— No, man, he’s okay. I think so. I really do. I would have come before but, like, I didn’t know how he’d feel. To see me, and so on. He’s all right.—
This was one of the two friends who had found their friend with his sandal hanging from the thong on his foot, killed by a bullet from a gun that belonged casually to all who used the house, shared brotherly as the cigarette packs lying about and the drinks in the kitchen. He was one of two friends who ran to the cottage to tell their other friend something terrible had happened.
And suddenly, as they stood so close together in shelter before the prison he’d left and they were about to enter, his face very near them struggled with a changing tension of muscles and his eyes, appalled by what was overcoming him, grew large, brimming. He drew tears through his nose with the unashamed snort of a child.
Claudia put a hand on his arm.
But a man must not be patronized or humiliated by the hiatus of another man’s silence: Harald himself had been blinded in this way, once, driving back from the prison at the beginning of awaiting trial. — I’m sure he was glad to see you. It was good of you to come. Thank you.—
Duncan’s manner stopped their mouths against any concern about how the ordeal under scrutiny among the schizophrenics and demented had passed. And he did not acknowledge to them that there had been a visitor before them. He had ready a list of things he wanted attended to and time was on his heels, they must know as well as he did, by now, how soon the warders would shift from one heavy foot to another: back to the cell. There was a distanced practicality in his delivery. As if the probing of doctors had shaken him out of some stunned condition, in there, that place where the human mind in all the frightening distortions of its complexity is exposed. They were to get in touch with Julian Verster (they would know how to do that? If not at home, then at the firm, the architects’ office) and get him to remove what was still on his, Duncan’s, drawing board. Plans. The work he was in the middle of. — I can do it here. They can’t stop me. Motsamai’s arranged it. And tell Julian to bring everything I need, everything, down to the last pen. Motsamai’s arranged for a table.—
Harald noted dictated payments that had to be made: overdue. Time must have been destroyed with everything else in Duncan’s life, and now the sense of what had passed, stopped dead at the moment of the act, had to be reckoned with. Insurance for the car. And it ought to be put up on blocks. To protect the tyres. The battery disconnected. Unless she would like to use it — for a moment the son was aware of her, remembered as if it were to be taken seriously his mother’s jaunty enjoyment when she once tried out driving the second-hand Italian sports car; a vehicle for the transport of a young man’s past life.
— The policy should be in a drawer. The bedroom. A file with other things.—
Harald has no need to make a note of this, he has been there before, looking into what was not for his eyes.
There were letters for posting. These were allowed by the prison authorities to be handed over, awaiting trial there are still some personal rights left, and Harald put the envelopes under the flap of his jacket pocket without looking at them. His son watched the letters stowed, as if à ship were disappearing over his horizon; no horizon within prison walls. And he knows these two will look to see to whom he’s writing letters, once they’re away from this place. And they’ll want to know, desperately want to know what’s inside, what someone like him has to say to these names they recognize or don’t recognize. (Everyone wants to know what’s inside him, everyone.) They’ll want to know because what he’s thinking is what he’ll write and what he’s thinking in the cell is what he is, the mystery he is for them, my poor mother and father.
They promised a twelve-year-old boy that whatever he did, anything, whatever he was, anything, they would always be there for him. And here they are, sitting facing him in the prison visitors’ room.
Plan.
The plan their son is going ahead to draw in a prison cell — office block, hotel, hospital — what is it — predicates something that will come about. Ahead. Belief. Steel and cement and glass, in this form; yet an assumption of a future.
Messengers.
The Senior Counsel’s secretary faxed the message and Harald Lindgard’s secretary brought the missive to his desk. She entered softly in consideration and laid it before him just as she would a letter for signature but of course she knew what such messages concerned. Mr Motsamai had set aside ‘the afternoon hours’ for them, three-thirty onwards. As usual, the attendant at chambers’ underground garage would reserve space for their car if Mr Lindgard’s secretary called to give the registration number. Whatever portent messengers bear they have no responsibility, cannot help; all she could do was call the attendant with the necessary information which, of course, she memorized as part of her job.
Harald picked up Claudia at the surgery. Although the message had come at short notice — he heard her receptionist, Mrs February’s question, what should she do about patients’ appointments, when would the doctor expect to be back, answered with a gesture of dismissal. From Claudia, this time: to hell with them. But he saw it detachedly as the deterioration of her personality, since without the ethics of her doctoring she had no support.
What did they talk about in the car? Neither would remember. Maybe they hadn’t spoken at all, each preferring it that way. They were already seated in the room when Motsamai — Hamilton — came in with the animation of a long lunch, like an actor backstage after leaving an appreciative audience.
— Got caught up!—
Dumped a raincoat, flung hands apart, a smile that seemed to belong with the last pleasantries and witticisms exchanged at a restaurant door. Wine in him maybe.
It was as if he had forgotten whatever it was he had called them together for. He calmed while ignoring them, flitting through papers that had arrived on his desk in his absence. And then became really aware of their presence; turned from where he stood and shook Harald’s hand, clasped it doubly, covering the fist, and presented himself before Claudia. — Tea. You’ll have some tea. Or you’d like a fruit juice?—
The tray had been brought and the obligatory ritual was followed in preparation for — what? ‘The afternoon hours’. A considerable weight of his time to be given to whatever it must be he had to say to them.
— You’ve seen your son this week, yes? I have the impression he’s standing up well.—
— Whatever that means.—
She may not know, but he, Harald, impatient, does: why pretend! — He’s determined to finish the plan he was working on, you’ve arranged that, I gather. I don’t know what the firm will feel about it.—
— Oh he’s still on the payroll. Man! I should damn well hope so! They’d look fine if they struck him off before he faces a charge that hasn’t been heard. I would not be prepared to let that pass, you can be sure.—
— If the man himself does not wait to be judged guilty.—
— Oh come now, Harald, I’ve told you again and again. That’s not the principle. The facts still must be examined by the court, verified. You must bear in mind there are cases where an accused may be taking the rap for someone else — a matter of big money, or even, certainly where a capital offence may be involved, a matter of love, something where one party will do anything to protect the other.—