Tales from the Old Karoo

by Guy Butler

  Sally Hawkridge, with four young children on her hands and in her hair, had little sympathy to spare for any creature apart from them, and occasionally herself. Or so she thought. William, her husband, although necessary, struck her as another difficult child; he was so helpless, needed so much attention, and talked such fanciful nonsense. She did make some allowances for the fact that he was a secondary school teacher. It was quite proper for him to ‘have ideas’ on all sorts of wayout topics, but she did wish he’d get down to brass tacks. One day she said to him, ‘Why don’t you get down to brass tacks?’ But he said, ‘Why brass tacks?’ and went off to the big dictionary in the public library, and came back only slightly the wiser.

  ‘Perhaps the plumber’s right’, she said. ‘I’m sick of the mess those birds make in the spare room.’

  ‘So the kids have caught another one?’ said William. ‘You mean you haven’t even noticed?’

  The children frequently rescued Rock Pigeons from the claws and jaws of Lucky. It was meant well; but Lucky’s reluctance to let go of what his own nature told him was his by natural Law, made his teeth sink deeper and do more damage. The children’s pity saved the birds from a comparatively quick death for a lingering one. Snatched from the cat’s sharp teeth, a wounded and terrified creature was taken inside the mysterious cliff on top of which he had been hatched and bred. Four solicitous little monsters would each demand a turn at stroking and cosseting him while the others made a nest for him of materials strange to a cliff-dwelling species – face tissues, cottonwool. Violet Nkwinti, their otherwise infinitely patient Xhosa nanny, had drawn the line at twigs and straw from the garden.

  ‘That damn cat. Perhaps we should get rid of him’, said William.

  ‘No you don’t. He earns his keep. He had another mouse this morning.’

  William went upstairs to the spare room. His youngest child, Kit, four, blonde and blue-eyed, was holding the beautiful bird in his grubby little paws, in awe and wonder at its struggling wings, its panic-stricken red-ringed eye. Jill, dark haried, methodical, was busy building the nest, and was not to be hurried. She was standing on a chair, in order to reach the top of the tallboy. Desmond was holding (and spilling) a boot polish tin of water in front of the bird’s beak. He’d heard that wounds induce thirst.

  ‘It’s ready’, said Jill. ‘He can come and sleep now.’

  The bird was passed from hand to hand and placed on his nest of pink tissues. He struggled to fly, instinctively, towards the light, hit the glass hard, fell floundering to the floor.

  ‘Shame!’ cries Jill. Four young people scramble to help him.

  The bird scuttles for shelter under the bed. Three solicitous monsters drop to the floor, and the arms reach for the bird in the semi-dark.

  At which point Percy enters. Percy is the eldest by two years, a most beautiful child, just arrived home for his holiday from a special school, run by Catholic nuns, for mentally handicapped children. The world for small children is a confusing and unpredictable place at the best of times, but much more so when the pattern-setter, the eldest sibling, is hyperkinetic, slightly unco-ordinated and blissfully cheerful and trustful. Holidays are very exciting for the children, taxing for William and torture to Sally.

  Percy has thought ahead; his arms are full of packets, and he has raided the pantry for food.

  ‘Get up’, he says. ‘He needs food.’ He is obeyed instantly. Too fascinated to interrupt, William watches the floor transformed into a strange heaven, broadcast first with uncrushed golden mealies, followed by galaxies of ‘hundreds-and-thousands’. But the bird does not respond, not even to raisins and cherries. He stays under the bed.

  ‘What are they up to?’ asks Sally as William descends the stairs. ‘Feeding him. I’m afraid Percy’s raided your larder.’

  ‘I saw –.’ She waited for William to be seated. Then: ‘I’ve been reading Doctor Rosen’s report again.’ And she passed him a substantial letter on official-looking paper.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit out of date?’

  ‘Out of date? It’ll never be out of date if her facts are right.’

  ‘Well, he’s been to St Vitus for a year since then. I’d have thought the letters from Sister Scholastica –?

  ‘The starting point is Dr Rosen’s report. Has he improved at all?’

  ‘Okay, I’ll read it again.’

