Keepers of the House

by JH Fletcher

  Across the half-dozen yards that separated them, the force of Adam’s personality reached out to seize her. At once the intervening years were gone. She saw him as she had on that first occasion in the tiny Guguletu house, heard the note in his voice, angry and contemptuous, as he dismissed her.

  They send a woman to talk to me?

  She remembered, too, the later meeting and what had followed from it, the quarrel with Mark, their eventual separation, the remaking of both their lives.

  All brought about by this man.

  The chairman was droning on about funds, about boycotts of South African products, about …

  Anna shut out his voice, concentrating only on Adam Shongwe’s eyes. They were as yellow and almond-shaped as she remembered; like their owner they seemed not to have changed at all. They were everywhere, staring at each member of the audience in turn. She watched them move closer to her, fought down a ludicrous impulse to lower her face, avoid his challenging gaze. Instead, she sat deliberately erect, chin up. Waiting.

  The eyes reached her. Slid past. Returned. Not by a flicker did either acknowledge the other, but both knew. Oh yes.

  The time came for him to address the meeting. He stood, his personality filling the hall as easily as it had the tiny Guguletu room. He spoke fluently, but with an uncompromising harshness.

  ‘Within the last day or two, there has been criticism in the Australian press of the bombing campaign conducted in South African cities by the ANC. I wish to answer that criticism now.’

  He spoke of struggle, of death, of outrage, of the South African government’s own terror tactics, of its refusal to talk. Yes, bombs had been placed in bus shelters and post offices, black people and white had been killed or maimed in the ensuing explosions.

  ‘I make no apologies.’ So he challenged them, making plain his contempt for their white, middle-class assumptions of victory easily won, their distaste for blood and pain. ‘We are fighting a war and in a war, always, there are casualties. It is the price that must be paid.’

  The bombing campaign out of the way, he slipped easily into what was obviously a ritual speech, smooth and non-confrontational, in which he praised all supporters of the armed struggle, white as well as black, calling them brothers and sisters.

  Anna listened, face impassive, eyes fixed upon him, but he did not look at her again.

  He ended with a warning of more vengeance, more blood.

  ‘Recently there has been much talk of a book by an Australian called Mark Forrest. I have read it myself. Cry from a Dark Continent serves a purpose. It focuses world criticism upon the regime, weakening those who for so long have kept us beneath their iron heel. But I have to say this. It claims that both sides, white and black, need to change their ideas about each other. It is not his place to tell us what we should think. He is not an African, he has not suffered as we have. In any case, the book is irrelevant. The apartheid citadel is already tottering. With or without the Forrests of the world, it will fall. When it is gone will come the reckoning. We shall purge the land.’ He stared around at the audience, controlling them, taking his time about it. The room was subservient, silent, breath caught in throats waiting to cheer. ‘There is a place where the impis of the Zulu king Dingaan destroyed the women and children of the Boers. To this day they call it Weenen, the Place of Weeping.’ He raised his clenched fists above his head as his voice, harsh, ominous, triumphant, rolled over them all. ‘Soon — I give you my solemn promise — for all those who have worshipped at apartheid’s bloody shrine, the days of weeping will return.’

  The audience was on its feet, applause like a riot in the hall. Anna slipped out of the door and was gone.

  The next day her secretary buzzed her. ‘There’s some man on the phone. I didn’t catch the name.’

  It could have been anybody but Anna knew, at once. She took a steadying breath, conscious of the thunder of her heart. ‘Put him through.’

  ‘Anna Riordan?’

  It was Adam, the warm African inflexion unmistakable.

  ‘Good morning.’

  She did not ask who he was; there was no need for games.

  ‘I hoped to see you after the meeting.’

  ‘I had to leave.’

  ‘Had, or chose?’

  He had always been direct but she believed she could match him in that, as in most things. ‘Chose, perhaps.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I like you better when you’re honest.’

