I had been enrolled at the local school when the new term began at the end of January. Six was the starting age for Grade One, but after a few days it was clear that my year spent in a mixed-age class at boarding school had put me well ahead of the rest of the kids. I was pushed up to Grade Three where I easily held my own against kids two years older than me. Doing the Judge’s arithmetic, my early grounding in reading, a comprehensive understanding of Afrikaans in a classroom of English-speaking kids coming without enthusiasm to the language for the first time, and Doc’s demand from our first day that I write up my field notes all gave me a hugely unfair advantage. I might possibly have been elevated even further but for the embarrassment it would have caused.
I quickly earned a reputation, rather unjustly, for being clever. Doc had persuaded me to drop my camouflage and not to play dumb. ‘To be smart is not a sin. But to be smart and not use it, that, Peekay, is a sin. Absoloodle!’ I had needed little encouragement. Under his direction my mind was constantly hungry, and I soon found the school work tedious and simplistic. Doc became my real teacher and school was simply time spent between eight and one o’clock when I would rush from the classroom to his cottage hidden in the cactus garden.
His thorny garden was a never-ending source of delight. It was half an acre on the more or less flat top of a small hill which overlooked the town and valley. A ten-minute climb to solitude, up a little dirt and rock road that led nowhere else. His cactus garden may well have been the best private collection of cacti and succulents in the world. I, who grew to be an expert on cacti, have never seen a better one.
Doc’s cottage had three rooms and a lean-to kitchen. The three rooms were called the music room, the book room and the whisky room. Each having its specified purpose: music, study and drinking himself to sleep. For in all things, even in drunkenness, Doc had a tidy mind.
In the first year we spent together I never once witnessed him drunk, though when I arrived just after dawn for my music lesson I often had to wake him, whereupon he would stumble outside to retch and cough. Then he would come to sit beside the Steinway, his blue eyes red-rimmed and dulled from the previous night’s whisky, his long fingers wrapped around the enamel mug of bitter black coffee I had made him on the Primus. Doc never talked about drinking. All he would sometimes say as I set my music out on the big Steinway was, ‘Pianissimo, Peekay, the wolves were howling in my head last night.’ I would look through my music for something soft and easy on the nerves. Perhaps this is why, as I grew older and more proficient, I seemed more attracted to playing Chopin. There is a great deal less fortissimo in a Chopin étude than in Liszt or Brahms and Doc’s early morning hangovers may, over that first year, have somehow inclined me to softer music.
It was the cactus garden which testified to ‘his problem with Doctor Bottle’, as my mother would call any person who ever held strong drink to their lips. Bordering both sides of the path for a hundred yards through the cactus garden were embedded Johnnie Walker bottles, their square bases shining in the sun like parallel silver snakes winding around the cactus and aloe and blazing orange and pink portulaca. Each bottle represented an attempt to obviate some private torture. Doc made no apology for his drinking. He seldom even mentioned it and when he did it was always blamed quietly and politely on the wolves, which I imagined slavering away, great red tongues lolling, gnashing teeth chomping up Doc’s brains.
It was at sunset on a Saturday afternoon late in January 1941, a little more than a year after Doc and I had first met on the hill behind the rose garden. We’d spent the day in the hills and had almost arrived back at Doc’s cottage. We’d found a patch of Senecio serpens high up in a dry kloof, growing over the tailings of an old digging. It was a nice find although blue chalksticks, as they are commonly called, are not too rare unless they flower in an unusual colour. We had decided to plant them in the cactus garden and wait until they flowered again. That was the magic of the cactus garden, some succulents can play dumb; a common blue chalkstick can turn from a Cinderella into a princess in front of your very eyes. I was the first to notice the army van with the white-stencilled Military Police on its hood. The van was parked directly in front of the whisky bottle path which led to the cottage, hidden from view amongst the tall cactus. Two men leaned against the front mudguard smoking, their red-banded khaki caps resting on the hood of the van which had been turned to face down the hill. Doc was explaining the differences between the genus Senecio serpens and the lighter-coloured Glottiphyllym uncatum, banging his long hiking stick into the ground as he walked and getting generally excited as he did when his mind was absorbed in esoteric botanical detail.
The two men saw us approach, and dropping their cigarettes ground them underfoot. Clearing their throats almost simultaneously, they reached for their caps, carefully placed them back on their heads the way men do when they are about to undertake an unpleasant duty. Both wore khaki bush shirts, shorts, brown boots, puttees and khaki stockings, though one of them wore the polished Sam Browne belt of an officer while the other, a sergeant, wore a white webbing one. The officer stepped right in front of Doc who stopped and looked up in surprise. Doc was taller than the officer by at least a foot, so the military man was obliged to look up at him. He had a thin black pencil moustache just like Pik Botha, and although he was not standing to attention his body seemed permanently rigid. From the top pocket of his tunic he removed a piece of paper which he held up.
‘Good afternoon, sir. You are Karl Von Vollensteen, Professor Karl Von Vollensteen?’ he asked in a sententious voice.
‘Ja, this is me,’ Doc said, surprised that anyone would question so obvious a fact.
The officer cleared his throat and proceeded to read from the paper he held in front of him. ‘Under the Aliens Act of 1939 and by the authority vested in me by the Provost Marshal of the South African Armed Forces, I arrest you. You are charged with conspiracy to undermine the security of a nation at war.’ He handed the paper to Doc. ‘You will have to come with me, sir. The civilian police, under the direction of military security, will search your premises and you will be detained at Barberton prison until your case can be heard.’
