‘What about Natty Outfitters?’ Boston asked.

‘To hell with them,’ Johnboy said, dribbling a stone with his feet. ‘We’ll specialize in previous employers. Where do you stay?’

‘Nowhere.’

‘You can sleep with me. I got a room in the hostel. Do you like soccer? I play every Saturday.’

That night Boston wrote to his mother again. As you can see from the attached pound note I am quite happy and have every hope for the future. Health good, miss you, good friend Mr J. Lethetwa where you can get Mr Mabusa to compose letter for you and send them to me.

Johnboy and Boston prospered and went a long way together. From the proceeds of previous employers they eventually saved enough to buy a few rubber stamps from one of the clerks in the Pass Office and so expanded their business to include work-seekers’ permits, the forty-eight-hour visitors’ permit and a small but lucrative sideline of residence permits for one of the townships. Those stamps, together with an inking pad, which the clerk also sold them, Boston carried in his raincoat pocket.

They set up shop wherever the people gathered, like the railway station, the bus terminus, the Pass Office, Johnboy collecting the customers and Boston handling the books and papers. Letters from his mother, written by the shopkeeper, Mr Mabusa, began to arrive at his new address, full of gratitude for the money and hope for the future and when are you coming home? He answered faithfully, and sent her money.

Their partnership was only in business. Beyond that they had nothing in common. Boston didn’t mind. He had a lot to think about and the shebeens were as good a place as any to brood about the old mistakes and the new ones, his own, or those of other people that he had seen. When he wasn’t thinking, drinking helped to pass the time and keep his hands busy. He took to it naturally, not noticing what was happening until he was deep and well-soaked in the habit. The long nights with nothing to do, a man with few friends and no luck with the girls. Johnboy went his own way. Boston stayed on the fringes, you might say, within touching distance of the real thing.

There was a gang which frequented the same shebeen; he heard their talk and sometimes added a word of his own. Their real meeting place was Marty’s and he was a frequent visitor. So when a day came when Johnboy did not return, and he got the word that he had been picked up with ten passbooks in his pocket, it was the end to that game—he was not really worried. That night in Marty’s, sitting alone in a corner with a glass in his hand, he heard those three men discuss a job. They had a problem and were discussing it. It was a simple problem, the solution even simpler, so simple that they were amazed when Boston pointed it out to them. They looked at him with disbelief, while Marty laughed. They gave him a cut, of course, and that was the beginning of the real thing. Before long he was going out with them on jobs.