Gerald Seymour - A song in the morning

"If it doesn't I'll be giving hell to an old guy in England when I get back." Jack grinned.

"How so?"

Jack said, "This is the first time I've ever built anything like it."

"The first time?"

"But you're supposed to be…"

"It's the first time," Jack said.

Ros turned away. She was shaking her head, broad sweeps, and the red ribbon in her hair flowing. A crack in her voice. "And you haven't even thought how you'll get away in the car, where you'll go."

"My father'll know."

"I think it's pathetic."

"I don't have the time, Ros It's way past midnight. I've only today, I don't have time time to go running around the getaway routes. And I'm bloody tired, and I don't need lecturing. If you want to give a lecture then bugger off out through the door first…"

"I'll make a cup of tea," she said.

Jan levered himself down onto the floor beside Jack. They studied the plan of Pretoria Central and Magazine Hill. Jan pointed to the place where the car would be waiting, shrugged away the distance between Pretoria Central and the car. Jack led Jan through the map points where the grenades would be thrown, where the pistol shots would be fired.

"… And then you'll get the hell out. You have to give that promise. You do what you're going to do and you get clear. You don't stay about to see the show. You go home and you get into your beds, and you go to the university in the morning, and Ros goes to work. It never happened, you were never involved."

He saw the struggle working at the face of Jan van Niekerk.

Jack said, "I have to know that you're clear. That'll be a strength to me. You have to make me that promise."

He saw the way that the crippled boy's fingers stroked the heavy arms of the wire cutter. Light, delicate fingers. He thought the boy should never have been there.

Ros stood in the doorway. She held two mugs of tea.

"To give you strength, we promise."

"Never hesitate, turn your backs on me."

"I promise," Jan said.

Ros leaned forward with the mug of tea for Jack. Her eyes were misted. He thought she was at the limit.

"When are you going to sleep, Jack?"

He smiled. "I'll catnap when the old man's driving.

Bloody old taxi driver can drive all n i g h t… "

The smile swiped off his face.

"Oh, Christ… " Furious concentrated anger spreading over him.

"I missed a window," Jack hissed. The mug rocked in his hands. "I have the outer wall. I have the wall onto the exercise yard. I have the window onto the catwalk. I have the grille down into the cell.. . I've all of that accounted for… I don't have the window between the catwalk and the grille over the cell… "

"You're going to kill yourself," Ros said.

He didn't seem to have heard. He was ripping at the adhesive wrapping he had made around the three pound charge.

"What are you going to do?"

"Just hope that a pound and a half on each will do the two windows, and one without a detonator."

They left him. They couldn't help him. They left him on the floor with the sweet almond smell of gelignite. They would sleep together on the one bed, dressed and in each other's arms. They would hold each other to shut out the certainty of their fear.

He lay on his bed. He could not sleep. He stared up at the frail light patterned by the grille wires.

The trap had been tested during the afternoon, the trap falling under a weighted sack.

There was a cool wind, and the cold came into Jeez's cell through the window between his cell and the catwalk, and the window between the catwalk and the night. He heard the shuffle of the feet of the guard on the catwalk above and the guttering cough as the man cleared his throat. He heard the snore of the prison officer who was locked into the corridor of C section 2. He heard the dribbling of the singing, muffled because the sound swam along the catwalks all the way from A section or B section. Keeping a poor bastard company, because there was a poor bastard who was going to hang in four hours' time. Jeez wondered if anyone slept when they were going to hang in four hours' time. Jeez had another fifty hours of living, and he couldn't sleep either.

Tuesday already started. Wednesday tomorrow. Wednesday was library day. He'd hear the trap going on Wednesday, and the sack under the trap would be of his weight.

He could end it all.

Of course he could. He had it in his power to make an end of it.

He could shout for the officer sleeping in the corridor.

The officer would send for the duty major. The duty major would ring through to the night duty officer at John Vorster Square. The night duty officer at John Vorster Square would rouse the colonel. He had the promise of the colonel for his life if he coughed the details on the cadres and the safe houses and the arms caches… Just one shout. Fucking cruel… Typical of the pigs that they offered the Judas Kiss as the price for living.

It had just been a job for him, watching over the African National Congress. Just an assignment from old Colonel Basil. Wasn't supposed to get involved, not physically and not with the heart. Just supposed to be bumming on the fringe, just supposed to be a listener, and a writer of reports.

He'd hang with Happy and Charlie and Percy and Tom.

Fucking cruel, that it was better to hang with them than to make the Judas Kiss, and live a life sentence in a Boer White gaol.

Jeez reckoned to find friends where he was. Didn't go looking for them, found them when he needed them.

There'd been a guy in Spac, good guy, teacher, they'd been friends for six years. Close enough to pick the lice from each other's heads. A good guy and a good friend, and he'd died in the snow with a bullet hole in his nape. His best friend in Spac and Jeez had been on the detail that pickaxed the grave out of the iron-frozen ground. He wouldn't have given that friend the Judas Kiss, not just for life.

He would make new friends.

He would be friends with Happy and Charlie and Percy and Tom in the corridor, going towards the door that was always closed. He'd be their friend in the preparation room, and when they went through the doorway and into the shed. He'd be their friend when it was the hood and when it was the noose. He'd not give them the bloody Judas Kiss.

No way he would shout for the bastard sleeping in the corridor of C section 2.

He did not understand why the arm of Century hadn't reached for him.

Hurt, hurt hard, lying on his bed, gazing at the dull light bulb through the mesh of the grille, to think that Century had dropped him off the team. He had the proof that they had dropped him, the proof was the bloody cell he was locked into, and the hours that were left to him.

Couldn't think about it, because thinking of the team was fucking agony for Jeez. Think of some other bloody thing…

Think of why Hilda hadn't written.

Think of Hilda in a nice house with a nice husband with a nice life.

Think of the boy who was his and who was Hilda's.

Think of the boy who would be twenty-seven years old next birthday.

Think of the boy Jack.

Think of anything other than the trap hammering in practice on Wednesday afternoon, after library.

He couldn't picture, now, what the boy, his son, looked like.

First thing in the morning, first thing at his desk, the colonel called London. The London embassy told him that Major Swart was not yet in his office.

The colonel said that he would not be calling unless it was of great urgency. The London embassy told him that the major's home had already been contacted, that the major's wife had not seen him since the previous day.

The colonel said that it was an outrage that they had no contact with their man. The London embassy told the colonel that as soon as they had contact with Major Swart they would pass on the message for him to call John Vorster Square, priority.