The Power of One

TWENTY

The second term of form three began with a new aspect of school life. Singe ’n Burn’s tutorials three times a week were quite unlike school. We talked for an hour and from it would come at least three hours of reading and preparation for the next tutorial. The headmaster had a wide grasp of subject and he was quick to discover where a boy’s special aptitudes lay. These he would cultivate carefully while at the same time balancing the mental menu with the discipline of tackling subjects which, though less interesting, he thought essential to a well-rounded education. Sinjun’s People seldom met as a group and once chosen they were never mentioned again in the activity of the Prince of Wales School. No attempt was ever made to make any one of us seem special or especially important, although a powerful struggle between the six took place in the normal course of school, with each one of Sinjun’s People competing fiercely in the classroom for honours. All this, combined with boxing and rugby football, left me very little time to myself.

Hymie had also revealed his big plan. By now he was so intimately involved with me as a boxer as well as a friend that he acted quite unselfconsciously as my manager. In two and a bit years Hymie had acquired a remarkable expertise on boxing and he too was aware that we’d reached the limitations of both Darby White and Sarge and needed to take the next step in my training.

‘Who’s the best professional boxing trainer in South Africa?’ he’d asked one afternoon shortly after our return to school.

‘You already know the answer to that; Solly Goldman.’

‘Well, I went to see him during the holidays. We’re working out for him when he gets back from a trip to England in six weeks. If he likes what he sees, he’ll take you on.’

‘Jesus, Hymie, that’s wonderful! How’d you get him to agree? Solly Goldman only handles professionals.’

For once Hymie wasn’t ready with a flip answer. He looked down at the back of his hands as he answered. ‘We’re going to pay him. We’ve got enough money in the bank to pay him for a year then we’ll think of something else.’ Hymie looked up at me. ‘Now I know what you’re going to say; but as far as I’m concerned my money is yours, you’d do the same for me.’

‘It’s not on, Hymie. Thank you, but it’s simply not on. There are two reasons. The first you already know about, no hand-outs, not under any circumstances, friendship notwithstanding. The second is more practical, that’s our business capital, the first rule of business is never to eat into your capital, you above all people know that!’

‘Look, we’d still keep the Bank, I can borrow money from my old man to keep the float going. You don’t have to take a hand-out. You can buy back your share of the float capital from the profits and you can take a salary as pocket money, you’ll see, it will work out.’

‘Hymie, there’s nothing in the world I want more than Solly Goldman’s expertise, but I can’t do it. It’s got something to do with an incident in my life when I was five years old and I’ve promised myself I would never again forfeit my independence, never again find myself in a position where I wasn’t in control of my life.’

Hymie looked hurt and I couldn’t blame him, in a sense I was rejecting his friendship and his trust. But the wounds entrenched by the Judge and Nazi stormtroopers had left adhesions on my psyche as a constant reminder to me that I was on my own.

‘Okay, Peekay, have it your way, man.’ Then Hymie grinned. ‘If I think up a scam and your share makes enough money to pay Goldman, will you be in it?’

I grinned, relieved that he had accepted my objection. ‘That’s business, that’s different! But only if I play my part and the whole thing’s kosher.’

‘Shake a paw, partner,’ Hymie grinned. ‘This one is going to be an intellectual masterpiece!’

Atherton, Cunning-Spider and I had been a combination on the rugby field from form one. I was a natural scrum-half with Atherton, following in the footsteps of his famous cousin, developing into a brilliant fly-half while Cunning-Spider was a centre with a lot of style. Hugh Lyell and Jean Minnaar, both Sinjun’s People, were also on the team. While I was still technically under fourteen I elected to play in the under fifteen team to keep the combination together. Pissy Johnson, who seemed to grow bigger every term, was a front row forward and, of course, Hymie only became interested because most of the Wooden Spoon Goons were in the team. The under fifteen team in any school is the nursery for the first fifteen and so the players in it are always carefully watched by the rugby masters who regarded this particular team as one with great promise.

Hymie, as usual, analysed the teams against whom we played and, like his boxing notes, we had a pretty good idea of their game plan and capability before taking the field against them.

As he had done in his swot spot in boxing, Hymie made us think and behave like winners. ‘Winners make their own luck but winners are also lucky,’ he said.

