Spud – Exit Pursued by a Bear Read online

  JOHN VAN DE RUIT

  Spud -

  Exit, Pursued by a Bear

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  THE MALAWI DIARIES

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  This book is dedicated to my Dad,

  Dave van de Ruit, who always told me stories.

  John Milton proved fruitful in still one more respect. He was versatile, and Major Major soon found himself incorporating the signature in fragments of imaginary dialogues. Thus, typical endorsements on the official documents might read, ‘John, Milton is a sadist’ or ‘Have you seen Milton, John?’ One signature of which he was especially proud read, ‘Is anybody in the John, Milton?’ John Milton threw open whole new vistas filled with charming, inexhaustible possibilities that promised to ward off monotony forever.

  Catch 22

  Joseph Heller

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Family

  Mom

  Dad

  Wombat (my gran)

  Ex-Girlfriends

  Mermaid

  Amanda

  Christine (one night stand)

  Teachers

  The Glock: Headmaster

  Viking: Housemaster/Drama

  The Guv: English

  Lennox: History

  Mr Bosch: Geography

  Mongrel: Afrikaans

  Mrs Bishop: Maths

  Eve: Hot counsellor

  Sparerib: Unpleasant former housemaster

  Crazy Eight (Matric)

  John Spud Milton (Prefect)

  Simon Brown (Head of House)

  Robert Rambo Black (Prefect)

  Sidney Fatty Smitherson-Scott (Prefect)

  Alan Boggo Greenstein (Non-prefect)

  Vern Rain Man Blackadder (Cretin)

  Garth Garlic (Malawian)

  Henry Gecko Barker (RIP)

  Charlie Mad Dog Hooper (Expelled)

  Normal Seven (3rd year)

  Spike

  Thinny

  Darryl (the last remaining)

  JR Ewing

  Barryl

  Runt

  Fragile Five (2nd year)

  Stutterheim

  Rowdy

  Plump Graham

  Sidewinder

  Meg Ryan’s Son

  Harmless Half-Dozen (1st year)

  Albert Schweitzer

  Small & Freckly

  Enzo Ferrari

  Shambles

  Plaque

  Near Death

  SUNDAY 17TH JANUARY 1993

  MEN’S BREAKFAST

  09:15 I was woken by devious whispering from outside my bedroom door. My parents were definitely up to no good because the only time they whisper in the passage is when I’m sick or if they think I’m suicidal. Stupidly, I grew curious and sauntered out to reconnoitre for any potential landmines. Dad was whistling Roger Whittaker and frying sausages in the kitchen, while my mother greeted me in a high-pitched and unnatural voice from the lounge before disappearing out of the front door jangling her keys.

  ‘Just taking Mum out for her tea and crumpets at the Bot Gardens,’ she called from the driveway and with an unpleasant grating of the gears she was gone.

  ‘Send the old bag my love!’ hollered Dad before plunging a steak knife into an extremely large Russian sausage which in turn squirted boiling juice in his face and onto his arm.

  My father issued a hysterical scream and retaliated by kicking the door off the washing machine. The broken washing machine door led to further tirades about the Japanese (DEFY), my father’s Jonah tendencies, and the diminishing quality of your standard Eskort sausage. Having made my tea while nodding sympathetically at Dad’s rant, I attempted to extricate myself from the scene of acrimony and make a break for the safety of my bedroom where Tom Wolfe’s excellent Bonfire of the Vanities awaited. I didn’t quite pull off the plan because my father scampered across the dining room and slammed the door shut before I could reach it.

  ‘A men only father and son breakfast,’ he said, ushering me to a seat and darting back to the kitchen to turn the Russians and chop a tomato in half. I sipped at my tea and gazed out of the window at the half-mowed lawn. The lawnmower’s lid was open and most of the engine lay in a heap of spare parts on the slasto beside the pool.

  I didn’t have a good feeling about this at all.

  ‘Good old English breakfast just the way your grandmother made it,’ Dad announced rather emotionally slapping an enormous tray-sized plate of fried breakfast down in front of me.

  ‘Been dry,’ said Dad to get the ball rolling.

  ‘Helluva dry,’ I agreed and set to work cutting through a Russian.

  ‘They reckon it’s called El Niño,’ added my father gravely, shoving a fork load of food into his mouth.

  There was a brief period of silence as I salted my eggs and Dad poured orange juice with a shaky hand, before carefully rearranging the breakfast on his plate.

  ‘So … how goes things on the girlfriend front?’ he asked without the slightest shred of warning.

  ‘Very, very slow,’ I replied gravely, and attempted to look like the kind of boy who might never think about sex, girlfriends, let alone bizarre sex acts with girlfriends.

  ‘Really, boy?’ said Dad with some concern.

