A song in the morning

18

She lay beside him, and her cheek rested on the centre of his chest.

She could feel the steady rhythm of his heart in her ear.

She thought he was at peace. With her fingers, with her nails, she made shapes and patterns amongst the hairs of his chest. She formed the letters of his name, she wrote amongst the hairs of her love for him. The curtains in the room had been open when she had taken him to the bed. She could see that the skies were darkening now over Pretoria, and she could sense the thickening of the traffic on the streets below the window. She hated the coming of the evening. She felt a safety with this man as they lay against each other, damp warm and loving safety. There was a safety when his arm was around her, his hand over her breast. She knew that she could not hold him in the bed, she had seen the way that a few minutes before he had shifted his hand from her stomach to look down at the face of his watch before returning his hand to the place of pleasure and comfort. She knew that when the hour hand had trickled and the minute hand had rushed that he would leave her. She acknowledged that on this evening, on this last evening, that she played the role of second best. She accepted that she was secondary to the work of the evening that would start when he leaned across her, kissed her, pushed her back onto the pillow, and left her bed. She thought that she had helped him. Her friends had told her that the first time was awful. Ros van Niekerk, happy in her moist heat, safe with a man's hand over her breast and with his fingers over the flatness of her stomach, thought it was not at all awful. He hadn't used anything, she hadn't used anything. Not an act of gratification, not an occasion when adults who knew their minds discussed the merits of pills and coils, a time for soft urgent loving between two young people who would part when the hand of a watch had run its hour. She thought she did not care about the consequences of his not having used anything, of her not having used anything.

His hand moved.

She felt the aloneness of the skin on her stomach. She felt his fingers climbing the slow length of her body, and brushing the nipple of her breast. She opened her eyes. She saw that he looked at his watch. She hated the watch.

"How long?"

"Just a few minutes."

"I can't keep you?"

"You knew you couldn't."

"To have found something precious, and to lose it…"

"Something wonderful to remember, Ros."

Jack kissed her, closed her eyes with his kisses. With his tongue he ran over the nostrils and the fresh lips of his girl.

So calm. As if when he left her he would go for an evening walk, a stroll that was without danger.

She clung to him. Her arms were around his neck, her breasts were forced against the jutted strength of his jaw.

"Please, no hurting yourself, Ros."

She thought that if she cried she would weaken him. She thought that to weaken him was to further endanger him.

And that was absurd because there could not be more danger than where he was going. She choked on the tears, she squeezed the wetness from her eyes.

"Trying."

"Great girl."

"How long?"

"Less than a few minutes."

"Will I ever see you again… " She faltered.

"Remember the brilliance, Ros, of being loved, and remember the brilliance that you gave me with your love."

He looked again at his watch. She felt him start to move.

And, God, she didn't want him to go. And, God, she was without the power to stop his going. She rolled away from him. She lay on her back and the bed sheet hid her knees. She laid her arm over her eyes, so that she would not see the moment of his going from her bed, from her side.

"It was only for you, Jack."

"I know that."

"Because I love my country."

"That's my guilt, that I've made you fight what you love."

"My country, Jack, that's more than a rabble of politicians."

"Ros, my country's politicians, and the bastard desk men, they ditched my father and left him to hang. But I, too, can still love my country."

"And I love my brother. And I hate his cause, because his cause is bombs and guns. His way is killing and loathing and fear. His way takes us to ruin, destroys the country that I love, and will destroy the brother that I love… How long?"

He kissed her. As if they both knew it would be for the last time. He snapped off the bed. He went to his clothes, he started to dress. She lay in the darkness, her eyes under her arm. She heard the movement of his body. She could not let her eyes see him. She felt his hands on her head, lifting her head. She felt the cold of the chain on her neck, on the skin above her breasts. She opened her eyes. She saw the gold chain, she lifted the crucifix of gold to see it better.

"Wear it and remember."

"I won't forget you, Jack, not ever."

She watched him go out through the door.

She heard his desultory conversation with Jan in the living room. She heard him speak aloud as he went through his check list of the items he would carry up Magazine Hill, and down Magazine Hill, to the gaol.

She was numbed. Too unhappy, now, for tears. She swung her legs off the bed.

As she dressed she heard Jack talking to Jan. They had moved on to the list of street places at which the grenades would be thrown, where the pistol shots were to be fired.

Her fingers played with the crucifix. She thought she would wear it for the rest of her life, for the ever of her life. She had promised that in the morning she would be at her office desk, and Jan had promised that he would be in the lecture theatre at Wits. At home, in the top drawer of her wardrobe, there was a yellow silk scarf. She thought that when she was again in her room, that night, when she was back with her parents and everything familiar, she would leave her curtains open and she would tie the yellow scarf to the handle of the window, and she would allow the light from beside her bed to be thrown against the yellow scarf and to be seen outside her window. It was important to her that the yellow scarf should be seen, should be her beacon to save him. Her fingers were tight on the edges of the crucifix.

When she was dressed she went into the living room.

Sitting on the floor with the street map of Pretoria spread out in front of him, Jan looked up at her. He was grinning, amused. She blushed.

"Bit bourgeois, Ros, handing out home comforts to the troops before the battle."

She ignored her brother. "Can I do anything, Jack?"

"Have you a nail file, metal?"

"Yes."

"Please, would you take the serial number off the shotgun."

"Aren't you going to take it with you, to the border?"

"Just in case I get separated from it," Jack said easily.

"You'll need it all the way to the border."

"Wouldn't want it to fall into the wrong hands, come back to you."

It was insane to be thinking about the border. Jack passed her up the shotgun, and he pointed to the serial number.

She took it into the bedroom where she had left her handbag.

She would remember him for ever, as she had seen him in her bed, because she would never see him again.