by Jon Zackon
I was getting angry. “You are asking me to walk out of the office at this moment without a shred of protection from …”
“No! It’s not like that,” said the editor, cutting me short. “We’ll give you ten days until the end of the month to clear up your affairs. The detectives have assured me – have promised me – that you will be afforded complete protection until then. After that you’ll be on your own.”
Can Theo protect me from Koos? I wondered. Perhaps. In any case, what choice did I have? I had to agree that staying in Durban was out of the question.
“One last thing, Daniel. Gordon and I don’t want to tempt fate. We worry about you carrying out reporting duties outside of the office. One of the subs is off next week and we think it would be a good idea for you to sit at their table. Have you ever subbed before?”
***
Theo was waiting for me as I came out of the building. I wasn’t too happy about it. I looked round for Koos but there was no sign of him.
“Whose side are you really on, Theo?” I asked.
He ignored my cheek.
“I’ve come here to see you really understand what’s expected of you, Daniel.”
“OK, so I have to leave town. What else?”
“It’s not as easy as that. It’s my responsibility to protect you so I think I’m entitled to set some rules. You are not to leave the city precincts without my permission, OK? I can’t go chasing all over Natal for you. Secondly, you have to leave Durban before midnight on November 30th. Thirdly, I’d prefer it if you catch a train back to Jo’burg.”
“Why?”
“Easier for me to keep an eye on you, that’s all. It’s obviously safer.”
I wasn’t sure about that, but I said, “I’ll do my best to stay in line, OK?”
“And the last rule is, keep in touch. You can phone me any time of the day or night.”
I already knew Theo’s home and work phone numbers, so the last instruction would not be a problem. And the first two also made sense. It was the one about the train that worried me. To follow this rule I would have to sell my car. But its resale value was practically nil. And if you lived and worked in the sprawling metropolis of Jo’burg, which was probably what the future held for me, a car was essential. I decided to ignore that particular piece of advice.
Theo walked off and I set off for my car. It seemed miles away. I kept an eye on corners, recesses and random shadows. When I got to the car I was breathing heavily. I leaned on the door and said aloud, “This is stupid!” I had to get a hold of myself. I couldn’t live like this.
I reasoned that I was never going to succumb to Koos’s bullying. So if he appeared, he would have to kill me there and then. And I wasn’t really that afraid of death, or so I’d told myself on numerous occasions.
So stop looking over your shoulder and stop being frightened, I ordered. Where’s your fucking pride?
I immediately felt better.
***
Back in my flat I phoned Ruth. She blew her top. “Jesus, Danny, this is unreal,” she cried down the phone. “Why should you have to go? Why not that bastard with blood on his hands?”
“Good point, but that’s never going to happen. Apparently the police think he’s a great detective. Anyway, Ruthie, please say nothing to anyone. I’ve given my word on this.”
“What about your official complaint?”
“It’s sort of worthless, Ruthie. It won’t put him off. Theo Oudenstad has promised to protect me until I leave town and I’ll just have to trust him. And let’s face it I no longer have a job. It’s only you that makes me want to stay in Durban.”
She was quiet for a while and then she said, “That’s sweet of you, Danny.”
As I put the phone down I suddenly realised how desperate I was to see her. I ached to hold her.
Chapter 21
MOST journalists with a country newspaper background – I’d worked on three before joining The Messenger – know something about typefaces and fonts and understand the rudiments of subbing. Not just correcting grammar and spelling, but how to write a headline, a caption and a pertinent intro. To perform these tasks with humour and imagination constitutes a minor art form. But outside of the cutthroat competitiveness of Fleet Street, most newspapers are happy with mere competence.
Once the night editor gathered that I possessed a degree of such competence, he was happy to throw me in at the deep end on my first subbing shift. I had friends around the table and could always have asked for help, but decided to rest or fall on my own merits. It would have been fun except for the fact that all our work was subject to scrutiny by the chief sub, which turned a shift into something resembling a nightly exam. Deadlines for every page added to the stress levels.
There was pride in making the paper look good. Not for nothing was the subs’ table referred to as the “engine room,” a sobriquet enhanced by the steady hum of the American air conditioning plant.
My first few nights of subbing were complicated by repeatedly having to deflect cross-examination by those around me. Is it true you’re leaving, Danny? Why? Haven’t you enjoyed your stay? And so on. It would have been easier if I could have told the truth. Instead I invented a load of bullshit, even saying different things to different people.
I spent a miserable Saturday on my own. Ruth was working twenty-five hours a day and barely had time to speak on the telephone. I complained bitterly, pointing out that I did not have much time left in Durban and she promised she’d try to do something about it.
***
Conrad dropped by on Sunday night and pulled up a chair beside me. “Shit, I’m sorry the way things have worked out, Danny. I could kick myself,” he said.
“Thanks mate, but come on – there’s no need for you to blame yourself for anything. You’d see that if you knew the full story. I’m just sorry I can’t tell you.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure Marty’s involved. I introduced you and should have warned you about him from the start.”