To my surprise Doc made no protest. His face was sad as he looked down at the officer and handed him back the piece of paper without even glancing at it. He raised his head to look over the officer and past where the sergeant was standing next to the van, his gaze following the line of the cactus garden. He turned slowly, his eyes filled with pain, taking in the hills, the marvellous aloe-dotted hills, his garden of Eden for twenty years in the Africa he so savagely loved. Finally he turned to look over the town, across the valley to the sun beginning to dip behind the escarpment.
‘The stupidity. Already the stupidity begins again,’ he said softly, then turning to me he patted my shoulder. ‘You must plant the Senecio serpens to get the morning sun, they like that.’ He removed his bush hat and absent-mindedly put it on the roof of the van. He got his red bandanna from his overalls and slowly wiped his face and sniffed into it and pushed his nose around before returning it to the pocket of his overalls. Then he lifted his bush hat from the roof of the van and put it on my head. I looked up at him in surprise, Doc didn’t play that sort of childish game. But his eyes were sad and his voice soft, barely above a whisper. ‘So, now you are the boss of the cactus garden, Peekay.’ I wanted to cry and I think Doc wanted to as well. But we didn’t. We both knew enough not to show our feelings in front of the military.
Turning to the officer, Doc said, ‘You will please allow me first to shave and change my clothes. A man must go to prison in his best clothes.’
The officer rolled his eyes heavenwards. From the number of cigarette butts on the ground they had been waiting for some time and he obviously wanted to get going. ‘Orright, professor, but make it snappy.’ Turning to the sergeant in an official manner he rapped, ‘Sergeant! Escort the prisoner to his house for kit change and ablutions.’
We walked slowly down the whisky bottle path and Doc dropped his canvas shoulder bag on the open verandah. I followed him into the dark little cottage. ‘Do not light the lamps, Peekay, the light is soft and we will soon be gone.’ I followed him to the lean-to kitchen where he placed an enamel basin on the hard earth floor and poured water into it from a jug. I took the jug and refilled it from the rainwater tank behind the cottage. Doc’s cottage, isolated from the town by the small hill, had no running water. He stripped down in the lean-to kitchen and using a loofah washed himself from head to toe. I brought him the fresh jug of water and, stepping out of the lean-to into the garden, he stood beside a tall cactus and poured it over his head, giving the cactus the benefit of the over-flow. Then he wiped himself briskly with an almost threadbare towel. He was brown all over, for we often lay on a rock in the hills to sun ourselves after a swim in a mountain creek. His thin body was hard and sinewy and the snowy-white hair on his chest seemed incongruous. I had seen my granpa nude and while he too was a thin man, he didn’t have the same hard-as-nails look.
The sergeant had grown impatient waiting around the kitchen and had wandered into the music room where he was playing chopsticks on the Steinway. Doc seemed not to hear as he shaved carefully, stropping his cut-throat razor for ages until it was perfect. Then he dressed slowly in his white linen suit and black boots. Finally he placed a spare shirt and his shaving things in a sugar bag, and walking through to the book room he selected a large book from the very top shelf of one of the bookshelves which he had constructed from bricks and pineboard planks. ‘Put it also in the bag, Peekay.’ I took the large leather-bound volume from him and looked at the spine. It was an old book whose maroon leather binding was scuffed and mottled with rough brown leather spots showing through the once smooth and polished cover. The title embossed on the spine was hard to read as the gold had mostly worn away leaving only the pale embossing. It read, ‘Cactaceae. Afrika und Amerika. K. J. Von Vollensteen.’ I opened the heavy book to find that it was written in German. I walked into the whisky room where Doc had left the sugar bag, and using the edge of the blanket on the small, hard bed I wiped the dust from the cover of the book and put it in the bag. On the packing case dresser next to the bed was half a bottle of Johnnie Walker and this too I put in the bag. Then heaving it over my shoulder I joined Doc who was standing at the front door. He removed his panama hat from a hook on the wall and picked up his silver-handled walking stick leaning in the corner behind the door. ‘We are ready, sir,’ he said, turning slowly to the sergeant a few feet away in the music room.
The sergeant rose from the piano stool. ‘That’s a blêrrie good peeana you got there, professor. Once in the bioscope I saw this fillim star dance on the top of a peeana just like this one, only it was all white. I think it was Greeta Garbo but I’m not sure.’ He took a last look around the cottage. ‘Okay man, let’s go.’ He took the sugar bag from my shoulder and looked into it. ‘Hey, what’s this? You can’t take whisky where you going, are you stupid or something?’ I started to apologise, but he checked me with his hand and grinned. ‘If you like we can have a quick spot now, oubaas?’ he said to Doc. ‘Who knows when you’ll get another chance hey?’ He gave him a conspiratorial wink and uncorked the bottle. Raising it to his lips, he took a long drag of whisky. He winced as he withdrew the bottle from his mouth, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and the top of the bottle with the palm of his hand. ‘Lekker, man, that’s blêrrie good whisky! No use leaving it lying around hey?’ He handed the bottle to Doc who raised his hand in refusal. ‘C’mon don’t be stupid, man. It’s going to be a long time between drinks, better make the most of it.’ He held it towards Doc after taking another long swig. In two goes he had reduced the whisky to less than a quarter of a bottle. Doc took the bottle of Johnnie Walker and held it briefly to his lips without opening his mouth before handing it back. The sergeant shrugged. ‘Suit yourself, man, all the more for me, it’s blêrrie good whisky. Who knows? Tomorrow maybe we’re all dead.’ He took another long swig and walked over to the piano. ‘In this fillim this man was playing the peeana like at a funeral, then a drunk tipped some whisky on it and suddenly it was playing like mad.’ He tipped the remaining whisky over the keys of the Steinway. Doc, who had been standing passively waiting, seemed to come alive. He raised his stick and rushed at the sergeant.
