LESBIANS, SURELY?

I finally led the family to a bathing beacon. As an ex-pro, I know about these things. We could hang our towels on the rungs of the beacon to prevent them getting sandy. We did so and then sat in a row beside the beacon, facing the sea. Cool water foamed around our feet. A kind father stood nearbye holding his daughter on his hip. Inrushing water hissed up his shins and she shrieked delightedly. Further down, away from the main crowd, a group of sand-pipers ran back and forth with the ebb and flow of the water. They moved with the rapidity of wind-up toys, stabbing the sand with their beaks in search of sea lice. Yes. In my lucid drunken state I saw all. The shorebreak waves reared up, their faces streaked with foam and churning sand, and collapsed with hollow booming concussions on the yelling throng. Slick arms windmilled from the foamy chaos, heads tumbled, feet pointed skyward.
There were only a few surfers at backline, beyond a wide midbreak of ordlerly rolling foamies. The waves there reared up and turned green for an instant before bowling onto the sandbank with a crisp hollow whump. Beside me the family sat in order of seniority: Pa, Ma, Dawie - yanking on one end of the stick he'd brought, Spud growling on the other end, ploughing up the sand - Stefaan, Lettie, Helga and Willem Jnr. By rights Helga should have been at the end, but she'd managed to outmanouvre Willem. Again. He was scowling, aware of the injustice.

A group of men with Health and Racket chiselled bodies, about twenty of them, were throwing a frisbee back and forth near the water's edge. Their feet slapped the hard wet sand. There were cries of 'Mike!' 'Robert!' 'Over here!' Pa and I entered the shallow water near them and swung Helga and Willem around for a while - not easy with Willem, with his tremlbing white gut. Ma watched us, smiling with a faraway look in her eye. Lydenburg memories. As soon as I got the chance I swam out to the backline for half an hour of crisp thumping barrels, sluicing my crevices, scouring road grime off, tucking into the long revolving chutes translucent with green light. The water here was clean and not gritty with churned sand like the shorebreak. A perfect right came my way and I took off at an angle and dropped down with my right hand extended, my palm cutting into the uprushing wall tight with ribbed tension. My left hand was down by my balls, digging into the face like a little fin, keeping me hanging there. The water drummed against my chest as the revolving tunnel closed up entirely and I was spat out and hung suspended in green silence for the space of a snapshot. Then I was tumbling madly, eyes tightly shut, muscles braced against the bombing concussion of white water. I found the bottom and gripped it with my fingers and toes, resisting the force of the wave which wanted to drag me with it. I oriented myself seawards and waited for the overhead turbulence to pass before thrusting off at an angle and surfacing in smooth water, flicking the salt from my eyes so I could see if another thick lip was sledging towards me.

I returned to the beach a new man, glowing with salty health, frothed up Stout singing in my veins. It took me a while to get my bearings, wiping the water from my eyes, wading through the melee of bathers - this really was a busy beach - but there was Ma beside the beacon, sitting like one of those wooden carvings of fat Bhuddist monks. Except that Ma wasn't smiling. She had the kids standing around her and they were all peering towards the packed beach, shielding their eyes, with a concerned stillness in their bearing. Down by the water's edge the group of frisbee tossers were grouped together in a perplexed knot, staring in the same direction. I looked across at the mob sweltering under the merciless garish spotlight of the sun and there, shambling around horribly amongst the glistening flesh and swivelling heads, the bright towels and the umbrellas, looking rather low rent if I say so myself, were Pa and Dawie and Stefaan. Spud scampered a few feet ahead of them. He had the frisbee clamped in his mouth and he was pocking the thing, his jaws working with frantic joy.
How long had this been going on? Quite a while, if the scowling expressions of the frisbee tossers were anything to go by. Dawie was stalking around Spuds flank, scowling himself with concentration, his arms hanging terribly low at his sides. Spud's eyes twitched, watching him close in. Dawie got within range and lunged at him but Spud merely pranced off, delighted, and planted himself on the other side of a gawking family - his head held low and his arse in the air, tail thrashing, jawing the frisbee, piggy eyes twitching upwards, waiting for the next lumbering charge. From Pa this time.
Trotting briskly up the bank, sober now, onto the level glaring stage to save the day, I passed the knot of pissed-off frisbee throwers. They mulled around, undecided. A few of them played on the wing, they could probably catch the stupid animal if they tried. But you judge a dog by its owner and if this one was anything like the oke with the scars and the mashed nose and the homemade blue tatoo of the saint on his shoulder ... best left alone.

The rest of Sunday was spent in a torpid green dwaal, back in the amniotic security of the tent, writing in my journal. I felt clean and exercised and healthy. My skin glowed pinkly after a hot shower in the yeasty glass cubicle. A white crescent of salt had survived on my forearm. I licked it off. The grotto beyond the tent opening was a viridian twilight world shot with dusty shafts of sunlight. I could see the bright world beating down on the canopy up there, dancing in a thin white haze over the tree tops, repelled, except for these lazy columns twirling with bright specs of dust and the odd meteoric gnat.
Out on the quiet road, hemmed in by tall green thicket, the sunlight was thick and milky now, like I could wade through it. It shone on a run down concrete bunker of a tea-room, the same tired beigy yellow as the ablution block, sitting alone and partially swallowed by the trees and palms. I was hungry after my swim so I left the tent and walked over - Spud shadowing me as always. Inside two shirtless boogie-boarding grommets, shoeless on a grubby maroon concrete floor, with long baggies almost down to their ankles, bonged away on a flashing pinball machine in the corner.
There was very little stock. A single wire shelf on the wall contained a jumble of obscurely flavoured crisps like Biltong and Potroast. On the counter a huge glass jar with a swivel lid held a collection of sticky looking sweets - big pink balls that you suck for hours and then crack a tooth on.
'No man,' the stringy woman behind the counter said. 'The truck only delivers stock once a week and it hasn't come this week.'
Of course not. Laid back beach decrepitude. I bought a packet of chips and a withered Mutton Curry Pie from the glass oven on the counter. Two dead flies lay on top of it, their legs in the air, slightly fried. A ceiling fan blatted down thick wedges of air, causing the legs to stir slightly.
The woman looked at Spud and beamed. 'Ag! such a mooi Varkhoindjie! My husband had one. That dog was crazy! We took him to the beach and every time he dove into the rock pools for the ... what you call it? Ag man,' she fluttered her hand in frustration. 'The anemones! Because they is bright! This dog loved bright things! But the crazy animal wouldn't let go! When he got a thing in his mouth he held on. Until he passed out! Hey!' One of the grommets, clacking the flippers of the pinball machine and heaving it around frantically, had yelled fuck. 'Watch your language! Don't make me call your mothers! And if you break that machine you're going to be in groot kak!' The grommet gave her a surly look and continued playing.
'Where was I,' she said, turning a bright smile on me. 'Ooh ja! The dog used to pass out and my husband had to give him ... how do you call it? Mouth to mouth! Ag!' She beamed down at Spud and I agreed that he wasn't the brightest dog either. 'But he is so handsome. Skat, come and look at this mooi varkhoindjie. He's brown, not like Bruno.'
From behind the counter her daughter gave me a nice smile from where she was sprawled in a white plastic fold out chair. She heaved herself up on the chair's armrests and held herself there, the chair creaking, as she peered over the counter at Spud. Then she collapsed back again. She was slightly younger than the chunky young thing on the beach, about eighteen, with the same suety skin swelling where her faded denim shorts cut into her thighs. Frayed white thread showed where the jeans had been cut to make shorts. She wore a pink bikini beneath a yellow Instinct vest. It had a wide cut so the glabrous white flesh of her full breasts, not quite covered by her bikini, was visible from the side. The sight made my breath snag. She caught me looking but instead of covering up she yawned and stretched languidly, her arms fully extended above her head. My God, the power young girls can weild over a man's idiotic flesh.
In fact they were both so friendly that I thought it was my stout induced charm working. But gradually I saw that they were competing with each other. The mom may have been pretty once, but her sharp brown face was withered now, with a row of vertical wrinkles leading into her top lip. She gabbled on and registered my reactions a little desperately, watching me with alert black eyes beneath a fringe of teased auburn bangs. The daughter sat quietly in the chair, not saying much, smiling, confident in the power of her blossoming breasts.

