A song in the morning

** *

He lay on his bed. He could not sleep. He stared up at the frail light patterned by the grille wires.

The trap had been tested during the afternoon, the trap falling under a weighted sack.

There was a cool wind, and the cold came into Jeez's cell through the window between his cell and the catwalk, and the window between the catwalk and the night. He heard the shuffle of the feet of the guard on the catwalk above and the guttering cough as the man cleared his throat. He heard the snore of the prison officer who was locked into the corridor of C section 2. He heard the dribbling of the singing, muffled because the sound swam along the catwalks all the way from A section or B section. Keeping a poor bastard company, because there was a poor bastard who was going to hang in four hours' time. Jeez wondered if anyone slept when they were going to hang in four hours' time. Jeez had another fifty hours of living, and he couldn't sleep either.

Tuesday already started. Wednesday tomorrow. Wednesday was library day. He'd hear the trap going on Wednesday, and the sack under the trap would be of his weight.

He could end it all.

Of course he could. He had it in his power to make an end of it.

He could shout for the officer sleeping in the corridor.

The officer would send for the duty major. The duty major would ring through to the night duty officer at John Vorster Square. The night duty officer at John Vorster Square would rouse the colonel. He had the promise of the colonel for his life if he coughed the details on the cadres and the safe houses and the arms caches… Just one shout. Fucking cruel… Typical of the pigs that they offered the Judas Kiss as the price for living.

It had just been a job for him, watching over the African National Congress. Just an assignment from old Colonel Basil. Wasn't supposed to get involved, not physically and not with the heart. Just supposed to be bumming on the fringe, just supposed to be a listener, and a writer of reports.

He'd hang with Happy and Charlie and Percy and Tom.

Fucking cruel, that it was better to hang with them than to make the Judas Kiss, and live a life sentence in a Boer White gaol.

Jeez reckoned to find friends where he was. Didn't go looking for them, found them when he needed them.

There'd been a guy in Spac, good guy, teacher, they'd been friends for six years. Close enough to pick the lice from each other's heads. A good guy and a good friend, and he'd died in the snow with a bullet hole in his nape. His best friend in Spac and Jeez had been on the detail that pickaxed the grave out of the iron-frozen ground. He wouldn't have given that friend the Judas Kiss, not just for life.

He would make new friends.

He would be friends with Happy and Charlie and Percy and Tom in the corridor, going towards the door that was always closed. He'd be their friend in the preparation room, and when they went through the doorway and into the shed. He'd be their friend when it was the hood and when it was the noose. He'd not give them the bloody Judas Kiss.

No way he would shout for the bastard sleeping in the corridor of C section 2.

He did not understand why the arm of Century hadn't reached for him.

Hurt, hurt hard, lying on his bed, gazing at the dull light bulb through the mesh of the grille, to think that Century had dropped him off the team. He had the proof that they had dropped him, the proof was the bloody cell he was locked into, and the hours that were left to him.

Couldn't think about it, because thinking of the team was fucking agony for Jeez. Think of some other bloody thing…

Think of why Hilda hadn't written.

Think of Hilda in a nice house with a nice husband with a nice life.

Think of the boy who was his and who was Hilda's.

Think of the boy who would be twenty-seven years old next birthday.

Think of the boy Jack.

Think of anything other than the trap hammering in practice on Wednesday afternoon, after library.

He couldn't picture, now, what the boy, his son, looked like.

First thing in the morning, first thing at his desk, the colonel called London. The London embassy told him that Major Swart was not yet in his office.

The colonel said that he would not be calling unless it was of great urgency. The London embassy told him that the major's home had already been contacted, that the major's wife had not seen him since the previous day.

The colonel said that it was an outrage that they had no contact with their man. The London embassy told the colonel that as soon as they had contact with Major Swart they would pass on the message for him to call John Vorster Square, priority.

As if a door slammed in the colonel's face. His investigation had been at a gallop. A name. An address overseas.

A photo-fit likeness. Because the door had slammed, he did not know how to go forward. A piece of basic, beginner's school, detective work was all that was required from London, but Major Swart had gone walkabout and the door was slammed.

He went down the stairs to the incident room.

Expressionless, he reported that London had not yet been able to furnish the material necessary for short circuiting a lengthy investigation. He knew he had lost ground. He made a lame suggestion. He suggested that all the two and three star hotels in Johannesburg should be checked again.

•* •

"Is he standing firm, sir?"

The civil servant had brought the first briefing papers of the day. The Minister of Justice smiled.

"The State President? He's in great form. I was with him yesterday, firm as they come."

"No question of clemency?"

"I'm surprised you ask."

"Because of the overnight telegrams… Washington, the Vatican, the Speaker of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the Security Council, the Secretary General of the Commonwealth. They all came in overnight."

"A formality. But you have missed one."

