Roderick’s mouth tightened and twisted as he raised his head, and the cords in his neck stood out with the effort he was putting into not weeping. But the tears of relief ran for all that down his cheeks, and he tried to get rid of them with his fingers.
I pretended not to see, if that was what he wanted. But I knew, Heaven forgive me, that one day I would put that face, that reaction, into a film. Whatever one learned, whatever one saw, and however private it was, in the end, if one were an actor, one used it.
She breathed in, convulsively, on her own, while I was still breathing in myself, through my nose. It felt extraordinary, as if she were sucking the air out of me.
I took my mouth away from hers, and stopped holding her jaws open with my hands. She went on breathing: a bit sketchily at first, but then quite regularly, in shallow, body-shaking, audible gasps.
‘She ought to be warmer,’ I said to Roderick. ‘She needs blankets.’
He looked at me dazedly. ‘Yes. Blankets.’
‘I’ll get some,’ someone said, and the breath-held quietness in the room erupted with sudden bustle. Frozen shock turned to worried shock, and that to relieved shock, and from that to revival via the whiskey bottle.
I saw Clifford Wenkins looking down at Katya’s still unconscious form. His face was grey and looked like putty oozing, as the sweat had not had time to dry. For once, however, he had been reduced to speechlessness.
Conrad, too, seemed temporarily to have run out of ‘dear boys’. But I guessed sharply that the blankness in his face as he watched the proceedings was not the result of shock. He was at his business, as I had been at mine, seeing an electrocution in terms of camera angles, atmospheric shadows, impact-making colours. And at what point, I wondered, did making use of other people’s agonies become a spiritual sin.
Someone reappeared with some blankets, and with shaking hands Roderick wrapped Katya up in them, and put a cushion under her head.
I said to him, ‘Don’t expect too much when she wakes up. She’ll be confused, I think.’
He nodded. Colour was coming back to her cheeks. She seemed securely alive. The time of fiercest anxiety was over.
He looked suddenly up at me, then down at her, then up at me again. The first thought that was not raw emotion was taking root.
As if it were a sudden discovery, he slowly said, ‘You’re Edward Lincoln.’
For him too the dilemma of conscience arose: whether or not to make professional copy out of the near-death of his girl friend.
I looked round the room, and so did he. There had been a noticeable thinning of the ranks. I met Roderick’s eyes and knew what he was thinking: the Press had made for the telephones, and he was the only one there from the Rand Daily Star.
He looked down again at the girl. ‘She’ll be all right, now, won’t she?’ he said.
I made an inconclusive gesture with my hands and didn’t directly answer. I didn’t know whether or not she would be all right. I thought her heart had probably not been stopped for much over three minutes, so with a bit of luck her brain would not be irreparably damaged. But my knowledge was only the sketchy remains of a long past first-aid course.
The journalist in Roderick won the day. He stood up abruptly and said, ‘Do me a favour...? Don’t let them take her to hospital or anywhere before I get back.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ I said; and he made a highly rapid exit.
Joe, the radio equipment man, was coiling up the lead of the faulty microphone, having disconnected it gingerly from its power socket. He looked at it dubiously and said, ‘It’s such an old one I didn’t know we had it. It was just there, in the box... I wish to God I hadn’t decided to use it. It just seemed quicker than waiting any longer for the replacement from the studio. I’ll make sure it’ll do no more damage, anyway. I’ll dismantle it and throw it away.’
Conrad returned to my side and stood looking down at Katya, who began showing signs of returning consciousness. Her eyelids fluttered. She moved under the blankets.
Conrad said, ‘You do realise, dear boy, that until very shortly before the accident you were holding that microphone yourself.’
‘Yes,’ I said neutrally. ‘I do.’
‘And,’ said Conrad, ‘just how many people in this room showed the slightest sign of knowing that the only hope for the electrocuted is artificial respiration, instantly applied?’
I looked at him straightly.
‘Did you know?’
He sighed. ‘You are so cynical, dear boy. But no, I didn’t.’
Chapter Six
Danilo arrived at the Iguana Rock at four o’clock with a hired Triumph, a scarlet open-necked shirt and a suntanned grin.
I had been back there less than an hour myself, Conrad and I having dawdled over a beer and sandwich lunch in an unobtrusive bar. Katya had gone to hospital, with Roderick in frantic tow, and the other journalists were currently stubbing their fingernails on their typewriters. Clifford Wenkins had twittered off at some unmarked point in the proceedings, and when Conrad and I left we saw him, too, engaged in earnest conversation on the telephone. Reporting to Worldic, no doubt. I stifled a despairing sigh. Not a butterfly’s chance in a blizzard that anyone would ignore the whole thing as uninteresting.
Danilo chatted in his carefree way, navigating us round the elevated Sir de Villiers Graaf ring road, that God’s gift to the city’s inhabitants which took the through traffic out of their way, over their heads.
‘I can’t imagine what Johannesburg was like before they built this highway,’ Danilo commented. ‘They still have a big traffic problem downtown, and as for parking... there’s more cars parked along the streets down there than one-armed bandits in Nevada...’
‘You’ve been here quite a time, then?’
‘Hell, no,’ he grinned. ‘Only a few days. But I’ve been here before, once, and anyway it sure only takes twenty minutes of searching around to teach you that all the car parks are permanently full and that you can never park within a quarter mile of where you want to be.’
He drove expertly and coolly on what was to him the wrong side of the road.
‘Greville lives down near Turffontein,’ he said. ‘We drop down off this elevated part soon now... did that sign say Eloff Street Extension?’
‘It did,’ I confirmed.
‘Great.’ He took the turn and we left the South African M.I. and presently passed some football fields and a skating rink.
‘They call this “Wembley”,’ Danilo said. ‘And over there is a lake called Wemmer Pan for boating. And say, they have a water organ there which shoots coloured fountains up into the air in time to the music.’
‘Have you been there?’
‘No... Greville told me, I guess. He also says it’s a great place for fishing out rotting corpses and headless torsos.’
‘Nice,’ I said.
He grinned.
Before we reached Turffontein he turned off down a side road which presently became hard impacted earth covered with a layer of dust.
‘They’ve had no rain here for four-five months,’ Danilo said. ‘Everything’s sure looking dry.’
The grass was certainly brownish, but that was what I expected. I was surprised to learn from Danilo that in a month’s time, when the rain came and the days were warmer, the whole area would be lush, colourful, and green.
‘It’s sure sad you won’t be here to see the jacarandas,’ Danilo said. ‘They’ll flower all over, after you’ve gone.’
‘You’ve seen them before?’
He hesitated. ‘Well no, not exactly. Last time I was here, they weren’t flowering. It’s just what Greville says.’