A SONG IN THE MORNING Read Free Page B

itself to any clothes or flesh it came into contact with. The casualties would have been even more severe but for the devotion to duty and the personal sacrifice of warrant officer Prinsloo. In taking much of the blast of the bomb the warrant officer without doubt saved many others from the savagery that you intended. As the driver of the getaway vehicle your guilt is equal to that of the man who made the bomb and the men who delivered it. You were an essential member of a murderous conspiracy.
    "We live in a time when it is more than ever important that in our beloved country God-fearing men and women should support the legitimate forces of law and of order. No benefit to any person in the Republic, whatever his colour, can come from an outrage such as you helped to perpetrate.
    I truly hope that the sentence that I am about to pass on you will deter other foreigners from coming to our country, taking our hospitality, and repaying us with murder.
    "I believe, Mr Carew, in the efficacy of the deterrent. A lew years ago a distinguished colleague of mine said, 'The death penalty is like a warning, just like a lighthouse throwing its beams out to sea. We hear about shipwrecks, but we do not hear about the ships the lighthouse guides safely on its way. We do not have proof of the number of ships it saves, but we do not tear the lighthouse down.' Mr Carew, we will not permit our country to be used as a playground of mayhem by foreigners who conspire with such hate-consumed organisations as the African National Congress.

    "James Carew, the sentence of the court is that you be taken from here to a lawful place of execution and that you there be hanged by the neck until you are dead."
    There was no entreaty for the Lord to have mercy on James Carew's soul.
    Had Jeez slumped or even dropped his eyes from the Judge's face, then there would have been. Mr Justice van Zyl was vexed by the prisoner's composure. He thrust his papers together, propelled himself from his chair.
    "All rise," the clerk intoned.
    Mr Justice van Zyl stamped out of his court room, his assessors after him.
    A guard tapped Jeez on the shoulder. Jeez turned smartly and down the steps from the dock to the court room cells, followed by Happy and Charlie and Percy and Tom.
    In prison lore they were the "condemns". While they were driven under heavy escort to that part of Pretoria Central prison a mile and a half away that was reserved for these men who were condemned, a police major sat in the emptied courtroom filling in with a ball point pen the specific details of the printed form that was the death warrant. The form would go later to the sheriff of the capital city for his signature and in due course to the hangman as authority for his work.

    * * *
An age later Jeez sat on the end of his bed and stared down at the sheet of writing paper, blank as yet, that lay on the table that was fastened into the cell wall.
    An endless time later. Countless days, more than a year.
    Long enough for the Rand Supreme Court and the ride up Rissik Street to be just a hated memory, a smell that was everywhere in the mind but couldn't be located.
    It was the first time that he had asked for writing paper and a pen.
    What to write? What to say? . . . He could hear the singing,. Many, many voices in a slow dirge. Couldn't escape from the bastard singing. Shit, when it was his turn, who'd be singing for bloody Jeez?
    On the top right hand corner of the sheet of paper he wrote the date.

    2
    He let himself in through the front door and the atmosphere hit him.
    Before Jack had his key out of the lock and the door closed behind him, he could sense catastrophe.
    The vacuum cleaner was in the middle of the hall rug.
    His mother always did the carpets straight after Sam and Jack had gone to work and little Will to school. There were dirty clothes at the foot of the stairs. She would have put'
    the yesterday shirts and socks and pants into the machine straight after she'd done the carpets. Down