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It was lovely to be twenty years old and head over heels in forbidden love with a beautiful woman most of South Africa knew about – but didn’t know he had. Lovely, exciting, knowing that they had the whole weekend to themselves until Monday morning, with nobody to knock on the door. Each weekend he brought his law books – he had finished her story – and in the mornings he studied but midday found them lying beside the little pool, drinking wine, cooking on the barbecue, the sun glistening on her goldenness, her long legs so gloriously female, her tiny bikini covering her mount of Venus, the wonderful olive line where her thighs touched, her rounded soft-firm hips, her glorious breasts naked, her long black hair loose, her mouth happy below her sexy sunglasses. They were lovers who had been kept apart most of the week, catching up on each other’s news, what happened at the office, who said what about whom: the delightfully important business of talking about unimportant things when out there in the rest of the land awful things were happening. It was a relief ‘to get away from South Africa’. And, oh, the blissful knowledge of what they were going to do after lunch: just take each other by the hand and lay themselves down upon that big double bed with a smile of anticipation, happiness all over their faces. It seemed that each time he looked at her, her perfect body, cool and warm, the droplets of the swimming pool on her, he took a happy sigh. And she was as beautiful a person as she was beautiful. And their love-making was as beautiful as she was.
Sometimes they got away from it all by getting the hell out of South Africa. Gandhi Garments had outlets in Botswana and Mozambique, all of which fell under Patti’s jurisdiction. About once a month she had to visit one of them, and they made a holiday out of it. They had to go in separate cars, because a white man leaving the country in the same vehicle as an Indian woman, particularly one as well known to the authorities as Patti Gandhi, would be a prime suspect for contravention of the Immorality Act when he returned – the wires would be hot between the border and Police HQ. So they left in separate cars and met in the hotel on the other side of the border. Patti had a cousin in Botswana whom they sometimes visited, but they always stayed in hotels. And, oh, it was a lovely feeling to be free. God knows there is nothing beautiful about the towns of Botswana, flat and dry, the sun beating down hot as hell, but to them it was lovely, freedom. Freedom to be like two people in love, to lie together by the motel pool, to have dinner together by candlelight, to dance together for all the world to see. To them Botswana was beautiful. But Mozambique was truly beautiful: the Portuguese motel on the palmy beach outside Lourenço Marques, the Indian Ocean warm and clear, the fishing boats, fooling together in the warm surf, chasing, splashing, ducking each other like two kids let out of school, pulling her bikini off midst girlish squeals, the wonderful fleeting feel of her nakedness, the laughing salty kisses, lying in the sun, her long hair shiny, her golden skin glistening. Oh God, he was proud of her; he loved the way people looked at her, stole glances at her, the furtive stares when she walked into a room.
‘How does it make you feel?’
‘It amuses me,’ she said. ‘But in South Africa it makes me angry because I’m good enough to lust after but I’m not good enough to be one of them. I’m like an Amsterdam prostitute to be drooled over and left behind in the window. In fact, I’m lower than the prostitute because it’s legal to fuck her. I’m an Untouchable.’
‘Damn right, anybody touches you and I’ll break their bloody necks. Apartheid’s done me a favour …’
Then there were the long languorous lunches at the beachside bistros under the palms, piri-piri prawns and fresh crayfish and barbecued suckling pig and chicken Portuguese style. There they would talk and talk, with the sun sparkling on the sea, the vinho verde slipping down cold and crisp, getting good and replete and sensuous in delicious anticipation of what they were going to do. And waking up in the late afternoon, in the hours after love, sweaty, replete, and diving back into the sea together to start the whole lovely process again.
‘Do we make love more than other lovers, d’you think?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we want each other more than other lovers.’
She said: ‘Because we’re abnormal lovers. We’re not allowed to be normal. So every time we’re together it’s a honeymoon.’
‘If I came home to you every night it would feel the same.’
