Against All Odds Read online

  His name was Peter. Once he’d finished fitting his handiwork onto all the window frames around the house, we sat outside with a couple of cold beers and chatted. He asked me if I had a maid. I told him I hadn’t been lucky because everyone I tried stole minuscule things from me, which was annoying.

  He recommended that his sister, Elizabeth, be my maid. She wasn’t working, so it seemed the perfect solution. Later the same day, he brought her over to present her to me. She arrived dressed in a newly purchased maid’s outfit, which certainly impressed me. I heartily welcomed Elizabeth who became a wonderful little companion to warm up my loneliness while home.

  Elizabeth was as honest as the day was long, and she kept the little bungalow immaculately clean. Because it was so sparsely furnished, there wasn’t actually much to keep clean. I didn’t have a vacuum cleaner or a washing machine, but that didn’t matter to Elizabeth.

  She had all day, and she paced herself as she swept the carpet and hand washed my clothes. She seemed happy. Elizabeth was extremely honest and if she ever found money in my pockets, she’d put it on the table for me.

  The grass in the front of my garden badly needed cutting, so she asked whether her grandfather could take care of my garden for me. Great, I thought. The next day, I arrived home to see an old man sitting down on the grass using my front door mat, cutting my grass by hand with what looked like sheep shears. The grass didn’t seem to grow very fast, so he’d spend all day, every day snipping away at it.

  He liked to smoke marijuana, which made him sleepy. When Elizabeth couldn’t see him working, she’d go out and find him sleeping under a big rubber tree in the corner of the back garden. She’d angrily kick him to wake him up and get him back to work. I felt quite sorry for the old man, but Elizabeth made a better boss than I did, and she wouldn’t allow him to snooze while I was paying for his services.

  Elizabeth was always preparing meals for me with whatever she could find available. Meatballs were a regular preparation, even though that meant chopping up my prized fillet steak sometimes.

  We developed a nice routine. Elizabeth would light the barbecue an hour before I was due home, and it was ready to use as I arrived. She’d hear my car pull into the short drive, which was her cue to throw a rib-eye steak on the grill.

  By the time I had entered and taken my shoes off, she knew it was time to turn my steak, and then, after I’d had a wash and freshened up, the steak was ready to be placed on a plate together with the maize meal she’d prepared. In South Africa, they called it mealy pup, and it was often served with homemade tomato and onion sauce.

  I insisted that she ate with me because she looked a little on the skinny side. Therefore, her steak would go on the grill well before mine as she liked hers well done.

  Our meals together weren’t without their surprises. I didn’t have a table, so we had to sit on the little, scruffy sofa I’d bought. We ate off our laps. The first time we ate together, I sat on the sofa and little Elizabeth automatically sat on the carpet beside me.

  I asked her what she was doing down there and told her to sit on the sofa, but she answered, “Master, if any of your South African friends call around and see me eating with you, it wouldn’t look good for you!”

  I thought, first, I’m not involved, and have no intention of getting involved, with the apartheid, which was still in full force in South Africa; and second, Master is not my name.

  I explained to Elizabeth that apartheid didn’t exist where I came from, and it would never exist inside my house either. She began to call me Andy after that, and the atmosphere changed dramatically. It was so nice having the little angel in the house and that was how it remained.

  At that time, I was engaged to get married to a girl back in Swansea called Rita. Rita was becoming increasingly interested in staying with me in South Africa due to the lifestyle I told her about in my letters. I explained to Guy that she was interested in joining me, and he asked whether I would still be required to work nights. “Yes,” I said to him. Guy recommended that I buy a sidearm, just in case I was broken into a second time, as it wouldn’t be good that the robbers find a white girl alone in the house.

  With that in mind, Guy took me to a local gun dealer, and after a short time, I settled for a small, CZ 7.62mm semi-automatic. It fitted well into my small hands, much better than the 9mm guns I also picked up, and it held fourteen rounds in its clip.

