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A QUIET YOUNG MAN by Jean Edmunds
It was a shock, but I’m feeling better now. The scar tissue on my mind has
started to fade.
I spent three days with June and Rob after it happened. They wanted me to
stay longer, but when I woke up this morning I knew it was time to go home. June
drove me over here. She offered to come up to the flat, but I said I was fine,
I’d be back at work tomorrow. We hugged and then she left.
As the lift whined up to the sixth floor, I looked at myself in the mirror. I
seemed pale and hollow-eyed. Maybe it was just the light. I always look awful in
that mirror anyway. The lift smelled stale, the buttons were grimy and the
carpet grubby and worn. I noticed these failings more sharply than I used to do.
Odd, isn’t it?
Topsy, my cat, came trotting to meet me when I opened the door. They say cats
are selfish, don’t they, but she seemed thrilled to see me. Trudie from next
door had fed her while I was away. I put my suitcase in the bedroom. I made a
cup of coffee and sat down on the sofa. Topsy curled up next to me.
Leaning back against the familiar tweedy fabric, I closed my eyes and ran the
whole thing through my mind yet again - build-up, main event, aftermath - as
familiar now as a much-seen newsreel. Perhaps this would give me some sort of
"closure," to use a fashionable cliché.
I was widowed three years ago. I’ve got two sons in Australia, both married
with children. They’re always nagging me to move there, but I grew up in this
small South African city and all my friends are here. Andrew left me comfortably
off, but I was keen to go on working. I soon found that nobody wants you when
you’re in your sixties, no matter how efficient a secretary you may have been in
the past.
June and Rob live just a few streets away and she suggested we start a little
typing service. Their house is quite big, so we set up an office in one of the
spare rooms and got to work. It was slow at first, but we advertised and then
word-of-mouth recommendations began to come in. Now we’re busy almost every day.
I first saw him in the bank about three weeks ago. It was my turn to
deposit the week’s earnings. I used to walk to the bank. It’s in Link Street,
not very far away, but, the times being what they are, I feel it’s safer to
drive as close to it as possible. I leave my car in the customers’ parking
behind the bank building.
There aren’t any security gates or doors. You walk straight in, past the
reception desk on the right, flanked by big planters filled with delicious
monsters and syngoniums.
The how-can-I-help-you counters are beyond it, and past them, a door to the
labyrinth of back offices. There’s a roped-off queuing area in the centre. The
floor tiles are a dull combination of green and beige. I should know, I had a
close-up view of them. The tellers, behind their bullet-proof glass, are on the
left. The rest of us are out in the open.
I stood next to him in the queue. I guessed him to be no more than nineteen
or twenty. He wore a fawn cable-knit sweater and matching fawn chinos. His hair
was in dreadlocks, the neat fashion kind, not the scruffy Rasta kind. He had a
small gold earring in his left ear. His face was gentle, still somewhat
childlike.
He was suffering from hiccups. Every few seconds his chest jerked. He seemed
embarrassed by this very common complaint.
I wanted to tell him "Take a deep breath and hold it," but I thought he’d be
even more embarrassed by advice from an elderly white woman. Presently, he
reached the top of the queue and passed on to a teller. So did I. Then I left
the bank and forgot him.
On Monday morning this week the bank was busy. Johannes Combrink, the
security guard, was outside on the pavement as I arrived, unsmiling, his arms
folded. The bank’s security used to consist of an elderly African man in a navy
uniform who sat on a stool at the entrance all day. About a year ago it was
decided that a professional company should be employed.
A succession of uniformed and armed guards appeared. Johannes was the latest.
Tall, crop-headed and solemn, he spent his day prowling about inside the bank,
or standing outside on sentry duty.
I know all the front-of-house bank staff by sight and some by name. Sheila is
my most unfavourite, a bossy, loud-mouthed woman, who can nearly always be heard
in full voice, even if she’s not actually visible.
The young women on the "helping" counters are unfriendly. They twitter to
each other about clothes and hair colour and boyfriends in between serving the
boring public. By contrast, you struggle to hear the tellers behind their glass
shields.
Ahead of me in the queue was a blonde and elegant young mother. Her little
daughter, about three years old, blonde too, and grizzling non-stop, wore an
expensive kiddie-boutique track suit. She stamped her feet in their miniature
trainers.
"Stop it, Britney!" said her mother.
Britney smacked her on the thigh, leaving a sticky mark on the
beautifully-cut taupe trousers. My hand itched. I couldn’t bear the spoilt brat
any longer, so I began a conversation with the woman standing behind me. She was
chubby and middle-aged, with strange, painted-on eyebrows.
We began a weather-based conversation. She said the recent rains had flooded
her front lawn.
"It’s like a little dam!"
