by Wilbur Smith
In return Sean began leaving gifts in her desk, thereby confirming her suspicion that he had been into it before. However, the theft of cigarettes stopped and she accepted the offerings of fruit and flowers without comment, just a smile and a nod as she passed his easel.
Then one Friday afternoon she opened her drawer and there lay a blue enamel box with 'Garrards' in gold lettering on the lid. She opened it with her back turned to the class, and she started uncontrollably and almost dropped the box as she realized that it contained a brooch of white gold. The centrepiece was a large star sapphire, and even Clare, who was no judge of gems, realized that it was an exquisite stone. It was surrounded by small diamonds set in a star pattern. Clare experienced a giddy rush of avarice. The brooch must certainly be worth many hundreds of pounds, more money than she had ever had in her hand at one time, more than a year's salary at her present parsimonious rate of pay.
Sean had taken the piece from his mother's dressing-table and hidden it in the thatch of the saddle room behind the stables until the furore had died down. All the house servants had been interrogated, first by Shasa, who was outraged by this breach of faith. Nothing, apart from liquor, had ever been stolen by his employees before. When his own investigations ran into a dead end, Shasa called in the police.
Fortunately for Sean, it transpired that one of the junior maids had previously served a six-month sentence for theft from an employer. She was obviously guilty and the Wynberg magistrate gave her eighteen months, her offence compounded by her obstinate refusal to return the stolen brooch. Since she was now over twenty-one years, the maid was sent to the Pollsmoor Women's Prison.
Sean had waited another ten days for the incident to be forgotten before presenting the gift to the object of his passion. Clare East was mightily tempted. She realized that the brooch must have been stolen, but on the other hand she was, as usual for her, in serious financial difficulty. This was the only reason she had taken on her present employment. She looked back with nostalgic regret on the idle days of eating and drinking and painting and making love which had led her into her present embarrassed circumstances. The brooch would solve it all'. She had no scruples of conscience, but a terror of being convicted of theft. She knew that her free and creative soul would wither behind the bars of a women's prison.
Surreptitiously she returned he brooch to her desk drawer and for the rest of that art period she was distracted and withdrawn. She chain-smoked cigarettes and kept well clear of the rear of the art room, where Sean made a fine picture of innocence as he applied himself with unusual industry to his easel. She did not have to tell him to remain behind when the bell rang at the end of the period.
He came to where she sat at her desk.
'Did you like it?" he asked softly, and she opened the drawer and placed the enamel box in the centre of the desk between them.
'I cannot accept it, Sean,' she said. 'You know that very well." She didn't want to ask him where he had obtained it. She didn't want to know, and involuntarily she reached out to touch the box for the last time. The enamel surface felt like a new-laid egg, smooth and warm to the touch.
'It's all right,' Sean said quietly. 'Nobody knows. They think somebody else took it. It's quite safe." Had the child seen through her so easily? She stared at him. Was it one amoral soul recognizing another? It made her angry to be found out, to have her greed so exposed. She took her hand off the box and placed it in her lap.
She drew a breath, and steeled herself to repeat her refusal, but Sean stilled her by opening his art book and taking out three loose leaves. He placed them beside the blue enamel box, and she drew a hissing breath. They were her own drawings from her fun folder, signed by herself.
'I took these - sort of fair exchange,' Sean said, and she looked at him and truly saw him for the very first time.
He was young in years only. In the museum in Athens she had been enchanted by a marble statue of the great god Pan in his manifestation as a young boy. A beautiful child, but about him an ancient evil as enthralling as sin itself. Clare East was not a teacher by vocation, she felt no innate revulsion at the corruption of the young. It was simply that she had not thought of it before. With her hearty sexual appetite she had experienced almost everything else, including partners of her own sex, although those had been unsuccessful experiments long ago put behind her. Men she had known, in the biblical sense, in every possible variation of size and shape and colour. She took and discarded them with a kind of compulsive fervour, seeking always an elusive fulfilment which seemed to dance for ever just beyond her grasp. Often she was afraid, truly terrified, that she had reached the point of satiety, when her pleasure was irreparably blunted and jaded.