  ‘There is no doubt that Percy belongs to the category of brain-injured children. That was confirmed by the electroencephalogram. In these children, part of the brain (usually the cortex and sometimes the midbrain) is damaged, some time before, during or after the child’s birth. Sometimes the injury to the brain results in an upset of movement with paralysis in certain cases, and is then diagnosed as cerebral palsy. In Percy’s case, however, the movement handicap is slight, and consists in a little unco-ordination in his right arm, and occasional muscular twitches which are of diagnostic and not of functional importance.’ (Beautifully put, Doctor, but you should have seen the unco-ordinated movement as he scattered those ‘hundreds-and-thousands’.)

  ‘His main problems are personality and learning difficulties, both of which are characteristic of that type of child. On personality: because of the disturbance in the cortex, which is the “inhibiting” part of the brain, the most striking feature of your child’s total behaviour is the lack of inhibition. This is seen, most advantageously, in the amazing ease and rapidity with which he is able to make social contacts.’

  (God, how true. Every delivery boy and all the petrol-pump attendants down the length of Church Street know him by his cheerful greetings and ease of manner: this miracle of a completely open white child. Only yesterday as I turned away from the newspaper stand, I heard one vendor say to his apprentice, ‘Percy se pa.’ And other people, meeting him for the first time, will exclaim to us – ‘What poise and self confidence, what charm!’ until one could scream, instead of smiling as a smug parent should.)

  ‘His lack of inhibition is also seen, to his distinct disadvantage, in his distractability. It is as though he is at the mercy of most stimuli in the environment around him and is unable to reject those which are of no consequence. He responds by excessive bodily activity, hopping from one thing to the next, exploring everything that comes in his way – to the point of destroying what he is handling.’

  (Dear God, how true. I remember the nursery the morning after Percy had emptied the entire contents of the cot, and then of the cot’s flock mattress on the floor. ‘But why did he do it?’ asked my dear rational spinster aunt, Rhoda, who believes children should always be reasoned with. Parents, in her sensible view, are almost always guilty, usually of sins of omission.

  ‘I did ask him why’, I said.

  ‘And?’ she said, smiling her challenging smile.

  ‘And he said he was looking for a tortoise.’

  ‘Why a tortoise?’ she asked, pressing her advantage. ‘He looked blank when I asked him.)

  ‘His learning difficulties spring from an inability to shut out unimportant visual and auditory stimuli: this shows a lack of concentration, but I do not think he really lacks the ability to concentrate.’

  (Spot on again, dear Doctor. Like the time at the second kindergarten, when he disappeared, presumably because he couldn’t concentrate in class. The whole school, from the headmistress to the toddlers, searched for him. After an hour they found him in a deep builders’ trench, helping the plumber’s apprentice make wipe-joints with lovely molten lead from a soup ladle over a glowing brazier. No lack of concentration there at all.)

  ‘I found him very quick to pick out and recognise animals in the game of picture dominoes we played, and he often found the correct piece before I did.’

  (Right again. During the last vacation, was he not the first, always, to shout ‘Look, monkeys!’ and sure enough, there they would be, pretty and alert on their hind legs.)

  ‘We found he could count, but had no concept of numbers.’

  (Yes, yes, yes, dear God, yes. His you
ngest brother Kit knows more about counting and simple sums.)

  ‘Unless special teaching methods are used, clear and lasting impressions are not made, and the child is discouraged and frustrated.’

  (Sure, sure. And will he not discourage and frustrate the best teacher in the world?)

  ‘We therefore suggest that he be removed to a special school and be taught individually or in a very small group by an affectionate, firm person, who is prepared to use various methods to slow him down and help him control his thought processes. I have little doubt that this child is teachable, but I feel his learning has to be firmly consolidated step by step.’

  (Okay, Doctor, we’ve found this marvellous special school run by these devoted nuns. And, thank God, it looks as though they are going to keep him. It’s his third school already: and shuttling him around can do him no good, whatever relief his going may be to his teachers.)

  ‘By virtue of his handicap he is particularly aware of the emotional climate around him, being forced to compete with normal, younger, more intelligent siblings for parental approval and affection.’

  There is a banging of doors and a clatter of small feet on the stairs, and Percy leads the gang down into their father’s presence. ‘Well, kids, how’s the Rock Pigeon?’

  ‘His name’s Henry’, announces Percy with authority.

