Hold My Hand I'm Dying

by John Gordon Davis

  ‘Tonight is the only chance,’ he said aloud to the smoke-stained wall of his kia.

  The two red pills and the two bottles of beer were making him feel much stronger. He was even feeling calm and almost happy.

  He thought about petrol. It was impossible for even white men to get petrol these days. Paraffin. He went to his primus stove and shook it but there was very little in it. He poured the paraffin from the stove into the empty beer bottle. Then he went to the kitchen again and he took the bottle of benzine off the pantry shelf arid carried it back to his kia. He poured some into the beer bottle. He pushed a hole through a cork and he pushed a piece of string through the hole. He lit the string and let it burn a little and then he snuffed it out. Now it looked real. He pushed the cork and wick into the bottle and examined it critically. It looked real. He smiled sadly. It would frighten the Nkosi all right. Then he looked around for a sock. He carefully wiped his fingerprints off the bottle with the sock. Then he slid the sock on to his right hand like a glove. He picked up the bomb with his socked hand and he went through the motions of throwing it experimentally. Then he returned the benzine bottle to the pantry and he put the bomb and the sock under his bed to wait till dark.

  At eight o’clock he stood in the garden under his master’s dark bedroom window. He held the bottle in his socked hand. He did not light the wick again. He aimed for the centre window pane and he drew back his arm and he flung the bomb through the glass. He heard it shatter against the far wall. He ran round the house to his kia and he jumped into his bed and after a long time he went to sleep.

  The police found six things linking Samson Ndhlovu to the crime. On the broken glass bottle they found four wool fibres corresponding exactly in thickness, colour and substance with the sock in Samson Ndhlovu’s kia. From that sock the forensic scientist recovered .127 of a cubic centimetre of a mixture of benzine and paraffin and traces of the same mixture were found amongst the fragments of beer bottle in Mahoney’s room. The name of Mahoney’s grocer was stamped upon the label of the beer bottle. In Samson’s room was a length of string identical to the charred wick found in the broken bomb. On Samson’s floor were fragments of cork identical to the cork found in the neck of the bomb. And in his primus stove was the paraffin and in Mahoney’s pantry stood the benzine.

  Samson Ndhlovu denied all knowledge of the crime. He said he had spent the night with a woman in Harare. He did not know the woman’s name and he did not know her address.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  It was a bright fresh Rhodesian morning under a sparkling blue sky and the sun shone golden on long thick green grass and the earth was damp and rich after the rains. The Borrowdale Road was busy with late model cars, despite petrol rationing. Salisbury looked gracious and luscious and prosperous. Not, Mahoney thought, on the brink of bankruptcy. Or was it on the brink of bankruptcy? It bloody well should be in view of all Britain’s sanctions, but everywhere life seemed to be going on as normal. No riots, no extraordinary crime wave, no soldiers to be seen. The black traffic constables still stood at the pedestrian crossings and waved the whole city to a halt so that half-a-dozen school children could cross the road.

  ‘i hate harold’ the sticker said on the rear window of the car ahead of him. Every second car in Rhodesia bore ‘I hate Harold’ stickers. The other common sticker read: ‘Thank You South Africa-Dankie Suid Afrika’ on a background of a petrol pump.

  I hate harold. Mahoney shook his head. How bloody childish. But how bloody true! Everybody hates Harold. Even me, now, Mahoney thought, even the stable moderates, the ones with a bit of nous who had been dead against UDI were now all behind Ian Smith because Harold was being so beastly. You couldn’t help hating Harold. Harold stopping old Rhodesian ladies’ pensions, Harold stealing all our London money, Harold invalidating our passports, Harold stopping all our oil, Harold stopping us from selling our tobacco, Harold refusing to sell us anything. Harold this and Harold that.

  And now Horrible Harold had held a special Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in Nigeria, for Chrissake. What was Great Mother Britain coming to? The British Prime Minister held to ransom by tinpot black states over Rhodesia. Tinpot black states threatening to chuck Britain out of the Commonwealth, for Chrissake. Ghana and Tanzania severing diplomatic relations with Britain, yet Britain still pouring in millions of pounds in aid, for Chrissake. And Britain selling arms to the Viet Cong and the Cubans! What kind of set-up is this? For Chrissake.

