I had my doubts, Helpmekaar with four wins to their credit in the preceding two years had a right to be confident. ‘Hymie, they’re Boers, they’d rather die than lose to an English school, it’s not simply a matter of statistics!’
‘Ja, I know, that’s what we’re going to have to fix.’
On the Wednesday afternoon two weeks prior to the match, when we were meant to be studying at the Johannesburg library, Hymie drew me aside. ‘Will you come to Helpmekaar with me this afternoon to see Jannie Geldenhuis, don’t ask any questions, just say, yes… it’s important.’
Sitting on the top deck of the Parktown bus he outlined his plan. ‘There are nearly twelve hundred kids at Helpmekaar and six hundred at our school, if we can get most of them to place a bet on Helpmekaar winning against our under fifteens we could really clean up, we’d have your Solly Goldman money.’
‘Christ, Hymie, we’re back to straight gambling! You’re crazy, this isn’t like those fist boxing matches when we took a few bets in the toilet before the fight. There I was a surprise factor in that scam, the punters from the other schools didn’t know we had a boxer who could fight. This is just the opposite, they know how good we are and what’s more we’ve never beaten them! This whole thing contradicts our business philosophy.’
‘You know what your problem is, Peekay? You worry too much.’
‘With you as a friend, that’s hardly bloody surprising. I hope you’ve got a plan?’
Hymie opened his hands expansively. ‘Does a bird fly? Of course I’ve got a plan, but I may have to tapdance a little when we get there so please excuse me if I don’t explain it to you in detail. But I promise you our business philosophy is intact.’
‘Hymie, listen! Picking up a dozen punters in the shit house is one thing; taking on a whole bloody Afrikaans school is another. You don’t know these buggers like I do, these guys don’t gamble, the Afrikaans are very religious, you know.’
‘Greed, my dear Peekay, transcends religion. Did not the Roman soldiers gamble for Christ’s garments at Golgotha? Besides, when those Helpmekaar guys see the odds I’m offering, their little Boer hands won’t be able to get a kitchen knife to their money boxes fast enough.’
‘Hymie, I hope this whole thing’s kosher. If it turns out to be a con and they find out, we’re dead meat!’ Hymie had taught us all the Jewish word ‘kosher’ and it had become the generic term for something being legitimate.
Hymie smiled. ‘I’ve racked my brains, in fact I’m rather ashamed of myself, but even with my considerable intellect, there is no way of ensuring the outcome other than to pay them off, which is patently impossible. We simply have to beat them on the day. Believe me, it’s as kosher as my granma’s chicken soup.’ He turned to me and gave me his most disarming smile. ‘Peekay, I know you’ve got a considerable rep with these Boers, no way I’m going to spoil that. You’re the only Rooinek Christian gentleman they respect,’ he paused. ‘Just get it into your head that we can beat the bastards!’
‘I hope you didn’t mean you’d pay them off if you could find a way?’
‘No, of course not, I was only kidding. The nicest part of a scam is the brains part. Anyone can learn to cheat.’
We reached the top of the hill and arrived at the Helpmekaar gates just as school was getting out. A sea of brown blazers piped with yellow braid engulfed our two green ones. Remarks were flying left, right and centre and things were getting decidedly uncomfortable.
‘What now?’ I whispered to Hymie.
‘We just wait here, you’ll see,’ he replied.
Just then a voice cut through the sea of brown blazers, ‘Peekay, howzit?’ It was Jannie Geldenhuis. ‘Sorry I’m late, man, I had to see one of the masters. Come with me.’ He extended his hand in the Boer manner and we shook it in turn and then followed him through the gates.
‘Magtig, I thought we were going to be lynched,’ I said to Jannie in Afrikaans.
‘No way, man, they all know you here, you a sort of hero.’
We had reached the school toilets where a couple of guys about our own age were having a quiet smoke. Jannie asked them politely to leave and they kicked at the ground with the toe cap of their shoes, then deciding to obey, killed their cigarettes by pinching the heads off and put the unused stompies in their blazer pockets for use later.
Hymie said he’d accept odds of three to one on the Prince of Wales School winning.
Geldenhuis gasped. ‘You’re crazy, man! We already beat you four games to nil!’
‘Those are the odds,’ Hymie said quietly.
‘That’s blêrrie terrific for the punters,’ Geldenhuis said, ‘but what about us? We… you’ll be cleaned out! Fifteen percent of nothing is nothing, and I’ll end up with my arse kicked by twelve hundred bloody angry Helpmekaar punters.’
Geldenhius was not just a pretty face, I observed. Hymie’d gone crackers! Helpmekaar had to be favoured to win. Three to one odds was suicide.
‘Okay, Geldenhuis… Peekay and I will give you a written guarantee that we’ll honour our debts if the Prince of Wales loses.’ He reached into the inside pocket of his blazer and handed me a square of folded paper. I opened it to see that it was a guarantee by the Bank to pay in the event of a Helpmekaar win. There was a place at the bottom for two signatures. Hymie had already signed as one of them.
‘Sign it and give it to him,’ Hymie said casually.
I made a rough calculation in my head. Assuming two thirds of the punters bet against us at an average of two shillings a bet, we stood to lose around three hundred and seventy pounds. If we sold the Bank to a syndicate and our rights to Miss Bornstein’s Famous Correspondence School Notes and took all our savings we could just make it.
I breathed a sigh of relief, if it had been more than our total assets I would have had to turn Hymie down in front of Geldenhuis, causing us both no end of embarrassment. I borrowed Hymie’s Parker 51 and holding the guarantee against the toilet wall I signed it. But I can tell you I was not happy; Hymie Solomon Levy was going to be in a lot of shit when we were alone again.
Geldenhuis took the guarantee from me, read it and pulled out a small leather wallet from his pocket, as he opened it to stow the guarantee I noticed it contained no money.
‘Okay, Geldenhuis, twenty percent of the winnings or fifty quid now, it’s your choice,’ Hymie said.
Like me before Hymie had entered my life, Jannie Geldenhuis had probably never seen a ten-pound note in his life, much less fifty. Eight pounds a week was the average white workers’ wage, Helpmekaar was not a private school and his parents were probably battling to make ends meet.
Hymie had read his man correctly. ‘I’ll take the fifty pounds now,’ Geldenhuis said.
Jannie Geldenhuis must have believed we couldn’t win, Hymie was offering him fifty quid against a potential of seventy-five.
Hymie pulled out his wallet and opened it. ‘Just a second!’ Geldenhuis said suddenly. He withdrew his wallet again and took the guarantee from it and proffered it to Hymie. ‘I got a condition of my own, without it we got no deal, man.’
We both looked at Geldenhuis with surprise. ‘What’s the condition, Jannie?’ I asked.