In the under thirteens and fourteens, when we had played Helpmekaar, the Afrikaans school where I had boxed my first bout to beat Jannie Geldenhuis, the much bigger Helpmekaar forwards had made mincemeat of us and the stronger, bigger backs had run us off our feet. Geldenhuis, playing scrum-half opposite me, had thoroughly enjoyed his revenge on each of these four occasions. In the last under fourteen match there they’d beaten us narrowly, as we left the field he’d given me an unnecessarily patronising pat on the back. ‘In the ring is one thing, on the rugby field is another. Rugby is more important than boxing, man.’ We’d met five times in the ring and while he was always a tough opponent, on each occasion I’d beaten him; he had a right to try and get even. We would play each school twice during a season and so in our personal score it was me with five boxing wins, Helpmekaar four rugby wins. Hymie, in particular, was anxious to change these rugby statistics when we met in the under fifteens. While the Helpmekaar team were still bigger than we were, things had evened out a bit in size. Hymie was convinced we could beat them. ‘Look at the statistics, Peekay, in the under thirteens they beat us twenty to nil and again fifteen nil, last year it was nine nil and ten three and we scored a try to two free kicks and a drop goal. Statistically we have to take them this year.’

I had my doubts, Helpmekaar with four wins to their credit in the preceding two years had a right to be confident. ‘Hymie, they’re Boers, they’d rather die than lose to an English school, it’s not simply a matter of statistics!’

‘Ja, I know, that’s what we’re going to have to fix.’

On the Wednesday afternoon two weeks prior to the match, when we were meant to be studying at the Johannesburg library, Hymie drew me aside. ‘Will you come to Helpmekaar with me this afternoon to see Jannie Geldenhuis, don’t ask any questions, just say, yes… it’s important.’

Sitting on the top deck of the Parktown bus he outlined his plan. ‘There are nearly twelve hundred kids at Helpmekaar and six hundred at our school, if we can get most of them to place a bet on Helpmekaar winning against our under fifteens we could really clean up, we’d have your Solly Goldman money.’

‘Christ, Hymie, we’re back to straight gambling! You’re crazy, this isn’t like those fist boxing matches when we took a few bets in the toilet before the fight. There I was a surprise factor in that scam, the punters from the other schools didn’t know we had a boxer who could fight. This is just the opposite, they know how good we are and what’s more we’ve never beaten them! This whole thing contradicts our business philosophy.’

‘You know what your problem is, Peekay? You worry too much.’

‘With you as a friend, that’s hardly bloody surprising. I hope you’ve got a plan?’

Hymie opened his hands expansively. ‘Does a bird fly? Of course I’ve got a plan, but I may have to tapdance a little when we get there so please excuse me if I don’t explain it to you in detail. But I promise you our business philosophy is intact.’

‘Hymie, listen! Picking up a dozen punters in the shit house is one thing; taking on a whole bloody Afrikaans school is another. You don’t know these buggers like I do, these guys don’t gamble, the Afrikaans are very religious, you know.’

‘Greed, my dear Peekay, transcends religion. Did not the Roman soldiers gamble for Christ’s garments at Golgotha? Besides, when those Helpmekaar guys see the odds I’m offering, their little Boer hands won’t be able to get a kitchen knife to their money boxes fast enough.’

‘Hymie, I hope this whole thing’s kosher. If it turns out to be a con and they find out, we’re dead meat!’ Hymie had taught us all the Jewish word ‘kosher’ and it had become the generic term for something being legitimate.

Hymie smiled. ‘I’ve racked my brains, in fact I’m rather ashamed of myself, but even with my considerable intellect, there is no way of ensuring the outcome other than to pay them off, which is patently impossible. We simply have to beat them on the day. Believe me, it’s as kosher as my granma’s chicken soup.’ He turned to me and gave me his most disarming smile. ‘Peekay, I know you’ve got a considerable rep with these Boers, no way I’m going to spoil that. You’re the only Rooinek Christian gentleman they respect,’ he paused. ‘Just get it into your head that we can beat the bastards!’

‘I hope you didn’t mean you’d pay them off if you could find a way?’

‘No, of course not, I was only kidding. The nicest part of a scam is the brains part. Anyone can learn to cheat.’

We reached the top of the hill and arrived at the Helpmekaar gates just as school was getting out. A sea of brown blazers piped with yellow braid engulfed our two green ones. Remarks were flying left, right and centre and things were getting decidedly uncomfortable.

‘What now?’ I whispered to Hymie.

