him in. Hamish hummed the note in his head and stepped onto the little teak box from which he was to sing. It was an old box – generations of boy soloists had been standing on it for exactly ninety years.
As it turned out, ninety-one was one too many.
The front panel split upon Hamish opening his mouth.
‘Once,’ (perfectly pitched) and then in a rapidly ascending glissando, ‘… AAAAAAH!’
The box gave way, the soloist overbalanced and tipped over the gallery railing, and it was only the lightning reactions of Mr Danhauser and Hamish’s sparrow-like physique that saved him from landing headfirst on Father Josiah’s pious bald spot.
A collective gasp rose from the congregation as Hamish, flailing, began slipping out of his blazer, the back of which was held fast by Mr Danhauser.
Simphiwe Buthelezi, tenor and first XV fullback, leapt down from the back of the gallery, leant over the railing and grabbed Hamish’s left ankle. This had the effect of up-ending him just as Mr Danhauser lost his grip. The blazer emptied onto the pews below, the number of personal effects in the pockets defying their depth. Hamish’s concern for his own safety was momentarily arrested as he grabbed for a tiny stuffed mouse his brother had given him years before – possibly the only thing of value he’d not lost within a week of acquiring it. (It lived in his blazer as a comforting reminder of home.)
‘Mousie!’ he yelled as Buthelezi hauled him back to safety.
The boys of the congregation collapsed into laughter. ‘Mousie!’ they guffawed.
Hamish hardly noticed as Mr Danhauser checked him for injuries. But his mother heard, and her tears began to flow as she helped Stuart to pick up the detritus – mints, a broken pen, some coins, a half-eaten sandwich, his diary (with no entries in it), a sharpener and half a ruler.
A spotty-faced youth retrieved Mousie and held it up like a prize. From beside his parents, Roger emerged with the speed of an angry mamba. In one stride he leapt across the nave and up onto the pew where the prize-winner was standing. Before the much larger boy could do anything, Roger had seized the mouse, shoved his brother’s tormentor back into his seat and returned to his own place.
‘Boys!’ There was immediate quiet at the booming voice of Mr Wallace McAdams, the College headmaster.
Hamish had a nasty gash above his right eye from where his head had collected a bolt on the edge of the gallery. With blood running into his eyes and down his face, he insisted that he could sing, but Mr Danhauser directed Buthelezi to take the boy to the boarding house to be cleaned up by the matron.
That year, for the first time in Trinity College history, all the trebles of the choir sang the first verse of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ – well, all bar the one who was having his forehead dressed.
The Frasers drove home in silence after the service, and Stuart agreed to Caroline’s suggestion of burgers and milkshakes for dinner – the sort of meal he detested. The pleasant evening on the verandah and the treat moved Hamish’s mood from disappointed anger to nostalgic melancholy. The fact that all the other trebles had performed the first verse did much to dissipate the boy’s ire – he’d have been in a mood for weeks if another chorister had performed his solo.
The school year ended with Hamish detesting his exams and underachieving as expected. Before Christmas, the family went on holiday to Kenton.
One hot morning, they headed down to the beach for an extended stay – never an easy trip due to the number of accoutrements (beach chairs, umbrella, buckets, spades, picnic, towels, books, sun cream, hats …). The parents settled into their holiday reads while Hamish, Roger and Julia began building a beach car, which consisted of a large hole with sand seats.
‘Stuart, would you pass me a peach, please,’ Caroline said pointedly.
Her husband, who was under the misapprehension that his morning’s labours were complete, extracted himself from Robert Ludlum’s latest tome, reached across to the cooler box and handed his wife a cold, perfectly ripe cling peach.
‘Thanks.’
Stuart held his breath, and then sighed quietly as she replaced her bookmark and set her PD James mystery aside. They would be having a conversation.
‘Stuart, do you think Hamish is just a late developer or do you think there’s a developmental problem? He’s so scrawny compared with Roger and other boys his age.’
‘He’s fine – he probably won’t be the largest boy in the wurld but he’ll grow eventually.’
‘Why isn’t he any good at sport? You were pretty good, and Roger isn’t bad.’
‘Because he’s nor interested, that’s why – he doesn’t like cricket or soccer, and if you’re small and nor very talented, you need to wurk at these things. How much time does Hamish spend practising with a soccer ball or with his cricket bat?’
‘None.’
‘Precisely – besides which, he rides well. It costs far more than is appropriate but at least that’s a sport.’
‘Well, yes, but it’s hardly doing his image much good, is it?’
‘What’s image got to do with anything?’
‘You know what I mean – he’s got one friend at school and Harry’s going off to boarding school in Natal next year, so Hamish will be starting in the College with no one … not even Roger.’ She sighed, sucking on her peach stone. ‘You know I worry about him.’
Stuart snickered.
‘What are you laughing at?’
