A SONG IN THE MORNING by Gerald Seymour Page A

with the job of infiltrating the military wing of the African National Congress. He speculated that Jeez had overstepped his brief and become involved in a guerrilla attack. He knew that Her Majesty's Government were not prepared to go to Pretoria and cough up that a White under sentence of death was in fact a legman in deep cover for S.I.S. and therefore should be spared the rope.
    A gasp from Jack. "I can't believe it."
    "You're on the horizon of a tough, rough old world."
    "They always get their people back, that's what you always read." "
    "It might have been true once, but isn't true any more, and your father wasn't acting under orders and that's government's let out. There's more to it. Technically South Africa is a major trading partner. We've billions invested there.
    We may have as many as a quarter of a million jobs dependent on South African purchasing power and South African mineral resources. Government's dislike of apartheid comes a poor second to economics. I'm just telling you what I know."
    Jack flared. "I'm going to blow this off the roof tops."
    "Don't even try it. The papers won't print it and telly won't broadcast it. That's the D-notice. You'd be charged under the Official Secrets Act, and when you get to court it'll be long after your father's been executed. And then it'll be in camera, the court'll be cleared, the doors locked, the Press out."
    "So who's lifting a finger for him?"

    Sandham picked up their glasses, went to the bar. Jack sat slumped on the upholstered seat. He was drained. He could not absorb that this was happening to Hilda Perry and Jack Curwen. Worse than a nightmare. Sandham put two large Scotches on the table and sat down.
    Jack asked, "If I blew it would you go to prison with me?"
    "Worse than that. Breach of official trust."
    "You've taken a chance on me."
    "It was the only decent course to take."
    Jack gripped Sandham's hand, held it tight. His face was screwed into lines, as if he agonised over the question.
    "Is Jeez Carew worth crying over?"
    "You know the answer."
    "You have to tell me."
    Gently Sandham released Jack's hand. "You're his son, you don't have a choice. And from what I've discovered I'd say that your father is a man you should be very, very proud of."
    Sandham said he had set up a meeting at the Foreign Office for the following morning that was to discuss Jeez.
    He didn't elaborate. He left Jack, grim and drawn.

    * * *
He walked back to his car.
    Waves of outrage lapped over him, outrage against the forces that had intruded into his life, his mother's life. His tongue twisted round obscenities, sometimes silent in the spring evening wind, sometimes out loud. Terrorism, prisons, and the sentence that a man should hang by the neck until he was dead had never before owned a corner of Jack Curwen's mind. Many targets for his hatred. He hated White South Africa. He hated the security policemen who had arrested Jeez. He hated their prisons and their gallows.
    He hated the Secret Intelligence Service of his own country.

    He hated the men who had washed their hands of responsibility for Jeez's life.
    A long, bitter walk, a mile beyond his car.
    When his mind was made, when a certainty had slashed through the rage and bafflement, he retraced his steps.
    South Africa was a place on a map. He had no thoughts on the future of that country, it was of no interest to him.
    He had no Black friends. In a year he could have counted on his fingers the times he had spoken to Black men and Black women.
    Jack knew nothing of Black Britain or Black South Africa.
    He knew nothing of the Black dream of freedom, and he cared less.
    But his mind was made.
    He went in search of Duggie Arkwright.
    Duggie Arkwright was the best start Jack could think of.
    Each new year, Jack transferred from his old diary to his new one the addresses and telephone numbers that he had consolidated over the years. The previous New Year, when he had determined on retaking his degree as an external student, he