Talent in Umtentweni
The Guy family was to me a fantastic family. Father Frank Guy was very tall, and fun, with a jittery stammer—meaning with my hearing, I almost never worked out what he was saying. Whatever else people said about him (a surprising amount of it was not good), he remains a hero to me. The story I got from Jeff is that he carried a friend from a POW camp for some hundreds of miles on a forced march to a new POW camp when the allies were closing in on them. I have never in my life been able to carry another person ten metres, let alone hundreds. How does any one person do that? Respect.
The domestic worker there, Mavis, was a dynamo in every way, not least because she routinely whistled the entirety of Beethoven’s Seventh.
Jeff himself played, in turn as he walked past them and picked them up, alto sax, recorder, mouth organ, or guitar. It was the earliest I recall figuring out that a sound I often heard on the radio came from a glorified pipe with lots of keys and pads—the first time I can remember seeing a saxophone up close.
Mrs Guy’s voice was fairly high in pitch, so I could hear her very clearly, helped also because teaching forces people to learn to project their voices. I was deathly shy in those days, and Mrs Guy’s kindliness somehow increased it. I was not used to attention. My habit was to stay out of sight where possible. Trouble can happen only if one is visible!
Before we returned to Pietermaritzburg, she asked why I spent most of the day walking alone around the property. Perhaps she was concerned about snakes: that coast is known for them, though I never saw one. She put it down to shyness, which was also true, but I did those walks to keep lots of safe distance between myself and the moody brother!
A lot of the holiday was spent swimming at ‘Tweni beach. That meant a walk of perhaps a couple of kilometres along the farm road each way. One day, Mrs Guy, driving home from teaching in Port Shepstone, stopped to give us a lift for the remaining distance to the farm.
“Why is he so far behind?” She wanted to know why Jeff and Allen did not wait for me to catch up with them. Jeff shrugged; Al said nothing. The thing was, it was my choice to tag along well behind them so as to stay out of the reach of the stones they threw. They were both five years older than me, and good throwers (lots of cricket practice), so that distance would have been at least 25 metres to give me time to dodge the stones. Yes, I got stoned a lot on that holiday, but at eight years of age, it had nothing to do with cannabis!
At the beach, too, I would sprint to the water, dive through the breakers, and tread water in the calmer swells beyond. A few times, adult men swam out to me to persuade eight-year-old me to come in nearer the beach, but I always said “no” in a very final way. One even talked of sharks. Well, I was aware of shark attacks, but the Natal Witness said they happened seldom. Closer in to shore would have meant a risk of being set upon by Older Brother. Looking at the percentages, I decided to go with the sharks as the lesser danger.
Jeff was amused by Al and his “games” with me, and joined in the stone-throwing until he realised that Al fully intended to hurt me. Once he realised that, he did no further throwing, sometimes even chiding Al, who was not to be denied his “sport”.
Having asked for a penny whistle for my eleventh birthday, I transferred the effort previously lavished on schoolwork into getting good at the penny whistle. I worked out the scales easily, and then I needed to learn some tunes. That was done by standing next to the radio and pecking around until I pecked a tune up okay. Three minutes was all one had. That was the duration of a 78rpm vinyl record back then. If I did not learn the whole tune in three minutes, it was a long wait until it was played again, if ever, so I got really quick at this.
The best thing for me was when Spokes Mashiyane made a huge hit with “Kwela Claude”. I learned that, and many others by him and by little Lemmy Special. I never met Spokes, but Lemmy “Special” Mabaso joined the AJP after I had been with them some years. He was just one of many people whom I met, never thought I would see again, and then popped into my life many years later. Another was Dennis Mpale.
I have been asked if I asked for a penny whistle for my birthday because I knew I was musical. The answer is, I had no idea about anything back then. I just wanted to play one. It was the first real “desire” I ever felt, but I neither took it seriously nor doubted I would be able to play it. There was never the slightest doubt about that. Jeff played musical instruments, so I would, too.
I was overjoyed with the present when the penny whistle arrived. My dad thumped it on the table, wrapped in brown paper, and said, “There you are!” Very accusingly, he then grumbled, “Penny whistle. PENNY whistle. PENNY WHISTLE! That b— thing was HALF A CROWN! THIRTY PENNIES!”