I told her my old car leaks and the carpet is mouldy.
"A moving mushroom farm!"
We were both smiling, then suddenly her face stiffened. She looked past me,
towards the entrance. I turned.
A tall man, wearing black, with a balaclava pulled down over his face,
stepped into the bank. He carried what I supposed to be an AK47. Two other men
in black and balaclavas followed him. The second one bent down at the corner of
the entrance and pressed a button. The glass doors closed.
The first man shouted "Down, down, everybody down!"
Alerted by the shout, Johannes appeared round the corner from the manager’s
office, gun in hand. The first intruder swung left and shot Johannes full in the
face, flinging him back against the wall. Everybody gasped. Johannes slid slowly
to the floor, leaving a bloody trail on the beige-green wallpaper.
After that, we were all down on the tiles in seconds. The ropes and posts
marking the queuing area, were knocked over and lay scattered amongst us.
The fat woman gave a little sob. I reached out and grasped her left hand. She
had pudgy fingers with rings sunk in the flesh. I didn’t like to think how the
robbers were going to get them off if they wanted our jewellery.
I heard one of the robbers climbing over an enquiries counter. There was a
crash, as a staff member’s vase of birthday flowers got kicked over, followed by
shouting in the back office.
"Out, out, everybody out!"
Presently, the behind-the-scenes staff, including the manager, filed through
the entrance to those offices with their hands in the air, and lay down on the
floor with the rest of us.
Britney began to scream. Her mother tried to hush her. I turned my head
cautiously and looked at them. One of the robbers strode over the recumbent
bodies, bent down and scooped up the child.
Her mother sat up.
"My baby, oh please, not my baby!"
The man took two steps back, then one forward, swung his right foot and
kicked her in the ribs.
She collapsed moaning. He put a gun to Britney’s head.
"We take her with us. She cries, we shoot her."
Britney stopped crying, but a wet patch appeared on the crotch of her track
bottoms. It spread down one leg, and began dripping onto the floor. The man said
something which could only have been a swear word.
It was then that Mr Hiccups himself, identified later as Sindile Xego, stood
up slowly, raising one hand and pushing himself off the floor with the other.
This time he wore jeans, but the same fawn sweater. I hadn’t noticed him up
until then.
He spoke to the robber in his own language. A murmur came from those of us
who could understand him.
Then he spoke in English. He was offering to go as a hostage instead of the
child. The robber, who seemed to be the leader, nodded. He stepped back to
Britney’s mother and dropped the child on top of her. It turned out afterwards
that the poor woman had two broken ribs, but she clutched her daughter as though
nothing else mattered, as though she would never let her go again.
"Thank you, thank you," she said to Sindile.
At that moment, the two other robbers came out of the back part of the bank,
carrying bags. All three made for the entrance, shoving Sindile along with them.
A car was waiting for them in the street outside, the engine running, the
door ajar.
We were all on our feet by then. Someone - loud-mouth Sheila, perhaps? – good
for her - had managed, at some stage, to press the alarm button. Howling sirens
sounded in the not-so-far distance.
The men flung the bags into the car and scrambled in themselves. The last man
pushed Sindile away, then fired at him. Sindile staggered back and collapsed on
the kerb.
The car screeched away up the street, doors still open, as the police
arrived, dead-heating with the security company.
In the bank, confusion reigned. A few people tried, too late, to help
Johannes. Others milled around, some crying, some praying, some swearing. My
chubby neighbour seemed to be disorientated. She was shaking. Her eyebrows were
brown half-moons on her ashen face.
What did I do? Without hesitation, almost without thought, I pushed past the
other people and ran out onto the pavement.
I crouched down next to Sindile. He looked at me. Did he feel pain? Or was he
in a mind-floating state of shock?
There was blood all over his chest, still pumping out of his body, soaking
his jersey. I squeezed his hand.
"You’ll be alright," I said. "You’re a very brave guy."
He tried to say something. I leaned forward.
He whispered "You brave too." Then he died.
I suppose I was in shock myself. I sagged onto the pavement. I heard people
round me and cars, sirens and police radios, but I seemed to be on another
wavelength. I managed to call June on my mobile phone. Presently she and Rob
arrived and drove me back to their place. The police took a statement from me
later.
That’s all, really.
The local newspaper sent reporters and photographers up to Link Street. I’d
gone by that time. They ran the story on page one. I refused to be interviewed
or to have my picture taken.
Was I brave? Oh no, Sindile was brave, a real hero.
Funny, you know, when I came home this morning I switched on the radio and
that Tina Turner song was playing, the one about not needing another hero.
I listened to it and I thought "You’re wrong, Tina, definitely wrong. We need
all the heroes we can get! All the Sindiles."
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