by Jon Zackon
“I’ve thought about that. I can’t help you a lot, but I’m in charge of petty cash in my department. I can get you a hundred and fifty rand. That will pay for a single air ticket to the UK. But there are conditions - you don’t talk about Koos and you don’t tell anyone that we’ve given you money. We’re not in the habit of doing this. You’re an exception.”
Shit! Did this little donation from petty cash mean that Theo was actually feeling guilty? Not that it felt like much of a consolation.
I lay brooding and hurting after he’d gone. I knew he was right. I had to get away – far away. Koos was like a ragged tooth shark. He had his teeth into me and would never let go.
It must have been an hour before Ruth entered my little enclosure. The trouble was, a nurse and an elderly doctor were with her. She was all business-like in her white coat, with her stethoscope around her neck. She touched my hand surreptitiously.
Whoever designed the white coat probably intended for the wearer to look severe, antiseptic, unapproachable. On the contrary, it made Ruth look highly attractive. Virginal, even. I wanted to unbutton the garment and make love to her there and then. Sadly, my little fantasy was spoilt as my aches and pains began to return.
“You’ve been very lucky,” said the elderly man. “We can’t see any cracks in the patella and some of the surrounding bones are bruised but not broken. This ligament” – he lifted his leg and pointed towards the inside of his own knee – “this one here, is bruised. We’ll keep you in hospital for two or three days, by which time you should be hobbling about. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”
“My face aches.”
“Ah, was that hurt as well in the accident?”
The nurse went off to get me an ice pack. Ruth and the doctor also left.
Minutes later Ruth returned.
She bent down and kissed me. “Danny, what happened? Please tell me.”
“It’s nothing, Ruthie. Just a silly accident.”
“Danny, Dr Fisher doesn’t think so. He says, if you fell on a rock the front of your knee would be injured. But it’s the side that’s been struck. And how could you have got that face injury at the same time? Did you fall twice?”
“Something like that, I suppose.”
“He thinks you’ve been struck with a blunt instrument – on the knee, that is. He can’t work out what caused the facial injury.”
When I didn’t answer she said, “Look, I’ll drop in when I can.”
I tried to smile.
“What’s going to happen now, Danny? You’ll have to make a completely new set of plans, won’t you?”
***
The next few days were something of an ordeal relieved only by the odd occasion when I saw Ruth. I felt embarrassed at my situation. I wasn’t supposed to be in Durban, was fed up with being asked to explain why I was, and was dreading having to say goodbye all over again.
But I promised to tell Ruth everything once I was out of hospital and that seemed to satisfy her. She couldn’t know that I was prevaricating.
Conrad and Moira dropped in. And Steven Fall, who joked that the only time he ever saw me was when I was laid up in bed – a reference to the time he visited me while I had flu.
On Conrad’s second visit he asked if there was anything I needed doing. I told him I had to sell the car but obviously had no proof of ownership papers with me.
He told me not to worry. One of his schoolboy friends was a used car dealer who would take the Anglia off my hands.
“It’s not worth much,” I said.
The next day Conrad returned with an envelope containing two hundred rand.
“Thanks, Conrad. Er …” I began.
“What?” he said. “Another favour?”
“I need an airline ticket to Jo’burg. For a week’s time.”
Conrad agreed to buy a ticket for me, adding, “I don’t think they’ll let you stay in hospital until then. Where will you go when they’ve kicked you out?”
“Apparently, Ruth’s parents spend every December at their house in Ballito Bay. So their big house is empty and that’s where I’m going. Ruth is trying to get a few days off.”
“What about her sister?”
“Ruth told me that Lola and her boyfriend are in the States, visiting his relatives.”
“So you’ll be all alone with Ruth, eh? Very convenient.”
***
I hobbled out of hospital on crutches with four days to go before my flight to Jo’burg. Ruth helped me into the Minx.
“My leg’s a lot better,” I said. “And I don’t like these.”
I meant the crutches. I certainly didn’t think I’d be using them for more than another day or two.
We arrived at her house and I fell on to a sofa.
“So,” said Ruth. “You were going to explain how you came to be injured.”
“I can’t, Ruthie. You just have to take my word for it.”
“That’s nonsense, Danny. I know it wasn’t an accident.”
“You’re right. Of course it wasn’t. But it would be too dangerous to tell you the truth. You’re safer not knowing, believe me. And that’s all there is to it.”
“It’s about that detective. Van Blatter. Isn’t it?”
“Ruthie, I’m not going to put you in danger. Forget it.”
She wanted to go on arguing but then thought better of it. She’d never encountered me being so adamant about anything and she must have realised I wouldn’t – or couldn’t – say more.
As she grew quiet I said, “And there’s worse.”
She looked at me questioningly.
“I have just a few weeks to get out of the country, by order of the CID.”
“That’s unbelievable!”
I tried to explain to her that by disobeying the order I would be putting innocent people at risk. She didn’t get it and got angry with me.
“Just blame it on our society, Ruthie. South Africa’s a sick place these days.”