It was made by Hohner—the best ever birthday present in a long time.
Maritzburg College
I cycled to Maritzburg College for part of my first year there—an exhilarating sprint: Burger St, down Boshoff St, right into Bulwer Rd, skirt the back of the cemetery via Miller St, then across Commercial Rd onto the suspension bridge1 next to the tennis courts at Kershaw Park, uphill past the playing fields through Alexandra Park, past Arthur Fairall’s municipal parks board nursery complex, across a field, and I was there.
I had no watch but checked other people’s watches as I rode, and on arrival. It was about a 15-minute ride, but I could do it in 10 if I went at it (as my mother said I usually did) like a “bull at a gate”. My poor mother. Once, after we had moved to St Patrick’s Rd in Scottsville, she knelt, put her hands in a praying position, and said,
“Please, once, just once, WALK A FEW STEPS, so I can see you CAN.”
I ran constantly and everywhere. Harder for Big Brother to nab you. I don’t think my mother knew the reason!
Brother Allen was well and truly into his lifelong fascination for swing and jazz by the time we moved to Scottsville. He wore out album after album of first Glenn Miller, then Benny Goodman, and was then inspired to buy a clarinet. The teacher he found was nicknamed “Boozy McCallum”. Despite the name, he was an excellent teacher, and Al went daily through all the exercises in his Otto Langley clarinet tutor: all the major and minor scales, the fast-tongue exercises, and arpeggios. He was an avid practiser, and it paid off, setting a wonderful example for me. Professor of No Rugby
My most common nickname at high school continued to be “Cookie”, straight from my prep school days. However, another name crept in. Although high school was when I lost interest in frantically being top of my class (difficult with Derek Attridge around, anyway), I was named “Professor” soon after starting high school. I assumed that name was from my dominance of tests and exams at prep school, but Malcolm McKeown, my best friend from prep school days, corrected me fifty years later, at the fiftieth-year reunion of our class of ‘62. I got the name, he said, because of the short queue of other boys from our class who sought help after school hours. They came up with the name because they felt that I routinely explained things far more clearly than the teachers had. The queue was not always there: some days were rugby days, and they would be off playing that sport.
I refused to. I did play in my first year there, but found it a free-for-all, not to my taste at all. I played a good game, but most of the bigger guys enjoyed flattening other people in tackles to the exclusion of any other possible interest in the game. I wanted above all to keep my teeth for playing trumpet, and I was never going to fall for that waste of my time.
One problem was that rugby was compulsory at Maritzburg College. For a start, I immediately fight against anything compulsory, and for a second, life is too short to waste a single minute on something you hate. Anyway, I detested all games, although I did play soccer, which was my father’s preference—and I suppose now that I was trying to please him, among other aims, though I did not realise that back then.
After my first year at high school, I went down to the riverside sports fields next to the Umsundusi and joined in the soccer practice with Shamrocks Football Club. That lasted for a year, and then I took to other things: running, canoeing, trumpet.
One day in Std 9 (I was sixteen), “Skonk” Nicholson, the vice-principal and rugby master, stopped me near the gym.
“I have not seen you on a rugby field here, Cook.”
I went straight to the point.
“I don’t play rugby, sir.”
The vice-principal appeared shocked. “Maritzburg College is a rugby school. Rugby is compulsory here.”
“I don’t understand that, sir. I think school is about getting a matric. What’s the point of applying myself to rugby when it will not get me a job when I leave school?”
“Mens sana in corpore sano,” he said.
“I know that Latin, sir.” Latin was my favourite subject. “A healthy mind in a healthy body. The thing is, sir, I do other things that demand a far higher level of fitness than rugby does.”
“The fact remains,” he said, “that rugby is compulsory, and you WILL pitch for a team from now on.”
“Then, sir, you must expel me, because I am not going to do that.” I said it a little too hotly, and started to feel slightly shaky. But I held my ground.
He paused. “What are these things that you do that demand a higher level of fitness than rugby?”
“Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I run up to Lady St George’s Hill and back. It’s seven miles. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, I carry my canoe down to the Victoria Bridge and paddle down to Low Level Bridge, and carry the canoe back. The normal thing is to run with the canoe, sir. It’s about five miles portage, sir. On Sundays, I run through town, along Mayor’s Walk, up through Boughton, Sweetwaters, past Winterskloof and Swartkop, across past Hilton Station to the N3, and downhill from there, through town, and back to Scottsville. It’s twenty-one miles, sir.”
Nicholson was a very decent man. “Well, I agree that those are very demanding. But the thing is, we don’t see you doing them. So we don’t know whether you really are or not. Here at school, we can see you playing rugby and be sure that we are living up to our responsibilities.”
I did not really want to argue the toss. It was time to firm up my stance.
“Those fatties in the forward pack of the first team are not fit, sir. I will beat them over a cross-country course of seven miles anytime. I am not saying I will come first, but I will definitely beat all of the First XV rugby players. Those guys, especially those podgy blokes in the forward pack, just huff and puff all the time. I won’t say they are sissies, but I do say they are unfit.”
Nicholson stood in the afternoon sun and stared at me. “You honestly believe they are unfit?”
“Yes, sir. Organise a cross-country over seven miles. If a single First XV player beats me, I will concede and take up rugby, much as I hate it.”
He thought. And thought more. “Well, I’ll say this. You make an interesting point. Let me think about it.”
Not long after this, perhaps a fortnight, a prefect collected my name for a cross-country run of 7 miles. I remember a lot of boys gave doctor’s notes to get out of it. In the event, I came 13th, but the nearest First XV player was 29th or thereabouts. I had passed a couple of the forward players in a bad way at the side of the path, puking up their lunch.
Skonk was at the finish line. He appeared to thoroughly enjoy the event. I did not speak to him for some time, but when we did, he said the First XV were very unhappy because, seeing how unfit they were, he had introduced a trial of “roadwork” for the team.
I did get a few heated moments from some in the team, but I don’t recall it coming to blows or being hurt by them. It is true that for a few weeks I was vastly unpopular. I did not care a jot.
At a school reunion about half a century later—a small affair in Johburg—I spoke about my brother, about his part in IDAF, about my sister and her contribution to the struggle, and about my own part, culminating with the best day: performing at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration. Some months later, I met Vince van der Bijl, who had been at that reunion. He remembered nothing at all about my family, nothing at all about the struggle. He remembered only that I had refused to play rugby. All two-plus metres of him stood there slowly shaking his head, tut-tutting. He could not for the life of him understand.
Twiggy’s Pie Cart
There was a bar named “Globe Bar”, corner Burger/Boshoff Streets, at the upper end of our block. We left Burger St for Scotsville some time after the Globe had been replaced by “Richleen Bar”, a soulless building that reeked of “student architect”. It was a mix of modern church and art deco, with diamond shaped stained glass windows, art-deco in every other way. For some strange reason (revenge for apartheid?) Richleen was never full. The Globe customers never continued there. I suppose Richleen was a property investment by a couple named Richard and Eileen - making a single name of two is quite common in SA property with husband-wife projects.
The Globe, though, was a daily source of horror and wonder for us while growing up. We came to know the Globe’s patrons as “drunkies”. It had two bars: the patronage for the main one was unspecified, though only whites went in: that was the main bar, entered from a large corner door, with the notorious “green curtain” of Herman Charles Bosman’s “The Music Maker”, but the secondary one had a sign “Indian Bar”. I never ever saw an African in the Indian bar, though Indians and so-called coloureds drank together there. Apartheid was just weird, especially the unspoken kind.
None of us were ever old enough to drink at Globe Bar before we left for Scotsville, but brother Al caroused in many joints with both Graham Pechey, and Pete Rodda, both friendships continuing years later in exile in England.
Rodda and Pechey
Before my brother left for Grahamstown, around 1961, he and various friends regularly caroused in “the usual” drnking holes around town. These included: ok, how do I do this? Take the word “The” for starters, then add “Imp/Vic/First and Last/Ans/Crossroads” and end with “hotel”.
Barring (pun intended) “First and Last”, they were all hotels, because for decades only hotels could get a liquor licence. “First and Last” preceded that law, and was allowed to survive, along with the “Globe Bar”, which was my long time fiend Charles Gordon Ward put it, a “BAR bar. neither an Inn nor a hostelry”.
