Indecent Exposure (29 page)

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the doctor, “after all you did have the Dean of Johannesburg.”

“That was different,” the Kommandant told her, “he was a Communist.” He tried to think of some way round the problem. “Can’t you hypnotize the swine or something?”

Dr von Blimenstein could not see what good that would do.

“Tell them to wake up Communists,” said the Kommandant. “You can do anything with hypnotism. I once saw a hypnotist turn a man into a plank and sit on him.”

Dr von Blimenstein said it was different with ideas.

“You can’t make people do things that they wouldn’t want to do in their ordinary life. You can’t make them act against their own moral sense.”

“I don’t suppose that bloke wanted to be a plank,” said the Kommandant, “not in ordinary life anyway, and as for moral sense I should have thought your suicides have a great deal in common with Communists. All the Communists I’ve met have wanted to give the vote to the blacks and if that isn’t suicidal, tell me what is.”

He left her with the warning that something had to be done quickly. “Pretoria will be sending down a team of investigators shortly and then we’ll all be in the shit,” he said.

Later the same day he had the same trouble with the Rev Schlachbals this time over the introduction of nude women into the treatment for the queers. “That doctor wants to bring girls up here from the strip clubs in Durban and parade them up and down in front of the boys,” the Rev Schlachbals complained. “She says she wants to test their reactions. I won’t stand for it.”

“It seems a good idea to me,” said the Kommandant.

The Rev Schlachbals looked at him disapprovingly.

“That is as maybe,” he said, “but it’s too much for me. I’ve stood for men but naked ladies are another matter.”

“Have it your own way,” said the Kommandant. The Rev Schlachbals blushed.

“I don’t mean what you mean,” he said and walked out.

The Kommandant gave Dr von Blimenstein permission to go ahead with the test and later in the day several blowsy girls from Durban went through their routine in front of the konstabels while Sergeant Breitenbach went along the rows with a swagger stick making sure that everyone responded properly.

“All present and erect, sir,” he said when he had finished.

Kommandant van Heerden thanked the doctor for her assistance and accompanied her to her car.

“It’s been no trouble,” said the doctor, “I found the whole experience most valuable. It’s not every woman can say she’s had such a stimulating effect on two hundred and ten men at the same time.”

“Two hundred and eleven, doctor,” said the Kommandant with unusual gallantry and left the doctor with the impression that she had made a conquest. He had just caught sight of Els who was apparently about to rape one of the chorus girls.

“Amazing woman,” said Sergeant Breitenbach, “I don’t envy Verkramp’s chances with her.”

“That’s one marriage that wasn’t made in heaven,” said the Kommandant.

At White Ladies Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon had come to much the same conclusion about her own marriage to the Colonel. Ever since her brief taste of happiness in the dell, her thoughts had turned again and again to the Kommandant. So had the Colonel’s.

“Damned man comes here, ruins my best roses, flogs an expensive horse to death, pollutes a tank of tropical fish, poisons poor Willy and finally goes off with a damned good whipper-in,” he said irritably.

“I had rather a soft spot for Harbinger,” said La Marquise tenderly.

For the most part though, the Kommandant’s visit was forgotten and the brief glimpse of fearful reality his presence had given to the members of the Dornford Yates Club lent a new and frenetic gaiety to their efforts to evoke the past. They drove over to Swaziland to gamble at the casino at Piggs Peak in memory of Berry’s great coup at San Sebastian in Jonah & Co. where he had won four thousand nine hundred and ninety-five pounds. Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon lost forty before giving up and driving home through a thunderstorm trying to maintain an insouciance he didn’t feel. They went racing but again without luck. The Colonel made a point of backing only black horses in memory of Chaka.

“Blue-based baboon,” he said in a voice that carried his unique blend of Inner Circle County across the heads of the crowd. “That damned jockey was pulling.”

“We should organize our own races, Berry,” said the fat man. “There was a car race in Jonah & Co.”

“By Jove, I do believe he’s right,” said La Marquise who was doubling as Piers, Duke of Padua.

“The cars were called Ping and Pong,” Major Bloxham said. “And the race was from Angoulême to Pau. It was two hundred and twenty miles.”

