17 1956: NUC again, brandy&coke, and adventures with Boet

17 <> 1956: NUC again, brandy&coke, and adventures with Boet

I have no recollection of just when Boet and I found each other again at Howard College. I think we were mutually surprised to see each other. Whether it was in the hall where registration was taking place, or afterwards in the Residence or in the Great Dining Hall, I have not the faintest idea. Boet will remember, but I am not asking him because this is my history sewn together of things that I remember. The point is that we had both been there previously, we both left at about the same time, and now we had both come back without any communication having passed between us in the interim.

I had a room in the Residence and I don’t know whether I shared with anyone or whether I had it on my own. I remember a table at which I was to study, and a wireless (that’s what we used to call a radio in those days) on which I used to listen to the midday concert. The wireless (which I think I got from Boet at some stage) had ‘valves’ (things like electric light bulbs, there were no transistors at that time) all held in a wood case. It would be a treasured antique today. I remember attending an English Literature lecture or two with Professor Sands, and a lecture or two on Psychology, and, frankly, in two terms there that is all I remember of my higher education at that attempt. I had Stendahl’s “Scarlet and Black” to read, and “Sons and Lovers” by D H Lawrence but I read neither, nor do I recollect reading the Shakespeare plays that were assigned for the year. Tasks which today I would relish, I left totally neglected — for the sake of spending the time drinking in a pub.

It would be less than truthful if I said I didn’t enjoy the year: after all, I spent the time drinking because that was what I enjoyed doing. But, to be mature about it, it wasn’t the best use of the windfall money neither was it good for my total well-being. How did it happen?

It all started when two desires met in one place — I was thinking of buying a scooter (a chap at UCT had a Vespa), and Boet wanted a bigger motorbike. He had already made arrangements to do a trade with a dealer. When it turned out that what Boet would get as a trade-in was the same as I would pay for a scooter, he suggested that instead of a scooter I should buy his bike. It made good sense so I bought the bike from him and became the owner of a 350cc Velocette which was as good as new (anything that Boet owns is always in a condition as good as new), and it would be more suitable for my purpose, say, for travelling to New Hanover to see my dad. And just in that way do the twists and turns of life depend on decisions almost made for us when events come together. Boet wonders today how differently our lives might have turned out had I bought the scooter as I had planned? We can’t, of course, even imagine that but looking back over the years I would not have wanted it differently. For one thing  DorothyAnne and I might not have met and got married but, as it was, life now swerved off in that new direction which eventually took me there.

When I took possession of the bike at the dealer’s premises where Boet’s new 650cc BSA was ready for him, I had never ridden one before. I think Boet gave me a few pointers about how the gears worked and which was the clutch and which the front brake on the handlebars after which I must have got on it and ridden off. The same day, or a day or two later, we were going to Pinetown. I had a passenger on the pillion — a chap called Howell if I remember correctly. I had got the bike into third gear and then, going up the steep hill out of Durban, I didn’t know how to change down. The bike slogged away going slower and slower until Mr Howell just jumped off and left me to it! Then I pulled in the clutch, stopped, and took off again in low gear with Mr Howell back on the pillion! Anyway, I got the hang of it after that and got a learner’s licence and not long afterwards, a Driver’s Licence. I vaguely remember that — the examiner asked me a couple of questions, told me to ride round the block and come back. When I got back I got the licence and rode off. He hadn’t even watched me. I suppose he figured that since I had ridden there through the traffic in the first place I must be able to ride.

Having the bike meant that Boet and I could ride out together, just for the joy of riding, of course. At this stage, Boet and I were still attending all the required lectures and just riding out when we were free, just stopping for a drink on the way back, either at the Outspan Hotel, or the Willowvale which was at the bottom of the hill leading up to the University.