Back outside I waded across the milky road, back into the dappled green other-world of the grotto. I sat beside the tent and ate the pie with its glutinous blobs of black meat. Spud inspected the piece I gave him with a delicately crinkled nose before gingerly eating it with his front teeth. Not such a stupid dog after all. Then I lay on my back on the cool grass and breathed the dusty smell of sunstruck vegetation filtering down from the canopy. Lambent fragments of blue showed between leaves tinctured along their edges with a chartreuse light. No wind. Then the grass rustled beside my head. It was the two women who lived in a caravan at the far end of the camp. Possible lesbians. Batting their eyes, smiling, in their early forties, with white cellulite-scrolled thighs beneath their matching khaki shorts, they wanted to know if I was interested in buying a canvas tent for R500.
While we were discussing this Pa and Lettie emerged from their tent and began quietly hanging wet costumes and towels on a green wire slung from a corner of their caravan to a nearbye tree. Their tent was quiet. Just the tv droning somnolently. They must be sprawled out in there watching it. Ma must be nursing her aching legs and back.
The two women ignored Pa and Lettie. They even paused in their bright, neighbourly chatter to give them sour looks. When Pa and Lettie finished and went inside there was a ticklish pause: I think they wanted me to complain about the family. Instead I kept quiet, and as the pause lengthened I could see these two trying to work out where my sympathies lay. The camp was divided into two obvious factions: the reclusive overnight campers, with their expensive cars and caravans; and the people who actually lived in the camp - the Inwooners. The overnight campers were shadowy figures, sticking to themselves out of site in the nooks and crannies of the camp, nodding warily on their way to the toilets and showers. They pulled out in the early morning in their 4x4's to go on fishing trips and returned at dusk.
The Inwooners, on the other hand, walked around the camp all day with a relaxed proprietory air, with their animals tailing them, chatting and socialising. This was their turf. But amongst the Inwooners their was a further division between those living rough but comfortable like the lesbians, and those with a tacky air of desperation about them, like the familie. Piet the biker didn't have a desperate air, but Piet was comfortable with hard Lydenburg stories and Piet sommer didn't give a fok if Pa and Dawie came over to shoot the breeze. And there was still the question of Stefaan's soft arse. I still hadn't gotten to the bottom of that one.
Within the camp setting I was harder to place. With my story about the Uno breaking down, and with my lekker fancy tent with Svalsbad Explorer printed in expensive little white letters on the side, I was like an Overnighter who had lost his way and become a comfortable Inwooner. I was seen chatting to the family all the time. I was right there in the pall cast by their grotty tent and caravan.
Now - this was what the pause had been about, with these two looking down at me - was I suffocating in the family's sordidness and aching for a chance to wail about them? Or did I, God forbid, actually enjoy having them at my tent opening all day long? I thought about it - about them following me trustingly across the beach, about Ma sitting beside the beacon with a faraway, enigmatic smile on her lips - and thanked them for their offer. I said I had no real need for a six man tent, but I'd ask around for them.
They smiled sympathetically - I was obviously a man of admirable restraint, not given to gossiping. Then they ambled back towards their caravan, taking their time as Inwooners to pluck a few leaves and glare up at the monkeys and corner a scared ten year old Overnighter scurring back to the safety of his caravan. As they walked their tan khaki shorts rode up their wide arses and their cellulite scrolled in a rapid, complex series of dents and shadows like hieroglyphics. Lesbians, surely?

MY GOD, STRAIGHT OUT OF JERRY SPRINGER

Sunday morning, the crack of dawn. The roof glowed with a faint pink light, broken by shifting geometric patterns as the wind ruffled the branches of the tree canopy overhead. And what was that? Scuffling and hot breathing: 'Oom ...? Oom ...?'
I held out till about ten before cracking my first quart; and then I lay sipping it inside the tent, with the flaps wide open. Helga and Lettie took Spud for walks, dragging him around in the shafts of sunlight that pierced the canopy. Willem trailed after them, complaining bitterly. The same sunlight lay in a fresh haze out on the road. Piet was sitting in his deckchair sipping coffee, surveying the world quietly beneath his sagging awning. There was some sort of fuck the world motto on the front of his white t-shirt. Monkeys trooped about overhead. The males led in a serious and cautious manner, the youngsters shrieked and crashed about, chasing each other, and the mothers came last. There were tiny babys clinging to their stomachs. The upside down faces stared down at me, wrinkled and worried looking.

Pa slinked around and struck poses as he potted the monkeys with his BB gun. He was protecting us from their thieving ways. He had discovered that I'd been in security, and had decided that the the two of us shared a common understanding and should discuss life. I would come out the tent and we would stand there with our arms folded, watching the monkeys, and Pa would tell me about his desperate situation. He had an interview coming up with a security company, but he hadn't worked since he'd arrived at the camp after driving all night to avoid the cops - because he couldn't remember the last time his caravan had been licenced.
He was not happy with Dawie, he told me right off the bat. He had been forced by his wife to bring Dawie along. But Dawie too wasn't working; and Dawie was 'A beitjie ... jy weet ... hy verloor sy kop nadat hy n' paar beere in hom het. He does stupid things. But he's got no work, he's got no money, he smokes my cigarettes ... '
Pa was about six foot, and in his slinky way he looked like he could handle himself. But I got the feeling he was very wary of Dawie and Dawie's dark moods. Dawie drifted around the camp and sometimes stalked in for a few very measured words. He would clear his sticky throat, flaps whirring, and we would grope for a common topic - usually valves, and overhead cams, while I nodded shiftily. At other times I was him standing quietly off to one side, beside a tree staring at Pa and myself chatting - about him, Dawie knows! - or at teenage girls trotting past on the road, heading for the bathing beach with bright towels flung over their shoulders. With his big, pitted, scarred head held with a predatory stillness he looked like on of those ex-guard dogs you see at the SPCA. Beaten up Rottweilers you can't trust an inch, peering at you with groggy, twitching eyes, mean and haunted.
He told me this story about owning a dog like Spud. 'N varkhoindjie, ne? A good dog. He bite many kaffers.' But the neighbours didn't like the dog, or his Mom's boyfriend or someone kept on doing hideous things to the dog, pouring boiling water over it. So they took the dog to the end of town and left it there. 'Maar daaie hond was slim, ne, hy het huis gekom. He come home. so we take him further away, and we leave him, ne, and that is the last time I see that dog.'