“Where will you go?”
“I’m going to try to make a go of things in England. Aim for Fleet Street.”
“I was really looking forward to coming up to Jo’burg to see you,” she said. “And who knows, Baragwanath might even have given me a job.”
“What about London?”
“Yes, it is possible. But it will take longer to organise. More time to miss you.”
***
Conrad had retrieved my luggage before selling the car. With a bit of care I reduced my worldly goods to fit into one large trunk. I had to ditch some old clothes and give away my gramophone.
But that left my record collection.
“I’ll take the Monks and you can look after the rest for me,” I told Ruth.
We were in her lounge, sorting through a pile of seventy-eights and LPs.
“This one looks interesting, Danny.”
“Brubeck Quartet at Oberlin,” I said, examining the red vinyl disc. “Famous recording. If you listen to one of the tracks, Perdido, you can hear Paul Desmond playing a bit of Petrushka as homage to Stravinsky, who just happened to be in the audience.”
“That’s brilliant. So don’t you want to take it?”
“I’d like to, but I am going to have to be very selective. I can’t afford to pay for excess.”
In the end I agreed to take the Brubeck and a Max Roach-Clifford Brown album. And an avant garde Teddy Charles one titled Edging Out. And a Cannonball Adderley and a …
“This has to stop,” I said.
“It’s breaking your heart, I can see,” said Ruth, cradling my head in her arms.
“Let’s forget about the records for now, Ruthie. Why don’t you play for me?”
Not surprisingly, the Falls had a fine piano, a baby grand. Ruth warmed up with a few scales and then swung into Cottontail, followed by I Got Rhythm. She changed the mood to reflective with Flamingo, got sad with Stormy Weather, and saddest of all with Lover Man.
As she played it grew dark. We left the lights off. The music was all. And it was magical.
When she got tired of playing she came and snuggled up to me on the sofa and we made love slowly, sweetly, sadly.
***
I discarded the crutches the day before I left. I still had a limp, but was able to manage my trunk at the check-in desk. Conrad and Moira waved to me. I could see Moira was crying, which set Ruth off. We hugged and kissed and then I felt myself walking mechanically through the flight gate.
I had a window seat on the plane and waved furiously but I don’t think Ruth could see me.
And then I was gone from Durban. I’d always associate the place with falling in love. I loved the sea and the free and easy lifestyle. I loved the job and I loved the people. And I loved Ruth.
Just one mad individual had spoilt it all for me. How unlucky was it to run into someone like Koos? I decided I had been dreadfully, staggeringly unlucky. I began to feel sorry for myself.
And now I was flying to Jo’burg, where I would have to face my parents. Oh shit. What was I going to say to them? I spent most of the flight dreaming up a lie to tell them.
Chapter 26
THE LIE was simple enough. I was going to England because a Daily Express reporter I’d met in Durban had promised to get me on to the paper. I couldn’t ignore such a golden opportunity, could I? If my family asked me the Express man’s name I would say Kevin McDougal, the hard drinking guy Geordie West had told me about. At least I could say this bit with a straight face, given that McDougal actually existed. Always helped to have a little bit of the truth on one’s side, I believed.
My sister Penny, five years older than me, married to an accountant and the mother of two small children, believed me explicitly. But then, she was a very trusting person. My mother didn’t disbelieve me, but she was hard to read. Her nature was always to reserve judgment on anything she was told. My bachelor brother Bernie, eight years my senior, was an out and out sceptic. He was a lawyer and didn’t trust anybody anytime, anyway, so bugger him. Michael, the family’s youngest, aged just eighteen, was indifferent.
That left my father, a man whose character was forged by a lifetime of disappointments.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “All you’ve got is a promise, Danny boy. Nothing in writing. This man could be a … a Walter Mitty. What if there’s nothing there for you, son?”
What my dear old dad was really saying was that I was the Walter Mitty. Nevertheless, I pressed on.
“If nothing comes of it, dad, I’ll try damn hard to get a job somewhere else in Fleet Street and, you know, if nothing comes of that I can always go back to The Messenger.”
“They’ll have you?”
I produced the reference the editor had given to Neal Smythe to give to me.
“This is very nice,” said my father. “You’d have done really well to stay on there.”
He started showing the reference to everyone else.
“I always knew you’d go far, Danny,” said my mother.
“Well, just remember one thing,” I said, defensively. “Journalism is a really bitchy business and it’s always possible someone will come along and say I was sacked by The Messenger. This is not the sort of reference you’d give to someone who’s been sacked, OK?”
Theo was the author of the lie I then told to account for my limp – that it was the result of an accident. I didn’t care who believed me and who didn’t. Predictably, my mother made a great fuss, begging me to see a consultant, any consultant.
“It’s a lot better, mom, believe me,” I said, beginning to get exasperated and seeing why I had once been so glad to leave home. For once I was almost telling the truth. My knee was slightly better and so was my movement.
When I came to think about the attack, I realised that as I’d thrown up my hands to protect my head I must also have raised my knees. Koos could not have had time to adjust his aim and the blow would have glanced off the patella, hitting the inside of the knee.
