The Prime Minister's Holiday Home

In the dusk it was hard to distinguish between solid ground, mud and pure foam. Each footstep was a guess, a calculated guess. A misstep caused the heavy pack to slam down, hard between their shoulders or wrench them left, right or backwards. Muscles trembled from the unaccustomed strain of counterbalance. The foam was gooey as well as wet and it stank of rot, of dead sea things. The whole group was coated in the light brown foam, the shorter members up to their arm pits where foam had been deposited when crossing channels that were filled with foam. No one had yet fallen, but the possibilities increased with every step and with the increasing darkness. The wind had not helped much either whipping up rain, sea water and foam and hurling it into their unprotected faces.. The group was wet cold and dispirited, the map had disintegrated in mid-afternoon. It would not have been much help if it had survived. The rivers hidden by foam, the mountains by swirling mist. There were no roads, but they had memorised the rivers and deeper channels before setting out. The foam had put an end to that plan and they trudged on, hopeful, hopeless, blind and despairing.

Michael, who seemed to have more energy than the rest of the group put together was in front, setting a smart pace. Ashley behind him was muttering ferociously about wine, hot coffee and death. The rest straggled out behind with the strong, tractor like Roger at the back, preventing the group from breaking up and getting lost. Michael stopped suddenly, Ashley reciting a line of gibberish he later claimed was a magic spell slammed into his back pack. Michael steadied himself and waited for Ashley’s stream of invective to slow to a rhythmic mutter.

"Light up ahead."

"Light?" A voice midway down. Stephen the brains of the groups. "Shouldn't be. I haven't counted 10 river crossings yet."

"You have managed to count rivers through this godforsaken foam? Don't talk crap. You have about as much idea of where we are as Roger back there."

"F*ck off, Ash." said Roger's cheerful voice from behind. "I know where we are, we are in the doggy doo doo. You are gonna get your wish for death, not of alcohol poisoning, but of hypothermia if Mike isn't right."

"How is it that you can be so f*cking cheerful when we are in the sh*t? You are always so blo*dy cheerful. It is sickening."

"That is the reason you keep me around, otherwise you Catholics would have burnt my Protestant arse at the stake years ago. That and my ability to drag your sad sniffling bum out of the trouble on a regular basis. Do you remember the opening of the season where you got so . . ."

"Aw shuddup. I was sick."

"Sick? Is that what you call it?"

The almost ritualised interchange brought a chuckle or two from the group.

"Cummon you lot. There is a house and if there is a house there is shelter. You can stand there and freeze or we can allow Ash to use his negotiating skills to get us a place to stay. Cummon Ash, lets go talk to the people before they see the rest of the rabble. You guys stay here till we call you."

Michael and Ash disappeared into the swirling mist ahead, soon there was a murmur of voices and Ash's laughter, then a stranger laughed.

"He is bl*ody incredible, Ash is. The day he gets to the point of death all his grieving relatives need do is to ask him to negotiate a complex deal and he will recover immediately." Johnny the Spy, a cynic by trade and a police informer by choice had a nice turn of phrase and despite or perhaps because of his perceived role as informer was accepted into the group of outcasts who coalesced around Michael and Roger.

"I want to be dead before him. He will have bought the Pearly gates and sold them for scrap within ten minutes of getting there." Titch despite being the shortest seemed to have gathered less foam than anyone, but then he was always neat and tidy. He could emerge from the bottom of a collapsed scrum and still have a neat parting and no mud on his face.

Michael returned. "We have accommodation. Ash has, once again worked his magic."

The group followed Michael around a clump of buildings and into a door in the dark behind the houses. It was only when the group had divested themselves of their kit bags that anyone actually looked around.

"What the f....?" Johnny looked around. "What is this place?"

"The night watchman's room. He is going stay with his girlfriend and we can use his room for the cost of every coin we have in our pockets." Ash nodded to the door where the night watchman stood nodding solemnly. "Cough up you lot."

"For this?" Johnny looked furious. "I am not . ."

Roger's hand appeared from nowhere and clamped itself around his mouth.

"You want to sleep outside? No. I didn't think so. Cough up and be very, very grateful."

The night watchman scored very nicely out of the money collected and headed off to sleep with his girlfriend which was probably what he was going to do before we had arrived.

