The Sunday Hangman

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Tollie Erasmus looked at the room in which he was about to die, and saw there the story of his life. Nothing had ever turned out quite the way he’d imagined it.

For once, however, he was very relieved to find this was so. In nightmare after nightmare, he had seen himself in a harshly lit execution chamber that had whitewashed walls and high fanlights, a scrubbed wooden floor and a crude beam, a long lever and a thick, bloodstained rope. Whereas, in fact, the chamber was far more like a hospital corner, screened off by green curtaining and lit by a warm orange glow; there was a clinical sparkle to the brass pulley, and the rope was so clean it must have been specially sterilized, assuring him of a swift, certain, scientifically humane end to his days.

Tollie was thinking very fast, absorbing all this in a twinkling while, on another level, wondering what had happened to all the in-between bits. He couldn’t remember his arrest, the trial, or the passing of sentence. It was like coming round in a dentist’s chair: you knew where you were and why, but you didn’t want to probe too much for fear of the onrush of pain.

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