Now she was presented with a new and titillating perversion, enough to reawaken the lusty response that she had thought lost for ever. This child's loveliness contained a wickedness that left her breathless as she discovered it.
She had never been paid before, and this mannikin was offering her a prostitute's fee that was princely enough for a royal courtesan.
She had never been blackmailed before, and he was threatening her with those unwise sketches. She knew what would happen if they ever fell into the hands of the school governors, and she did not doubt that he would carry out the unspoken threat. He had already hinted that he had placed blame for the theft of the sapphire brooch on an innocent party. Most tantalizing, she had never had a child before. She let her eyes run over him curiously. His skin was clear and firm, with the sweet gloss of youth on it. The hair on his forearms was silky, but his cheeks were bare. He was using a razor already, and he was taller than she was, a man's outline emerging from boyhood in his shoulders and narrow hips. His limbs were long and shapely, strange that she should never have noticed the muscle in his arms before. His eyes were green as emeralds, or-of crbme de menthe in a crystal glass and there were tiny flecks of brown and gold surrounding the pupils. She saw those pupils dilate sightly as she leaned forward, deliberately letting the top of her blouse gape open to expose the swell and cleavage of her breasts. Carefully she picked up the enamel box.
'Thank you, Sean,' she whispered hoarsely. 'It's a magnificent gift and I shall treasure it." Sean picked up the lewd sketches and slipped them into his art book, hostage to the unspoken pact between them.
'Thank you, Miss East." His voice was as rough as hers. 'I am so glad you like it." It was so exciting to see his agitation that her own loins melted and she felt the familiar pressure build up swiftly in her lower body.
With calculated cruelty she stood up, dismissing him to the exquisite torture of anticipation. Instinctively she knew that he had planned it all. No further effort would be required from her, the boy's genius would providd the means and the moment, and it was part of the excitement, waiting to see what he would do.
She did not have long to wait, and though she had expected something unusual, she was surprised by the note he left on her desk.
Dear Miss East, My son, Sean, tells me that you are having difficulty in procuring suitable lodgings. I do understand how difficult this can be, particularly in the summer when the whole world seems to descend upon our little peninsula.
As it happens, I have a furnished cottage on the estate, which at the present time is standing empty. If you find it suitable, you are welcome to the use of it. The rental would be nominal. I should say a guinea a week would satisfy the estate bookkeeper, and you would find the cottage secluded and quiet with a lovely view over the Constantia Berg and False Bay, which will appeal to the artist.
Sean speaks highly of your work, and I look forward to seeing examples of it.
Very sincerely, Tara Courtney Clare East was paying five guineas a week for a single squalid room beside the railway tracks at the back of Rondebosch station.
When she sold the sapphire brooch for three hundred pounds, which she suspected was a fraction of its real value, Clare had been determined to pay off her accumulated debts. However, as with so many of her good intentions
, she closed her mind to the impulse, and instead blew most of the money on a secondhand Morris Minor.
She drove out to Weltevreden the following Saturday morning.
Some instinct warned her not to attempt to conceal her Bohemian inclinations, and she and Tara recognized kindred spirits at the very first meeting. Tara sent a driver and one of the estate lorries to fetch her few sticks of furniture and her pile of finished canvases, and personally helped her move into the cottage.
As they worked together, Clare showed Tara a few of the canvases, beginning with the landscapes and seascapes. Tara's response was noncommittal, so once again, following her instinct, Clare stripped the cover off one of her abstracts, a cubist arrangement of blues and fiery reds, and held it up for Tara.
'Oh God, it's magnificent!" Tara murmured. 'So fierce and uncompromising. I love it." A few evenings later Tara came down the path through the pines, carrying a small basket. Clare was on the stoep of the cottage, sitting bare-footed and cross-legged on a leather cushion with a sketch-pad on her lap.