  ‘You mean my speech.’ A hint of laughter. ‘The first part was from the heart, I promise you, but some of our supporters are easily frightened.’

  ‘So why are you calling?’

  ‘To meet with you. To discuss investment in the new South Africa.’

  ‘Which does not exist.’

  ‘But which will.’

  It was very different from the previous occasion: a suite in an up-market hotel in the middle of the city, aides in charcoal suits, Adam Shongwe himself sitting at his ease on a brocade settee. Which did not mean she could simply walk in. On the contrary, she was checked very carefully indeed by a young man with watchful eyes and a body honed to the edge of violence. To which, she judged, he was no stranger.

  Some things were not so different, after all.

  Adam, when at last she reached him, wasted no time on chatter or reminiscence. ‘You are a person of influence in the Australian business world.’

  She thought it might be prudent to discount such a notion. ‘Some influence, perhaps. Not a lot.’

  ‘Australian Businesswoman of the Year?’

  That damn trophy, she thought. ‘It doesn’t mean much.’

  ‘We are looking for investment. For expressions of interest. I thought you might be the person to speak to.’

  ‘For the new South Africa which does not yet exist.’

  ‘But which will.’

  ‘So you say. I think my co-directors will prefer to wait until that is definite, not something that may or may not happen at some unspecified time in the future.’

  ‘I shall be talking to other industrialists,’ Adam said. ‘Both in Australia and overseas. The organisations at the head of the queue will be the ones who will have the greatest influence.’

  He smiled at her, very sure of himself in his London-made suit, but Anna was unmoved by threats, however smilingly presented. ‘Judging from previous African experience, aid gives no influence at all.’

  ‘No one has mentioned aid,’ he said softly. ‘We are talking investment. With remittable, hard-currency profits.’

  ‘After tax.’

  ‘Tax holidays could perhaps be negotiated.’ Which certainly put a different complexion on things.

  ‘You should send a fact-finding team,’ he suggested. ‘Come yourself, perhaps.’

  ‘We might. Violence is likely to be a problem,’ Anna told him. ‘We hear of what is happening in the townships. Some people think the whole country is set to explode. If that happens, there won’t be any profits to remit.’

  ‘We shall make sure it doesn’t.’

  ‘Those same people doubt you can stop it.’

  The amber eyes narrowed. He frowned, but did not speak. Smoothly Anna changed the subject, satisfied that she had made her point. ‘When can we expect this change of power to take place?’

  ‘It will happen,’ Adam said. ‘Nothing is more definite than that. But the date is not yet settled.’

  ‘Perhaps we should talk again when it is.’

  Again the frown, the assessing stare but, for the moment, he said nothing. Instead flicked a finger. An aide brought coffee, with biscuits, on an elegant tray. The china was the best. Whatever else, Adam Shongwe had learned to live well.

  ‘Your friend Mark Forrest …’ Calculated small talk to ease the tension that had entered the conversation. ‘You have read his book, I assume. Did you like it?’

  ‘More than you did, judging from what you said last night.’

  ‘Some things have to be said for public consum
ption,’ he said. ‘It is the nature of politics.’

  ‘Are you saying you did like it?’

  ‘I found it interesting. Cry from a Dark Continent …’ The dark voice reflected upon the words. ‘By admitting the confusion in his own mind, he has shown he may eventually come to understanding, after all. I told him once he would never be more than an observer. He didn’t like it, but I was right. What I did not realise was how influential an observer can be.’ He finished his coffee, returned the cup to the tray. He contemplated her soberly. ‘I had great hopes for you, in those days.’

  Anna managed a laugh. ‘For me? Why?’

  ‘I believed you had more potential than he did.’ He smiled, but she saw lingering regret in the amber eyes. ‘Perhaps I was foolish.’

  His smile had diminished her. She would not accept it. ‘Why should you think that?’