‘Schweinhund! Do not defile the instrument of Beethoven, Brahms, Bach and Liszt!’ He brought his cane down hard onto the sergeant’s wrist and the bottle fell from his hand to smash on the cement floor. Gripping his wrist, the sergeant danced in agony amongst the broken glass. Doc, using the sleeve of his linen jacket, ran his arm across the keys in an attempt to wipe them and sent the piano into a glissando. Then he turned and walked towards the front door.
‘You fucking Nazi bastard!’ the sergeant yelled. I hurried after Doc and he caught up with us on the path outside the cottage. ‘I’ll show you, you child fucker!’ He was trying to remove a pair of handcuffs from his belt as he ran. ‘Stop! You’re under military arrest!’ But Doc, his head held high, simply continued down the path towards the van. The sergeant grabbed Doc’s arm and clicked a handcuff around his compliant wrist. Doc seemed hardly to notice and just kept walking, obliging the sergeant to hang onto the other handcuff as though he were being dragged along like a prisoner. He took a swinging kick at Doc, knocking his legs from under him and bringing the old man to his knees on the path. In his fury and humiliation he aimed a second kick just as, screaming, I flung myself at his legs. The army boot intended for Doc’s ribs caught me under the chin knocking me unconscious.
I awoke in Barberton Hospital with a man in a white coat shining a torch into my eyes. My head was ringing as though voices came from the other end of a long tunnel. ‘Well, thank God for that, he’s regained consciousness,’ I heard him say.
‘Thank you, Jesus,’ I heard my mother say in a weepy voice. I looked around to see her seated at the side of the bed. She looked pale and worried and her hair hung in wisps around her eyes for she had come out without her hat and still wore her pink sewing smock. My granpa was also there, sitting on a chair at the opposite side of the bed. I tried to talk but found it impossible and my jaw hurt like billy-o. I managed a weak grunt without opening my mouth, but that was all. My mouth tasted of blood and, running my swollen tongue around my palate, I realised that several of my teeth were missing.
The doctor spoke to me. ‘Now son, I want you to tell me how many fingers I’m holding up in front of you.’ He held up two and I held up two fingers. ‘Again.’ He held up four fingers and I too held up four. He repeated this with several combinations before he finally said, ‘Well, that’s something anyway, he doesn’t appear to have concussion. We’ll have to X-ray the jaw, though I think it’s probably broken.’ He turned to my mother and granpa. ‘The boy is in a lot of pain, we’ll be taking him into theatre almost immediately, we may need to wire his jaw and there are several broken teeth which we will have to clean up. He’ll be sedated when he comes out so there isn’t any point in your staying.’
They both rose and my mother leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. ‘We’ll see you tomorrow morning, darling. You be a brave boy now!’ My granpa touched me lightly on the shoulder. ‘There’s a good lad,’ he said.
I watched them leave the emergency ward where I appeared to be the only emergency, as the other three beds were unoccupied. My jaw ached a great deal and while I think I may have been crying, I only recall being terribly concerned for Doc.
It turned out my jaw had been broken. They wired the top jaw to the bottom one in the closed mouth position so I was unable to talk. I couldn’t enquire about him. Adults decide what they want kids to know and all my mother would say when she came to visit was, ‘You’ve had a terrible shock, darling, you mustn’t think about what happened.’
In fact, that was all I could think about. Doc was the most important person in my life and the thought of him lying in a dark cell probably dying was almost unbearable. I managed to communicate to a junior nurse called Marie, who had taken to calling me her little skattebol, that I wanted paper and a pencil. She brought a pad and a pencil and in running writing I wrote, ‘What’s happened to Professor Von Vollensteen?’ She read the note and her eyes grew large.
‘Ag no, man! Sister says we can’t tell you nothing.’ She held out her hand for the pad and pencil but I quickly tucked it under the quilt. ‘Give it to me back! Please, I’ll get into trouble with Sister!’ I shook my head, which hurt. ‘I’ll tell on you, you hear!’ But I knew she wouldn’t. I felt less vulnerable with the pad and pencil beside me. I tore a single sheet from the small pad and brought it out from under the bedclothes. Placing it on the cabinet beside my bed, I leaned over and wrote, ‘My name is not skattebol, it is PEEKAY.’ I didn’t much like the endearment as I didn’t see myself as a fluffy ball which is a name you give to really small kids. I tore the bit I’d written on from the sheet of paper and handed it to her. She read it slowly then walked to the end of the bed.
‘That’s not what it says here,’ Marie said, looking down at the progress chart which hung from the foot of the bed. ‘Don’t you know your proper name then?’ she teased. ‘It’s wrong,’ I scribbled, tearing off a second note and holding it out to her. ‘Sis, man! You don’t even know your own name. I never heard of a name like Peekay, where’d you get a silly name like that?’ On the remaining scrap of paper I wrote, ‘I just got it.’
