Reggie and Me

James Hendry

Description

South Africa – 1976 to 1994.

A time of turbulence as the struggle against apartheid reaches its zenith, pushing South Africa to the brink. But for a one small boy in the leafy northern suburbs of Johannesburg ... his beloved housekeeper is serving fish fingers for lunch.

This is the tale of Hamish Charles Sutherland Fraser – chorister, horse rider, schoolboy actor and, in his dreams, 1st XV rugby star and young ladies’ delight. A boy who loves climbing trees in the spring and a girl named Reggie. An odd child growing up in a conflicted, scary, beautiful society. A young South African who hasn’t learnt the rules.

Sujets

• Republic of South Africa
• Coming of Age
• 21st century
• South Africa
• 20th century
• Fiction
• Afrique du Sud

Informations

• Publié par: Pan Macmillan South Africa
• Date de parution: 01 février 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781770106437
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Also by James Hendry
Back to the Bush: Another Year in the Wild (2013)
‘Witty and hilarious, Back to the Bush captures life in a game lodge brilliantly. I could not put it down!’ – nicky rattray
‘ Back to the Bush is just as readable and entertaining, if not more so, than A Year in the Wild . It is filled with pathos and bathos and much to make you chuckle, laugh out loud, and even shed a tear or two. There is an unexpected twist in this riotous read.’ – brian joss , Constantiaberg Bulletin
A Year in the Wild: A Riotous Novel (2011)
‘There’s family conflict, romance, funny anecdotes, poaching and all kinds of intrigue – in other words, something for everyone.’ – kay-ann van rooyen , GO
‘It’s both delicious and deliciously funny. It draws easy-to-imagine pictures of madness and mayhem; hilarity and horror. And it gives the most fascinating insights into what goes on behind the posh scenes of larney lodges.’ – tiffany markman , Women24
‘ A Year in the Wild is more than an amusing and entertaining account of game lodge goings on; it is also a coming-of-age tale of two brothers who explore life, love, lust and loss.’ – chris roche , Wilderness Safaris

Reggie & Me
a novel
James Hendry
MACMILLAN

First published in 2020
by Pan Macmillan South Africa
Private Bag x 19
Northlands
Johannesburg
2116
www.panmacmillan.co.za
isbn : 978-1-77010-642-0
e- isbn 978-1-77010-643-7
© 2020 James Hendry
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual places, events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Editing by Craig MacKenzie and Nicola Rijsdijk
Proofreading by Katlego Tapala
Design and typesetting by Triple M Design, Johannesburg
Cover design by Hybrid Creative

For my beloved Mum and Dad, who taught me English.


