Gerald Seymour - A song in the morning

Jack asked, "If I blew it would you go to prison with me?"

"Worse than that. Breach of official trust."

"You've taken a chance on me."

"It was the only decent course to take."

Jack gripped Sandham's hand, held it tight. His face was screwed into lines, as if he agonised over the question.

"Is Jeez Carew worth crying over?"

"You know the answer."

"You have to tell me."

Gently Sandham released Jack's hand. "You're his son, you don't have a choice. And from what I've discovered I'd say that your father is a man you should be very, very proud of."

Sandham said he had set up a meeting at the Foreign Office for the following morning that was to discuss Jeez.

He didn't elaborate. He left Jack, grim and drawn.

He walked back to his car.

Waves of outrage lapped over him, outrage against the forces that had intruded into his life, his mother's life. His tongue twisted round obscenities, sometimes silent in the spring evening wind, sometimes out loud. Terrorism, prisons, and the sentence that a man should hang by the neck until he was dead had never before owned a corner of Jack Curwen's mind. Many targets for his hatred. He hated White South Africa. He hated the security policemen who had arrested Jeez. He hated their prisons and their gallows.

He hated the Secret Intelligence Service of his own country.

He hated the men who had washed their hands of responsibility for Jeez's life.

A long, bitter walk, a mile beyond his car.

When his mind was made, when a certainty had slashed through the rage and bafflement, he retraced his steps.

South Africa was a place on a map. He had no thoughts on the future of that country, it was of no interest to him.

He had no Black friends. In a year he could have counted on his fingers the times he had spoken to Black men and Black women.

Jack knew nothing of Black Britain or Black South Africa.

He knew nothing of the Black dream of freedom, and he cared less.

But his mind was made.

He went in search of Duggie Arkwright.

Duggie Arkwright was the best start Jack could think of.

Each new year, Jack transferred from his old diary to his new one the addresses and telephone numbers that he had consolidated over the years. The previous New Year, when he had determined on retaking his degree as an external student, he had searched out Duggie to beg and borrow the library books from college that he knew Duggie had squirreled away. He had an address that was a squat off Camden High Street. He thought they were all Marxists, or they might have been Stalinists, and there was a Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party poster sellotaped to the wallpaper in the hall. He was given a second address.

Duggie had nearly been a friend in the little more than two years they had shared at London University. They had known each other first when they had adjoining rooms in the hall of residence, when they shared coffee, or were short of sugar, or needed to borrow a book. Duggie was an idealist.

In his first term he had joined DebSoc, LabSoc, AASoc, and DramSoc. Jack hadn't joined the Debating Society nor the Labour Society nor the Anti-Apartheid Society nor the Dramatic Society. He had joined the rugby club. Jack would have been satisfied to end up with a 2nd (Lower) in Modern History, he knew Duggie had kicked himself for ending up with that grade. Jack had dogged application, Duggie had brains. He'd gone to Duggie for the books because he was damned if he was going to go back to college and request library facilities.

He went gingerly down the dark basement steps in Pad-dington. When he rang, a woman shouted at him from a window above. She gave him a third address. She said she'd been chasing the bastard herself for his unpaid rent. She may have been misled by Jack's suit to supposing him another creditor, because she wished him well.

They had drifted apart during the second year. But it would not have been possible for Jack to lose sight of Duggie.

Duggie Arkwright was the darling of the Left's societies, the regular lambaster of government and institutions. He wrote in the student paper under a photograph and a by-line.

He made principal speeches at debates. He had twice been arrested in Trafalgar Square, once on the Anti-Apartheid ticket and once on a C.N.D. demonstration.

He ended up in Dalston, quite a long way east over the tracks from tarted-up Islington. It was the doorway beside a newsagent. The newsagent was open. He went inside and asked if next door was right for Duggie Arkwright. He got a cold nod from the young Pakistani at the cash till.

Last year Jack had seen Duggie's photograph, second row in a demonstration in Liverpool. He couldn't think of anywhere else to start.

Jack had rung the bell and a girl had opened the street door and led him upstairs. It wasn't really a flat. It was a room with a table and some chairs, a baby asleep in one of them, and a line of washing and a paraffin stove and a collapsible cot and an electric cooker. For a bed there was a mattress on the floor with rumpled sheets and blankets.

Posters on the wall, and Jack fancied they hid the damp.

They looked at each other and Duggie beamed.

"Bloody hell, it's priggy Curwen, the refugee from Modern History. What in God's name…?"

"Nice to see you, Duggie."

"I suppose you want my notes now, and my essays."

"No."

"Ditched it all, have you? Come to tell me you've chucked it?"

"I'll take my degree the year after next, and pass."

"God, what a crass prig. Do I have to wait till then for my books back?"

"When I've finished with your books I'll be sending them back to the library."

Duggie was laughing out loud, Jack was grinning. The student that Jack had hit had been standing in front of Duggie Arkwright. Duggie had said at the time that it didn't matter, the student having his jaw broken, because he was unsound, a revisionist.

"Come on in, sit yourself down."

But there wasn't anywhere to sit down. The baby was in the one comfortable chair, and of the two chairs at the table one was deep in washing bags and the other was a book store.

"Bloody good to see you, Jack bloody Curwen. Jack, this is Anthea."

The girl stared coldly at Jack. He could measure her dislike. His suit and his raincoat, wasn't it? His hair that was cut every fortnight. She turned away from him, as if she was a bank manager's daughter, as if she detested a reminder of where she had once been.

"That's Joshua Lenin Arkwright, sleeping thank God…

Don't just stand there, get your bloody coat off. You look like a bloody bailiff."

Jack grinned. "Your last landlady spoke well of you."

"Remember that cow, Anthea? Should have had the rent tribunal on her, and the Health and Sanitary… You're bloody welcome, if you're not after a loan."

"I do need some help," Jack said simply.

Duggie's laughter pealed through the room. His smile was huge and his teeth were awful.

"You must be in desperate shit if you need my help."

Anthea snapped that he'd wake the baby.

Duggie pulled a face. "Come on, if you've the price of two pints."

They went down the stairs, and were in the street before Jack realised that neither of them had said goodbye to the girl. "One glorious night behind a hedge when we'd gone up to help the miners picket some hideous power station.

Her daddy said he'd cut her out of his will if we didn't marry. High price to pay for coal, if you ask me, but he's seventy-one next birthday."

Jack plunged. "Are you still involved in South Africa?"

"You don't just lose interest because you've left college."

"It's important to you?"

"Course it is. Most days I'm at Anti-Apartheid."

"Do you know people at the A.N.C.?"