I had agreed halfway through my second stout to take the kids down to the beach. And why not? Bits of pure blue blazed through the canopy. But the kids were so excited, and Pa came over to talk about life so often, and Dawie stalked in to share his muddy guttural thoughts on tortured dogs with such regularity, that it began to dawn on me: this was no ordinary trip to the beach.
'How many times have you been for a swim?' I asked Helga.
'No, only two times,' she said. 'This will be the second.'
One of the reasons was that Ma couldn't walk. 'Ma kry baai, baaie moeg,' Helga told me solemly. 'Omdat sy so vet is.'
'She's got a bad hip,' the older girls said.

By one o'clock the haze of sunlight out on the road had become sharp and heated. But with three quarts inside me I was in a Ghandi-like zone of total benevolence. I was ready for anything. Pa drove Ma down in his Fanta-orange Sierra, with sulphur-yellow fur on the front dashboard (I swear). A row of fluffy toys was glued across the fur. The rest of us walked. Dawie had discovered that he could haul Spud up into the air while Spud clung with his teeth to a stick. Spud could do this all day, and so could Dawie. Spud had never had it so good. He latched onto the stick and Dawie hauled it up, liked he was performing a curl in a weightlifting session, so that Spud's snout ended up inches from Dawies moustache. Then the two of them moved along like this - Spud growling and pawing Dawie's chest as he worried the stick, Dawie walking stiff legged, his back arched.
I was happily pissed, cracking smiles at everyone and blathering on. The family had made me feel good about myself - the special Oom. The kids had a happy preoccupied look about them, walking with their heads down, thinking about their swim. Stefaan shambled along, knock kneed, with that quiet inward quality of teenagers that makes them seem semi-invisible. He had wet and combed his fringe in a perfect line across his forehead. Every now and then he put a hand up to plaster it down. Dawie was still hauling Spud up. His forearms writhed with fiercely striated muscle, and he grinned with muddy surprise at the fun he was having.
Occasionaly Spud let go and went crashing onto his backside, risking compacted disks, a broken tail. But he was back for more in a second, his piggy eyes fixed on the stick, slathering happily. I was cringing, but I didn't have the heart to interupt their game. I imagined them both staring at me while I tried to explain - Spud with his trusting piggy eyes and Dawie looking groggy and haunted, their flaps turning in unison.

As we walked along the road, hemmed in by the tall scrub and trees on either side, I realised that every available parking space along the road had been taken. Cars were wedged into the roadside, their noses pressed into the scratchy succulent scrub. I saw Mercs and BMW's and Pajero's. This was evidently the beach to come to. People streamed back and forth, carrying cooler boxes and umbrellas and deckchairs. This mob must have been passing the camping ground all morning. But from inside the green groto the outside world had seemed dreamily quiet. I had seen the odd car flashing by in the sunlight, but not this seething crowd.
No problem though, since I was a vessel of benevolence. We met Ma and Pa in the packed car park, where the road terminated at the beach, and progressed past the lifeguard building. The amateur lifeguard dudes and their little blonde numbers lined the second floor balcony. They looked down on us and we gawked back, slowed to a mesmerised shuffle by this bronzed and bleached exotica - die mooi mense! They looked away with prim hair flicks and irritated frowns. The gnarly world can look but it musn't stare. Willem and the kids sensed this. They bobbed their heads and shot furtive looks from under their brows. Ma flicked the pretty boys and girls a single dark look and launched herself out over the sand with ponderous dignity, her sights set on the ocean. After what she'd seen, growing up with Dawie for a boet, surrounded by those hard manne up there in Lydebnburg ... these little toy people didn't impress her at all. They would dissolve on that hard baking plain. Dawie was also unimpressed by the dismissive cool on the balcony; or rather he didn't see it. Subtlties of rejection were lost on Dawie. He stared hungrily at the pert breasts.

I assumed leadership of the group. In my day I'd worked as a professional lifeguard on the Durban beaches, and the family seemed to sense I was on familiar turf. Ma fell in behind me and we trooped out onto the garish sunstruck stage, with its brawling mass of umbrellas and deckchairs and glistening flesh giving off sickly whiffs of coconut oil. I have sensitive eyes and skin, which normally starts to protest at this stage; and there is my rather well developed fear of social gatherings. Yet I discovered as I floated over the hot sand that I was properly frotted. I was immersed in thick golden light. I seemed to be looking through one of those dream eyeballs in a movie - the kind where the middle is a ball of magnified clarity and the edges sort of stream away in blurred rivulets ... yes, let me see. Over there was the sea, sparkling from a million merrily oscillating little dents. Further out towards the horizon pure white cumulus clouds formed towering, sharply defined masses in the cerulean sky. Closer in a glittering salty haze hung over the shrieking mob of bathers being pounded by the shorebreak. Further out again toy green waves reared and thumped down on a sandbank at the backline.
It was all too, too lovely. In fact it was too much. It made my head reel. I needed to focus on pariculars. I looked around as we moved through the crowd and saw heads lift and eyes slide behing sunglasses. They were looking at Ma, who really was a big woman, lumbering along behind me like a stately herbivore; and at Pa, who really did look horribly horny, grinning cheesily at everyone, flashing rotten teeth. I discovered that my super-vision had a tendency to lock onto objects now, which wasn't good. It made me dizzy. Better to trawl my gaze around smoothly, taking in particulars, but without dwelling on them for too long. Yes. Up ahead a nicely chunky young thing, about nineteen or twenty, lay on her back in a lime green bikini. As we got closer, threading our way between towels and heads and feet, I saw that her milky, suety skin was mottling into pink romboidal patterns as a prelude to really going red and burning ... the tent this morning, those shifting, geometrical patterns on the roof ... most of the women here - I trawled my high powered beam around and my God, the beach was full of good looking women, with lovely rounded bums, and breasts to make you giddy - most of them had one knee raised to shelter their little mounds from hungry male eyes. Not the chunky young girl though, lying alone on her fluffy yellow towel. She had both knees down, her crinkled bonnet jutting up unashamedly. A little slot bisected the plump fullness - the faintest furrow where the lime green lycra was sucked inwards. With my beam I saw that all around men were sneaking looks at this lusciuos mound, helplessly, like bees drawn to honey. Their girlfriends and wives sat and read magazines - Cosmopolitan, on this beach - and if they looked over towards this girl they did so with grim lines around their mouths. Young hussy! And my God! Look at this grisly group trooping through our midst, straight out of Jerry Springer. The one in the lead seems to be stoned, peering around droopily, like he knows something. Can't he have gone around everybody?