She looked up and grinned, 'I hoped you'd come,' and Tara flopped down beside her and took a bottle of Shasa's best estate wine, the fifteen-year-old vintage, out of the basket.
They chatted easily while Clare sketched, drinking the wine and watching the sunset over the mountains.
'It's good to find a friend,' Tara said impulsively. 'You can't imagine how lonely it is here sometimes." '_With ark tJe_guesLs_a nd_v'mitor'_Cja.r, ewJ:u.to kled .as. hr 'Those aren't real people,' Tara said. 'They are just talking dolls, stuffed with money and their own importance,' and she took a flat silver cigarette case out of the pocket of her skirt, and opened it. It contained rice papers and shredded yellow leaf. 'Do you?" she asked shyly.
'Darling, you have probably saved my life,' Clare exclaimed. 'Roll one for us this instant. I can't wait." They passed the joint back and forth, and in the course of their lazy conversation Clare remarked, Tve been exploring. It's so beautiful here. A little earthly paradise." 'Paradise can be an awful bore,' Tara smiled.
'I found a waterfall with a little summer-house." 'That's the picnic spot. None of the servants are allowed there, so if you want to swim in the buff, you don't have to worry. Nobody is going to surprise you." Clare had not seen Sean on the estate since she moved into the cottage. She had expected him to come panting to the door on the very first day, and was slightly piqued when he did not. Then after a few more days she was amused by his restraint, he had an instinct far beyond his years, the touch of the born philanderer, and she waited with a rising sense of anticipation for him to approach her.
Then the delay began to gall her. She was unaccustomed to extended periods of celibacy, and her sleep started to become fitful and disturbed by erotic dreams.
The spring evenings lengthened and became balmy, and Clare took up Tara's suggestion to visit the pool below the waterfall. Each afternoon she hurried back to Weltevreden after school, and pulled a pair of shorts and a sleeveless blouse over her bikini before taking the short cut through the vineyards to the foot of the hills. Tara's assurances were well founded. The pool was always deserted except for the sugar birds amongst the proteas on the bank, and soon she discarded the bikini.
On her third visit, as she was standing under the waterfall letting her long dark hair flow down her body, she was suddenly aware that she was being watched. She sank down quickly, the water up to her chin, and looked around her apprehensively.
Sean sat on one of the wet black rocks at the head of the pool, almost within touching distance. The roar of the waterfall had muffled any sound of his approach. He was regarding her solemnly, and the resemblance to the youthful Pan god was enhanced in this wild and beautiful place. He was barefoot and wore only shorts and a cotton shirt. His lips were slightly parted and his teeth were white and perfect, a lock of dark hair had fallen over one eye and he lifted his hand and brushed it aside.
Slowly she raised herself until the water dropped to her waist, the foam swirled around her, and her body shone with wetness. She saw his eyes go to her breasts, and his tongue flicked between his teeth and he winced as if in pain. Matching his solemn expression, she crooked her finger and beckoned him. The noise of the waterfall prevented all speech.
x He stood up and began to unbutton his shirt, and then paused.
She saw that at last he was uncertain, and his confusion amused and excited her. She nodded encouragement and beckoned again. His expression firmed and he stripped off his shirt and threw it aside, then he unbuckled his belt and let his shorts drop around his ankles.
She drew breath sharply and felt the muscles on the inside of her thighs tense. She was not sure what she had expected, but protruding from a smoky haze of pubic hair he was long and white and rigid. Here, as in so many other ways, he was almost fully matured, the lingering signs of childhood on his body were all the more titillating foe this.
He stood naked for only an instant and then dived head first into the pool, to surface beside her, water streaming down his face, grinning like an imp. Immediately she ducked away, and he chased her. He was a stronger swimmer than she was, moving in the water like a young otter, and he caught her in the middle of the pool.
