I never visited him again after that although I was repeatedly pressed and as often promised to do so. I claimed pressure of work which, in the past, would have been a reasonable excuse. But at this period the bitter process of cancellation within me had reached such a point that there were times when I could barely summon up the energy to get up in the mornings or, once dressed, to get through the day. Often, the day over, I was unable to undress for bed. This distaste of life, joined to my fear of the distaste, lengthened in my heart like my own evening shadow cast behind me on a great, yellow plain of the high-veld. When at last one September our African spring came, it fell on my torn and tattered senses like the rap of a policeman at my own door with a warrant for my arrest. I was at my wits’ end – and my wits, as my career showed, were not inconsiderable.
At that moment the War came.
War is animal, not vegetable or mineral. It should be proclaimed as such by the beast blowing his own apocalyptic trumpet and sending scarlet heralds on coal-black horses to spread the news from one land’s end to the other so that all can recognize him for what he is.
It came to us, however, quite differently. We read the news on the club teleprinter whose main duty it was to keep us posted of the latest market prices, as we crowded round it that Sunday before lunch, glasses of wine in hand. I joined with the rest in the many expressions of horror that went up in the room. I, too, called it a crime against God and humanity. I warmly supported the oldest member when, tears streaming down his smooth pink cheeks, he called Heaven to witness that the war was not of our seeking and had been thrust on us despite the most honourable efforts to avoid it. But even as he spoke and I agreed I was aware of a barely perceptible sense of relief, a feeling as if an obstruction which had been damming the waters of life and rendering them stagnant had now broken through and the stream was once more flowing fast towards the sea.
Not that I want to exaggerate. This is an issue of war and I want to be dead accurate. But it is not easy. In order to be so I have to deal in a currency which the civilized, Christian heart considers counterfeit; to pursue considerations to which no decent mind will wittingly own. Yet my impression that Sunday morning was that the company in the teleprinter room shared with me a lifting of tension. This, of course, had its legitimate aspect. For a long time the fear of war had been hanging over our heads: the removal of that uncertainty was accompanied by a certain relief. Yet, now that doubt was slain and the ancient theatre, closed for so long, was open once more and yet another great drama of life and death was about to be acted, it was noteworthy how the feeling of having a definite part to play in a world-premiere quickly invested the many persons in the room with a new sense of importance and an emotion of differences overcome. I saw two bitter enemies in the club who had not spoken to each other for years, simultaneously pledge themselves, with moist eyes, in an extra measure of wine. I myself felt the burden of meaningless which had been growing in me so alarmingly of late fall away and the savour returned to my tongue. I felt a new reinstatement of purpose in my life, and a promise of greater significance to come.
I stood at the window of the club. Alone for a moment, absorbed in my own thoughts, I listened to sirens and factory hooters breaking the Sunday calm to announce the news. Their tones of sinister hysteria affected the whole community. People walking in the street suddenly swung out into a stride, cars doubled their normal speed, all the leisurely, Sunday traffic began to hasten. I saw a policeman overlooking flagrant breaches of traffic regulations, and all sorts and conditions of men who had never before mixed together now gathered spontaneously on the street corners talking with extraordinary animation and gesticulating dramatically in a manner unknown in our community. Behind me, too, the club buzzed like a beehive. The sound reminded me of – of – I could only think of the noise in the quadrangle at school the afternoon just before the ‘round-up’. I felt my body stiffen as the finger of the implacable memory touched me. Then deliberately I forced myself to relax. The war – real fighting – I told myself savagely, would soon put an end to this shadow-boxing that I had endured for so many years. Yes, I even felt a kind of grim satisfaction at the thought.
I was just about to heed the voices of my friends calling me back to the bar when, among all those animated fast-moving and quickly-changing figures without, my eye was caught and held by one inconspicuous scene. A woman and a child by her waiting no doubt for a man, were sitting apart from the crowd in the swirling streets on an iron bench under the Royal Palm in front of our imposing gates. The woman had her arm thrown out protectively round the child. Her shoulders were shaking. Clearly she was crying. When I turned away she was still crying. It was a scene I never forgot, and that went to join the other shadows in my mind, fighting for recognition.
All that Sunday my mind worked with a vigour and a precision I had not known for long. I did not worry at all about my own personal safety. I had an idea I would be all right in battle and good at killing. Ignorant of the origins of this terrible need of life for death in the living issue that was upon us, I dismissed them. All my instinct for action and my confidence seemed promptly to return to me. I left the club after a quick lunch, went to my chambers and wound up my affairs. I gave my clerks and juniors detailed instructions in writing as to how to carry on in my absence. It was nearly midnight when I finished, and yet for the first time in years I did not feel tired. I went home, still curiously exhilarated, woke up my housekeeper and repeated my performance there. I did not get to bed until four in the morning. Even so I was up by seven with a small suitcase packed with a few essentials. Soon after, still filled with this curious new eagerness, I presented myself at our military headquarters. I was nearly an hour too early and a sleepy sergeant, impatient for his relief, angrily told me so. However, I insisted, with such an assumption of authority, on seeing one of the duty officers that he had no option but to fetch him. As a result I was the first volunteer to be enrolled for the war in our city. In all this I behaved as if in accordance to a plan worked out years before for just such an emergency. I never thought about what to do next; each step presented itself to me in an unhesitating sequence of an apparently predetermined logic, even down to this question of volunteering and entering the army through the ranks. I do not suppose that I really anticipated being left there long. Perhaps if I had I would have enlisted as an officer straight away, as it was easy to do in my country. Indeed, probably the more normal thing to do would have been quietly to apply for a commission and patiently wait my turn with the rest of my friends. But my instinct for the drama of the occasion, my yearning to keep close to this revived feeling of purpose, would have none of that. It exacted this precipitate gesture from me and persuaded me, at the same time, that this was the natural thing to do. The persuasion seemed more than justified when that evening, sitting in barracks in a brand-new uniform, I read in the evening newspapers: City’s youngest K.C. leads nation-wide rush to the colours: Famous barrister joins the ranks.
I was sent for the next day. I could then have had a good administrative post for the duration in the Adjutant-General’s department. They told me it was the branch of the service which could best use my experience and training. But resolutely I refused all such suggestions and insisted that I would remain in the ranks unless I could be commissioned in the infantry. Didn’t they know, I asked with a grin, that it was killing not clerking I was after? I had my way and within a few days was back in the club in officer’s uniform, standing round after round of farewell drinks, hearing from everyone both appraisal and approval of my behaviour.