They said he was a war hero. And I had no reason to doubt it. He had lost one arm but this did not appear to hinder his active sexlife. Very active!

When I first met him he must have been  in his late 50s.  Jill, his latest girlfriend, would however have been no older than 20.

Of course a man can lose an arm in a road accident or flying but everybody accepted that he had lost his heroically…for king and country. Certainly I never queried it.They said he had a wife but she had refused to put up with his bevvy of young girls. She had departed for England.

How did I come to be in his entourage? A girl who had, earlier, worked in the same government department as I in Northern Rhodesia introduced me to his circle a while after I got to Cape Town. I was grateful to her. I had been lonely earlier. One-arm Willy knew all the best restaurants in town. He also boasted he knew all the prettiest girls.

These girls were usually surrounded by men:   Rich men, fat men, lecherous men .. a great variety. One of the fat and rich appeared to  be happy to pick up all bills — until that quarrel. He quarrelled with a blonde he had brought to the restaurant that morning.  He got up suddenly and dramatically stalked out … bill unpaid.

In our group, that day, the only one with a bulging purse was … muggins. I had, alas, that very morning, been to the bank to collect my leave pay for the month. I grumbled, but I paid. If all of us had tried to leave without paying, they would, I am sure, have called the police.

Once, in conversation, Willy had mentioned he knew Rhodesia.  He had once spent a while at a dreary dump called Selukwe. One of my good friends, Abel, had told me he had come from that dump. Next time I saw him I mentioned the lecherous one-armed war hero.

“Is that what he says? That he’s a war hero?”

“Everybody says so.”

“Does he say it himself?” asked Abel,

“Not that I can recall, I can’t say that I’ve ever heard him say it.”

“Well, if he ever does, call him a bloody liar. Call me as a witness. He lost it in an accident … a bloody stupid rail accident, chasing girls. He climbed out of a compartment and was hanging on to the outside of a moving train … moving quite fast. He was trying to climb into another compartment … a compartment full of girls. But they would not open their window.  Someone shouted ‘tunnel coming up’. Perhaps it was just a joke, I don’t know. But he panicked and jumped … fell under the wheels. The girls pulled the emergency cord. They got the train to stop but it was too late. When they got him to a hospital, all the doctors could do was to amputate the arm. War hero? My foot!”

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