Keepers of the House

by JH Fletcher

  ‘It’ll be hot, filthy. Quite likely dangerous, too.’

  Anna’s mind had been set on it. It would make her look good if she could tell Jack she’d seen at first hand what was going on. She had kept on and on until at last Mark had given in.

  ‘You’re mad. But if you really want to …’

  He had even written out an accreditation card to show the cops, if it came to that.

  She had her own camera; if they were going to stand here, she might as well use it. She raised it, focusing through the viewfinder.

  A posturing, grimacing man, clenched fist held high, fingers closed, symbolically concealing the white skin of his palm. Only black was beautiful here.

  Click.

  A girl, no more than fifteen, frizzy hair tightened in braids across her scalp, throwing out her hips mockingly as she danced.

  Click.

  Behind them a sea of faces, one hundred, two — figures rhythmically chanting and swaying in the shuffling dance that had become commonplace on television screens across the world.

  Thanks to the international press corps; thanks to Mark Forrest. It was the first time she had really understood what his work entailed.

  Click.

  Mark had told her he came here often to run the tennis clinic he had started with the help of one of the local teachers. He’d spoken of tin shanties and bare brick houses, of dusty alleyways and corrugated iron fences. Of chickens, scrawny dogs, children in the streets. None of that today. Today the mob was a surf of anger pounding against the rock wall of the waiting police.

  I wouldn’t want their job, she thought.

  Mark had shifted half a dozen paces to one side. She followed, not wanting to be separated from him, and saw that he was taking pictures of the police line. Little more than boys themselves, Anna thought, but their faces belied their age. Eyes watchful, mouths tight beneath trim moustaches, faces grey with dust and tension. They held their rifles across their chests. Pointing at nothing, for the moment, but there nonetheless.

  Click.

  More yells. More stones. The tear gas thinning now. A stone flew high over the police line and fell close to the huddled journalists, who shied like nervous horses. Too close, as the man had said.

  Anna stared down at the stone. More than a stone. It was a great chunk of paving. Whoever threw that must have a wrist like a tennis champion.

  One of Mark’s pupils, maybe.

  And grinned, despite the circumstances.

  Another chorus of yells. Stones. In the dusty air, rage as potent as dynamite.

  The police line stirred again. She could feel the tension. Trouble coming.

  Mark obviously felt it, too. He turned towards her.

  ‘I wish you’d get out of here.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m staying.’

  A wry half-smile as he shook his head, yielding to her stubbornness. ‘Please yourself …’

  He turned once again to watch the mob. She studied him, seeing the dust and sweat on his upper lip. One or two of the journalists were already scurrying for shelter; she knew he’d be happier if she left with them but she wasn’t going to do that. This was what she’d come to Africa for (wasn’t it?), and she wasn’t going to run away at the first sign of danger. At least he wasn’t badgering her.

  What a man he is, she thought. Perhaps I’ll be luckier this time.

  A few metres to her right Mark was moving again, bringing the rioters and the police together in the viewfinder, a weaving pattern of confrontation.

  Click.

  There were dogs now. German shepherds, trained for the work, held by their handlers on long chains.

  All of a sudden, on no order that she had heard, the dog teams charged the crowd, the dogs snarling and leaping, yanking at the steel leashes. The blacks fled a dozen stumbling yards out of range, terrified of the dogs. And who could blame them?

  One man somehow avoided the charge and danced up almost to the line of cops. Red T-shirt, dirty jeans, upraised finger jabbing the air derisively under the nose of the nearest policeman.

  She saw Mark move closer, hands busy as he focused.

  Click.

  One for the front pages, she thought.

  He came back to her; she felt his tension, as hot as flame.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I want you to stay here for a moment. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Just to get a couple of pics. I want to try out a different angle.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t see why –’

  ‘No.’

  His voice said, No argument. He stood watching her until at last, reluctantly, she nodded.

  ‘Take care,’ she said.

  ‘Sure.’

  Cautiously he edged away from the group of journalists, the protective police screen. Now he was exposed to the demonstrators but they, too, were preoccupied and nobody took any notice of him.

  She watched as he crossed the road bordering the football field. He ducked down one of the side lanes between the houses and was gone.

  FOUR

  Take care, she’d said.

  Mark thought, If I wanted to be careful I wouldn’t be here at all.

  He took one final look over his shoulder. A police officer had clambered on top of the armoured car. He’d met him several times at township demonstrations. Captain Scholtz was a hard bastard, although better than some. Now he was speaking into a microphone held close to his mouth, eyes on a section of the crowd on the far side of the field. Far too preoccupied to pay any attention to Mark.

  Excellent.

  Swiftly he crossed the last few metres of the football field and eeled his way into the confusion of alleyways leading back between the small houses, the corrugated iron fences. He knew the area vaguely, had driven this way lots of times on his way to the tennis clinic he had arranged with the headmaster of the nearby school. Abraham Qwele, quietly-spoken, a courteous man with a closed face.

  The tennis court had been a joke, lines scratched on the open ground, but someone had found a net and there’d been no end of kids interested. Boys in grey shorts, girls in black gym slips. It had turned out well, and Mark had enjoyed himself.

