The Power of One (26 page)

that you will take Him into your heart and use your fine mind to glorify His precious name.” She gathered the pieces up, dropped them into her handbag, and gave 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 midweek to night duty and came on at six
P.M
. with our dinner. I handed her the note. She read it and quickly 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 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 color 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 had happened, even the swear words, and then I hid the three sheets of paper in my pillow slip. Mrs. Boxall came the very next afternoon. In her string bag she carried a new
William
book by Richard Crompton, a book called
Flowers from the Banks of the Zambesi
by Rev.

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 authorized people could see him. If a librarian isn't an authorized 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 sympathizer 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.
On the front page, taking up almost half the 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 had carried the original news of the arrest, and this special two-page midweek edition, using precious rationed newsprint, was an attempt by Mr. Hankin to achieve immortality in his profession. The fact that 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 flavor 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 disheveled state, and it was obvious to the two military policemen that he had been drinking. The sergeant, on the orders of the officer, had 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 Lourengo Marques, the nearest neutral territory.

The story went on to say that the sergeant had been stunned from the blows he had received and it had 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 had 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 Swedish Hasselblad 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 the 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 and 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 rumor-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 gobstoppers. 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. Leaning over and touching me on the chin, she said, “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 brogues clattering on the polished cement floor, her back straight as a ramrod, and her bobbed head held high. I could still hear her 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 had 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 had 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, signaling 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 a 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 favor, 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 pajama jacket and walked down the corridor to the lavatories. Taking the letter out, I began to read. The letter 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 favor of my being a witness at the hearing. The lawyer had pointed out that it was very much in my mother's interest to clear our family name, as the prattletongues 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 magistrate's court, where the military tribunal was to be held. Mr. Andrews was waiting for us and so, to my surprise, was Marie.