Crimson League Squad Cars

MY AUNTY lived in a small house in Unit 3, Chatsworth. Two bedrooms upstairs, a kitchen and sitting room downstairs.

The toilet with a long metal chain for flushing was just outside the kitchen door and doubled as a bathroom for bucket baths.

"Pull hard," my aunty would holler.  "Don't leave your ships stuck in the harbour."

She was well-read in everything from Shakespeare to the Thevaram. Her idioms trotted between high English and a melodic Telugu.

“Make hay while the suns shines but why you sitting so long in the toilet. Go hang the carpet in the fence.”

A few pieces of furniture dotted the sitting room. A divan bed that my grandfather slept on until one day in 1976, he died.

Hanging off the side of one arm of the bulbous divan was a thick strap of leather on which he sharpened the jack razor that scraped off his white stubble before he suited up for a day gambling at the racecourse.

Jumbo Naidoo rode in those big American cars like Chevys and Buicks that dominated the taxi trade on Grey Street.

The transport system was run by gangs like the Crimson League either as owners or just collecting tax. For the longer journey to Scottsville, my grandfather caught the luxurious Pullman buses if the taxis were full.

“You flashed? I’m getting like bum smell on you. Make water and go bath. Hurry up.Time and tide wait for no man.” My aunty made an insult sound like a hangman’s noose.

I would turn around to see if anyone was listening. Our houses were so small that every sound was amplified a few times over.

On the matter of loud sounds, month end was a bit of a treat. When Rusty, the attached neighbour got paid, he brought his wife all kinds of presents. Those evenings we could hear her screaming thank you through the single brick dividing wall.

“What like that?”, was my aunty’s retort as she pricked her ears for the symphony of the bedsprings.

“Who’s your daddy?” was Rusty’s repeated line.

“Why she don’t tell Thangavellu is her father?” my aunty lamented.

There were two couches in the sitting room with cushions flattened to pancakes. Amid-century coffee table covered with a cream plastic doily was the centrepiece.

Nestled in one corner was a Pilot radiogram. There are two special memories Itreasure from the childhood living with my aunt.

The one was from seven thirty on a Friday evening when Squad Cars came on the radio.

"They prowl the empty streets at night, waiting in fast cars, on foot".

Burglars could clean out houses in that half hour. Everyone was glued to the radio hearing nothing but the deep-voiced commentary.

The second memory was the half hour before Squad Cars came on air.

My aunty would fuss around me as she mashed the food on my plate saying: "Eat stomach full."

Usually, dhall and rice. Frequently lashings of bhaji or oily green beans.

Meat was a weekend treat.Since I wasn’t under my parents’ discipline, I could stay awake late into Friday night.

David Gresham's music programme on Springbok Radio was the Top 20, which came on air at 10pm.

I remember the song “Buccaneer” and the jingle that startedwith the line “Sixteen men on a dead man's chest”.

There was also Clout’s Substitute: “Sam, you've been waiting much too long now. It looks like she's not coming home …”

My grandfather got back late from the races in the early evening on a Saturday night.

He would slip off his jacket and waistcoast and undo his thin tie. He woreloose collars from the Victorian Age with a collar pin at the bag of the neck.

As heaged, I was the one unscrewing the pin and taking off his shoes.

His feet smelled of fouled grass and wet leather.

“Sooter neeru!”, he would bellow.

His tipple was hot water served in a large cup. That he would hold up to his forehead and temple as if to gently massage them after a hard day of throwing money at the horses.

Whenever my eyes met my aunt’s she would whisper, “Goodray!”

Now that I think about it, for some reason she would switch to Tamil in that instance. to pour scorn on the horses that drained his bank balance.

The old man never sat at the table. My aunt dutifully brought his food to the divan.

He made himself comfortable in a white vest and long johns.

The next morning, it was also my job to match his betting tickets against the horse racing results in the Sunday Tribune. The were never any winning tickets. The old coot cashed those before returning home.

Kiru Naidoo will be at the Saris and Sweetmeats Festival all day this Sunday at the Umhlanga Apart Hotel on 60 Meridian Drive. Nagara will be at 4pm. Contact him on 082 940 8163. Entry is free.

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