In time, though, the outing was as much for the purpose of reaching a pub as it was for the ride itself. We started missing the regular formal evening meals in the dining hall which students and staff attended dressed in their academic gowns. Our supper on those occasions was coffee and a toasted cheese sandwich at the Sunkist on Durban’s North Beach or a mixed grill in one or other restaurant, especially one — The Excel Tearoom, I think it was — at the foot of Berea Road. Then we would miss breakfast, getting up too late for it, having instead a whole-wheat ham roll and a cup of coffee (in the dining hall which served as a canteen between meals) and missing the lectures taking place at the time. (Boet tells me that even today on a Saturday afternoon he has a beer and a whole-wheat ham roll which Alice, his wife, makes for him. I will join him in it one day if I get to visit them in Greytown!)

Boet’s cousin Gwen (second cousin actually) had been at Greytown High School with us. In the three years that I had been running around trying to figure out what to do with my life, she had been at Teacher’s Training College in Pietermaritzburg and had just started teaching at Kingsway High School in Amanzimtoti. It was with Boet that I made contact again with Gwen at the Trefusis Hotel in Warner Beach where she was staying. I can’t remember the situation too clearly, but I went one day to visit Gwen and she wanted me to meet another teacher who had recently arrived from England, so the two of us walked across to the Warner Beach Hotel where the teacher was staying — and that is where I saw  DorothyAnne for the first time. I got to know  DorothyAnne better later when she and Gwen shared an apartment (a converted garage overlooking the ocean in Doonside) where Boet and I called in to say hello now and again on our way to or from a pub anywhere down that way, but at that stage there were no thoughts of any romantic involvement between  DorothyAnne and me because  DorothyAnne was engaged to a man from England, for whose sake she had applied for a teaching job in South Africa.

By mid-year our drinking habit was becoming very serious. Not a day went by that we didn’t arrive back at the residence quite drunk, the day often starting with a visit to a pub as soon as it was open in the morning. I actually remember very little of those eight or nine months of my life, possibly because the routine was much the same every day — drinking in this pub or in that pub, in Smith Street, on the Esplanade or along Marine Parade, riding down to Margate, Scottburgh or Amanzimtoti, and returning very much under the influence, singing pub songs and shouting Zulu praises at the top of our voices along the way — but keeping silent as we turned off the engines to coast downhill surreptitiously to the residences.

Sometimes we went to Boet’s home in Greytown for a weekend and spent much of the time in the Plough Hotel, drinking with friends of Boet’s, the company including one of our previous teachers. It was on one such weekend, probably when we were running out of money and out of grace at Howard College that Boet and I thought we might go gold mining! There was an abandoned mine near Nkandla, a man-made cave cut into the mountainside. There apparently had been a fairly successful small operation there until the owner-miner, who had invested the proceeds in shares, went bust during the great Stock Market crash in the 1920/30′s. Boet tells me that, in his extreme poverty, the miner had become a tramp until he eventually found his way to the farm of Boet’s grandparents who took him in and accommodated him until the end of his life. In gratitude, the miner gave the mine and another adjacent claim to Boet’s grandparents. I don’t think that mining operations were ever resumed at the two claims. Boet and I rode out to the one mine to assess the possibilities! At the entrance, I ventured into the mouth and Boet followed me. But, frankly, I don’t know how we thought we would accomplish even an initial exploration because we had not even brought a torch with us! Once into the tunnel it was soon too dark to see anything, let alone veins of gold in the rock face! We gave up on that idea and returned to Greytown — probably straight to the Plough Hotel!

Once we were travelling up West Street when a traffic light turned orange. I hit my brakes and Boet, following behind me, swerved to avoid me but collected the crash-bar of my bike. He went slithering, bike and all, across the street. Fortunately it was late so there was not much traffic. I parked my bike against the kerb and I rushed across the street to Boet lying on the tar with blood streaming down his face. I expected the very worst until I heard him saying: “I’m so drunk I could die!” I think we had someone else with us who must have called for an ambulance. I vaguely remember riding Boet’s bike with twisted handlebars down to Addington Hospital. At the hospital they sewed up the long cut above and through his left eyebrow. They did it with no anaesthetic because, as the surgeon said, they would have to inform the police if they had to put him to sleep — something that neither Boet nor I would want to happen. Boet opted to endure the pain, which, with that amount of alcohol in his system, was probably almost bearable!