In my benevolent state, lost in small lucid detail, I found I had blundered right into the middle of the throng, without thinking ahead and picking out a decent course. Now there was a minefield of bodies and towels and umbrellas and cooler boxes to get through. I looked behind me and Jesus, Ma looked massive. The kids stared at me doubtfully - even they could see an easier route to the sea, where the crowd shrieked rythmically in time with the breaking waves. Pa was sweating and sweating and grinning and grinning. Dawie looked hard and dangerous, like a gaunt rouge lion amongst a herd of sleek antelope.
I hung a sharp left at the next turquoise towel, careful of its protruding puffy male head - a florid moon with raybans resting on it. Then another right at the red and white striped cooler box, beneath the lemony yellow umbrella. Colours were coming to me soft and vibrant now; and there was so much light on this beach, blazing down, bouncing off the sand, that even the shadow beneath the umbrella had a bluish light of its own.
After the umbrella a skittering left around a family frozen in mid-conversation, the kids with their mouths hanging open, staring behind me; tip-toeing between them and a row of feet on the other side. One of the pairs of male feet was turning crimson under tufts of black hair. As as ex-pro, I know about these things. People wear shoes all year and forget how virginally white their feet are. They get third degree burns just sitting in the sun! I would warn people if I saw a pair of these pasty feet starting to go ... I almost did this now, this guy's feet were already past the blistering stage, the black hair was going to get horribly matted when the blisters popped ... I actually stopped for a second and my eyes travelled up the hairy legs, past the mauve baggies with the yellow floral print, up the oiled and sweaty pink chest, coming to rest on the sweaty pink face, with its eyes fixed on me incredulously: what the fuck are you looking at China? I actually had my mouth open, about to start explaining to this guy the dangers of foot burn - and why not, for God's sakes - when I realised what a pissed thing this would be to do, in front of all these momentarily staring people, with their little plots of beach staked out. The family was relying on me. I looked behind me and yes, they were frozen in mid-stride, peering at me with dumb trust. Pa was sweating and sweating and grinning and grinning. Surely I was going to get to the water sooner or later ...

EDDIES IN THE SEXUAL SUBSTREAM

Walking to the Uno dealership was no easy feat. It took me about four hours both ways, stopping at a car wash so Spud could lap from a tap; looking for those snobby little Jaguar and Fiat emblems in the hot blue sky. While I was there I snuck into the showroom, sweating, and asked one of the salesmen slowly twirling a pen behind his desk about selling the Uno.
He paused in his twirling, his pen held up like a cigarette, and said, 'We've just sold a similar one for R9000.'
While I digested this he sat back and began twirling again. 'What is it you do?' he asked. When I said my last job had been in security his eyes glazed over and there was a sudden tang of low-rent desperation to my negotiating. I might start wheedling in a second, or trying to flog the frigging dog - which was dripping saliva all over the polished slate tiles. 'Anyway,' he said, picking his phone up, 'the directors will only be in on Monday. They're the ones with the power to buy, so ... '

So back to the camp, buying a few Stouts on the way. I hadn't drunk since my session with Brian, two nights ago. The sun was beating down from directly overhead now; but the houses on this downhill stretch to the sea had a sleepy langour to them, set in dense rolling coastal thicket, stagnating beneath a warm muggy blue sky. It felt very different to yesterday's angst ridden PE sky, with its little scraps of cirrus flitting along in a glassy wind.
Back inside the cool fenced enclosure of the camp I spoke to a black khaki-clad groundsman who came around to check on us. He explained that Roger, the owner of the camp, came around every second day or so to collect the rent. I erected the tent and slipped inside with the zipppered entrance flaps on both sides tied back. Two happy days now to do nothing except stagnate in cool dappled shade with my book and supply of stouts - breathing in thick sea air, maybe stirring now and then to go for a piss. Laid back beach decrepitude. Then two heads, the girl and the boy I'd seen earlier, popped into the opening of the tent.
"Hullo Oom!' the boy squawked. He was blonde, with a fat face and a snub nose. 'Jussie! Does Oom like beer? Oom Dawie also likes beer, but it makes him crazy! That's why Pa doesn't like it when Oom Dawie drinks.'
The girl sneered sideways at him and then nodded vigorously at me, as if to say: he's an idiot but he's right. Before I could say anything there was a pinging noise followed by sharp chattering and a clashing of branches overhead. The two heads whipped away.
'Pa's shooting the monkeys!' the boy yelled. 'Kom kyk Oom! The leash was still attached to Spud, the other end looped around my foot. He charged out - monkeys! - dragging me half out the tent. Sure enough, there was Pa, grinning through rotten teeth, brother in law of Brakman, husband to the 300 pound (at least) woman in the tent, shooting monkeys in the trees overhead with a BB pistol, taking aim with a classic two handed grip. A security man, true's God, grade three.

And that was that. Over the next few days the only time I got away from this crowd was at night, when I was asleep; and even then I imagined I could hear hot breathing and scuffling around the tent, come to check up on the Oom.
There was Helga, about 9, and Willem, about 10, and Lettie, about 12. I got so used to them being around the tent that I stopped noticing them. They didn't irritate me, funnily enough. If I got annoyed I yelled at them and they dissapeared for half an hour and then reappeared as if nothing had happened, asking, 'Ag! Does Oom's fone have games? Can I mos speel wiff it?'
'No.'
'Ag! Does Oom want to come for a walk on the beach?'
'No.'
'Ag! ... Can I mos take Oom's hond vir n' walk then?'
'OK. But don't yank him ... moenie sy kop druk nie. Hy kry seer. OK?'
'Ag! Ya Oom!'

And for the next hour I'd see Helga, cute and stroppy, yanking Spud around; or Spud yanking her around, his head pointed up at the trees, fixated by monkeys. There would be shrieking as he tried to climb a tree, or pained squawking when Willem Jr - whose white gut trembled as he ran - tried to take the leash from Helga and got slapped around for his trouble.
Helga was going to be a hit with the boys when she got older. She was sassy and confident and comfortable in her budding curves. Willem Jr was stupid, with a voice that often sounded like a throttled budgie. The older girl, Lettie, stayed inside a lot with her mom and was more guarded and withdrawn. I think she was embaressed to be living in a tent and not going to school like other kids. I mentioned this to Pa and he said he would enroll the kids as soon as things were looking up. But in the meantime, no ya, vasbyt.

There was the oldest kid, Stefaan, about 17. He was the family's main breadwinner - a waiter at a chinese restuarant up the road. He would come over in the evenings after work and sit cross legged in my tent opening, wiffling on in a sighing, high pitched voice, while I sipped my Stout and read my book and nodded blearily at him. He was a big kid, but he had this soft feminine passivity about him that was rather doomed. It seemed he would end up being drawn towards a mean bitch or bastard one day, and vice-versa.
One night he was wiffling on in his wounded girls voice. I was only half listening when I heard, 'Piet asked would I go wiff him, and I said yes, so I went wiff Piet.' When I looked at him he looked down and twiddled a tuft of grass beside his grubby bare foot. Piet was a biker dude in a nearbye caravan who spent most of his time sipping beers with gritty calm beneath his awning; or heading off on his mean looking motorbike to sip beers with gritty calm at biker joints.
Go wiff? Stefaan had said it with a sort of tender, nostalgic wistfulness ... Ya, me and Piet did go wiff each other. Had Piet been belting Stefaan, his face grittily calm somewhere over Stefaan's bent back?
'Where did you go?' I asked. Jauling?'
Stefaan paused, twiddling the grass for a while before dreamily saying, 'Yaa, jauling. I went wiff Piet jauling, to a very nice club, and Piet did buy me some very nice beers ... '
Sweet Jesus. My sexual radar is useless. Was this kid obviously gay, and I was too thick to see it? Was this just a come-on? Piet went wiff me, so if you want to go wiff me ... ? People seem to be plugged into this roaring sexual substream but it eddies around me hopelessly. Now I was paranoid about this big, girlish seventeen year old, with grubby bare feet, sitting in the opening to my tent. I told him I was very tired and managed to get him to shamble off - a wounded receding falsetto: 'Yaaa ... my family is also tired ... I must go now and sommer talk to the hond ... ' leaving me thinking: go wiff?