‘We just wait here, you’ll see,’ he replied.

Just then a voice cut through the sea of brown blazers, ‘Peekay, howzit?’ It was Jannie Geldenhuis. ‘Sorry I’m late, man, I had to see one of the masters. Come with me.’ He extended his hand in the Boer manner and we shook it in turn and then followed him through the gates.

‘Magtig, I thought we were going to be lynched,’ I said to Jannie in Afrikaans.

‘No way, man, they all know you here, you a sort of hero.’

We had reached the school toilets where a couple of guys about our own age were having a quiet smoke. Jannie asked them politely to leave and they kicked at the ground with the toe cap of their shoes, then deciding to obey, killed their cigarettes by pinching the heads off and put the unused stompies in their blazer pockets for use later.

Hymie said he’d accept odds of three to one on the Prince of Wales School winning.

Geldenhuis gasped. ‘You’re crazy, man! We already beat you four games to nil!’

‘Those are the odds,’ Hymie said quietly.

‘That’s blêrrie terrific for the punters,’ Geldenhuis said, ‘but what about us? We… you’ll be cleaned out! Fifteen percent of nothing is nothing, and I’ll end up with my arse kicked by twelve hundred bloody angry Helpmekaar punters.’

Geldenhius was not just a pretty face, I observed. Hymie’d gone crackers! Helpmekaar had to be favoured to win. Three to one odds was suicide.

‘Okay, Geldenhuis… Peekay and I will give you a written guarantee that we’ll honour our debts if the Prince of Wales loses.’ He reached into the inside pocket of his blazer and handed me a square of folded paper. I opened it to see that it was a guarantee by the Bank to pay in the event of a Helpmekaar win. There was a place at the bottom for two signatures. Hymie had already signed as one of them.

‘Sign it and give it to him,’ Hymie said casually.

I made a rough calculation in my head. Assuming two thirds of the punters bet against us at an average of two shillings a bet, we stood to lose around three hundred and seventy pounds. If we sold the Bank to a syndicate and our rights to Miss Bornstein’s Famous Correspondence School Notes and took all our savings we could just make it.

I breathed a sigh of relief, if it had been more than our total assets I would have had to turn Hymie down in front of Geldenhuis, causing us both no end of embarrassment. I borrowed Hymie’s Parker 51 and holding the guarantee against the toilet wall I signed it. But I can tell you I was not happy; Hymie Solomon Levy was going to be in a lot of shit when we were alone again.

Geldenhuis took the guarantee from me, read it and pulled out a small leather wallet from his pocket, as he opened it to stow the guarantee I noticed it contained no money.

‘Okay, Geldenhuis, twenty percent of the winnings or fifty quid now, it’s your choice,’ Hymie said.

Like me before Hymie had entered my life, Jannie Geldenhuis had probably never seen a ten-pound note in his life, much less fifty. Eight pounds a week was the average white workers’ wage, Helpmekaar was not a private school and his parents were probably battling to make ends meet.

Hymie had read his man correctly. ‘I’ll take the fifty pounds now,’ Geldenhuis said.

Jannie Geldenhuis must have believed we couldn’t win, Hymie was offering him fifty quid against a potential of seventy-five.

Hymie pulled out his wallet and opened it. ‘Just a second!’ Geldenhuis said suddenly. He withdrew his wallet again and took the guarantee from it and proffered it to Hymie. ‘I got a condition of my own, without it we got no deal, man.’

We both looked at Geldenhuis with surprise. ‘What’s the condition, Jannie?’ I asked.

‘Well, first of all, I’m only agreeing to set up the Helpmekaar side of the betting because you’re in this, Peekay.’ He jabbed his finger in Hymie’s direction. ‘I don’t do business with a Jewboy!’

‘Hey, now wait a minute!’ I was suddenly angry, ‘Hymie and I are in this together, no Hymie, no deal!’ I turned to Hymie, ‘C’mon, let’s piss off.’

Hymie put his hand up in a conciliatory manner. ‘Now hang on a sec. Take it easy. We’re a partnership, if Jannie here wants to deal with you that’s fine.’ He had moved so as to unsight Geldenhuis and gave me a knowing wink, then turned again so that Geldenhuis could see him and removed five ten-pound notes from his wallet. “Here, Peekay, you pay the man.’

Before I could take the money, Geldenhuis said, ‘That’s not the condition.’ The beginnings of a smile played at the corners of his mouth.