part 1
1976–1989


1
H amish Charles Sutherland Fraser arrived on this planet via emergency Caesarean section on the twenty-fourth of October 1976. As a clichéd harbinger of things to come, Hamish’s entry into this existence was not easy for him or those concerned with his well-being. His mother, Caroline, experienced a protracted labour of twenty-four hours before her doctor finally decided that the irksome foetus had no intention of becoming a member of society of its own volition – and certainly not before the 09h08 tee-off time at the Country Club Johannesburg.
Caroline and Stuart (father to be) had been focused on little else but procreation for some seven years. Adoption was whispered, but then Caroline fell pregnant and considerations of raising someone else’s offspring had been no longer necessary.
Hamish did not come from an exotic and heroic dynasty – not that anyone could trace at any rate. His blood contained traces of ancient Scottish nobility, soldiers, brigands, businesspeople and, very far back, an Irish monk who’d failed to overcome his Darwinian drives. On his father’s side, Fraser’s Fishmonger of Perth, Scotland, had earned sufficient tom for Stuart’s mother to make a decent if not overly comfortable living. Stuart’s father’s absence necessitated his son’s presence at the shop after school and on weekends, and the smell of fish innards never quite left Stuart’s nostrils. His presence during business hours became necessary when Captain Charles Fraser was killed on Sword Beach, Normandy, in June 1944. What remained of him was buried in an unmarked grave just above the high-tide mark.
Despite the challenges of a frugal Scottish existence that relied on the vagaries of the fish market, Stuart had finished school with an admir able academic record, whereupon his mother had decided she’d had enough of sleet, snow and fish guts, and emigrated to South Africa. Stuart had gone along, and secured a bursary for a university education. By the time Hamish was born, Stuart was a well-to-do financial director with a Perthshire lilt.
Hamish’s maternal grandparents had slightly more African origins, Caroline’s mother being of 1820-settler stock. Born in South Africa to Scottish parents, Caroline’s father had grown up in Johannesburg and amassed a large fortune by concocting fantastical mining deals in remote parts of southern Africa on land he neither owned nor had any prospecting data on. His swindling ways eventually caught up with him and some of his booty was seized on the commencement of a lengthy prison term. The old man was incarcerated when Caroline was the tender age of thirteen, and he contracted fatal emphysema not long after. This familial turmoil was to contribute to a not-insubstantial list of neuroses possessed by his daughter.
Caroline’s father’s ill-gotten gains (those the law hadn’t unearthed) had ensured that she and her mother, Elizabeth, never wanted for anything material. Caroline grew up in a salubrious Johannesburg suburb, went to an expensive but severe boarding school that made her father’s prison look like a holiday resort, and then read for Law at Stellenbosch University. She practised for a time but packed it in when Hamish arrived.
Hamish’s parents had been introduced by a mutual friend. At the time, Caroline was engaged to another lawyer, who wrote poetry, played the lute and didn’t wash his hair. She dropped the fellow like a hot coal on meeting Stuart, who looked a bit like Robert Redford, played the guitar and couldn’t speak on account of a broken jaw sustained on the rugby field. Six months later, in the summer of 1969, Stuart and Caroline had recited their nuptials and begun the serious business that all organisms evolved to achieve – though the procedure had proved more difficult than expected.
So it was with great fanfare that Hamish arrived at the family nest ten days after his birth. Cousins, aunts and uncles were there to greet him, a Scottish standard flew over the threshold, and Stuart’s brother, Walter, played ‘The 79 th ’s Farewell to Gibraltar’ on his bagpipes – much to the disgust of the Fraser Burmese, which had to be extracted from a tree later that evening. Hamish’s only remaining grandparent, Caroline’s mother, Elizabeth, by then aged fifty-eight, shared the cat’s distaste and had to be coaxed from a bench at the far corner of the garden.
‘Whenever there is a family celebration, that obstreperous man has to befoul the atmosphere with his savage’s instrument – I shouldn’t wonder if the poor baby isn’t already stone deaf,’ she complained from behind a rose bed. ‘ We won the battle of Culloden – not the barbarous Scots!’ She still thought of herself as an Englishwoman living in the colonies despite having spent less than one per cent of her life in England.
Caroline settled the peaceful infant into a lovingly decorated nursery some seven years in the imagination. There was a mobile above his pillow, a red clockwork owl from which a lullaby emanated when its string was pulled, and a wooden crib draped with soft white linen, which Hamish was to share with a stuffed orange dog named Peach.
A few months before Hamish’s birth, Caroline and Stuart had decided that their new addition would necessitate full-time domestic help. The interview process consisted of a ten-minute conversation with the neighbour’s housekeeper, who had a friend in need of employment.
Christina Lebogang Baloyi began working for the Fraser family on the Monday after Hamish arrived home. When Stuart brought Christina into the nursery to meet her young charge, Caroline was in a state of high agitation, tears streaming down her face, her blue-eyed boy yowling his tiny head off, little fists balled in what the inexperienced mother read as distressed rage. The more she dithered, the more he resembled a landed salmon, squishing the contents of his flannel nappy onto the table and himself.
Standing just five feet and two inches off the ground, Tina, as she became known to the family, took control. She gently moved Caroline out of the way, grabbed the infant’s ankles, hoisted them up and began to wipe. Hamish calmed immediately – as did his mother.
‘You feed him now,’ Tina instructed, handing over the clean and newly swaddled infant.
Assuming that Tina would allow the process of breast-feeding to unfold in privacy, Caroline sat down on the nursing chair. But the new housekeeper-cum-nanny put her hands on her vast hips and watched as Caroline draped a towel over her shoulder, removed her right breast from a loose-fitting shirt and attempted to latch her son. Stuart departed post-haste.
The new mother had had plenty of time to learn the theory of caring for infants. She’d read the contents of a bookshelf filled with the latest tomes on the subject for modern (Western) families, making notes in the margins and leaving countless bits of coloured paper protruding from the pages. As such, she felt herself a theoretical expert in the art of administering milk.
‘No, Manna,’ Tina instructed, addressing Caroline by her own contraction of ‘madam’. ‘Not like that.’
‘But Marvin Eiger says that this is how to do it!’ said Caroline.
Tina had no idea who Marvin Eiger was or what he had to say about breastfeeding, and neither did she show the slightest interest. She walked to the chair, pulled away the vanity towel and lifted the infant, holding him as though she was going to feed him.
‘Manna must carry him like this,’ she demonstrated. ‘His head like this so is easy for him drinking – you see?’
‘Oh … um … yes … I thin