There was Willem Snr, the Pa; and there was Dawie, the doomed brak Oom - brother of Wilma, the 300 pound Ma. I keep repeating this but when I say 300 pounds I mean 300 pounds. She was enormous. Of course Willem Snr was lanky and slinky and horny looking - exactly the sort of man you'd expect to see beside one of these mammoth women. They all slept in a row on the tent floor, in a jumble of sleeping bags and blankets and pillows. Except Ma and Pa, who got to sleep inside the caravan; or maybe just Ma, there might not have been enough room left over for Pa in there.
The family had uprooted and driven down from Lydenburg about three weeks ago. During an early stage of the trip I drove through Lydenburg, baking on an arid plateau as I descended the Eastern Transval Berg, and it had been a doomed place. Doom had followed them down. It clung to them. Stefaan was going to be humped to death by an entire gang of gritty bikers. Oom Dawie was going to get roaring crazy dronk verdriet and be beaten to death by a whole shebeen of plank swinging kaffers. My Lydenburg memories were of a young white car guard turning to smile coquettishly as she crossed the road in front of the Uno. Her front teeth had been missing. A minute later these lean, sunbaked teenagers had given me rotten looks from the back of a lacquered purple V6 bakkie while I drove behind them - one wearing a silky black shirt with orange flames licking upwards, and wrap around sunglasses, with sideburns struggling down to somewhere near his jaw line; all of them giving me looks that left me in no doubt: look at us fokken skeef and we will fokken pull you out of your sissy car and fokken keel you right here in the fokken street! Lydenburg style! Even the name of the place told you to get the fok out. Lydenburg: Place Of Suffering.

But getting back to that first Saturday night. I padded to the shower and back in the tranquil gloaming, the grass cool beneath my feet. In the shower stall, in the grey light filtering through the dusty, cracked windows, black mould coated the silicone between the white wall tiles. It also coated the dark concrete shower floor in a slippery green film, causing me to slip once or twice.
After dark there was just enough light coming from the various caravans to faintly illuminate the thicket walls and the overhead canopy, giving the camp the feel of a grotto, a secure dark green cave. I ate outside the tent with Spud beside me, the gasoline lamp on the grass next to us projecting flickering shadows onto the thicket. My maroon tent glowed like a pink lung with the torch hanging inside it.
While I was eating Helga and Willem and Lettie came across and sat with me. They took furtive sips of my Stout and inspected my tin.
'Ag sis!' Helga said. 'Does Oom eat boontjies?' Then she inspected Spud's tin. 'Ya, dis beter. Hoender is lekker vir die hond.'
They exchanged looks and Lettie said, 'Ma says she won't mind if you want to come and watch Noot vir Noot.' When I said I was too tired they looked shocked. Who in their right minds gave up the chance to watch Noot Vir Noot when there was nothing else to do? I was stuffed though. My kind of basic camping had made me dirnal: opening gates and sneaking Stout numbed into the bush in the evenings; driving off anxiously in the early morning before an enraged farmer could find me.
I sent them back to their tent looking rather crestfallen, their precious offering rejected, and crawled into the pink lung with my own creature comforts: my tinny transistor radio, my dog curled in the crook of my arm, my book balanced in my hand a few inches above my nose.
Noises drifted across from the familie tent: plates being scraped, a dustbin lid clanking; murmuring voices. There were tv noises: blurts of applause, and that manic presenter from Noot vir Noot with the groovy waistcoats.

I turned the torch off and lay there, listening to the sea murmuring, to the distinct tiny crumps of the waves breaking, sliding into sleep, turning on my hip one final time and wrapping an arm around Spud as he fluttered a tolerant dog sigh ... drifting off ... Then very clearly, floating across from their tent and zapping the darkness of my tent into sharper focus, I heard Dawies hungry glottal voice say, 'Ya, die Engelsman het beer.' Fok. He was pining after my supply of Stouts. It must be torture for him, watching me slurp them all day.

An hour went by and I was slowly drifting off again. There were clicks and a faint, sussurating hum coming from the forest all around: the combined noise of millions of insects crawling about. The grotto was so quiet I could hear minute rustlings in the grass near my head: a beetle looking for my earhole to climb into and drive me insane with pain. A minor squabble was taking place in the tent. They were all jostling in a row on the tent floor. There were aggrieved squawks from Willem, and then loud squalling. Helga must have slapped him. A burst of wronged adenoidal flutings came from Stefaan. Maybe Dawie rolled over and caught him on the head with an elbow. Pa's weak voice made half hearted attempts at discipline. This bickering droned on like a distant tv. It was almost comforting ... I was sliding into sleep again, making one final turn onto my hip, wrapping an arm around my sighing dog.
Then came a noise like a like a bull elephant squealing. 'Ek gaan jou fokken FOKKEN MOER!'
Ma had flipped! Six meaty stinging slaps rang out in the stunned silence, accompanied by frightened whimpering, and then muffled sobs and strained, swallowed groans from Helga and Willem. They were trying to keep quiet. Ma was like a tanker with a head of steam going. Best to stay silent until she had gone rumbling over you. Spuds head was quiveringly upright in the darkness, his ears erect. What the fuck was out there? Carnivours! Beserk herbivoures!
After this the camp was even more silent than before. Just the thicket humming, and the faint, sibilant murmuring of the sea, like static electricity, interupted by the tiny crumping of the waves ... actually not so tiny. I was wide awake now and could hear them clearly. I remembered how earlier Helga and Willem had irritated me, acting like brats to get my attention while I chatted to Pa. Pa had grinned and done nothing. His lack of discipline had annoyed me and I'd been dying to crap on them. Now all I could think about was Ma's insane sqealing, and those vicious, stinging slaps forcing out the breathless whimpering that I'd heard. The sound leached the romance out of the camp for me. I lay in the dark and looked at myself and my situation with cold, dreary anxiety.

THE GARGANTUAN WOMAN BEHIND THE GAUZE

As we headed down to the beach from the dealership I tried to memorise the route, so I would be able to find my way back on Monday. But fuck me if we didn't cruise for kilometres along a bustling downtown strip, before taking a confusing number of lefts and rights on the last downhill stretch to the sea - which glinted merrily, a pretty blue band over a dense strip of coastal scrub and palms.
'You can walk it, easy!' Samuel the driver said to me, when he saw me worriedly peering at street signs. I told him a walk like this would kill a Londoner.

The camping ground lay snugly in the heart of the coastal forest. It looked promising. Tall spreading trees provided plenty of cool dappled shade. A dense tangle of shrubs and vines and smaller trees encircled the camp and walled off the outer world. The ablution block as we drove past had salt blotched walls, with strips of yellow paint hanging from them. Most of the windows were either cracked or broken, and I caught a musty whiff of wet concrete coming from the drains and the showers, and of rotting vegetation coming from the back. This all felt so right - laid back beach decrepitude for me to wallow in for a few days.