I was still angry. ‘So what’s the condition, Geldenhuis?’

‘Fight me!’

He must have seen the surprise in my face. ‘What here? Now?’

‘I just turned featherweight, you still easy a bantamweight, I want a last chance to get even.’

‘And if he says no?’ Hymie asked.

Still looking directly at me Geldenhuis said: ‘No deal! You can stick your fifty quid up your Jewboy arse! What do you reckon, Peekay? Box me three rounds here in the gym?’

‘Christ, and to think I liked you, Geldenhuis. You’re on! But I haven’t got any gear.’

‘I already thought of that, I got stuff for you.’ Geldenhuis paused and then shrugged his shoulders, ‘Hey, no hard feelings, man. You a Rooinek, I’m a Boer, I won’t be happy till I beat you,’ he said simply.

‘You may be a long time unhappy, man! Where do I change?’

‘Who’s going to referee?’ Hymie asked.

Jannie Geldenhuis pointed to Witwatersrand University campus which was only a couple of hundred yards from the school. ‘We got a guy from Wits just in case you said yes.’

Geldenhuis put the guarantee back into his wallet and I turned to follow him out of the toilets, but Hymie stood his ground.

‘Just a moment, Geldenhuis!’

We turned to face Hymie who held the five ten-pound notes up in his hand, just the hint of a smile played over his face.

‘I bet you fifty quid Peekay smacks your arse!’

Geldenhuis stood, his arms held stiffly as though at attention, he was rigid with anger. Hymie had outfoxed him and avenged himself at the same time.

‘You got your bet, Jew!’ he spat.

Geldenhuis took us over to the shower block and pointed to a brown paper bag on a bench. ‘Everything’s there, I’ll see you in the gym.’ He turned and walked away, presumably to change elsewhere.

‘Christ, what a turn up for the books,’ Hymie said.

The gear fitted well enough and the boxing boots were nicely worn. We left the showers and walked down a long corridor towards the gym. I entered ahead of Hymie.

Suddenly the hall resounded with clapping and whistling, it was packed to the rafters with Helpmekaar guys.

‘Holy shit!’ I exclaimed, turning to Hymie.

Hymie glanced at the grinning faces looking at us. ‘Keep calm, pretend you’re not surprised, we don’t want him to have the psychological advantage.’ Hymie, as usual, was thinking on his feet. We climbed up into the ring and Hymie gloved me up. Geldenhuis was already in his corner throwing punches into the air. As usual I sat on the pot and waited.

The referee, a chap in his mid-twenties, called us into the centre of the ring. ‘Okay, boxers, shake hands! Break when I say break. A knock down takes a compulsory count of eight, I don’t start counting until you’re in a neutral corner. Three warnings on a foul and the fight goes against you.’

Neither of us were listening to him. ‘This time I get you Rooinek,’ Jannie Geldenhuis said out of the corner of his mouth.

‘This fight comes to you with the compliments of the Jewboy, Boer bastard!’ I spat back.

‘Ready timekeeper? Seconds out of the ring!’ The bell went and we danced towards each other. I could see Geldenhuis meant business, he had five defeats to avenge and his eyes were hard. Fighting in the enemy camp in front of a hostile crowd I wasn’t about to let him have the satisfaction. He was a naturally aggressive fighter and I wasn’t going to give him the opportunity of landing a few good punches early so I spent the first half of round one on the back foot using the ring and staying clear of the ropes. Later Hymie told me the Helpmekaar kids were yelling their heads off but it was as though I was fighting in a vacuum, my concentration was complete. Geldenhuis threw a lot of leather but most of it landed on my arms and gloves, though he did score with two punches. A beautiful uppercut as he caught me briefly on the ropes and a right under the heart. Both punches hurt like hell. It was sheer luck that I hadn’t had any lunch. Sinjun had had me for a tutorial which had gone on an extra half hour and so I’d missed lunch. I was willing to bet Geldenhuis hadn’t eaten since morning.

I caught Geldenhuis a beautiful punch on the jaw which stopped him in his tracks. He had come at me with a careless left lead and I brought my right hand across his lead to hit him hard on the side of the jaw. Jannie was a sucker for repeating a mistake and later in the round he led again with a sloppy left. This time I came under the blow and caught him with everything I had under the heart. I could see his eyes boggle and he staggered back into the ropes where I hit him with a left right combination in the gut, expecting his gloves to open so that I could get an uppercut to the jaw. Instead, anticipating the uppercut, he defended his head, leaving his gut exposed. In went the Geel Piet eight-punch combination and he grabbed at the ropes just as the bell went. The first round was mine.