Marie took a sharp breath. ‘Anyway, it’s a rotten name for a hero who tackled a German spy when he was trying to escape.’ Her eyes grew big again and she moved her spotty face close to mine. ‘It says in the paper you even may be going to get a medal!’ She drew back suddenly, alarmed that she’d told me too much. ‘Don’t you tell Sister I told you, you hear.’ She brought a finger up to her lips. ‘I promise I’ll call you Peekay if you promise to stay stom.’ I nodded my head, though I wondered how she thought I could tell anyone. The tears began to roll down my cheeks. I hadn’t wanted them to, they just came because of the news about Doc. I could hear his voice when the officer had handed him the piece of paper. ‘The stupidity. Already the stupidity begins again.’
‘Don’t cry, Peekay. Sister’ll know I told you if you cry,’ Marie said, distressed. I knuckled the tears from my eyes and then she bathed my face with a wet flannel. ‘I don’t really think Peekay is a silly name,’ she said gently. ‘Who showed you how to write so good? I went to school up to fourteen and even I can’t write so good as you.’
After three days alone in the ward I was moved onto the verandah where there were eight beds all occupied. Except for the fact that I still couldn’t talk, I was much better. I had walked into the ward with the sister and with the exception of two old men who were asleep, all the others had applauded and said things like, ‘Well done, son!’ One man said that I was a proper patriot. As soon as Sister left the ward I wrote on a piece of paper as big as I could, ‘What happened to Professor Von Vollensteen?’ I jumped out of bed and took it over to the bed nearest me and gave it to the man in it. He read it and handed it back to me.
‘You mean the German spy? Sorry, son, we’re not supposed to tell you,’ he winked at the others, ‘we got strict orders.’ The others all nodded. ‘Mind you, you’re a brave little bugger, I have to say that for you.’ The other men seemed to agree with him.
My mother came to the hospital in the mornings when Pastor Mulvery was able to bring her. She sat with me while he went around the hospital to witness for the Lord. But first he came in to see me, and he’d flash his lightning smile which prevented his two front teeth from escaping and held my hand in his damp, warm grasp for ages until it felt as though it wanted to jump out of his soft grip and run away and hide. In his soft woman’s voice he said, ‘We’re all praying that this terrible ordeal will make you accept Jesus into your heart.’ Then, still holding my hand, he knelt beside the bed and my mother also knelt on the other side and Pastor Mulvery would pray out aloud. When he prayed his voice rose even higher and he became quite excited.
He would start with a few random ‘Hallelujahs’ and my mother would respond with ‘Praise His name! Praise His precious name!’ And Pastor Mulvery would say, ‘Lord, we are gathered here in Your precious name to pray for this poor child.’ ‘Amen,’ my mother would say. ‘In his terrible affliction, show him the path to salvation. Oh precious Redeemer who died on the cross so we might be free.’ ‘Hallelujah, praise the Lord,’ my mother would answer. ‘Son, open your heart to Jesus, accept Him into your life. Lord, do not condemn him to the terrible fires of hell, grant him everlasting life with your glorious salvation.’ ‘Hallelujah, blessed be His name!’ ‘Bring your sin to Jesus, son, lay it at His feet so that He may grant you His precious redemption. Precious Jesus, answer our prayers, open his young heart, let him see you in all your glory. Lord, we pray for this child’s soul, we earnestly beseech you to bring him from darkness to the light, from the inky black of the stone tomb on Golgotha into the glorious morning of the resurrection of our sweet Jesus Christ!’ ‘Yes Jesus! Precious Jesus!’ my mother would be saying on her side of the bed. And so it would go every morning.
Not long after I’d first met Doc, we were sitting on our rock on the hill behind the rose garden and I had asked him why I was a sinner and what I had done to be condemned to eternal hell fire unless I was born again.
He sat for a long time looking over the valley and then he said, ‘Peekay, God is too busy making the sun come up and go down and watching so the moon floats just right in the sky to be concerned with such rubbish. Only man wants always God should be there to condemn this one and save that one. Always it is man who wants to make heaven and hell. God is too busy training the bees to make honey and every morning opening up all the new flowers for business.’ He paused and smiled. ‘In Mexico there is a cactus that even sometimes you would think God forgets. But no, my friend, this is not so. On a full moon in the desert every one hundred years he remembers and he opens up a single flower to bloom. And if you should be there and you see this beautiful cactus blossom painted silver by the moon and laughing up at the stars, this, Peekay, is heaven.’ He looked at me, his deep blue eyes sharp and penetrating. ‘This is the faith in God the cactus has.’ We had sat for a while before he spoke again. ‘It is better just to get on with the business of living and minding your own business and maybe, if God likes the way you do things, he may just let you flower for a day or a night. But don’t go pestering and begging and telling Him all your stupid little sins, that way you will spoil His day. Absoloodle.’