‘I just had a flashback to our firstborn dangling from the choir gallery by his ankles.’
part 2
1990–1994
16
The traditional beginning-of-the-school-year photograph of 1990 saw Julia, now five, prepared for her last year at Jumping Jacks in a smocked dress, sandals and holding a pristine brown suitcase. Roger, gangly and outgrowing his grey shorts, smiled underneath his mop of greasy, dark-blond hair – he’d developed an adolescent aversion to tidying his room, polishing his shoes and washing his person.
Hamish stood to the right of his brother in his new College uniform. His mother had shortened the charcoal pants by at least three inches the night before, and the navy blazer sleeves hung almost to his fingertips. A sense of trepidation could be seen in the oldest Fraser child’s smile.
During the trip to school, Stuart pushed an ageing cassette of military music into the Mercedes’s sound system, opened all the windows and turned up the volume. ‘Rule Britannia’ blared as they drove through the rush-hour traffic, with Stuart singing at the top of his lungs, and Hamish crooning too (he didn’t know the words so he just mouthed the tune). From the back seat, Roger growled the odd inaccurate note. This had become something of a tradition on the first day of the school year, and Hamish felt inspired while the brass band played.
The car pulled up to the imposing College archway as the final note faded.
Stuart had given up pretending that Hamish would enjoy school. He turned to his smaller son and squeezed Hamish’s shoulder. ‘Good luck, boy.’
The undersized thirteen year old sighed and opened the door. ‘Thanks, Dad. See you later, Rog.’
Hamish walked to the back of the car, opened the boot and took out his new school bag, which contained a new pencil case with new stationery that he’d sworn to keep neat and tidy (a commitment that wouldn’t see out the day). He reached up to the boot lid on his tippy-toes and just managed to grasp the short string hanging from the catch that allowed him, with some effort, to pull it shut.
The warm January air was filled with the scent of green oak and plane trees, fresh grass cuttings and flowers sprouting from extensive gardens. The archway’s buttresses shone deep green with ivy. Hamish noted the colours and the comforting summer smells and thought about how much he’d rather have been enjoying them in the Inanda garden.
As the car pulled away, he walked under the archway surrounded by young men of the senior years – all substantially larger than he. They pushed and cajoled each other, rekindling relationships that had drifted during the December holidays. Hamish was cowed by the roughness with which they shoved each other into the stone walls.
He moved quickly up through the claustrophobic arch and into the light of the Lion Quadrangle. At the head of the cross-shaped pond, a bronze of the College’s lion rampant stood on a plinth; between his front legs, a cub looked out from the protection of his father. Impressive as the piece was, it was a smaller bronze almost hidden in a flowerbed of yellow roses that Hamish paused to consider. There stood David, sword in hand, his right foot on Goliath’s recently severed head. Hamish might have taken courage from the piece, but as the Goliaths streamed past, bumping him, he felt more like a fragile worm than a sword-wielding hero.
He flinched out of his reverie as the clock tower struck seven-thirty, and then cast his eyes through the open doors of the chapel, all the way to the rood screen topped with the disturbing image of Christ nailed to the cross.
Quite suddenly, Hamish found himself flying through the air into the chapel. For a split second he thought he may have been caught in some sort of impromptu rapture. He realised it was not so when pain exploded in his right shoulder as it was driven into the worn carpet at the back of the nave. He rolled onto his back in time to hear, ‘Watch out, wanker!’
It had been a year since Hamish had seen Nicholas Cullinan and Robert Bosch, and the boys had grown substantially in that time. Robert Bosch was almost unrecognisable, such was the severity of the acne outbreak on his round cheeks.
‘You must respect your seniors, doos,’ said Cullinan, the great orator.
Hamish couldn’t take his eyes off the slick sheen – Cullinan had more oil in his hair than a Wimpy deep fryer.
‘What are you looking at, wanker?’
Oddly, to Hamish, this incident was a little like clearing the first jump at a show – his nerves dissipated as his instincts took over and his temper flared. If there was one thing he knew, it was that there was very little these boys could do to him in the confines of a private boys’ school.
‘I’m looking at your greasy hair,’ he replied to Cullinan. Then he turned his gaze to Bosch. ‘You look like a pizza.’
The bullies were not expecting this from a junior – especially not such a weedy one. This was their first attempt at intimidation for the year and it wasn’t going to plan.
Cullinan grabbed Hamish by his blazer lapels and lifted him clean off the ground.
‘Apologise!’ he spat.
‘No!’ the small boy stammered.
‘Apologise or you’re gonna get hit!’
Hamish surmised that the older boy had clearly not brushed his teeth before coming to school.
‘Chips chips chips!’ hissed Bosch. ‘Pod’s coming.’
Cullinan dropped his victim and turned as a teacher walked past the chapel door. The two bullies’ legs masked their diminutive victim. The master stopped briefly.
‘Cullinan, Bosch, what are you boys doing in there?’
‘Praying, sir,’ replied Cullinan, grinning stupidly.