“Conrad, I’d have met Marty anyway. And just watch out for yourself, hey? You’ve got a beautiful fiancée and you’ll be married soon. If you keep your distance from the bastard and his cop pal you’ll be all right.”
“You’ll miss the wedding now.”
“I know, I’m really sad about that. Ruth will have to go for both of us.”
During my break I phoned Ruth.
“Danny, I’ve got terrific news,” she said.
“Really?” Good news was in short supply. “What?”
“I’ve managed to organise two nights off, starting tomorrow.”
My heart leapt. She had plans for us. Together.
“I’m sure I can get both nights off, Ruthie. If they don’t give them to me I’ll just take them. Blimey, we could go …”
“No wait, Danny. I’ve got somewhere in mind. My family own a beach house twenty miles from town and I was hoping we could go there.”
“This is beginning to sound better and better. But don’t tell me where it is, Ruthie. Let’s just go there.”
“I have to get some sleep after my shift,” she said. “So let’s leave after lunch. I’ll pick you up in the Minx.”
I waited ten minutes to calm down a little and then phoned Theo.
“I suppose it’s OK,” he said. “Where exactly are you going?”
“I honestly don’t know, Theo. Seriously. I don’t even know which direction and I aim to keep it that way.”
He thought for a while. I was prepared for him to start arguing, but instead he said, “So you’re not going to be driving, hey? Who are you going with?”
I refused to say.
“OK. At least tell me what time you are leaving and returning.”
“Leaving around two tomorrow and returning Wednesday before three o’clock.”
“That only gives you forty-eight hours before you have to leave Durban, Danny, but that’s your business. OK, I’ll keep the coast clear. But pho
ne me when you get back.”
I waited until the first edition was put to bed before approaching the night editor. He was a rather diffident character, a Yorkshire man who claimed to have worked on the Daily Telegraph – although Harland had told me it was actually the Sheffield Telegraph.
“Well, er, that leaves us in a bit of a jam,” he said dourly.
Nonsense, I thought. You’ll manage without any trouble.
“As you know I’m leaving the paper in a few days, sir, and I’m afraid it’s imperative I have those nights off.” For good measure, I added loudly, “It’s not my idea to quit, you know. I’m being got rid of.”
He couldn’t face a scene and buried his head in a wet page pull.
That night it took hours for me to fall asleep. Having to wait to drive off to a tryst with Ruth was downright mental cruelty.
***
The minx pulled up on the stroke of two. For no good reason, other than unadulterated delight, I laughed as I got in.
Ruth smiled and leaned over for a kiss.
We headed north and I wondered whether we were driving, rather predictably, to Umhlanga Rocks.
“So where to? You can tell me now,” I said.
“No, not yet. You told me not to tell you.”
“Swine.”
“I want to see your reaction when we get there.”
There was a radio in the car – a luxury lacking in my little Anglia – and I fiddled about until I found some swing on the Lourenco Marques station.
Ruth drove at a steady fifty miles an hour, first through sun-scorched suburbs and then amid the dark green seas of banana plantations.
We sailed past the signs to Umhlanga. Ruth shook her head and smiled. Eventually, we came to a turning leading on to a newish strip of tarmac. As we took it I saw the sign – Ballito Bay.
“Never heard of it,” I said.
“Not many people have. It was just a banana plantation until they started building on it a few years ago.”
We caught sight of the Indian Ocean as the road wound downhill. Around one last bend and a corner of paradise lay before us - a gorgeous little beach set like a band of gold around a tiny bay, bisected by a low reef running out to sea.
Behind the beach was an estate of new houses. One or two had cars parked in front but most looked deserted.
Ruth drove close to the beach, took a dirt road to the left, turned first right for twenty-five yards and stopped.
We were at the back of a single-storey house. I noticed immediately that it enjoyed unobstructed views of the bay.
“We’re here,” she said triumphantly.
“Wow!” And I meant it.
Ruth’s mother had prepared a hamper and we carried cases and provisions into the house.
The tasks finished, Ruth wasted no time. “Lastoneinsasissy,” she cried, tearing off her top and skirt and revealing that she already had a bikini on underneath.
“Jesus, you are such a cheat!” I shouted as she ran for the front door while I hunted through clothes looking for my cossie.
I lost the race by fully five minutes. When I eventually poked a toe in the water I got splashed for my trouble.
“I’m going to get you for that,” I said.
But as I waded in, cleaving through small waves, Ruth swam out further.
“What about sharks?” I shouted.
“What about sharks?” she responded disingenuously.
“What if they’re about?”
She stopped swimming and waded back towards me.
“I’m being a bit unfair. I’m sorry,” she said. “Everybody’s put off by the stories of sharks along this coast. But there’s never been an attack at Ballito, I promise.”
“There could be a first.”
“It’s doubtful, Danny. Do you see the reef? It cuts off any escape to the open sea and ragged tooth sharks hate that. And look at the water – it’s clearer than at Durban. Ragged tooths like murkier water than this.”
