A song in the morning

8

"Have you made your decision?"

Jack had come early to the "safe house". When the door had been opened to his ring he had smelled the aroma of sweet spices from the kitchen. She had been a tall woman with the dark skin of the Bengali and had two children clinging to her sari. She had shown no surprise, only taken him to the foot of the stairs and pointed upwards to the closed door.

"So direct. Should you not give me time to offer you coffee, to ask you to sit?"

He thought Jacob Thiroko had slept less than he had.

The coffee mug stood amongst stain rings on the table.

Beside it was an ashtray and the empty matchbox that had been used when the ashtray had spilled over. Thiroko sat at the table. The haze of smoke filled a strata of the room, morning mist over a damp meadow. Thiroko sat at the table. There was no other chair, only the unmade bed for Jack.

"I just need your decision. I want explosives, I want to prove myself to you, then I want help."

Jack saw the sadness on Thiroko's face. He knew it was the sadness of a military commander who sent young men onto the dirty battleground of revolutionary warfare.

"I'm going, Mr Thiroko, with your help or without it.

With your help I'll make a better job of it."

Thiroko stood and pulled out his shirt from his trousers.

He lifted the back shirt tail, and then his vest up to his shoulders. Jack saw the thin welt of the scar, pink on the dark skin, running diagonally across the length of his back.

"Sjambok, rhino hide whip. It is the way the police break up demonstrations. They use the sjambok when they do not think it necessary to shoot. I was a politician before they whipped me, I was a soldier afterwards… "

Jack had his answer, his elation shone.

"I take a gamble on you, a small gamble. A few pounds of explosive. Nothing more until you have proved yourself."

They clasped hands.

Jack said he would fly within two days. Thiroko told him where he should stay, to wait for a contact, and thereafter, since he would be travelling in his own name, to keep on the move.

"Where will you be, Mr Thiroko?"

"I will be in Lusaka."

"You won't have long to wait." Jack was smiling.

Thiroko's face clouded with anger. "You are all children.

You think it is a game. Last night I shamed myself with my thoughts. I thought whether it was better for our Movement if those five should hang. I considered whether five men dead was of more advantage to us than those five men free. I know the answer and I prayed for forgiveness on my knees… What will be your target for your explosives?"

Jack could smell the sweat on the sheets. "I don't know."

Thiroko laughed with amusement. "You are clever to be cautious."

"I don't know what the target will be, honestly."

Thiroko seemed not to have heard him. "We say that we trust each other, and we are strangers. There are men and women whom I have worked with for many years, and I do not know whether I can trust them. It was sensible of you not to have gone to our offices."

"I trust you, Mr Thiroko."

"It is a small building. Always full of people hurrying, busy, greeting each other, telling each other of their commit ment to the Movement. But there are worms there rotting our cause. They may have been purchased by the Boers, they may have been compromised by threats against their family still in South Africa. No way of knowing. But you have my word that only those who must know will know of your journey."

"Thank you."

"You will be foolish if you underestimate the forces you are up against. If you are caught, you will wish that you could die to escape the pain the Boers will inflict on you.

They will put electric shocks on you, keep you from sleeping, they will spin the chambers of a service revolver beside your head, they will starve you, they will hang you upside down from the ceiling with a broomstick under your knees and spin you, they will parade you naked in front of the men and women who work in the security police offices in John Vorster Square. It is where your father was, John Vorster Square… Trust nobody, trust only yourself."

"Do you know my father?"

"I know of him. He would know of me."

"I'll tell him about you."

Thiroko asked quietly, "If it were not your father…?"

"I wouldn't have known who the Pritchard Five were."

"I like honesty, Mr Curwen, but honesty will not help you in South Africa. Be the cheat. Cheat the Boers out of the satisfaction of five hangings."

Jack saw a fast grimace of pain on Thiroko's face, momentary, then wiped away. "Perhaps we won't ever meet again, but I'll tell Jeez that you're a good man."