"Those are all the cables, sir."

"What about the United Kingdom? No word from Her Britannic Majesty's ratbag."

"I noted that," the civil servant said. "No message has come from the United Kingdom."

The Minister of Justice clapped his hands. "Did you see the opinion poll from the Free State. We are going to win that by-election, because I was photographed at the grave of Gerhardt Prinsloo, and because the Pritchard Five will hang."

"But curious that the United Kingdom is silent."

•* •

Jack stood with Jan below the wide climbing steps leading to the rearing stone hulk of the Vortrekker Monument.

Jan spoke savagely of this edifice to Afrikaner power and mythology.

As if it were something evil, a national monument to privilege and superiority. He showed Jack, with an angry pointing finger, the carved relief of trekker wagons that formed a laager around the monument, and the great hewn corner statues of the Boer leaders with their rifles, and the bronze of the trekker woman and her children. Jack thought the boy's intensity was unreal, just a drug to give him courage. For himself, he didn't listen. He stood with his back to the monument and looked across the valley to the south side slopes of Magazine Hill.

There was a wire fence at the floor of the valley, at the bottom of the hill. The ground on the slope was rough, half cleared, cut by a stone vehicle track. To the right side, as he looked, of Magazine Hill, was the sweep of the Johannesburg motorway, the Ben Schoeman Highway, that would come round behind the hill on which the Voortrekker Monument had been built. To the left side of Magazine Hill was a separate fenced area, which his plans told him was the army's firing range. Directly ahead, the crown of Magazine Hill was covered with tall and heavy pine trees, rich green, and he could see buildings in the shelter of the trees.

He made his estimates.

He tried to judge the distance from the floor of the valley to the crown of Magazine Hill. He tried to see where he could lie up if he were ahead of schedule, over which ground he could hurry if he was late.

He thought it could not be more than two hundred yards from the crown down the hidden tree-covered slope to the walls of Beverly Hills.

He turned his back on Magazine Hill and walked to the far side of the Voortrekker Monument to see down below where the car would be left. It was a hell of a distance to come back. More than a mile. His own thought… that in the chaos after the attack he and Jeez would be better on the scrub hills on foot than immediately into a car, but a hell of a way for all that.

In the line between Magazine Hill and the Ben Schoeman Highway was another stony outcrop. He saw the summit of it had been shaped.

"What's that?"

"Skanskopfort. Built to protect Pretoria, historic monument, colonial cannons and that crap."

"Lived in?"

Jan shook his head. "It's just a museum, and an army store."

Jack walked again to the steps. He stood in the morning sunlight. He gazed again on the slope of Magazine Hill, the slope that he would climb that evening.

They went to Ros's car. Jan drove back to Pretoria.

In two heaps, Jack's possessions were laid out on the floor.

In one heap was his suitcase and his coat. He had told Jan to dump them from Ros's car, once they were on the way back to Johannesburg. The other heap was what he would take with him that night. There was the metal tube, and the prepared Cordtex equivalent and safety fuse lengths, and the two charges for the windows, and the shotgun and the ammunition, and the wire cutters, and the rope and the bent metal hook that was lashed to it, all to be carried up Magazine Hill.

The bedroom door opened.

Ros had taken the ribbon from her hair. She had washed the make-up from her cheeks and her eyes and from her lips.

She was ice calm, pale, matter of fact.

"Lose yourself, Jan."

Jan looked at her, blinking, not understanding.

"Just get rid of yourself. Lose yourself."

"What for?"

"Because I tell you to."

"Where to?"

"Go and check the other car, make sure it isn't being watched, walk the streets, anywhere."

Ros came to Jan and took his arm and kissed him on the cheek and led him to the door. She opened the door and pushed him out through it.

She closed the door. She came to Jack. She reached for his hand. She might have been leading a child. She led him into the bedroom. He thought she might have been crying while he had been at the Voortrekker Monument and looking over Magazine Hill. She did not look into his face. She was clumsy with her fingers as she unbuttoned his shirt, slid it away across his shoulders to let it fall from his arms. She knelt in front of him and lifted away his shoes and peeled off his socks. She reached up to unfasten his belt and to ease down the zipper. She was kneeling as she pushed her light sweater up and over her head. Jack stood in his nakedness and watched her. He knew he loved her. He loved every part of her scrubbed clean body. She stood to step out of her skirt. She drove her pants down to below her knees.

Jack reached for her, he felt the loveliness of her. She stepped back from him. A slow sad smile. She took his hand, she took him to the bed.

She broke. She pushed him hard down onto the bed. She came down onto him. She was sobbing her heart to him.

She tore at the skin on his back with her nails. She hurt him as she bathed him in her tears. She was stretching apart over him, reaching for him, guiding him, driving onto him.

"You cruel bastard, Jack, for coming into my life… for going out of it."