Pop-Splat, Page 2

  The Great Trek South was under way and they decided to buy a second house in Cape Town. Predictably, they chose the posh suburb of Constantia, home to a motley crew of rich rubbish (new and old), rotten politicians (of all persuasions), and brazen mafiosi (both foreign and local).

  Matt was enrolled at the best of schools. It was one of those museum institutions that should have died out as a despicable anachronism once the sun had set on the British Empire. It was based on the English Public School model, and was steeped in all sorts of bizarre and archaic traditions that one would have thought had no place in the 20th century, let alone the 21st. But the wealthy elite who prosper at the expense of the stinking masses seem determined to have their offspring educated in just such old-fashioned bastions of privilege. Certainly the Dreyers did.

  On account of business (and other) commitments, Bruce was required to spend most of his time in Jo’burg. It was his younger brother, Uncle Claude, who headed up the Cape Town side of things.

  Unlike Daddy, Uncle Claude got on well with Mummy – very well indeed. He often came to stay and the three of them sometimes went for a drive or a walk on the beach together.

  Claude was different to Bruce in most respects. He was considerably taller and broader, had a fine head of hair, and wasn’t overly concerned about his growing paunch. He laughed easily, loved a party, and was generally more extrovert. Bruce was intense and astute while Claude was able to disarm and persuade with his oily charm.

  *

  The other relatives. Now Claude was married to Marion, who had a sister called Pat. When Pat married Ben Apollis in 1991 it was Bruce who spotted the gap and offered the new relation the position of Financial Director. Ben was a very bright accountant who lectured part-time at the UCT Business School. More importantly, his father was Freddy Apollis, who was a veteran of the Struggle and had been on the island with Mandela and co. This meant that Ben had all the right connections. And the fact that his skin colour was an affirmative shade of brown later opened up a whole range of BEE opportunities.

  By the way, Marion and Claude were childless. They never bothered to establish who was infertile – maybe they both were. It was a sterile union in other respects too, and one day in 2004 she went to the garden shed and drank down a full 500ml bottle of pesticide. The consequences of this action were pretty horrific and they had to pull the plug on her two weeks later after most of her organs had packed up. It was all rather convenient for Claude.

  Ben and Pat Apollis were reasonably happy together. They had twins: a boy and a girl. The boy was named Lawrence and the girl Ophabia. Ophabia was exceptionally pretty and near-as-dammit white, while Larry’s features were arranged in a disagreeable fashion and he had more than a touch of the tar brush in him.

  Mummy and Daddy, Uncle Claude and Auntie Marion, Auntie Pat and Uncle Ben, Larry and Ophabia – this was Matt’s inner circle. Then there were the neighbours.

  *

  On one side was Family Sternkranz. She was a South African of German stock, very gifted, Professor of German Literature at UWC. He was a German national who had come to South Africa as a diplomat and stayed on as head of the BMW dealership in the Western Cape. They had two kids close to Matt’s age, Rose and Gilbert.

  On the other side was the Horowitz family. Abe Horowitz was head of Farewell Funeral Services. Golda was a Constantia matron, heavily involved in charity work and fund-raising for the DA. Their only child was David, known to Matt as ‘Horry’. Horry Horowitz.

  Up till the end of primary school he used to see quite a lot of these neighbourhood kids. Rose was slender and pretty, with long dark hair that hung in ringlets. She was a bit of a tomboy and liked to play practical jokes and shriek with uncontrolled laughter. She was often in trouble with her teachers and her parents, and there was something wild and reckless about her that alarmed Matt. Gilbert, a year and a half older than his sister, was tall, heavily built and very strong. He never laughed and liked nothing more than to beat up other boys. Horry had freckles and uncombable frizzy orange hair. He had a staggeringly high IQ and the Horowitz’s were advised that their son might one day turn out to be a genius if he applied himself. Which he didn’t.

  They played with each other’s expensive toys, swam in each other’s pools, and ran about in each other’s extensive gardens. Sometimes the three boys, Matt, Gilbert and Horry, would climb up into Matt’s tree house and indulge in pubescent behaviour not usually spoken about by the adults. Rose would spy on them with her father’s telescope.

  The pattern of life changed when they went into high school. Horry was sent to Herzlia, and Rose and Gilbert went off to the German School. Matt moved up a rung in the Museum Institution and saw less and less of his former playmates.

  *

  On the rare occasions Bruce paid them a visit, the encounter invariably ended with shouting, screaming and swearing, and Matt would shut himself in his room with the TV turned up loud. So most of the time it was just mother and son occupying the big house. So what if Prudence the housekeeper was there in the day, as well as that lazy devil Simon the gardener? It was supposed to be home but it felt unlived-in and cheerless.

  Uncle Claude began to visit more frequently. One afternoon when he was about eleven or twelve, Matt walked quietly down the passage to the big master bedroom. Why was it called the ‘master’ bedroom? The door stood half open and he looked in. They were at it, copulating like dogs, Uncle Claude’s belly resting on the small of his mother’s back.

  He withdrew his head and stood listening to the bestial grunting.

  “Trudy?” he called out.