In another incident I crashed into a cyclist and ended up across the road in a flowing storm-water gulley, and sustained a couple of cracked ribs. Boet and I were drinking, probably at the Outspan Hotel, where we had stopped for a drink before I went on to visit  DorothyAnne. When we left the pub on our bikes, it was a dark night and raining steadily. Boet was ahead and I was feeling my way behind with rain beating into my face and clouding my glasses. I didn’t see the cyclist ahead of me, partly because he had no lights (no one had lights on bicycles in those days) and no reflector on the back, and partly because of the oncoming cars that blinded me. It all happened so fast that I was hardly aware of having hit anything as I veered across the road in front of oncoming traffic, up a slight embankment and into the gutter. The bike was standing upright in the narrow rainwater drain with me on my back in the water beside it. My left leg was under the bike and my right leg caught with my shin under the footrest and my foot over the brake pedal. I was completely trapped: try as I might I couldn’t get my leg out. Next thing I knew some men were on the bank heaving the bike off me. They had seen the headlight which was still shining, and came to the rescue. My rescuers didn’t wait after getting me and the bike out of the drain and seeing that I was okay. I got the bike back onto the road and then for the first time I saw the cyclist standing there with his bike. I had broken his pedal off, not the shank but just the foot part, which was amazing because he himself wasn’t injured at all; by rights the impact must have been on his leg and foot. I gave him ten shillings, which was enough to buy a new pedal, and we parted. In the meantime Boet knew nothing about what had happened but rode on happily thinking I was somewhere behind him. I arrived, wet, bedraggled and with a painful chest, at  DorothyAnne’s and Gwen’s flat, where  DorothyAnne was anxiously waiting for me. I simply didn’t go to doctors in those days so it was only after several days that  DorothyAnne realised that I probably had a couple of cracked ribs.

At some stage earlier in the year, Boet and I went up to Tugela Mouth to meet up with JP, a friend of his, who was one of our drinking companions in Greytown. It was before I started ‘seeing’  DorothyAnne and I was often in that ‘life-is-meaningless-and-futile’ frame of mind. Always in my mind was the quote from Pilgrim’s Progress that I had brought with me from school, “Why choose to live when life is attended by so many difficulties?” On this occasion we had been drinking as usual and were quite drunk and had gone to the beach. I was in that morbid mood and decided that I would swim out beyond the breakers so far that I could not swim back. I thought differently once I was out there and started swimming for the shore. Boet tells me that he, standing watching with JP on the beach, could see that I was in trouble and said so to JP expecting that he would come to my rescue because, in times in the pub, JP had often regaled us with stories of his exploits as a life-saver! JP looked at me and said to Boet, “No — anyone brave enough to swim out that far knows what he is doing”! In the meantime I had managed to get back to where the waves break but then sank from sheer exhaustion. Boet, who cannot swim at all, came out on an inflated tractor tube, managed to get a hold of me and pulled me up — but then lost his hold and I sank again. Fortunately for me, he felt in the water and got a new grip on me and pulled me out. I often had such suicidal thoughts, but that is the only time I made any attempt at it.

