by Wilbur Smith
‘You have just told me that you are a wife with four children,’ Centaine spoke quietly. ‘Would you not agree that you have a duty—’
‘My children are well cared for,’ Tara flared at her. ‘You cannot accuse me of that.’
‘And what about your husband and your marriage?’
‘What about Shasa?’ Tara was immediately defensive.
‘You tell me,’ Centaine invited.
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘Oh, but it is,’ Centaine contradicted her. ‘I have devoted my entire life to Shasa. I plan for him to be one of the leaders of this nation.’ She paused and a dreamy glaze covered her eyes for a moment, and she seemed to squint slightly. Tara had noticed that expression before, whenever Centaine was in deep thought, and now she wanted to break in upon it as brutally as she could.
‘That’s impossible and you know it.’
Centaine’s eyes snapped back into focus and she glared at Tara. ‘Nothing is impossible – not for me, not for us.’
‘Oh yes it is,’ Tara gloated. ‘You know as well as I do that the Nationalists have gerrymandered the electorate, that they have even loaded the Senate with their own appointees. They are in power for ever. Never again will anyone who is not one of them, an Afrikaner Nationalist, ever be this country’s leader, not until the revolution – and when that is over, the leader will be a black man.’ Tara broke off and thought for an instant of Moses Gama.
‘You are naive,’ Centaine snapped. ‘You do not understand these things. Your talk of revolution is childish and irresponsible.’
‘Have it your own way, Mater. But deep down you know it’s so. Your darling Shasa will never fulfil your dream. Even he is beginning to sense the futility of being in Opposition for ever. He is losing interest in the impossible. I wouldn’t be surprised if he decides not to contest the next election, gives up the political aspirations that you have foisted on him and simply goes off to make himself another trillion pounds.’
‘No.’ Centaine shook her head. ‘He won’t give up. He is a fighter like I am.’
‘He’ll never be even a cabinet minister, let alone Prime Minister,’ Tara stated flatly.
‘If you believe that, then you are no wife for my son,’ Centaine said.
‘You said it,’ Tara said softly. ‘You said it, not me.’
‘Oh, Tara, my dear, I am sorry.’ Centaine reached across the desk but it was too broad for her to touch Tara’s hand. ‘Forgive me. I lost my temper. All this is so desperately important to me. I feel it so deeply, but I did not mean to antagonize you. I want only to help you – I am so worried about you and Shasa. I want to help, Tara. Won’t you let me help you?’
‘I don’t see that we need help,’ Tara lied sweetly. ‘Shasa and I are perfectly happy. We have four lovely children—’
Centaine made an impatient gesture. ‘Tara, you and I haven’t always seen eye to eye. But I am your friend, I truly am. I want the best for you and Shasa and the little ones. Won’t you let me help you?’
‘How, Mater? By giving us money? You have already given us ten or twenty million – or is it thirty million pounds? I lose track sometimes.’
‘Won’t you let me share my experience with you? Won’t you listen to my advice?’
‘Yes, Mater, I’ll listen. I don’t promise to take it, but I’ll listen to it.’
‘Firstly, Tara dear, you must give up these crazy left-wing activities. You bring the whole family into disrepute. You make a spectacle of yourself, and therefore of us, by dressing up and standing on street corners. Apart from that, it is positively dangerous. The Suppression of Communism Act is now law. You could be declared a Communist, and placed under a banning order. Just consider that, you would become a non-person, deprived of all human rights and dignity. Then there is Shasa’s political career. What you do reflects on him.’
‘Mater, I promised to listen,’ Tara said stonily. ‘But now I withdraw that promise. I know what I am doing.’ She stood up and moved to the door where she paused and looked back. ‘Did you ever think, Centaine Courtney-Malcomess, that my mother died of a broken heart, and it was your blatant adultery with my father that broke it for her? Yet you can sit there smugly and advise me how to conduct my life, so as not to disgrace you and your precious son.’ She went out and closed the heavy teak door softly behind her.
Shasa Courtney lolled on the Opposition front bench with his hands pushed deeply into his pockets, his legs thrust out and crossed at the ankles, and listened intently to the Minister of Police outlining the legislation which he intended bringing before the House during the current session.
The Minister of Police was the youngest member of the cabinet, a man of approximately the same age as Shasa, which was extraordinary. The Afrikaner revered age and mistrusted the inexperience and impetuosity of youth. The average age of the other members of the Nationalist cabinet could not be less than sixty-five years, Shasa reflected, and yet here was Manfred De La Rey standing before them, a mere stripling of less than forty years, setting out the general contents of the Criminal Law Amendment Bill which he would be proposing and shepherding through its various stages.
‘He is asking for the right to declare a state of emergency which will put the police above the law, without appeal to the courts,’ Blaine Malcomess grunted beside him, and Shasa nodded without looking at his father-in-law. Instead he was watching the man across the floor.