She smiled. ‘Would it, darling?’ She stroked his eyebrow. ‘Yes, I know how it feels. However I doubt the best of lovers could keep this up. But …’ she sighed, ‘even if we did end up moderating our carnal appetites wouldn’t it be lovely to come home to each other every night?’
Oh, it was a heartbreaking thought. With all his heart he did not want the weekend to end, he did not want to drive back alone to South Africa tomorrow, he did not want to go to bed alone in The Parsonage, he did not want to wake up on Monday morning without her, he did not want to wait for next weekend on Buck’s Farm.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And that’s how it’s going to be one day.’
She snorted softly, and stroked his eyebrow. ‘One day when apartheid is gone? When it’s torn us to bits? When we’re old?’
It made him burn to talk like this. He hated those Afrikaner bastards who had done this to them. He said: ‘So there’s only one thing to do: get out.’ He looked at her. ‘Get out when I’ve got my LLB and we’ll go and live happily ever after in another land.’
She looked at him. It was the first time he had expressed his commitment like that. Her face softened. ‘Thank you, Luke.’ Her big brown eyes were moist; then she clenched her fist and clenched her teeth and heaved herself up and clasped her knees and said to the glorious sunset: ‘And I mean this too: I will never, never leave South Africa!’ She glared at the sunset. ‘Fuck them! I’ll never let them drive me away from the land of my birth! From my parents. From my livelihood!’ She shook her head angrily. ‘If we stand up to these Afrikaner bastards we can pull them down!’ She glared at the sunset. ‘I hate them! And I love what Umkhonto we Sizwe is doing …!’
Umkhonto we Sizwe – MK, for short. Spear of the Nation.
That year the ANC and the Communist Party decided violence was their only policy now that they were banned, driven underground and into exile. Mau Mau violence had worked in Kenya. All over Africa the colonies were getting their independence: the ANC could be sure of support from many places in the north. It was common knowledge that Nelson Mandela was the leader of MK, but it was the South African Communist Party who hurried to Moscow to arrange weapons and training for his new army. MK’s existence was unveiled on 16th December of that year, the anniversary of the Battle of Blood River when the Boers defeated Dingaan’s Zulus. That day bombs exploded in Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Durban, at post offices, government administration offices and electrical installations, and MK’s manifesto was broadcast over Radio Freedom:
‘The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices: submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa. We shall not submit and we have no choice but to hit back by all means within our power in defence of our people, our future and our freedom …’
The recruits made their way over the border to join MK, to go for training in Eastern Europe and China and elsewhere in Africa, all arranged by the South African Communist Party. That year two hundred explosions rocked the land. The journalists called Nelson Mandela The Black Pimpernel; the police called him Public Enemy Number One, a Tool of the Communists.
That year Gandhi Garments opened a factory in Swaziland, which was a British protectorate. Swaziland was ideal for those long weekends, the border only 150 miles from Johannesburg. It is high, hilly country with forests and valleys with tumbling streams. Patti usually drove up on Friday morning and completed business in one day so they would have the whole weekend free. Mahoney followed on Friday afternoon. They stayed in the Mountain Arms, in the high forests near the border. It was lovely to sit on the verandah in the evening with a bottle of wine looking down on South Africa turning mauve, the sky turning orange red and setting the western horizon on fire. It was extraordinary that up here on this side of the border they were free to watch that romantic sunset together, to be in love, to stay in this hotel – and down there the law forbade it.
‘Don’t think about it,’ she said. ‘Or it’ll drive us mad.’
‘I am mad. Fighting mad.’
She smiled. ‘Never be fighting mad. You’ve got to be cold, calculatingly mad in this game. And you’re more valuable as a wordsmith, the pen is mightier than the sword. Leave the fighting to us.’
He looked at her. ‘In what game?’
‘Dealing with those bastards down there.’
‘What fighting? And who’s “us”?’
She smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’m keeping my hands clean. If the cops had anything on me they’d have gleefully nailed me long ago.’
That was the first time he really worried.