Next day the dusty roads of Zululand saw the great race from Weezen to Dagga and back and by nightfall the Colonel, as Berry, had made good his losses of the previous days. Admittedly Weezen was hardly Angoulême and Dagga’s resemblance to Pau was limited to a view of distant mountains but the Club made good these deficiencies in their own imaginations and by driving with a wholly authentic disregard for other road users. Even Berry & Co. could hardly have complained and among other trophies the Colonel collected two goats and a guinea fowl. In the back seat of the Rolls Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon did her best to be Daphne but her heart wasn’t in it. Much the same could be said for the Duke of Padua, who insisted that the fat man stop at Sjambok while she bought an inflatable ring. That night Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon told the Colonel she was going down to Piemburg next morning.

“Another perm, eh?” said the Colonel. “Well don’t overdo things. It’s Berry Puts Off His Manhood night tomorrow.”

“Yes dear.” said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon.

The next day she was up early and on her way to Piemburg. As the great car slid down the Rooi Nek, Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon felt free and strangely youthful. Chin in air, eyebrows raised, lids lowered, the faintest of smiles hovering about her small red mouth, she leaned back with an indescribable air of easy efficiency which was most attractive. Only the parted lips at all betrayed her eagerness…

She was still in a playful mood when she was shown into the Kommandant’s office by Sergeant Breitenbach.

“My darling,” she said as soon as the door was shut, and skipped across the room a vision of elegance in mauve silk.

“For God’s sake,” spluttered the Kommandant, unwinding her arms from his neck.

“I had to come, I couldn’t wait.” said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon.

Kommandant van Heerden looked frantically round his office. Something about shitting on one’s own doorstep was on the tip of his tongue but he managed not to say it. Instead he asked after the Colonel.

Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon reclined in a chair. “He’s absolutely furious with you,” she said. Kommandant van Heerden went pale.

“You can’t blame him, can you?” she continued. “I mean, think how you’d feel in his position.”

The Kommandant didn’t have to think how he’d feel. He knew.

“What’s he going to do?” he asked anxiously, the vision of the cuckold Colonel shooting him looming large in his mind. “Has he got a gun?”

Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon leant back and laughed. “Has he got a gun? My dear, he’s got an arsenal,” she said. “Haven’t you seen his armoury?”

The Kommandant sat down hurriedly and got up almost at once. Coming on top of the terrible position Verkramp had put him in, this new threat not only to his position but to his life was the last straw. Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon sensed his feelings.

“I shouldn’t have come,” she said taking the words out of the Kommandant’s mouth. “But I simply had to tell you…”

“As if I hadn’t got enough fucking trouble on my hands without this,” snarled the Kommandant, his instinct for survival sweeping away what few pretensions he had previously maintained in her company. Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon adjusted her language to his mood.

“Doesn’t Doodoo love his mummy any more?” she cooed.

With rare good taste the Kommandant shuddered.

“Of course he does,” he snapped, taking refuge in the third person from the threat of extinction doodoos brought to mind. He was about to say that he had enough on his fucking plate without jealous husbands when there was a knock on the door and Sergeant Breitenbach entered.

“Urgent telegram for Verkramp, sir,” he said. “From
BOSS
. I thought you’d want to see it.” The Kommandant snatched the message from him and stared at it.

“
INSTANT
EXPLANATION
SAB
STROKE
SUBV
PIEMBURG
STOP
URGENT
CARR
STROKE
INTERRO
COMBLIBS
STOP
DETAIL
ACTION
STOP
SAB
STOKE
SUBV
BOSS
TEAM
FOLLOWING
,” he read and stared at the Sergeant uncomprehendingly. “What the hell does it mean?” he asked.

Sergeant Breitenbach glanced meaningfully at Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon.

“Never mind her,” shouted the Kommandant, “tell me what the thing means.”

Sergeant Breitenbach looked at the telegram.

“Instant explication sabotage subversion Piemburg stop Urgent arrest interrogation Communists and Liberals stop Detail action taken stop Sabotage subversion team from Bureau of State Security following.”

