Read A SONG IN THE MORNING for Free Online Page A

Getting the coffee machine working? Sharing out the sandwiches?
    Filling in the South African Department's football pool coupon?
    "Good morning, Mr Curwen, would you come this way, please."
    The man might have been in his late forties, could have been the early fifties. His suit didn't look good enough for him to be important, but he had a kindly face that seemed worn thin with tiredness. They went down a long and silent corridor, then the man opened a door and waved Jack inside.
    It was an interview room, four chairs and a table and an ashtray that hadn't been emptied. Of course they weren't going to invite him into the working part of the building.
    They were in the quarantine area.
    "I'm Sandham. I'm on the South Africa desk."
    The man apologised for keeping him waiting. Then he listened as Jack told him about the letter from Pretoria, and of the little that he knew about his father.
    "And you want to know what we're doing for him?"
    "Yes."
    Sandham asked him please to wait, smiled ruefully, as if Jack knew all about waiting. He was gone five minutes. He came back with a buff file under his arm, and a younger man.
    "Mr Sandham explained to me your business with us, Mr Curwen. I decided to come and see you myself. My name's Furneaux, Assistant Secretary. I read everything that goes across the South Africa desk."
    Furneaux took a chair, Sandham stood.
    A short, abrupt, unlikeable little man, not yet out of middle age, with a maroon silk handkerchief flopping from his breast pocket. Furneaux reached for Sandham's file.
    "This conversation is not for newspaper consumption,"
    Furneaux said.
    "Of course."
    "I understand that your father left your mother when you were two years old. That makes it easier for me to talk frankly to you. I am assuming you have no emotional attachment to your father because you have no memory of him. But you want to know what we are doing to save your father's life?
    Publicly we are doing nothing, because it is our belief that by going public we would diminish what influence we have on the government of South Africa. Privately we have done everything possible to urge clemency for the terrorists . . . "
    "Terrorists or freedom fighters?" Jack held Furneaux's eye until the Assistant Secretary dropped his face to the file.
    "Terrorists, Mr Curwen. Your government does not support the throwing of bombs in central Johannesburg. You've heard the Prime Minister on the subject, I expect. Bombs in Johannesburg are no different to bombs in Belfast or in the West End of London. It is not an area we can be selective over . . . Privately we have requested clemency because we do not feel the execution of these men will ease the present tension in South Africa."
    "What sort of reply have you had?"
    "What we'd have expected. Officially and unofficially our request has been ignored. I might add, Mr Curwen, that your father is only a British subject in technical terms. For the last dozen or so years he has chosen to make his home in the Republic."
    "So you've washed your hands of him?"
    Furneaux said evenly, "There's something you should understand. They execute a minimum of a hundred criminals a year there. There's no capital punishment debate in the Republic. From our viewpoint, your father received a fair trial although he declined to co-operate in any way with his defence advisors. The Supreme Court heard his appeal, at length."
    "I'm not interested in what he did, I only care about saving his life."
    "Your father was found guilty of murder. My view is that nothing more can be done to save his life."
    "That's washing your hands."
    "Wrong, that's accepting the reality that in South Africa people convicted of murder are hanged."
    "He's my father," Jack said.
    "His solicitors don't believe he has a chance of a reprieve.
    I am sorry to have to tell you this."
    "How soon?"
    Furneaux scanned the papers in the file, flipped them over. He fastened on a single sheet, read it, then closed the file.
    "It may have been