  The sequence required for the purchase of a gun by a foreigner was to first buy a gun and then take the receipt to the local police station along with a passport.

  The police took my fingerprints and a number of other pieces of information before sending my passport to Pretoria, where a gun license could be stapled in the back of it.

  A week later, my passport was returned to me with my license, and off I went back to the gun dealer to collect my gun. As part of the requirements, I had to buy a gun safe and have it securely bolted to a wall in a discreet location inside the bungalow. Guy advised me to use the fitted wall cupboard in my bedroom, so that’s where we installed it.

  Three weeks later, my fiancée arrived, but this was not such a good move. She became increasingly homesick, and it was a long way from home for her first overseas visit.

  There were many times when she did enjoy herself, however. Guy’s wife used to pick her up in the daytime, and she introduced her to all the other local ladies. Due to the reduced intensity of the project, we began getting long weekends every two weeks. We’d leave work on Friday lunchtime, and we’d start again on Monday lunchtime. This was great because there was a mass exodus to Cape Town every long weekend for a change of scenery. We stayed in the Ritz Hotel in Seapoint, which was just behind a mountain they called the Lion’s Head due to its appearance.

  The hotel offered an amazing buffet breakfast and had a revolving restaurant on its roof. In the restaurant, someone was always playing a white grand piano. I always walked the wrong way when returning from the restroom because the table had moved, which was very disorienting.

  The stays at the hotel didn’t improve her homesickness, though. One night back at my house, Rita felt terribly homesick and decided to walk home to Swansea. I knew she wouldn’t get far before getting into trouble, so I stopped her.

  Just two days before Christmas, I caught her trying to walk out the front door not once, but three times. Eventually, she punched me in the mouth, cleanly snapping the root of my front tooth. All the dentists were on holiday for the week, so I couldn’t eat anything. I just had to wait while my front tooth dangled painfully in my mouth.

  In February of 1990, my mother came to visit me. She’d never flown further than Greece before, so it took a lot of persuasion to get her to come. The weekend she arrived, we stayed in Cape Town before driving along the N2 through the Garden Route and the wilderness to Port Elizabeth.

  The first place I wanted to show her was the massive Sunday market held in Seapoint. It was located in the national stadium’s car park near the Lion’s Head. As I drove out of the hotel, I couldn’t understand why all the roads were so deserted in Cape Town.

  On the way back, we found out why. It was February 22nd, and the day Nelson Mandela was freed after twenty-two years in captivity. We were foolishly waiting at a red light when it all started.

  Thousands of Africans rushed through the streets and totally surrounded my car. I put my semi-automatic in the car door in case of trouble, not that it would have helped. It was the first time my mother realised I was carrying a gun. Instead, as I beeped the car horn and waved at all the mob, they moved out of our way and let us drive on, right through the middle of them all. They didn’t give us any trouble at all.

  The following day, we drove east towards a place called George to spend a few days at the popular Victoria Bay. Every day, we’d see the narrow-gauge Apple Express steam train from Port Elizabeth to Loerie going past on the cliff above us. Bristol Carriage & Wagon in the United Kingdom manufactured a number of its original coaches in 1905. By 1924, h
owever, those coaches were taken out of service.

  George was a very nice place, and it was home to the crocodile and ostrich farms, not to mention the huge Kango Caves, which we also visited. It was at one of the ostrich farms that I had the opportunity to ride one around the enclosure. Some Japanese tourists watched on with great interest, taking many photos. The South African holding the ostrich advised me to hook my legs around the bird’s body, hold onto its short little wings and lean right back to avoid sliding forward, which would have been dangerous if I’d slid off in front of the bird.

  With a slap on the bird’s rear end I was off and trotting around the small enclosure with a worker running behind me to slap the poor bird again if it stopped.