  The Borrowdale Road traffic swept round the bend, past Government House. Gracious palatial Government House, looking a bit sick now. His Excellency the Governor was now in law the sole legal Government of Rhodesia, appointed so by Horrible Harold, but looking very sick. Ian Smith had taken away all his trappings, his guards and his cars and his salary, he had even cut off His Excellency’s telephone. Now Ian Smith was charging His Excellency rent for Government House.

  ‘Sick sick sick,’ Mahoney said aloud.

  He pulled up outside the huge old colonial-style High Court. He bought a newspaper on the corner and walked upstairs to his office and sat down. He put his knee up on the desk and opened the newspaper. Then he straightened as he read the headlines:

  MILITARY COUP IN NIGERIA

  A smile spread across his face as he sped through the item then he scrambled off his chair and went out of his door and across the corridor.

  ‘Hey, Phil, you see there’s been a military coup in Nigeria—?’

  Phillip grinned at him.

  ‘Yeah, it was on the morning news. Beautiful, isn’t it?’

  ‘And only last week Horrible Harold was holding his precious Prime Ministers’ conference there on how to restore law and order in Rhodesia—’

  ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’

  ‘Hell, why didn’t it happen when Harold was there? That would have been beautiful. Imagine if they had captured Harold and held him to ransom.’

  ‘Held him up for auction—’

  ‘In his underpants.’

  ‘Yes, in his underpants. There would have been some pretty high bids from Rhodesia.’

  Mahoney shook his head.

  ‘The showpiece of Africa!’ he said. ‘God, it makes a laughing stock of Britain. All those gentlemen shouting the odds round the conference table about how the Rhodesian rebels should be put in their places, and outside the door their own rebels are whetting their spears.’

  ‘Ian Smith must be grinning all over his face—’

  ‘He sure must be.’

  Mahoney turned and crossed the corridor back to his office. He took off his suit jacket and slung it over the chair and he started taking off his tie. He put the paper down on the desk and glanced at it as he fiddled to loosen the collar studs. There were white blanks dotted all over the front page where the Government censors had chopped out news items likely to mislead the unsophisticated members of the public and cause alarm and despondency. Mahoney put the court collar round his neck and snapped it over the studs and flicked the newspaper to the front page to see if there was a report of his case. Yes, there it was, front page news:

  COURT TOLD OF RUSSIAN SABOTAGE TRAINING:

  ‘The trial of the twenty-four Rhodesian Africans charged with having undergone sabotage training in Moscow in contravention of the Law and Order Maintenance Act entered its twenty-second day in the High Court today.

  ‘The Crown alleges that during the period between April and October 1965 the twenty-four men were recruited by ZAPU officials in Zambia to undergo courses in sabotage and intelligence in Russia, Communist China and North Korea …’

  The door opened and Peter came in. He was also wearing a court collar and white cravat.

  ‘Morning, Joe—’

  ‘Morning, Pete—’ Mahoney said.

  Pete sat down. He felt in his pocket then held out a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘Thanks,’ Mahoney said. He lit it and started coughing. ‘Excuse me.’ He sat down and looked at Pete.

  ‘How’s your case going
?’ Pete said.

  Mahoney shrugged. ‘Okay. Enough to make an undertaker sick.’ He flicked the six-inch pile of paper with the back of his hand. ‘Look at it. Those are just my notes of the cross-examination so far. The brief is another six inches high.’

  ‘Much law in it?’

  Mahoney shook his head. ‘Not much. The law’s straightforward. Just mountains and mountains of fact. How’s your roll going in B Court?’

  Pete nodded. He shifted in his chair.

  ‘I’m starting your boy Samson’s case today.’

  ‘Today? I thought you weren’t starting it till Monday—’

  Pete nodded. ‘I’ve decided to bring it forward a bit.’

  Mahoney was silent a moment. ‘Oh-huh,’ he said, nodding. He fiddled with his pen.

  ‘Is it true that you’re paying Mike’s fees?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Pete shook his head. ‘Unusual situation,’ he said. ‘Crown counsel has his house bombed, then hires the best defence lawyer to defend the accused.’

