The Girl from Germiston

By Vincent Gray

After a chance meeting with the incurably fickle but exquisitely beautiful Helena Lathbury, Julian Bogart finds himself on a roller-coaster journey which takes him from the orphan city of Germiston to the streets of Paris. While in the Louvre after being warned by a stranger they discover that they have been mistaken for terrorists and their abduction by South African secret agents was imminent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vincent Gray
• Release date: Jun 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311688132

Vincent Gray

As a son of a miner, I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. I grew up in the East Rand mining town of Boksburg. I matriculated from Boksburg High School. After high school, I was conscripted into the South African Defence Force for compulsory national military service when I was 17 years old. After my military service, I went to the University of the Witwatersrand. After graduating with a BSc honours degree I worked for a short period for the Department of Agriculture in Potchefstroom as an agronomist. As an obligatory member of the South African Citizen Miltary Force, I was called up to do 3-month camps on the 'Border' which was the theatre of the so-called counter-insurgency 'Bush War'. In between postgraduate university studies I also worked as a wage clerk on the South African Railways and as a travelling chemical sales rep. In my career as an academic, I was a molecular biologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, where I lectured courses in microbiology, molecular biology, biotechnology and evolutionary biology. On the research side, I was involved in genomics, and plant and microbial biotechnology. I also conducted research into the genomics of strange and weird animals known as entomopathogenic nematodes. I retired in 2019, however, I am currently an honorary professor at the University of the Witwaterand and I also work as a research writing consultant for the University of Johannesburg.

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The Girl from Germiston

By

Vincent Gray

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2016 V M Gray

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN: 9781311688132

Author Biography

As a son of a miner, the author was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He grew up in the East Rand mining town of Boksburg during the 1960s and matriculated from Boksburg High School. After high school, he was conscripted into the South African Defence Force (SADF) for compulsory national military service at the age of seventeen. On completion of his military service, he studied courses in Zoology, Botany, and Microbiology at the University of the Witwatersrand. After graduating with a BSc honours degree he worked for a short period for the Department of Agriculture in Potchefstroom as an agronomist. Following the initial conscription into military service in the SADF, like all other white South African males of his generation, he was then drafted into one of the many South African Citizen Military Regiments. During the 1970s he was called up as a citizen-soldier to do three-month military camps on the 'Border' which was the operational theatre of the so-called counter-insurgency 'Bush War' during the Apartheid years. Before and in between university studies he also worked as a wage clerk on the South African Railways and as a travelling chemical sales representative. The author is now a retired professor whose career as an academic in the Biological Sciences has spanned a period of thirty-three years mainly at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Before retirement, he lectured and carried out research in the field of molecular biology with a special interest in the molecular basis of evolution. He continues to pursue his interest in evolutionary biology. Other interests which the author pursues include radical theology, philosophy, and literature.

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Chapter 1

Julian, Julian, Julian Bogart, she called out while rushing after him. A recurring thought shot through her mind for the umpteenth time. He did not look like his name. This had always bugged her about him, this incongruity between him, his manner and his name. Why don’t parents give their children proper names that will somehow resonant with their physical appearance and personalities?

Julian Bogart had just walked out of the CNA in President Street Germiston. He turned round to see who was calling him. It was Helena Lathbury.

I thought it was you, she exclaimed, as she walked up to him, slightly breathless from the sudden rush to catch up with him.

He turned around and saw Helena. She was the last person he had ever expected to see again.

Helena! Hi, he responded, looking extremely surprised, a bit bewildered and somewhat flustered, at the sudden unexpected eager attention that he was receiving from Helena.

She had spotted him in the CNA while he was browsing through some magazines on the sports shelf. He did not notice her. Two years had passed since she had last seen him. Her eyes followed him as he walked with a golf magazine to the cashier. As usual, he was neatly dressed, on this occasion in pressed golf trousers and a golf shirt. She had never seen him in jeans or a T-shirt or wearing track shoes. He always wore top of the range shoes. Basically, he had always been a careful dresser. He was also wearing more fashionable spectacle frames and he had an expensive gold watch on his left wrist. His hair had been nicely trimmed and styled.

