Gerald Seymour - A song in the morning

There are gardens inside the outer wall that come up to the sections. I saw those gardens when I went inside and when I left. You are there a long time and you know very little.

It was the same for all of us who were there… It is not a place that I care to remember."

Thiroko was hunched towards him.

"For me, I want you to try to remember."

For more than an hour the radio played light music, and a disc jockey doodled away his time in a London studio.

The old man covered a dozen sheets of foolscap paper with his drawings. At the moment of his arrest he had been an architect's draughtsman in Cape Town.

He drew a plan, as best he knew it, of the square mile to the west of Potgieterstraat, a square mile that encompassed Defence Headquarters to Pretoria Central to Magazine Hill.

He drew a plan of the whole of Beverly Hills, cursing the gaps in his knowledge.

He drew C section. He drew C section I. He drew an individual cell. He drew a cell in relation to the catwalk above the linking corridor. He drew the corridor of C section I and the catwalk. He drew the exercise yard of C section I, and after that he drew a top view plan to show the positioning of the metal grid over the yard and of the supporting beams. He drew the visit rooms. He drew the gallows shed as it had been described to him. Last he drew the airlock entry through the outer wall.

He said drily, "Under the Prisons Act, I could get ten years for drawing you such plans… should I be returning to South Africa."

Thiroko accepted no time for banter.

"Firearms?"

"There is an armoury in the administration block where they keep hand guns, machine guns, grenade launchers.

There are guns available at all times in the gatehouse and at the reception at the entrance to administration. There are guns on the watch tower that is set onto the highest wall on the hillside where the sentry can overlook the whole of the compound. The men on the catwalks have F.N. s or Lee Enfields, they are issued with six rounds for a duty. No one carries a gun if they are in contact with prisoners."

"What is the closest guard to the condemns?"

"I cannot tell you about B section and A section. Over C section there is the armed guard on the catwalk. Through the windows he can look down into each cell. In addition there is one guard, not armed, who is locked for the night into the individual corridors of C section i, and 2 and 3.

Each of those men has a telephone line to the Control in the gatehouse."

Magyar looked up to see the fighting concentration in Thiroko's eyes.

"Comrade, I do not think you can go to any of the others of us who were there and find more. One man's experience is the same as every man's. I have forgotten nothing that I knew. You cannot break out. You cannot break in."

Thiroko said, "Last night a man broke into John Vorster Square."

Again the sad smile, as if it was a disappointment to the old man that he played the bearer of bad news.

"John Vorster Square has public roads on all sides. Go east from Beverly Hills, you have half a mile before you get to Potgieterstraat, all a control area. Go south, and you are climbing Magazine Hill which is within the prison complex.

Go west, you have a rifle range for the military, and then you have the police training college, and then you have the police dog centre. Go north, you are into Defence Headquarters and the Air Force command bunker. There is not just a high railing. You cannot break in nor out of Beverly Hills… Is it because five comrades will hang?"

A defiance in Thiroko, an echo in his words from a park bench. "It is not right that we should do nothing."

"Sentiment from you, Comrade Jacob? There was one amongst the White politicals serving with me, serving longer than I. He used to say, 'Why don't they hurry up with their bloody revolution, get us out of here?' I tell you, every man in Beverly Hills, political or criminal, yearns by the candle of hope for freedom, that is what I know. Comrade, there are five of our men in there who are going to hang and they have no hope."

Thiroko put the drawings into his briefcase.

"If you hold the candle of hope for them then that is wonderful," the old man said.

Their farewells were curtly made. Thiroko switched off the radio. He went out of the room. He was given his ticket.

It had been taken to the Zambian airlines office in Piccadilly, and endorsed for that night's flight.

He was photographed when he left the green painted front door, as he had been when he had entered. The cameraman freelanced for the Special Branch and operated from the Metropolitan Police offices on the opposite side of the street.

Thiroko would have expected to be photographed. He didn't care. He had curtailed his visit to London. He was going home with the pain in his stomach. And when he got there he was going to provide the support that an extraordinary young man had asked of him.

•**

Jeez knew of the bomb.

The sentries changing duty on the catwalk would have been disciplined, up before the governor, if it had been known that they had let slip such a nugget of information.

Jeez had heard them talking.

It seemed a small matter. What seemed a big matter was that Sergeant Oosthuizen had informed him that his solicitor was driving from Johannesburg the next day to see him.

He thought the days were sliding fast, each day shorter.

He thought his time was bloody racing.

George Hawkins was driving to inspect a chimney when he heard the one o'clock news.

He was preoccupied with the chimney because he was certain it would be difficult. The chimney was 112 feet high, and to bring it down he required an additional 28 feet of clearance on the fall line. It was a built-up area of Hackney, and the oaf who had telephoned him hadn't known whether there was 140 feet clear. He was going to see for himself and he was going to charge them for his time whether or not he agreed to do the demolition.

Johannesburg's central police station? Stone the bleeding crows.

He knew it was his boy. The fire told him that the blue print for the bomb had been his own diagram of the La Mon Hotel device.

Christ, and he hadn't told the kid much. Hadn't told him much because he hadn't thought the kid was getting far beyond having his arse shot off. He'd given the boy nothing but the barest and the briefest. The boy must have followed to the letter what he had been told, must have memorised every bloody word. And what he'd told him for the hotel job was sweet bugger all of what he'd need to know to blow a hollow charge job against a prison wall. Hadn't even told him of the safety procedures to go through in the loading of a hollow charge job with Polar Ammon.

He thought that if Jack Curwen died that he, George Hawkins, would never forgive his bloody old miserable self for allowing the boy to stuff such nonsense in his head.

Hard for the student to concentrate on his afternoon lecture.

The subject matter was The Role of the State in Support of the Single Parent Family. Hard for Jan van Niekerk to concentrate on anything. All the talk in the cafeteria, and over the whole campus was of the bomb in John Vorster Square.

He had read that there was a theory that the bomber was White. Jan van Niekerk had carried a package to the Landdrost Hotel. A few Blacks got to stay at the Landdrost, token Blacks, but he thought that the Mr Curwen to whom the package had been carried on by the bellboy must be White, a White name. He was involved, certain of that. He was guilty under the terms of the Sabotage Act, 5 years to death. Always, since he had begun, they could have manufactured a case against him. There would be no need to manufacture anything when he had carried explosives, when those explosives had been used in something so super fucking fantastic as the bomb inside John Vorster Square.