Hymie had noticed the same thing as I had, Geldenhuis had developed a peculiar habit, in order to set himself for a left hook, he held his right elbow high, opening up his rib cage, and I’d given him a lot of punishment in the area right under the heart. The eight-punch combo was just what I needed to soften him up for later in the fight. As Geel Piet would say, ‘If you hit them enough in between the heart and the belt the legs will soon melt.’

To my surprise, in the second round he continued to be the aggressor. I’d never seen him fight better. His punches were crisp and finding their mark disconcertingly often. In the middle of the round I changed to a southpaw stance. This confused him enough to get me through the round with no more punishment. And while I’d put a lot of hard work into his body he’d won the round, I felt sure. When a fighter gets set and is able to move his opponent into the corners, he can do a lot of harm and look very good.

I hated to lose the second round, it gives your opponent the psychological advantage, knowing he’s going into the last round with his tail up. Besides, it gives the referee a chance to call a draw if the final round isn’t convincing.

The extra weight Jannie had gained had increased his strength and he had seemed to take in his stride the punishment I’d given him.

Jannie knew he had to make the final round look good, and I knew I had to make it look great. As a fighter he had the edge over a boxer, the aggressor moving relentlessly forward is a crowd pleaser and a partisan crowd is apt to forget the winner is the guy who lands the most clean punches. I hoped the ref was good enough to call it correctly but with a home crowd like this a close decision in my favour would get us lynched.

Jannie began the final round by circling me, boxing clever. I had switched back from a southpaw stance and he was no match for me as a boxer, provided I stayed in the centre of the ring and off the ropes. I held him off easily enough. He kept moving in close, trying to throw the left hook to the head, the punch he’d decided would take me out. I could have kept him off with a straight right, just jabbing away and scoring, but I felt I was fast enough to keep my head out of the way of his vicious left hook which, every time he threw it, lifted his right elbow and made a delicious target for me to plant a hard left uppercut under his heart. To a percentage boxer like me this was money in the bank.

Geldenhuis threw another hard left hook which caught me a glancing blow on the side of the head. I didn’t even have to look, the right elbow would be way up in the air and I drove a left hook in as hard as I could. The light suddenly left his eyes, Geel Piet was right as usual, his head had gone.

I changed onto the front foot and into attack. The sudden onslaught caught Geldenhuis completely by surprise and gaps in his defence opened up everywhere. His concept of me as a boxer who worked mostly off the back foot was so completely fixed in his mind that he was unable to respond to the fighter who now brought the fight to him, hitting him seemingly at will. He dropped his defences as he reached out too soon for a clinch and I caught him on the point of the jaw with a right cross which knocked him into the ropes, leaving his midriff exposed as his hands shot up into the air. I moved in with another of Geel Piet’s eight-punch combinations, all of them clean, hard punches even though they were thrown at short range. He pulled me into a clinch and the ref separated us. I’d taken the stuffing out of him and thirty seconds later he missed with a right and the left that followed and I hit him with the best punch I had thrown in my life, a right uppercut which packed everything I had behind it and caught him perfectly under the point of the chin.

It was the first absolute knockout I’d ever achieved. Jannie Geldenhuis went down like a sack of potatoes and lay sprawled on the canvas. I retired quickly to a neutral corner; while he hadn’t moved I fully expected him to take the eight count before getting up. The ref stood over him counting; at seven Geldenhuis managed to get up onto his elbow but that was all. At ten he slumped back onto the canvas.

The ref moved over and held my hand up. The audience was clearly stunned. After their initial shock, and as Jannie got to his feet, they stood up and gave me a really big round of applause. Hymie jumped into the ring and held my arm up again, which was unnecessary. Jannie Geldenhuis helped by his seconds climbed through the ropes without coming over.

I grinned. ‘Christ Hymie, what a preliminary for getting the punters ready to bet on a game of rugby.’

‘Couldn’t be better if I’d set it up myself,’ he said.

We climbed from the ropes and the Helpmekaar chaps made way for us as we walked towards the door. ‘Promise me something, Hymie.’

‘Yeah, sure, what is it?’

‘Promise me you didn’t set this all up?’