  There was an abrupt cessation of activity within. (For a year he had been calling her Trudy, because it wasn’t fashionable to call her Mummy, Mommy, Mother, Mum, Mom or Ma.)

  “Not right now, Matt.” His mother’s voice sounded very loud and penetrating. “Uncle Claude’s just giving me a hand with something.”

  For a time after this incident he laboured under the false impression that to give someone a hand was adult code for having sexual intercourse. Hey, did you know that my uncle comes round twice a week regularly and gives my mother a hand in the master bedroom? While the master’s giving somebody else a hand in Johannesburg?

  There was something repugnant about it, this image of them mating like animals. And it was adultery. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Even worse, it was incest.

  When he told Horry about it (remember it was in the pre-high school era and they still hung out together), his friend was adamant: this was a heinous crime.

  “In the Bible,” he said, “it states quite plainly, in the Book of Leviticus, that this is an unclean act and an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. If they were living in Biblical times your mother and your uncle would both be put to death.”

  Matt already doubted his father’s love. Now he began to doubt his mother’s too. And the resentment and dislike he was beginning to feel towards his uncle was set to develop into a deep loathing.

  Little surprise then that, when he moved up to high school, he elected to become a boarder. This was in spite of knowing that he would have to undergo all sorts of bruising and demeaning ordeals at the hands of the senior boys.

  He didn’t realise it, but what he was looking for was a substitute for his own family. The rigid structure of the boarding school, with its strict hierarchy and sets of rules and regulations would replace the anarchy of his home life. He would willingly acquiesce to the authoritarian structure, enthusiastically participate in the rituals, ceremonies, traditions and customs, and determinedly seek out some real people he could look up to as role models.

  3

  Trudy’s feelings were only slightly injured when Matt said he wanted to be a boarder when he started high school at the end of the holidays. It was perfectly normal for a boy without siblings to want the comradeship of his schoolfellows. Over a G & T or two she thought about it and her maternal instinct was momentarily stirred to life. How could she help to protect him from the dangers th
at lurked in that pitiless environment? If he were unfortunate enough to be branded a sissy, a wimp, a suction or a traitor, the boys, the masters, the very system itself would conspire to destroy him.

  Late one morning she threw a little cocktail party for half a dozen mothers whose sons had survived the first year or more. Drinkies were served out on the patio and there was an abundance of snacks, both sweet and savoury. In a convivial atmosphere the ladies put their heads together and produced some practical ideas and sound advice.

  Trudy was mildly shocked at what they told her – clearly circumstances had changed radically since she had been at school – but she quickly resolved to follow their counsel. A training programme for the boy was drawn up there and then.

  In the afternoon she went off to make some purchases. There was plenty of booze in the house – that was no problem. But she didn’t smoke anymore and neither did Claude. At Pick ‘n Pay she bought several packets of cigarettes of the stronger kind like Gauloise and Camel.

  At the pharmacy she selected a range of condoms and got some KGB, which was good for hangovers. Then she drove to her friend Vicky in Southern Cross Drive. Vicky’s husband was a senior advocate who dealt in sex accessories. It was a lucrative sideline, unrelated to his profession. She came away with two dildos (one realistic, the other outlandish with batteries stored in the fake testicles), a vibrator, and a blow-up Britney.

  At dinner that evening, with her at one end of the big table and he at the other, she told him what she had in store for him over the next few weeks.

  “You see, darling,” she said, “it’s most important not to appear weak in any way.”

  “Like how?” Matt wanted to know.

  “Well, for example, they’ll offer you a cigarette and closely watch your response. If you refuse, or start coughing and spluttering, or don’t know how to inhale, you’ll be an object of ridicule. I’m afraid they’ll see it as a chink in your armour, my dear. Then they’ll look for other ways to test you and before you know it you’ll be a laughing stock and fair game for the bullies.”

  Matt had stopped eating and was looking anxious.

  “But don’t you worry, my darling,” she went on. “We’re going to give you lots of training over the next month. And it’s not that complicated, really. You’ve just got to be able to smoke, hold your liquor, and do drugs. Also you must know about sex.”

  So, at the age of 13 he was given a crash course designed to equip him for the first stage of his steep journey through adolescence to manhood.

  He learnt how to talk with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, the smoke drifting into his screwed-up, smarting eyes. He inhaled deeply and held his breath despite the searing pain in his throat and the fire in his lungs. And gradually he became accustomed to the beneficial side-effects of the nicotine.

  Soon after eleven every morning he would open his first beer. Most nights he went to bed drunk and woke feeling terrible. In the first two weeks he did a lot of vomiting. Beer, wine, whisky, brandy, gin, vodka, rum – anything and everything. She showed him how to down Tequilas. He developed tolerance and judgement, and by the end of the third week his hangover was little more than a headache.

  They shared a joint together and sat on the couch dreamily listening to Michael Learns To Rock. She got him to pop some ecstasy pills and urged him to dance on the spot while she played very loud rave music. But he soon lay down in a corner, groaning and clutching his stomach. They experimented with tik, and that was more successful, even fun, sniffing the fumes with a straw dipped into a doctored light bulb that they were heating over a candle. Finally, just before the holidays ended, she let him try a snort of her precious supply of coke. He declared the effect to be superior to any of the other substances.