  He ignored the question. ‘Until I met you I had thought all white women fell into one of two categories. Those with jagged, autocratic voices, the majority. I hated them, but despised the rest — they were always so subservient, trying to convince themselves they would be black if they could. I remember one like that, all teeth and ardour, stringy hair scragged back. I saw her in a street demonstration, a would-be black among a sea of blacks. She mimicked our cries, shrilly, she flung her arms about, trying to imitate our fluid gestures of rage; she even joined in the toya-toya, the protest dance that is the property of none but ourselves.’ Another smile, reflective and dark, and again Anna felt the power of the man, raw and forceful in the so-smart room. ‘I remember telling myself that when the revolution came she would die with the rest.’

  ‘I hope you don’t think like that any more,’ she told him. ‘Not if you want investment.’

  His thoughts, and perhaps her response, seemed to awaken anger. ‘I asked you to come here today to give you the chance to share with us in rebuilding our country. And what has interested you most?’ One by one, his voice tolled the bell of their discussion. ‘Profits. Tax. Violence. The questions that every capitalist asks. I believed you were different, that you would have made a good comrade. Now I ask myself if I was wrong.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  For once in their lives, Anna and Mostyn, both of them in Sydney, both without appointments, spent the evening together. Mostyn had suggested they should go out somewhere — to celebrate, as he put it — but Anna had said no.

  ‘When we’ve the chance to stay home together? There’s no point in having the house at all, if we’re going to do that.’

  So they had stayed. It was just the two of them. Anna had given Mrs Casey the evening off and, for the first time in ages, she did a stint in the kitchen.

  Mostyn couldn’t see the point. ‘Have something sent in. A whole lot easier, surely?’

  And probably a lot more palatable. At least he didn’t say that, but the thought was no doubt in his mind, as it was in hers.

  You are a perfectly competent cook, Anna instructed herself, ferreting around in the deep freeze. All the same, with the amount of practice she’d had in recent years, it made sense to keep things simple.

  It wasn’t too hard; Mostyn had always been a steak man and that was what she gave him, a fillet steak that she had ordered especially, collecting it on the way home from the office. For herself, she had stuck with salmon; she could hardly go wrong with that. Besides, it was her favourite, although she steered clear of anything as elaborate as Mrs Casey’s pie.

  It had given her an odd feeling, shopping for their evening meal, odder still to think that it was something that most married women did every day of their lives. Not that she was about to get dewy-eyed about that; she’d never been into the pastry-making kick at school and had no plans to change now. Changes in her lifestyle might be on the agenda, but becoming little wifey in the kitchen was, most emphatically, not one of them.

  She did croquette potatoes, something she had been good at long ago, peas and broccoli from the freezer, baby carrots from the shopping mall down the road. For herself, a bottle of chardonnay, nicely chilled; another of shiraz, chosen with due ceremony by the man himself, to go with Mostyn’s steak. To round things off, a lemon cheesecake, very grand, from a cake shop in the same mall. A splot or two of King Island cream, and they were in business.

  Might as well pig out while we’re about it, she thought, feeling not in the least guilty about it. What the hell, all the good old-fashioned books claimed that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, and she had no aversion to thinking how the evening might end. Had even planned for it: no bra and sexy panties so brief they were hardly there at all. She had admired them as she stepped into them after her bath. They were gorgeous. So they should be; the price she’d paid, they cost more per square centimetre than the most expensive real estate on earth.

  Never mind; she’d bought them for an occasion, after all, and if dining alone with her husband for the first time in months was not an occasion, what was?

  It was warm, a night without wind, and Anna decided they should eat on the terrace. She brought out a linen cloth, the best cutlery, the Georgian silver candlesticks. The candle flames stood tall, with barely a flutter.

  Lights, she thought, how I love them. Candlelight on the table, the underwater lights of the swimming pool, the clustered brilliance of the city across the harbour, the sails of the Opera House glowing distantly against the sky. The right kind of light, made for romance, made to order.

