Gerald Seymour - A song in the morning

You'll hang and nobody'11 care."

"Can I go back to my cell, sir?"

Whatever t h e torment, misery, always address the interrogators w i t h courtesy. Courtesy brought a small victory over the bastards. T h e bigger victory was never to plead.

He wanted the loneliness of his cell, he wanted the anguish to be private. He wanted to cry alone within the walls of his cell for help from his team.

"I don't w a n t to see you hang, Carew. It would give me no pleasure to have you hanged by the neck until you are dead. I come here today with the offer that can save you from the executioner. Are you listening, Carew? Don't play the 'Mister' with me, man."

T h e blood rolled from his chin onto his buttonless tunic.

" O n your behalf, Carew, I had a meeting with the Minister of Justice this morning. I have made a bargain with him."

It was the colonel's moment. He took a sheet of headed paper from his pocket. He unfolded it, he waved it at Jeez.

He laid it on his knee.

"If, even at this late stage, you agree to co-operate fully with me, to make a detailed and verifiable statement concerning every dealing you have had with the A.N.C., then the minister will go to the State President and get an order of clemency for you… "

He heard the singing, and then the trap, and then the spurt of water, and then the hammering, and then the cough of the van engine.

"A detailed statement, Carew. Personalities, safe houses, arms caches. Give us those and you get clemency, that is the bargain, here in writing."

Jeez was rocking on the balls of his feet. Swaying as a sapling in light wind. Moisture bursting all over his body.

Tickling fear at the nape of his neck.

"Make it easy for yourself, Carew, help us to help you.

There's a good chap. The A.N.C. doesn't give a damn for you. It's martyrs they want, photographs of martyrs to drape round Europe and America. You owe them nothing, man.

You owe it to yourself to co-operate with me. Are you going to be a good chap?"

He was burdened with his secret. He had never reneged on that secret, not during the years in Spac, nor during the weeks in John Vorster Square, nor during the months in Pretoria Central. To renege on the secret was to believe that the team had abandoned him. Better to hang than to believe Century had ditched him. Still the small kernel of hope, whittled down, the kernel said the team at Century would never believe that Jeez Carew would betray his secret.

He turned on his heel. It was a parade ground swivel. He was facing the door.

"You're putting the rope round your neck, Carew," the colonel snarled.

The warrant officer shouted for Oosthuizen.

Still in his clothes, his shoes kicked off onto the carpet, Jack slept. Beside him on the wide bed was a copy of Star, open at the page that reported the decision of the State President that five convicted terrorists should hang.

From his eighth floor window in the Landdrost Hotel Jack Curwen stared out over the city and beyond to the open ground. He looked past the office towers and away across the pale yellow pyramids of goldmine waste. He saw a modern city where less than a century before there had been only flat veld. He had read the books in his hotel room, and had to smile. An Australian, one George Harrison, had come here in search of gold, and stumbled on the main seam, and been given his discoverer's certificate – and sold it for ten pounds. It was all down to George Harrison from Oz, all the towers, all the wealth, all the unrest. And poor George Harrison had disappeared with his ten pounds into the Eastern Transvaal, never to be heard of again. All that Jack saw was built upon the discovery of George Harrison, poor sod, loser. Waste heaps stretching to the south into the early morning haze mist, the towers to the east and north, the concrete streets to the west. Wherever he was, George Harrison, he must be crying in his box.

He took the lift down to the lobby. He had wondered if he would be contacted on his first afternoon, first evening, in the hotel. He had lain on his bed, sometimes reading, sometimes asleep, and waited. He hadn't taken breakfast, couldn't face a meal.

Time to find the target on which he would prove himself.

He was crossing the lobby. He heard his name called. The Indian day porter was coming from behind his counter.

"You want a taxi, Mr Curwen?"

"No, thank you."

He saw the frown pucker the Indian's plump forehead.

"I'm going to walk," Jack said.

"Be careful where you walk, Mr Curwen. Some very bad things happen to tourists. Definitely, no walking after four o'clock, Mr Curwen. Please not, sir."

"I'm just going to walk around the main streets."

"Anywhere, sir, it is better by taxi."

He had seen the printed slip on the desk in his room.

"You are warned pickpockets have been known to assault tourists in Central Johannesburg." He walked outside into a bright sunshine.

Once he had turned the corner from the front of the hotel he lost the sun. Buildings too tall for the width of their streets. Into shadow. Into the grey of concrete buildings and cracked litter-strewn pavings where the grass sprouted. A dirty city. He passed two paint-peeling, dowdy-fronted escort agencies, then on to Bree Street. Clothes shops and dismal coffee shops. The few Whites went on their way and hesitated not at all, and the Blacks leaned in the doorways, tilted themselves against the lamp posts. A beggar pleaded to him, Black, squatting over a crippled left leg, and Jack flushed and hurried on. The Blacks seemed to watch him, size him, weigh him.

Back into the sunlight.

He had come off Jeppe and onto Van Brandis. A square opened in front of him. He felt the warmth of the sunlight.

Safety from the loiterers. He came past a high tower that gave way to a mock Gothic front, to a building of tall rectangular windows, and entrance steps leading to a wide portico. He saw the street sign ahead of him. Pritchard. He looked back across open lawns to the doorway and saw the spider web of scaffolding obscuring the black scorched stone work.

He gazed at the Rand Supreme Court.

He thought there must be a terrorist trial at the court.

Too many police, too many yellow police wagons parked on Pritchard. He looked at the policemen, White and Black, some in denim blue overalls and forage caps, some in trousers and tunics and caps. He saw the way their holsters were slung from their webbing belts, slapping their thighs. There were high fire stains around the doorway. He wondered where his father had sat in the van. He wondered from which direction the four had approached with their bomb.

He saw some flowers lying at the side of the steps leading up to the court. He wondered who in South Africa would want to put out flowers all those months later for his father, if he hanged…

Bullshit. Bullshit, because Jeez Curwen wasn't going to hang.

… He was standing on the pavement beside the path to the front entrance. A Mercedes pulled up beside him. A policeman saluted. The chauffeur sprang out to open the passenger's door. Jack watched the small and unremarkable man go slowly up the path between the lawns. Shrunken by age, his suit now a size too large for him, a judge going to work. A judge like another judge. A judge like the judge who had sentenced his father.

Not enough of a target.

He heard a faraway siren. He saw the police stiffen to alert, then move to cordon the pavement, to shepherd the drifting Blacks back from the kerb. A policeman standing in the junction of Van Brandis and Pritchard, beside his motorcycle, had his arm raised to halt the oncoming vehicles, leaving the road clear for the siren. Two cars, coming fast, and sandwiched between them a yellow van with tight mesh over the side window. Jack saw the blur of a Black face. He thought he saw the momentary image of a clenched fist, couldn't be sure.