  ‘Extremely slow … barely off the mark,’ I said, hoping that Dad might register the cricket reference and that would be the end of it.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

  ‘I thought we might have a little chat over our men’s breakfast,’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ I replied and felt terribly nauseous.

  ‘Brekkie okay?’ asked Dad, while looking despairingly at my untouched plate.

  ‘Delicious,’ I lied, miming further chewing.

  And then out of the dark end of left field came:

  ‘Johnny, you could think of the male penis as very much like your average Russian sausage.’

  The blood rushed to my face. My father had already speared the Russian with his fork and held the dripping creature aloft for examination.

  ‘Size is important, my boy, but no lady south of the Vaal likes a freak.’ He nodded knowingly like he was deeply knowledgeable about such women.

  ‘Right,’ I replied through gritted teeth and we both stared at his sausage.

  ‘Just like the fairer sex, Johnny, fried eggs are all about timing and probably enjoyed best when flipped over.’

  I watched in horror as Dad wrapped a tomato skin around the end of the Russian in a suggestive fashion. When I say ‘suggestive fashion’ I mean that he kept looking at me oddly and saying, ‘Watch closely, my boy, this is life and death …’

  ‘Just for precautions,’ he said firmly, after accomplishing his fairly lengthy mission of wrapping the skin of a fried tomato around the uneaten side of his Russian.

  ‘Trust me, boy; there is no greater disaster in a man’s life than hearing the terrible news that his wife is pregnant.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Your life is over, Johnny,’ he said desperately.

  ‘I understand,’ I replied and really did.

  ‘If you haven’t had a threesome by twenty-five, then kiss the fantasy goodbye!’ blurted my father growing increasingly upset and red faced about matters.

  There followed a fairly long pause while I wound down the clock by re-salting my already re-salted fried tomato.

  ‘Use protection, Johnny. At the very least it will keep your jalogi free from the VD plague.’

  I stared at my plate and nodded again.

  ‘Frank says it’s all over the place,’ he added.

  Then without doubt God answered my silent prayers and the phone rang.

&nb
sp; It was Amber from next door asking if Dad could help her with a blocked drain. He was gone in seconds and one of the most excruciating moments of my short life was over. In case my father returned and tried to stoke up his men’s breakfast again, I jumped on my bike and rode the streets of lower Durban North at a furious pace while trying not to think of sex, threesomes, and the VD plague.

  Thankfully, I never did find out what the bacon meant.

  MONDAY 18TH JANUARY

  18:20 I didn’t want to go in. I just stood there staring at those red brick walls feeling greatly about the contradiction of this being both an end and a beginning. The setting sun dipped behind the line of trees to my right and I reluctantly ended my procrastination. One deep breath and I heaved up my bags and staggered towards the great archway and the heart of the school where the depraved and the insane awaited.

  The place was oddly deserted, and for a moment I hesitated, considering the unlikely possibility that I had arrived at school a week too early. It was only the prefects who had been summoned tonight but it genuinely appeared like I was utterly alone. The main quad was trimmed and serene and Pissing Pete must have been serviced in the holidays because the spray of water from his sword flew high into the air before crashing back into the pond at his feet. His face looked a good deal shinier too.

  I skirted the clipped grass of the quad and strode swiftly towards the house door. It was wide open but I couldn’t detect any sign of life from inside.

  ‘Hello!’ I shouted and heard my voice echo up the stairs and down into the bogs. There was no reply. I dropped my bags and poked my head into the common room which now boasts a blood red carpet and two new armchairs. On the television Adrian Steed was reading the news but the volume was turned down.

  Up the stairs and onto the landing, I hovered outside the head of house’s room.

  ‘Simon?’ I knocked gently.

  There was no response so I continued along the passage to the second year dormitory which was equally deserted. Then onward to the first year dorm where the air was dank and unexpectedly cool.

  I reclined on the house bench and surveyed the quad for any signs of movement. The bell tower glimmered pink and silver in the fading light. Nothing stirred. It was truly as if I was the only schoolboy left alive in the world. Just me and ten million desperate schoolgirls. It was a mightily positive thought.

  After scoping the bogs, which I am happy to report have been retiled and painted a brilliant white, I tried the handle on the prefects’ room door which, surprisingly, twisted and opened.

  ‘Get out!’ hissed an icy voice from the gloom inside.

  ‘Sorry,’ I replied instinctively, and hurriedly closed the door.

  Out in the passage the realisation dawned on me that this was 1993 and I was a prefect and well within my rights. I turned the handle again, kicked the door open and entered. All I could see was an unmoving figure seated in an armchair across the room.

  ‘So what’s the answer, Milton? Are you retarded or did you just forget that you were a prefect?’

  ‘I’m probably retarded,’ I replied.

  The dark figure snorted and I immediately knew who it was.

  ‘So, 1993, Spuddy … what you say – a bang or a whimper?’

  ‘A bang,’ I responded, sounding positively inspired.

