‘Not because it is my secret, but because it is now his as well, you understand?’

‘I understand,’ Spokes said as he handed her the blue-and-white scarf. As The Head of the Organisation of Domestic Affairs, Emil Coetzee had spent most of his adult life placing people into neat categories: white, black; good, bad; soldier, terrorist. Marion Hartley’s revelation had undone the order he had placed on the world.

‘I now only wear it when I need a certain kind of courage,’ Marion Hartley said as she took the scarf from him. She looked at him. ‘I notice that you never address me directly. You don’t know what to call me, do you? Madam? Mrs? Miss? Well, I have never been a madam. I was married, but never was a Mrs. I am too old by far to be Miss anybody. So I think you have to call me Marion.’

It took Spokes a long while, but in the end he said, ‘Marion …’

Marion Hartley’s smile broadened into a beam. ‘Can you believe that we are only three days away from a brand-new year?’ she said. ‘I tell you what, Emil had better be back by New Year’s, or he really will be unforgiven.’

Spokes was happy to see the twinkle back in her eyes.

January 1980

JANUARY 1980

Tom

TOM

Tom Fortenoy had played the part of Emil Coetzee so many times that he found he definitely did not need to be present for his own performance in order for his audience to enjoy it, and so he always spent quite a few hours at the bar before staggering onto the stage. Tom’s pre-performance preparation seemed rather fitting because his Emil – clad in khaki safari suit, khaki knee-length socks, khaki veldskoene and khaki boonie hat – was a man of many words, most of them slurred, mumbled or mispronounced, and spoken while he was holding a bottle of Castle Lager, which he referred to as ‘my best girl’, in one hand, and a handkerchief, khaki, of course, in the other.

During the very last hours of 1979, Tom’s Emil found himself swaying slightly on the stage as he said, ‘Did you hear the one about the blonde,’ and then immediately forgot the punchline because just then, Tom was pantomiming a woman passing by, and Emil, who loved a skirt almost as much as he loved ‘his best girl’, followed her with his eyes, craning his neck until she was out of sight. Having been thus absorbed, Emil lost his train of thought, removed his boonie hat, ran his fingers through his blond hair, and asked the audience, ‘Now where was I?’