‘Are you crazy? What about that anti-semitic bastard?’

‘You got your revenge, that was the quickest fifty quid anybody ever had.’ We had reached the privacy of the showers and Hymie started to giggle. Soon we were thumping each other on the back and howling with laughter.

On the way back in the bus I turned to Hymie. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

‘What question?’

‘Was today a set-up?’

Hymie looked down at his hands, ‘Technically no. But when you bring the right elements together you’re entitled to expect a predictable outcome.’

‘I ought to bust your teeth, Hymie Solomon Levy! I ought to do it right now!’

We repeated the attractive odds at the Prince of Wales and as we had expected the gentlemen Christians bet heavily on Helpmekaar to win. School spirit was one thing but money was quite another. Only the Wellington House boarders, Darby and Sarge and the under fifteen team itself bet on the Prince of Wales School. Setting the odds up as he had done had the result of inspiring the under fifteens enormously. The David and Goliath syndrome was operating, Hymie’s psychology was perfect, by the day of the game we really thought we could win. At Helpmekaar it was hoped it would have a different effect, for while the Afrikaans punters bet heavily on their team to win, the team itself should have felt a little uneasy. Why would we make the Prince of Wales School the favourite, when virtually the same team we were fielding had been beaten on four previous occasions? Like ours, their team contained a number of boxers in its ranks and they’d seen how we had improved out of sight in the ring, to the point where we had drawn the last boxing tournament with them. If we could do it in boxing …? Hymie and I were known not to be fools.

Hymie’s poison, we hoped, was working.

Despite being only an under fifteens match, the game drew the biggest crowd of the season. The punters from both schools were out in full and Hymie was still taking bets when the two teams were lined up on the field. He had even got the school pipe major to play ‘Scotland the Brave’ out in the middle before we ran on. It was grand stuff.

The ref blew his whistle and Atherton kicked off, a short kick which landed in the middle of their forwards. Pissy Johnson, by some miracle, got there first and bowled over the Helpmekaar forward who caught the ball. A loose scrum formed but the ball wouldn’t come out and the ref blew his whistle for a set scrum.

It was our loose head and, despite a big push from Helpmekaar, the ball came to me quite cleanly. We were halfway between the halfway mark and their twenty-five and Atherton was standing almost on the halfway line directly behind me. I knew he was going to go for the drop kick which, even for him, seemed a bit ambitious. I flipped the ball back at him as their flankers broke away and seemingly with time to spare he put the ball straight through the posts for four points. It was the best drop kick I had ever seen from him and it set the tone of the match.

Shortly afterwards we scored a converted try and just before half-time they landed a free kick. At half-time it was nine three, but their heavier pack was taking its toll and we were exhausted.

In the second half they closed down the game and eventually scored by pushing our lighter pack over the line. It was nine to eight with ten minutes to go and I could see our forwards were dead on their feet. It was just a matter of time before they scored. Somehow we hung on, tackling everything in sight.

Hymie had the pipe major on the sideline and he was blasting away, but we were too tired to care or even hear him. Geldenhuis had given me a torrid time and was over anxious to get at me. On two occasions during these last minutes of the game when they were camped on our line I’d dummied a pass from the scrum and his over-eagerness to get to me put him off-side and gave us a free kick. These two relieving kicks alone may well have saved us.

With two minutes to go we packed down for a scrum on our five yard line. It was our loose head but they were pushing us hard towards the line. Somehow we managed to ruck the ball. I dummied a pass to our fullback and Geldenhuis hesitated for a fraction of a second, enough time for me to move down the blind side. I drew their wing and passed to Atherton who’d come round with me. He cut inside, drew their fly-half and kicked the ball across field towards the far corner posts. Lyell, our right winger, beat the full-back to the ball and scored in the corner. The Prince of Wales School went berserk, despite the fact that they’d all lost their money. Atherton failed to convert the try but we’d won twelve to eight.

When all the bets were counted and we’d paid the faithful handful who’d bet against Helpmekaar we were left with four hundred and eighty-seven pounds, fifteen shillings and sixpence. Of the eighteen hundred kids in the two schools almost every one of them had a bet on the outcome. It was the mightiest scam of all time and my share paid Solly Goldman for the next three and a half years.

