A SONG IN THE MORNING (39 page)

It had just been a job for him, watching over the African National Congress. Just an assignment from old Colonel Basil. Wasn't supposed to get involved, not physically and not with the heart. Just supposed to be bumming on the fringe, just supposed to be a listener, and a writer of reports.

He'd hang with Happy and Charlie and Percy and Tom.

Fucking cruel, that it was better to hang with them than to make the Judas Kiss, and live a life sentence in a Boer White gaol.

Jeez reckoned to find friends where he was. Didn't go looking for them, found them when he needed them.

There'd been a guy in Spac, good guy, teacher, they'd been friends for six years. Close enough to pick the lice from each other's heads. A good guy and a good friend, and he'd died in the snow with a bullet hole in his nape. His best friend in Spac and Jeez had been on the detail that pickaxed the grave out of the iron-frozen ground. He wouldn't have given that friend the Judas Kiss, not just for life.

He would make new friends.

He would be friends with Happy and Charlie and Percy and Tom in the corridor, going towards the door that was always closed. He'd be their friend in the preparation room, and when they went through the doorway and into the shed. He'd be their friend when it was the hood and when it was the noose. He'd not give them the bloody Judas Kiss.

No way he would shout for the bastard sleeping in the corridor of C section 2.

He did not understand why the arm of Century hadn't reached for him.

Hurt, hurt hard, lying on his bed, gazing at the dull light bulb through the mesh of the grille, to think that Century had dropped him off the team. He had the proof that they had dropped him, the proof was the bloody cell he was locked into, and the hours that were left to him.

Couldn't think about it, because thinking of the team was fucking agony for Jeez. Think of some other bloody thing . . .

Think of why Hilda hadn't written.

Think of Hilda in a nice house with a nice husband with a nice life.

Think of the boy who was his and who was Hilda's.

Think of the boy who would be twenty-seven years old next birthday.

Think of the boy Jack.

Think of anything other than the trap hammering in practice on Wednesday afternoon, after library.

He couldn't picture, now, what the boy, his son, looked like.

* * *

First thing in the morning, first thing at his desk, the colonel called London. The London embassy told him that Major Swart was not yet in his office.

The colonel said that he would not be calling unless it was of great urgency. The London embassy told him that the major's home had already been contacted, that the major's wife had not seen him since the previous day.

The colonel said that it was an outrage that they had no contact with their man. The London embassy told the colonel that as soon as they had contact with Major Swart they would pass on the message for him to call John Vorster Square, priority.

As if a door slammed in the colonel's face. His investigation had been at a gallop. A name. An address overseas.

A photo-fit likeness. Because the door had slammed, he did not know how to go forward. A piece of basic, beginner's school, detective work was all that was required from London, but Major Swart had gone walkabout and the door was slammed.

He went down the stairs to the incident room.

Expressionless, he reported that London had not yet been able to furnish the material necessary for short circuiting a lengthy investigation. He knew he had lost ground. He made a lame suggestion. He suggested that all the two and three star hotels in Johannesburg should be checked again.

• * •

"Is he standing firm, sir?"

The civil servant had brought the first briefing papers of the day. The Minister of Justice smiled.

"The State President? He's in great form. I was with him yesterday, firm as they come."

"No question of clemency?"

"I'm surprised you ask."

"Because of the overnight telegrams . . . Washington, the Vatican, the Speaker of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the Security Council, the Secretary General of the Commonwealth. They all came in overnight."

"A formality. But you have missed one."

"Those are all the cables, sir."

"What about the United Kingdom? No word from Her Britannic Majesty's ratbag."

"I noted that," the civil servant said. "No message has come from the United Kingdom."

The Minister of Justice clapped his hands. "Did you see the opinion poll from the Free State. We are going to win that by-election, because I was photographed at the grave of Gerhardt Prinsloo, and because the Pritchard Five will hang."

"But curious that the United Kingdom is silent."

• * •

Jack stood with Jan below the wide climbing steps leading to the rearing stone hulk of the Vortrekker Monument.

Jan spoke savagely of this edifice to Afrikaner power and mythology.