A few caravans and tents peeked at me from secluded corners, but not too many. I directed Samuel to a good spot, directly beneath a tree, with soft grass and space all around me. I was thrilled. I was on the same slightly elevated patch of ground as a battered old Jurgens caravan. It was tucked into the wall of green, about fifteen feet away. It was beige, with heavy, chunky fibreglass and mouldering grey canvass on the side of the square extension that pops us on the roof to give extra headroom. A big ratty tent was attached to it, and an orange Ford Sierra V6, lekker clean with groovy chrome mags - someone's treasure - was parked snugly alongside.

My arrival cause excitement in the tent. I counted three kids scurrying to and fro. There were yelps of 'Sokkies! Sokkies! and a runty white Fox Terrier with black markings on all four feet shot into the tent. After a while a ferocious looking man with a thick handlebar moustache and a broken nose began stalking over. He was barefoot, in baggies and a lime green t-shirt. He had the terrier cradled in muscular forearms, which were knobbled with hard stunted muscle like a warthog's arse. If you walked into a kickboxing gym in the really hard part of Boksburg he was exactly the sort of oke you expected to see wearing tacky tracksuit bottoms, working the bag in the corner. Oom can lift the engine out of his XR Drie all by himself the kids were to tell me later. I thought he had had that piece of bone in his nose removed as a precaution against it being driven into his brain in the ring, but his brother in law told me later, "No man, he got hit in the nose by a kaffer with a plank.'

Because he was obviouly making his way over to me I looked at him in a friendly way; but he kept his head turned away, with his eyes fixed on me obliquely. When I looked at him he stopped and peered at me sideways, with such stillness, confident in his camoflauge, that it seemed perfectly acceptable: he was half approaching and half not approaching. There was some sort of feline stalking ettiquette involved. I would just get on with my unpacking.
While he was inching closer a gargantuan - this word applies here - woman popped her head out of the tent and shot me and Spud a worried, slightly hostile look. I had my camping gear strewn around me on the grass: tent, sleeping bag, torch, radio, backpack - but no fucking cellphone! Of all the things to leave in the Uno, I had gone and left behind my one link with the outside world.

I was pondering this latest fuck-up, sitting distraught amongst my stuff, when Brakman finally cleared his throat and decided to make himself visible.
'Byt daai honde ander honde?,' he asked about Spud (Does that dog bite other dogs?).
Spud is terrible with other dogs. He almost killed my sister's beautiful brindle once in Cape Town. But he isn't a bully. He generally tolerates smaller dogs - maybe a nip if they irritate him. Come to think of it, he had also nipped my sister's Maltese Poodle in Cape Town - twice.
'Nee,' I said. 'No. He's a good dog. But I'll keep him on this leash. The whole time. Just in case. He won't be any trouble.'
Brakman's head produced a tiny tremor - like I had tapped him on his neurons. Now he must maar fokken praat Engels. He peered at me groggily, slowly allowing the information to work its way downwards, like those old pre-digital airport displays where all the flight times shuttle in a blur of little flaps. I could see the outline of the huge woman's head behind the gauze window, in the gloomy light of the tent, watching us.
'But that dog is a keeler,' Brakman said to me, the trembling terrier perched in a sitting position on his scarred forearms. He had one of those growling voices that vibrates from a calm pocket deep in his chest and is mashed into treacle by a slowly failing epiglottis. Now and then something in his throat seemed to get stuck and he swallowed and carried on. 'That dog will ... keel ... other dogs.'
I repeated that Spud was a good dog. But my heart wasn't in the conversation, and neither was his. I was distraught about leaving my phone behind and he was delivering a message for the heavy breathing presence behind the gauze. To prevent myself spiralling into gloom I jumped up and asked him if he wouldn't mind watching my stuff. Then I quickly trekked off, trailing Spud on his leash, while Brakman stared after us in quiet wonderment, his flaps slowly turning.

A SALESMAN WITH HEART

We arrived in East London around eight on a festive Friday night. The driver was taking me to an Uno dealership, because this is what the horrified mechanic in Steytlerville had suggested I do. Also, I had no dea where else to go. We drove around the throbbing, brightly lit centre of East London for what seemed like an hour, hooting at every woman we passed. At first I thought the three men were greeting friends on the street, because the hooting was so insistent. Then I decided that they were morons, hooting indiscriminantly at anything that moved. Then, after a while, I began to darkly suspect that they were intentionally trying to draw attention to me. Wherever I looked there were upturned, grinning faces. There was no way to look in a situation like this. Dignified was bad. Haughty was very bad. Lost in a reverie was difficult when some miscreant was amusing his mates by yelling, 'Ay Bra! Do you know you're parked on a lorrie?' I settled for po-faced, which I looked up, to be sure I'd gotten it right: Having a foolishly solemn, humorlous, or disapproving expression. Yes.

The Fiat (Uno) dealership was situated in a bustling downtown part of East London, with other dealerships grouped around it. The chunky concrete signs for these places reared up like smooth white obelisks, out of football-field sized lots lined with gleaming Fiat trade-ins. Whenever I got lost over the next few days I would head for these Fiat and Jaguar and Ford insignia hovering in the heat above the jungle of Spur and Nando signs. It all looked rather high rent for the Uno, but I wasn't going back out on the truck.

The black security guard was friendly and helpfull. I was in a Uno, I was part of the club. He unlocked the chain running across the entrance and we pushed the Uno amongst the rows of polished Fiats. I even scored a place under an awning for the night, near the slick expanses of glass protecting the glossy new models in the showroom.
I told the security guard that I too had been in the security game. He told me he worked six twelve-hour night-shifts a week and got paid something like R1400 a month (about 100 English Pounds). We clucked and shook our heads. He was happy though. 'This is a safe lot!' he said, giving me the thumbs up.

He showed me where to find water and I got comfortable. I opened all four windows to allow in the warm night air. I tuned my transistor radio in, put bowls of food and water outside for Spud, and arranged my duvet and pillow across the back seat. Then I bought pies and coke across the road at a busy BP garage full of excited Friday-nighters and sat eating contentedly in the Uno, imagining myself stranded on a dark road somewhere near Gomka, with shadows stirring menacingly all round; or sitting with Dennis in his lonely old man's isolation, fretting about getting the Uno towed. This was fine. There was enough light caming from the streetlights to read by, so I lay back with Bosman's short stories while Spud made himself comfortable on his blanket in the front. Then I bunged wet bog roll in my ears and went to sleep while flocks of white and coloured teenagers roamed back and forth - many bared midriffs, what a joy to get one in the back seat - and a queue wound into a nightclub across the street. There were the usual late nights screams of high pitched revving as okes put foot in their GTI's, cruising around, yelling, peering with desperate intenstity at anything that moved - looking for girls or fights or hobos to kick. I slept happily through most of it though, absolutely exhausted from the day's tension.

I woke anxiously to a clear, pale blue sky beyond the Uno's dusty windows. The streets were quiet, and there was a hint of balmy east coast humidity in the air, reminding me of Durban. But I felt exposed here. I was going to have to deal with people. I brushed my teeth in a cup of water and picked papers and pie crusts from the Uno's floor. While I was topping up Spud's bowl of water the salesmen began arriving. They parked in the carpark and stood around the closed doors, looking and sounding like golfers at an after tournament banquet. Their voices were loud and vigourous, and laughter brayed out every few seconds. This was evidently no place for sissies. If your sales figures dropped you got booted.

