A song in the morning

3

The drink hadn't hurt, had been something of a blessing because his stupor sleep didn't let him nightmare.

First thing when he came down the stairs he hunted for the newspaper and his father's photograph. It was one from the top of the pile, next to the fire lighters. He tore out the picture and folded it into his wallet.

Breakfast in the kitchen and not a word of his lurching up the stairs a little after midnight. His mother didn't ask him why he had been out so late. Big boy, wasn't he?

Twenty-six years old, a grown man. Nothing had ever been said about his moving out, not that Sam would have complained if Jack had announced one Monday morning that he was off to look for a flat. He couldn't have faulted Sam for the way he had taken this other man's son into his household, but kindness and patience couldn't have turned them into father and son. Sometimes they were friends, sometimes he was a generously tolerated lodger. Jack could recognise there was more fault in him than in the attitudes of his step-father. He was close to himself, rarely gave of his affections, took his pleasures away from home, pubs and squash club friends and the girls who were casually hooked into that scene. He was aware of his own cold streak of independence. Natural enough, for a boy who had never known the companionship of a true father.

And no mention made at the breakfast table of James Carew. Didn't have to be talked about, because he was there with them. Sam too loud, his mother too quiet, and Jack behaving as if he had buried the whole matter, and all of them hurrying through the bacon and the scrambled egg the sooner to escape to their work and the privacy of their thoughts.

Jack didn't even call the office.

He drove into London and parked off the Vauxhall Bridge Road, behind the cathedral and walked through the park to Whitehall. Yesterday had been wasted, and now there was no more time to waste because time was short for James Carew..

He stood in the courtyard outside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He made some rapid calculations and decided to advise Richard Villiers not to accept the contract.

It was just too damn four-square big. Almost intimidat i ing.

He watched the civil servants arriving with their uniform E II R briefcases, most of them looking as though they had nothing but a morning paper in them; and the leggy secretaries, and the chauffeurs and the messengers. He went up the steps and into the dark reception area.

There was a commissionaire, blue uniform and medal ribbons, an old regular army man. There was a security man a yard or two back in the shadows. There was a woman with grey hair drawn into a tight knot. She wore a white blouse over what didn't look like regulation underwear. He wasn't asked what his business was. They waited on him to speak.

He was an ordinary citizen who was calling by because his father was going to be hanged in South Africa. He wondered how often the ordinary citizen came to announce themselves in the reception area. They were all looking at him, like it was an attempt to make him grovel. Probably not worth pointing out that he and a few other ordinary chaps off the street paid their salaries.

"My name is Curwen. I'd like to see someone, please, who deals with South Africa."

There was a very slight smile at the commissionaire's mouth. The security man looked as though he hadn't heard.

The woman said, "Do you have an appointment?"

"If I had an appointment, I'd have said so."

"You have to have an appointment."

"I don't have an appointment, but I do insist on seeing someone who deals with South Africa, on a matter of urgency."

Jack wondered what the word urgency might mean under this roof. He'd used it forcefully enough for her to hesitate.

"What's it in connection with?"

"Are you an expert on South Africa?"

"No."

"Then it won't help you to know what it's about."

A flush spilled through the make-up on her cheeks. She turned her back on him and spoke into a telephone, then told him to take a seat.

He sat on a hard chair away from the desk. He reckoned he'd spoiled her day. He was more than half an hour on the chair, and she began to look herself again. He wondered what they would be doing upstairs that meant he had to sit for more than thirty minutes waiting for them. Getting the coffee machine working? Sharing out the sandwiches?

Filling in the South African Department's football pool coupon?

"Good morning, Mr Curwen, would you come this way, please."

The man might have been in his late forties, could have been the early fifties. His suit didn't look good enough for him to be important, but he had a kindly face that seemed worn thin with tiredness. They went down a long and silent corridor, then the man opened a door and waved Jack inside.

It was an interview room, four chairs and a table and an ashtray that hadn't been emptied. Of course they weren't going to invite him into the working part of the building.