They struggled together playfully, giggling and gasping, treading water, going under and bobbing up again. She was surprised by the hardness and strength of his body, and though she extended herself, he began to get the better of her. She was tiring and she slowed her movements and let him rub himself against her. Cold water and exertion had softened him, but she felt him grow again, his hips slipping over her belly, probing instinctively at her. She hooked an arm around his neck and pulled his face down between her breasts.
His entire body arched and convulsed and for a moment she thought he had gone too far, and she reached down and squeezed him hard and painfully to stop him.
Then as he broke away, shocked by her assault, she turned and swam swiftly to the bank, dragged herself from the pool and ran wet and naked to the summer-house. She snatched up her towel, wiped her face dry and, holding the towel in front of her, turned back to face him as he reached the door of the summer-house behind her. He stood flushed and angry in the doorway, and they stared at each other, both of them panting heavily.
Then slowly she lowered the towel and tossed it over the couch.
Swinging her hips deliberately she went to where he stood.
'All right, Master Sean. We know you are worse than useless with a paint brush. Let's see if there isn't anything else we can teach you." He was like a blank canvas on which she could trace her own designs, no matter how bizarre.
There were things from which her other lovers had recoiled, and other acts that she had only imagined and never had the courage to suggest to a partner. At last she felt free of all constraint. It was as though he could read her intentions. She had only to start some new experiment, guide him just part of the way, and he picked it up with a greedy relish that astonished her and carried it through to a conclusion that she had not always fully foreseen, and which sometimes left her stunned.
His strength and confidence increased with every one of their meetings. For the first time she had found something that did not swiftly pall. Gradually her existence seemed to centre around the summer-house beside the pool, and she could not wait to reach it each evening. It required all her self-discipline to keep her hands off him in the art room. She could not trust herself to stand close 'to him, or to look at him directly during her classes.
Then he initiated a new series of dangerous games. He would remain behind after class, for just a few minutes. It had to be very quick, but risk of discovery enhanced the thrill for both of them.
Once the janitor came in as they were busy and it was so close, so exciting, that she thought she had experienced heart failure at the climax. Sean was standing erect behind her desk, and she was kneeling in front of him. He had taken a handful of her hair and twisted it, holding her face against his lower body.
'I am looking for
Miss East,' the janitor said from the doorway.
He was a pensioner, almost seventy years of age but out of vanity he refused to wear spectacles. 'Is she here?" he demanded, peering at Sean myopically.
'Hello, Mr Brownlee. Miss East has gone up to the staff common room already,' Sean told him coolly, holding Clare by her hair so she could not pull away from him. The janitor muttered unintelligibly and turned to leave the art room, when to Clare's horror Sean called him back.
'Oh, Mr Brownlee, can I give her a message for you?" he asked, and he and the janitor talked for almost a minute that seemed like all the ages, while she, screened by the desk, was forced to continue.
She knew then, when she paused to think about it, that she was in over her head. She had seen glimpses of the cruelty and violence in him and as the months passed, his physical strength increased with all the sudden blooming of desert grass after rain. The last garlands of puppy fat around his torso were replaced by hard muscle and it seemed that before her eyes his chest broadened and took on a covering of springing dark curls.
Though sometimes she still challenged and fought him, each time he subdued her with greater ease, and then he would force her to perform one of the tricks to which she had originally introduced him, but which he had embroidered with little sadistic twists of his own.
She developed a taste for these humiliations, and she began deliberately to provoke him, until at last she succeeded beyond her expectations. It was in her cottage - the first time they had met there because there was always the danger that Tara would drop in unexpectedly, but by now both of them were reckless.
Clare waited until he was fully ripe, his eyes glazing and his lips pulled back in a rictus of ecstasy, then she twisted and bucked, throwing him off her and she knelt before him and jeered with laughter.
He was angry, but she calmed him down. Then a few minutes later she did it again, and this time she squeezed him painfully, just as she had done that first evening at the pool.