She noticed that his waist was trim, his stomach flat and his biceps seemed bigger, but not too big. They looked nice. He had muscular thighs and nice calves. She liked men with good thighs. She began to realize, especially after not seeing him for quite a while, that he was actually not that bad looking. He must be going to the gym she thought to herself. That would be something new, something totally out of character. Why was he buying a golf magazine? Has he taken up golf? Could a person change so much over two years? As he walked out of the CNA, she was in two minds whether or not to draw his attention. She had fobbed him off so often before that he had finally stopped calling her. But she could not contain her curiosity, and there was now another reason for her turnaround. It was because of a recent dream that she now suddenly found him interesting, even appealing and possibly even a bit mysterious.

So she decided on the spur of that moment to rush out of the CNA after him. On the pavement outside the CNA, she stopped and stood in front of him in her black high heels, which made her slightly taller. She had a lovely smile on her face.

She was dressed in a short 30-inch long sleeveless cobalt coloured body clinging casual dress made from nylon and Lycra. With its natural waistline, the soft fabric accentuated the outline and contours of her body. The oval-shaped neckline was low enough for her cleavage to be exposed. The fragrance of her long loose hanging thick full-bodied glossy hair was intoxicatingly erotic. At 5 foot 3 inches, she was just fractionally short of average height. She was about 2 inches shorter than he was. She had long dark brown hair, big brown eyes, a perfect nose and very sensual lips, which today glistened with lip gloss. She was an eye-catching, head-turning woman. Men looked at her and she knew that they looked at her.

He was amazed at how fabulous she looked in such a simple outfit with just a simple black leather shoulder bag as her only accessory. Her sudden materialization out of the blue right before him seemed to have struck him dumb. Momentarily he seemed to be at a complete loss for words. He had been caught totally off guard. Helena quickly sensed that the situation could become quite awkward. She had to think of something to say, anything would do, as long it kept up the flow of conversation.

It is wonderful to see you again, he said while trying desperately to control the tension in his facial muscles that threatened to make his face so completely immobile that he would not even be able to manage a frozen smile.

It’s also so great to see you again. I can’t believe how fast time goes by. It seems like only just yesterday that we were still students catching the train to Wits every day, she said.

She was the girl that he had pursued so long without having any success. Pursued and wooed in such a cautious and dignified manner, that at times it became quite comical to her. He had not been timid at all, in fact, he been indomitable in his careful and sensitive persistence. All his efforts were eventually rewarded with an emphatic rejection.

He had not seen her since he had graduated with a degree in Chemical Engineering from Wits. He had been infatuated with her ever since he first met her about 5 years ago when he was in his first year. He met Helena at the unlikeliest of places possible. It was also under the most unusual of circumstances. They met on a warm December Saturday night in a hot basement in Twist Street over the road from Joubert Park at a place called the Invisible Church. Julian a Roman Catholic by birth, baptism, and confirmation had at the urging of his recently born again classmate gone to a service at the Invisible Church.

He had responded to the altar call. Helena who was then a recent new born again and a member of the Invisible Church was the person who counselled him, who knelt next to him holding his hand tightly while they laid hands on him and prayed for him. That night he made a conscious commitment to accept and receive Jesus as his personal saviour. At that intensely emotional and intimate moment, she had hugged him tightly, tears of joy running down her cheeks.

While they were standing on the sidewalk outside the entrance of the CNA she could see from his posture and body language that he was preparing to take flight from her. She sensed his wariness of her. She guessed that he was going to say something along the lines of ‘nice to see again, I have to go.’ He might feel compelled to do this just for the sake of preserving his self-respect and dignity especially after she had rejected him so many times before. He was that kind of person. Actually, she respected him for that. Now his cautious reserve towards her also made him more appealing.

She felt the need to re-establish the bond that used to exist between her and him. Things had changed a lot over the last two years. She had time to think a lot about all the relationships that she had been involved in. Almost all of the men had been pretty much a dreary, tedious, and uninspiring lot. They were all lacking in something, even if she could not put her finger on it, they just lacked it whatever it was. She did, however, find that all her relationships so far had in the end turned out to be experiences that were intellectually and emotionally stunting, if not suffocating in the extreme, and it was inevitable that they had to be aborted.