They were in the quarantine area.

"I'm Sandham. I'm on the South Africa desk."

The man apologised for keeping him waiting. Then he listened as Jack told him about the letter from Pretoria, and of the little that he knew about his father.

"And you want to know what we're doing for him?"

"Yes."

Sandham asked him please to wait, smiled ruefully, as if Jack knew all about waiting. He was gone five minutes. He came back with a buff file under his arm, and a younger man.

"Mr Sandham explained to me your business with us, Mr Curwen. I decided to come and see you myself. My name's Furneaux, Assistant Secretary. I read everything that goes across the South Africa desk."

Furneaux took a chair, Sandham stood.

A short, abrupt, unlikeable little man, not yet out of middle age, with a maroon silk handkerchief flopping from his breast pocket. Furneaux reached for Sandham's file.

"This conversation is not for newspaper consumption,"

Furneaux said.

"Of course."

"I understand that your father left your mother when you were two years old. That makes it easier for me to talk frankly to you. I am assuming you have no emotional attachment to your father because you have no memory of him. But you want to know what we are doing to save your father's life?

Publicly we are doing nothing, because it is our belief that by going public we would diminish what influence we have on the government of South Africa. Privately we have done everything possible to urge clemency for the terrorists… "

"Terrorists or freedom fighters?" Jack held Furneaux's eye until the Assistant Secretary dropped his face to the file.

"Terrorists, Mr Curwen. Your government does not support the throwing of bombs in central Johannesburg. You've heard the Prime Minister on the subject, I expect. Bombs in Johannesburg are no different to bombs in Belfast or in the West End of London. It is not an area we can be selective over… Privately we have requested clemency because we do not feel the execution of these men will ease the present tension in South Africa."

"What sort of reply have you had?"

"What we'd have expected. Officially and unofficially our request has been ignored. I might add, Mr Curwen, that your father is only a British subject in technical terms. For the last dozen or so years he has chosen to make his home in the Republic."

"So you've washed your hands of him?"

Furneaux said evenly, "There's something you should understand. They execute a minimum of a hundred criminals a year there. There's no capital punishment debate in the Republic. From our viewpoint, your father received a fair trial although he declined to co-operate in any way with his defence advisors. The Supreme Court heard his appeal, at length."

"I'm not interested in what he did, I only care about saving his life."

"Your father was found guilty of murder. My view is that nothing more can be done to save his life."

"That's washing your hands."

"Wrong, that's accepting the reality that in South Africa people convicted of murder are hanged."

"He's my father," Jack said.

"His solicitors don't believe he has a chance of a reprieve.

I am sorry to have to tell you this."

"How soon?"

Furneaux scanned the papers in the file, flipped them over. He fastened on a single sheet, read it, then closed the file.

"It may have been discussed by the executive council last night, but it might be next week – they're more preoccupied with the unrest – three weeks, a month maximum."

Jack stood. He looked at the table, he looked at his hands.

"So what am I supposed to do?"

Furneaux looked to the window. "Baldly put, Mr Curwen, there's nothing you can do."

"So you're just going to stand back while they hang my father?" Jack spat the question. He saw his spittle on Furneaux's tie, and on his chin.

Furneaux looped his handkerchief from his pocket, wiped himself. "Mr Curwen, your father travelled quite voluntarily to South Africa. He chose to involve himself with a terrorist gang, and it is, and from the very beginning was, more or less inevitable that he will pay a high price for his actions." the file was gathered against Furneaux's chest.

"I'm sorry for wasting your valuable time…" Jack said.

"Mr Sandham, would you show Mr Curwen to the front hull."

Jack heard Furneaux's heavy tread clatter away down the corridor.

He said, "I don't understand. My father is a British citizen living in South Africa for years, suddenly turns up in a murder trial, but your man has a pretty ancient looking file on him an inch thick. How's that?"

"Don't know." Sandham bounced his eyebrows.

Sandham took Jack to the front hall, asked him for a card so that he could contact him if there were developments.