Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

I thought about these things as I watched a convoy of one hundred and five army trucks go by, the biggest yet by far, so I didn’t notice Doc coming up the hill until he almost reached the gate.

‘Goot morning, Peekay.’ He was dressed in a white linen suit and wore a panama hat, so that I hardly recognised him. He carried a string bag and a silver-handled walking stick and under one arm was a large manila envelope.

‘Good morning, Doc,’ I said, jumping to my feet. I found it a little strange to say his name out loud, though in my head I’d said it a thousand times.

‘I can come in, ja?’ I hurried down the steps to open the gate. ‘This is an official visit, Peekay, I have come to see your mother.’

I felt stupidly disappointed. I hadn’t known he knew my mother. I followed him up the steps. ‘You will introduce us please,’ he said as we reached the verandah.

Unreasonably pleased that I was his first friend, I opened the front door and led him into the parlour. Visitors to the farm had been infrequent but the routine was unerring. First you sat people down and then you gave them coffee and cake. I asked Doc to sit down and he did so but not before he had stood in the centre of the zebra skin and slowly turned around taking the room in. When he reached the grandfather clock he paused and said, ‘English, London, about 1680, a very good piece.’ He took a gold Hunter from his fob pocket, and snapping it open examined it briefly. ‘Four minutes a month,’ he said, returning the watch to his pocket. I was amazed he should know how much our grandfather clock lost, for he was right. I thought perhaps my granpa had told him.

‘Do you know my granpa?’ I asked Doc.

‘I have not yet had this pleasure but it will be okay, we are both men of thorns, with me the cactus, with him the rose. The English and the Germans are not so far apart. It will be all right, you will see.’ He said this just as I was about to leave the room to get Dum and Dee to bring coffee and cake.

I was dumbfounded, Professor Von Vollensteen was a German! What should I do? My grandfather had gone to the library in town to change his books, that was one good thing anyway. You never knew what he might do coming face to face with a German, although even against Doc I didn’t fancy his chances. I decided to say nothing to my mother, she might have a conniption on the spot.

Dum and Dee had somehow known we had a guest and were putting out the tea things and half a canary cake on a plate. I could hear the sewing machine zizzing away as I walked over to the far side of the house to tell my mother she had a guest. I knocked before opening the door.

‘There is someone to see you, Mother,’ I shouted over the sound of the whirring machine. She stopped sewing and looked up.

‘Tell her to come in, darling, it must be Mrs Cameron about her skirt.’

‘It is Professor Von Vollensteen. He wants to see you,’ I said in a low voice.

‘Professor whom?’ she asked, removing her glasses and looking directly at me.

‘He is a teacher, a teacher of music,’ I said urgently in an attempt to hide my confusion. She rose to her feet and patted her hair and reached for her bag. From it she took a compact and, looking into the tiny mirror on the inside flap of the bag, hurriedly powdered her nose.

‘Well he can’t teach music here, we haven’t got that sort of money,’ she said, putting the pad back into the compact and snapping it shut. I followed behind her, not at all sure of the reception Doc would get.

But my mother was country-bred and all visitors were treated courteously no matter what their purpose. Doc rose from the lounge as she entered and extended his hand. ‘Madame,’ he said, bowing slightly, ‘Professor Karl Von Vollensteen.’

My mother extended her hand and Doc took it lightly and bowed over it bringing his heels together. ‘Please sit down, Professor, will you take coffee with us?’ She reached no higher than his waist and when he sat down her head was level with his.

‘You are very kind, madame. Today we have two things.’ He reached into the string bag at his feet and produced a jam tin which held a small plant. The plant had only two leaves which stuck straight up out of the tin and were tinged with pink around the edges. They looked exactly like two light green rabbit ears. ‘Allow me please to introduce Kalanchoe thyrsiflora , quite rare in these parts, often mistaken for a plant, but I assure you, madame, a true cactus.’ Doc handed the jam tin to my mother who remarked that she couldn’t possibly remember the name and laughed her nervous laugh. ‘Ja, it is a difficult name but, if you wish, you may just call it Rabbit Ears,’ Doc said charitably, though he somehow left the impression that the little cactus was demeaned by such a common name.

Dum and Dee entered, Dee carrying a tray with cups and cake and Dum carrying the china coffee pot we used for visitors. Dee set the tray on the traymobile and carefully wheeled it over to my mother who sent her back to fetch a knife for the cake. Dum, keeping her back straight and her arm rigid, bent her knees almost to the ground so she could put the coffee pot down on the traymobile without any possibility of spilling it. Dum, too, was sent back to the kitchen, for the coffee strainer.

‘You can tell them a hundred times over, it’s useless. I don’t know what goes on inside their heads,’ my mother sighed, putting the tiny plant on the shelf under the traymobile. I had been standing beside her chair and now she turned to me. ‘Run along now’.

Doc looked up. ‘With your permission, madame, I would like for Peekay to stay please?’

‘Who?’ my mother said.

‘Your son, madame, I would much like him to stay.’

My mother turned to me. ‘What on earth have you been telling the professor? Who is Peekay?

‘It’s my new name. I, I haven’t told you about it yet,’ I said, flustered. My mother laughed, but I knew she was annoyed.

‘Why, you have a perfectly good name, my dear.’ She gave me a funny look, then turned to Doc. ‘Of course he may stay, but I’m afraid our family never had much of an ear for music and lessons would be much too expensive.’

Without looking at Dee and Dum, who had re-entered the room and now stood beside her, she held her hand out for the knife and strainer and dismissed them with an impatient flick of her head.

‘I am most grateful, madame.’ My mother lifted the coffee pot. ‘Black only, no sugar,’ Doc said, leaning forward in anticipation.

My mother poured his coffee. ‘A nice piece of cake, professor?’ Doc put his hand up in refusal. ‘Thank you,’ he said. It was a speech habit I was going to find hard to get used to, saying, ‘Thank you,’ when he meant, ‘No thank you,’ and clearly my mother misunderstood him for she placed a piece of the canary cake on a sideplate and handed it to him with his coffee. He accepted the cake without further protest.

Doc put the coffee and cake on the zebra hide between his legs and picked up the manila envelope. ‘And so now we have the second thing.’ His eyes sparkled as he handed the envelope to my mother.

‘Goodness, what can it be?’ she said, pulling out the tucked-in flap of the large brown envelope. She withdrew the largest photograph I had ever seen which, to my amazement, turned out to be me sitting on the rock on top of the hill. ‘Goodness gracious!’ My mother stared at it, momentarily lost for words. The photograph showed every detail, even the lichen on the rock, more clearly than any I had seen before. Shafts of sunlight shining through a silver-edged cloud seemed to be directed straight at the rock on which I sat. My body, half in shadow, appeared to be as one with the rock. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was an extraordinary picture. At last my mother spoke. ‘Wherever did you take this? It is so sad! Why did you take a picture of him when he was looking sad?’