  Now his knowledge of the area might come in handy. Everyone was familiar with the images of rioters seen over the shoulders of policemen. The dogs, the tear gas grenades. What was needed now was something to freshen the world’s jaded imagination. If he could work his way around to the back of the crowd through the narrow lanes, he might just manage it.

  People said Mark Forrest would always go that extra yard for a story, a picture. It was true; it made him feel good, knowing it. But he knew, too, that they shook their heads, telling themselves that he was living on borrowed time. Take the chances he did, one day there’d be a reckoning.

  Hell, man, it’s only a job.

  They were probably right. Except to Mark it had always been more than that. If you lacked the talent to be grand slam tennis champion, maybe you could still be champion of something. You still had something to prove, didn’t you? To yourself, if no one else? That you weren’t the bum your old man had been. Not the bum your ex-wife had always said you were, either.

  Mary-Lou Aspinall.

  They had been on the circuit, both of them talented, but she, in truth, better than he. Both of them so much in love. A marriage made in heaven was what the papers had said. The way it had turned out, more like a marriage made in hell. They’d broken up months before Mark had pulled out of the tennis circuit and gone home. No doubt she had been as glad to see the back of him as he had been to leave. If she’d minded enough to care, one way or the other.

  Why the hell do I always think of her at moments like this?

  The sound of yelling was fainter now, blanketed by the buildings. Mark hurried down the lane to the end. There was refuse everywhere, the ripe stench of decay. The smell of fire was stronger, too, the crackling swir
l of black smoke staining the sky over to his right. Not a building, after all; the fire wasn’t big enough and the smell was wrong. More like a bus. Probably the mob had torched it on its way through. It was what mobs did. Maybe he’d have a chance to get some pictures of it later.

  A black face appeared suddenly in a gap between the houses. Mark’s heart leapt. The face vanished as suddenly as it had come and he heard the scuff of running feet.

  A child. Thank God.

  He went on, running now. No time to spare. That demo was set to explode any minute and, if he didn’t get a move on, he’d be too late.

  The lane ended at another road. He flicked a cautious eye around the corner. Nothing. No peace-loving residents on the streets today. He went left, running easily, Nikon swinging from the strap around his neck. He turned into the next lane and sprinted along it towards the football field, the sound of the mob growing louder as he ran.

  The field opened before him. The crowd, backs to him now, still faced the police line. Mark saw at once how the situation had deteriorated in the few minutes he’d been away. The police had raised their rifles and were pointing them at the demonstrators. There were a lot more dogs and the anger in the mob’s voice had notched into hatred. The explosion was only a spark away.

  Mark crossed the field towards the back of the crowd. He passed a scattering of hangers-on, people who’d come to watch rather than take part. He got some unfriendly looks but nobody tried to interfere. They were too interested in seeing what was happening at the front of the crowd. ‘Watch a mob’ — great spectator sport. People never seemed to realise that the guys at the back were almost as much at risk as the ones in front. Flying bullets had a way of finding you, wherever you were standing.

  And you? he asked himself. Reckon white skin gives you immunity, maybe?

  The crowd was a lot bigger now. For their own safety, the cops would have to make a move soon. And when they did …

  It could become another Sharpeville.

  If he’d been around to take photographs of that riot, when all those demonstrators had died, his name would have gone around the world.

  The crowd stank. Black or white, all crowds did when tensions ran high. The stink was different, that was all.

  Yelling, chanting, stamping, eyes blood-red in the black faces. Mob frenzy was taking over. The killing mode.

  Perched on top of the armoured car, Captain Scholtz was shouting through a loudhailer. Mark couldn’t hear a word; the voice of the mob drowned him out.

  The tension was jerky, orgasmic. It needed only a spark —

  A crack, like a stick breaking. One of the cops stumbled. Mark saw him sag, rifle thudding on the bare earth, before he realised that what he’d heard had been a shot.

  Someone in the crowd had opened fire on the police.

  The mob realised it at the same moment and surged forward with a triumphant roar.

  Don’t! Mark wanted to scream the warning. Didn’t they realise what would happen next?

  The police line took one step forward, rifles pointing. The crowd hesitated. Cross-tides of confusion ripped through it and the police charged, a furious rush of men and dogs.

  The demonstrators broke and ran.

  Mark ran with them.

  On the far side of the field they felt the pursuit slacken and stopped, looking back at the police. Not everyone had been fast enough; some had been cut off. The cops had been badly frightened. One of them had been shot, maybe killed. Now they were angry, determined to repay that solitary bullet. Wooden batons rose and fell as the victims were beaten systematically into the dust of the football field. Their blood stained the earth, as Mark had foreseen.

  Click.

  The crowd rumbled, reformed, started hesitantly to move back, but the police line was still intact, the guns still raised. The impetus was gone. The police charged again. The crowd retreated and began to break up. The police stopped. The rifles swung up. They fired into the mass of people.

  Screams. Men and women going down around him, eyes wide in horror and disbelief as the bullets bit home.

