Whitethorn Read Free Page B

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    â€˜ Ahee ! The mighty one!’ Mattress exclaimed, clapping. ‘She is a lioness this one. She will survive!’
    I can tell you I was very relieved. But then disaster struck, one of the piglets let go of his own teat and wanted Tinker’s.
    â€˜Quick!’ I shouted to Mattress. ‘Save her!’
    Mattress did no such thing and Tinker was sent rolling into the stink-mud. Mattress laughed and picked her up. ‘She must learn that life is hard, Kleinbaas ,’ he explained, but then he moved the piglet away and placed it back on its former teat and reinstated Tinker. It happened again. This time Tinker was sent sprawling against the wall near where I was standing and she gave a yelp and at that very moment, lying on her back, trying to get to her feet, her eyes opened and she looked straight into mine. I was the first thing she saw in her life, and I can tell you it was love at first sight. Her and me, from now on we were in this together, Tinker and Tom, a deadly combination in the making.
    Mattress picked her up again. ‘Back you go, little lioness,’ he said and placed her on the spare teat. This time she had a good feed, sucking for dear life, her tiny jaws working overtime, the sow’s rich milk running from the corners of her mouth. After a while you could see her tummy grow as big as a tennis ball so we knew she’d had enough.
    â€˜The sow’s milk is good, Kleinbaas ,’ Mattress said, handing Tinker back to me. ‘She will grow strong and soon she’ll be eating inyama ,’ which means meat in Zulu.
    The next problem was accommodation and here Mattress wasn’t to prove very helpful. ‘Can Tinker live with you in your kaya ?’ I asked him.
    He sat down on the pigsty wall and sighed heavily, looking down at his cracked feet, unable to meet my eyes. ‘This thing, it is not possible, Kleinbaas , the Big Baas Botha will not allow it. He will say I have a kaffir dog and they are not allowed here. We cannot have such a dog in this place, he will wring her neck.’
    I should explain the word ‘ kaffir ’. It was used like the word ‘nigger’ was used in America, which wasn’t very nice, so a kaffir dog was something that whites thought was pretty bad. Even I was shocked at the idea of Tinker being thought of as a kaffir dog.
    â€˜Oh, but she is not a kaffir dog!’ I protested. Kaffir dogs were thin and scrawny with their ribs showing, they skulked around with their tails between their legs and with sores showing through their mangy pelts. They understood Voetsek very well and couldn’t look you in the eye. Tinker wouldn’t grow up to be like one of them.
    â€˜We cannot have a dog in this place, we are black.’ Mattress said it without sadness, just sort of resigned. I knew he was right, we had rules in The Boys Farm and he had rules as the pig boy and you simply couldn’t go against the rules, no matter what. ‘I will lose my job,’ he said.
    I wanted to cry but what use would that be? Crying never solved anything and, besides, I wasn’t much good at the business of blubbing. It was bad enough being English but if they saw me blubbing all over the place they’d really have a go. I did what crying it was impossible to avoid at the big rock where nobody ever came except me. Then it struck me. I would keep Tinker at the rock, it had plenty of overhang and I could make her a sort of burrow underneath and every day take her to the pigsty for a feed. She’d be okay while I was at school, and when she got a bit bigger I would build a stone enclosure under the overhang where she could play when I wasn’t around or had to work in the vegetable garden.
    I felt pretty cheered up as I outlined this plan to Mattress, although from his expression I could see he seemed less than convinced. He nodded gravely and said maybe it was a plan that could work and that he was very sorry about not being