The motorbike gave me great mobility, great freedom to get around, mainly to the pubs, of course! But I was also able to visit Dad at New Hanover more often than I would have done without the bike when I would have had to rely on the train or on hitch-hiking. On one such visit to Dad, I gave Osra a lift. Osra was at school with me and now was also at University in Durban. She lived with her mother and two brothers on their farm a couple of kilometres off the main road in New Hanover, almost opposite the road that led to the farm where Dad rented his house. Leaving Durban on Friday afternoon after lectures, we encountered rain — really heavy rain — soon after leaving the low lying coastal area. We were soon soaked through and through but we pushed on toward Pietermaritzburg and the rain never let up. As we entered the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg, Osra suggested we call in at her cousin’s house which was not far off the road and get warmed up a bit. Her cousin wasn’t at home but we let ourselves in. I can’t remember if there was a fire going or if we managed to dry up to any extent, or even if had a warm cup of tea, but after a while we decided to press on to New Hanover. I was going to drop Osra off at her home and then go on to Dad’s place but the road leading to her farm was muddy and very slippery. I carried on slowly but soon the bike was sliding uncontrollably and we were on the ground. We got on again but were soon on the ground once more. Then the bike started to labour and stall — the mud had caked up between the tyre and the mudguard and effectively braked the rear wheel. Osra then suggested that we leave the bike there beside the road and walk to her place, which was not very far at that point, and I would spend the night there and retrieve the bike in the morning. When I started the bike in the morning, the mud jamming the wheel had dried and shrunk enough so that the wheel was free, and the road was also less slippery so I could get to Dad’s place easily enough.

It may have been in the same weekend that I had an encounter with a snake at Dad’s place. The toilet at the house was a long-drop (a long-drop is a pit-toilet in an outhouse away from the house) and the footpath leading to it was literally a path made by feet walking through the long grass. (Dad spent no time ‘gardening’ so the wild veld grasses grew right up to the wall of the house on all sides!) I was walking down this path to the toilet when I felt a sharp stab on my right foot. I was wearing a pair of moccasins at the time. Seated in the loo, I examined my foot and saw two punctures just above the edge of the moccasin — two neat punctures a centimetre or so apart. I had seen nothing but the marks were undoubtedly made by a snake’s teeth. This was puff adder country so the guess was that I had been bitten by one of the breed. Back at the house I opened the petrol tank on the bike, dipped a piece of cloth (probably my handkerchief which I always have in my pocket) and dabbed the marks. It burned a little but then I thought little more about it. There were no consequences so I guess I was saved by the lip of the moccasin which prevented the teeth from doing any more than just a surface incision.

My history, to be truthful, must also be my confession of those things of which I am ashamed. There are two such things from this period of my life.

Jean was at school with us. Now she was in Durban doing a course (not at University), and living in the YWCA. Boet had made friends with another man at University who also had a motorbike, so there were times when he rode out with us to a pub. Somewhere, somehow, this man had met Jean and, on this occasion, he had Jean on the back of his bike when we went drinking somewhere down the South Coast. During the evening, Jean approached me on the side and asked me if she could go back with me on my bike: for some reason she no longer wanted to ride with this man, or to be with him. To my shame to this day, I refused because of the notion that a man does not come between a chap and his girl. I have no idea how and when he and Jean had met, or how much they had seen of each other before this. It was okay however, Jean got home safely and, as far as I know, never went out with that man again. I never saw her again, even to this day, but I always remember it with profound regret. If Jean could chance upon this that I write, I would like to say to her, “I am really sorry, Jean. I should have set aside the ‘protocol’ and helped you out.”

The second thing of which I am profoundly ashamed is that, having the windfall of that money, I never once thought of giving my Dad some of it. Even knowing that we — he and I — were poor, I always just assumed that he had at least enough money to live on. And he never let me know otherwise. It is only in recent years that I learnt that he was completely out of money and that my sister and brother-in-law were supporting him with regular cheques. I do think that, even had he had more money, he would still have continued living just as he was. That would have been his choice, but that he was destitute and I never noticed it distresses me even now. I am grateful to my brother-in-law for acting generously in something which was hardly his responsibility, but I do regret that I never thought of saying, “Dad I have this money: do you need any of it?”

