I shouted instructions to them across the water. I saw Sally saying something to Isobel, and Isobel shaking her head. I stood impatiently, feeling my muscles shivering into the beginnings of cramp. I shouted again and Isobel stood up. Sally and she tied the end of the rope around their waists and across their chests in the manner I had shown them, then walked nervously to the edge of the water. In my impatience I may have pulled the rope too hard. In any event, just as they had reached the edge of the water they fell forward and began floundering in the shallows. Isobel could not swim and was afraid of drowning. I could see Sally struggling with her, trying to prevent her mother from crawling back on to the bank.
Taking the initiative from both of them, I pulled the rope, towing them out into the centre of the river. Whenever Isobel’s face came above the surface, she shouted and screamed in a mixture of fear and anger.
In just under a minute I had them on my side. Sally lay on the muddy bank, staring at me wordlessly. I wanted her to criticize me for what I had done, but she said nothing. Isobel lay on her side, doubled over. She retched up water for several minutes, then swore at me. I ignored her.
Although the river was cold from the hills, the air was warm. We took stock of our possession. Nothing had been lost in the crossing, but everything we carried had become soaked. It had been part of the original plan that Isobel should hold our main haversack up out of the water, while Sally supported her. Now, all our clothes and food were wet, and our matches for lighting a fire were unusable. We decided it would be best if we removed all our clothes, and hung them in the bushes and trees in the hope that they would be wearably dry by morning.
We lay together on the ground, shivering miserably, and cuddling each other for warmth. Within half an hour Isobel was asleep, but Sally lay in my arms with her eyes open.
We each knew the other was awake and stayed so for most of the night.
I was to spend the night with a woman named Louise. She had taken a room for the purpose in an hotel in Goodge Street, and as I had told Isobel that I was taking part in an all-night demonstration at the college I was able to get away from home for a whole night.
Louise and I dined at a small Greek restaurant in Charlotte Street, then, not wishing to spend the entire evening in her hotel room, we went to a cinema in Tottenham Court Road. I do not recall the title of the film. All I can remember is that it was foreign, that its dialogue was sub-titled in English and that it concerned a violently-resolved love-affair between a coloured man and a white woman. The film contained several scenes of complete sexual frankness, and although it had not been banned, few cinemas were willing to show films which depicted the various forms of the sex act in detail because of several instances of police action. However, at the time we saw the film it had been showing unmolested for more than a year.
Louise and I had bought seats at the rear of the cinema, and when the police came in by way of the entrances along each side, we were able to see the precision with which it was done, indicating that the raid had been planned carefully. One policeman stood at each door and the others moved in a loose cordon around the audience.
For a minute or two there seemed to be no further action, and we continued to watch the film until the house-lights went up. The film still showed and went on doing so for several more minutes. Finally it stopped abruptly.
We sat in the auditorium for twenty minutes without knowing what was happening. One of the policemen forming part of the cordon was near me and I asked him what was going on. He made no answer.
We were ordered to leave the auditorium row by row and to divulge our names and addresses. By a stroke of good fortune I did not have with me any form of self-identification, and was thus unable to prove who I was. Under the circumstances I gave the police a false name and address, and although my pockets were searched in an attempt to find authentication for my story, I was allowed to go free after Louise vouched for my identity.
We returned to her hotel immediately and went to bed. After the events of the evening I was rendered impotent, and in spite of Louise’s best efforts we were unable to have intercourse.
John Tregarth’s government had been in power for three months.
As adversaries we detested the Afrim troops. We continually heard rumours of their cowardice in battle; and of their arrogance in victory, however small or relative it may be.
One day we encountered a member of the Royal Nationalist Air Force who had been captured by an Afrim patrol. This man, who had been a pilot until crippled by the Africans’ torture, told us of brutalities and atrocities in their military interrogation centres that made our own experiences as civilians appear to be trivial and perfunctory. The pilot had lost one leg below the knee, and had suffered lacerated tendons in the other, and he counted himself as among the more fortunate. He asked us for assistance.
We were reluctant to become involved and Lateef called a meeting to decide what to do. In the end we voted to transport the crippled man to within a mile of the R.N.A.F. station, and to allow him to find his own way from there.
Shortly after this incident, we were rounded up by a large Afrim patrol and taken to one of their civilian interrogation centres.
We said nothing to them about the pilot, nor about their military methods in general. On this occasion we made no attempt to resist arrest. For my own part it was because I felt it might be connected in some way with the recent abduction of the women, but on the part of the group as a whole our lack of resistance was an outcome of the overall lethargy being experienced at the time.
We were taken to a large building on the outskirts of one of the Afrim-held towns, and in a large marquee in the grounds told to strip and pass through a delousing section. This was a part of the tent which had been partitioned off and filled with a dense steam. Coming out a few minutes later, we were told to dress again. Our clothes lay untouched where we had left them.
We were then divided into groups of one, two or three men. I was one of those on my own. We were taken to rooms inside the main building and interrogated briefly. My own interrogator was a tall West African, who, in spite of the central-heating system, wore a brown greatcoat. I had noticed on entering the room that the two uniformed guards in the corridor had been holding Russian rifles.
The interrogation was sketchy. Identification-papers, certificate of state and origin and Afrim-stamped photograph shown and checked.
“Your destination, Whitman?”
“Dorchester,” I said, giving him the answer we had agreed upon in the event of arrest.
“You have relatives there?”
“Yes.” I gave him the name and address of fictitious parents.
“You have a family?”
“Yes.”
“But they are not with you.”
“No.”
“Who is the leader of your group?”
“We are self-directed.”
There was a long silence while he rescrutinized my papers. After this I was returned to the marquee where I waited with the others as the remainder of the interrogation-sessions were completed. Then two Afrims dressed as civilians went through our possessions. The search was superficial in the extreme, turning up only a fork for eating that one of the men had left near the top of his haversack. The two knives I had secreted in the lining of my own bag went undetected.
After this search there was another long period of waiting, until a lorry bearing a large red cross on a white background was driven up alongside the marquee. The agreed Red Cross hand-out to refugees had been established for some time as being five pounds of protein, but since the Afrims had been handling their own side of the arrangement, provisions had decreased steadily. I received two small cans of processed meat and a packet of forty cigarettes.