A song in the morning

**

George Hawkins was driving to inspect a chimney when he heard the one o'clock news.

He was preoccupied with the chimney because he was certain it would be difficult. The chimney was 112 feet high, and to bring it down he required an additional 28 feet of clearance on the fall line. It was a built-up area of Hackney, and the oaf who had telephoned him hadn't known whether there was 140 feet clear. He was going to see for himself and he was going to charge them for his time whether or not he agreed to do the demolition.

Johannesburg's central police station? Stone the bleeding crows.

He knew it was his boy. The fire told him that the blue print for the bomb had been his own diagram of the La Mon Hotel device.

Christ, and he hadn't told the kid much. Hadn't told him much because he hadn't thought the kid was getting far beyond having his arse shot off. He'd given the boy nothing but the barest and the briefest. The boy must have followed to the letter what he had been told, must have memorised every bloody word. And what he'd told him for the hotel job was sweet bugger all of what he'd need to know to blow a hollow charge job against a prison wall. Hadn't even told him of the safety procedures to go through in the loading of a hollow charge job with Polar Ammon.

He thought that if Jack Curwen died that he, George Hawkins, would never forgive his bloody old miserable self for allowing the boy to stuff such nonsense in his head.

Hard for the student to concentrate on his afternoon lecture.

The subject matter was The Role of the State in Support of the Single Parent Family. Hard for Jan van Niekerk to concentrate on anything. All the talk in the cafeteria, and over the whole campus was of the bomb in John Vorster Square.

He had read that there was a theory that the bomber was White. Jan van Niekerk had carried a package to the Landdrost Hotel. A few Blacks got to stay at the Landdrost, token Blacks, but he thought that the Mr Curwen to whom the package had been carried on by the bellboy must be White, a White name. He was involved, certain of that. He was guilty under the terms of the Sabotage Act, 5 years to death. Always, since he had begun, they could have manufactured a case against him. There would be no need to manufacture anything when he had carried explosives, when those explosives had been used in something so super fucking fantastic as the bomb inside John Vorster Square.

After the lecture, managing almost a bounce in his crippled stride, he made for his locker. There was no message for him.

•**

Frikkie de Kok liked a drink, and he liked to talk. There were few men he could drink with because his working life was his secret, a matter that put him apart from other men. His assistant was his natural drinking partner, on Wednesdays in the late afternoon and early evening, if they did not have to be out of their beds while it was still dark on the following morning. Frikkie de Kok liked the Harlequin Club for his drinking and the chance to watch a rugby match from the old dark wood long bar. He had a small circle of acquaintances amongst the solicitors and barristers and government servants and accountants who patronised the bar on their way home from work.

His place was a corner table against the wall and the window, where he could talk to the man who would succeed him on his retirement. Where, also, he could watch the match.

He gave all he knew to his assistant.

He thought that was the least he could do for this young man who was so keen to learn. He had decided when the time would be, very soon, that he would allow his assistant to take over the full role of judging the length of the rope to be used, of fitting the pinions and the hood, of handling the lever. He reckoned that an assistant had to be given a chance to learn for himself. Not for a multiple of course, but for a single execution, and as long as they had no reason to think that the man would not go quietly… probably be best if it were a Coloured, that's what he thought, because in Frikkie de Kok's experience, the Coloureds were usually no trouble…

Frikkie de Kok checked his watch. The players should have been out of the dressing room by now.

He carried on talking.

"You see, there's a great irony about the method of execution, hanging. We now support the method of hanging over firing squad or gas chamber or electrocution because we say it is the most effective and the most humane. It didn't start like that. Look where it started, hanging. They wanted the most degrading way of death, and they wanted it to be slow and painful because that was good deterrent. What they were looking for was something that shocked and terrified the people who came to watch a public execution.

The slower the better, because that way the spectators were most frightened. That's the irony. We have taken the most inefficient method and changed it into the most efficient. I like to think that in Pretoria we have the very most efficient and the very most humane system. You can go anywhere in the world, you won't find anything that is better organised than our situation. It's something that we in South Africa can feel genuinely proud of… I think they're stupid not coming out earlier, that's the way you get to pull a hamstring, when you're not properly loosened…"

There was a ripple of applause from the touchline, and shouts from members in the bar. The players ran onto the pitch.

"There was one thing that concerned me the first time I was an assistant, that was the heart of the man. The heart kept beating for a full twenty minutes after he'd dropped.

I'd been told all the things that I told you when you first started. Fracture dislocation of the cervical vertebrae with crushing of the spinal cord. Immediate unconsciousness, no possibility of recovering consciousness because there is no chance of breathing. But that heart was still going. I put my ear against his chest, while he was hanging, and I could hear the heart. It took me several minutes to get accustomed to that heart keeping going… They want to watch the new boy at out half. Fine boy, off last year's high school side.

He could go all the way. I'd like to think my boy could get to play for Harlequins."

"He's on the school team, Mr de Kok."

"But the school's filling his head with university, not with rugby. He's in his books, that's why he's not on the line watching."

There was the question that the assistant had waited two years to ask, the question that fascinated him. For two years he had waited for the opportunity to appear. He thought it was the moment.

"Does he know?"

"Know what?"

There was the roar as the Harlequins kicked off.

"Know what his father does."

He wished he hadn't asked. He saw Frikkie de Kok hesitate.

"I've never told them, not Dawie, not Erasmus. You could say it's like telling them about the sexual functions.

There's never a right time, and anyway they'll learn it all at school. There's never been a right time to tell Dawie what I do, and if I tell him then do I tell Erasmus, and he's two years younger. I suppose I'll wait until they're adults. They might not understand, funny things are young boys' minds. He thinks I run the carpentry courses at Central."

"If my Poppa had done such work, I'd have been proud of him."

"Who knows what they might think… "

The assistant was hunched forward. "Mr de Kok, what would happen to us if the political situation were to change?"

"Change how?" Frikkie de Kok was entranced by the game, nose close to the glass.

"If the present government were to fall."

Frikkie de Kok chuckled. "No chance. And we'll survive, our job isn't political. Every government needs us…

Let me tell you an anecdote from history. There was an executioner down in the Cape, and he hanged and he quartered and he severed limbs, and he was paid by each item, then the British came. We're nearly two hundred years back.

The British said that he should just do hanging. The poor man saw his livelihood going, so what did he do? He went and hanged h i m s e l f… "

They were both laughing.

"… A little bit of change never hurts anyone. I won't be hanging myself, not even if they abolish maximum security.

Too damned fast I'll be off to buy a farm. You won't see me for dust… That man, he's offside."

"Me too, Mr de Kok, I would have said he was offside."

Frikkie de Kok said from the side of his mouth, casual,

"Next Thursday, tomorrow week, that's the Pritchard Five."

"All together?"

"They killed together, they were convicted together…

Look at that."

"That referee's a disgrace, Mr de Kok."

•**

Jack, still dressed, slept on his bed. Exhausted. Harrowed by the high walls he had seen.

He had turned his back on Magazine Hill, he had walked away from the green tree slopes where his father was held.