Gerald Seymour - A song in the morning

"Look, I'm not going to tell you what is the State President's opinion. The way we do it is this, the deputy sheriff will go to the gaol not more than four or five days before an execution and he will then inform a prisoner that the appeal to the State President has been turned down. I'm not saying for certain that the sentence will stand in the case of your client, but I can tell you that if it does stand you will know at the same time that Carew knows."

It had been spelled out to him. The young solicitor softened.

"Not for Carew, but for me to know."

"You're asking me to read the mind of the State President."

"A bit of guidance."

"The minister was in Petrusburg this morning. He made an addition to his prepared speech. He said… 'There are people who say that your government is soft on the matter of law and order. We are not. There are people who say that our legal processes can be influenced by the threats of foreign governments. They can not. There are people who say that terrorists will get away with murder in our fine country.

They will not. I warn people who seek to bring down our society that they will face the harshest penalties under our law, whether they be White or Black, whether they be our citizens or jackals from outside.'… It's not me that's answering your questions, it is my minister."

"How long?"

"Not long, not a month."

"It's cut and dried?"

"Listen. At the moment we have a police strength of around 45,000. In ten years we will have a force of more than 80,000. Right now we have to fight this unrest with an understrength force. If any South African police line cracks then there is nothing to save us from anarchy. We have to sustain the morale of the police or we go under, and supporting the morale is not best served by reprieving police murderers."

"I appreciate that you've spoken to me in confidence.

What can save my client?"

The civil servant examined the file in front of him. He was a long time turning the pages. He looked up, he gazed steadily at the solicitor.

"If at this late stage your client were to give to the security police every detail of his knowledge of the African National Congress, then there might be grounds for clemency in his case alone."

"The others would go?"

"We could handle one reprieve, not more. We have never understood why your client ever involved himself in terrorism, and he hasn't helped us. If we had names, safe houses, arms caches, everything he knew, then we could talk about clemency."

"Guaranteed?"

Fractionally the eyebrows of the civil servant lifted.

"You should tell him to talk to the security police, that's all that can save him."

•* •

Sergeant Oosthuizen stood by the locked door of the exercise yard and talked. He talked of his daughter who was big in wind-surfing down on the Cape, and of his son who owned a liquor store in Louis Trichardt.

Sergeant Oosthuizen had been 38 years in the prison service, the last eleven of them in Beverly Hills. He was to retire in the next month, and then he'd be able to spend time with his daughter and his son. Sergeant Oosthuizen didn't require Jeez to have a conversation with him. He just talked, that was what he was happiest at.

It was more of a garden than an exercise yard. Against the walls was concrete paving. Each wall was nine paces long.

Thirty-six paces for a circuit. Forty-nine circuits was a mile's walk. The centre of the yard was Jeez's garden. The soil was twelve inches deep, then concrete. It was Jeez's garden because none of the other condemns showed any interest in it. The garden had not been looked after since a child killer had gone to the rope the month before Jeez arrived at Beverly Hills. Last spring Oosthuizen had brought Jeez seed. The geraniums had done well, the marigolds had threatened to take over, the chrysanthemums had failed. Jeez crouched on his haunches and picked discoloured leaves and old blooms off the geraniums. The sunlight was latticed over the bed and the concrete by the shadow of the grid above him. The garden was a cell. The song birds could manage it through the grid and out again, but nothing as large as a pigeon could have squeezed down to feed from the grubs that he turned up when he weeded his flowers.

In the exercise yard Jeez could see the sky and he could feel a trapped slow breath of wind, but he could see no trees, and no buildings, and no men other than Sergeant Oosthuizan and sometimes the guard at his catwalk window.

He could see the wall of C section 2, and the outer wall, and the wall of C section 3, and the wall of the C section corridor.

If he stod with his back to the wall of C section 2 and raised himself onto tip-toe he could look over the roof of C section

amp; onto the upper brickwork of the hanging room.

He wondered if Sergeant Oosthuizen would have retired before it was his turn, Jeez's turn, to take the early walk.

He wondered if the sergeant would walk with him.

Tha was stupid thinking, because there was no way the team would let it happen. Burning the candle they'd be.

Couldn't for the life of him think how the team would pull him out. Thought about it often enough, but couldn't work it. Colonel Basil wasn't the one for ideas, nor Lennie. Adrian was good with ideas, better than Henry. Have to be Adrian who was going to crack it, and then the team would all thrash it round. Wouldn't see their feet for dust once they'd settled on an idea. Clear memories, faces clear in his mind, Colonel Basil, and Lennie who had the limp from the ambush in Cyprus, and Adrian who'd bloody near lost his career in the gentlemen's toilet at Piccadilly underground, and Henry .. Shit, and wouldn't Henry have been up for retirement, gone to breed the bloody pigeons he always talked of. What if they'd all gone? Couldn't have done… All bloody older than Jeez. Colonel Basil was, certain, Henry was. Bloody Lennie looked older. Couldn't tell Adrian's age, not with the hair rinse. What if they weren't there at Century…? Stupid thinking. No way the team would let him hang.. .

"Carew, I'm speaking to you."

Jeez started up. "Sorry, Sergeant."

"You weren't listening to me."

"Sorry, Sergeant, I was far away."

"You don't want to brood, you know. It's where we're all going. You don't want to think too much."

"No, Sergeant."

"Why I was talking to you was that I'd just seen your fingers, first and second on your right hand. How long is it since I've been with you?"

"It's thirteen months, Sergeant."

"And I've never noticed your fingers before."

"Just fingers, Sergeant."

"I've never noticed them before, and my wife says I'm the noticing kind."

"What didn't you notice, Sergeant?"

"No nails on the first and second fingers of your right hand."

Jeez looked down. Pink skin had grown over the old scars.

"Someone took them out, Sergeant."

"Ingrowing, were they? I once had an ingrowing big toe nail, when I was serving at the old Johannesburg Fort gaol.

That's closed now. They thought they might have to take it off, but they cut it back and it grew again, but not in. Hell's painful."

"Someone took them out for fun, Sergeant. Can we go inside now, please, Sergeant."

"Who took them out for fun… That's a very serious allegation

… "

"Long ago, Sergeant, long before South Africa."

He could remember the pliers grasping at the nails of the first and second fingers of his right hand. Pain rivers in his whole body. He could remember the smile of the bastard as he jerked the nails off. He hadn't talked to the bastard who had ripped his nails off, just as he hadn't talked to the security police in Johannesburg.

"And you get yourself washed up for the medic."

They went inside. Jeez going first and Sergeant Oosthuizen following and locking the door to the exercise yard.