‘Rubbish,’ snapped the teacher as he moved on. ‘Get to roll-call or you’ll find yourselves on hard labour before the year’s even started.’
A moment later, left alone, Hamish rolled onto his back and looked down the nave. Sun streamed through the windows, slicing the dust- and incense-filled air into shafts of pale gold. He considered how pretty the light was compared with the rather horrific figure of Christ’s torture. He raised himself, checked that Mousie was still in his inside right pocket and then put his hand into his bag. The pencil case was intact, but it was covered in mayonnaise from his squished sandwich.
‘Fuck,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Sorry, God.’ He bowed briefly to the altar.
Roll-call took place in the Memorial Quadrangle. In the middle of the quad’s circular pond was a plinth topped with a bronze of four soldiers in First World War fatigues, standing facing each of the cardinal points, heads bowed and rifle butts resting on the ground. Hamish found the pond disconcerting – struck by the eerie contradiction of the peaceful trickle of water and the ghostly soldiers above.
For Hamish, the time between arriving at school and roll-call, when the official school day began, would become the most awkward part of his five high-school years. Most boys drifted into their social groups before the bell rang at seven-forty, and Hamish found that he had no one to talk to. On this first day, however, he had a task to occupy him: ridding his bag of mayonnaise. He withdrew to a secluded section of the cloisters surrounding the quad and cleaned the mess as best as possible. The bag gave off a vague whiff of stale mayonnaise for the rest of the year.
A few minutes later the bell in the clock tower began to peal and Hamish made his way to the north-western corner of the quad – the designated area for Iverson House. Standing in front of the gathering boys of Iverson were six prefects dressed not in uniform but in blue pin-striped suits. They cast stern looks towards the nervous Form I boys.
‘Line up!’ yelled the head of house, a massive, neckless fellow by the name of Quentin Allenby.
The Form Is shuffled about in terror while the rest of the house arranged themselves alphabetically in their year groups.
‘Form Is! Get in line, alphabetical. Quickly – you think you still on holiday?!’ Anton Eisenbaum bellowed. The prefect assigned to the Iverson Form Is was, as far as Hamish could tell, the loudest, most terrifying and thoroughly unpleasant human being ever spawned.
Hamish shuffled to the middle of the stripe. He slotted in next to Robert Gumede – a new boy – on one side and Bernard Fenton on the other.
Eisenbaum went for the most obvious targets first: Basil Anderson and Ryan Henderson, both of whom had reached puberty before they were out of nappies.
‘You two think this is some kind of joke!?’ Saliva flew from a cavernous mouth not two inches from the startled and spotty visage of Basil Anderson.
Hamish knew that his hitherto miserable morning was about to improve. Anderson was big, and although he wasn’t the bluntest pencil in the box, he was no genius.
‘No, I didn’t hear a joke, sir,’ replied Anderson.
‘I’m not a sir – what’s my name!?’
The new boys were supposed to know the names of all the prefects. Anderson, perhaps thinking of his last dinner, blurted, ‘Eisbein … sir … um … sorry, I mean not sir. Just Eisbein.’
Hamish began to giggle. ‘Sir Eisbein,’ he whispered under his breath.
Robert Gumede started to chuckle.
‘Eisenbaum! Say it: Eisenbaum!’ The prefect’s face turned an alarming shade of crimson, which only served to increase Hamish’s amusement.
‘Sir Eisenbaum … um … sorry … um …’ blubbered Anderson.
‘Shuddup!’ yelled the prefect. ‘Anderson, you better know my name and the name of every prefect in the school by this time tomorrow or you gonna to be in more shit than you’ll find in … ah …’ Eisenbaum’s attempt to come up with a clever simile failed ‘… in a lot of shit.’
Trinity tradition dictated that when your name was called by your prefect during roll-call, you replied with the Latin adsum – I am present. The puce prefect reached into his inside jacket pocket and extracted the list of Form Is. Poor Anderson was at the head of the list and therefore the line.
‘Anderson!’ he yelled.
‘Yes, sir, Eisenbaum, sir … um … no … sorry … just Eisenbaum,’ he stammered, sweat glistening on his quivering top lip.
‘Anderson! You say ABSOOM – ABSOOM, Anderson. Are you a moron?’
‘ABSOOM, sir, Eisenbaum, sir.’
Tears were leaking from Hamish’s eyes and he was shaking. Robert Gumede was in a similar state. Alan Barrett was next.
‘Barre—’ Eisenbaum stormed to the middle of the line and towered over Hamish Fraser and Robert Gumede, who tried desperately to hide their mirth. ‘What the hell is so funny, you two?
This was excellent entertainment for those not involved, and all laughter ceased.
Hamish felt like a lead weight had dropped into his lower intestine. His face went cold but began to sweat at the same time, and he made the mistake of looking up – straight into the face of death.
At that moment Robert Gumede – who would spend most of his high school career doing punishments of various kinds due to a chronic inability to cope with authority – chose to speak up.
