Carol’s Column

When the cops caught the tunny run home

OTHER mothers have sons.

I have two sons and a resident Ernest Hemingway.

You think I’m exaggerating.

A few weeks ago, the hot African sun blazed down on holiday makers throughout the country. And, at beaches everywhere, they frolicked and sizzled happily.

At Plettenberg Bay, the Lazar family sizzled along with the best of them. Until the day that my youngest, unmarried son, Jamie, decided that he wished to go deep-sea fishing.

“You can’t go deep-sea fishing, it’s dangerous — all those sharks and things. Besides, what happens if a wave swamps the boat. I’ll never see you again. I’ve only got four children, I can’t afford to lose one.”

Jamie sighed. “Ma, it’s quite safe. The boats have two engines and lifejackets. You can’t mollycoddle me for the rest of my life. I’m getting old now.”

Which is why at 5am one morning, the fog thick on the sea, the shells curling with cold and the seagulls shivering, I took my son down to the launching beach.

“Ma, stop crying,” said Jamie as he climbed into the boat. “I’m only going for eight hours.”

Those eight hours were the longest of my life. I imagined the worst. Jamie falling overboard, Jamie wrestling with a blue marlin, being yanked out of the boat and pulled to Australia, Jamie attacked by a great, man-eating shark.

At 1pm I was waiting on the beach with blankets, a thermos flask of chicken soup and his sheep-skin slippers.

At 1.10pm, there was a woosh, and through the surf I saw a small fishing craft shoot through the surf at top speed.

It beached and Jamie jumped out, a triumphant grin on his face.

“Look, Ma, look, I caught a tunny. It’s a fantastic tunny!”

I peered into the boat. Sure enough, there was the largest fish I’d ever seen. A giant, a monster.

His silvery-blue skin glittered in the sunlight, his eye stared at me malevolently. He must have been at least two metres long.

Jamie was euphoric.

“You should have seen me, Ma, I fought him for two hours. Backwards and forwards, I played the line. What a fighter he was!”

So, what can you say to your son who has caught the largest fish in the world?

“Have some chicken soup, Jamie, your feet must be cold.”

A thought crossed my mind. “What are we going to do with that tunny?”

“Do? We’re going to take it home and eat it, of course. You grab one end and I’ll grab the other.”

It will suffice to say that we had to hire a special truck to escort the tunny to a friend who kindly offered to incarcerate the fish in his cooler room for the duration of the holiday.

The journey home to Johannesburg was a nightmare.

It is not possible to fit two adults, four children and a two-metre tunny comfortably into a Kombi.

“OK,” said my husband, always pragmatic, “you sit on the roof-rack and we’ll place the tunny on the back seat. It can’t be in the sun, it will defrost and lose its firmness.”

I wasn’t taking this lying down. “Has it occurred to you that if I sit on the roof-rack, the sun will make me defrost, wrinkle and lose my firmness.”

“So, what’s new?”

Nevertheless, we departed with the tunny wrapped in wet newspapers and a mohair blanket, attached to the roof.

We were stopped on five different occasions by five belligerent traffic officers who insisted that we were transporting a corpse. They were right. Sort of.

By the time we’d unwrapped Jamie’s tunny for the fifth time, he was beginning to smell decidedly unfragrant. The tunny, not Jamie.

It was with profound relief that we arrived home, to find that the tunny could only fit into the freezer if every other item was removed.

I was all for giving it to the cat pound. Jamie was distraught.

“Ma, this tunny is a special fish. It’s an achievement. You can’t throw it away, discard it. If the tunny goes, then I go too.”

I admit, I was tempted. But, it is a mother’s duty to love, cherish, nurture and indulge her children.

So, with much squeezing and manoeuvring, we managed to fit the blasted fish into the freezer. Where he remained, staring grimly through his glazed, cold eye, whenever I opened the door.

Last Sunday, we asked several friends to join us for a tunny braai.

On Saturday morning, I removed the tunny from the freezer so that it might defrost.

By that night it was still frozen solid — all two metres.

I only realised it when I went upstairs and saw it floating in my bath.

I screamed, I mean any normal person would have screamed.

“Relax, Ma, we’ve put him in there to defrost,” said Jamie, smiling proudly. “Isn’t he magnificent.”

“Great, great,” I muttered, “but did you have to sprinkle my entire bottle of Chanel bath salts over him.”

“I thought the Chanel smelled better than the fish,” he said.

By Sunday morning, the tunny was semi-defrosted.

“Don’t worry,” said my husband, “we’ll build an enormous fire and then braai him gently.”

At 11am the Rosebank fire brigade arrived to extinguish the 10-metre fire on our front lawn.

It took a lot of talking to persuade them we were not intent on burning down Parkwood, but in fact only having a tunny braai.

The tunny tasted delicious. Eventually.

No matter that it took three days to cook and a week to eat, which meant our friends moved in for the duration.

I haven’t forgiven my husband for his wish to place me on the roof rack.

In the Amazon, there is a tribe that braais people. It is a great delicacy, they say.

I am looking at my husband with new eyes. About the same size, but somewhat plumper, than Jamie’s tunny — he could keep a family and friends going for at least a fortnight.

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