Spud – Exit Pursued by a Bear Read online

  Viking was as furious as ever although it was impossible to know what he was so livid about. All I could really glean from his introduction was that the new boys were arriving in two hours’ time and that he had recently had a vivid nightmare about one of them attempting to commit suicide on his watch. When Fatty asked our housemaster whether this had been a bad dream or a premonition, Viking refused to elaborate other than to say that the dying boy was naked. A long silence followed before he cleared his throat and moved on to general protocol. After repeated instructions on what to say to the parents of the new boys as they arrived, he scavenged through his filing cabinet and brought out yet more instructions. We were each given a folder and told to familiarise ourselves closely with its contents.

  Before having to read out the entire document together in unison, Viking made it clear that during the first years’ two week period of grace we were to keep interactions with the new boys to the minimum and that Simon was the only contact point should any of them need help or assistance. It all seemed a little odd but then again Viking isn’t exactly the heartland of normal.

  Since the document accurately demonstrates my housemaster’s (fragile) state of mind, and is perhaps the most ridiculous set of guidelines ever dished out by a high school teacher, I have decided to stick some of its contents into my diary for safekeeping and future proof that I in fact received a scholarship to the monkey asylum rather than to a top private school as previously advertised.

  ATTENDING TO THE NEEDS …

  OF OUR JUNIORS!

  In accordance with a liberal psycho-analytical perspective of adolescent young men (boys) –

  Inspired, created and written by:

  V.A. RICHARDSON

  B.A.(Hons) UED (cum laude) RHODES UNIVERSITY

  © (Copyright) V.A. RICHARDSON. B.A. (Hons) UED

  (cum laude) RHODES UNIVERSITY

  HOW TO SPOT A NEW BOY IS HOMESICK

  Crying Usually involving tears/sobbing/red eyes/or boy covering his face with his hands for prolonged periods. Beware!!! Prolonged periods of crying can lead to depression, loneliness and SUICIDE (see below).

  Depression Loosely means permanently sad moods which could result in crying (see above), or loneliness (see below) or a combination of both (see above and below).

  Loneliness Leads to depression (see above), crying (see above), SUICIDE (below) or a combination thereof (see everywhere).

  Tell-tale signs of SUICIDAL tendencies include impressionable young boys exhibiting some or all of the following behaviours:

  Jabbing at their wrists with Swiss army pocket knives, razor blades or sharp nail scissors

  Lethal overdose of pills

  Leaping naked out of the dormitory window/s

  Placing gun in mouth/electric drill in ear etc …

  Self-drownage with backpack of bricks/stones/gymnasium equipment

  Most common reasons for suicide:

  Poor family life (Abuse, divorce, incest)

  Late development

  Poor financial decisions (Gambling/thievery/fraud victim)

  Insanity (Due to possible birthing problems/blows to the head/drinking paint or detergent etc …)

  Iron deficiency (See sanatorium for assistance)

  Prolonged constipation (See sanatorium for assistance)

  Victimisation and bullying (This must be weeded out!)

  Homosexuality

  Warning*********

  Should a boy demonstrate SUICIDAL behaviour in any shape or form he should immediately be subdued by means of wrapping his entire head in a towel or bedspread. His arms and legs should be tied together and, if possible, his body should be attached either to the floor or to an immovable object such as a sturdy wall or bolted to a roofing panel. A particularly effective ploy is to lock the distressed boy inside the boot of a car while professional help is found. On rare occasions a responsible yet solid blow to the back of the head may be necessary. Once the boy has been subdued, make sure he doesn’t swallow his tongue, and report directly to your housemaster …

  V.A. RICHARDSON

  B.A.(Hons) UED (cum laude) RHODES UNIVERSITY

  Meeting the new boys and carrying their trunks to the first year dormitory thankfully went off without a hitch. Although nervous, none of them seemed suicidal. They seemed quite an unassuming bunch apart from the black boy, Ntoko, who was extremely confident on arrival.

