‘So you’ve said,’ Blanchaille remarked sceptically.
‘Can’t be said often enough. Only this time I say it in hope. This time before the shades come down I see a gleam of something that may be —’
‘Light?’ Blanchaille put in helpfully.
‘Gold!’ said Lynch, ‘and the deliriously exciting perception that history, or what passes for such in this dust-bin, may just be about to repeat itself. Remember, Theodore, red and yellow neon, Airport Palace — don’t delay.’ And with a grin the little priest stepped out into the darkness.
CHAPTER 3
Now in my dream I saw Blanchaille set off early in one of those typical highveld dawns, a sky of light blue plated steel arcing overhead. He wore old grey flannels and a white cotton jacket, grunting beneath the weight of his three bulky tartan suitcases well strapped, belted around their fat middles in thick-tongued fraying leather. He slipped quietly out of the house and set off down the dirt road. But Joyce, who was sleeping rolled in a blanket by the embers of the night fire, had sharp ears and shouted after him. This woke Makapan who was dozing behind the wheel of his motor car. Both came running after Blanchaille: ‘What’s this? Where are you going?’
‘Somewhere where you won’t be able to bother me.’
‘But are you going for good?’
‘For good.’
‘You’re running away then?’ There was a jeering note in Makapan’s voice. His eyelashes were crusted with sleep.
Blanchaille nodded. ‘As fast as I can.’
Joyce said; ‘Father won’t get very far, those cases are too heavy. He’ll have to walk slowly.’
‘I expected you to stand and fight at least,’ said Makapan.
‘Where are you going?’ Joyce asked.
‘I don’t know yet.’
Joyce became rather excited. Grasping one of the heavy suitcases Blanchaille held she tried to help him, half hobbling and half running alongside him. ‘Are you going overseas?’
Blanchaille nodded. ‘Perhaps.’
Makapan lumbered up. ‘That’s nonsense, man. You’re starting to talk politics again. We’re not that badly off. We’re not finished. Even the Americans think there’s life in us yet. I saw only yesterday in the paper how their Secretary for State for Political Affairs came all this way to tell us that it will come right in the end, that we’re getting better all the time, that we will give political rights to other groups when the time is right, that we will be saved. There is no threat, not outside nor in, that our armed forces cannot handle. Even at the time of the Total Onslaught we hold our own. I assure you myself, and I am a captain in the Signals Corps. You do your military duty — even if it does sometimes harm your career prospects. My fight with you is religious, not political…’
Blanchaille understood this qualification.
In the time of the Total Onslaught of course everyone was in the armed services. For many years a quarter of a million young men capable of bearing arms were on active service or on reserve or in training. All immigrants were called up. However, the Regime decided this base was not sufficient and announced a plan to push this figure to one million men, by drafting individuals, old and young, who for various reasons had been overlooked in the years of the huge defence build-up. In a total white population of little over five million, this force represented a great army, at least on paper, able surely to withstand the Total Onslaught. However, it was also a considerable drain on the available workforce. The army had an insatiable appetite for more men because even the best strategic planners could not predict where the attack would come from next. The chief problem lay in guarding the borders which were thousands of miles long and growing longer all the time. There were, besides the national borders, the borders around the new Homelands, the former reserves in the rural areas which the Government declared independent and sovereign, and guaranteed that sovereignty by fencing them off. New countries meant new borders. New borders meant new fences. Entire battalions spent their period of military service banging in fence poles. Of course the Total Onslaught might also show itself from within, and as a result the huge black townships had to be encircled with wire and the resettlement camps fortified with foot patrols and armoured cars. Then there were Government buildings, the railheads, the power stations, the factories. Since these were frequently the targets of incendiary bombs and limpet mines, they required the strictest protection and the young men on active training might spend months on end sweating in desolate railway sidings or freezing by night outside the oil refineries waiting for something to happen. It seldom did, but then Total Onslaught required total preparedness.
The sons of the middle classes managed to defer their call up by going into university. Some emigrated, a few deserted and a tiny number pleaded conscientious objection and went to jail. But the great majority of young men went into the services and found the tedium quite lethal. Deaths from drink and drugs rose steadily; motor car accidents became more and more frequent and the number of deaths through careless, one might say carefree, handling of fire-arms, a form of suicide traditionally associated with the police in the old days, grew so alarmingly that the annual mortality rates actually overtook those inflicted by the Total Onslaught. In a notorious case, a young man named Gussie Lamprecht, a draftee lance-corporal in a coastal barracks, was enterprising enough to draw attention to this problem by telephoning a local newspaper, giving his name, rank and number, and promising that if their crime reporter would come to the beach he would see ‘something very interesting’. As the reporter walked along the pier, he related at the inquest, he saw before him a figure on the beach, whom he now knew to be the deceased, lift a pistol to his temple and fire. He remembered that the incident had terrified an Indian fisherman catching shad nearby. He had taken a picture which his newspaper was refused permission to publish, photographs of Defence Force property being forbidden, and young Gussie Lamprecht though deceased was still regarded as Defence Force property. The case caused an outcry, worried mothers of draftees demanded that the Government take action. The Regime responded by forbidding publication of any further figures relating to accidental death caused by firearms and a delegation of mothers thanked the Minister concerned from the depths of their hearts.
A problem more intractable was the increasing shortage of manpower. To ameliorate the imbalance caused by the giant call-up, the Regime suggested a new deal, a kind of leaseback of uniformed labour at army prices. The army would liaise with various businesses and industries and Government bodies which would state their requirements which would then be assessed in terms of manpower available and then where possible specialised labour would be leased back to organisations in need. Contingents of soldiers were deployed whose training in civilian life approximated to the skills required. The word ‘approximated’ covered a wide range and so cooks and engineers might find themselves spending the period of their military training working through files in the Department of Inland Revenue and young accountants could spend years knocking in fence posts to take the electrified wire surrounding the Independent Homelands in which the ethnic identity of each black tribe was so fiercely protected.
‘Is it true, in that place called Overseas, that white people and black people can meet as they please? You come and go when you like? No one tells you what to do? Everybody is equal?’ Joyce asked.
‘I have never been there, but I believe so,’ said Blanchaille.
‘Stop and consider, Blanchaille,’ Makapan was pleading with him now, ‘We haven’t got on well, I know that. But if you stayed maybe we could work something out.’