Hymie broke out a fiver for a party in the team dressing room and sent Geldenhuis and the Helpmekaar team a case of Pepsi and four dozen cream buns. He opened a cream bun and placed a tenner in it and put it on top of the pile of buns going to Helpmekaar dressing room. ‘That will teach the hairy back to do business with a Jewboy,’ he laughed.

The Solly Goldman Gym in Sauer Street was just like any gym you’ve read about. It smelt of sweat, chalk, liniment and hope. Solly ran his gym colour blind, the way gyms are run the world over. His only concession to apartheid was a locker room for non-Europeans. The rest depended on your skill as a boxer. The Johannesburg police turned a blind eye to Solly’s personal race integration programme. The police commissioner, Kruger, was a boxing man, and to boxing men black isn’t black in the ring. Too many great black boxers existed in the world and a man jabbing a pair of twelve ounce gloves into your face wasn’t a dirty Kaffir, he was a boxer, if only for the duration of the fight.

While a number of amateurs worked out in the gym, none of them was instructed by Solly, who had his work cut out handling the pros. Boxing was becoming a big time sport in the African townships surrounding Johannesburg and Solly had a regular stable of black fighters he trained in return for a percentage of the purse. Black and white boxers were not allowed to fight in public for the same title but they’d spar together and sometimes the sparring would get out of hand when a white or a black guy, but it was mostly the white boxers, decided to have a go. Solly would let it go for a couple of rounds, particularly when it looked as though the white man was getting a bit of a drubbing.

The first time Hymie and I appeared, Solly put me in with a young pro bantamweight who hadn’t been out of the amateur ranks very long. After two rounds he stopped the sparring session.

‘Who taught you to box, Peekay?’

I told him about Geel Piet without giving him the exact details.

‘Next time you see him, my boy, you give him my compliments.’

‘He’s dead, Solly.’

Solly cocked his bald head to one side. ‘Well he didn’t die in vain, my son, he’s given you an almost perfect grounding, you use the ring like a wizard.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, not quite knowing what else to say. Solly Goldman was the best and I found his over-generous compliments unnerving.

‘Thank me later, my boy, there’s a lot of work to get through. You need a little more starch in your left hand and your right is no great shakes niver. Like all amateurs you’re looking for points, you hold your hands too bleedin’ high. You’re fast enough to drop ’em a little and give yourself more punching power. We’ll get you onto weights and build up your upper body. It would also be very comforting indeed to know you also packed a good left right combination. Before I’m through with you, my son, you’re going to be the only amateur boxer in South Africa who can put a thirteen-punch combo together. That’s the show stopper, that’s the one man band that starts with a bleedin’ mouf organ and ends with a big bass drum.’

I was amazed that Solly Goldman, a cockney Jew from London, could read so much into my boxing after watching me for only two rounds. But he was true to his word. By the Christmas holidays I was a vastly improved boxer with a lot more power in both hands. We fought as usual in the Eastern Transvaal Championships that December and Captain Smit couldn’t believe the difference. The championships were in Barberton and it seemed the whole town turned out to see me box. My mother stayed at home but my granpa had a ringside seat with Doc, Mrs Boxall, Miss Bornstein and old Mr Bornstein. Miss Bornstein told me later that old Mr Bornstein winced every time I threw a punch, while Doc, by now a seasoned campaigner, pretended to take it all in his stride.

I was awarded the trophy for best boxer in the tournament, and afterwards my granpa and I walked home while Mrs Boxall drove Doc to his cottage. We reached the front gate and my granpa patted me on the shoulder. ‘I’ve never been so proud in my life, son,’ he said and then, to cover his embarrassment, reached into his white linen jacket for his pipe.

I had been home a week. The train from Johannesburg arrived at Nelspruit at nine a.m. on the previous Saturday morning. Usually I would then go on to Kaapmuiden and wait until mid-afternoon for the coffee pot to Barberton which would crawl exhausted into town about eight in the evening. But to my delight Gert was waiting for me at Nelspruit.

‘Ag man, we had to put in some papers here about a white drunk and disorderly who attacked a prison gang with a pick handle so Captain Smit said take the car and pick up Peekay at the same time.’ He extended his hand, ‘How goes it, man?’

On the road back to Barberton, Gert told me that Doc had been in a storm in the hills and had caught pneumonia and spent a week in hospital. ‘He’s looking old, Peekay. I reckon he’ll be making his peace pretty soon.’

I was stunned. ‘He’s a tough old bugger, he’ll be okay I’m telling you,’ I said, more to give myself comfort than as a reply.

