Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

After another long while of looking into nothing my granpa continued. ‘When she died giving birth to your mother, I couldn’t stay on here in her rose garden.’ He looked down at me as though seeking my approval. ‘Sometimes it’s best just to walk away from your memories, just put one memory in front of the other and walk them right out of your head.’

I was beginning to realise that Nanny had nothing to do with my granpa’s conversation.

‘Her brother Richard had come out from England to try to cure his arthritis and decided to stay on. A grand lad, Richard, and a good rose man. In thirty years he hasn’t changed a thing. When the roses grew old he replaced them with their own kind.’ He pointed to a standard rose on the terrace below him. From it rose two perfect long-stemmed blossoms, the edges of their delicate orange petals tipped with red. ‘I’ll vouch that is the only Imperial Sunset left in Africa,’ he said with deep satisfaction. He tapped the bowl of his pipe on the step until the smoking ash fell from it. Then, picking up the garden shears where they lay on the step below, he rose and turned to look about him. ‘Now Dick’s dead I’ve come home to her rose garden. The pain is gone but the roses, the sweet Yorkshire roses, not a day older, bloom forever on.’

They were the most words I could recall having come from my granpa in one sitting. While he hadn’t answered my urgent questions about Nanny, I could see that he had said something out loud that must have been bouncing around in his head for a long time.

‘There’s a good lad, off you go and play now.’ He moved over to resume the tidying up of old Mrs Butt. I rose from the steps and started to walk towards the house. Smoke was coming from the chimney and breakfast couldn’t be too far away. The clicking of the shears suddenly ceased. ‘Lad!’ he called after me. I turned to look at him, his shaggy old head was almost touching the canopy of roses covering the arbour. ‘You must ask your mother about your nanny, it’s got something to do with the damn fool religion she’s caught up in.’

Imagine my delight when I walked into the kitchen to find our two little kitchen maids Dee and Dum. They saw me enter and with a squeal of pleasure rushed over to embrace me, each of them holding a hand and dancing me around the kitchen. ‘You have grown. Your hair is still shaved. We must wash your clothes. Your mouth is stained from the fruit. You must eat. We will look after you now that Nanny has gone. Yes, yes, we will be your nanny, we have learned all the songs.’ The two little girls were beside themselves with joy. It felt good, so very good to have them with me. While they had only been on the periphery of my life with Nanny, who had scolded them constantly and called them silly, empty-headed Shangaan girls but loved them anyway, I now realised how important they were to my past. They were continuity in a world that had been shattered and changed and was still changing. Now that my mother was following the Lord and could no longer be relied upon, my granpa and the two girls were my only constants.

‘Me, Dum,’ one of them said in English, tapping her chest with one hand while covering her mouth with the other to hide her giggle.

‘Me, Dee,’ the second one echoed, the whites of her eyes showing her delight as they lit up her small black face. They were identical twins and were reminding me of the names I had given them when I was much smaller. It had started as Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee and had simply become Dum and Dee. I laughed as they showed off their English.

The room smelt of fresh coffee and Dee moved over to a tall, brown enamel coffee pot on the back of the stove and Dum brought a mug and placed it on the table together with a hard rusk and then walked over to a coolbox on the stoep for a jug of milk. She returned with the milk and Dee poured the fresh coffee into the cup, both of them concentrating on their tasks, silent for the time being. Placing the pot back on the stove, Dee ladled two carefully measured spoons of sugar into the mug of steaming coffee, using the same spoon to stir it. It was a labour of love, an expression of their devotion. Dum brought me a riempie stool and placed it in the middle of the kitchen. I sat down and Dee placed the mug on the floor between my legs so that I could sit on the little rawhide chair and dunk the rock-hard rusk into it just the way I had always done on the farm. The two girls then sat on the polished cement floor in front of me, their legs tucked away under their skirts.

On the farm they had simply worn a single length of thin cotton cloth wrapped around their bodies and tied over one shoulder. Their wrists and ankles had been banded in bangles of copper and brass wire which jingled as they walked. Now these rings were gone and over their slim, pre-pubescent twelve-year-old bodies they wore identical sleeveless shifts of striped navy mattress cotton which reached almost to their ankles.

While I dunked and sipped at my coffee we chatted away in Shangaan. They asked me about the night water and I told them that Inkosi-Inkosikazi’s magic had worked and the problem was solved. They clucked and sighed about this for a while and we then talked about the crops and about the men who came in a big truck and lit a huge bonfire and killed and burned all the black chickens. The smell of burning feathers and roasted chickens had lingered for three days, but no one was allowed to eat the meat. Such a waste had never been seen before. How my granpa had sat on the stoep at the farm for a day and a night watching the fire die down to nothing, silently puffing at his pipe, leaving the food brought to him and letting the coffee beside him grow cold.

At last we reached silence, for the subject of Nanny had been standing on the edge of the conversation waiting to be introduced all along and they knew it could no longer be delayed.

‘Where is she who is Nanny?’ I asked at last, putting it in the formal manner so they could not avoid the question. Both girls lowered their heads and brought their hands up to cover their mouths.

‘Ah, ah, ah!’ they shook their heads slowly.

‘Who forbids the answering?’

‘We may not say,’ Dee volunteered, and they both let out a miserable sigh.

‘Is it the mistress?’ I asked, already knowing the answer. Both looked up at me pleadingly, tears in their eyes.

‘She is much changed since she has returned,’ Dum said.

‘She had made us take off our bangles of womanhood and these dresses make our bodies very hot,’ Dee added with a sad little sniff. Both rose from the floor and moved over to the stove where they stood with their backs to me, sobbing.

‘I will ask her myself,’ I said, sounding more brave than I felt inside. ‘At least tell me, is she who is Nanny alive?’ They both turned to face me, relieved that there was something they could say without betraying my mother’s instructions.

‘She is alive!’ they exclaimed together, their eyes wide. Using their knuckles to smudge away their tears they smiled at me, once again happy that they could bring me some good news.

‘We will make hot water and wash you.’ Dum reached down beside the stove for an empty four-gallon paraffin tin from which the top had been cut, the edges hammered flat and a wire handle added, to turn it into a container for hot water.

‘See, the water comes to us along an iron snake which comes into the house,’ Dee said, moving over to the sink and turning on the tap.

‘I am too old to be washed by silly girls,’ I said indignantly. ‘Put on the water and I will bath myself.’ Apart from wiping my face and hands with a damp flannel, my mother had let me climb into bed without washing, and I hadn’t really washed since the shower with Hoppie at Gravelotte.