  While head of house Simon was forced to attend The Glock’s laborious speech about discipline in the theatre, Reverend Bishop’s sprawling feel-the-spirit sermon in the chapel, and an awkward buffet lunch in the quad with the parents and new boys, Fatty, Rambo and I spent the afternoon drinking tea, eating toast with honey, and discussing the finer points of seduction. Despite it being close to thirty degrees outside Rambo poured an entire steel bucket of coal into the fireplace and soon had a raging furnace under way. He took off his shirt and sat before the smouldering coals smoking his cigarettes and tracing the lines of his biceps and triceps with a piece of coal while we continued our discussion.

  In the knowledge that the rest of the Crazy Eight would be arriving shortly, I locked my room and stashed the key in my pocket. Boggo has a long history of thievery, blackmail and forced removals.

  17:35 Garth Garlic was the first of the rest of the Crazy Eight to arrive. We heard his excited shouting about Malawi from the passage outside the prefects’ room.

  ‘Rowdy!’ he hollered. ‘Where’s the rest of the Crazy Eight?’ We didn’t hear Rowdy respond but he must have because Garlic immediately began banging on the door of the cop shop and shouting, ‘Hey, guys! Fatty? Spud? You guys in there?’

  Nobody replied. The handle twisted and the prefects’ room door flew open. The pink and incredulous face of Garth Garlic appeared.

  ‘There you all are!’ he cried with delight like we had been involved in a game of good natured hide and seek.

  ‘We’re in the middle of a prefects’ meeting, Garlic,’ said Rambo sharply while exhaling a large cloud of cigarette smoke into the fire and up the chimney.

  ‘Cool,’ replied Garlic with an expectant grin like somebody was on the verge of cracking a rip-snorting joke. He closed the door and made his way to the empty armchair to my left. ‘So how was your holiday, guys?’ There was a long pause before Garlic continued. ‘Mine was a top tenner, maybe even a top fiver!’

  ‘Good,’ muttered Rambo. ‘Now sod off before I roast your face in the fire and eat it.’

  Rambo sprang to his feet and made a lunging bid to catch the Malawian but Garlic, who is fast developing a reputation for narrowly escaping imminent pain and humiliation, evaded Rambo’s outstretched hand, leapt over the armchair in which he had been sitting, and bolted from the prefects’ room, his eyes wide with terror and his skin glowing pink.

  ‘I swear to God,’ growled Rambo once the dust had settled, ‘one day I’m going to roast a piece of Garlic and taste it. No bullshit. I reckon he’ll be absolutely delicious.’ I didn’t quite know how to respond to Rambo’s cannibalism so I nodded in agreement as if eating a piece of Garth Garlic was normal if not downright sensible.

  Boggo arrived when we were all at dinner. After carefully examining the available room options, he selected the bog room for its size and the fact that it suited his nickname. He said that he would rather contract cholera from the urinal than have to share with me and sleep with a cork up his bum for an entire year.

  Garlic selected the tiny room on the landing which meant that whether he liked it or not, Rain Man would sleep in the room under the stairs.

  Vern arrived at 21:00 and immediately began to cause trouble. Firstly, he kept banging on Boggo’s door and shouting, ‘Oi!’ The maniac seemed furious that Boggo wasn’t allowing him in and was hell bent on evicting him. But Boggo was resolute as always and refused to open the door even when Viking came knocking to welcome him back to school. Then some donkey fart suggested that Vern should share the outside room with me. Luckily, I beat the nutcase in the race for the door and l
ocked him out. I sat triumphantly at my desk listening to Vern’s banging and shouting outside, confident that if I stuck to my guns like Boggo I would eventually see the idiot off. Thankfully, Viking didn’t take kindly to the terrible racket going on outside his office window and ordered the Rain Man to cease his terrible din and occupy the room under the stairs.

  Vern’s fate was sealed and within minutes Viking (with the help of Simon, JR Ewing, Thinny, Runt and myself) managed to force him into his room.

  Strangely, once the cretin was in, he never once tried to come out again.

  WEDNESDAY 20TH JANUARY

  06:30 I called the morning roll call at a good lick, giving dissenters and wise guys no chance to undermine my first official duty as a prefect with lame jibes and idiotic sideshows. I even issued a stern rebuking of Darryl (the last remaining) for looking an absolute shambles and threw a nasty glare at Plump Graham for being forty seconds late. The first years seemed genuinely afraid of me which was heartening to see. It must be added that they do look pretty much terrified of everything right now so I probably shouldn’t take too much masculine credit at this stage.