  While dining in the hotel’s restaurant on our last night, I was busy with my usual oyster starter when my teeth crunched down on something hard. I put my finders into my mouth and took out a small tear shaped pearl.

  We left George the next day and headed to Port Elizabeth, which was also known as the friendly city, where we spent a couple more nights. Whilst there, we drove northeast one day to the Addo elephant park.

  After four hours of driving around without seeing an elephant anywhere, we found all forty-seven of them at a watering hole. By sitting on my car’s door I managed to take some really nice photos of a mother with its baby, which I eventually had blown up and framed. There was increasing interest from a nearby bull elephant that had started to open its ears in a threatening manner, so we pressed on. On the way back we drove over a green mamba snake.

  We worked our way back the same direction we’d come from, and we spent a couple more nights in George until we arrived back in Cape Town. From there we went directly to my bungalow in Vredenburg. Just a couple of days later, my mother’s three week visit was over so it was sadly time for her to travel back to Swansea.

  By March, my fiancée couldn’t shake off her homesickness any longer. The only solution was to get her a flight back to Wales. She flew back, and I’ve never seen her again to this day. Nevertheless, I’ve heard stories that she’s doing well for herself so that’s nice to know, as she was terrific company.

  Just a couple of weeks later, on a warm evening, I was rushing to start my nightshift with my driver’s side window fully open. Someone walking at the side of the road, maybe drunk, but definitely angry, threw a broken beer bottle at my car. It all happened so fast: all I could do was put my hand up just in time to stop the bottle from hitting me in the face.

  With the combined speed I was driving and the force of the throw, the bottle severed my entire thumb, which was left dangling by a small piece of skin. I wasn’t sure where the local hospital was, so I got myself to the office where the contractor’s nightshift inspector would be waiting.

  His name was Ben. He was a Scottish man who was very much the old school type. He immediately stopped what he was doing and drove me straight to hospital. By the time we arrived, my blood had saturated my shirt and jeans so as we entered the hospital, the night nurse rushed me straight into a treatment room.

  In an instant, a doctor joined us. I was still holding my thumb together against my right hand. Infection had already set in, and the pain was rising fast. It was difficult for me to let go of my thumb because areas of the blood, which had dried, had set like glue.

  I put my confidence in the doctor while he lowered my arm down and slowly separated my left hand from my thumb to begin his assessment. Without needing time to think, he said, “It’s lost. We just need to cut this small piece of skin remaining and stitch you up the best we can.”

  I couldn’t accept this. I asked him to do whatever he could to save my thumb. He said, “There’s nothing left to save. All nerves, tendons, everything has been completely severed.” And then he repeated his words: “There isn’t anything left to save.”

  Again, I asked him to at least try. I told him my right hand would be useless without a thumb, so he agreed. He stated, “I’ll do my best, but it’ll probably be a waste of time.”

  The doctor was a general practitioner, not a surgeon, and he spent five and a half long hours doing all he could before stitching my skin back together. He had to keep injecting more and more painkillers into me, but they did nothing to stop the burning sensation I was feeling from the infection in my thumb.

  He wrote a prescription for a course of antibiotics and a few other drugs, and he told me to clean the area and change the dressing daily until I returned to have the stitches removed.

  I couldn’t clean my wound myself because doing so required two hands to slowly unwrap the blood soaked bandage. Luckily, the two local barmaids from the North Western Hotel took turns in helping me.

  The two girls, Julie and Dalmaine, decided who would visit me each day and for the following two weeks, they were always on time, never missing a day. The wound was badly infected, and the pain prevented me from sleeping.

  Sometimes, I had to stop the girls from pulling on the bandage when trying to separate it from the dried blood because the pain was too great and there was the constant risk of opening the wound. Instead, they gently dampened the blood with warm sterile water until it was soft enough to pull the bandage free.

  I kept off any kind of alcohol with the hope that the antibiotics would succeed against the infection. Ultimately, my choice paid off. Eventually, back at the hospital, the stitches were removed even though the doctor didn’t have any confidence that I would ever be able to use, feel, or move my thumb again.