  Mark was caught in the milling mob. He managed to focus the camera as the second volley came. More cries, more people falling. Blood.

  Now the dog teams came in, harrying the fragmenting crowd.

  Click.

  They were off the field now, dispersing down the alleys leading into the heart of the township. They would be safe there. The cops wouldn’t follow them into that maze but they’d been thrashed and knew it. Now they were angry, looking for a victim.

  Mark sensed the change. Until now, mob consciousness had protected him. Now he was a potential target, white amid a sea of black.

  He edged away, hoping to be invisible.

  How the hell do you manage that, white man?

  Most of the crowd ignored him, confrontation over until the next time, but here and there knots of youths still held together. That was where the danger lay. For them Mark was a target to dream about, a solitary white man where nobody, including himself, wanted him to be.

  He saw one group watching him. Half a dozen of them, about eighteen years old. The most dangerous age.

  Mark grinned at them, a shit-eating grin, easing himself away. Nobody grinned back. He was white, they were black, there was nothing more to be said. To be white here was to be dead.

  The group split, heading his way. Mark ran.

  Anna had been tempted to follow him but had promised and would not break her word. She was frightened, too — not only of the mob, although certainly that, but of being a burden to Mark in whatever lunacy he was up to now.

  The chanting of the crowd had become a menacing accompaniment to fear. With Mark’s departure she felt terror, raw and absolute, for the man, lover, stranger, whose presence could still evoke in her such disbelief and astonishment. More than terror, there was outrage that he should endanger so carelessly the relationship, passionate and consuming, that had sprung up between them.

  Emotion was a scream within her head. Never mind your damn story. What about us?

  Watching, almost paralysed by fear, she caught a momentary glimpse of him crossing the open ground behind the crowd. He ducked between two buildings and was gone.

  Now only fear remained.

  Time passed. Five minutes, ten. She waited and cursed and hoped, balancing on a knife-edge of terror that brought the acid taste of vomit to her throat. Then, between one moment and the next, the world went mad.

  Out of nowhere, men and dogs charged, scattering the crowd as anger turned to terror. Batons wove their rhythmic pattern of violence, the sound of the blows a sickening counterpoint to the screaming of the crowd. Then all other sound was stilled by the staccato rattle of the guns.

  Hand to her disbelieving mouth, Anna watched as fleeing figures crumpled and fell. Time stopped, became an endless, appalling present in which some figures crawled, others were hauled away, heels and heads dragging, others still lay motionless, their blood soaking into the bare and thirsty ground.

  Of Mark there was no sign.

  There remained only a stillness, a capsule of horror and disbelief within which her own questions ricocheted like bullets.

  Where? Where has he gone?

  I don’t know.

  You were with him, weren’t you?

  Yes.

  He knows it’s against the rules for anyone to go off unaccompanied. He could be killed. Doesn’t the fool see that?

  Yes. No. I don’t know.

  Where did he go? Why? Answer me.

  At last, silence.

  Unreality remained. Disbelief separated her from what was happening around her. The return journey in the guarded vehicle. The city with its illusion of normality. The cottage, peaceful at the end of its driveway. The mountain leaning in serene beauty against the blue sky. The room with the bed upon which she fell. Familiar and irrelevant. A dream.

  In her head was the only reality. One question going round and round, a bird trapped and frantic within he
r skull.

  Why? Why? WHY?

  A yell and the youths were after him, hunting him down. Shrill laughter giggled in their voices as they called to each other, believing him helpless. This was their home ground. No one would help him here. They were between Mark and the sanctuary of the police line, driving him ever deeper into the township’s alleys. They were young and fit, they could run like the wind but were in no hurry.

  Plenty of time to enjoy the chase and kill whitey, too.

  How could he hope to get away from them?

  He ran, thanking God he was pretty fit himself. The camera bumped against his chest. He thought of dropping it, but would not. The pictures in there were his passport to success, to fame, even. He would not abandon his future.

  Future? What future?

  He rounded a corner. The streets had emptied fast. Hardly anybody about now. Thank God.

  There certainly wasn’t much else to be thankful for. Twenty yards back, the pack of youths still followed, not hurrying, but not going away, either. Wearing him down. It was the fun of the chase, the anticipation of getting something of their own back when they finally caught him.

  If, he told himself fiercely, breath beginning to catch in his throat. Not when. If.

  Another corner, another alley, and there was an opening to the right, a narrow pathway between two buildings. He followed it, praying it wasn’t a dead end, flogging himself onwards over the bare earth.

  Cut me off here, I’m dead.

  Another turning, another alley. Breath getting difficult now. They were still there. He’d heard them shout to each other only seconds earlier. Pathways led off the alley but he daren’t take them, afraid they led nowhere.

  A corrugated iron fence appeared, six feet high, flanking a two-storey building with no visible windows. Mark skidded to a stop, grabbed the top of the fence and felt the edge of the rusty metal hack into his palms as he hauled himself up and over. He dropped with a thump to the ground. Looking about him, he could see no one. He crouched behind the fence, fighting for breath, joints loose with fear now he’d stopped running.