‘I don’t want you involved in any of this MK business, Patti.’
She put her hand on his. ‘I promise you I’m far too smart to get my hands dirty or my nose bloodied.’
‘For Christ’s sake, what are you talking about? “Far too smart”?’
‘I simply mean we should leave the fighting to MK.’ She squeezed his hand brightly. ‘Now can we please stop talking about bloody apartheid?’
‘No, I want to know what you mean about being far too smart to get caught.’
‘I didn’t say that. I said too smart to get my hands dirty.’
‘Patti – are you involved in these explosions?’
‘Do I look like a bomb-artist?’
‘Answer me, damn it!’
She looked at him. ‘No.’
He glared at her. ‘But you are still a member of the ANC?’
‘You know the answer to that one.’
‘I mean, are you a member of an ANC underground cell?’
She smiled. ‘Darling, if I were I’d be the last to admit it.’
‘And that’s what worries the shit out of me. Answer me, Yes or no.’
She looked him in the eye. ‘No, darling. There – better?’
Not much. ‘And are you a member of the Communist Party?’
She smiled. ‘Darling, a Communist Party member never admits it. The membership is so secret that not even other party members know who’s a member apart from their immediate cell. Not even all the members of the national executive know who’s who.’
‘So even the ANC executive doesn’t know which of its members are also members of the Communist Party.’
‘I would imagine that’s right.’
She would imagine … ‘Are you or are you not?’
She smiled. ‘Would it make any difference to how you feel about me?’ She held up her palms. ‘And please don’t let’s have another argument about the failure inherent in communism – about the repression of human initiative and the dictatorship of the Party.’
‘But it’d make a difference to our strategy. How careful we are.’
‘Can we be more careful?’
He took a breath. ‘Patti, bombs are going off all over the place. The cops are scouring the land for Nelson Mandela. Roadblocks everywhere. Midnight raids. Surveillance. Tapped telephones. Intercepted mail. Informers.’ He held out a finger at her. ‘If you’re in any way involved in Nelson Mandela’s fucking bombs, even as just a … post office box for passing on messages, you’ll be nailed as an accomplice. And that’s the gallows in Pretoria, Patti!’ He glared at her. ‘Now, do you have anything to do with that?’
She looked him in the eye with fond amusement. ‘No. And now can we please stop talking about it? We’re away from it. We’ve got two whole nights and two whole days! And tomorrow we’re going to our favourite place. Please let’s be happy …’
Their favourite place was a valley two miles from the hotel where a little waterfall tumbled into a deep pool, then swirled away over rapids of smooth stones, round big grey boulders that were warm in the sun, swirling into little bays with pebbled beaches. They had the whole glorious valley to themselves. They were free, free as the air, with nobody to see them. The forest, the waterfall, the sky so blue and the sun golden warm – it was a beautiful place to be free with the most beautiful young woman in the world, swimming naked in the pool, splashing, thrashing, ducking, the wonderful sensuous feel of her cold-warm slipperiness in his arms, her breasts and her hips and her thighs satiny smooth, her long hair floating in clouds about her shoulders.
She always had to do one dive off the top of the waterfall. It was a thirty-foot drop and it gave him the willies. She stood up there, straight lovely legs together, arms stiff at her side, her hair plastered to her head, her breasts jutting. ‘Watching?’
She looked like a goddess of the forest against the sky. ‘Watching.’
Up came her arms, breasts lifting, thighs tautening, up onto her toes, then a big breath and she launched herself. Through thin air she flew, her arms out in her swallow dive, hair streaming, buttocks tight, long legs together. She arced through the sunlight, glistening, then hit the water with a splash. She broke surface, puffing. ‘Were my feet together?’
‘Yep.’
‘Were my toes pointed?’
‘I was particularly proud of your toes.’
‘Shall I do another one?’
‘No, that was perfect, quit while you’re ahead.’