The time at University was to come to a dramatic end at the very beginning of the fourth term. Fast running out of money, I had taken a job at the Customs Clearing and Forwarding Agency, a full-time job from the beginning of October 1956, which meant I could no longer even pretend to be attending lectures. In nine months my windfall from the Rhodesian Sweepstake — a full three-year’s normal salary-equivalent — had gone, part of it on University fees for the year and part on the motorbike, but the most part spent on drinking and eating while out on the town. The day came when I was called to the office of the Professor in charge of the residence. He said to me, “You are not attending lectures: you are just using the residence as a place to board. So you are required to vacate the premises immediately”. It was as straightforward as that. The surprise is that it had taken the establishment so long to find out. (Boet reminds me that his dismissal had taken place not long before that when, firstly, because he drew the attention of the Professor in charge of the residence when he was seen walking around with a bandage on his head following the accident in West Street, and then when he missed writing an exam. When challenged about his activities he confessed that he had missed writing because he had gone up to Pretoria to take delivery of a new motorbike! That was too much for the authorities so he was given his instant marching orders). My turn had come so I packed my suitcase and haversack, placed the bag on the petrol tank in front of me and left the men’s residence at Howard College. With no money to stay at a hotel — let alone The Royal — a school friend, Johny Fosteras, put me up in his one-roomed flat that he shared with his brother, Basil, who was away at the time.

It would be quite incorrect to say now that I am sorry that I wasted a year of my life or that I spent all that money on drinking. I am neither sorry about it nor am I proud of it. It was an episode in my life which I had no mind to avoid or control. Was I unhappy during that time? No, it was what I wanted to do. To drink and be drunk was all I could see in life for me. I had acquired a taste for alcohol even before the farewell party during the Matric exams. I had a friend, Ray, who managed a timber farm in the district, with whom I would spend the odd weekend and drink with him. I had also read Jack London’s “John Barleycorn”, which is a biographical work chronicling a time in his life when he lived the life of an alcoholic hobo, and I thought. “Why not? What else is there in life to look forward to?” And added to this, I was steeped in Omar Khayyam’s philosophy which spoke sense to me:

“Into this universe, and why not knowing,

Nor whence, like water willy-nilly flowing;

And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,

I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing.

“What, without asking, hither hurried whence?

And, without asking, whither hurried hence!

Another and another Cup to drown

The Memory of this Impertinence!”

Now let me philosophise a little.

I was young, but I was a seeker for something, thinking, thinking all the time, but getting nowhere. The one thing that could have rescued me at that time would have been the intimacy of a woman. It is instinctive, I am sure, that yearning for the feel of a female hand in yours (or, I suppose, if you are a woman, for a man’s hand in yours); for the closeness of a hug and a kiss; for the feeling that there is someone there waiting for the touch of your hand. It starts early in life, it is certainly there before puberty. Particularly at High School, I was ready for it. It’s not love to begin with; love is a commitment which follows later when intimacy has set the course. Neither is it predatory, as in looking for sex, but it will move on to sex as a normal consequence of the flesh (or is it of the genes seeking to reproduce and live on in ones’ offspring?). During the school years, I yearned for such an intimate relationship with a girl, and at High School I had a longing especially for one girl who shared a class with me all the way from Standard Six to Matric. I could never approach her — I was struck dumb at any time she spoke to me, which wasn’t often. I think she was as shy a person as I was. But there were also the other girls any one of whom I would gladly have had as a girlfriend. But that never happened, except in my final year when there was a girl who was more a girlfriend to me than I was a boyfriend to her. I think she was embarrassed by my attentions, but she did hold my hand as we walked and she did partner me to events at the school. Then there was Clee in Estcourt who ran away from me, and after that, June, the first girl that had ever willingly been my girlfriend but whom I left behind in Johannesburg. Back at University, after I and June had ceased writing to each other, I did ask a girl to go to the beach with me but she turned me down. After that I developed an antipathy to (or a certain wariness of) the female sex, in self-defence, I imagine, because I did not want to be hurt, and the pub and the drinking-men in it became even more meaningful to me, for what did life hold better than the pleasure of drinking and being drunk?