A few days ago, she had an erotic dream about Julian. It disturbed her. It awoke feelings that she thought she could never have had for him. After the dream, thoughts about him kept on cropping up in her mind for days on end at the most unexpected moments. She tried her best but she could not suppress them. She wondered whether it was possible to develop feelings for someone against one’s own will. Could one possibly have an erotic dream about somebody against one’s own will? How could that be possible? She had given the dream considerable thought. She eventually concluded that she could only have had an erotic dream about someone if, in reality, she did have some feelings for that person even though she may not have been fully aware of having these feelings. Therefore, the dream must have triggered these feelings that she was not aware of with respect to Julian, feelings that she would not have dreamt of in her conscious state. Maybe all this time for some unknown reason she had been suppressing the genuine feeling that she had subconsciously really felt for him.

It was all so complicated and could turn out really messy. But now the erotic dream of Julian had certainly triggered some kind of emotional domino effect over which she had little if any control. Today for some obscure reason that she could not quite fathom, she suddenly found herself being irresistibly drawn to him. She felt unashamedly predatory. All she had to do now was to exert the full force of her considerable charms on the person who had so unexpectedly gate-crashed back into her life from the past all of a sudden.

And here he was standing right before her in the flesh, completely unaware that she had succumbed to an incredibly strong attraction towards him all because of a dream.

Helena did the unexpected. She stepped forward closing the gap between them and hugged him. She gave him a kiss full on the lips and grabbed his hand. She had never kissed him before or hugged him or even taken his hand. She then stood back, still holding his hand firmly, and looked at him with searching earnest eyes, as if seeing him in a new light for the first time.

Just look at you. You also look so good. It has been so long since we last saw each other. How are you, what are doing? she asked with a display of interest that seemed authentic to Julian. As she spoke, she started running her free hand through her long hair and then placed it on her hip.

He had always been scrupulous about his personal hygiene. She liked the deodorant and cologne he used. His nails were always immaculate, clean, and perfectly trimmed. He had such nice hands. He also took good care of his thick black hair. He had brown eyes, but they were darker than her eyes. His eyes behind his spectacles were always alert, intelligent, and sensitive. She remembered that he always got a bluish five-o-clock shadow. It made him sexy in a cute kind of way. But as it turned out, during those halcyon days at Wits she felt no attraction towards him; even the bluish five-o-clock shadow did nothing for her.

Whenever she dreamed this kind of dream about a guy something always happened. She fell in love with that person. This was why her recent dream disturbed her so much. Today his height did not bother her before it did matter. It was now no longer one of the important considerations in her list of attributes that she had used to judge his relative attractiveness compared to her many other suitors. Today nothing mattered. He was just perfect.

After graduating, they had gone their separate ways. She had majored in Chemistry and Physics at Wits. Throughout their undergraduate years, they had remained firm friends. They had both served on the committee of the Student’s Christian Association (SCA) at Wits. For two years, she had been the president of the SCA at Wits. During their final year at Wits, they had both succumbed to the contagion of Reformed Theology that was spreading in the Churches of the East Rand like a powerful invisible undercurrent. They metamorphosed from being Pentecostals into Calvinists. At Wits, they had both joined a band of students who had become Reformed Christians or in other words Calvinists.

They were interrupting the smooth flow of the pedestrian traffic going past the CNA so he moved away from the centre of the pavement towards the pavement curb next to a parking meter. She followed him. She did not seem to be in any hurry to leave him; she lingered next to him at the parking meter. In the late morning sunlight, her hair shone brilliantly.

I am fine. I am working here in Germiston at the SA Chemical and Fermentation Industries in Power Street, he answered, And you, how are you, and what are you doing?

I am also fine as you can see. I am a science teacher at Jeppe Girls, she said. Where are you fellowshipping?

I have been going to St Andrew's Presbyterian Church.

That is so great. I am glad to hear that. You say you work in Power Street that is the Power Street that intersects with La Bassee Road?

Yes.

That is so amazing. I have been attending the African Reformed Church just down the road in the old Indian shantytown. The church is next to the railway line. It is an Indian Church with a wonderful Afrikaans dominee.

Are you still living with your parents? Julian asked

No. Actually, I have been staying at this totally eccentric Christian commune called the Loft. We are renting a huge old sprawling ramshackle house from Simmer and Jack.

I have heard about the Loft from friends who have been to their meetings, he said, it has not been around for long or what?

As far as I know it started in 1973. That makes it roughly 5 years old. It started as an informal gathering of Reformed Christians. They formed a study group that used to meet fairly regularly on Friday or Saturday nights. Everard Mallet started it. He is the most amazing guy. He did a BA in English and Philosophy at UCT before going to the Bible College at Kalk Bay in Simons Town. He is an English teacher at Germiston High, she said.

