A SONG IN THE MORNING

by Gerald Seymour

"I will lead the cadre."

  Nothing astonished this White man. His eyebrows flickered a trace of surprise. He stayed silent.

  "I will go back myself into South Africa, into my mother-land. I have not been there since I was a young man. Perhaps it is a hallucination. Perhaps it is my duty to the men who otherwise will hang. I have a responsibility for them, five times of responsibility. You gave the authorisation, I prepared the plan. I cannot escape my responsibility . . . The young man in Johannesburg is the son of James Carew, the driver. The son taught me about sacrifice, when I thought I had nothing to learn. For his father he is prepared to sacrifice his life. I should be prepared to make the same sacrifice. They are sons to me, Happy, Charlie, Percy and Tom. What did we do when Benjamin Moloise walked to the gallows? We issued statements . . . I don't want to issue a statement this time!"

  "Tell me about London, Comrade."

  "In London I went to see a physician."

  "What were you told, Comrade Jacob?"

  "To live each day of my life to the full, to enjoy each minute of each day."

  "Is there pain?"

  "The pain will be nothing to the joy if I can give life to my children."

  "Is it possible, to bring them out?"

  "I would have said it was impossible for a stranger to carry a bomb into John Vorster Square. I no longer know what is impossible."

  The pain was deep in the lower bowel of Thiroko's stomach. He winced as he stood, as he shook hands with the man from Riga. He had chosen the four men who would go with him, who would return with him to South Africa.

  The physician had not been specific, he had spoken only of the few months that remained.

  * * *

  Jack came back into his room, closed the door behind him, slipped on the security chain, checked the suitcase.

  In the afternoon, after the experience in Soweto, he had had to force himself to go out into the city, to walk on the streets amongst Blacks, be a tourist. Be a tourist and also make some enquiries.

  He had gone to a small engineering firm in the back streets^

  down from Marshall. He had asked about the availability of a short length of 8" iron piping.

  When he crossed the room he saw, lying on his dressing table, left there by the bellboy, a sealed envelope.

  He saw the bold handwriting. He thought the envelope had been addressed by a girl.

  * * *

  When the colonel left the meeting he brought back to his office a copy of the initial forensic report.

  Embedded in the walls of the hallway of John Vorster Square had been found the synthetic fibres of a cheap bag.

  Blown clear through the doorway and into a flower-bed had been a piece of a metal can. This first examination stated that the fibres came from a little-used bag, and the fifty cent sized piece of metal from a clean painted can without corrosion or rust.

  The colonel had given it as his opinion that both items had been bought specifically for the bombing, for the making up of the explosive device, for carrying it.

  * * •

  "I'm truly sorry, Carew."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "There's not a decent man I know who can get pleasure out of this moment."

  "I'm sure there isn't, sir."

  "For what we do in life . . . we have to take the consequences of our actions."

  "Just so, sir."

  "I take no delight in seeing a man go to his punishment, whatever he's done."

  "I appreciate that, sir."

  The governor stood ramrod straight in the doorway of the cell. Behind him, his message read, the deputy sheriff of Pretoria waited, his arms hanging, his hands clasped in front of his trouser flies. Jeez had the centre of the floor space, he was at attention, his thumbs on the seams of his trousers. He thought the sympathy was genuine. He thought the governor was an honest man. The governor didn't frighten Jeez, not so that he had to imagine him out of his tailored uniform, shorn of his medal ribbons, stripped to his underpants. The governor was nothing like the bastard who had run Spac, who had been Jeez's gaoler way back for so many long years.

  "I like a man to go proudly. I like a man to behave like a man. I can tell you this, Carew, go like a man and it will be easier for you. A prisoner who makes difficulties hurts himself, not us."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "I'd bet money on you, Carew, that you'll go like a man who is proud."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I always tell a man at this time that he should think through his life, think about his affairs, and stay with the good times. We don't want any melancholy."

  "No, sir."

  "Carew, you wrote a letter a few weeks ago, I checked with Records and you've had no letter back. I'm sorry. Of course, you are permitted to write as many letters as you wish."

  "There won't be any more letters, sir."

  "Is there anyone we should contact, anyone you would like to be offered facilities for a visit?"

  "No, sir. There's no one who should visit."

  "I tell you frankly, I've never met a man who has been here, White, who has been as private as you. Nor of your bearing, if I may say so."

  "Yes, sir."

  "There's a point I would like to make to you, Carew. The State President has refused you clemency, he has named the date of your execution. There have come from abroad several representations to the State President urging him to think again. From His Holiness the Pope, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, many others. Carew, you should know that in these matters the State President will not alter his decision. I tell you that, man to man, because it is better that you prepare yourself without the distraction of false hope."

  "Yes, sir."

  "The decision that you hang next Thursday is irrevers-ible."

  "I know that, sir."

  "The colonel from the security police, he will come back and see you, Carew, if you care to reconsider his proposal."

  "I have nothing to say to the colonel, sir."

  13

  He took a taxi from the hotel to the zoo gardens.

  Jack had memorised his instructions and flushed the sheet of paper away down the lavatory.

