10 pages nothing for mahala

NOTHING FOR MAHALA For my grandson, Murray Scott, I thought I had seen it all until you arrived, Love you, Papa.

ALEXANDER HOUSE Incorporating TRAYBERRY PRESS 29 Howick Road Pietermaritzburg, South Africa 3201 0836388813 graham.l@mweb.co.za NOTHING FOR MAHALA This edition 2009 Copyright 2008 Graham Vivian Lancaster Copyright 2009 in this published edition

ALEXANDER HOUSE

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in 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 copyright holder and publisher.

First published 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 ISBN: 978-0-9814146-2-1 Cover design: G.V.Lancaster, Taryn Duckham Cover photograph of Abel Naicker by G.V.Lancaster, published with permission of Abel Naicker Distributed by ALEXANDER HOUSE.

OTHER WORKS BY THE AUTHOR: NOVELS: Wind Song Strength Of ten SELF HELP: Everyone Can Do It Its Never Too Late Surviving The Ladder The Cost Of Money Who’s Shrinking Your Money?

The Happy Customer POETRY: Marks On My Soul Gypsey Whale Song Gravel Roads Fledgeling HUMOUR: Bert and Co. Bert Another Story ADVENTURE SERIES: Wild and Dangerous Secrets of the Sea Cyclone Tracy

INDEX 1 7 11 15 17 28 30 33 38 41 45 49 51 54 58 62 65 74 76 80 85 91 96 101 104 110 115 118

PENSIONERS LEFT BEHIND PIRATE CAPTAIN REGINALD NAIDOOS FIGHTER PILOT PIERRE FOWL MOODS NINE KINGS MONSOON PEGS WITCHES OF SURBURBIA SNAPSHOT URGENTLY ABSENT AT THE GENERAL DISCOVERIES SUFFERING SILENCE THE HUNTER HAPPINESS OKES SHNUFFS AIR GOLF WINE CELLAR ALSO AT THE GENERAL CHEAP WINE KAAITJIE THE INTERVIEW CATCH A THIEF MAURITIAN HOLIDAY THE GOOD SAMARITAN BOOMSLANG BONFIRE NIGHT

PENSIONERS

The two men sat warming themselves in the early morning Cape Town sunshine, as was their daily routine.

Sampie February looked up the street to where Reginald Platneus Adonis was pointing.

“Hell! Thassa fascinating thing, you know?” Reginald observed.

“What?” Sampie asked and Reginald straightened his shirt collar over that of his frayed orange and green check sports coat, which normally meant he was about to deliver counsel.

“The cultures of the dogs man! Look what they do. A pack of multi-national dogs, black and white and bruin ou’s too – integrated – like zebras, and there’s no apartheid or pass books or wedding rings. Watch them, stretching, cocking their legs and peeing on lampposts to reaffirm their territory and having their early morning reacquainting rude sniffs of each other’s passings and private things – like social interaction is so much of uncomplicated. And you know what? Well I’ll tell you.

Nobody looks at things like that, although everyone sees it, even though they turns their heads the other way. But all the dogs watch in open honesty and approval and are satisfied with proceedings being as they are. But dogs aren’t complicated or affronted like people and the police

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won’t be around later because someone complained of invasion of privacy and stuff like that.”

“What a insight you got ou Reginald, you shoulda been a minister of the kerk, or a World Wrestling disting dingis – ah - commentator,” Sampie was awe struck.

“Ya, I know, and they asked me but I chose something noble, like to work on the trawlers.”

“Jusslaik! What a sacrifice of a mind!”

“Ja, you are right, Sampie.”

There was an easy silence as both men leaned back against a stone garden wall, stopped their pipes with Boxer and lit up in blue clouds of fragrant smoke, until the match flame reached their fingers and they hurriedly flicked them away and shook their hands and said, “Bliksem!”

“Now thaaaaat’s something to see!” Reginald exclaimed.

“What?” Sampie looked round quickly.

“Scarlet! The eighth wonder of the world, man.” He pointed with the wet stem of his pipe and they watched the black 350Z Nissan purr past as Scarlet Haremsé flicked her flowing red hair and a wicked little knowing smile at Reginald.

“Topless!” Sampie’s voice was hushed as he observed the convertible and the little devil tattoo on her arm lying along the window sill with her long red nailed, jeweled fingers resting on the wing mirror.

“Ungh!” Reginald grunted and clutched his heart.

“You having a heart attack or what, broe?” Sampie asked, quickly placing a concerned hand on his back.

“Nay man! I’s just clutching her look of pure passion to my bosom.”

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“Seker wasn’t meant for you, you blerrie “big schoopit!

“You don’t know half, Sampie February!”

“Kak man! Have you seen all the big cars and smart ou’s what visits there by she? Suits and ties with big businessmans inside and flowers outside and chocolates, and you scheme there’s a place there for a ou met a hole in his shoe?”

“You’ll be surprised what a ou with a hole in his shoe can get!” Reginald said defensively, took off his tweed flat cap and his hand followed the silver aluminium tail comb he’d pulled out of his pink sock, smoothing his steel grey hair into place.