  ‘Henry Rock Pigeon’, says Desmond solemnly. Jill repeats it more slowly, and Kit ends with ‘When we Wok Pidin’.

  (Well, Dr Rosen, for the moment his status as the eldest son, just returned home from school, is unquestionable. No pending revolt in the ranks.)

  ‘Henry is a marvellous name for a Rock Pigeon’, says William. ‘Lots of Kings of England were called Henry. What’s Henry doing at the moment?’

  ‘I think he’s saying a decade’, says Percy.

  Crikey, these nuns work fast. For the enlightenment of the others, he asks, ‘What’s a decade?’

  ‘Sister Scholastica says a decade’s when one of the older sisters closes her eyes in chapel and takes no notice of anyone else for a long time.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a decade’, says Desmond. ‘I think Henry’s dead.’

  Jill shakes her head, and says, ‘When they dead their heads go floppy on their necks, like this.’ She rolls her head and her eyes, and sticks out a lolling tongue. William laughs. Sally says: ‘Stop that, darling!’ Jill resumes normality. ‘Henry’s neck is still stiff.’

  ‘Not dead’, says Kit, with magisterial solemnity, and a slow shake of his head.

  Lacking the experience of his siblings in the mortuary habits of Rock Pigeons, Percy concludes the debate by the simple expedient of making for the garden. They follow, unquestioning.

  Sally follows them.

  William re-reads Doctor Rosen’s report. What a wonderful woman!

  Sally entered, and sat down with a sigh.

  ‘Well?’ she asked.

  ‘Dr Rosen knows her onions. Sally, she makes me weep, she’s so right. The only real question is – what can Sister Scholastica do?’

  ‘Exactly. Now you may read her letters again. And not only for the laughs.’

  She handed half a dozen letters to her reluctant husband and left to get on with making bright, neighbour-delighting shirts and skirts for her children.

  William was grateful for small mercies, such as Sister Scholastica’s blessedly legible hand.

  ‘Percy went off to the beach this morning with the boys, and after a short time Sister brought him back with a cut hand. Apparently he was practising some diving stunts and hit a rock. It isn’t bad enough for a stitch, and, unless it turns septic, there should be no cause for alarm.’

  ‘At the moment he is charmed with himself. He has done himself up and is going around draped in superfluous bandages, which he insisted I put on. Anything for peace!’

  (Sister, sister, are you being as firm as Dr Rosen wants?)

  ‘He recalled the time he had stitches in his head, and wasn’t anxious to have another similar experience.’

  (He’d been helping the builders when we were adding a dormer room, and fell into the lane, cutting his scalp on half a clinker brick.)

  ‘I wanted him to lie down after the accident, but he decided to go down to the cattle kraal. I think he wants to tease the bull.’

  Then came a long discussion of sedative pills and their effects, and, finally, ‘When fifty boys are hovering round there isn’t any time for quiet reflection. By the way, don’t forget to post the air ticket.’

  That was before the first holiday, thought William, the holiday where they’d all become Red Indians, and Sally had made feather headdresses, and William had made bows and arrows, and the bazaar had provided equipment for the Sheriff, who was always and only Percy.

  The next letter was a long one, shortly after the vac, from which it was clear that Sister Scholastica had missed her charges. The plane had been delayed, and Percy had slept throughout the long bus ride from airport to the school by the sea.

  ‘He revived on arrival, and it was all I could do to stop him shooting arrows at the sleeping beauties. He then attempted “Silent Night” on the musical instrument which he extracted from his case, and I was soon praying for a Silent Night. Every now and then he wanted to wake up his best friends to show them he was back, but I felt that six o’clock next morning would be time enough.

  ‘The young man went along to Assembly this morning in his Sheriff’s hat. He was promptly decapped by Mother Ceslaus; so he thought the only safe place for it would be my classroom. At the moment the Texan headpiece is gracing my desk. He has peeped in twice to make sure it’s all right … ‘ In another letter:

  ‘Percy’s father has apparently made many remarkable statements to his son during the holidays, at which I express mild surprise, but do not contradict. For instance, Percy will be eighteen at Christmas and he will then receive a .22 pellet gun.’

