Kitchen Boy Read Online Free PDF Page A

sounds pathetic, but he wants to leave his grandson the legacy of valiant men and war memories that his son rejected.
    Hugh says, ‘And he loves being here. He’s a much better listener than I was. But I won’t have his head filled with obsolete patriotism.’ He moderates the reproach by adding, ‘Life is much more complex now.’
    ‘You were a hippy prick. Still are.’
    ‘Come on, Dad. I keep hoping we’ve moved beyond that.’ Hugh is tired after a day of lecturing and his patience is wearing thin.
    But J J continues to bristle. ‘You’ve always opted out and Sam’s been mollycoddled, like they all are today. Someone has to make this next generation realise that the world isn’t all sweetness and light.’
    ‘Not when they’re only twelve.’
    ‘When I was that age, I had to serve behind the counter of your grandfather’s trading store.’
    ‘In the school holidays.’
    ‘Every day except Sundays. We all mucked in during the Depression. Doctors and lawyers shovelled coal on Durban docks.’
    ‘So you’ve always said.’
    ‘Clearly boring you.’ J J’s chin still shoots forward when he’s furious, only now the flesh is falling away so his jawbone stands prominent.
    ‘Please, Dad. I’m just asking you to give Sam a break from war. He’s an imaginative kid. We try not to over-stimulate him before he goes to bed because he has nightmares.’
    ‘So do I.’ The confidence spurts out before he can stop it. ‘Ever since –’
    ‘I know,’ Hugh cuts in. ‘Barbs and I used to lie there listening.’
    ‘You did? I tried to keep those – horrors –’ He’d always believed that the nightmares were a weakness only he and Shirley knew about.
    ‘Behind closed doors? They aren’t thick enough. We heard you scream and howl. It was terrible. I wanted to grow up so I could kill the Germans who had hurt you.’
    ‘You did?’ his father repeats, a sick old man with his lifetime certainties crumbling. ‘But you’ve always said you despise war and the stupid bastards who make it.’
    Hugh manages to say what he’s been trying to voice for months. ‘I do. But I love you, Dad. You didn’t make that war. You did the honourable thing, joining up so young.’ He hopes it sounds convincing and adds, ‘I don’t think I could ever be so brave.’
    ‘You try to do your duty.’
    Hugh bends towards him and grips the skeleton hands. ‘You did much more.’
    ‘I just wanted to help make the world safe. But I lost so many friends. Boys, most of them. One moment they were there, the next – pff! Gone.’ A tremor deepens the crevices in his face.
    ‘Try not to dwell on it.’
    ‘Well,’ is all J J can say, shaking his head, ‘well.’
    Leaning over the stair rail, Sam sees his father help Grampa out of the chair and, putting his arm round the wasted shoulders, lead him towards the veranda. Shirley keeps up the tradition of the evening spot, though now it’s weak whisky.
    Less than a year has gone by, and Hugh is, of course, the other leading pall-bearer.
    J J and Bobby Brewitt go back a long way, to the time when they were boys in Umfolozi. Bobby’s father Reg worked for the railways, in sole charge of the small red brick station and its corrugated iron shed at the end of the branch line. Every day at noon, a train came puffing in with supplies and left with loaded trucks of sugar cane. J J’s father Victor ran the trading store, now that he’d come down in the world. His mother Dot kept up their standing in the community by hosting tea parties, baking for hours in the hot kitchen to load the tiered cake stand with jam tarts and shortbread and squares of exquisite lemon cake. Afterwards, the two boys were given the leftovers to scoff, quick sticks, with the ragged kids who hung around the store’s back steps. If Victor came home early and saw there’d been a tea party, he’d thump the table, shouting, ‘Bugger the sweet stuff. Waste of bloody money. I want red meat, not bally