  Vern wasn’t at roll call and didn’t open his door when I knocked. Considering Rain Man’s oddball behaviour last night, I thought it wise to inform Simon in case Vern had run away or done something disturbing.

  Simon rapped sharply on Vern’s door but there was no reply. I spied through the keyhole and found myself locked onto Vern’s demented eyeball which was peering through the other end.

  ‘Vern,’ I said in a kindly voice, ‘I just wanted to check that you were all right.’

  There was no reply other than the sound of Rain Man muttering to himself and pushing his desk against the door.

  ‘Quick, attack!’ shouted Simon. He shoulder charged the door and managed to prise it open before Vern had his barricade in place. Vern tried his best to keep the door closed but the collective muscle of myself, Simon and Sidewinder, who was wandering past clad only in a yellow towel, was enough to heave the door open and reveal a wild looking Rain Man dressed in khaki.

  ‘Grab him!’ ordered Simon and lunged for Vern’s arm. Despite there being nowhere to hide in his spooky little room, Vern nevertheless made a valiant attempt to escape by diving head first into the wall. The bang to the head settled him down and we were able to escort him out of his room, down the passage and into the bright sunshine of the main quad.

  ‘Come, Vern, it’s time for breakfast,’ I called as normally as possible.

  The cretin grinned and followed me rather unsteadily to the dining hall for a breakfast of scrambled egg and sausages which he drenched in tomato sauce and wolfed down without using any of his cutlery.

  (DIS) ORIENTATION DAY

  Simon, Rambo, Fatty and I led the new boys off for an introductory tour of the school to the sound of loud and obvious sniggering from a tea-drinking Boggo Greenstein on the house bench. Simon led the tour which meant that Rambo and I dawdled at the back, with Fatty falling further behind before calling it quits at the squash courts.

  Viking called us in for our second prefects’ meeting of the day and was relieved to hear that none of the new boys had plunged to their deaths on the school tour. His big announcement was that Eggwhite, last year’s mostly ineffectual house prefect returning for post matric, would be back on Friday and that we would have to cover his duties this week. He handed us further lists and instruction documents before sending us on our way with a curt nod.

  Back in the prefects’ room, which we have taken to calling the cop shop, we bemoaned our lot over milky tea and cheese sandwiches. Rambo even reckoned that he was thinking of packing it in if Viking didn’t stop with his endless meetings about naked boys committing suicide. I returned to my room to ready myself for tomorrow’s lessons and glanced through the variety of textbooks filled with reams of knowledge and information that I will have to devour, digest and regurgitate in November. I wonder if my brain will have the capacity to take it all in? My matric maths textbook looks particularly nasty with its small unemotional writing and vomit yellow cover. At least I have the space and serenity of my own room to make a decent stab at it.

  I bumped into Eve on the way to dinner and I would be denying the truth if I didn’t say that she looked absolutely ravishing in her knee length skirt and high heels. We spoke about Roger the cat’s banishment to Sparerib’s brother’s farm near Komga due to his endless spraying and destructive behaviour around the house over the holidays. She reckons he ripped up all their lounge cushions during Christmas and extensively soiled Sparerib’s thermal underwear drawer while they were at The Glock’s New Year’s Eve party. I nodded sympathetically about the situation and stole a glance at her cleavage as she leant forward to adjust her left heel. Eve seemed rather concerned about the way Vern had taken the news about Roger no longer being at the school and asked me if he was behaving unusually. ‘Vern always behaves unusually,’ I replied, making her laugh and then briefly ruffle my hair. We must have chatted against the wall of the passage for at least fifteen minutes about Roger and Vern and I sensed a growing ease in each other’s company. Overall, it was an excellent conversation and Eve smelled terrific.

  21:30 My first lights out duty went rather smoothly, all things considered. The first years even called me sir. I was careful not to open up any meaningful conversations but a small boy with ginger hair and the unfortunate name of Michael Wiggle asked me with a deeply troubled expression on his face if Vern was insane.