‘Ja, he’s tough all right, but the old bugger must be eighty-five, maybe more, he can’t last forever, man.’

‘Well, he’s still climbing into the hills, that’s something at least.’

‘Not since he was sick, he talks about it, about when you get back, but I dunno, man, I reckon he’s finish and klaar. I told him I’ll send a gang any time to work in the cactus garden but he says he can still manage. But I dunno, man.’

I said nothing. A huge lump grew in my throat and the road in front of me blurred. The thought of Doc not being there when I returned home from school was too distressing even to contemplate.

‘Those two abafazi at your house look after him like he’s a chief. They spend all their spare time over at his place and they bring food every day and now they even shave him.’

Doc was the most independent person I’d ever known and I knew at once that Gert wasn’t imagining things. If Dee and Dum had to shave him his hands must have become very shaky.

I had bought Dee and Dum a Singer hand machine and they’d turned their sewing into a regular little business making cotton shifts for many of the local house servants. My mother and Marie had shown them how to cut out and how to make buttonholes and hem by hand and they were going great guns. I had learned by accident that Dee and Dum were using their small earnings from sewing to look after Doc who could no longer take in his little girls for music lessons. When I could after that, I would send them money for him. The Bank was a regular source of income and I could generally manage a pound a week and what with one or two other scams Hymie and I had going, between the girls and me, Doc was okay.

Realising that my mother would expect me home on the coffee pot, I asked Gert to drop me off at the bottom of Doc’s road. Hiding my suitcase under some bushes I climbed up to the cottage. He was sitting in the shade on the stoep in his favourite riempie chair and I thought he must be asleep. But he looked up and saw me approaching and rose from his chair a little stiffly, one hand on the small of his back. His six foot seven frame almost touched the rafters of the verandah and he seemed to be swaying slightly as his arms went out to me. I ran up to him and he put his hands on my shoulders and then I could no longer contain myself and I grabbed him fiercely.

‘Please, Doc, please don’t die,’ I sobbed.

Doc and I seldom showed emotion, our love each for the other was so fierce that it burned like a flame inside of us. But now I was suddenly overcome, Gert’s conversation on the way over mixed with the emotion of seeing him standing with his arms outstretched to me, frail as a wisp of smoke, was too much.

His hand came round and patted me on the back, ‘Absoloodle! We have no time to die, Peekay, the hills are still green and waiting, it is not yet time for the crystal cave of Africa.’

I pulled away from him and he sat down in his chair. Still sniffing, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. ‘You’ve been sick, Doc. Gert told me you’ve been sick?’

‘Just a bad cold, Peekay. It was nothing.’

‘It was pneumonia!’

‘Ja this is true, but some pneumonia is big, some is small, this was a pickaninny, a very small pneumonia for sure and absoloodle.’ He rose again from the chair. ‘Come I make coffee, Peekay.’

‘Marie will tell me how bad it was.’

Doc threw up his hands. ‘Marie! Such a person! “Professor you must give your life to Jesus, there is not much time. You must choose between the eternal damnation of hellfire or the love of Jesus Christ.” I think maybe I stay a little longer here, miss, I say to this Marie. I think she was quite a lot disappointed. Ja, I think so,’ Doc said, chuckling as he poured a mug of strong black coffee for me, holding the coffee pot in both hands to stop himself shaking.

We sat on the verandah sipping our coffee in big tin mugs, Doc’s only half full so that he wouldn’t spill it. He was up to all his tricks to hide his frailty. We said very little, I could see Doc was happy I was back and I felt I would give him strength. We talked about the crystal cave of Africa, which Doc now regarded as our greatest discovery.

‘It is good we are together again, Peekay. On Christmas Day I will be eighty-seven years old.’

‘Doc, you’ve got to live until I’m welterweight champion of the world, you’ve got to make it until you’re at least ninety-four or five!’

Doc chuckled at the urgency in my voice and rose slowly from his chair. ‘Come, I show you Pachypodium namaquanum. It grows so big, maybe we have the world champion here also.’

As we walked together into the cactus garden, Doc still tall and straight as Pachypodium namaquanum himself, there seemed to be a little more spring in his step. ‘Next week we will go into the mountains, Peekay, it has been too long.’

We did, mostly skirting the foothills and taking the easy paths, but Doc seemed to gain strength and was much better by the time I returned to school in mid-January.