Then came the important business of building a fire. She insisted on doing it herself. Why does she love the actual making of a fire? he wondered. While he sat on a warm rock drinking cold beer she went off into the forest, wearing nothing but sunglasses, collecting wood. The blackened stones of their last fire were still there: she elaborately laid her kindling, then her bigger wood, critically rearranging it, crouching around on her haunches. Mahoney watched her, wondering at her girlish pleasure. Then, the match. Great care as she applied it to her creation: it was a matter of pride that she needed only one, and used no paper. She anxiously dropped to her knees ready to blow. Then, as flame took, great satisfaction.
‘Voilà! Only one match!’
‘Next time I want you to rub two sticks together, that’ll really impress the shit out of me.’
They lay in the sun on a warm smooth rock drinking crisp wine as they waited for the fire to turn to coals, the waterfall cascading, the rapids sparkling. Then they roasted the meat, succulent lamb chops and sausages, and ate with their fingers, teeth tearing, the taste of the fire and wood-smoke, the juices on their chins – it seemed like the best food they had ever eaten. Afterwards, lying back on the warm rock, happy, free, he looked at her, her eyes closed behind her sunglasses, her hair splayed out, her breasts gently rising and falling, the sun glinting on her dark pubic triangle, her thighs glistening; she was the most naked woman in the world. He leant towards her and kissed her nipple and teased it with his tongue, and she gave a little sigh. He kissed down her breasts, and down her belly, kissing her hip, her thigh, down to her knees, then slowly up her other side, and oh the bliss of her soft inner thighs, smooth and fragrant. She lay, eyes closed, a small smile on her wide mouth, her nipples hard as he lingeringly trailed his tongue all round her mount of Venus, his breathing ruffling her silky pubic hair, then she could bear the waiting no longer and she slid her legs apart. He sank his tongue into her warm secret place, and her hand reached out for him.
Later, lying side by side, replete, he said: ‘Why do you love making the fire so much?’
She smiled up at the sky.
‘It’s freedom,’ she said. ‘Being close to nature. When I was a little girl I longed to go into the bush and see the animals. I longed to go camping. But there are no places where Indians are allowed. We aren’t allowed into the Kruger National Park or the other game reserves except as day-trippers. Going to the Indian beach on the Natal coast was about as close to nature as we could get. And it was always full of other Indians with their picnic baskets and portable radios – it wasn’t nature. And you’re not allowed to build fires on the beach. So the only place you can have a fire is in your backyard – and that sure isn’t nature either. That was just frustration when I was a girl – a mockery of freedom. So now I’ve got the opportunity to do it, here, in real nature, real forest, real mountains, it’s a real treat for me. I want to run and do somersaults. Skip and play the fool.’ She smiled. ‘So making the fire is just responding to a childhood deprivation, I guess. That’s why I get a bang out of it.’
‘And that crazy swallow dive is the same?’
She smiled. ‘When I was a kid I saw a movie with Jean Simmons in it, where she’s shipwrecked as a girl on this desert island in the South Pacific with a boy. And they grow up not knowing anything except each other – and then they fall in love, of course, and have a baby, doing it all just instinctively. And they live off the sea and wild fruit, and they are forever diving off cliffs into this turquoise sea – and they collect pearls and don’t know the value of them, until one day this ship arrives and agrees to take them back to civilization, but the wicked captain finds their pearls and he makes them dive for more, and more, and more, until they’re enslaved, and they rebel and run and hide and eventually the ship sails away without them. But they are happy to be free again, living with nature, just the two of them and their baby …’ She smiled. ‘I saw that movie again and again, and I cried each time. And I longed to be like Jean Simmons, so beautiful, so free, standing there on the lip of the cliff, the wind in her hair, the turquoise water below, then launching herself so gracefully, diving like a wild creature into her underwater wonderworld, amongst all the lovely fish and coral … Anyway, I longed to dive like that, when I was a little girl. But there were no public pools for Indians. Now, when I’m standing up there at the top of the waterfall I feel even better than Jean Simmons. Because I’m like a bird let out of a cage. I’m free in real nature at last, and I’m high, and I’m naked, the sun and wind on my body, and I feel defiant – I want to shout, so the whole of South Africa can hear: “Look at me, I’m as good-looking and smart as you are and this is what I want to say to you all: Fuck you!” And then I try to do a perfect swallow, to show ’em.’ She turned her head and looked at him. ‘I guess that’s what it is …’
13 (#ulink_553f3cbc-f67b-5ad4-b650-0bb98401944c)
Politics. They tried not to think about politics when they were together, but you couldn’t avoid politics in South Africa, because you lived it. The laws of the land rubbed your nose in it every day. You worried about it, read about it, argued about it, despaired over it. Mahoney wrote about it, daily Patti seethed under it; both were the victims of it, riven apart by it.