  The driver hissed against the wooden toothpick that was clamped in his teeth through each detail of the bland police statement of unrest overnight in the Cape and the East Rand on the early morning news. Two shot dead by the police in the Cape, and a Black woman burned to death in an East Rand township.

  "Seems to be getting worse," Jack said.

  The taxi driver looked over his shoulder. "You'd need to be smiling from your cheeks to your backside to think it's getting better."

  "What has to happen for it to get better?"

  The taxi driver settled comfortably in his seat, like the question was a box of chocolates, to be enjoyed.

  "My opinion, take a tougher line with the Blacks. That's not what we're doing at the moment. Right, the State President's put the military and the police into the townships. Wrong, each time he makes a speech he's talking about reform. Result, they think they're winning, they reckon if they keep up the murder and the arson that they're on their way to government. On the one hand the State President is trying to intimidate the Blacks into ending the violence, on the other hand he's trying to buy them off with promises.

  The two don't sleep in the same bed . . . "

  Jack slid out of reach of the driver's eyes in the rear-view mirror, took a fast, deep breath, and asked: "Did you know the taxi man, the one they're going to hang?"

  "Carew, that bastard?"

  "Did you know him?"

  "I didn't myself. I've a friend who did."

  "What sort of fellow was he?"

  "Mystery man, that's what my friend says. When the name was in the papers he just didn't believe it, says he was a very private fellow."

  A recklessness in Jack. "Where did he live?"

  "He had a flat, behind Berea, furnished, that's what my friend says. When he was arrested he gave instructions to his lawyer man that
everything in the flat should be sold, went to a children's home charity. My friend says there wasn't much, bits and pieces and his clothes, but they've all gone, like he knew he was never coming out. My friend says that he used to talk quite a bit with this Carew, but he never knew anything about him. I mean, they didn't talk about family, just used to talk about the motor, that sort of thing.

  Long time ago, he wrote to ask whether Carew would like a visit, and the letter came back from the authorities that Carew didn't want any visit. . . What's your interest?"

  Jack said, "I read about it in the English papers."

  He was dropped at the main entrance.

  He must have been one of the first customers that morning because the wide sloping grounds with the autumn in the trees were near-deserted. He walked over the dun yellow parched lawns. He did exactly as he had been instructed.

  He went to ihe cafeteria where they were still putting out the tables, and he ordered a cup of coffee. When he had drunk it he walked away past the big wingspan vulture in a tall cage, and past the compound where a young gorilla gambolled, and past the green water pool of the sea lions.

  He understood why the instructions had demanded that he followed a set route. He was being watched and checked to see that he had no tail. He climbed the hill and strolled slowly past the big cat enclosures. Well before the heat of the day and the leopards and the jaguar and the lions were pacing. He sat on a bench in front of the Bengali tigers. He didn't look around, he made no attempt to identify the people he assumed to be watching him. Up again and past the stink of the elephant and the rhino, past a bee swarm of tiny Black children out with their teacher, past a party of shambling mencaps with their nurses. He followed the instructions.

  He went up the long hill towards a huge memorial, to British victory in the Boer War of nearly a century ago. He drifted into the military museum. More schoolchildren, but middle teens and White, and with a pretty young teacher who had a strident voice as she quizzed her pupils on Bren gun carriers, Churchill tanks, 25 pounders, an 88 mm recoilless anti-tank. They'd be needing that knowledge, the little sods. Their country was going into automatic rifles and armoured personnel carriers and White conscripts in the townships, and by the time these kids were fattened up then it might have come down to tanks and artillery. It was a bad image for Jack. His thoughts ran fast to Potgieterstraat and Defence Headquarters and the guns of the sentries and the fire slits on the walls of Local. A bad awful bloody express train of thought because he had never believed that Beverly Hills could be so well protected . . .

  If he had known it would be that well protected then Jimmy Sandham would be alive, and Duggie would be alive, and Jack Curwen would be in his office, at his desk, on the north side of Leatherhead.

  Bit bloody late, Jack.

  He sat on a bench. He waited.

  * * *

  Jan and Ros had argued half the night away. They had argued in the car on the way to the zoo. The argument had continued as they tracked the Englishman.

  "Violence doesn't change anything."

  "The Boers listen to violence, they don't listen to debate."

  "Blowing people up, killing and maiming people, won't change the government."

  "Change will only come when control of the townships is lost."

  "The state is committed to real change, all that's needed is a breathing space for the moderates on all sides to come forward and negotiate."

  "The moderates? What do they want to talk about? About opening up Whites beaches for non-segregated bathing? Do you think they care in the townships, where they're queuing up for charity food parcels, about a nice little swim on a Whites Only beach? The moderates aren't relevant, might have been twenty years ago, not now. It's about power, not about which beach you're allowed to swim on. Anyone who has power will never hand it over voluntarily. The Boers'll have to be burned out of power."

  "Your way, Jan, only slows the pace of change."

  "They're playing with reform, Ros. They want to get the Americans off their backs, so they can go back to living the way they've always lived, the White boot on the Black throat."

  "Are you ashamed of being White?"

  "I've no shame, because I'm fighting against a White evil.