I still sometimes got a bit scared about going to hell and I used to think quite a lot about being born again. But my heart didn’t want to open up and receive the Lord. All the people I knew who had opened up their hearts to Jesus struck me as a pretty pathetic lot, not bad, not good, just nothing. I couldn’t afford to be just nothing when I was aiming to be the welterweight champion of the world. I guess my mother was right when she said if I kept rejecting the Lord and hardening my heart one day He might just go away and leave me to it. That’s what must have happened because after a while it got a lot easier and I didn’t worry as much. I decided I liked Doc’s God a lot more than my mother’s and Pastor Mulvery’s and Pik Botha’s and all the people who loved Jesus at the Apostolic Faith Mission. Jesus, who was God’s dearly beloved son, seemed to be in charge of things there. He seemed to be very keen on saving souls and had actually died for their sins, but I couldn’t help feeling it may have been a bit of a waste. Still, they seemed pretty grateful because they spoke a lot more about Jesus than about God. Jesus was definitely number one at the Apostolic Faith Mission.
Later I was to learn that there was a third party involved called the Holy Ghost who spoke in tongues of invisible fire and he gave people a thing called ‘the gift of tongues’. When he did this, people would jump up in prayer meetings and wave their arms around and shake a lot with their eyes closed. They never seemed to bump into anything either, it was quite uncanny. And they’d babble away and sing, using strange words. I’d try to do it afterwards but it never sounded right. It was a gift all right.
A visiting pastor from the Assembly of God Church in America told us once when we were having a revival week that he had definite proof that a woman who had never been out of her small town in America spoke in Swahili when the Holy Ghost entered into her. There was a missionary from Africa who understood Swahili present in the same small church in America and she’d understood every word. He didn’t tell us what she said, but he said there were lots of cases like this and that he’d personally witnessed quite a few. I had listened from then on but nobody in the Apostolic Faith Mission ever spoke Zulu or Shangaan. Maybe Zulu and Shangaan weren’t exotic enough for the Holy Ghost. I wondered what was so special about Swahili.
Pastor Mulvery got up from beside the hospital bed and gave me a flash smile and said that Jesus loved me anyway. Then he trotted off with the Bible under one arm and a handful of tracts to visit all the other patients and my mother called him a precious man and stayed with me.
After I got the pad I wrote her a long note asking her about Doc. She took it and without reading it, asked, ‘Is this about the Professor?’ Her lips were drawn tight as I nodded. Then she scrunched the note in her hand. ‘I don’t want you ever to mention his name again, do you hear? He is an evil man who used you to cover up the terrible things he was doing and then he nearly killed you.’ There were sudden tears in her eyes. ‘The doctor says, if he had caught you on the side of the head he would have killed you! Another three inches and you would have been dead. You’ve been through a terrible experience and I’ve prayed and prayed the Lord will make you forget it so you are not scarred for life.’ She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
‘No! No!’ I forced myself to say. What came out was sort of two squeaks from the back of my throat which forced their way past my bruised and swollen tongue and out of my clamped mouth. I started to cry silently without wanting to in front of my mother. They were blaming Doc for what had happened to me and I was the only one who knew the truth and I couldn’t help him. It was my fault anyway. If I hadn’t put the bottle of Johnnie Walker in his sugar bag this never would have happened. Doc, whom I loved so dearly, had become another Pisskop victim. This time it was much worse than a nervous breakdown.
My mother had stopped sniffing when she saw my tears. ‘You poor little mite, you’ve been through a terrible time. We’ll never talk about it again. Mrs Boxall from the library has asked to come and see you but the doctor and I have agreed that you’re not well enough to have visitors.’ She opened her bag and withdrew a green folded card. ‘Now I have some good news for you. Your report card came and you came first in your class. Your granpa and I are very proud of you.’ She beamed at me, her tears forgotten. ‘They’ve put you up another two classes, you’re going to be in with the ten-year-olds. Fancy that, seven and in with the ten-year-olds!’ She handed the report card to me and through my tears I took it and tore it into four pieces. For a long time my mother said nothing, looking down at the pieces of green cardboard in my lap. Finally she gave a deep sigh. I hated her sighs the most because they made me feel terribly guilty. ‘The Lord has blessed you with a good brain. I pray every day that you will take Him into your heart and use your fine mind to glorify His precious name.’ She gathered the pieces up and dropped them into her handbag, giving me a sort of squiffy smile. ‘I’m sure it can be mended, you are just not your old cheerful self at present, are you?’ But her eyes weren’t smiling as she spoke.
That afternoon I wrote a note to Mrs Boxall at the library. All it said was, ‘Please come! In the afternoon,’ and I signed it. I also wrote a note for Marie asking her if she would take the note to Mrs Boxall at the Barberton public library. Marie had switched mid-week to night duty and came on at six p.m. with our dinner. I handed her the note. She read it quickly and hid it in the pocket of her white starched junior nurse’s uniform. She picked up my dinner tray from the trolley and brought it over to me.
‘I’ll only do it if it’s got nothing to do with that spy,’ she whispered as she put my tray down in front of me. I handed her the second note. She gave me a suspicious look as she took it. ‘I got to read it first before I say I’ll do it.’ She read the note and seemed assured by its contents. ‘I’ve got my day off tomorrow, I’ll do it then. Now promise you’ll eat your pumpkin, you left it last night and also your peas.’ She seated herself on the side of the bed and, taking up a teaspoon, she filled it with pumpkin and put it through the hole in the corner of my mouth. I had lost four top and bottom teeth on the same side where the sergeant’s boot had landed, and Marie called it my ‘feeding hole’. She was the best of anyone at getting the mashed food they were beginning to give me through the hole without making my gums bleed.