His main drinking partners were Pete and Graham, though it was seldom a three person venture. It was either Pete or Graham. The standard practice was to descend on Twiggy’s Pie Cart in the Market Square, where the greasiest of junk foods was served as booze antidote when they were over or near the limit. Of these, the Crossroads was the most dangerous, not because of violent patrons, but because it often became cloaked in thick fog. Driving up to it was on a scary, narrow, twisty road, bad enough to drive on with clear vision, but a real scare in dense mist. There was also an untended level crossing, though they dug that line up just before Al’s drinking days. I think.
Mrs Jane Heath told me once that she and Professor Jack had been out with people (quite possibly at the Crossroads Hotel), and returned home via the Sweetwaters Road. There was a level crossing on that road, too. It was usually “manned” but evidently not always, because somewhere in dense fog, Jack took a turn, and they both found the road unbearably bumpy. Fearing a puncture, Jack got out, peered closely at a wheel, and discovered his car was on rail track sleepers, straddling the track. How they reversed out of that jam she could not fully remember, but they did, found the level crossing and rejoined the road.
This was very lucky for them: it was before the Boughton Tunnels were built, and that was one of the main Johannesburg tracks in those days, though the most used line was the one via Koffiefontein, a forgotten halt on the track half way up World’s View on its northern slope. Its level crossing, just down from the Crossroads Hotel, was the one Al and Pete may have had to contend with a few times.
At the Pie Cart that Al and Graham inaugurated “Cerebral Yeah-ism” a religion or movement (they could never decide which) with a membership of two. On another night, Pete and Al went out in Pete’s VW beetle, and they toured the spots, ending at the Pie Cart. Al, drunk as a skunk, rubbed up one of the local yahoos the wrong way, who then pulled a knife. Unworried, Al said:
“You better be careful. My mate there” (pointing at the car, where Pete Rodda lay passed out) “is the KING OF THE KNIFE FIGHTERS”.
He led them to the car, where the yahoos woke Pete for the fight, and Al climbed in and then himself passed out. Neither had any idea of what happened further, but they survived without a scratch.
Freelancing in Pietermaritzburg
“Wow, we really swang last night!” — Mike Henri
He never, ever used “swung” for the past tense. Only “swang”. And we often “swang”. I think Mike was comfortably off. He owned a pharmacy,2 and music was very much a side hustle for him, but one he really enjoyed, and he paid generously. I liked him, his gigs, and how easygoing he was.
In all, I free-lanced in four white bands in Pietermaritzburg, starting in my sixteenth year:
- Chris Roering (two generations: the first a dance band, the later named “Down to Earth”, a pop band)
- Mike Henri
- Peter Kruit
- Dennis East (“Generation Gap”)
- Johnny Potgieter
I was not a regular in the bands of Peter Kruit and Mike Henri. Peter Kruit was a Dutch immigrant piano teacher who did gigs on both piano and organ. Mike Henri was a pharmacist who played organ only.
You could say I was not a true freelancer in that I did every gig that Chris offered me and played for other bands only when he had no gig on a given night. That was not often. The Roering band was my mainstay, and a very busy and happy one: Chris and I are like brothers, and it was always more than a gig. We played the whole of Natal, particularly for functions in the Northern Natal coalfields in Dundee, Dannhauser, and Vryheid, and fairly often in Kokstad, then in East Griqualand.
Chris borrowed his father’s car for most of these away trips. It was a huge American “yank tank”, with the widest front bench seat I have ever seen in a car. We were often seated four in the front. Joe Turner’s double bass rested on top of the seats inside, and the boot swallowed everything else.
The “illegal” bands were:
- Swing Inc: a mixed-race marabi/swing band playing out of the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg.
- The Shange Brothers: Lionel and Cecil Shange were Durban-based, but booked me for two gigs—once somewhere in or near Umkhumbane, Durban, and once at the Library Hall in Edendale.
The Chris Roering band was hired to play at my matric dance—a huge saving in trauma for me, because the one thing I would never have coped with was the process of asking (and surely being rejected; it was seen as bad to say “yes” first time, as guys had to be made to work for the honour) and being turned down by a girl! I was that shy of girls.
