Gerald Seymour: A song in the morning

They could see the lights of the vehicles around the base of the Skanskop, a mesmerising cage of lights. When they were not talking they could hear the idling engines of the trucks and jeeps.

"You won't be afraid?"

Jack shook his head. Enough light seeping onto the hilltop for Jeez to see his son's face. Through the night he had talked to his son and he had not known his son's face. Jack gazed at the face of his father. A thin pinched face, stubble on the chin, short back and sides where there was hair to cut. Jack thought he saw a love in his father's face.

"Not having been a talking man, Jack, not any of my life, it's hard for me, to say what I want to say to you… To say thank you, that's not enough. Just crap to say thank you.

I'll tell it better if I say what you've given me…"

Jack watched his father's head, clearer against the sky.

"It won't be by them, that's rich to me. It'll be in our time, not at the time they'd open my cell up, the time they've decided. Because it'll be us, by ourselves, who decide the time, that's bloody fantastic to me. Free hands and free arms and free legs. No pinions on my ankles, no hood over my face, that's wonderful for me. Yesterday I couldn't have imagined how wonderful. You understand me, Jack?"

"I understand you, Jeez."

"You're the son that I made with your mother, you're the son that I bloody failed, and you came here to take me out when none of the other bastards were coming. You've given me the thing I wanted most."

Almost a shyness on Jeez's face. "Where I've been you don't get to see the morning coming, and you don't feel the wind on your face. I wanted most to see the morning coming, the sun rise, and feel the wind. And I don't have to be counting. Got that?"

"Got it."

"In that place you may be counting in months, weeks, days, I was down to counting hours. I'd got to counting meals. Day before yesterday I was counting how many socks I'd be needing. Day before yesterday they gave me a new uniform, but it wasn't new, oldest they'd got, look at it. You mess your clothes when you're hanged, Jack, so they give you an old uniform before they drop you off. You got me out of the counting. You got me to see a morning coming.

You got me to feel the fresh wind on my face."

He was between the pain. He was lying back. He was aware of the light building in the sky.

Jack said, "Everyone I spoke to, they all said it was impossible."

A dry smile from Jeez. "Probably was."

"The car was wrong."

"Just as wrong as when I said we had to stop and take the boys. We had to bring them, Jack."

"You don't get a choice. You had to take the boys, just as I had to come for you."

"They might just make it. Us going so slow might have drawn the flak off them. You know what, if they do make it, you might just get to have a street named after you in some real African shit-heap up in 'saka or Dar."

"I don't blame you for anything, Jeez."

"You're not afraid?"

"It's like I'm happy."

"You screwed them proper."

"Cheated them."

"It's the best morning of my life, the cleanest air. Thank you."

"For nothing, Jeez."

"So let's get this fucking show on the road."

"They don't take us."

"No way they take us."

"It'll be what they wanted in London."

"They'll be breaking open crates in Century, swilling champagne."

Jack said, "There must be some people who know, who'll want to tell the truth."

Jeez said, "They'll promote them. Promotion and the honours list, they're good silencers."

"I wanted to walk you down Whitehall. I wanted to take you into the Foreign Office. I wanted to see those bastards' faces."

"The bastards don't get to lose that often, not there, not here."

Jeez stood. For a long time he looked away to the clipped, half rising sun. He breathed in. He dragged the morning air into his lungs. He wondered how long it would be before the dandelion weed showed again in the garden of the exercise yard of C section 2. He clapped his hands. Jeez took off his tunic shirt and started to rip strips from it. He made five strips. He came behind Jack and put his hands under Jack's armpits and lifted him up. With the strips from his tunic, Jeez bound Jack's right leg. He knotted the strips tight.

Jeez checked the shotgun. He checked the rifle.

"You heard their message, what they want of us."

"They don't take us, Jeez."

"We're close as family, boy."

They stumbled forward to the edge of the hill. The pain swam again through Jack. Behind them were the walls of the old Skanskopfort, and the light of morning, and a gathering wind. It would be a short pain, the pain would not last. They were stiff with cold. It took them a few strides to find the rhythm. He wondered whether he could live with the pain from his stiffening, ruptured leg. He looked into Jeez's face, saw the chin jutting bloody-minded defiance. He saw his father's face, the face he had grown to know in a dawn haze.

They came to the edge.

Jack clung to Jeez's shoulder, supporting himself, trying not to shake, trying to hold back the agony tremors. Jeez had the rifle to his shoulder, aimed. Jack saw a jeep far below, a bristle of aerials. He saw the pygmy figures evacuating the jeep. He could hear the faint alarum calls. One shot, one bullet left. He understood the controlled pleasure at Jeez's mouth. Hitting back, after thirteen months. Aiming on the jeep, finger squeezing over the trigger, the report of the shot, the kick in Jeez's shoulder.

Jeez whipped the rifle down, gave it to Jack as a support, as a stick. Jeez took the shotgun. They came down the slope..

They were juddering forward, faster. Jack's arm tight across Jeez's shoulders. They were one, father and son.

Down the slope, and the pain gone from Jack's knee. Just the echo cracks of the shotgun and Jeez's laughter. Laughter pealing at the sun and the clean cold of the wind, and the blast of the shotgun. Jeez firing from the hip at the vehicles that seemed to soar to meet them, and all the time his laughter. No pain for Jack, only the laughter and the shotgun blasting. He didn't hear the shouted order of the brigadier.

He didn't see the barrel of a Vickers machine gun waver and then lock on their path. He didn't know that the colonel of security police howled his frustration in the ear of the brigadier and was ignored.

He only knew his own happiness and his father's freedom and the hammer whip of the shotgun.

They were wrong, all those who said it was impossible.

They were wrong because Jack had come for his father, and had taken him out.