I spent the rest of the evening writing for Mrs Boxall a long, detailed description of what had happened. Doc, when I presented him with my botanical notes, would always stress that a botanist is concerned with detail. ‘Observation is what makes a scientist,’ he said. ‘It is only by seeing things in minute detail that we learn their secrets. Others can walk past a plant for a whole life and never even notice the colour of its blossoms, but the botanist knows every beat of its heart and turning of petal.’ And so I wrote it all down just the way it happened, even the swear-words, and then I hid the three sheets of paper in my pillowslip. Mrs Boxall came the very next afternoon. In her string bag she carried a new William book by Richmal Crompton, a book called Flowers from the banks of the Zambesi by Revd William Barton of the London Missionary Society and three copies of National Geographic. ‘You are such a precocious child, Peekay, I hope they suit your catholic taste.’ Like Doc, Mrs Boxall never talked down to me. With the result that I didn’t always understand her and wondered what the Catholics might have to do with my taste.
I withdrew my notes from inside the pillow and handed them to Mrs Boxall. ‘Well now, pray, what have we here?’ she said, taking the three pages and reaching into her bag for her glasses. She read for a long time and then read the three pages again before looking up at me. ‘Remarkable! You are a remarkable child. This comes just in time. A military court is being convened next week and things are looking pretty grim for our professor, my dear. The whole jolly town is up in arms about him. People are seeing Jerries in their chamberpots.’ She chuckled at her own joke. ‘I tried to see him in prison but those dreadful Boers said only authorised people could see him. If a librarian isn’t an authorised person then who is, I ask you? But the stupid warder at the gate wouldn’t budge. I’ve started a petition in the library but so far I only have twelve signatures and three of them are Boers and we all know where their sympathies lie, do we not? That dreadful little man, Georgie Hankin, has threatened to say some perfectly ghastly things about me in Goldfields News and has told me privately that, if I persist, he can’t have a Nazi-sympathiser writing a column in his newspaper. Honestly, you’d think it was The Times of London the way he carries on about that dreadful little rag!’ She paused, dug once more into her string bag and withdrew a copy of the Goldfields News. Taking up almost half the front page was Doc’s picture of me sitting on the rock. Above the picture in huge black letters it said, THE BOY HE TRIED TO KILL! Just above the headline and below the masthead was written Special Spy Edition. Under the picture the caption read, Like Abraham’s biblical sacrifice of Isaac, the innocent boy waits on the rock. No doubt Georgie Hankin, who as usual had it all wrong, saw this as his finest professional hour.
Doc’s arrest had occurred just in time for the weekly edition which appeared on a Monday. It carried the original news of the arrest, and this special two-page mid-week edition, using precious rationed newsprint, was an attempt by Mr Hankin to achieve immortality in his profession. The reason Mrs Boxall hadn’t been able to visit me was because Dr Simpson, in resisting Georgie and his photographer’s attempts to come and see me, had banned all visitors. She was surprised that I hadn’t seen the earlier paper and promised to bring it the following afternoon, though as a trained librarian she had little trouble verbally reproducing the essence and the flavour of Monday’s big story.
The essence of the story reported in the News was that the Provost officer and his sergeant had waited most of the afternoon for Doc to arrive. When he appeared with a small boy in tow, he was in a dishevelled state and it was obvious to the two military policemen that he had been drinking. The sergeant, on the orders of the officer, escorted him back to his cottage to allow him to clean up. Whereupon, when his back was turned, Doc attacked the sergeant with a heavy metal-topped walking stick and attempted to run for the hills. It was pointed out that Doc knew the hills well and would easily be able to conceal himself indefinitely in one of the hundreds of disused mine shafts dotted all through the mountains. He would then make his way across the mountains to Lourenço Marques, the nearest neutral territory.
The story had gone on to say that the sergeant was stunned from the blows he had received and it looked as though Doc would make good his escape had it not been for me who had bravely tackled him. Hearing my scream, the officer had rushed down the path just in time to see Doc take a vicious kick at my head. The officer arrested the suspected spy at the point of his pistol.
The editorial went on to point out that Doc was a noted photographer, and that under the guise of photographing cactus he had undoubtedly taken pictures of likely enemy landing places and established landmarks and mine shafts for storing food and weapons for enemy spies infiltrating South Africa from Portuguese territory. The paper pointed out that there were no pictures to be found of such places, confirming that they had already reached the enemy and that no clever spy would leave such incriminating evidence around. Fortuitously, inside the expensive German Leica camera the spy had used that very afternoon was exposed film of a hole in the mountainside, with the ore tailings dug from the mine heaped directly outside the shaft making it an ideal defensive position. In Doc’s notepad had been found a compass bearing and exact location of the disused mine. There had also been several pictures of a succulent, which proved how cunning and careful to cover up Doc had been.
The picture was, of course, the site where we had found Senecio serpens, the blue chalksticks. The remainder of the exposed pictures on Doc’s film had been of the succulent. Doc, as he had taught me to do, always established the location of a find, the direction of the prevailing winds, by studying the bush and larger plants in the immediate area, the soil conditions and the surrounding rock types.
