with a wad of paper. There was much time for drinking Thermos coffee and for thinking.
There were three subjects that endlessly occupied Davy's mind as he sat at ease, waiting for the completion of the next shot hole. Sometimes for half an hour at a time Davy would hold the image of that 50,000 rand in his mind. It was his, tax paid, painstakingly accumulated over the years and lovingly deposited with the local branch of the Johannesburg Building Society. He imagined it bundled and stacked in neat green piles in the Society's vault. Each bundle was labelled David Delange.
Then his imagination would pass automatically on to the farm that the money would buy. He saw how it would be in the evenings when he sat on the wide stoep, with the setting sun striking the peaks of the Swart Berg across the Valley, and the cattle coming in from the paddocks towards the homestead.
Always there was a woman sitting beside him on the stoep. The woman had red hair.
On the fifth morning Davy drove home in the dawn, he was not tired. The night's labours had been easy and un exacting The door of Johnny and Hettie's bedroom was closed.
Davy read the newspapers with his breakfast; as always the cartoon strip adventures of Modesty Blaise and Willie Uarvin intrigued him completely. This morning Modesty was depicted in a bikini and Davy studied her comparing her to the big healthy body of his brother's wife. The thought of her stayed with him as he rolled onto his bed, and he lay unsleeping, daydreaming an adventure in which Modesty Blaise had become Hettie, and Willie Garvin was Davy.
An hour later he was still awake. He sat up and reached for the towel which lay across the foot of his bed. He wrapped the towel around his waist as he went down the passage to the bathroom. As he reached for the handle of the bathroom door, it opened under his hand and he was face to face with Hettie Delange.
She wore a white lace dressing-gown with ostrich-feather mules on her feet. Her face was innocent of make-up and she had brushed her hair and tied it with a ribbon.
'Oh!' she gasped with surprise. 'You gave me a fright, man.'
'I'm sorry, hey.' Davy grinned at her, holding the towel with one hand. Hettie let her eyes run quickly over his naked upper body.
Davy was muscled like a prizefighter. His chest hair was crisp and curly. On both arms the tattoos drew attention to the thickness and weight of muscle.
'Gee, you are built,' Hettie murmured in admiration, and Davy sucked in his belly reflexively.
'You think so?' His 'grin was self-conscious now.
'Yes.' Hettie leaned forward and touched his arm. 'It's hard too!'
The movement had allowed the front of her dressing gown to gape open.
Davy's face flushed as he looked down into the opening. He started to say something, but his voice had dried up on him. Hettie's fingers stroked down his arm, and she was watching the direction of his eyes.
Slowly she moved closer to him.
'Do you like me, Davy?' she asked, her voice throaty and low, and with an animal cry Davy attacked her.
His hands ripping at the opening of her gown, pinning her to the wall of the bathroom with his mouth frantically hunting hers. His body pressing hard and urgent, his eyes wild, his breathing ragged.
Hettie was laughing, a breathless gasping laugh.
This was what she loved. When they lost their heads, when they went mad for her.
'Davy,' she said, jerking loose his towel. 'Davy.' She kept wriggling away from his thrusting hips, knowing that it would inflame him further. His hands were tearing at her body, his eyes were maniacal.
'Yes!' she hissed into his mouth. He threw her off balance and she slid down the wall onto the floor.
'Wait,' she panted. 'Not here the bedroom.' But it was too late.
Davy had spent the afternoon locked in his bedroom, lying on his bed in an agony of black all-pervading remorse and guilt.
'My brother,' he kept repeating. 'Johnny is my brother.' Once he wept, each sob tearing something in his chest.
The tears squeezed out between burning eyelids, leaving him feeling exhausted and weak.
'My own brother,' he shook his head slowly in horrified disbelief 'I cannot stay here,' he decided miserably. 'I'll have to go.' He went to the washbasin and washed his eyes. Stooping over the basin, water still dripping from his face, he decided. ''I will have to tell him.'
