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the boss boy – always carries a long stick. He can crush a snake’s head with one blow’

      ‘That’s probably why his name is Never Die,’ said Pa’s other friend who came from Pretoria.

      Silently I sang along with Mick Jagger. I didn’t know what I would’ve done without LM Radio.

      ‘Mart, you must be careful of the sun!’ My mother warned from the edge of the veranda where she had appeared with a bowl of salad in her hands. ‘Else you’ll be crying in a vinegar bath tonight.’

      ‘Oh, Maa!’

      ‘It’s just a thought.’ Ma was wearing a trilobal skirt over a matching floral bathing suit. Her dark glasses could have belonged to Jackie Onassis. The clusters of red cherries hanging from her ears looked real enough to eat. ‘But remember it’s not the Cape sun.’

      I placed the open book over my face. The black letters swam in front of my eyes. I felt the sweat running down my stomach and filling my navel.

      ‘Gosh, but the water looks good.’

      The voice of the Pretorian sounded closer, as though he were standing next to my mother. Ma’s high-heeled cork sandals creaked as she walked away. It was quiet for a few moments, but I had the feeling that someone was watching me. I peered past my book and saw the man leaning on the railing of the veranda. ‘Nice hills on the horizon.’

      ‘Yes.’ My father gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘I’ll have to buy a shotgun one of these days to keep the boys at bay.’

      ‘I’d like to see her in a few years’ time.’

      Did the bastard think I was deaf? I lay without moving as though I’d fallen asleep.

      ‘Mart is a quiet child,’ my father said, ‘always has her nose in a book. Lovey is going to give me grey hairs, I can see that already. She’s the wild one.’

      ‘My name’s not Lovey!’ Lovey called out from somewhere, ran down the stairs and jumped into the swimming pool with a splash which sounded like applause.

      I was so grateful for the distraction that I didn’t even mind getting wet, just tried to keep the book dry by holding it above my head. I turned my back to the veranda and watched my sister bursting through the surface of the water like a glittering trout.

      ‘I caught her in the bathroom the other day, shaving her legs,’ my father said, sounding annoyed. ‘With my razor! And she’s not even in high school!’

      Lovey climbed out of the swimming pool, straddled me and shook herself. The drops of water scorched my skin like dry ice.

      ‘Come on! Look what you’ve done to the book!’

      ‘What are you reading?’

      ‘Nothing you’ll be able to understand.’

      ‘How do you know?’

      She sank down on the wet paving next to me. Her skin was as brown as a nut, her body still unformed, but her nipples already showed darker under the tight bikini top. She winked at me as if she knew what I was thinking.

      ‘You must ask Ma to buy you a bra.’

      ‘I already have.’ Not ashamed about it at all, as I had been. ‘I wear it to school.’

      I pulled the damp book towards me, tried to read again. The frangipani tree behind me smelt as stickily sweet as Ma’s hairspray. All around me on the paving the creamy-white frangipani flowers had been dropped as though the scent had become too much even for the tree. It was difficult to concentrate on a book – even one with sex in it – when the trees around you smelt of hairspray and the sun burned your bare legs and the plants were so green that it seemed as if you looked at the world through dark glasses even when you took them off. Now I understood why everyone always said people overseas read more than people in Africa.

      That was yet another reason for living in an attic in Paris one day: to read lots of books while eating long loaves of French bread, drinking cheap French wine and smoking strong French cigarettes. And when I wasn’t reading, I would write romantic Afrikaans poetry which I would declaim with great feeling to madly attractive Frenchmen with black eyes and sunken cheeks who naturally wouldn’t be able to understand a word …

      ‘I’ve thought up a name for myself.’ Lovey’s voice broke into my dreams of the future.

      ‘You’ve got a name,’ I said irritably.

      ‘How would you like it if everyone called you Lovey?’

      ‘I can’t imagine anyone ever calling me Lovey,’ I sighed. ‘I probably don’t look like a Lovey.’

      ‘Well, I wasn’t stupid enough to tell the kids at my new school that you call me Lovey.’

      ‘And now they call you Loulene?’

      ‘Hm-mm.’

      Slowly she shook her head while she drew patterns on the wet paving with her forefinger. Bit her full lower lip as Ma did when she wanted to hide her feelings. But it had always been easier for Lovey to show her feelings than to hide them.

      ‘What’s wrong with Loulene?’

      ‘Nothing. It just doesn’t suit me. A name is like a dress, it has to suit you.’ She dropped her voice to make the most of the dramatic moment. ‘I told them my name is Bobby.’

      ‘Bobby?’

      ‘Yes. Like that song Simon always sings. “Me and Bobby McKay”.’

      ‘McGee.’

      ‘Yes, that one.’ A blinding smile lit her face. ‘Don’t you think it suits me?’

      ‘Bobby Vermaak!’ I muttered and turned on my stomach to read again.

      ‘Better than Lovey Vermaak, don’t you think?’

      ‘The army is a strange place,’ Simon wrote from Potchefstroom. ‘I wanted to be a parabat, remember, so I’ll have to go to Bloemfontein when I’ve done basic training, but now I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s such a great idea. I mean I’ve got this picture in my head of a paratrooper all the girls will fall for, but perhaps I’m the only one who’s going to fall, hard, out of an aeroplane. No, I’m not becoming a pansy. I’m just wondering.

      ‘I’m reading a book Pierre lent me. Catch-22, I think you’ll like it. I told you, didn’t I, that Pierre is the guy who grew up in Black River? He was expelled in standard nine, I heard the other day, because he told the headmaster that he was an old fart, can you believe it, so his parents sent him to a private school in Pretoria and he did standards nine and ten in one year. And last year he hitch-hiked across the country. I’ve never met a guy who asks so many questions. Or has so many strange opinions.

      ‘He says the Americans saw their arseholes in Vietnam. Solidly. He also says the whites have seen their arseholes in Africa, but we’re still arguing about that.’

      ‘Here a man eats meat,’ Pa said. ‘Beef, venison, lion …’

      ‘Snake?’ asked the man from the Cape, who was beginning to grasp the game.

      ‘Snake,’ my father said. ‘Only last week we had a snake barbecue.’

      ‘No, really, Carl, now you’re talking shit.’

      ‘Not so loud, there are children around,’ Pa said primly. ‘Come and have a piece of sausage meanwhile.’

      ‘I saw a monster of a snake next to the road this morning,’ said the Pretorian and swallowed some beer. ‘Easily six feet long. A car had driven over its head but its body was still wriggling when I stopped.’ Another swallow. The man knew how to expand a story. ‘I put it into the boot. Thought I could play a little joke this evening. Leave it under Jake’s bed with just the tail showing …’

      ‘No, dammit, man!’ One could almost hear the sigh of relief in the

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