  There were no kitchen disasters; everything went very well.

  Mostyn polished off the last of his steak. ‘Very nice,’ he said approvingly. ‘Delicious.’

  It was nice to hear, although she knew he would have said the same thing, with exactly the same degree of enthusiasm, to the chef in any swank restaurant.

  She brought coffee in the Queen Anne pot; she fetched a glass of port for her husband; she was little wifey to the core, if only for the night. They sat in silence together, contented and — for once in their lives — at peace.

  Except that the way to Mostyn’s heart had never been through his stomach but through balance sheets.

  He savoured his port, took a sip, put down his glass. ‘South Africa,’ he said.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Big changes coming.’

  They both knew that; one of the advantages of the financial world was that the intelligence was red-hot. Nothing took place anywhere on earth without their both being aware of it, almost before it happened.

  ‘That cousin of yours … Does he ever say anything about it?’

  ‘Not a word.’

  Anna had made it her business to keep in touch with Pieter Wolmarans over the years. Having discovered her roots she did not intend to let them go again and, with Mostyn — and the business world generally — so opposed to links with South Africa, it was the only way she could do it.

  The trouble was that Pieter Wolmarans — like most men, Anna had decided — was no correspondent. At first she had heard from him only once a year, at Christmas. Then he had asked when her birthday was. After she had told him, he had written then as well, with never a miss. Two letters a year; it wasn’t a lot, but she had learned to accept that it was all she was going to get.

  They were short letters, retailing news about the weather, the prospects for the vintage, the perennial problem of alcohol abuse among the labourers. Once, proudly, he mentioned how Oudekraal had won gold medals at the Stellenbosch Wine Show for pinot noir, merlot and chardonnay. It reminded her of the time he had driven her around the farm, explaining how the chardonnay was suited to the altitude.

  From the intelligence point of view, the letters were a waste of time. On several occasions she had tried to coax him into telling her about the political changes that were taking place in his country but he never had. Either he didn’t want to talk about such things or, more probably, didn’t care enough about them to be bothered.

  Once she had shown one of his letters to Mostyn. His fascination with vineyards and wine had
if anything grown stronger with the years, but it had always been a bottom-line interest, the industry’s potential for profit. He had glanced swiftly through the letter and thrown it back on the table.

  ‘I don’t know why you bother …’

  But Anna had continued to write, to read Pieter’s biannual replies. Certainly they contained nothing to excite the financial markets of the world, but they brought with them the taste and sounds of the wine farm that formed so much a part of Anna’s heritage, and she read them eagerly.

  Now Mostyn sipped his port again. ‘Think he might be interested in selling?’

  She stared. ‘Oudekraal? Never.’

  ‘I wonder. He’s not getting any younger —’

  ‘Oudekraat’s been in the family over two hundred years. It’s impossible. He’d never even think about it.’

  Mostyn had spent the greater portion of his business career in pulling off impossible deals. ‘He’ll have to leave it, sometime. What’s he going to do with it when he dies? He’s got no family …’

  ‘He mentioned a neighbour, once. A friend. Perhaps he’ll leave it to him.’

  ‘No chance of leaving it to you, I suppose?’

  She would have thought he was joking, but about money Mostyn never joked. ‘Why on earth should he do that? He’s not set eyes on me for years.’

  ‘You keep in touch, though. I thought that must be why you did it. And you are family, after all.’

  She was displeased that he should imagine that was why she had kept writing. ‘There’s not the slightest chance of it.’

  ‘I suppose not …’ Would have preferred not to believe, but accepted, reluctantly, that she was probably right. ‘All the more reason for putting in an offer.’

  ‘You’d be wasting your time.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. We’d let him stay there for his lifetime, of course. Put it in the agreement, if it makes him happy. That way he’ll have the use of the money without having to change his lifestyle at all. None of his neighbours need know anything about it. From his point of view, I’d have said it was a pretty good deal.’