Manfred De La Rey was speaking in Afrikaans, as he usually did. His English was heavily accented and laboured, and he spoke it unwillingly, making only the barest gesture towards the bilingualism of the House. On the other hand, when speaking in his mother tongue, he was eloquent and persuasive, his oratorial attitudes and devices were so skilled as to seem entirely natural and more than once he raised a chuckle of exasperated admiration from the opposition benches and a chorus of ‘Hoor, hoor!’ from his own party.
‘The fellow has a damned cheek.’ Blaine Malcomess shook his head. ‘He is asking for the right to suspend the rule of law and impose a police state at the whim of the ruling party. We’ll have to fight that tooth and nail.’
‘My word!’ Shasa agreed mildly, but he found himself envying the other man, and yet mysteriously drawn to him. It was strange how their two destinies seemed to be inexorably linked.
He had first met Manfred De La Rey twenty years ago, and for no apparent reason the two of them had flown at each other on the spot like young game cocks and fought a bloody bout of fisticuffs. Shasa grimaced at the way it had ended, the drubbing he had received still rankled even after all that time. Since then their paths had crossed and recrossed.
In 1936 they had both been on the national team that went to Adolf Hitler’s Olympic Games in Berlin, but it had been Manfred De La Rey in the boxing ring who collected the only gold medal the team had won, while Shasa returned empty-handed. They had hotly and acrimoniously contested the same seat in the 1948 elections that had seen the National Party come sweeping to power, and again it was Manfred De La Rey who had won the seat and taken his place in parliament, while Shasa had to wait for a by-election in a safe United Party constituency to secure his own place on the Opposition benches from which to confront his rival once again. Now Manfred was a minister, a position that Shasa coveted with all his heart, and with his undoubted brilliance and oratorical skills together with growing political acumen and a solid power base within the party, Manfred De La Rey’s future must be unbounded.
Envy, admiration and furious antagonism – that was what Shasa Courtney felt as he listened to the man across the floor from him, and he studied him intently.
Manfred De La Rey still had a boxer’s physique, wide shoulders and powerful neck, but he was thickening around the waist and his jawline was beginning to blur with flesh. He wasn’t keeping himself in shape and hard muscle was turning flabby. Shasa glanced down at his own lean hips and greyhound belly with self-satisfaction and then concentrated again on his adversary.
Manfred
De La Rey’s nose was twisted and there was a gleaming white scar through one of his dark eyebrows, injuries he had received in the boxing ring. However, his eyes were a strange pale colour, like yellow topaz, implacable as the eyes of a cat and yet with the fire of his fine intellect in their depths. Like all the Nationalist cabinet ministers, with the exception of the Prime Minister himself, he was a highly educated and brilliant man, devout and dedicated, totally convinced of the divine right of his party and his Volk.
‘They truly believe they are God’s instruments on earth. That’s what makes them so damned dangerous.’ Shasa smiled grimly as Manfred finished speaking and sat down to the roar of approval from his own side of the House. They were waving order papers, and the Prime Minister leaned across to pat Manfred’s shoulder, while a dozen congratulatory notes were passed to him from the back benches.
Shasa used this distraction to murmur an excuse to his father-in-law. ‘You won’t need me for the rest of the day, but if you do, you’ll know where to find me.’ Then he stood up, bowed to the Speaker and, as unobtrusively as possible, headed for the exit. However, Shasa was six foot one inch tall, and with the black patch over one eye and his dark waving hair and good looks he drew more than a few speculative glances from the younger women in the visitors’ gallery, and a hostile appraisal from the Government benches.
Manfred De La Rey glanced up from the note he was reading as Shasa passed, and the look they exchanged was intent but enigmatic. Then Shasa was out of the chamber and he shrugged off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder as he acknowledged the salute of the doorman and went out into the sunshine.
Shasa did not keep an office in the parliament building, for the seven-storey Centaine House, the headquarters of the Courtney Mining and Finance Co. Ltd., was just two minutes’ walk across the gardens. As he strode along under the oaks he mentally changed hats, doffing his political topper for the businessman’s homburg. Shasa kept his life in separate compartments, and he had trained himself to concentrate on each in its turn, without ever allowing his energy to dissipate by spreading it too thinly.
By the time he crossed the road in front of St George’s Cathedral and went into the revolving glass front door of Centaine House, he was thinking of finance and mining, juggling figures and choices, weighing factual reports against his own instincts, and enjoying the game of money as hugely as he had the rituals and confrontations on the floor of the Houses of Parliament.
The two pretty girls at the reception desk in the entrance lobby with its marbled floors and columns burst into radiant smiles.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Courtney,’ they chorused, and he devastated them with his smile as he crossed to the lifts. His reaction to them was instinctive; he liked pretty females around him, although he would never touch one of his own people. Somehow that would have been incestuous, and unsporting for they would not have been able to refuse him, too much like shooting a sitting bird. Still the two young females at the desk sighed and rolled their eyes as the lift doors closed on him.
Janet, his secretary, had heard the lift and was waiting as the doors opened. She was more Shasa’s type – mature and poised, groomed and efficient, and though she made little attempt to conceal her adoration, Shasa’s self-imposed rules prevailed here also.