To the rumour-happy folk of Barberton it was all very feasible and few of them paused long enough to examine the evidence or to question the town’s fifteen-year relationship with Doc. Mrs Boxall said people were going around saying, ‘Once a Jerry always a Jerry!’ satisfied that this covered a multitude of sins. ‘Goodness, Peekay, I’d suspect my dear old father before I’d suspect the professor. He doesn’t have a patriotic bone in his body unless it’s for Africa and has something to do with cactus.’ She folded my notes carefully and placed them in her handbag. ‘Oh dear, I nearly forgot, I brought you a bag of gob-stoppers. Oh my goodness!’ she said in an alarmed voice. ‘I’d quite forgotten about your jaw, what an idiot I am.’ She dropped the rock-hard candy into her bag and clipped it shut and leaned over and touched me on the chin. ‘Chin up, old chap, we’ve got all the evidence we need to get our mutual friend out of trouble. I’ll get back tomorrow with the news.’ She was gone, her sensible brogue shoes clattering on the polished cement floor, her back straight as a ramrod and her bobbed head held high. I could hear her still clattering down the verandah long after she was out of sight.
For the first time in a week I felt happy. Mrs Boxall was not the sort to be trifled with and I had every confidence that she’d sort things out. She was Doc’s friend and mine as well and as Doc had so often said, ‘This woman, she is not a fool, Peekay.’
But I didn’t see Mrs Boxall the next day. Somehow my mother had heard of her visit and had seen Dr Simpson who brought down a ban on visitors again. I had begun to make semi-intelligent sounds through my wired jaw and Marie, after a few trial sessions, had little trouble understanding me. She said she had a little brother who was a bit wonky in the head and I sounded a lot like him, which made it easy for her to understand me. It was nice to talk to someone again and it was Marie who told me about my mother’s visit to Dr Simpson which she overheard while she was in the dispensary. My mother said nothing to me the morning after she had visited the doctor and I was once again cut off without any news. Marie also told me that I would be going home on Tuesday and she was quite sad about it. She was fifteen years old and came from a farm in the valley. She only got one weekend a month off to go home. She lived in the nurses’ home while all the other juniors lived in town. She wasn’t very pretty or very clever and she had pimples, which she called her ‘terrible spots’, so she didn’t have any friends. I told her I was her friend and if she liked she could come into the hills with me. She seemed a bit worried about that and said girls weren’t supposed to go climbing hills, but she’d like to come anyway.
On the Monday evening she came into the ward and put a large brown paper bag on the bed. She brought a finger to her lips, signalling for me to say nothing. ‘Mrs Boxall brought it to the nurses’ home, she says it’s the latest on you know what,’ she whispered, thrilled to be part of the conspiracy but also frightened. Though later when she was feeding me, she said, ‘I did nothing wrong, did I? I just brought in this brown paper packet, that’s all. It’s only polite to do people a favour, isn’t it?’
I had looked into the paper bag which, at first glance, seemed to contain nothing but bananas, but under the bananas was a tightly folded newspaper and a letter from Mrs Boxall. After lights out I stuffed both into my pyjama jacket and walked down the corridor to the lavatories. Taking the letter out, I began to read. It was written in Mrs Boxall’s neat librarian’s hand.
Dear Peekay,
Much news from the war zone. I have been to see Mr Andrews. He is the lawyer who comes into the library and only takes out books on birds. He read your notes and he said, ‘By Jove! This places a different complexion on everything.’ He seemed very hopeful that he could get to the military judge when he arrives from Pretoria next Wednesday. He agrees with me your notes are excellent. ‘Too good,’ he said, ‘who will believe a seven-year-old can express himself in such detail?’
Well, my dear, that’s the problem he thinks we may have. He knows about your inability to speak. But he’s hit on a clever plan. He wants you to take an intelligence test, a written test in front of the judge so the judge can make up his own mind. Mr Andrews has been to see your mother but she won’t hear of your having anything to do with the case. But she did say she’d pray about it so all is not lost. It’s a bit of a problem really, but we’re not beaten yet. I’m sure God is on our side and not on the side of Georgie Hankin or the military. British justice will come through in the end, even if we have to write personally to Mr Winston Churchill.
Can you come and see me when you get out of hospital? Keep your chin up!
Yours sincerely,
Fiona Boxall
Librarian
I wondered what sort of test the judge would give me. What if I failed and let Doc down? What if the Lord didn’t give my mother permission for me to see the judge?
But the Lord, with a little help from Mr Andrews who came from one of the oldest and most important families in town, came out in favour of my being a witness at the hearing. The lawyer had pointed out that it was very much in my mother’s interests to clear our family name as the prattle tongues in town might well accuse her of neglect for having allowed me to roam the hills with a German spy.
I was released from hospital on Tuesday and on the following morning Mrs Boxall called round in Charlie, her little Austin Seven, to pick me up and take me down to the magistrates’ court where the military tribunal was to be held. Mr Andrews was waiting for us and so, to my surprise, was Marie.
‘She seems to be the only one who can understand you, Peekay, so we’ve brought her along as interpreter. It was my idea and a good one, even if I say so myself,’ Mrs Boxall declared. Marie was dressed in a freshly starched nurse’s uniform and looked even more scared than I felt.
Mr Andrews left us and we had to wait a long while, sitting on a bench in the waiting room. Finally, he came back and said the judge would see us privately in the magistrates’ chambers and, depending on how things went, I wouldn’t be required as a witness.
