Gordimer Nadine - The House Gun

There were letters for posting. These were allowed by the prison authorities to be handed over, awaiting trial there are still some personal rights left, and Harald put the envelopes under the flap of his jacket pocket without looking at them. His son watched the letters stowed, as if à ship were disappearing over his horizon; no horizon within prison walls. And he knows these two will look to see to whom he’s writing letters, once they’re away from this place. And they’ll want to know, desperately want to know what’s inside, what someone like him has to say to these names they recognize or don’t recognize. (Everyone wants to know what’s inside him, everyone.) They’ll want to know because what he’s thinking is what he’ll write and what he’s thinking in the cell is what he is, the mystery he is for them, my poor mother and father.

They promised a twelve-year-old boy that whatever he did, anything, whatever he was, anything, they would always be there for him. And here they are, sitting facing him in the prison visitors’ room.

Plan.

The plan their son is going ahead to draw in a prison cell — office block, hotel, hospital — what is it — predicates something that will come about. Ahead. Belief. Steel and cement and glass, in this form; yet an assumption of a future.

Messengers.

The Senior Counsel’s secretary faxed the message and Harald Lindgard’s secretary brought the missive to his desk. She entered softly in consideration and laid it before him just as she would a letter for signature but of course she knew what such messages concerned. Mr Motsamai had set aside ‘the afternoon hours’ for them, three-thirty onwards. As usual, the attendant at chambers’ underground garage would reserve space for their car if Mr Lindgard’s secretary called to give the registration number. Whatever portent messengers bear they have no responsibility, cannot help; all she could do was call the attendant with the necessary information which, of course, she memorized as part of her job.

Harald picked up Claudia at the surgery. Although the message had come at short notice — he heard her receptionist, Mrs February’s question, what should she do about patients’ appointments, when would the doctor expect to be back, answered with a gesture of dismissal. From Claudia, this time: to hell with them. But he saw it detachedly as the deterioration of her personality, since without the ethics of her doctoring she had no support.

What did they talk about in the car? Neither would remember. Maybe they hadn’t spoken at all, each preferring it that way. They were already seated in the room when Motsamai — Hamilton — came in with the animation of a long lunch, like an actor backstage after leaving an appreciative audience.

— Got caught up!—

Dumped a raincoat, flung hands apart, a smile that seemed to belong with the last pleasantries and witticisms exchanged at a restaurant door. Wine in him maybe.

It was as if he had forgotten whatever it was he had called them together for. He calmed while ignoring them, flitting through papers that had arrived on his desk in his absence. And then became really aware of their presence; turned from where he stood and shook Harald’s hand, clasped it doubly, covering the fist, and presented himself before Claudia. — Tea. You’ll have some tea. Or you’d like a fruit juice?—

The tray had been brought and the obligatory ritual was followed in preparation for — what? ‘The afternoon hours’. A considerable weight of his time to be given to whatever it must be he had to say to them.

— You’ve seen your son this week, yes? I have the impression he’s standing up well.—

— Whatever that means.—

She may not know, but he, Harald, impatient, does: why pretend! — He’s determined to finish the plan he was working on, you’ve arranged that, I gather. I don’t know what the firm will feel about it.—

— Oh he’s still on the payroll. Man! I should damn well hope so! They’d look fine if they struck him off before he faces a charge that hasn’t been heard. I would not be prepared to let that pass, you can be sure.—

— If the man himself does not wait to be judged guilty.—

— Oh come now, Harald, I’ve told you again and again. That’s not the principle. The facts still must be examined by the court, verified. You must bear in mind there are cases where an accused may be taking the rap for someone else — a matter of big money, or even, certainly where a capital offence may be involved, a matter of love, something where one party will do anything to protect the other.—

— You don’t think there’s any possibility here, do you.—

Claudia is not asking, she is drily pre-empting any baseless encouragement in herself.

— I do not. No. I’m reiterating from another aspect what we know our case rests on — circumstances. Circumstances that will be revealed in court. As I’ve already discussed with you. As I’ve been studying in the psychiatrist’s report. As I’ve been following up in the talks I’ve had with people I’ve called in this past week. Verster. David Baker and so on. People from the house and those who frequented the house. What must and what should not be expected from cross examination. If I think it necessary to call this one or that as witnesses.—

— There is only the man, the gardener. If you can say witness is what he says he saw and didn’t find.—

Harald contracted his calves against his chair to control irritation with Claudia. The lawyer was working up to whatever it was he was going to tell them, it was signalled in the way he leant back and then brought his body forward over the expanse of desk that held him at professional remove from them, his people in trouble; an intimacy with which, while inspiring their confidence must always leave him with a clear head above theirs. He could have summed it up for them: the definition of a best available Senior Counsel is one who thinks for those who do not know what to think.

— I’ve had them all in this room, one by one. With the exception of Baker, Jespersen’s lover, they don’t seem to feel anything particularly violent against Duncan, which surprised me, I must admit. Even if they thought they were concealing from me — I have my ways of seeing through the faces people put up. After all, one of them is dead, you could expect them to reject absolutely — never want to look at Duncan again. Ah-hêh …—

— One of them’s been to visit Duncan. We bumped into him outside.—

Motsamai tilted his head at Claudia in confirmation; must have sent him there.

— Ah-hêh. It was necessary for someone to go to him. From the house, the two men who are left of the little set that lived on the property. Kind of family. Whatever in the house might have happened.—

— He never mentioned Dladla who’d just been with him.—

— I suppose it was a bit of a shock. But also something to give him courage, you know what I mean. Later. When he could bring himself to think about it, in there. There’s so much time, so many hours when you’re inside … Well. Dladla was with me last week and again yesterday. We’ve talked. Long talks. He’s told me what Duncan hasn’t, and what I didn’t get out of the girl. Miss Natalie James didn’t tell me the particulars of her relationship with Duncan. Dladla says she tried to kill herself after the affair of the birth. I don’t know exactly what she did, pills, walked out into the sea, it was in Durban, he says, but Duncan found her and took her to hospital. He brought her back to life. Literally. She owes her life to Duncan; or she blames him. Depends which way it was, for her. Given my impressions of her, she could punish him for it. That could have been what the display of intercourse on the sofa was about. Oh yes. With a woman like her. A proven unstable character. I’ve said before — I suspect she wanted him to discover her. And now it turns out there’s another reason why she would choose this particular way to get at him.—