  Mahoney looked at him. ‘It’s not so unusual when you bear in mind that, he saved my life once.’

  ‘But he tried to kill you.’

  ‘He didn’t try to kill me. He knew I wasn’t in the house.’

  ‘Well, he tried to burn your house down, then.’

  Mahoney grunted, ‘Yes.’ He got up and pulled on his jacket and sat down again. Then he stood up again and turned and looked out the window, ‘I’m not so sure he did,’ he said, ‘there’s more in this than meets the eye. Samson wouldn’t burn my house, he’s not interested in politics—’

  Pete grunted.

  ‘You can’t believe your faithful servant would do it to you?’ he said flatly. ‘Well I can. Old Mau Mau trick. Happened many a time in Kenya that the trusted cookboy who had been with the family for twenty years and dandled all the bwana’s children on his knee was the one to slit his bwana’s throat. And his memsahib’s throat, and the kids’ he’d dandled on his knee. The Mau Mau made them do it because the more horrible the murder the more Charlie cookboy felt bound to the Mau Mau, like Macbeth. Having waded so far into the blood to turn back is as tedious as go o’er. It’s a kind of initiation ceremony with these chaps—’

  Mahoney waved his cigarette irritably.

  ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘The point is that whoever intimidated him wanted to get me, obviously. Yet Samson threw it when I wasn’t there. So? He was obviously pulling a fast one on the intimidators—’

  ‘That story won’t help him,’ Pete said flatly, ‘because he still threw it into a residential building and that’s a capital offence even if nobody was in it.’

  Mahoney closed his eyes till the interruption passed.

  ‘And if he was pulling a fast one on his intimidators he could have thrown a fake bomb too. Hell, if he really wanted to burn the joint down he would have gone back when he saw the bomb didn’t work and put a match to the thatch.’

  ‘You’ve forgotten one thing, Joe: the wick on the bomb was burned.’

  ‘He could have done that beforehand to make the job look authentic’

  Pete stood up and put his foot on the chair.

  ‘Yes, well, that’s a theory,’ he said, ‘but it’s no good to him if he doesn’t say it.’

  Mahoney shook his head.

  ‘The stupid bastard,’ he said, ‘—if only he would tell the truth.’

  ‘Have you been to see him?’

  Mahoney waved his hand.

  ‘I’ve been down to the prison with Mike to see him umpteen times. But every time he insists that he didn’t do it, says he knows nothing about it. Stupid bastard.’

  Pete shrugged.

  ‘Have you explained your theory to him?’

  ‘I’ve explained everything to him a dozen times in his own language. He still insists he didn’t do it. He just sits there with that wooden expression on his black face. You know the wog,’ he said, ‘you can talk till you’re blue in the face. He gets the idea into his head that when he’s in trouble the best thing is to deny. Deny everything. Deny your fingerprints. Any port in a storm. Maybe he doesn’t even trust me when the chips are down, thinks I’m trying to get him swung maybe.’

  Pete looked around for an ashtray.

  ‘Use the big one,’ Mahoney said, nodding to the floor.

  ‘Yes, well, he’ll swing all right if he sticks to that one,’ Pete said calmly.

  Mahoney nodded.

  ‘Maybe the Executive Council will reprieve him,’ he said, ‘it’s not a very serious case.’ Pete’s eyebrows went up.

  ‘I think it’s very serious when the ZAPU thugs start the Mau Mau stunt of getting the trusted servants to butcher their own masters.’

  Mahoney nodded, ‘I suppose so.’ He paused. ‘Listen Pete – I’ve kept my nose out of this case, but do me a favour: go easy on him if he gets into the witness box. He’s a dead duck already. Try to bring out all the mitigating features in the case for the benefit of the Executive Council.’

  ‘Okay, of course I will—’

  ‘And Pete? If he gives evidence and you bring him to his knees in cross-examination, give him a chance to admit that he did it but threw a fake bomb. Put it to him in so many words and see what he says—’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he said stiffly, ‘of course I will.’ There was a pause.