The room was crowded, smelled of paraffin, candles, sweat and old foam. It was heaven. We managed to make some warm food and arrange sleeping bags so that everyone could fit in. Ash managed to score the bed, but then he pointed out that he had scored us the lodgings so it was his right. It was pointless arguing with the man. As the sleeping bags dried out and people warmed up the bottle of OBs was retrieved and made the rounds.

"Hey Roger?"

"Yeah"

"Tell us a joke."

That brought a communal groan.

Roger told the most awful jokes. And could keep on do it for hours.

Ash seemed to either want to see if there was an end to the store of jokes or got some strange arcane pleasure from the terrible jokes. Either way, every time he could he would encourage Roger to tell jokes, the group was used to it and accepted it as another ritual to be survived.

"How do you hide an elephant in a strawberry patch?"

A grunt from Ash.

"Paint its toenails strawberry red."

A groan from the group.

"Another."

"How do you know if you have an elephant in a fridge?"

Grunt.

"Footsteps in the butter."

Groan.

So it went till there were no more groans and Roger rolled over and went to sleep.

It was the sun that woke them the next morning, the sun and the warmth and the stuffiness of the watchman’s room.

They agreed to exit the room together quietly and unobtrusively in case the owner of the estate was around and did not approve of their presence. So they were all kitted up and ready to walk as they emerged into the morning sunlight. Yesterdays storm a nightmare, today a daydream of gentle wind and blue skies. They made it almost to the periphery, when out of nowhere appeared a group of very angry looking policemen.

"What are you doing here?" The conversation had started in Afrikaans, but the police realised that nothing sensible would be gotten from the bewildered "rooineks".

"Hiking."

"Hiking?"

Nods from the assembled group.

"How did you get here?"

"Walked?" Roger sounded tentative.

"Security swept this place at 5 yesterday. What time did you get here?"

"After dark."

"Which direction?"

"PE side."

"Through all that mess and foam?" gesturing toward the brown foam and looking distinctly incredulous?

It was at this time that Johnny appeared as if from nowhere carrying a badly foam encrusted hiking bag and a pair of wet, grubby boots and put them down carefully between the two groups.

"You a hiking club?"

"No. A school group." Initially it sounded a clever answer and it might have been if the next inevitable question hadn't been asked.

"What school."

Michael hesitated, knowing that naming the school would make things infinitely worse. He decided to lie, but before he could say, "Victoria High" Ashley spat out, "Marist Brothers College."

Ash was proud of being at a college, he was proud of his religion, of his school and his friends. Problem was that the authorities did not share his enthusiasm. Catholics and their schools were not the flavour of the decade with the Nationalist government and the men facing the hikers were definitely Nationalists of the most austere sort. The authorities also took a dim view of "Die ou vyand" a description that had slowly gained traction from the time that the British took over the Cape from the Dutch in about 1815.

The interrogator looked at the evidence offered by the foam encrusted, stinking gear and walked a distance off with his henchmen. The hiking group kept quiet and tried to look as inoffensive as possible. For once Johnny was not only silent, but completely unobtrusive.

"Do you know whose place this is?"

Mute shaking of heads all round.

"The Prime Minister. And we swept the place last evening and you sneaked in here." He paused.

Roger took a chance, butted in.

"It was the bad storm. No one could have predicted it and we go caught. It was pitch dark when we arrived. We were soaked and covered in that foam. The Watchman, he saved us. We would have died in the cold."

Silence at that

"Where did you intend going?"

"Natures Valley."

"What?"

"Natures Valley."

A man who had taken little part in the proceedings suddenly appeared at our interrogators elbow.

"That's far away! How you going to cross the Blaaukrans River?"

"Swim?" Tentative again

"After this storm? You have any idea what that river will be like? A raging torrent. You are mad. You will drown. And you are wet. You cannot sleep out tonight. And there ii nothing between here and the Blaaukrans River to shelter."

He waited for us to think about hat.

"Tell you what, I am driving back to PE now. Climb in the back and I will take you back and we will forget about the trespass charges and any other charges that Dirk here is thinking up."

Dirk looked startled, opened his mouth once, closed it again and then nodded.

"Choose."

"Accepted." Ash had found his voice suddenly. "A good deal. Thank you."

Roger looked around for dissenting voices, found none and nodded.

The trip was cold and uncomfortable, but by evening they were all at home with a story to tell.

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