Gerald Seymour - A song in the morning

He had excused himself from taking tea with Aunt Annie's relations after church. He had told his wife to offer his apologies to the minister.

He read the reports that had come in late the previous evening. He couldn't have waited for them the previous evening, because the loss of Thiroko had been too great a blow. It should never have been left in the hands of Recce Commando, that he was certain of. He had been sure of it all through the late hours at home as he had listened to his wife, sniffling and talking of Aunt Annie.

Another day, another opportunity.

He gutted the reports.

A White male. Age between middle twenties and thirty years. Grey trousers and a green sports shirt and a mauve sweater. Common to both sales.

An English accent.

The reports were specific. Not an English accent that was South African. Not the accent of a long term English immigrant… and they were pigs who should never have been let into the country, hanging on to their British passports, shovelling money out of the country, sending their kids away to avoid army service, sneering at the Afrikaners who had made the country… The accent of an English Englishman.

The purchases had been made within one hour of each other on the day the bomb exploded.

Under the reports he had two photo-fit portraits. They had been built as mosaics from the descriptions of the two shopkeepers. The hair style, the deep set eyes, the strong nose, the jutting chin.

It was the colonel's belief that he stared at the two faces of one man. They were the faces of the man who had destroyed the back hallway of John Vorster Square. And his mind could wander. If he had been consulted he would have argued strongly against the use of Recce Commando in the tracking and failed capture of Jacob Thiroko. He had not been consulted and as a result he had been denied the chance of extracting information from one of the best sources he'd ever been close to. He had scarcely slept for rage.

He went down the stairs to the incident room. He let it be known, that in his opinion, from the weight of his experience, the bomb was not the work of Umkonto we Sizwe.

"I believe it was thrown by an individual who arrived recently from England, otherwise more care would have been taken in the purchase of the materials. It should be assumed that he came to South Africa very shortly before the attack. The airports should be checked. You should look for a flight from Europe because the shop men have given him a pale complexion, he hasn't been in the sun. You should also check every one of the city's hotels. That is my suggestion."

He knew his suggestion would be taken as an order.

•**

"You'slept on it?" Jan asked.

"My decision, yes."

"No flight?"

"No," Jack said.

A pointless question. Jan could see beside the unmade bed the toy building that was Pretoria Central.

"I don't want to…"

Jack cut in. "You don't want to get shot."

"I don't want to start something that is impossible."

"It's an over-used word."

"You don't have explosives and you don't have weapons."

Jack waved him quiet. He told Jan about the fifteen pounds of gelignite, saved from the John Vorster Square bomb. He told him about the detonators and the firing fuse.

He saw the surprise growing on the boy's face.

"Didn't you trust us?"

"Nor myself."

"Each one of us, the activists of Umkonto we Sizwe, each of us has an implicit trust in our Movement."

"It was sensible to be careful, it's nothing to do with trust.

Jan, I have to have more explosives or grenades, and I have to have firearms. I have to have them."

"I'm just a courier," the boy said, and the nerves showed.

"I have to have them, Jan."

"By when?"

"Tonight."

"That's impossible."

"Over-used word, Jan."

Jack started to make the bed. Jan paced the floor, there was the rhythm of the shuffle and the thud of his feet. Jack smoothed down the coverlet. He thought he would never understand this boy. He could understand a man such as Thiroko, and the young men who had died with Thiroko.

Blacks fighting for what Blacks thought was theirs. Couldn't place this crippled boy in the game, a White fighting for what Blacks thought was theirs. He thought it was all to do with the foot. He thought the misshapen foot had alienated the boy from the White society around him. He thought the boy must find a satisfaction from his hidden betrayal of his own people.

The boy stopped, turned. He faced Jack squarely.

"I'll be back in an hour for you."

After Jan had gone, Jack sat again on the floor beside the model. He was drawn to an approach to Beverly Hills from the south side, over Magazine Hill. He knew why that approach appealed to him. Defence H.Q. was to the north.

The east approach was through Pretoria Local and Pretoria Central. From the west he would have to cross beside the police dog training school, and the secure mental hospital.

He did not know what was on Magazine Hill, and ignorance was a comfort, his only ally.

"You're not usually here on a Sunday morning, Sergeant."

"Overtime, Carew. I get time and a half on a Sunday morning. I need the money, what with retirement coming.

You can always get overtime on a Sunday. The young fellows don't want it. They want to be with their families, get outside the city, get away from here."

Jeez had eaten his breakfast. His breakfast on a Sunday morning was the same as on any other morning. Jeez had eaten porridge made from maize, with milk. And two slices of brown bread, with thinly smeared margarine and jam.

The same as on every morning that he had been in Beverly Hills. He had three more breakfasts to eat. He would be gone before breakfast was served on Thursday. He had drunk his mug of coffee. He knew that he would get one meal that was different to all the other meals inside Beverly Hills. On Wednesday afternoon he would have a whole chicken for his dinner, cooked by the chef in the staff canteen. For the last meals there was always a whole chicken for the condemns who were White. He couldn't remember where he had heard that, whether it had been from way back when he was on remand, or whether he had read it in the newspapers before his arrest. It was a part of the lore of the condemns that they were given a whole chicken the dinner before they were hanged, just as it was part of the lore that the Blacks only had half a chicken. Jeez couldn't believe that, that the pigmentation of the skin made the difference between two legs and two wings and two breasts, and one leg and one wing and one chicken breast. And he wouldn't get to know, because he was buggered if he was going to beg an answer from Sergeant Oosthuizen.

Jeez wasn't sharp that Sunday morning.

So dull that he didn't even question Oosthuizen's claim that he was only at work to get time and a half for his nest egg. There was a weakness in Jeez's legs and in his belly. It was with him more frequently, as if he had a cold coming on, and the microbe was fear. Couldn't rid himself of the fear, not when he was locked in his cell, not when he was alone, particularly not when the high ceiling light about the wire grille was dimmed, when he was alone with his thoughts of Thursday morning and the rambling night sounds of the gaol.

The sounds carried into the upper areas of the cells and through the open windows to the catwalks, and from the catwalks they eddied to the next window and floated down from there to the next cell, and the cell beyond that.

The young White, the one who hadn't been there for more than a few weeks, always cried on a Sunday morning, in the small hours. Oosthuizen had told Jeez that he had been an altar boy, was a Roman Catholic, and cried because when he had been a teenager he was out of bed early on a Sunday morning and away to his local church for first Mass. Oosthuizen had confided that the young White was getting to be a pain with his crying. The old White, charged with killing his wife for the insurance, he coughed and spat each morning to clear the nicotine mucus from his throat. Oosthuizen said that the old White smoked sixty cigarettes a day. Oosthuizen had once said, in his innocence, that the old White would kill himself by so much smoking.