  ‘There’s a bottle of vodka on the table to your right,’ he said rather matter of factly. ‘It’s the only liquor that can’t be smelled on your breath.’

  There was a glow of light about Rambo’s face, his lips pursed together around a cigarette as he slowly bowed his head to the flame.

  ‘It’s going to be one hell of a year.’

  ‘Bring it on,’ I said.

  He didn’t reply.

  Fifteen minutes later I found a drastically slimmed down Fatty on the house bench staring intently at Pissing Pete. When I asked him how his holiday had been, he turned to me and said, ‘My oath to God, Spuddy, it was like the best ever and I lost like twenty kilograms in six weeks.’

  ‘Penny?’ I asked. This was a loaded question because only Fatty’s barely legal, but very pretty, thirteen year old girlfriend could have inspired such a dramatic weight crash.

  ‘It was kinda like a scene from Grease meets Romeo and Juliet, but only set in Port Shepstone,’ he said with wonder in his voice. ‘You know, like summer loving on the beach with two star crossed lovers and all that …’

  I considered this for a moment.

  ‘So who was it this time, Mermaid or Amanda?’

  ‘Neither,’ I said.

  ‘Oh well, there’s always more fish in the …’ he faded off as a new idea seemed to strike him. ‘I actually know for a fact that Brenda – you remember Brenda from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, she told Penny on New Year’s Eve that she was still willing to kiss you anytime.’

  ‘Great,’ I replied without much enthusiasm.

  ‘And maybe a bit more …’ he added hopefully.

  There was a longish pause while I considered the barren wasteland of my love life.

  ‘Hey, and remember to book your room. It’s first come first served,’ he added.

  ‘Okay,’ I replied still trying to shake off the dismal vision of having to resort to young Brenda as my girlfriend, and first ever girl to touch my Russian. I think I’d rather become a monk or a Rastafarian or something.

  Rambo and Fatty had already booked the rooms upstairs diagonally opposite Simon’s head of house room. Despite Rambo occupying a double room, he made it abundantly clear that should anyone (read me) even think about asking to share with him, he’d kill them (me) slowly with his bare hands. He went on to add that the corpse (mine) would then be incinerated with concentrated lime stolen from the store room at the cricket pavilion.

  On the landing halfway up the stairs was another option, although this was a tiny room with barely enough space to stand up straight. Besides, this was Pike’s old matric room and is bound to have terrible karma due to his depraved behaviour and disturbing bullying.

  Another flight down and under the stairs itself was the room that was most famously home to Gavin, the weird prefect under the stairs. It’s a thoroughly disturbing space and I didn’t linger before moving on.

  The bog room occupied last year by Meany Dlamini is large and spacious but suffers from three obvious problems:

  Its proximity to the bogs

  Its proximity to the urinal

  Its proximity to the house phone

  That left the prefab double room outside that attached to the rear end of the first years’ classroom. I immediately liked the look of the long and narrow room which, although outside the house itself, was close enough not to feel out of the action. Three problems immediately presented themselves:

  The proximity of Viking’s office window offers the maniac a clear view of the door which could be tricky if I have to unexpectedly bring a buxom blonde back to my room for some late night jiggery.

  The room is attached to the first year prep classroom which will make it noisy unless fear is instilled into the new boys the very moment they arrive. Depending on their general sizes, this could be achievable. The flip side, however, is that Eve’s counsellor’s office is attached to the opposite end of the first year classroom, so with us regularly crossing paths there should be plenty of opportunities to hone my spadework over the coming months.

  (If I did take the room, it would probably be worth my while writing down and memorising a number of classic one-liners that I could use in passing conversation with Eve. Nothing too obvious, but just the kind of stuff that would make me look witty, cool and well worth a shag.)

  It’s a double room. That could mean I am opening myself up to a possible room mate (Vern, Boggo or Garlic) and definite disaster. Still, there are three decent-ish rooms in the house for the others. After some considerable thought, I decided the double room was a gamble worth taking.

  I hurriedly made the bed and u
npacked enough clothes from my trunk to make the room look taken. I checked the basin taps which, after spluttering out some chocolate water, seemed to rectify themselves and run true. Thereafter I locked the door and pocketed the key with the confidence of a proud new owner.

  Spud Milton has staked his claim! At last, a room of my own.

  TUESDAY 19TH JANUARY

  07:45 After enjoying a sumptuous breakfast at the prefects’ table, Rambo, Fatty and I dawdled across the quad with our coffee in the general direction of Viking’s office. Simon was waiting for us at the bench.

  ‘Hey, Simon,’ I said cheerfully. ‘How was your holiday?’

  ‘Cool,’ he replied without much enthusiasm.

  ‘What’s this meeting all about?’ asked Rambo, looking uninspired.

  ‘Flippin’ new boys, what else?’ hissed Simon, rolling his eyes.