As if it were something evil, a national monument to privilege and superiority. He showed Jack, with an angry pointing finger, the carved relief of trekker wagons that formed a laager around the monument, and the great hewn corner statues of the Boer leaders with their rifles, and the bronze of the trekker woman and her children. Jack thought the boy's intensity was unreal, just a drug to give him courage. For himself, he didn't listen. He stood with his back to the monument and looked across the valley to the south side slopes of Magazine Hill.

There was a wire fence at the floor of the valley, at the bottom of the hill. The ground on the slope was rough, half cleared, cut by a stone vehicle track. To the right side, as he looked, of Magazine Hill, was the sweep of the Johannesburg motorway, the Ben Schoeman Highway, that would come round behind the hill on which the Voortrekker Monument had been built. To the left side of Magazine Hill was a separate fenced area, which his plans told him was the army's firing range. Directly ahead, the crown of Magazine Hill was covered with tall and heavy pine trees, rich green, and he could see buildings in the shelter of the trees.

He made his estimates.

He tried to judge the distance from the floor of the valley to the crown of Magazine Hill. He tried to see where he could lie up if he were ahead of schedule, over which ground he could hurry if he was late.

He thought it could not be more than two hundred yards from the crown down the hidden tree-covered slope to the walls of Beverly Hills.

He turned his back on Magazine Hill and walked to the far side of the Voortrekker Monument to see down below where the car would be left. It was a hell of a distance to come back. More than a mile. His own thought. . . that in the chaos after the attack he and Jeez would be better on the scrub hills on foot than immediately into a car, but a hell of a way for all that.

In the line between Magazine Hill and the Ben Schoeman Highway was another stony outcrop. He saw the summit of it had been shaped.

"What's that?"

"Skanskopfort. Built to protect Pretoria, historic monument, colonial cannons and that crap."

"Lived in?"

Jan shook his head. "It's just a museum, and an army store."

Jack walked again to the steps. He stood in the morning sunlight. He gazed again on the slope of Magazine Hill, the slope that he would climb that evening.

They went to Ros's car. Jan drove back to Pretoria.

* * *

In two heaps, Jack's possessions were laid out on the floor.

In one heap was his suitcase and his coat. He had told Jan to dump them from Ros's car, once they were on the way back to Johannesburg. The other heap was what he would take with him that night. There was the metal tube, and the prepared Cordtex equivalent and safety fuse lengths, and the two charges for the windows, and the shotgun and the ammunition, and the wire cutters, and the rope and the bent metal hook that was lashed to it, all to be carried up Magazine Hill.

The bedroom door opened.

Ros had taken the ribbon from her hair. She had washed the make-up from her cheeks and her eyes and from her lips.

She was ice calm, pale, matter of fact.

"Lose yourself, Jan."

Jan looked at her, blinking, not understanding.

"Just get rid of yourself. Lose yourself."

"What for?"

"Because I tell you to."

"Where to?"

"Go and check the other car, make sure it isn't being watched, walk the streets, anywhere."

Ros came to Jan and took his arm and kissed him on the cheek and led him to the door. She opened the door and pushed him out through it.

She closed the door. She came to Jack. She reached for his hand. She might have been leading a child. She led him into the bedroom. He thought she might have been crying while he had been at the Voortrekker Monument and looking over Magazine Hill. She did not look into his face. She was clumsy with her fingers as she unbuttoned his shirt, slid it away across his shoulders to let it fall from his arms. She knelt in front of him and lifted away his shoes and peeled off his socks. She reached up to unfasten his belt and to ease down the zipper. She was kneeling as she pushed her light sweater up and over her head. Jack stood in his nakedness and watched her. He knew he loved her. He loved every part of her scrubbed clean body. She stood to step out of her skirt. She drove her pants down to below her knees.

Jack reached for her, he felt the loveliness of her. She stepped back from him. A slow sad smile. She took his hand, she took him to the bed.

She broke. She pushed him hard down onto the bed. She came down onto him. She was sobbing her heart to him.

She tore at the skin on his back with her nails. She hurt him as she bathed him in her tears. She was stretching apart over him, reaching for him, guiding him, driving onto him.

"You cruel bastard, Jack, for coming into my life . . . for going out of it."

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?"