The newspapers were full of it. Every other day, it seemed, the ANC caused another explosion, and Poqo kept striking at random. Much of this bad news was half-concealed from the public by censorship laws, but everybody knew about the terrible politics of the rest of Africa: that was not censored. The terrifying triumph of the devil in Kenya, the whites selling up their lovely farms for a song, the convoys of farmers fleeing to South Africa – ‘Thank God for South Africa and Hendrik Verwoerd’. Everybody knew about the independence of Uganda, the slaughter of his tribal enemies by Milton Obote, the chaos of his socialist policies. Everybody knew of the economic chaos of Tanzania where Julius Nyerere was uprooting whole peoples with his socialist policies of ‘villagization’. Everybody knew about the chaos in the Congo, the mayhem, the murder, the rape, the looting, the arson, the cannibalism. Everybody knew about that terrifying shit happening in the rest of Africa. Everybody knew that the USSR and China were behind it all, that they intended to turn Africa into a communist continent. Everybody knew that the USSR and China were behind the ANC and PAC, that the ANC was dominated by the South African Communist Party; and everybody knew that Nelson Mandela and his MK were the bastards causing these explosions.
‘He’s National Hero Number One,’ Patti said. ‘I pray for him …’
Nelson Mandela, the ‘black pimpernel’ who flitted in and out, organizing support outside the country, training, arms, money, masterminding the sabotage inside the country. Rumour had it he moved like a fish through the waters of the people, as a tribesman, a businessman, a delivery boy, a mine worker, visiting his underground cells, reconnoitring his targets, drawing up his plans, smuggling his explosives, building his bombs, getting them to his men. His face was well-known, a handsome, intelligent face, splashed across the police posters offering huge rewards for information leading to his capture; but the bombs kept exploding, damaging electric pylons, post offices, government offices, prisons, railway installations.
‘Don’t you think he’s a hero?’ Patti demanded.
Yes, Mahoney thought Mandela was heroic. But Patti believed that Mandela’s bombs would eventually frighten the whites so much it would bring about the collapse of apartheid; Mahoney did not believe that. Mandela’s bombs would only frighten the whites into the government’s laager, like the Mau Mau atrocities did in Kenya, like the nihilism was doing in Rhodesia. No way would Nelson Mandela’s bombs bring down the South African government: they would only make the laws harsher. The only thing that would bring down the government was a full-scale invasion, and the Defence Force would shoot the shit out of that too. And who was going to support such a communist invasion in the middle of the Cold War? If America was prepared to risk nuclear war against the USSR when she tried to emplace missiles in Cuba, who was prepared to support an ANC war and place the Cape sea route in the hands of the South African Communist Party and Russia? America had just fought the Korean War, it was fighting the Vietnam War: the West had already lost most of Africa to the USSR and China – no way were they going to lose South Africa and the Cape sea route by supporting Mr Mandela and his home-made bombs. Yes, Nelson Mandela and his boys in MK were brave men taking on an unjust system, but were they not also quixotic figures?
‘Quixotic!’ Patti cried indignantly.