  So, with the confidence that I still had my thumb attached and on the mend I continued to work out my contract as usual and enjoy the South African lifestyle. The man from the gun shop told me about his friend who’d had a similar accident and was able to feel and use his thumb as normal. He advised me to keep dipping my hand in a bowl of hot water and try squeezing a tennis ball as often as I could. This I continued for months, and it really seemed to be doing something. My original twelve month contract was nearing completion, as was the project in Saldanha Bay.

  Preparations were being made to move the entire project management team to Mosel Bay where the gas plant would be constructed to receive the gas imported from our newly, soon-to-be-installed offshore platform. It had almost been twelve months since I’d left the UK and I was starting to think of returning home, with the plan that my next overseas trip would be longer with some rotational leaves built in.

  I began to advertise among my colleagues in my office the items I’d bought to make my rental bungalow home but they offered me ridiculous amounts for my items. Rather than sell everything off for such low prices I decided to give everything to little Elizabeth who had at least been a great support and a lovely little friend to. Poor little Elizabeth cried when I told her she needed to arrange some transport to empty my bungalow and take it all home with her as I was leaving South Africa. She partly understood my reasons but still didn’t fully understand, as my work was not over.

  She called her brother who’d introduced me to her months earlier and he came to see how much he needed to move. It was really nice to see him again and we had a barbeque, which Elizabeth had become very good at.

  Eighteen months later, after spending every opportunity trying to bend my frozen thumb joint using my left hand it began to move slightly. A few months later, I could feel the tip of it tingling, but only slightly. I continued bending and stretching my thumb for another two years until full feeling had returned. In the end, I could move it without any help from my other hand. My thumb was fine again.

  Chapter 3

  Back to Wales

  I returned back to Swansea in June of 1990, after recovering from a very hospitable twelve months in South Africa. It wasn’t too long before I secured a short contract for a three-month shutdown on a nuclear power station in Dungeness, New Romney, Kent.

  New Romney was a really nice place to be, and so was the pub I stayed in whilst working there. The shutdown crew was from North Yorkshire, and were a real mix of characters. They were great to
work with, and they all knew their roles. I was still a little new to the business, but I had learnt enough from South Africa to hold my own, plus I knew what was required of me.

  Because I was the quality assurance engineer, I was the only person taking care of the quality for the shutdown. I also needed to work late every night to keep up with the progress and large amount of paperwork. I had contractors for site coverage, inspection, heat treatment services etc., but in the end, the responsibility fell on my shoulders.

  We had one particular labourer who was so efficient that the company always kept him employed. It was great for him because it was the only way he could avoid going to an asylum, where the rest of his family lived.

  One night, I left the site office long after everyone else had gone. I quickly noticed that the entrance of the pub had traces of fresh blood on the walls. As I entered, I found more blood on the walls and the floor … and then a lot more as I entered the main bar. A few crewmembers were sitting at the bar finishing their beers, but the whole place was badly messed up.

  The site engineer was one of those sitting at a table, so I asked what the hell had happened. He explained that a local man had entered earlier and demanded a beer, but was refused and asked to leave. Apparently, this man was no ordinary man: he had a military background, but not a normal military background.

  The police were called the moment he entered, but when they arrived, they stayed outside, as they knew who was inside. The man demanded to be served again, but again he was denied. He quickly became aggressive and started breaking up the place.

  The landlord’s son hit the man over the head with a baseball bat, which started the blood flowing, and then the son’s mother hit the man with a large beer bottle, which added to his injuries, but still nothing seemed to affect him.

  During all the commotion, our industrious site labourer had finished his beer and went to the bar for a refill, totally oblivious to what was going on. The landlady explained to Keith that they couldn’t serve any beer until they had got the man out of the pub, which seemed to register something in the labourer’s head.