Kitchen Boy by Jenny Hobbs Read Free Book Online Page A

brotherhood of war, he joined the Survivors B Team and invested his continuing rage in rugby.
    The cards were being shuffled and dealt again.

They were frogmarched through a dream of sunlight slanting through tall tree trunks, fronds of bracken unfurling from leaf mould and a scent of fresh piney resin, worlds away from war.
And it was all the more surreal because they weren’t lined up and shot.

· 4 ·
    T HE FIRST HYMN IS J J’ S FAVOURITE , ‘H E WHO WOULD valiant be ’gainst all disaster’. Organ music and song swell up into the rafters as older people belt it out in hearty voices, followed a beat later by those who remember the tune from school assemblies. Some of them are reading the words from the Order of Service with J J’s photograph on the front. Non-believers and people of other religions stand in respectful silence, though for most it is hard not to hum along when the music is so stirring.
    Shirley thinks about John as she mouths the words.
    He had his failings. He may be a hero to the world, but she has lived with his need to win: a case of beer for a referee, a palmed card at canasta, favours for useful executives, a golf ball nudged with his shoe when he thought no one was looking. Famous sportsmen in the liquor trade are under pressure to perform, entertaining important customers in company boxes at sports events, welcoming foreign teams, posing for publicity shots, handing out prizes. J J Kitching had a name for candid speaking to trusted journalists, so his face and opinions were often in the newspapers. SA Breweries-sponsored sports stars were paraded at congenial press shindigs whenever the players represented their province or country, and J J would host the Durban ones.
    But to continue being a winner required effort and sometimes short cuts. Shirley knows his wartime secret and has witnessed minor ethical lapses; she wonders now what she’s missed. During the last dreadful weeks sitting by his bedside watching him gasp for air, jealous thoughts snaked through her distress. He was always so popular in public, but cagey about what he called his own business. What hadn’t he told her? Were there other secrets? Other women? It was now too late to ask. As his life slipped away, she was only too well aware of what she hadn’t told him.
    From the pew behind her, Theodora’s resonant alto voice sings, ‘Let him in constancy follow the Master –’
    Barbara had said the day before the service, ‘Has anyone notified Theodora? She’ll expect to be there.’
    ‘I did, as soon as we knew the date.’ Lin was the one who compiled lists and phoned people to let them know that several front pews would be reserved for family and friends. There are few old colleagues and business acquaintances left: generous entertainment allowances have taken their toll on corporate hearts and livers.
    ‘Did she say she’d come?’
    ‘Of course. To pay her lasting respects, she told me.’
    ‘It’s not necessary,’ Shirley insisted. ‘She visited a few months ago when she heard Dad was so ill. Brought him madumbes and morogo from her garden, saying they’d make his blood strong. They talked for ages.’
    The former maid had settled into the armchair by John’s bed like all the other visitors, then put out her hand and stroked his arm as she had done when the children were sick. She wouldn’t have dared when she was a servant in a floral uniform, white doek and apron. That day she’d worn a lace blouse under a mauve two-piece that Shirley was sure she had seen in Stuttafords. With her beautiful leather shoes and matching handbag, Theodora looked as stylish as she had on her days off when she wore clothes from the OK Bazaars.
    Shirley has never been stylish. She wears drip-dry Delswa, priding herself on not spending too much money. John always called her a good-looking woman, and she believed she was a natural beauty who didn’t need props such as smart clothes and makeup and hairdos. Now she feels like a bag