Despite the Darkness, page 13
The meeting was already in progress by the time Cameron arrived and took his seat at the table. Patrick, contrary to his normal practice, stopped what he was saying and turned to Cameron.
‘You are late,’ he said.
Who, other than Patrick, would make an issue of a couple of minutes in present circumstances? Other members of staff all spoke at once.
‘We thought you might have been arrested,’ came from Derek, who sounded less jocular than might have been expected.
‘Have you read the papers? They are connecting the raid on your house with the bomb,’ said Louis.
‘As I came past I saw that they are still watching your house. Are you and Jules and the children OK?’
Trust Lynn to be the one to ask about the family.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ Cameron said, ‘I would have been in time, but for the uninvited arrival at our back door of a back-woodsman intent on cutting down the camphor tree in our garden.’
‘But that’s a beautiful tree – it is at least eighty years old,’ Pauline said. ‘Why on earth would anyone want it cut down?’
Cameron knew that Pauline, a part-time lecturer whose main interest was in local history, could tell you the date of virtually every building in the city and suburbs. He hadn’t been aware that she knew how old the trees were too.
‘Precisely,’ Cameron responded. ‘He said someone had phoned and told him that nobody would be at home but that it was urgent that the tree be cut down, so he should just go ahead with chopping it down and removing the logs. Whoever phoned him promised that I would sort out payment later.’
‘You must have really irritated one of your students this time, Cameron,’ Patrick said, ‘but enough of the chit-chat, we need to get back to our agenda.’
The business of the day went on far too long, and it was difficult to concentrate on arguments about whether the English Civil War should feature more prominently in the curriculum when your wife was in real danger of being beaten by a sadistic plain-clothes policeman; when your research student was somewhere out there on the run from the police; when you could be arrested any minute yourself for aiding a so-called terrorist; and when random wood-cutters had begun to turn up uninvited at your house to cut down your trees. At least the camphor tree had served as a useful distraction from any discussion of the police raid or its possible link with the bomb – but it would only be a temporary distraction.
Trust Patrick to assume that it must have been a student who was responsible for commissioning the chopping down of the camphor tree. Patrick knew perfectly well that Cameron was being harassed by the Special Branch, but was obviously loath to put two and two together.
When Patrick finally brought the meeting to an end, he pushed his chair back, stood up, and walked out of the room without stopping to engage in the idle chit-chat he so disdained. Everyone at the table immediately turned to Cameron, all, once again, starting to talk at once. But Patrick’s abrupt departure provided a good exit line.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t stop to talk now,’ Cameron said. ‘I need to get Patrick to sign-off my forms for the Brighton conference. I’m supposed to be leaving in a couple of weeks.’
Both parts of this were factually correct, but the form could have been signed later in the day. His funding for the conference wouldn’t hinge on a few hours either way, but Cameron had no desire to cope either with Derek’s banter or Lynn’s evident concern for him, touching as that was. Pauline’s concern seemed to be reserved for the tree.
Cameron could hear the phone ringing as he approached his office. He instinctively quickened his pace but it had rung off by the time he unlocked the door. No matter – if it was friend or family the caller would try again if it was urgent; if it was foe it was a phone call he could do without right now. He picked the forms up from the corner of his desk and scanned them briefly before heading for Patrick’s office.
Although all that was required was the routine signing of a form, getting Patrick’s signature would not be plain sailing – he was bound to find some way of making a meal of it. Where his Liberalism was concerned Patrick was nothing if not a purist: freedom of everything, including movement, was an article of faith. The academic boycott restricted the freedom of movement of academics to and from South Africa, morally if not physically. As with the resort to the armed struggle, for Patrick the end could never justify the means – however desirable the ending of apartheid might be. Patrick thought that Cameron’s support for the academic boycott of South Africa was wrong-headed and his attendance at international conferences contradictory. But he would never come out directly and say so. They had been through all this many times before, but there was not the remotest chance that Patrick would let slip the opportunity to go through it all again.
Patrick’s peremptory invitation to him to sit down in the chair facing his desk was less than warmly welcoming. The academic boycott was clearly not going to be the only issue. For all his Liberal skepticism about the good faith and general behaviour of the South African Police, some part of Patrick still, Cameron was sure, subscribed to the cliché that there was no smoke without fire. Police raids on the homes of members of his staff had the potential to call the reputation of the Department, and the University, into question. With this in mind, Patrick would almost certainly have phoned the Principal’s office to place his concern on record.
‘What makes you think they will allow you out of the country?’ Patrick asked. A quick perusal of the forms had done nothing to soften his tone.
‘Why wouldn’t they?’ Cameron responded. ‘I’m not under house arrest, I’m not banned, and my movements aren’t restricted in any way.’
‘Not yet,’ said Patrick. ‘But, given the academic boycott, they will know you have had to get ANC clearance before your paper was accepted for the conference. You wouldn’t have obtained that clearance if you hadn’t been supportive of the ANC. And if they suspect you were linked in any way to the bomb that killed that old man the other night they certainly won’t want to let you out of their sight.’
