Gerald Seymour - A song in the morning

The Governor pursed his lips, there was a frown of surprise cutting deep in his forehead.

"I think I heard you correctly, that one man alone came in and took five out."

The duty major nodded.

"Extraordinary, I would not have conceived it as possible."

"The blocks will be in place within a few minutes." The duty major spoke with pride.

"Perhaps in time, perhaps not…" The governor seemed to speak to himself, left the duty major as an eavesdropper.

"… If they are not all back with us in time to face the penalty of the law on Thursday morning then the scandal of one man's achievement will destroy me."

The duty major swung away and snatched for the telephone that would connect him to Defence Headquarters.

He did not wish to look again at his governor, to witness the fall of a fine man.

"You have to tell me what's ahead."

They were crowded together on the track. Jeez was bent over Jack. The sledgehammer blow was to Jack's right knee.

Jeez could see the blood. Not much blood. Blood on either side of the trouser leg, as if the bullet had pierced his knee, gone straight through.

"There's just buildings ahead, then you go down the hill, and there's a fence, that's all, after that you're out under the Voortrekker Monument and the Skanskopfort… "

Jeez put up his hand, cut Jack off. He turned to the others.

"You heard him, get bloody going. Move your arses."

He pushed the one who was nearest to him away. Each one crouched, slapped Jeez's shoulder, gripped his arm. An ecstatic farewell and the last one said: "God go with you, Jeez, and you too, friend. We'll fight together again." And was gone. There was the patter of their feet. They were shadows and then they were nothing.

"Go with them," Jack said.

Jeez stood and hoisted Jack up. He slung Jack's arm over his shoulder. He was on Jack's right side. They stumbled together up the track.

"I said, 'Go with them.' "

Jeez's fist was tight into Jack's anorak, under his armpit.

Jack doubted he could have torn the fist free. They made the best speed that was possible for them. His leg was numb, useless.

The pain came later. Into the ripped hole, into the wrecked ligaments, into the broken cartilage, into the splintered bone. The pain was in water surges, damned and then rushing in intensity. Flash floods of pain in Jack's whole leg as they went forward, up the hillside and through the trees.

Skirting the buildings and holding to the black holes where the lights did not reach. Silence around them. No cordon.

No dogs. Only the sirens pulsing behind them. Together, Jeez supporting Jack, they started down the hill, down the south slope of Magazine. They couldn't crawl because Jack's wound would not have permitted him to crawl. Jeez walked, Jack, leaning on his shoulder, hopped beside him. In the pure darkness they went down Magazine.

Jeez said, "Where are the wheels?"

"Far side of Skanskopfort."

He heard the whistle of surprise.

"What I was trying for… "

"Save your strength."

Jack found the hole that he had cut in the fence. He found his handkerchief. They slithered through. Jack, in his life, had never known such agony as when Jeez worked him through the wire and over the lower tumbler strand. He thought they should have been going faster, he knew he was incapable of greater speed. They crossed the road at the bottom of the valley between Magazine and Skanskop, and they climbed again. They climbed over the stone hard earth and the broken rock, and through the matted thorn scrub.

Against the clean night sky were the ordered plateau lines of the old fort's ramparts.

They looked down.

Jack gazed down the south face of the Skanskop slope to the road and the place where he had parked the Renault.

The triumph was bolted in his gut, the words were blocked in his throat. He could see the Renault. The Renault was illuminated by the lights of a jeep. There were many lights, many jeeps and transport lorries for moving troops. The lights of the vehicles shone on to the hillside where it fell to the road. He heard the rising drone of engines to his right, and to his left, and away behind him. His eyes squeezed shut.

The voice grated in his ear.

"You bastards took your time, and now you've blown it."

"It was the best… "

Jeez snapped. "Bloody awful best, and after I've been sitting there thirteen fucking months. Bastards."

"Who are the bastards?"

"Your crowd."

"What's my crowd?"

Teeth bared, "The team."

"What team?"

"Where's the back-up?"

"There's just me, me alone." Still leaning on Jeez's shoulder.

"Where's Colonel Basil?"

"Never heard of him."

"Lennie, Adrian, Henry."

"Don't know them."

"Who sent you?"

"I sent myself."

Jeez looked up at him, searched his face. Didn't understand, couldn't split the mist.

"So who are you?"

"I'm Jack."

"And who the hell's Jack, when he's at home?"

"He's your son."

Jack hung on his father's neck. Jeez buried his face in his son's shoulder. And around them, far beneath them, was the tightening circle of lights.

They had come off the motorway, they were close to their parents' home.

After Jan had thrown the grenades at Local, and the S.A.A.F. recruiting office, and the creeper-covered fence of S.A.D.F. H.Q., and after he had fired a whole magazine of pistol shots at the sentry box at the bottom of Potgieterstraat, Ros had taken a circular route to Johannesburg. Not a word was spoken. Ros's knuckles were white on the wheel all the way. Their nerves were stretched like wire. They expected every moment the flail of the siren in pursuit, the road block in their path. The number plates were mud-smeared. She did not think that the sentries would have noted her number plate, they'd have been lying in the dirt and shielding their heads from the shrapnel and the pistol bullets. She had driven fifty kilometres out of her way, across to the east before doubling back through Bapsfontein and Kempton Park and Edenvale. She hadn't been followed, there had been no road blocks. They had heard one explosion. Jan had said it was the main charge going against the wall, and then they had finished with their diversion, and he had wound up the passenger window. They had heard nothing more.

Now the radio was on in the car.

The midnight news bulletin. A bland English accent.

"… English service of the S.A.B.C. Good evening. In the last ten minutes police headquarters in Pretoria has announced that the area to the south of the capital between Verwoerdburg and Valhalla has been declared an emergency military zone. All persons travelling through that area until further notice are subject to S.A.D.F. and police control.

Residents in the area are advised to stay in their homes throughout the hours of darkness… "

"They made it," Jan squealed. "They're running."

"… Late this evening it was reported that explosions and firing were heard in the area of the S.A.D.F. headquarters on Potgieterstraat in the capital, but as yet there is no official police confirmation of these reports.

"In London a demonstration by an estimated two thousand people outside the South African embassy was broken up by police after violence… "

Jan switched off the radio.

"It didn't say he made it," Ros said bleakly. "It just said he was being hunted."

"Wrong, not a military zone unless he's taken his father out."

She drove on. She held the wheel lightly with one hand.

The fingers of her other hand played listlessly with the shape of the crucifix at her neck. She wanted only to be home. She wanted to tie the yellow scarf in the window of her bedroom.

"Did you love him, Ros?"