  (There you have it – the child can’t count: no sense of number, or time. He’ll never be an eighteen-year-old in the normal sense of the word, never.) Later.

  ‘He is always reminding me that he is suffering from extreme frustration on account of all the restrictions that are placed on him here. At home he is allowed so many liberties. Once I was giving him a little homily on his table manners. He came out with: “We don’t have any table manners at home cos my father doesn’t like them.” By this time you must be seriously doubting my fitness to be in charge of children.’

  (On the contrary, my dear Sister. You’ve got him to write a six word letter that is decipherable. Live for now. Teach him simple sums.)

  ‘He has a great gift of the blarney. Every now and then he wants to see Sr. Hildegarde in the kitchen because he hasn’t seen her for a long time – a long time may mean half an hour. He begins by telling her she “cooks nice” and then samples a cake or two. He asks for a sample to show the boys, and when he gets it he explains to the people at his table that it’s for his chest! I’ve tried to discourage these hypochondriac tendencies, but he says his father tells him he was “borned with a bad chest”.’

  (Well, asthma attacks may start in the mind, but they end in the throat and the lungs for sure. Pray God this vac goes by without one. I must check on the medicines, we must not be caught again without a supply, at midnight. Poor kid, poor Sally, poor all.)

  ‘Before they all went off on vacation a gift of pigeons (Pouters and Homers) arrived for the School, to the utter delight of the boys. I had strict instructions to feed and keep them safe. They are hovering around though I am doing nothing to encourage them. I can’t chase them away because I promised not to.’

  Pigeons again! William picked up another letter:

  ‘Percy is very devout, and a great observer of all ritual occasions. He would dearly like to swing a censer or carry a candle or cross. I had to explain that only boys from Catholic homes could take part in serving at the altar. He assured me that his father allowed him to be a Catholic whenever in Church, but not in the dining
room.’

  (Please, Sister Scholastica, feel free to lead him all the way to Rome. He’ll need every miracle available, in addition to your own good personal supply.)

  ‘I think Percy is exploiting his asthma a little. He presents himself in the kitchen with the usual blarney. “You cook very nice, sister. Could you borrow me some cakes?” (Confusion of verbs) Sister asked: “But isn’t it lunch time?” To which he replied, pat: “Sister Scholastica doesn’t let me eat dining room food because of my asthma.”

  ‘He’s had no asthma at all, only a slightly hoarse throat, and is making capital out of it. He imagines he has contracted some rare disease, of which he is very proud.’

  (Alas, the asthma springs from a damaged brain, with which he was born, and for which there is no cure.)

  Henry Rock Pigeon survived the first day of the children’s tender loving care. William prayed: ‘Long may he live, he provides so much interest for the children.’

  Violet Nkwinti was told to forget about cleaning the spare room. She was not altogether happy about the children’s treatment of their patient.

  ‘Cheeldreen keep chech (church) with bed (bird)’, she said. Apparently she had not heard of St Francis of Assisi. Sally said:

  ‘That’s all right, Violet. Birds are also God’s creatures. Not a sparrow falls without God knowing.’

  But the next day Violet was back.

  ‘Cheeldreen they baptise bed. Pessy him preest like by Roman chech.’

  As a good Methodist she did not like this.

  William said to himself ‘Ah! So that explains the smell of candle smoke on the stairs.’

  Sally shrugged her shoulders and continued sewing.

  William returned from the town library with a popular work on religion and anthropology, in both of which great subjects he was a slightly opinionated amateur. He was pleasantly and vaguely aware that scholars connected them, and that both tapped irrational and profound needs of man. He was fascinated by the gradual slide away from the ancient sacred world of many mysteries into the modern profane where all is naked in the light of science. There was a time when everything that lived was holy, and therefore all meals were holy occasions, particularly when the slain animal was special to the participants, like the eland to the Bushmen. If life is holy, everything that gives life to man is holy, like sex and food, and no sex act, or birth, or death, must be casual or taken for granted. But now man has progressed so far in his explanations that he believes in a rational world. Nothing need be mysterious or sacred. Food and sex are mere commodities with price tags to them. ‘We know the price of everything and the value of nothing.’ William took a puzzled iconoclast’s pleasure in expounding such views – particularly when his wife returned from church, which he had long since ceased to attend.