  ‘You see,’ Pete said, feeling for his cigarettes ‘—I’m in rather a different position to you. I don’t believe this trusted servant lark. I don’t believe you can trust these chaps further than you can kick them. They’ll cut our throats as soon as it suits them. It happened in Kenya, it’ll happen again here. These long-haired liberals overseas don’t appreciate that there’s only one thing a wog understands and that is a swift kick in the backside when he steps out of line. That’s the way he was treated fifty years ago by his chiefs, that’s the way it’ll always be. Give him power and he’ll abuse it. Look at Nigeria. Look at Ghana.’

  Mahoney nodded.

  ‘I don’t believe for one moment,’ Pete continued, lighting his cigarette, ‘the wogs would ever let us stay if they ever got to power here, even if we were born here. And as for you and me who have prosecuted most of their heroic petrol-bombers and saboteurs,’ he nodded out the window ‘—they’ll hang you and me from those lamp-posts out there. I mean that. Especially since UDI. You and I have been so much in the daily news prosecuting their heroes, they’ll lynch us publicly. You and me’ll be among the first to go, and don’t kid yourself about that one, chum.’

  Mahoney nodded.

  ‘I don’t kid myself,’ he said flatly.

  Peter blew out smoke.

  ‘So I’m not awfully sympathetic towards your pal Samson. As far as I’m concerned he’s your cookboy who tried to kill you for no rhyme or reason other than that you’re white and you’ve done your duty, and I don’t want the ZAPU thugs to get the same idea about my cookboy—’

  A distant chanting noise came through Mahoney’s window, from way up Third Street. Pete cocked his ear and listened. Mahoney did not turn. The chanting drew closer, a deep throated melodious up and down up and down. Pete moved to the window and looked out. The chanting was loud now. Through the jacaranda tree tops outside the window he glimpsed the big blue prison truck rumbling along Third Street towards the back entrance to the High Court. There were two police Land Rovers escorting it, loaded with armed policemen. A crowd of African men, women and children were gathered on the roadside and they were waving to the prison truck and some of the African women were wiping their eyes.

  ‘Here come your twenty-four Red-trained hoods,’ Pete said.

  The chanting was very loud now, as the trucks turned across the road towards the Court building.

  ‘Yes,’ Mahoney said, without looking up. ‘It’s the same every morning. They sound very brave, don’t they? It would be quite moving if you could forget that almost every one of them confessed to the police the moment they were caught.’

  ‘Yes,’ Pete said out t
he window ‘—James Bond wouldn’t think much of this bunch. Therein, my friend, lies our salvation. What is it they’re singing?’

  ‘I’m not much good at Chisezuru,’ Mahoney said turning slowly to the window. He put a cigarette in his mouth: ‘Something about, “We are going to rule the country.” ZAPU is going to have to wait a long time if they’re going to rely on tits like that. Imagine trained saboteurs re-entering the country with their pockets bulging with evidence of My Trip to Moscow and Peking.’

  Pete snorted. The prison truck was trundling slowly out of sight past the corner of the building.

  ‘Twenty years, boys,’ he said, ‘that’s what your little holiday to Moscow is going to cost you.’

  Mahoney turned from the window and puffed on his cigarette vigorously.

  ‘Except Samson Ndhlovu,’ he said. ‘He’s in that truck, too. He only threw one dud bomb and it’s going to cost him his life.’

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  The next day was Friday, and at four o’clock there were black thunderclouds hanging low in the sky and it was very close and warm and dusky and counsel’s robes were hot. A Court adjourned at four o’clock and the twenty-four black men were filed down to their holding cells below the Court room. Mahoney slung his gown and wig on to a chair and hurried down the corridor to B Court. He tiptoed down the aisle and slid on to an empty bench and sat down.

  Pete turned his head, saw Mahoney in the gallery and nodded briefly. Mahoney nodded. Samson had his back to Mahoney, sitting upright in the dock with an African policeman sitting beside him. Mike was on his feet addressing the Court. It sounded like the tail end of his argument. He didn’t seem to be saying it with much conviction – what could he say? Mahoney thought. The red-robed judge was bent over his notebook, listening tiredly with his hand shielding his eyes. The assessors on either side of him were sitting back in their chairs.

  Well, that looks like that, Samson my boy, Mahoney thought.