Gerald Seymour - A song in the morning

The doctor saw Jeez once a week, and weighed him. Jeez knew why he was weighed each week.

Sergeant Oosthuizen stood by the door of Jeez's cell.

"That must have hurt when they took them out."

"A long time ago, Sergeant."

Hilda Perry liked to see her family on its way in the morning.

Sam had taken Will to school, and ten minutes later she was back at the front door holding Jack's raincoat ready for him. He came hurrying down the stairs. If he ever managed to get himself married or get a flat of his own, she'd truly miss him. She always thought it was because of the time they had been together, the abandoned wife and the father-less son, that they had a special bond… He wasn't sleeping properly, she could see the eye bags. She reckoned she looked the same.

Today she hugged her boy. She knew they were both thinking of the man half way round the world from them in a cell, thinking of the man she wouldn't have recognised, her Jack couldn't have remembered. He told her he would be home early, he would have seen her gratitude. They'd keep a sort of vigil in the house, the two of them, for however many days and weeks it took, until Jeez was… Just the two of them. Sam didn't know, but she'd started to take Librium three days earlier, just one tablet each night when she was getting into bed, so that she wouldn't dream. She shrugged him into his raincoat. He managed a smile for her, and was away down the front path to his car. The telephone rang behind her. She wanted to see Jack go before answering the telephone, but he had taken a chammy out of his car and was cleaning the windscreen. She went back into the hall and lifted the telephone.

"Could I speak to Mr Curwen, please?"

She could see Jack at the rear window, finishing off.

"Who is it?"

"Name's Jimmy Sandham. He'd want to speak to me."

She ran awkwardly in her slippers down the path. The engine was starting, coughing. She caught him just in time.

She saw the frown. She heard him say, "I'll be right with you."

He put the telephone down.

"Only work, Mum."

She knew when he lied. She had always known. He was away, running down the path. She thought she was losing him. Could no longer reach him in the way she had before.

He had changed when he had broken with that nice Miriam.

She knew what had happened from Miriam's mother when a rain squall had driven them off the course into the lounge of the golf club. Something methodical and cheerless about his life. Two nights a week, after work, at the squash courts, working himself out until he was near sick from exhaustion

… and the same with his studies again, picking up the lost degree course, working late into the nights. She preferred him the way he had been before, when he was with Miriam.

She could never understand how he had lost the degree chance, thrown it up four months from his finals, seemed ridiculous to her, and so trivial.

She watched him drive away.

He had been so matter of fact that evening. He had come home from college and told her that his university days were finished. He'd told her the circumstances, like they didn't matter. A single student who was a paid-up member of a Fascist party being heckled by a group of Trotskyites between chemical engineering and applied mathematics. A point of principle, he'd said flatly, didn't like bullies. He'd told the Trots to leave it, they hadn't and they'd jostled the lad and were spitting in his face. Remembered Jack remarking that he'd thrown a punch, broken a boy's jaw.

So matter of fact. Jack spelling it out that he had been up before the disciplinary court of the senate that morning, and the provost had asked him for an apology, and his reply that he would do it again, because it was bullying, and being told that he must give the assurance, and refusing, and being told that he'd have to leave, and leaving. Telling it like it wasn't important, telling it just like Jeez would have. And here he was, back at his books.

She closed the door. She was alone with herself. The Librium didn't last into the morning. She worked at speed with the hoover and the dusters and the brush and pan, upstairs round the beds and downstairs through the kitchen.

The front door bell rang.

It was a cosy and predictable household. It was her home that was being damaged by nightmares and sedation pills and lies. The doorbell rang again. She didn't want to answer it, she didn't even want to go to the door and peer through the spy hole. Another long ringing. The milkman had already been, the post was on the sideboard in the hall beside the telephone, the newspaper was on the kitchen table. She looked through the fish eye spy hole. It was a tall man, still short of middle age she thought, and he wore a light grey suit and his face was tanned and his moustache was clipped short into a crescent over his upper lip. She tightened the belt on her housecoat. The door chain was hanging loose, unfastened.

She opened the door.

The man was smiling.

"Mrs Perry? Mrs Hilda Perry?" A soft casual voice.

"Yes."

"Did you used to live, Mrs Perry, at 45 Green Walk, Coulsdon, in Surrey?" Another smile. She couldn't place the accent. There was a lilt in his speech that wasn't English.

"Yes."

"Could I come inside, please, Mrs Perry?"

"I don't buy anything at the front door."

"It's about a letter you had, Mrs Perry."

"What letter?"

"You had a letter from a Mr James Carew in Pretoria Central prison. My name's Swart, it would be easier to talk inside."

She recognised the accent as South African. "What if I did have such a letter?"

"I'm from the embassy, consular section. The letter Mr Carew wrote to you is the only letter he's written to anyone inside or outside our country. We're trying to help Mr Carew. Sometimes a man's background, his personal history, can help a prisoner in his situation. It would be better if I was inside."

Because Jack had lied to her that morning she was fine tuned to a lie. She knew this man lied. The man was taller than her even though he stood on the step below the front door.

"If you could help us with Mr Carew's background, his friends and his work and so on, then there might be something you told us that could make a difference to his situation."

Whatever he said he smiled. She wondered if he had been on a course to learn how to smile. She knew Jeez's letter word by word. Each guarded sentence was in her mind. Jeez didn't want them to know that Hilda Perry was his wife, that Jack was his son.

"I've nothing to say to you."

"I don't think you understand me, Mrs Perry. James Carew is going to hang. What I'm trying to do is to find out something that might lead to a reprieve."

His foot was in the doorway. Jeez wouldn't have wanted him in her house, she was sure of that.

"I just want you to go away."

The smile oiled across his face, and then he was inside the hall.

"Why don't we just sit down and talk, Mrs Perry, with a cup of tea."

She thought of the good years with Jeez, and the misery without him. She thought of the way she had willed herself to hate him after he had gone. She would have sworn that the man who had pushed himself into her home was Jeez's enemy.

She picked up the telephone. She dialled fast.

"Who are you ringing?"

"Police, please," she said into the telephone.

"That's a hell of a stupid thing to be doing."

"Mrs Hilda Perry, I've an intruder in my house – 45

Churchill Close."

"Are you trying to put a rope round his neck?"

"Please come straight away."

She put the telephone down. She turned to face him.

"They're very good round here, very quick. Why don't you come into the kitchen and sit down, and then you can explain to the officer who you are and what you want."