What the hell, I thought, Even if she’s wrong I’d take a shark any day to being hunted down by Koos. I dived under an incoming breaker and came up feeling exhilarated.
For the first time I realised that the beach was deserted. It was an odd moment and it is fixed like a film clip in my memory.
Ruth is swimming towards me in slow motion. As she reaches me I half pick her up and fold my arms around her. My heart races wildly. She wraps her legs around me and we kiss …
At last she broke away and I struggled to catch my breath.
“Do you want to wait any longer?” I managed to ask.
I expected her to get cute and say, “Wait for what?” but she didn’t. Her cheeks flushed and she was having as much trouble with her breathing as I was.
“Come,” she said, taking my hand and trudging back to shore. We grabbed our towels from where we’d thrown them on the sand and broke into a dogtrot, which was hard work, given that there was suddenly no bloody oxygen on this beach.
We barged through the front door. Ruth led the way, drying herself as she went through the lounge and into a bedroom.
“God, I’m glad we’re back indoors,” I said. Ruth giggled, raising her face to be kissed and rubbing her body against me.
“Don’t be rough with me, Danny,” she said.
I lifted her bikini top over her head and kissed a nipple, feeling it go rock-hard.
Then we were naked.
And now, never to be forgotten, in my mind’s eye, she is lying on her back on the bed and … and she is crying out and the whole world is spinning and lights are exploding in my brain.
We lay in each other’s arms for quite a long time without saying anything.
“You’re supposed to be fast asleep now, you know,” she said at last.
“Why?”
“Orgasm in men releases endorphins in the brain. That’s why men often fall straight to sleep afterwards. There’s quite a lot of research going on.”
I cupped a perfectly rounded breast with my hand and said, “I may well be asleep, Ruthie. I certainly can’t believe I’m awake. But part of me is definitely not asleep.”
She smiled and her hand searched for me. Then she moaned softly and threw her arms around me. And soon more of those tardy old endorphins were flooding into my brain.
That night we wandered down to the beach, where we found a bench. We watched the moon rise over the Indian Ocean and heard, from the bush all around us, the stridulating love song of a trillion crickets. Urgent, incessant.
“That movie Breathless had a rather apt title, didn’t it?”
“You have to be flip, don’t you?” Ruth chided. “You’re spoiling the moment.”
“Yeah, sorry.”
“Danny, we have serious things to discuss … don’t we?”
She was right. I’d been sedulously avoiding a return to reality.
“How serious are you, Ruthie?”
“Very.”
“Serious enough to want to marry me?”
“Ye-es. Why not?”
“I don’t think you liked me at all when we met. Thought I was an arrogant upstart.”
“That’s true.”
“Then what changed your mind?”
“You can’t rationalise these things. They just happen.”
“It wasn’t because you saw I was getting into deeper and deeper trouble, was it? You know, pity for a pigeon with a broken wing sort of thing?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re quite sexy, you know. And you like jazz.”
“Wonderful basis for marriage. I on the other hand love you because you are so bloody beautiful and have loved you since the first moment I saw you.”
“So do you want to get married, Danny darling?”
“As a general principle, never. But to you, Ruthie, desperately. No waiting, no buggering about. Soon as possible.”
“That just can’t happen. I have to qualify. It could be nearly two years be
fore I’m free. And I’m not sure how I’m going to face it. You’ll be gone and I’ll be left here all alone. So don’t make it worse for me.”
“I know, I know,” I said, my voice cracking slightly.
We clung to each other in silence for a while.
“So there’s not really anything to discuss, is there?” I said. “Our immediate futures have been set for us. It’s fucking unfair.”
But we had the present, and in the present, in that beautifully soft night in Ballito Bay, we had each other. And so we tried to make every second count.
Chapter 22
SOMETIME near morning Ruth ran her finger round my ear, over my cheek and nose, touched my lips and said, “You know, Danny, this is really our honeymoon.” I muttered in agreement and held her tight.
Then, more asleep than awake, I went on mumbling, “Not in my wildest dreams did I …”
“What? What are you saying, Danny?”
I roused myself, paused, and said, “I never thought it would come to this, Ruthie. It’s happened so fast.”
“Not all that fast.”
I was fully awake now. “It’s only a short while since we went to the Eden Roc.”
I felt her tense in my arms but continued, “I was convinced you were still in love with your Indian student.”
“You’ve been speaking to Steven, haven’t you?”
“And Conrad and Moira.”
“Danny, it’s not like they say at all.”
I said nothing, waiting for her to go on.
“I was in love with him for a while, or thought I was,” she said at last. “But what happened … when I saw that he loved his mother more than he loved me … Danny, I stopped loving him at that instant. It was over right then.”
“But at the Eden Roc …”
“No one …” she said vehemently, “… no one understands what I went through. His mother wanted to tear my eyes out. She went crazy. She tore at my hair. Look, she left a scar on my ear with her bloody nails.”
I’d wondered about the angry nick on the rim of her ear.
Ruth reached for a tissue and blew her nose. I stroked her hair.