I did not, in the end, have a girlfriend until my second year at university, though I tried. There was a sort of exception after matric. I met a girl slightly older than me, a fine arts student, who had just broken up with her long-time boyfriend. I thought she was amazing and asked her to join me for a drink at the Imperial Hotel. That turned into a long evening, and we walked back to Scottsville pretty drunk. I was actually underage to be drinking, but I could not say no to Caterina.
As we neared Scottsville, she asked where I lived. I told her. “I want to see,” she said.
Back at our home in St Patrick’s Rd, the house was in darkness. I showed her the bathroom, toilet, and my room. She settled on the bed and lit up a cigarette. Back then, everyone seemed to smoke, and I was used to it around me. She finished the cigarette, got up, stooped to kiss me, and sat down again. Yawning, she lay back on the bed. After some while I tried stirring her; there was no waking her. It was a warm night. I arranged myself comfortably on the bed, spooning into her body. It was a most wonderful feeling, and I had a beautiful sleep.
And that’s how that started. The next night, she pitched up with suitcases. “I had to get out of my digs. But don’t worry, I’ll be leaving for Holland soon,” she said, and unpacked a few things.
That began a very happy couple of weeks. We did a fair amount of drinking and a lot of chatting. I was far too naive about sex and romance to even broach it, and anyway I had no idea how. What does a person say? How do you get going? I wondered a lot, but we were having such fun walking around, visiting her friends, and that was fun enough for me. She made me feel very special. Cat seemed permanently amused by me, and that was good enough for me.
I don’t remember exactly what day she left, but Caterina Kroon visited very briefly to say goodbye. It could have been Christmas Eve. She was flying out, her final destination being her home country, Holland. “Trek Airways,” she said with a little moue. “Best price.” I didn’t know one airline from the other. She stayed a few minutes, got up to leave, turned, and took my face in her hands. “You are not to miss me, and not to long for me. I had a lot of fun with you. We will never see one another again.” With that, she smothered my hot face with kisses, and was gone. She was right. I never did see, nor hear of her, again.
I can’t remember much about Christmas of 1962, except that my sister Colleen married Mike Taylor just before it, on the 22nd of December. Cat went with me to the wedding.
My dad’s passing had changed everything. My younger sister Irene had immediately left school and found a job, and my brother Allen was in Grahamstown. On the last morning of 1962, I woke in a lot of pain—bad enough to tell my mother. She knew I never complained unless things were really difficult, but there was another predicament: I was due to board the train for national service in Tempe, Bloemfontein, that night. After a moment of thought, she whisked me off to the family doctor. He pressed on the bottom right side of my abdomen, and I hit the roof. “Appendix,” he explained to my mom, and booked me in for surgery that night in Grey’s Hospital.
Few people remember much about being operated upon. I am the same, but turned out to remember more than most. During the op, I recall sitting bolt upright (causing both a huge tug on my core with a lot of lower abdominal pain, and panic stations across the theatre). I looked down and saw a gaping hole in my lower right side (not very big) surrounded with things. Gauze? Instruments? I can’t remember. Someone in scrubs dashed toward me, pressed me back down, pricked my right wrist, and all went black.
On returning home, I told my mom about waking up in the op. She, as she usually did when I talked of things she found hard to believe, cast her eyes to the ceiling and remained silent. I was a little indignant about that, but soon began to believe that it was no more than a dream, as she put forward.
Anaesthetics, when they knock you out, do not leave a bruise, but they are just as bewildering in the aftermath. Since an operation lasts some hours, being under must surely take a longer time for one to recover from than a simple boxing ring knockout. After all, being knocked out in a boxing ring seldom takes most boxers even a minute to regain consciousness. So, I should have expected a painful, difficult time of it when waking on New Year’s Day 1963, but this was a heavy surprise. It was the first time in my life waking without any idea of where I was, and also the first time waking to that amount of pain.
I stared around the ward. There were no easily visible faces. Everyone was supine, most with their backs to me, and no nursing staff were at that moment to be seen. Feeling the need for the toilet, I started awkwardly trying to get the bedclothes off, but felt shockingly weak and poorly coordinated. Fortunately, a nurse entered the ward right then, and dashed down the ward to my bed in seconds.