‘I would be more worried about not being allowed back into the country, than about being allowed out,’ Cameron replied. ‘I wasn’t linked in any way to the bomb and the SB have no good reason to think that I might have been.’
A ‘good’ reason would be one that was backed by evidence. Cameron didn’t have any evidence himself, either way.
‘The raid,’ Cameron went on, ‘was just another opportunity for Venter to extend his repertoire where harassing me is concerned. The man’s a psychopath. What kind of mind thinks it is either clever or funny to send people round to cut down other people’s trees?’
‘You don’t have any evidence that Venter was responsible,’ Patrick said. ‘But, getting back to the raid, Venter must have given you some explanation as to why they were searching your house?’
‘He said that they were looking for Mirambo,’ Cameron replied. ‘But he wouldn’t say why they were looking for him or what made them think that he might be at our house.’
‘I knew that lad was going to be trouble from the moment I first set eyes on him,’ Patrick said. He had never got over his instant dislike of Mirambo, and had never been shy about making that obvious to Cameron.
‘If they were looking for Mirambo,’ Patrick went on, ‘yours would have been an obvious house to search. He spent more time with you than students usually spend with their supervisors. If it was just a routine search based simply on the fact that you were his supervisor I expect you are right, they probably won’t try to stop you from going to the conference. They will think that letting you attend an international conference will burnish their liberal credentials in the eyes of the world. If they are happy to allow academics to leave the country to be critical of them they can’t be as bad as people make them out to be.’
‘So you are suggesting that getting rid of apartheid would be better served by academics who oppose it staying at home and refusing to interact with the outside world?’ Cameron asked.
‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ said Patrick, extracting a pen from the top drawer of his desk – nothing so potentially untidy as a writing implement was permitted to sully its uncluttered surface.
Cameron couldn’t imagine any fence so uncomfortable that Patrick couldn’t perch on it. His well-padded backside could always be relied on to provide him with enough cushioning for comfort. He was accordingly surprised when, after signing the forms with a flourish, Patrick added an afterthought.
‘But that would be the logic of supporting the academic boycott, wouldn’t it? If it is more than a little paradoxical for an academic to be supporting a boycott of his own university, it is even more paradoxical for him then to go ahead and break the boycott himself.’
Patrick signalled that the meeting was over with a cursory wave of his hand towards the door. Cameron wondered, as he made his way back to his office, what had occasioned Patrick’s descent from the fence.
The phone was ringing once again as Cameron reached his office door.
Chapter 10
This time the voice at the other end was Sandy’s. She was the easy-going and highly competent secretary to the Students Representative Council.
‘Good morning, Dr Beaumont,’ she said. ‘Graham has requested me to ask you whether you would be able to fit an appointment to see him and a couple of other members of the SRC into your schedule this afternoon. It is quite urgent.’
Cameron hesitated for a moment before responding. The formality was distinctly out of character – Sandy, who was unimpressed by titles, always addressed him by his first name. Graham would normally just pick up the phone and call Cameron himself – as he had done on Friday.
‘Yes, of course,’ Cameron answered. ‘I’ve got a two o’clock seminar with the Honours students, but I will be available after that – I should be free by 3.30. Where would he like to meet? Did he say what it was about?’
‘No. Graham just said it was urgent,’ Sandy replied. ‘He said that they could come to your office, if that would suit you.’
‘That will be fine,’ Cameron said, pausing for a moment before going on. ‘Is Graham available now? When we spoke on Friday he was going to try to find out where Mirambo had got to, and he promised to phone me after he had been to investigate. I gather he tried to phone me at home on Friday evening but I was out.’
‘Graham’s in his office with three other members of the SRC,’ replied Sandy after a moment’s hesitation. ‘I’ll ask him.’
The phone went dead for what seemed like several minutes during which Cameron began to feel increasingly uncomfortable. What was this all about? He should have tried to phone Graham over the weekend. He didn’t have Graham’s home number but he could have tried the SRC office. Graham or one of the other SRC members would have been in the office at some stage of the weekend. Even if nobody was there he could have left a message. Not having made any effort to find out if they had managed to contact Mirambo might suggest either that he knew where Mirambo was, or that he didn’t care. It was careless not to have covered his back by phoning and leaving a message. He needed to get better at this cloak-and-dagger business.
Cameron assumed that Graham must be discussing whether he should speak to him with the other SRC members. Why would he need to do that? After what seemed an age, he heard a click and Graham’s voice came on the line.
‘Good morning, Cameron. I understand from Sandy that we are going to be meeting this afternoon – thank you for making the time. Right now I’m in another meeting. Is there anything we need to talk about that can’t wait for this afternoon?’
This was, again, a level of formality that Cameron had never experienced with the SRC before.