‘No, look: government offices and electric pylons are important targets, but he can’t win like that. The Afrikaner won’t be scared away by bombs – his whole culture, his whole history is one of fighting, fighting the Kaffir Wars, trekking into the unknown, then fighting the whole mighty British Empire – so he’s not going to surrender because of a few bombs, that’ll only make him more repressive.’
‘It’s a start,’ Patti said. ‘Somebody’s got to start hitting this government. We can’t just accept our fate. And it’s got great propaganda value – it shows the masses that the flame of freedom is burning brightly.’
But bombs? There was something distasteful about bombs that tarnished Mandela’s image. Blowing up bridges, railway and electrical installations was legitimate in an armed struggle, but the step from there to bombs in supermarkets and hotel foyers was a short one.
‘Sooner or later innocent people are going to get killed, and Mandela will lose his moral high ground.’
‘It is our policy that there will be no loss of human life.’
Our policy? Jesus, that worried him. ‘Patti, you aren’t involved in any of this, are you?’
‘Of course not, I mean it’s ANC policy, made loud and clear at the start of the armed struggle. Mandela is a very principled man.’
‘Yeah, but how principled are all his boys scattered across the country? How long before one acts on his own initiative and blows up a crowded railway station? Mandela may be smart, but he can’t be everywhere at once keeping his hitmen under control.’
‘“Hitmen”,’ she said quietly, ‘is hardly the right word for freedom fighters. However, yes – there is a risk that life will be taken, arid I agree that’s regrettable, and it’s our policy to avoid it. But history is full of human life being taken in the struggle for freedom, Luke – it’s sad, but sometimes it’s a risk that has to be taken. Good God, how many lives are the Americans taking every day in Vietnam, as we speak? How many lives did the British take in establishing their empire? How many lives of Aborigines did the Australians take? How many Maoris were slaughtered in New Zealand? Red Indians in America? Who started the barbaric custom of scalping in America? Not the Indians, but the white settlers, to claim a bounty from the government for every Indian they killed. How many lives did Castro have to take in Cuba?’ (Oh Jesus, it worried him that she saw nothing wrong with communism.) ‘God, how many people did the South African police shoot at Sharpeville? The history of freedom is soaked in blood. This country’s history is soaked in blood. So don’t expect “us” to be too squeamish about the risk of a little more blood – regrettable though that is.’
Regrettable … Jesus, she frightened him when she talked like that. Out there bombs were going off and the police were scouring the land for Nelson Mandela – and where was she five nights a week when he couldn’t see her? He held a finger out at her perfect nose. ‘As long as you have nothing to do with that blood.’
She pretended to bite at his finger and grinned. ‘It’s not the blood that worries you, is it, darling – it’s me? Us. And the police. The Immorality Act. Boy, that’s typical South African liberal schizophrenia! All talk and no do. “Blood is historically inevitable, it’s academically necessary – as long as it’s not on my fair hands. Oh, apartheid is brutal, oh, apartheid must be toppled, and to do so there’ll be blood – but I can’t lift a finger in case a spot falls on me! So, alas, I can do nothing” …’
‘I do nothing? I write my articles for Drum, and the Globe. What I want to know is what you do, Patti?’
‘Wellshe said reasonably, ‘I run Gandhi Garments. I make nice cheap dresses and pants for “kaffirs” …’
‘And that’s all?’
‘That’s all, darling. Please stop worrying …’
14 (#ulink_a7a69735-e8ea-578b-90b3-24be2237694e)
Michael Sullivan was a geography teacher, twenty-seven years old. It was a cold winter’s afternoon and he wore a hat and overcoat as he hurried into Johannesburg railway station, his collar turned up. He was carrying a large, new, cheap suitcase. He made his way to the platforms. Some white people were already waiting for the 5.15 train, where the whites-only first-class coaches would pull up. Further down the platform, where the second-class coaches would stop, a good number of Coloured people were waiting. Past them, where the third-class coaches would be, many more blacks were waiting.