Painful enough, though. And I would neither forget nor forgive.
***
Eric’s office was on the tenth floor of a building overlooking Rissik Street. “I have to have an hour of your time,” I told him.
He put his finger to his lips to silence me.
Then he grinned and said, “This is about that fucking donkey, isn’t it? I knew we should have run the bugger over.”
He grabbed my arm and whispered, “Come on.” He led me back through reception to the lifts.
Next door to his block was a café, largely empty.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Security boys after you?”
“We can’t be too careful, Danny. You know, my dad has clients who are persona non grata. There are big cases pending.”
“But your own office, you’re telling me it’s bugged?”
“Quite possibly. Dangerous times, as they say in the classics. Now what do you want to tell me? You’re obviously in shit, right?”
“It’s that obvious?”
For the next thirty minutes I laboured him with every last detail of my dealings with Koos van Blatter.
Eric listened carefully to everything I had to say. At the end of my little tale, to forestall a lawyer’s obvious comment, I said, “Of course, I realise I don’t have a shred of hard evidence against Van Blatter. Shit, don’t I just know it.”
I tried to put on a rueful face. “Look, Eric, it boils down to two questions. Firstly, can you see any way to keep me in South Africa? I mean with built-in safety for me and my family? And secondly, if I have to go to the UK, what can I do there to bring this bastard to justice?”
Eric was chewing gum slowly. He was different from the person I’d grown up with. This new Eric did not laugh much. And his eyes had gone cold, as if he was preoccupied.
“Look Danny, there are guys out there just waiting for us to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, join the wrong party, represent the wrong people. And then we’re dead pigeons. In a police state you have to watch yourself every time you go for a piss.”
And then he shut up. Eric, the most loquacious person I knew, clammed up, just like that.
“That’s the most tangential answer to any question I’ve ever heard,” I said. But I spoke quietly, without a note of censure, because a few things were beginning to fall into place in my mind.
After a while I said, “Don’t make waves, eh? I get it, Eric. I mustn’t draw any attention to myself. If the police focus on me they might soon start focusing on my friends and acquaintances. Go quietly. To somewhere out of the line of fire. I should be grateful. That’s what you’re trying to tell me, right?”
He didn’t bother to answer.
“Well, I have one more problem, pal. I’ve had to keep the whole thing secret. That includes my family. Especially my family. So I’ve spun them a yarn. They think I’m going to the UK with the promise of a big job there. So I can’t ask them for help. They’d know I was lying, right? And I only have a little money. Not enough to last very long in London.”
Eric brightened immediately. “Now that is not a problem, Danny. If there’s one thing I can help you with, it’s money. How much do you need?”
“Well, I can’t borrow too much because I’d never be able to pay you back. I’ve got about two hundred pounds. I need another two hundred to be on the safe side.”
“Four hundred rand. That’s fine.”
“How will I pay you back?”
“Right. This bit is ultra-secret. Technically, we’re breaking the law, but from time to time my family needs money abroad. And you know how ridiculously strict our exchange control measures are – what is it you are allowed to take out of the country, two to three thousand rand? So last time my dad was in the UK he set up a dollar account at a bank in Finsbury Square in the City of London. Any unused cash on our trips goes into it. I’ll give you the address and the account number. And I’ll bring the m
oney round to your house tonight, so you’ll have time to turn it into travellers’ cheques. No great hurry to pay us back.”
“That is very, very kind Eric. With a bit of luck you’ll get the lot back inside of eighteen months.”
The conversation switched to family and friends.
“I don’t know if I’ve told you,” he said, “Lizette and I are getting engaged.”
“Mazel Tov! Congrats! So Durban works its charms once again.”
“Yep. A donkey story and a wife. And that was just one holiday.”
We stood up to go.
I remembered something Eric had once told me – that his father was on good terms with Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela, both also Jo’burg attorneys. Tambo, deputy president of the African National Congress, was living in exile in London. Mandela, branded a terrorist by the Verwoerd regime, was on the run.
“Eric, I get the feeling that you are mixed up in some kind of a dangerous game,” I said. “So please, please be careful.”
“OK, Danny, I’ll watch my step. But you’ve got to promise something in return – keep a low profile. Yeah?”
***
I phoned Ruth every day. On the day before I left for England, in between saying how much she missed me, she said she had a bit of news.
“It’s from Conrad. Moira’s passed it on. He says to tell you the editor has sacked someone called Marty Blaine. Is that the right name, Danny? Conrad said you’d know all about it.”
It took a few seconds for this to sink in, then I asked, “Is that all he said? No reason for why he was sacked?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Blimey, the editor’s got more sense than I thought. Marty’s a nasty piece of work. He got me into a lot of trouble, Ruthie.”
***
Penny and her husband, Abie, invited me for supper at their home in the suburb of Blairgowrie. As I walked through the hall I noticed that a gate had been fitted to the entrance to their staircase.
Seeing me staring, Penny said, “You can’t be too careful these days.”