‘No, I suppose not,’ Cameron answered. ‘I just wanted to ask whether you have heard from Mirambo – I’ve been worrying about him – and to apologise for not having been in my office to take your phone call on Friday.’
‘No, we have no idea where Mirambo is,’ Graham said. ‘His digs mates haven’t seen him since Thursday morning, as I told your wife. He didn’t make contact with any of us over the weekend and he hasn’t come in this morning. Now, if that is all, I’ll get back to my meeting if you don’t mind – we will be seeing you later.’
Graham had been polite enough, but the tone had changed markedly since Friday. What could explain that? All that had happened since then, as far as Graham was concerned, was that Cameron hadn’t answered his office phone on Friday and had been raided by the police. Being raided by the police would normally be regarded as a badge of honour by the SRC – but Graham had sounded cold and distant, almost hostile. Perhaps that was because he was in a meeting.
It was almost time for something to eat, but Cameron didn’t feel any more inclined to face the inevitable questions than he had earlier. The staff club was best avoided, so a sandwich at home was the obvious alternative. The car watch was still active; Margaret seemed uncomfortable and unusually monosyllabic; but otherwise all seemed well. The hour was spent wondering what was happening to Mirambo and what could be bothering the Students Representative Council.
The History Honours class was unremarkable. There were only half a dozen students in the class, all of whom Cameron knew well. The raid was by now common knowledge on campus and was mentioned by a couple of them, partly by way of commiseration, partly with a view to getting to hear the gory detail. Cameron acknowledged the former and evaded the latter, staying on topic much more assiduously than usual. He also ended the session earlier than usual and, feeling unaccountably nervous, headed back to his office to wait for the meeting with the SRC delegation.
The tramp of feet along the wooden floor of the corridor a minute or two before 3.30 suggested the arrival of a bigger delegation than Cameron had expected. Anxious to seem welcoming, he opened the door to the delegation before anyone had time to knock. Six other members of the SRC, half its total composition, filed solemnly into his office behind Graham, extending to Cameron only the most cursory of greetings. As there were only two chairs on each side of the table in front of his desk, Cameron had to borrow three from the tutorial room next door. Once everyone was seated, Cameron, in keeping with the formality with which the request for the meeting had been issued, delivered the welcome the occasion seemed to demand.
‘I am not sure to what I owe the honour of a visit from a delegation consisting of more than half the members of the Students Representative Council, but you are most welcome. How can I help?’
Cameron looked across to Graham who had taken the chair facing him at the end of the table.
‘I’m here mainly to chair the meeting,’ Graham said. ‘Duncan has been elected to lead the discussion.’
Duncan Lindsay-Smith was the SRC Vice-President, so that was logical enough, even if the idea that this was a meeting that needed a chair who wasn’t to be Cameron was less so. Duncan was not a good advertisement for the seriousness of student politics. Apart from his role on the SRC, his other claim to fame was the Chairmanship of the League of Empire Loyalists, whose main activity consisted of dressing up as English landed gentry on Empire Day and eating cucumber sandwiches, while waving Union Jacks and getting drunk on Pimms.
Although its local devotees seemed unaware of the fascist antecedents of the League, and appeared to regard the name as an excuse for regular fancy-dress parties, Mirambo – who had once confided to Cameron that he was allergic to Empire – had been vocally contemptuous of its activities and had gone on record as asking where the money for all the Pimms was coming from. Duncan had interpreted this as an implication that the security police were the likely source, which was by no means improbable, and their relationship had been extremely rocky ever since. So, if this meeting was about Mirambo, Duncan was an odd choice of chair.
‘Mirambo has disappeared,’ Duncan began. ‘We have cause to think that you may know more about what has happened than you have made known to Graham.’
The ponderous formality of the syntax suggested that Duncan saw himself in some kind of quasi-legal investigatory role. All the signs were that Cameron needed to be extremely careful – apart from anything else, it was entirely possible that the conversation was being recorded.
‘What makes you think I might know where he is?’ Cameron asked. ‘I haven’t seen him since our last supervision session early last week.’
The outright lie went against the grain, but in the end it would be easier to stick to. If he kept trying to find ways of saying that he didn’t know where Mirambo was, without actually saying that he hadn’t seen him, he would end up tying himself in knots.
‘We think that there may be more to the Special Branch sitting outside your house all the time than meets the eye,’ Duncan continued. ‘Jackie, here, saw you talking to Warrant Officer Venter in his car on Friday afternoon.’
Cameron had seen the students walking past when he accosted Venter, but hadn’t paid much attention to them – he was far too focused on Venter and the 9mm automatic in its holster on the seat beside him. Jackie, who was the only female member of the SRC delegation, nodded but didn’t say anything. Cameron hadn’t ever spoken more than two or three words to her and hadn’t noticed her among the group of students walking past. Being seen talking to Venter hardly merited a visit from a large delegation of the SRC.