“Oh my God,” moaned the Kommandant for whom the news that a team of investigators from
BOSS
was on its way came as the final death knell. “Now what do we do?”

In her chair Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon sat listening with a sense of being at the heart of the action, where decisions of far-reaching moment were made and real men made up real minds to do real things. It was a strangely exhilarating experience. The gulf between fantasy and fact which years of reading Dornford Yates and playing Daphne to the Colonel’s Berry across the dark continent had created in her mind suddenly closed. This was it, whatever it was, and Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, so long excluded from It, wanted to be part of It.

“If only I could help you,” she said melodramatically as the door closed behind Sergeant Breitenbach, who had just admitted he couldn’t.

“How?” said the Kommandant who wanted to be left alone to think of someone he could arrest before the
BOSS
team arrived.

“I could be your glamorous spy,” she said.

“We’re not short of glamorous spies,” said the Kommandant shortly, “what we need are suspects.”

“What sort of suspects?”

“Eleven bloody lunatics who know how to use high explosive and hate Afrikanerdom enough to want to put the clock back a thousand years,” said the Kommandant morosely, and was surprised to see Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon tilt back her lovely head and laugh.

“What’s the matter now?” he asked feeling pretty hysterical himself.

“Oh how frightfully funny,” Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon shrieked. “How absolutely priceless. Do you realize what you’ve just said?”

“No,” said the Kommandant as the tinted curls tossed delightfully.

“Don’t you see? The Club. Eleven lunatics. Boy, Berry, Jonah … Oh it’s too gorgeous.”

Kommandant van Heerden sat down at his desk, the light of understanding glazing his bloodshot eyes. As Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon’s laughter amazed Sergeant Breitenbach in the next room and awoke in Konstabel Els memories of other days and other places, Kommandant van Heerden knew that his troubles were over.

“Two birds with one stone,” he muttered and pressed the bell for Sergeant Breitenbach.

Twenty minutes later Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, somewhat astonished by her rapid dismissal from the Kommandant’s office but still chortling over her joke, was at the hairdresser’s.

“I think I’ll have a black rinse for a change.” she told the assistant with an intuitive sense of occasion.

In the Drill Hall, so recently the scene of sexual conversion, Kommandant van Heerden briefed his men.

“The saboteurs are based on a house called White Ladies near Weezen,” he told the assembled officers. “They are led by an ex-Colonel in the British secret service, one of their top men who served in the inner circle of the underground during the war. His second-in-command is a Major Bloxham and the sabotage group has used as its cover a club organized ostensibly for literary purposes. They are in possession of a considerable quantity of arms and ammunition and I anticipate fierce resistance when we surround the house.”

“How do we know they are the men we are after?” Sergeant Scheepers of the Security Branch asked.

“I realize that this may come as something of a surprise to you, Sergeant,” the Kommandant answered with a smile. “But we of the uniformed police also have our agents in the field. You Security Branch fellows aren’t the only ones to work undercover.” He paused to let this information sink in. “For the past year Konstabel Els has been working in the Weezen area at considerable risk to himself and disguised as a convict.” Standing to one side of the Kommandant Konstabel Els blushed modestly. “Thanks to his efforts we were able to infiltrate the Communist organization. Furthermore,” he added before anyone could point out that Konstabel Els was hardly a reliable witness, “over the past two weeks I have investigated the matter personally and on the spot. I have confirmed Konstabel Els’ findings and can vouch for the fact that these people are all avowed enemies of the Republic, maintain unquestioning loyalty to Britain and are utterly ruthless. An attempt was made to kill me while out riding.”

“Is there any other evidence that these men are responsible for the sabotage attacks in Piemburg?” Sergeant Breitenbach asked.

The Kommandant nodded. “A very good question, Sergeant,” he said. “In the first place Konstabel Els will go into the witness box and give evidence that he frequently heard the Colonel and his associates discussing the need for a change of government in South Africa. Secondly Els will swear that on the nights the attacks took place the group left the house early and didn’t get to bed until dawn. Thirdly and most significantly, a member of the group has turned State’s witness and will give evidence that these allegations are all correct. Does that satisfy you, Sergeant?”