What are you doing right now? she suddenly asked.

Do you mean this moment as in now or the rest of the day? he asked looking a bit confused.

Both. What are you doing now at this present moment, as in now? And what are you doing for the rest of the day? As in all the other moments that will follow? Sorry, I am being a bit pedantic, she said.

Nothing really, he replied.

Then why don’t you come over for some coffee at the Loft. We can do some catching up for old times’ sake. The Loft is just up the road by the old mine dumps near one of the old Simmer and Jack mineshafts. Look I am parked over there. You can follow me in your car, she said pointing to her car parked across the road from the CNA.

As always, she exuded this bubbling confidence that any suggestion which she may make would find ready and immediate compliance because it always seemed the most obvious thing to do at that moment.

He looked across the road and recognized her car.

It was still the same old battered and rusty brown Datsun. It was the car that she had inherited from her parents after graduating with her BSc degree in chemistry and physics. She needed the car to get to her teaching practicals while she was doing her higher education diploma.

Where are you parked? she asked.

I am parked just around the corner.

OK. I will get into my car so long, when you turn into President Street just flash your headlights and I will pull out of the parking space and you can follow me, she said.

After passing the Magistrate Courts she turned right into Knox Street and then left into Meyer Street, driving down the subway that went under the railway line. Julian drove a safe car length distance behind her car in his white 1600 VW Beetle that his parents had bought for him after he had passed his first year.

After they had met at the Invisible Church they were both amazed to discover that they lived just around the corner from each other. They also discovered that they had both just finished their first year at Wit. She had been attending the Invisible Church for most of that year. Their meeting seemed to be a remarkable coincidence. It seemed to be a sign from God. How else could this coming together have happened? She had gone to Germiston High School and he had gone to Christian Brothers College in Boksburg, there was no chance of their meeting even though they had been living just around the corner from each other ever since they were born.

Almost every day while they were undergraduates he would fetch Helena in the morning from her home in Catchet Street Lambton. He stayed in Klip Lane that was just around the corner from her home. He would drive to President Station where he would park his car. They would then travel together by train to Johannesburg Park Station from President Station. In the mornings, they would walk together from Johannesburg Station through Braamfontein to Wits. This was their daily morning routine.

He became very attracted to her, but he was also a cautious person not given to acting on impulse. He was an individual who had a great aversion to risk and avoided exposing himself to any kind of emotional hazard. He was not a reckless romantic. She also never gave any indication that she had any romantic inclinations towards him. Not even the faintest sign of flirtation ever emanated from her side. No fluttering of eyelashes, no dilated pupils, no touching of his arm or wrist, no prolonged stares into his eyes, no fidgeting with her hair, no tossing of her hair, no twirling of the ends of her hair with her figure tips, no biting of her lips, no hot flushes. She just acted normally towards him.

The total absence of any signs that may indicate a romantic interest did not put him off. He was grateful that he could be with her almost every day. Obviously, she must have sensed that he was in love with her. However, she was extraordinarily careful not to create any illusion that she felt similar romantic feelings towards him. She tactfully turned him down whenever he asked her out to movies. She always did it in a manner that allowed him to save face. This also allowed him to believe that he had risked nothing, his dignity remained intact, and he could walk away from the rejection feeling relatively undamaged. She had sufficient emotional savvy to be as sensitive as possible under the circumstances. She seemed to have a gift in being able to turn him down without bruising his ego too badly. He eventually stopped trying to ask her out on a date.

Despite her artful deflections of his advances, she was still able to play the role of a charming, reliable, and good friend. In return, he was grateful and satisfied with any morsel or crumb of attention that happened to fall from her table. Ironically, she had at the same time become quite dependent on him for transport and assistance with her chemistry and physics. He was a maths and chemistry whiz kid. So he proved to be a very useful and worthwhile friend to have. He was always there to fetch and carry. Always ready to help her solve some chemistry or physics problems. In the afternoons, they would wait for each other at Johannesburg Station and catch the same train home to President Station. He would give her a lift home in the afternoons. If she caught a later train, he would always be waiting for her in his car at President Station. He was completely reliable.

He also soon learnt that she, even though she was extremely popular and was pursued relentlessly by many suitors, happened to be exceptionally fickle, in fact incurably fickle. She was also aware that her many brief and often stormy romantic liaisons were extremely painful and upsetting to him. While he bore the pain of her many short-lived romances bravely with dignity, he battled to hide the emotional storms that he would have to frequently endure.