“You are NOT to get up. You CAN’T get up!” she said firmly.
I wanted to prove her wrong, and really needed the toilet, but everything went south. Today, it feels very lucky that she was there to stop any further downward progress. Surprisingly strong, she gently got me back onto the mattress, raised both hands to show me to “stay” or “be still”, and left, quickly returning with a long, cylindrical stainless-steel thing, shaped not unlike a bottle.
“I think you can work out how to use this,” she said.
I felt dumb and stupid, and asked, “What is it?”
She pursed her lips, and then eased up, seeing I was serious. “You pee in it, and leave it for me to collect.”
When she had gone, I picked the thing up, got it under the blankets, burning with shyness, and let fly. What a relief! Fortunately, no one in the entire ward was in any shape to wake from their various states, let alone see what I was up to.
That changed later that morning. I woke to find the man in the bed adjacent to mine, a man in his forties maybe, facing me. He had lain with his back to me before. He sported an amiably bashed-up face, but with a very kindly expression. We greeted. He winced.
“Hernia,” he said, pointing at his lower torso.
“Appendix,” I said, pointing to mine.
I didn’t really know what a hernia was, though my dad had mentioned it once. They were then more generally known as “ruptures” in everyday language, but the way my dad spoke of them, they are all about pain. The bashed-face man introduced himself as “Partridge, Dick Partridge”. As we both increasingly recovered from the anaesthetic, we talked a little more—sporadically, of course, everything was an effort, but very pleasantly. I was glad of the company. It turned out, prompted by me saying I was a trumpeter, that Dick played tenor sax.
I think Dick Partridge and I left hospital on the same day, toward the end of the first week of January. He was, he said, “out from Kenya”. I wondered, as I wished him goodbye, whether I would ever see him again.
Discharged from Grey’s Hospital, still slow from the surgery wound, my mother must have been wondering what next to do about me. It was mostly just her and me, though we did see my younger sister Irene once a week or so. The St Patrick’s Rd house was for sale, the estate was being wound up, and there is no doubt it would be easier for her not to have to look after me too much. She had sorted out my absence on the army train with an old friend, Bob de Carle, at Natal Command, Durban. Soon the next call-up notification arrived by post. I was to board a train from Pietermaritzburg to Bloemfontein on 4 April 1963. We had most of January, and all of February and March before then, so the decision was to send me to my mom’s aunt, Kassie, on the farm Stroma in Swaziland. I had been there with my younger sister Irene in 1960, so the trip was fresh in my mind.
Silent Swaziland
Before leaving for Swaziland, my mom took me uptown to buy some clothes. Near the war memorial, a charming young Zulu man stretched his hand out and said, “Jasper.”
Confused, I asked how he knew my name.
He said, “No, MY name is Jasper.”
I asked where he knew me from.
He said, “I am a nurse. You probably won’t remember me, but I was working in the operating theatre on New Year’s Eve. You woke up in the middle of your appendix operation.”
My mom stared at Jasper and me by turns. We walked on. Back home, she said, “I thought that was impossible.” No raised eyes this time.
The Swaziland trip details had not changed. As before, I boarded a train late at night from Pietermaritzburg station, changed trains in Glencoe in the small hours to the Piet Retief line. The instruction was to “change to the Ermelo train”. It wound through hilly country dotted with coal mines, passing through Vryheid and on into the Transvaal to Piet Retief. There I left the train and boarded a “railway bus” for a hectically noisy trip following along the Usutu River valley. I had never before nor since been on a vehicle that rattled that loud, and there were trillions of corrugations—it was dirt road all the way—to ensure that the “drums” never stopped. World War One artillery sound effects in movies I had seen were gentle by comparison. Everything in the bus rattled. The seats shook, the windows shook, every fitting in the interior bounced and clattered. I was totally worn out by the time the bus dropped me at a pole next to the roadside, marked “Mahlanya Halt”, on the Bremersdorp (then newly named “Manzini”) road. The map shows it as a town now; I have not been back that way, but it is strange to think of it as even a settlement. There was not a dwelling nor a person in sight. I waited for maybe half an hour or so before Uncle Frank’s little apple-green Austin pick-up appeared in the distance.