  ‘Definitely,’ I replied and switched out the lights.

  The second year dormitory was a little livelier than the first but the Fragile Five immediately obeyed when I ordered them to their beds.

  ‘Hey, John, can I ask you a question?’ asked Plump Graham, as he tried to squeeze himself into an extremely tight pair of white long-johns. ‘Why is Alan Greenstein charging a toll on the urinal?’

  The Fragile Five were adamant that Boggo had charged both Runt and Sidewinder R1.50 each to use the piss trough. I promised the worried second years that I’d look into the problem.

  (Surely it’s only a question of time until people begin whispering about the relative sizes of Plump Graham and Fatty, considering Graham’s vast expansion and what Boggo is now calling Fatty’s ‘anorexia-paedophilia’.)

  I was mildly dreading the Normal Seven dorm as they were most likely to pull something on me or challenge my authority. As it turned out my fears were unfounded and even the likes of Spike and JR Ewing were polite and obedient when I called them to order. If I didn’t know better I’d say they were up to something.

  ‘Where’s Runt?’ I asked after discovering his empty bed.

  Barryl stepped forward and in an exceedingly deep voice replied, ‘He’s helping Rambo and Viking push Vern back in his room.’ I headed downstairs to where Viking was shouting and Vern was shrieking and clawing at people’s faces because he didn’t want to go back into his room again.

  THURSDAY 21ST JANUARY

  School began properly today and it was the usual grind of boredom that passes for higher education in this place. Handed out were piles of papers detailing various syllabuses, approaching large projects, and dire threats of what cocking up matric will do to the rest of your life. There wasn’t even any comic relief because The Guv hasn’t returned to school. Boggo said he overheard Mr Cartwright telling Norm (I don’t believe in spinners) Wade that The Guv was in hospital for an operation.

  I ran down to The Guv’s house after lunch but the place looked deserted and nobody answered when I knocked and yelled. I should have called him in the holidays, if only to say Merry Christmas and to check on how he was doing. Hopefully, it’s nothing serious and only the gout in his drinking arm playing up again.

  19:30 During prep I took a stroll across to Boggo’s room to have a little chat about the increasing complaints that I have received concerning his toll charge at the urinal. Boggo reluctantly let me into his bog room which is plastered wall to wall with pictures of beautiful
naked women striking sexy poses, mostly under waterfalls. I decided to confront Boggo directly about his controversial new way of raising capital and, unsurprisingly, he pretended to be utterly shocked and outraged, saying that ‘people with agendas’ were already spreading malicious rumours about him.

  Boggo flopped down on his bed and appeared to be thoroughly disgusted with life. I allowed some time to pass before saying, ‘I have three boys willing to testify that they saw you charging Runt R1.50 for taking a piss.’

  Boggo’s eyes narrowed and his look of disgust was instantly replaced by one of raging defiance.

  ‘Well, obviously I charged Runt, but then who wouldn’t? He’s the weirdest little creep south of the North Pole.’

  ‘Still,’ I said in my most reasonable voice, ‘you can’t charge a guy for having a piss. It’s completely dictatorial and borderline insane.’

  ‘They do it in Europe,’ retorted Boggo with a broad smirk like he had gone some way towards winning the argument.

  ‘What do they do in Europe?’ echoed a surprisingly loud but mumbled voice from the doorway. We turned to see Garlic standing there in his crimson dressing gown with a buzzing electric toothbrush in his mouth.

  ‘Shag animals,’ replied Boggo, looking deeply displeased with life once more.

  Garlic was astonished by this revelation about Europeans but thankfully couldn’t ask any more questions because his mouth was too full of toothpaste. He raced off to the basins to spit and Boggo took the opportunity to slam and lock his bedroom door.

  ‘You see, that’s the fundamental problem with life, Milton,’ he said. ‘Too many lurkers.’ Boggo looked wistful as his eyes took in a large poster of a shapely brunette with a python sliding through her naked cleavage.

  ‘If it’s not Garlic with his questions or Vern with his screaming and banging, then it’s Runt peeping into my room and lingering around with suggestive intent.’