After they had graduated and started working, he tried for a time to keep in touch with her. But it was the same old story as before. Whenever he asked her out she always had some other commitment. Her list of different seemingly genuine and credible excuses seemed to be infinite. In the end, he gave up and stopped calling her altogether. He got the message that she did not need him anymore. He realized that the basis of their previous relationship as friends revolved around her dependency on the convenient and cost-free transport that he had so willingly and generously provided. There no longer seemed to be any compelling reason that she could think of for the continuance of their friendship, so their friendship waned, and finally withered away altogether.

So it was natural that he felt perplexed as he walked to his car. It was also natural that as he turned the ignition and engaged the gears of his car he began to feel wary of her sudden unsolicited friendly behaviour towards him. Was it for some ulterior motive? There were legitimate reasons for having misgivings. For him, it was never an issue that faintness of heart was the reason for failing to capture this fair maiden. His heart was never faint. His only fault was he could not help being a perfect gentleman. But he was also a realist. He had made no headway with her and so he had moved on.

Why had she changed? Maybe it had something to do with age and new life experiences. Maybe she had downgraded her life expectations. Maybe she had lowered her incredibly high standards and expectations when it came to men. Anything becomes possible when you are still single and approaching 25. She was 24 years old and he was 25 years old. He had joined The Purple Hat dancing school, and was surprised to see how many women had missed the boat and were now in their thirties, single and stranded high and dry without any marriage prospects. Men it seemed had a superior shelf life.

He was filled with mixed feelings as he followed her car. He realized that he had not gotten over her. Today she looked so sensual, so ripe, and so ready to be plucked. He was convinced that she was still a virgin. Anyway, he wanted to believe that about her. But then again how was it possible that such a striking woman could still be a virgin at 24? Well, he was a virgin at 25.

He wondered how his life would have turned out if he had not met her if he had not gone to the Invisible Church that night. Maybe things would have turned out differently for him. He would still have become a chemical engineer. However, he might have become a different person if he had not been trapped by the allure of such an eye-appealing and desirable girl. In a sense, it was because of her that he had become so choosy concerning the opposite sex. She had become the standard by means of which he measured the romantic suitability of all other females. Maybe his standards regarding the opposite sex should have been set a lot lower. It was clear that his standards were completely unrealistic. Maybe in another life, if that were at all possible, he would have in all likelihood fallen in love with a less attractive girl, a much plainer girl, possibly a nice Roman Catholic convent girl, who in turn would have fallen in love with him, a nice CBC boy. Maybe Catholicism would have been the glue that would have stuck them together.

Things could have been different if he had not spent all those years pursuing her as if she were the only girl in the Universe. Possibly his life would have turned out for the better if he had never met Helena Lathbury, not that his life was actually bad. He had no valid reason to be depressed or unhappy. He had been top of his class for as long as he could remember. When he graduated, he was awarded the gold medal for being the most outstanding engineering student. He now had a good job with excellent career prospects. His employers had sent him overseas many times over the past two years. He had never wanted for anything as a child or as a teenager. He had doting parents who were always quick to accommodate his needs.

But still, there was a dark cloud hovering over him. It often became most noticeable on his otherwise very bright horizon of promising prospects, casting its shadow over his life, reminding him that he was missing out on all those indiscernible things in life that made a person feel good and contented. Its shadow became particularly dark and especially long on Friday and Saturday nights. The shadow cast by the dark cloud over his life was the complete absence of female companionship. Female companionship was what he needed most now in his life and this was what he now lacked. How do you meet girls? Once he had started working and had moved out of the University social circle it became practically impossible to meet girls, even at church. It seemed that dateable girls stopped going to church after they had turned 18.

Cut adrift from his previous social circle of fellow Reformed Faith believers he found himself becoming a lot more critical of things he originally accepted without question. His commitment to the strict Calvinist asceticism once advocated by the Reformers of Geneva began to wane. Its inevitable waning had a lot to do with the exigencies of living a life isolated from the supportive comradeship he once enjoyed in his student days with Helena as a fellow member of a student faith community. Losing touch with a nurturing faith community of fellow age mates had in a real way also set him free to see and think about things differently, but always in a rational and logical manner. True to his nature, he could never accept any opposition between faith and reason. So he set out