When the glass doors slid open they settled into their neat row of cubicles behind the glossy showroom Fiats. They shuffled papers, arranged pens. A sense of competitive menace settled in. Cleaners wafted around hoovering up specks of dirt from the dark slate-tile floor. They sprayed and then polished to a waxy brilliance the green palms of potted plants, arranged in a row along the inside of the plate glass windows.
Mechanics began arrived in spotless blue overalls. They unlocked the tall diamond-wire gates that led to the workroom at the back and walked through. I followed and spoke to one - a beefy blonde who looked like he played club rugby and squeezed testicles at the bottom of loose mauls.
'Yes sir,' he said. 'I have a car to see to at the moment. It's a special case, this being a Saturday - my day off, you understand. I'll have a look though. Our going rate is R300 an hour, excluding parts. We deal with warranty models here, very high overheads.' He gave me an appraising look which didn't go well for me. 'From what you've told me, the noises you described, we'll have to lift the engine and look inside it. It'll take three, maybe four hours - and that's just to ascertain the damage. Perhaps sir should rethink ... ' He used the word sir like a cop or a lawyer would - not subserviently, more to establish a silky, slightly menacing air of detachment. If sir can't afford this, sir is well advised not to waste our time, or sir might find a spanner wedged up his arse.

As he spoke I snuck a look at the workshop and it was as daunting as the showroom: an airy space, without a drop of hydraulic fluid on the floor. Serious men worked quietly under hoods with power tools that now and then rippled out genteel farts. Others stood with legs astraddle, peering in a quiet huddle up at the clean underside of the lastest Uno Punto or whatever. There was no dirt anywhere, no hurry; the men moved dream like to elevator music that came from speakers hidden somewhere up in the roof's high cross beams. This was no place for the Uno, I was certain of this now. But I felt the complications of taking action knit almost physically before my nose: I had to find a phone-book, a phone, call a towing company, make sure they sent me a normal sized truck; then I had to find a cheap mechanic, one with a dingy, oil streaked workroom at the back of some derelict garage; finally, I'd have to stand there, shame faced, as he told me with cold disdain in his eye that I'd driven the Uno to death. And all the while, in the background, the snarl of the traffic was growing louder, the day hotter ...

'Listen,' I said, 'I'd like you to have a look, because basically ... basically I'm a little bit fucked here.'
'Ok sir.' He backed away from me as he spoke, wiping a stainless steel spanner with a rag, his mind already on the car behind him. 'When I get a chance I'll take a look. As you can see I'm rather busy here, this being a Saturday ... '

So I sat in the Uno with Spud, reading my book, with the door ajar, while the roof made small bonging noises in the increasing heat. The salesmen peered over from behind their desks with mounting unease and distaste . They stroked their power ties. Who was this giving off whiffs of street tackiness right outside their dazzling windows, right by the open doors, with a frigging dog running around, while the first customers of the day arrived, a good looking young couple ...

It wasn't long before the head salesman caught a whiff and came hustling out. He had his hands out in front of him, wringing them anxiously, eager to please; but concerned, confused, what the fuck was I doing out here? 'Good morning!' he brayed, his voice quivering with solicitous authority. 'Excuse me! How are you? Can I help?' He seemed to be a decent man. And God knows he deserved an explanation. Spud had just quiveringly shat on the strip of grass beside the pavement, on the other side of the low brick wall that separated the Fiat dealership from the street. Not strictly on their property, but still. I should have said something, but I was stunned, thinking about the R300 an hour for the Uno. So I just grinned and said I was fine and left it at that.

He peered at me for a few seconds, his eyebrows arched. 'Ah ... ? Good! Good!' I seemed quite assured. I must have some good reason for being here. And yet no-one inside seemed to know ... He gave me a confused, suffering grin and retreated back into the showroom. I went back to my book. An hour passed and the streets snarled with traffic. My roof bonged. The multicloured field of Fiat roofs in the carpark shimmered in the heat. A steady stream of well heeled customers cruised around the showroom. Some were taken to be seated at the desks. Then the head salesman was hustling out the door again, wringing his hands, grinning. 'Morning! I have to ask again, my friend. Can I help you? May I ask what you're doing here? I told him about my conversation with the brutal looking mechanic. 'Ah ... ' He trotted through the gate to the back, his plump bottom working huffily in expensive pants that were slightly worn. Times were tough ... and now this ...

In a minute he was back with the mechanic. 'I thought the gentleman had decided to look elsewhere,' the mechanic apologised silkily, running his eye over my baggies and grubby t-shirt.
The head salesman, Derek, quickly got the ball rolling. He was an ex-Zimbabwean with a ruddy, open face that trembled with earnest solicitude. He was a salesman with heart (as he soon informed me).
The mechanic brought out a power-pack and we attempted to start the Uno. Nothing happened, apart from it making a dry, wheezing sound.
'No compression,' the mechanic said. 'We'll have to lift her and look inside. Can't do it today though. It'll have to be Monday morning.'
The three of us stood around the Uno for a few minutes and agreed that the wheezing had sounded serious. Loss of compression was no laughing matter. It involved cylinders, pistons, shafts, rods, rings, heads - obvious stuff, really. I nodded shiftily.

Derrik was a whirlwind of efficiency. With some direct questioning he quickly established that I was something of an oddball, travelling around with my dog, camping. This was daft but promising. It removed the homeless reek.
'Camping! Hell!' Derrik said. 'If only I had the time!' He was an ex camper, so he could relate. He didn't think I was a mad cunt, which a lot of the harder salesmen would be thinking. Heart! He knew a camping site on the beach front. Samuel, his black driver, would take me there. On Monday I would return when they'd taken a look at the Uno. Good! Derek relaxed. Another problem had been dealt with: the eyesore outside the door.

A need for banter settled in, now that business had been taken care of. We all stared at Spud, who was trotting around happily, sensing action.
'Ay! My boy! Now this is a dog!' Derrek said. There is something about Bull Terriers that allows men to bond in a certain way, like talking about rugby: toughness without the meaness. I saw this time and again on the trip, when men stomped akwardly over to me and began the conversation with, 'No ya, dis n' gooie hond daai!'

We spoke about Spud until the driver arrived in Derriks white Opel Astra. Derrik pumped my hand and shot into the showroom to deal with a group of teenage boys who had their oily noses pressed against the window of a sporty Fiat. Sarel, the mechanic, helped me transfer my camping gear from the Uno to the Opel.
'Now what is sir going to do with the dog?' he asked me as he handed me my parrafin lamp from inside the Uno's open hatchback. His pale blue eyes watched me over a smooth little smile. I got the feeling he thought I was going to offload Spud on the roadside. Or perhaps he thought I would give Spud to him. I said I was quite committed to looking after my dog.
Then he asked me what my plans were. When I said I might fly back to London soon his eyes lit up. 'Ah! So it's not like you really need a car, for going to work and all that.' He reminded me
about his tremendous fee and peered at me like he could see the need to flog the Uno that was creeping around my weak soul. I knew I should get if towed to a cheaper place and check it out ... but those bustling, blaring streets, the glare ... and the billowing smoke and those horrible clonks when some vital broken off thing - an entire piston! - snagged in the Uno's guts. Mechanic Man may be able to smell my weak need for a quick sale, but he knew nothing about the terrible rips and rents and scoured metal that I'd caused, flogging the poor Uno to death.
'To be honest,' I said, 'I've been thinking about maybe selling.
'Ah sir!' His blue eyes flared and his patter aquired a voluptous edge. 'From what you've described, that rattle, I think your engine is finished. Scrap! Now with the cost of parts and repairs, if it's as serious as I think, you're looking at maybe five, six thousand. I think given our situation, travelling back to England - Sheez, I wish I could get the fuck out of this country too sometimes - but given your situation, as I say, selling does sound like the best option. A wise option, in my opinion, given the circumstances you find yourself in ... '

There was more of this, but I'd had enough. Retreat! Into the shade, with a stout. Mechanic man saw this too. He was unstoppable. 'Ah sir! You must be tired. Go and have a good rest. Derek's driver will take you all the way. We'll talk again on Monday. Sleep on it. You'll be making a wise decision, in my personal opinion. Best to cut your losses ... '
He was still going, clapping a hard hand on my shoulder as I climbed into the waiting white Opel and escaped with the driver into the traffic.