  I didn't ask you to spy in my room. You can get out of my life."

  "I'm stuck with your bloody life. I'm your sister. On your own you're dead or you're locked up. I won't turn away from you. I wish I could, and I can't."

  For half an hour they watched the Englishman move through the zoo's gardens. At the sea lions and the compound for the big cats they had split and gone in opposite ways so that each of them could be sure they were free of a tail. Jan thought that his sister learned fast. If there had been a tail he believed they would have seen it.

  For Jan there was the fascination of seeing the clean shouldered back of the man who had achieved the remarkable, and carried a bomb into John Vorster Square. For Ros there was the fascination of seeing the man who had come as an activist to their country, who was capable of murder.

  For what he had achieved, Jan thought the stranger was a hero. For involving her brother, Ros thought him an enemy.

  They came into the military museum.

  Through the heads and shoulders of the schoolchildren, between the snub barrels of the artillery pieces, they saw him. They were a boy and a girl out walking, there was nothing about them to excite suspicion. They looked at the man who sat hunched on the bench.

  Ros said, "Once you've spoken to him then you're more deeply involved than ever before. You could turn round, you could go home. Father would get you a ticket, you could fly out of the country tonight. You could be safe."

  Jan said, "I don't run away."

  "You don't run away because you can't run . . ." She hated herself.

  "They don't listen to reason. Last year when they hanged Ben Moloise they had petitions from all over the world.

  They didn't give a shit. They strung him up because what the rest of the world says doesn't c o u n t . . . "

  "He was convicted of killing a policeman."

  "Now they're going to hang five men, and again the rest of the world's pleading for mercy. They don't give a shit.

  This man knows it, fight force with force. Fight the force of John Vorster Square with the force of a fire bomb."

  "And Pretoria Central?"

  "I don't know," Jan said.

  He had the diagrams of the gaol in the inner pocket of his windcheater jacket.

  "You're getting to be a real creep, Jan."

  They went forward, Jan limping and ahead, and Ros trailing him.

  * • *

  He turned when he heard the voice. The voice spoke his name.

  Jack saw the boy. He saw the shallow body and the thin face. He saw the way the shoulder drooped. He saw that the boy was crippled. The boy was behind the bench, trying to smile a greeting.

  He looked the other way. The girl was standing back two more paces than the boy. A nice looking girl, and older than the boy, and she wore a summer skirt and a blouse buttoned to the throat. He could see the lines at her mouth, tension lines.

  "I'm Jack Curwen."

  "I was ordered to contact you. You followed the instructions, thank you."

  They stared at each other. As if neither had quite believed the ordinariness of the other.

  Jack smiled, the boy grinned. Jack wondered why the girl didn't smile.

  "I'm Jan, this is my sister. You don't need any more names."

  Strangely formal. Jack shook hands with them.

  A shyness in Jan's voice. "What you did at John Vorster Square was incredible."

  Again the silence. None of them knowing what to say.

  Out of earshot the schoolchildren were spidering over the hulk of the museum's largest tank.

  Jan drew the envelope from his pocket. He passed it to Jack. Jack ripped open the fold. He saw the diagrams. He leafed quickly through the sheets of paper, the frown settling sharp cut on his fore
head. He knew the girl's eyes never left his. The school teacher's voice carried gently to him. She had raised her voice because she was describing to her class the cyclic rate of fire of a heavy machine gun from the Great War. He saw that the diagrams were detail of Pretoria Central. He saw the positioning of Beverly Hills, he understood why he had not seen the walls when he had walked on Potgieterstraat.

  "What happens now?"

  Jan said, "I have to take you into the north of the Transvaal. There is a rendezvous there for you, close to a town called Warmbaths. It is a spa town about a hundred kilometres from Pretoria. You should go back to your hotel, and you should check out of your hotel, then we drive to Warmbaths."

  "Do you know why I have come to South Africa?"

  "No."

  Ros snapped, "And he doesn't need to know."

  Jack saw the anger on the boy's face.

  Jan said, "I'm just a courier. I am ordered to deliver you to a rendezvous. I do what I am told, just as I brought you the envelope today, just as I brought you the package of explosives."

  "You don't know why we are hitting the gaol?"

  "As he said, he's just a courier."

  Ros twisted away, swirled her skirt. Jack stood up and walked behind her and Jan hobbled after them. Jack caught up with her.

  "You're not a part of it," she said bitterly.

  Her eyes were on her sandals, striding out.

  Jack bored on. "I'm not a part of it, it's true. In England, my home, I'm not an activist, I'm not political. I don't give a damn for this war. I have to be here, probably like you have to be here."

  She tossed her head back, rippled her hair, gestured at her brother behind her. She said, "It's lunatic for him to be involved."

  "Lunatic for all of us."

  "So why did you honour us with your presence?"

  "A week today they're going to hang my father."

  She looked away. He saw her close her eyes, squeeze them tight shut. They stood together and waited for Jan to catch them.

  • * *

  There were eighteen detectives from the plain clothes branch of the security police who had taken the desks and tables in the large room set aside for the investigation. The detectives worked with their telephones and notebooks eight floors above the back hall of John Vorster Square.