Then  DorothyAnne came into my life, and everything changed.

Boet remembers —

Boet has a vivid memory of episodes which I have forgotten or remember only vaguely, but they are part of the story so I let Boet tell them here in his own words. ‘Josefas’ is, of course, me.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Bikes

I wanted a bigger bike and Josefas wanted to buy a Vespa scooter.

Killerbys offered to trade my bike for the same price as a scooter so Josefas bought it because there was no comparison between a 350 Velocette with 4000 miles on the clock and a wimpish 125 scooter.

That money plus the university fees which Geesie had given me in cash bought me a 650 BSA.

This simple transaction spelled the end of our academic careers.

There followed many happy and carefree days of motorcycling and drinking.

The drinking never got out of hand because if it had one or both of us would have been killed on our bikes.

I often think of the golden afternoons spent in the beer garden of an hotel on the Bluff watching dolphins romping in the Indian ocean. Mein Kind wir waren Kinder.

Tours

We made two failed attempts at touring. The first one was around Easter when Josefas, Freddy, and I decided to go to PE. We set off at 05h00 one morning and made good progress till the pubs opened. (At 09h00 in the Cape in those days)

That night at 10h00 when the pub closed we were in Mount Frere where a “padmaker” put us up for the night.

Josefas’s brakes had developed a loud squeal when applied. If this had developed earlier I wouldn’t have crashed in Durban as I would have known, in spite of his stop light not working, that he was going to stop at the robot.

As we were traveling through the Transkei a sow followed by five piglets ran across the road in front of him. Josefas applied his brakes and there was a long squeal followed by five short ones. Freddy and I laughed so much that I had to stop the bike for fear of coming off. Josefas only saw the funny side once he had recovered from the fright.

Once in East London We took stock of finances. Freddy had been given the drinking money, Josefas the food money, and I the petrol money. The drinking money was finished and half the food money was gone although we had not eaten anything. We then decide to spend the night in an hotel, ( bed only no breakfast) and then hightail back home. The following morning we bought a loaf of bread, butter and some cheese using petrol money because we were voraciously hungry by then. I can still remember how tasty it was.

After that it was just riding, no pubs. When we reached Umzumkulu we were so thirsty that we decided to risk some petrol money for a drink. In the pub Freddy encountered an old friend and borrowed five pounds off him (which he never repaid). Needless to say we had a well lubricated trip home.

At the next attempt Josefas and I decided to tour Basutuland. All went well until we reached Fouriesburg on the border. There was a grand celebration in the pub because the barman had a new son and the main spirit of the village (Willem) was making him buy drinks. It went something like this.

Willem: “Komaan barman gee ons nog ‘n rondte drinks op jou!”

Barman: “Ag nee man Willem ek het nie meer geld nie man”

Willem: “ Ja jy will moes naai! Gooi!”

We were eventually asked to leave the hotel because of rowdiness and continued the party in Willem’s car.

The next hungover morning Basutuland did not look at all attractive and we decide to go and watch military manoeuvres at Tempe outside Bloemfontein.

In Bloemfontein we discovered that we were very short of money and decided to each have a mixed grill, watch the manoeuvres and then head home.

It gets very cold in the Free State in July so we bought newspapers and stuffed them in our jackets for insulation.

We rode almost to Bethlehem and then Josefas’s lights failed. We decided to make a fire and wait for daybreak but there was no wood. The heat from the newspapers barely warmed our hands and our insulation was now gone.

With me leading the way we crept into Bethlehem where Josefas persuaded a very irate innkeeper ( it was about 02h00 ) to accept a cheque.

The next morning we continued to Mooi River where we pooled our money and filled Josefas’s tank because he still had to reach Durban. Much to the amusement of the petrol attendant there was sixpence left over to put petrol in my bike. As I reached Greytown my engine died but I managed to freewheel home.