He wondered if Sergeant Oosthuizen would have retired before it was his turn, Jeez's turn, to take the early walk.
He wondered if the sergeant would walk with him.
Tha was stupid thinking, because there was no way the team would let it happen. Burning the candle they'd be.
Couldn't for the life of him think how the team would pull him out. Thought about it often enough, but couldn't work it. Colonel Basil wasn't the one for ideas, nor Lennie. Adrian was good with ideas, better than Henry. Have to be Adrian who was going to crack it, and then the team would all thrash it round. Wouldn't see their feet for dust once they'd settled on an idea. Clear memories, faces clear in his mind, Colonel Basil, and Lennie who had the limp from the ambush in Cyprus, and Adrian who'd bloody near lost his career in the gentlemen's toilet at Piccadilly underground, and Henry .. Shit, and wouldn't Henry have been up for retirement, gone to breed the bloody pigeons he always talked of. What if they'd all gone? Couldn't have done… All bloody older than Jeez. Colonel Basil was, certain, Henry was. Bloody Lennie looked older. Couldn't tell Adrian's age, not with the hair rinse. What if they weren't there at Century…? Stupid thinking. No way the team would let him hang.. .
'Carew, I'm speaking to you.'
Jeez started up. 'Sorry, Sergeant.'
'You weren't listening to me.'
'Sorry, Sergeant, I was far away.'
'You don't want to brood, you know. It's where we're all going. You don't want to think too much.'
'No, Sergeant.'
'Why I was talking to you was that I'd just seen your fingers, first and second on your right hand. How long is it since I've been with you?'
'It's thirteen months, Sergeant.'
'And I've never noticed your fingers before.'
'Just fingers, Sergeant.'
'I've never noticed them before, and my wife says I'm the noticing kind.'
'What didn't you notice, Sergeant?'
'No nails on the first and second fingers of your right hand.'
Jeez looked down. Pink skin had grown over the old scars.
'Someone took them out, Sergeant.'
'Ingrowing, were they? I once had an ingrowing big toe nail, when I was serving at the old Johannesburg Fort gaol.
That's closed now. They thought they might have to take it off, but they cut it back and it grew again, but not in. Hell's painful.'
'Someone took them out for fun, Sergeant. Can we go inside now, please, Sergeant.'
'Who took them out for fun… That's a very serious allegation
… '
'Long ago, Sergeant, long before South Africa.'
He could remember the pliers grasping at the nails of the first and second fingers of his right hand. Pain rivers in his whole body. He could remember the smile of the bastard as he jerked the nails off. He hadn't talked to the bastard who had ripped his nails off, just as he hadn't talked to the security police in Johannesburg.
'And you get yourself washed up for the medic.'
They went inside. Jeez going first and Sergeant Oosthuizen following and locking the door to the exercise yard.
The doctor saw Jeez once a week, and weighed him. Jeez knew why he was weighed each week.
Sergeant Oosthuizen stood by the door of Jeez's cell.
'That must have hurt when they took them out.'
'A long time ago, Sergeant.'
5
Hilda Perry liked to see her family on its way in the morning.
Sam had taken Will to school, and ten minutes later she was back at the front door holding Jack's raincoat ready for him. He came hurrying down the stairs. If he ever managed to get himself married or get a flat of his own, she'd truly miss him. She always thought it was because of the time they had been together, the abandoned wife and the father-less son, that they had a special bond… He wasn't sleeping properly, she could see the eye bags. She reckoned she looked the same.
Today she hugged her boy. She knew they were both thinking of the man half way round the world from them in a cell, thinking of the man she wouldn't have recognised, her Jack couldn't have remembered. He told her he would be home early, he would have seen her gratitude. They'd keep a sort of vigil in the house, the two of them, for however many days and weeks it took, until Jeez was… Just the two of them. Sam didn't know, but she'd started to take Librium three days earlier, just one tablet each night when she was getting into bed, so that she wouldn't dream. She shrugged him into his raincoat. He managed a smile for her, and was away down the front path to his car. The telephone rang behind her. She wanted to see Jack go before answering the telephone, but he had taken a chammy out of his car and was cleaning the windscreen. She went back into the hall and lifted the telephone.
'Could I speak to Mr Curwen, please?'
She could see Jack at the rear window, finishing off.
'Who is it?'
'Name's Jimmy Sandham. He'd want to speak to me.'
She ran awkwardly in her slippers down the path. The engine was starting, coughing. She caught him just in time.
She saw the frown. She heard him say, 'I'll be right with you.'
He put the telephone down.
'Only work, Mum.'
She knew when he lied. She had always known. He was away, running down the path. She thought she was losing him. Could no longer reach him in the way she had before.
He had changed when he had broken with that nice Miriam.
She knew what had happened from Miriam's mother when a rain squall had driven them off the course into the lounge of the golf club. Something methodical and cheerless about his life. Two nights a week, after work, at the squash courts, working himself out until he was near sick from exhaustion
… and the same with his studies again, picking up the lost degree course, working late into the nights. She preferred him the way he had been before, when he was with Miriam.
She could never understand how he had lost the degree chance, thrown it up four months from his finals, seemed ridiculous to her, and so trivial.
She watched him drive away.
He had been so matter of fact that evening. He had come home from college and told her that his university days were finished. He'd told her the circumstances, like they didn't matter. A single student who was a paid-up member of a Fascist party being heckled by a group of Trotskyites between chemical engineering and applied mathematics. A point of principle, he'd said flatly, didn't like bullies. He'd told the Trots to leave it, they hadn't and they'd jostled the lad and were spitting in his face. Remembered Jack remarking that he'd thrown a punch, broken a boy's jaw.
So matter of fact. Jack spelling it out that he had been up before the disciplinary court of the senate that morning, and the provost had asked him for an apology, and his reply that he would do it again, because it was bullying, and being told that he must give the assurance, and refusing, and being told that he'd have to leave, and leaving. Telling it like it wasn't important, telling it just like Jeez would have. And here he was, back at his books.