DEATH OF THE UNO

By about eleven I'd had enough. I had to escape to find some shade. I drove east along the beachfront and scoured the area for a likely spot where I could pull over; but all I saw were hot carparks and crowded shopping centres. The traffic snarled around me, gnawing at my frayed nerves, and the glare coming off the sea lanced constantly into my skull. The Uno sounded awful when I slowed down, but once I got a bit of speed going it settled into a sort of ragged rhythm. The freeway to Durban suddenly opened up in front of me and without thinking I slotted into it. I felt huge relief to just be driving on the open road again - even if it was in a car that might explode at any second. I felt bad about leaving Brian behind, but I figured he would understand when I gave him a call on my cell later.

I barreled past Grahamstown, my nerves plugged into every farting backfire and squeak the Uno made. I barely registered the passing scenery as the tar unreeled between my white knuckles in a sort of tense tunnel vision. Now and then there would be a bowel twisting clunk as some loose part got sucked into moving parts. The Uno would lurch and the engine would bind and cut off, swooping silently, with me palpitating sickly behind the wheel, towards the bottom of a grim ravine. At the last moment, as I was trundling to a stop in the dip and four or five ragged black men were emerging helpfully from the bushes, the engine spat the part out, the freed parts clunked back into motion, and the Uno crawled up into daylight again.

After this had happened a few times I began to feel charmed: not for me the frettings and faffings of normal folk. Just sommer put foot, it'll all work out! I slowed down going through King William's town and saw smoke bellowing out of the exhaust in white clouds, where it had been wispy before. Not good. Africans on the roadside pointed at me and laughed, 'Aish! Too much smoke!' I was tempted to hunt down a mechanic. But after discovering I was the only white man in town I put my head down and aimed for the horizon again. In a perverse sort of way I was actually enjoying this. I was living on the edge!

This feeling lasted until the Uno actually did die, suddenly and completely, on top of a lonely hill in the middle of nowhere. The next town on my CNA map read Gomka, which didn't sound promising. I was either in the Transkei or right on the border of it. There was no dramatic implosion or heart-rending death rattle when the Uno died. It was like pushing a donkey until its heart bursts. The engine just stopped in mid beat and never started again.

It was now almost four. I left the Uno partially in the shadow of cold stone quarried walls, where the road sliced through the top of the hill, and walked down into a green sunlit valley. At the bottom, amazingly, I found a dirt road concealed behind a row of trees which led to a large, homely looking stone farmhouse. I free-wheeled the Uno down the hill and parked it at the entrance to this dirt road. Then I walked with Spud and stood at the peeling wooden gate of the house, trying to spot any dogs before I knocked on the closed door. There was an overturned red tricycle on the front porch but the shuttered windows were closed and blank looking. Behind me someone coughed politely and an old black farmhand came silently onto the road from an adjoining field. He informed me more with hand gestures than with his limited English that the Baas had taken the family to East London for the weekend. If I waited Dennis, the other Baas, would be home around five.

Dennis was a retired old gent in his seventies who rented a small cottage on the farm. He was small and slim, with sharp, weathered features and brown sun blotches on his cheekbones.
He'd been out doing his monthly shopping. I helped carry the grocery packets from his bakkie to the cottage. His stroppy brown and white fox terrier fussed around our legs, so to be I took Spud back to the Uno and left him there looking aggrieved, his snout protruding from the half open window.

I looked in Derek's Yellow Pages and used his landline to phone a towing company in East London. Five hundred rand for a tow-in. Fine. After the day's drive I felt surrealistically detached from everyday concerns like money. Dennis made me tea and showed me photographs of his kids and his dead wife. He had grown up in this area, and I suppose he'd come back to quietly see out his days here. In his neat but sparsely furnished lounge there was no tv. An old radio-turntable combo with a walnut veneer droned the news from a local radio station. The only books I saw were a row of green, hard-backed Reader's Digest Condensed Novels on a chipboard shelf on the wall. After tea we said our goodbyes. He went up to the farmhouse to feed the cats and dogs and I walked to the Uno to await the tow-truck.

Half an hour later there was still no sign of it. Derek wandered down and we stood in the twilight together. He invited me to stay the night if the truck didn't arrive. He said it casually, but I sensed beneath this his lonely isolation and his need for company. I was ready to accept, because the driver of the truck kept phoning his control room for directions. The control room in turn kept calling my cell, which I kept handing to Derek so he could say, "No! You get to Gomka and then turn left - left - at the big yellowwood.' It somehow felt perfectly natural that this truck should be careening around every country back road except ours. Because of the valley we were in night came quickly. Just as the last bit of light was bleeding from the sky the truck roared up with its lights blazing. Not just any truck mind you. An eighteen wheeler behemoth that you could have stuck a crane on. Three coloured men leapt out and went to work. A ramp with what looked like an eighty degree slant was extended from the back of the truck. A cable was hooked to the front of the Uno and Spud and I were asked to take our seats. Then, the cable twanging dangerously, we were winched up.

At the top the coloured men did some sort of strapping around the wheels that felt extremely perfunctory. Wait a second! I wanted to yell. Are you sure that's going to hold? But there was no time for these questions. They clambered noisily up into the front cabin while I waved nervously at Derek. He waved back, laughing.

As we got going Spud took one look out the window and curled up miserably on his seat, sensing death. Whenever a car passed us on the narrow potholed road into East London I saw upturned, laughing faces. This didn't happpen too often though, because the driver fucking floored it. Every now and then, after a really vicious pothole say, or a curve that came out of the dark too quickly - as curves do when you're humping along at 140 kph in a big truck on a narrow, winding road - every now and then one of his mates turned to look back to see if we were still there. Aay Jan, we lost the white oke on the last bend ... This was a very good time to have a stout; but after weeks of dedicated daily drunkeness I was fresh out.

To add to my well-being, since the Uno was pulled down on its suspension every bump we went over was transmitted to my arse with enough force to slam my head into the roof. Even when I got wise to this it kept happening. I'd be peering in an exhausted dwaal at the last flicker of flaming orange on the horizon, thinking, Ooh, isn't that prett - thwock! Each time it took a while to prize my head out of my shoulders, cursing miserably, while Spud flicked me reproachful looks from the ball he'd curled himself into on his seat.