The burden of guilt was too heavy. 'I'll write to Johnny. I'll write it all, and then I'll go away.
Frantically he searched for pen and paper, it was almost as though he could wipe away the deed by writing it down.
He sat at the table by the window and wrote slowly and laboriously.
When he had finished it was three o'clock. He felt better.
He sealed the four closely written pages into an envelope and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket. He dressed quickly, and crept out of the house, fearful of meeting Hettie, but she was nowhere about.
Her big white Monaco was not in the garage, and with relief he turned out of the driveway and took the road out to the Sander Ditch. He wanted to reach the mine before Johnny came off shift.
Davy listened to his brother's voice, as he kidded and laughed with the other off-duty miners in the company change house. He had locked himself in one of the lavatory closets to avoid meeting his brother, and he sat disconsolately on the toilet seat. The sound of Johnny's voice brought his guilt flooding back in its full strength. His letter of confession was buttoned into the top pocket of his overalls, and he took it out, broke open the flap and reread the contents.
'So long, then.' Johnny's voice sang out gaily from the change room.
'See you bastards tomorrow.' There was an answering chorus from the other miners, then the door slammed.
Davy went on sitting alone for another twenty minutes in the stench of stale bodies and urine, dirty socks and rank disinfections from the foot baths. At last he tucked the letter away in his pocket and opened the closet door.
Davy's gang were at their waiting place at the head of the drive. They were sitting along the bench laughing and chatting. There was a holiday spirit amongst them for they knew it would be another shift of easy going.
They greeted Davy cheerfully, as he came down the haulage. Both the Delange brothers were popular with their gangs and it was unusual that Davy did not reply to the chorused greeting. He did not even smile.
The Swazi boss boy handed him the safety lamp, and Davy grunted an acknowledgement. He set off alone down the tunnel, trudging heavily, not conscious of his surroundings, his mind encased in a padding of guilt and self-pity.
A thousand feet along the drive he reached the day's work area.
Johnny's shift had left the rock drills in place, still connected to the compressed air system, ready for use.
Davy came to a halt in the centre of the work area, and without a conscious command from his brain his hands began the routine process of striking the wick of the safety lamp.
The little blue flame came alight behind the protective screen of wire mesh, and Davy held the lamp at eye level before him and walked slowly along the drive. His eyes were watching the flame without seeing it.
The air in the tunnel was cool and refrigerated, scrubbed and filtered, there was no odour nor taste to it. Davy walked on somnambulantly. He was wallowing in self-pity now. He saw himself in a semi-heroic role, one of the great lovers of history caught up in tragic circumstances.
His brain was fully occupied with the picture. His eyes were unseeing.
Blindly he performed the ritual that a thousand times before had begun the day's shift.
Slowly in its wire mesh cage the blue flame of the safety lamp changed shape. Its crest flattened, and there formed above it a ghostly pale line. Davy's eyes saw it, but his brain refused to accept the message.
He walked on in a stupor of gilt and self-pity.
That line above the flame was called 'the cap', it signified that there was at least a five percent concentration of methane gas in the air.
The last shot hole that Johnny Delange's gang had drilled before going off shift had bored into a methane- filled fissure. For the previous three hours, gas had been blowing out of that hole. The ventilation system was unable to wash the air fast enough and now the gas had spread slowly down the drive. The air surrounding Davy's body was heavy with gas, he had breathed it into his lungs. It needed just one spark to ignite it.
Davy reached the end of the drive and snapped the snuffer over the wick, extinguishing the flame in the lamp.
'All safe,' he muttered, not realizing that he had spoken.
He went back to his waiting men.
'All safe,' he repeated, and with the Swazi boss boy leading them the forty men of Davy Delange's gang trooped gaily into the mouth of the drive.
Moodily Davy followed them. As he walked he reached into his hip pocket and took out a pack of Lexington filter tips. He put one between his lips,
