The parade ground was littered with black and white bodies while what survivors there were had lost all interest in history. With all the marks of an entirely sane instinct for self-preservation, they crawled towards the sick bay.
Only the staff seemed to have taken leave of their senses. On the stand above him the Kommandant could hear Dr Herzog still trying to reassure the late Mayor that the spears were made of rubber. To Kommandant van Heerden the assurance seemed quite unnecessary. Whatever had hit the Mayor had been made of something much more lethal.
The Kommandant waited until Dr Herzog had been taken away before crawling from his hiding-place. He stood up and looked around. History had not merely been portrayed, he thought, it had been made. Not only the past but the present and future of South Africa was to be seen in the devastation that greeted his eyes. Picking his way over the bodies, the Kommandant made his way towards a large crater which had been blown in the middle of the parade ground. Beside it, there lay the remains of a plumed pith helmet and the Star Miss Hazelstone had been wearing.
'A last memento,' he murmured, and picked them up. Then still dazed and shaken he turned and made his way back to the car.
Chapter 19
On the morning of his execution Jonathan Hazelstone was denied the usual privilege of choosing a hearty breakfast on the grounds that before all major operations patients had to do with light refreshment. Instead of the bacon and eggs he had ordered, he was allowed a cup of coffee and a visit from an Anglican chaplain. Jonathan found it difficult to decide which was the more unpleasant. On the whole he thought he preferred the coffee.
His ties with the Church had been severed at the time of his trial and the Bishop had reached the conclusion that the refusal of the Church authorities to testify on his behalf had been due to the jealousy he knew to exist among his colleagues at the rapidity of his promotion to a bishopric. He had no idea that parts of his confession, particularly those chosen by Konstabel Els, had been shown to the Archbishop.
'I knew the fellow was progressive,' the Archbishop muttered as he read the extraordinary document, 'but really this time he has gone too far,' and he recalled Jonathan's admission that he had used every possible method to attract people into the Church. 'High Church in ritual, Low Church in approach, that's my way,' Jonathan had said and the Archbishop could see that he had meant it. To combine sodomy with genuflection was to be High Church and Low with a vengeance and it was hardly surprising his congregations had grown so quickly.
'I think the least said the soonest mended,' the Archbishop had decided, and in short the Church had disowned him.
The Chaplain who came to visit him in his last hours was not a South African. It had been impossible to persuade any self-respecting parson to minister to the needs of a man who had brought disgrace on his cloth and even the Bishop of Piemburg had declined the invitation.
'There are moments when a man needs to be alone,' he explained to Governor Schnapps over the telephone, 'and this is surely one of them,' and had gone back to compose a sermon on the Brotherhood of Man.
In the end it was the Chaplain of a Cambridge college who was visiting Piemburg during the long vacation who was inveigled into Piemburg Prison to attend to the prisoner's spiritual needs.
'I understand there is a particularly fine display of prickly pears in the prison garden,' the Vicar of Piemburg explained to the Chaplain who was far more interested in the physical needs of rock plants than in the spiritual ones of his fellow men and the Chaplain had jumped at the opportunity afforded by the hanging to see a riot of prickly pears.
Standing in the cell, the Chaplain found it difficult to know what to say.
'You weren't by any chance in the Navy?' he asked finally.
Jonathan shook his head.
'I just wondered,' the Chaplain continued. 'There was a middy on HMS _Clodius_ in '43 I think it was, or it might have been '44. His name was Hazelnut.'
'Mine's Hazelstone,' said the Bishop.
'So it is. How forgetful of me. One meets so many people in my profession.'
'I suppose so,' said the Bishop.
The Chaplain paused, and looked at the manacles and chains. 'Do you wear those all the time?' he asked. 'They must be frightfully uncomfortable.'
'Only when I'm going to be hanged,' said the Bishop.
The Chaplain thought he detected a note of bitterness in the remark, and recollected the reason for his visit.
'Is there anything you would like to tell me?' he asked.
The Bishop could think of a great many things he would like to tell him, but there didn't seem much point.
'No,' he said, 'I have made my confession.'
The Chaplain sighed with relief. These occasions are so embarrassing, he thought.
'I've never actually attended an execution before,' he mumbled at last.
'Nor have I,' said the Bishop.
'Nasty things,' continued the Chaplain, 'nasty but necessary. Still they do say hanging is quick and painless. I daresay you'll be quite relieved when it is all over.'
The Bishop, whose hope of eternal life had vanished along with his faith, doubted if relieved was quite the right word. He tried to change the subject.
'Do you come here often?' he asked.
'To the prison?'
'To South Africa, though it's much the same thing.'
The Chaplain ignored the remark. He was a staunch supporter of the South African point of view at high table in his college, and had no time for liberals.
'I try to get away to summer climes at least once a year,' he said. 'Undergraduates are so irreligious these days and my real interest lies in gardening. South Africa is full of lovely gardens.'
'Then perhaps you'll appreciate this poem,' said the Bishop and began to recite 'The Forerunners'.
'Lovely enchanting language, sugar cane,
Hony of roses, whither wilt thou flie?'
He was still reciting when Governor Schnapps and Hangman Els arrived. As the chains were removed and he was strapped into the harness that held his arms, the Bishop continued:
'True beautie dwells on high: ours is a flame
But borrow'd thence to light us thither.
Beautie and beauteous words should go together.'
'Bugger these buckles,' said Els, who was having difficulty with the straps.
The solemn procession passed out of Bottom into the bright sunshine of the prison courtyard. Stumbling between Els and the old warder, Jonathan looked round him for the last time. Incongruous against the dead black paint of the Death House stood a white ambulance. To everyone's amazement, the condemned man laughed.
'Bleak paleness chalkes the doore,' he shouted.
'The harbingers are come. See, see their mark
White is their colour and behold my head.'
The two ambulance men stared in horror at the shouting figure whose corpse they had been sent to collect for the transplant operation.