None of this made very much sense to me but we had to walk down a long corridor of cork lino that smelt of floor wax. A lady with a trolley full of teacups went rattling past us and she stared at me. I was not yet used to people seeing me with my jaw wired up. I looked into every open door in the hope that I might see Doc. We finally reached a door with Magistrate in gold lettering on a square of polished wood screwed to the door. Mr Andrews knocked on it softly and a voice said ‘Come!’ and we followed him in. Sitting behind a desk was a man wearing a proper uniform with a tie and polished leather Sam Browne belt. He stood up when we entered and I could see he wore long pants and a revolver at his side. Mr Andrews introduced him to us as Colonel de Villiers. There were four chairs arranged in front of the desk and we all sat down. My notes were on the desk on top of a file that was tied with purple tape. Colonel de Villiers put on a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles which slid down his nose as he looked up so he looked over the top of them as he spoke.
‘Well now, young man, Mr Andrews here tells me that you are bright enough to have written these notes.’ He tapped my notes with his forefinger. ‘How old are you?’
‘Seven, sir,’ I rasped at the back of my throat. The colonel, Mr Andrews and Mrs Boxall turned to look at Marie. Her mouth opened but nothing came out. Her whole face appeared to be frozen in terror, then two big tears squeezed out of her eyes. She tried again but still nothing came out. I held up seven fingers to the colonel who looked stern and cleared his throat.
‘I see, seven. Well, you write very well for a seven-year-old. I think someone must have helped you, don’t you?’ I looked at Marie who was sniffing into a hankie Mrs Boxall had handed her. I shook my head. ‘Umph!’ the colonel grunted and looked at Mr Andrews. ‘These alleged swear-words the sergeant is claimed to have said, they would seem an unlikely part of the vocabulary of a seven-year-old child who, you tell me, has a religious background. I am also a little surprised at his knowledge of Latin, Senecio serpens and Glottiphyllym uncatum seem a little esoteric for a small boy who, I imagine, like all small boys, is more interested in getting his mouth around a sucker than a Latin noun.’
Mrs Boxall said, ‘The professor is an amateur botanist of considerable ability and the child has been trained by him to take punctilious notes. Besides, he has almost perfect recall.’
‘Hmm… a bit too perfect if you ask me, madam,’ the colonel said, as though talking to himself. I could see Mrs Boxall bristle.
‘He did it all himself, I seen him do it in the hospital,’ Marie said suddenly, her voice quaking with terror.’
‘Well that’s one good thing, little Miss Florence Nightingale has found her voice,’ the colonel said. ‘Perhaps we can get on with the interview now?’ He turned to me. ‘Son, I want you to tell me the whole story again, just as it happened.’ I repeated the story although Marie had no chance of pronouncing the Latin names of the two succulents which I then referred to as, ‘blue chalksticks and another succulent genus which I can write for you, if you want?’ The colonel pushed a piece of paper across the desk and I wrote the Latin names on it. ‘Extraordinary, it seems I owe you an apology, madam,’ he said dipping his head at Mrs Boxall. When we got to the swear-words Marie refused to say them. ‘Please, sir, I can’t say them words, I’ve never said words like that in my whole life,’ she said fearfully but with absolute resolve.
The colonel would cut in every once in a while and ask me questions such as, ‘What was the colour of the sergeant’s cap and belt?’ They were all questions which involved some minor piece of detailing, but I had no trouble answering them.
When I was finished, he told Marie that she had done an excellent job and she blushed crimson and the pimples stood out on her face. Then he turned to Mr Andrews.
‘The child’s statement coincides almost precisely with that of the prisoner. We have already determined that neither has been in a position to compare notes nor to have a third party co-ordinate a defence. Mrs Boxall did try to see him but was not allowed to do so. The prisoner has been visited and interviewed only by military personnel and I am satisfied that the incident took place as the boy has alleged. I am quite sure the court will find for the defendant in all matters except one. I will ask that the charges of assault to a minor and attempted escape be withdrawn. Quite obviously the striking of the Provost sergeant was under severe emotional provocation and the court is likely to look upon it as such. Both the army and the prison reports state that the prisoner smelt heavily of whisky but we can quite easily ascertain whether his coat sleeve is stained.’
He pulled at the purple tape on the file and opened it up. Inside were two folded copies of the Goldfields News, the picture of me sitting on the rock and a number of Doc’s other photographs and also one of his small spiral-bound notepads. The colonel held up one of the newspapers. ‘Really, this kind of hysterical nonsense makes it very difficult for us. The trial of aliens is distressing enough without having the general population turning the butcher, the baker and the music maker into enemies of the State. The only charge Professor Von Vollensteen faces is a technical one, that of not having registered as an alien.’ He rose from his chair and smiled briefly at me. ‘I only wish I could be here to have a chat with you when your jaw is better, young man. I am also beginning to form a healthy respect for the teachings of your professor.’ He shook Mrs Boxall and Mr Andrews by the hand and said something privately to him, then Mr Andrews hustled us out of the room.
When we got back to the waiting room Mr Hankin of the Goldfields News was waiting. Mr Andrews spoke to him and he nodded towards the colonel’s office. Mr Hankin rose and walked towards the office. ‘I think Mr Hankin’s career as a spy catcher is about to come to a sticky end,’ Mrs Boxall said to me and then started to laugh. ‘We won, Peekay, we won!’ she said triumphantly.
But we hadn’t won. While Doc was acquitted of all the charges just as the colonel said he would be, he was charged with being an unregistered alien and the court ordered him to be detained in a concentration camp for the duration of the war. The Goldfields News headline read, NO SPY BUT STILL A GERMAN! It was a year before Mrs Boxall agreed to resume her column, ‘Clippings from a Cultured Garden by Fiona Boxall’.