Bryce Courtenay - WhiteThorn

P ENGUIN B OOKS

WHITE THORN

Bryce Courtenay is the bestselling author of The Power of One, Tandia, April Fools Day, The Potato Factory, Tommo & Hawk, Jessica, Solomons Song, A Recipe for Dreaming, The Family Frying Pan, The Night Country, Smoky Joes Cafe, Four Fires, Matthew Flinders Cat, Brother Fish, Whitethorn, Sylvia and The Persimmon Tree.

The Power of One is also available in an edition for younger readers, and Jessica has been made into an award-winning television miniseries.

Bryce Courtenay lives in the Southern Highlands, New South Wales.

Further information about the
author can be found at
brycecourtenay.com

B OOKS BY B RYCE C OURTENAY

The Power of One

Tandia

April Fools Day

A Recipe for Dreaming

The Family Frying Pan

The Night Country

Jessica

Smoky Joes Cafe

Four Fires

Matthew Flinders Cat

Brother Fish

Whitethorn

Sylvia

The Persimmon Tree

T HE A USTRALIAN T RILOGY

The Potato Factory

Tommo & Hawk

Solomons Song

Also available in one volume,

as The Australian Trilogy

Bryce Courtenay

WHITE THORN

P ENGUIN B OOKS

To Celia Jarvis

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (Australia)
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(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2005

Copyright Bryce Courtenay 2005

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

penguin.com.au

ISBN: 978-0-14-194217-9

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Love in a Wet Sack

TRUE LOVE CAME TO me one crisp late autumn morning when the sky had lost the faded blue of the long hot summer and taken on the deeper colour of winter yet to come. I discovered it in a hessian sack floating down the bit of a creek that ran around the back of the orphanage. I waded into the shallow stream, the water reaching to just below the hem of my khaki shorts, the current pulling at my skinny legs. The stream, already icy from the high mountains, was extra cold from the frosty morning, so that I inched and ouched my way towards the floating sack, grabbed hold of it and drew it back against the current to finally rest it on the bank of wet black pebbles.

I untied the bag, no easy task I can tell you, the twine binding was knotted and slippery wet and my fingers near frozen. I peeped into the dark interior and, unable to see what it contained, up-ended it. To my surprise out plopped six dead puppies. Flippity-flop! Oh my Gawd!

With six dead dogs on my hands I knew I was in big trouble. What if someone came upon me and there were these dead puppies lying at my feet? I hastily dropped each one back into the sack, ready to return it to the stream. But as I grabbed the last one, the smallest of them all, it seemed to quiver and its mouth opened and gave a sort of gasp, so I gave it a bit of a squeeze and it vomited a jet of water. I squeezed it again and more water came out. One back leg started to jerk, I squeezed a third time and it must have been empty because nothing happened, except that it started to breathe.

Well, you cant just put a nearly dead puppy back in the sack and hope for the best, can you? So I took him beyond the shade of the overhanging mimosa and laid him down in a patch of sunlight. Then I quickly retied the bag and dragged it back to the stream and watched as the current caught it and it floated away around a rocky corner and was soon out of sight. I must say I was glad to see the last of it, five dead puppies lying at your feet is no way to start a morning. But then it struck me that a live puppy was going to be a lot more trouble than a dead one. How was a little kid in an orphanage where you were not allowed to have anything of your own going to look after a puppy?

Suddenly my life had become very complicated. I sat in the warm sun beside the puppy, stroking its pink tummy, which by now was pumping up and down thirteen to the dozen as it came truly alive and started to get warm again. I was accustomed to getting into trouble, mostly because of my surname, Fitzsaxby. I was English, well, thats what my name said I was anyway, and I was in the Deep North, high mountain country, Boer territory where the English were hated because of what theyd done in the Boer War. Theyd started the worlds first concentration camps and filled them with Boer women and children from the farms; many came from these mountains. That wasnt the bad part. The reason they hated the British was because 27 000 of them died of dysentery and blackwater fever and other terrible and unsanitary things. In a way, it was understandable that they hated me for being English, you dont forget things like what happened to your own ouma so easily, do you?

I picked up the still wet puppy and clasped him to my chest and he began to suck on my thumb and whimper. There was no doubt he was properly alive again and I had acquired a problem too big for a six-year-old boys brain. All of a sudden it struck me, my friend Mattress, the pig boy, would know what to do.

Mattress was my friend even if he was a grown-up. If youre black you get called boy even if youre an old man, you can be a garden boy, kitchen boy, farm boy, house boy or a pig boy like Mattress, because he looked after the orphanage pigs and also worked with the cows in the dairy. I can tell you, having a friend like him was good because having friends in that place wasnt easy when you had an English name. Nobody wanted to be the friend of the rooinek , which is what they called you if you were English. It means redneck. One thing was for sure, the concentration camp business never went away but was always pointing a finger at you. Rooinek, you are evil! God is going to punish you and you are going to hell, you hear!

This is what happened to the Boere. I know its true because on Sundays when we had to attend church the preacher stood up in his long black robes with a little white starched bib under his chin, it must have been there to catch the spit when he got angry with the English. Which is what he did every Sunday morning without fail. He got all worked up and thumped the pulpit and started going on and on. Soon hed be red in the face and spit came flying out of his mouth and sprayed onto his beard that almost covered the entire bib, so after all that trouble to wear it, the bib wasnt any good for catching spit. At first I would get really frightened, me being the only Englishman in the congregation and him saying I was the devils children. Not me personally, he didnt point to me, but I guess it amounted to the same thing. All the other kids would turn and look at me and the guys on either side of me would give me a sharp dig in the ribs and whisper verdomde rooinek , damned redneck.