  Right, so the smoke, booze and drugs side of things was dealt with over the four-week period and went rather well. On the other hand his sex education comprised only one lesson of about two hours duration. She found it strangely exciting while Matt suffered agonising, and almost nauseating, embarrassment.

  With great emphasis she stressed the importance of using a condom. The girls he was likely to socialise with at parties were notoriously sluttish (this was rich, coming from her), and he was at risk of picking up syphilis, gonorrhoea, herpes, you name it. Even HIV! If ever he were tempted or pressurised into having sex with one of them, then he must, must, must protect himself.

  She got him to hold the dildo, the realistic one, not the outlandish one, and showed him how to open the packaging and recognise inside from out.

  “Try to put it on outside-in, and it’s a total disaster,” she warned him.

  With consummate expertise she placed it atop the artificial organ and, while he tried to hold it steady, she rolled the latex down, one, two, three – as easy as that!

  “There we are, darling. Now it’s your turn.”

  She took the dildo, unsheathed it, and held it up for him to try.

  “Matt,” she exclaimed, “you’re so red in the face! And look at your hands. You’re trembling like a leaf. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.” Damn the pervy little monster. She raised her voice in anger: “I’m your mother, for Christ’s sake!”

  It was a pathetic first attempt and he could only roll it halfway down the shaft.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” she said, flinging the fake phallus on the floor. “Try again just now, alright? And later, when you’ve calmed down, you can go to the bathroom and… You know what I mean? Now take a ten minute break and make yourself a brandy and coke.”

  She poured herself another glass of Chardonnay and unpacked the cardboard box. Sipping her wine she read the instructions.

  “Okay, Matt,” she called. “Come and help me here.”

  He was on the patio, morosely staring out at the garden, cigarette in one hand, drink in the other.

  They inflated the doll and marvelled at how realistic she was. Then Trudy began her lecture, explaining with the aid of the vibrator and the dildo (the outlandish one) how girls excite themselves and how they like to be aroused and what it meant to have an orgasm. Then, by pulling, lifting, contorting and manoeuvring the acquiescent victim she went about demonstrating the act of intercourse in conventional positions as well as more imaginative ones.

  Matt observed his mother in silence, his face grey, his eyes filled with terror. When the performance was over and she had given him his ‘homework’, he went to his room and lay face down on the bed until dinnertime.

  *

  Uncle Claude was also able to help, for he and his brother had attended Matt’s school some decades earlier. The authoritarian structure that nurtured a culture of sadistic violence and intimidation, and enforced a strict pecking order hadn’t changed in a hundred years.

  Claude said he would need to be ready for verbal abuse on a big scale. To toughen the boy up he would subject him to some unpleasant tongue-lashing. Just so he’d be ready for the type of thing coming his way.

  “What did you say to me, you little cunt?” Uncle Claude’s nose was an inch from Matt’s. “What the fuck did you say to me, you fucking little shit?” And he gave him a sudden shove in the chest. The boy staggered back, his heel caught on the rug and he sat down heavily.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Matt!” his mother shrieked. “You’ve got to learn to keep your balance, or they’ll rip you to pieces.”

  Matt soon learned to be on his guard whenever Uncle Claude was around. Extreme subservience and quick obedience and never answer back or try to be facetious. And stay well out of reach if he didn’t want an unexpected shove or thump.

  It was also Claude’s idea that he walk about the house dressed only in his underpants. Even at mealtimes he should be in his underpants. At boarding school there’s no such thing as privacy for a new boy. There’s no room for modesty, shyness or diffidence. He must prepare himself for the communal showers and all sorts of other indignities.

  So Matt had to get used to walking about half naked and carrying it off with
a swagger to show that it meant nothing to him.

  When the holidays ended and it was time to go to school he looked a wreck. He had a dry cough, his breath stank and he had developed a facial tic in the form of a spasmodic grimace and twitching of the left eyelid. There was a shiftiness to his eyes and the expression in them was akin to what one would expect to see in the eyes of a 28s gangmember: crafty, vicious and fearful.

  Trudy commented on it but Claude assured her that in a year or two the lad would be able to look at you with steady confidence, smiling broadly, jaw thrust forward, shoulders back. Even if inside there was an apprentice criminal, a budding sexual pervert, a nascent murderer, or just a quivering jelly – you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

  “That’s what the school’s good at, Trudes,” he said, splashing Scotch onto the rocks until they floated and became icebergs. “They’ll convert him into a gentleman with all the social skills to make his way in life.”

  *

  The day arrived, school began, and Matt Dreyer walked through the gates of hell with dread in his heart.

  Yes, it was bad, it was tough. But not that bad. By the end of the first term the worst was over. He’d survived; he’d be alright. With some bitterness he realised that he had been able to withstand the onslaught and win through only because of the coaching he’d received. Grudgingly he admitted his indebtedness to his mother and his uncle. But he never forgave them.

  He scored a little above average in academic ability and achievement. English and History were his favourite subjects, he was indifferent towards Economics and Accounting, and he struggled with Maths and Science. All in all, he was an unenthusiastic but competent student.