“I reckons I would be surprised too,” Sampie scoffed, but wasn’t so sure as he looked at Reginald’s handsome profile, then had to admit that the Reginald Adonis of ten years ago could have – would have done it – before he became Reginald Platneus Adonis after a brawl with an irate young Adderly Street flower seller, who was determined she was taking the last fish.

Reginald seemed to read Sampies’ mind as he scratched his nose thoughtfully with the tail of the comb, before he pulled up the hem of his trousers and slipped it back into the pink sock.

“Ja but I’m a lover not a fighter and maybe I’m not young like I used to be, but there’s no budget for window shopping, ou Sampie. I haven’t seen a ugly woman since - 1994 - when I got divorced over that fish thing and five litres of Liberstein and a few other things what happened that night when Delila found us on the beach. That was ‘D’ day, broe – she swooped in like a DC Douglas on Dunkirk and we was ducking and diving, daffodils and dahlias flying everywhere and all what I was doing was

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admiring that lovely girl’s magnificent snoek! Afterwards people schemed I was fat, but I was swollen from the way she beat me.” He coughed awkwardly and looked away.

“Yaaa,” Sampie said at length, “But the story goes, Delila caught you flossing - -” “Well of course yes! One of my teeths was knocked out with my nose and I was just wiping it,” he hurriedly interrupted Sampie as his lips pulled back like a whinnying horse and an evidential gold tooth rattled out of his mouth on its plate.

“Boeta!” Sampie exploded with such force Reginald wasn’t sure whether he had belched or spoken.

“Ya?” he asked tentatively, like half way between question and agreement, just in case.

“But with her G string?” Sampie smiled knowingly.

“Ou Sampie, life takes funny turns and everything was a bit confused after the incident.” Reginald’s eyes sought refuge between his shoes.

“Ya, boeta I can understand that. Now me, I sees one ugly woman without teeths first thing I open my eyes every morning. It used to be different when I could look at the picture of Maria Carey what I stole out the ‘You’ magazine by the dentist and hid behind the cistern in the toilet to peek at whenever it was safe,” he replied dejectedly as he clamped his gums on the stem of his pipe and sucked.

“And if Sophie catches you! Hoo!” “Ja, I knows it!” his voice rose to a whine. “And she did founds the blerrie thing too. When I comes home from the tattersals, my cholla bag from the navy with all my clothes in are lying on the pavement outside the gate

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and attached with sticky tape is Mariah’s picture what Sophie doctored with a black coki pen – glasses and a moustache and some rude advice for the both of us she wrote on the side. Sophie is standing on the stoep – silent like my grave - with a baseball bat at the high port and I just grabbed the bag and ducked chicken, ou pel.

Sommer chucked the crumpled Mariah in the dustbin under Sophies watcheful eye. If I hadn’t just won the horses I would have been homeless for a month!”

“But where’s your blerrie teeths today anyway?”

Reginald reached around quickly and pinched Sampie’s top lip between thumb and forefinger, jerked it up like a parrot’s beak and looked in.

Sampie shied backwards in fright, swiping as though at a mosquito but Reginald held on in fascination.

“Nay – Sophie waked up before me cos why she’s going to visit she’s cousin and she must look smart cos they’s lanie ou’s, so she got to put big green plastic rollers and white pins in she’s hair and tie her doek just right over the top. I put my finger in my mous soon as I wakes up and the teese was gone on the bus in Sophie’s mous. Anyway. That fast goose Scarlet is so much of dangerous for your health,” Sampie’s voice took on a concerned note as Reginald released his lip.

“Nay man, she’s got da tools to play the game! That’s the bonus plan, ou Samps!”

“But what kind of name is that anyway – Scarlet?”

“Her husband gave it to she.”

“Why, because she got him all in the fever?” Sampie asked suspiciously.

“Well apparently – and by route of a long story - you know she was married to ou Haragat Haremsé what

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used to own the fishing trawlers by Hout Bay where I worked and she was he’s husband and he was rich – ” “Was!” “Shut up now, Samps. So the story goes – one day he comes home and thinks there’s a strange goose by the possie and wants to call the police before he gets in trouble by the auntie, but it was she what died she’s hair - like something biblical!”

“What?” Sampie said in amazement,”Biblical?”

“Ja man, sommer die burning bush, man. Don’t you know nothing?”

“Well, I hadn’t seen it like that,” Sampie defended himself lamely.

“Ya, ya, then one year she gets the moer in with him cos she wants a romantic dream cruise to the Carribean and he tunes her, ‘Lekker, Big Red, we’ll takes the new trawler and ketch fis all the way and you can help us clean them for five Rands a day’. She threatens and threatens where she’s going to park that trawler under full steam ahead dragging the anchors with the nets out and then when he comes home one other day – sy het gewaai - with everything - and he stands in the empty house looking at nix and he says, “‘Everything she has taken for free! Even the blerrie child.’ Like a little bit dejected he said it, you know?”

“Even the dop! Ya I can imagine he was down, man,” Sampie commiserated.

“Anyways, suddenly he clicks his fingers and a light goes on in his head like he’s watching a film, and he tunes, ‘That’s it; Gone met die kind. Scarlet Mahala!’”

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