‘What have we got, Janet?’ he demanded, and as she followed him across the ante-chamber to his own office, she read off his appointments for the rest of the afternoon.
He went first to the ticker-tape in the corner and ran the closing prices through his fingers. Anglos had dropped two shillings, it was almost time to buy again.
‘Ring Allen and put him off. I’m not ready for him yet,’ he told Janet and went to his desk. ‘Give me fifteen minutes and then get David Abrahams on the phone.’
As she left the room Shasa settled to the pile of telex sheets and urgent messages that she had left on his blotter. He worked swiftly through them, undistracted by the magnificent view of Table Mountain through the window on the opposite wall, and when one of the phones rang he was ready for David.
‘Hello, Davie, what’s happening in Jo’burg?’ It was a rhetorical question, he knew what was happening and what he was going to do about it. The daily reports and estimates were amongst the pile on his desk, but he listened carefully to David’s resume.
David was group managing director. He had been with Shasa since varsity days and he was as close to Shasa as no other person, with the exception of Centaine, had come.
Although the H’ani Diamond Mine near Windhoek in the north was still the fountainhead of the company’s prosperity, and had been for the thirty-two years since Centaine Courtney had discovered it, under Shasa’s direction the company had expanded and diversified until he had been forced to move the executive headquarters from Windhoek to Johannesburg. Johannesburg was the commercial centre of the country and the move was inevitable, but Johannesburg was also a bleak, heartless and unattractive city. Centaine Courtney-Malcomess refused to leave the beautiful Cape of Good Hope to live there, so the company’s financial and administrative headquarters remained in Cape Town. It was a clumsy and costly duplication, but Centaine always got her way. Moreover, it was convenient for Shasa to be so close to parliament and as he loved the Cape as much as she did he did not try to change her mind.
Shasa and David spoke for ten minutes before Shasa said, ‘Right, we can’t decide on this on the phone. I’ll come up to you.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow afternoon. Sean has a rugby match at ten in the morning. I can’t miss it. I promised him.’
David was silent a moment as he considered the relative importance of a schoolboy’s sporting achievement against the possible investment of something over ten million pounds in the development of the company’s options on the new Orange Free State goldfields.
‘Give me a ring before you take off,’ David agreed with resignation. ‘I’ll meet you at the airfield myself.’
Shasa hung up and checked his wristwatch. He wanted to get back to Weltevreden in time to spend an hour with the children before their bath and dinner. He could finish his work after his own dinner. He began to pack the remaining papers on his desk into his black crocodile-skin Hermès briefcase, when Janet tapped on the inter-leading door and came into his office.
‘I’m sorry, sir. This has just been delivered by hand. A parliamentary messenger, and he said it was very urgent.’
Shasa took the heavy-quality envelope from her. It was the type of expensive stationery reserved for use by members of the cabinet and the flap was embossed with the coat of arms of the Union, the quartered shield and rampant antelopes supporting it with the motto in the ribbon beneath Ex Unitate Vires — Strength through Unity.
‘Thank you, Janet.’ He broke the flap with his thumb and took out a single sheet of notepaper. It was headed: ‘Office of the Minister of Police’, and the message was handwritten in Afrikaans.
Dear Mr Courtney,
Knowing of your interest in hunting, an important personage has asked me to invite you to a springbok hunt on his ranch over the coming weekend. There is an airstrip on the property and the coordinates are as follows: 28°32’S 26°16’E.
I can assure you of good sport and interesting company. Please let me know if you are able to attend.
Sincerely,
Manfred De La Rey.
Shasa grinned and whistled softly through his teeth as he went to the large-scale map on the wall and checked the coordinates. The note amounted to a summons, and he could guess at the identity of the important personage. He saw that the ranch was in the Orange Free State just south of the goldfields at Welkom, and it would mean only a minor detour off his return course from Johannesburg to reach it.
‘I wonder what they are up to now,’ he mused, and he felt a prickle of anticipation. It was the kind of mystery he thoroughly enjoyed, and he scribbled a reply on a sheet of his personal note-paper.
Thank you for your kind invitation to hunt with you this weekend.
Please convey my acceptance to our host and I look forward to the hunting.
As he sealed the envelope he muttered, ‘In fact, you’d have to nail both my feet to the ground to keep me away.’
In his green Jaguar SS sports car, Shasa drove through the massive white-painted gateway of Weltevreden. The pediment had been designed and executed in 1790 by Anton Anreith, the Dutch East India Company’s architect and sculptor, and such an exquisite work of art was a fitting entrance to the estate.
Since Centaine had handed the estate over to him and gone to live with Blaine Malcomess on the far side of the Constantia Berg mountains, Shasa had lavished the same love and care upon Weltevreden as she had before. The name translated from the Dutch as ‘Well Satisfied’ and that was how Shasa felt as he slowed the Jaguar to a walking pace, so as not to blow dust over the vineyards that flanked the road.
The harvest was in full swing, and the headscarves of the women working down the rows of shoulder-high vines were bright spots of colour that vied with the leaves of red and gold. They straightened up to smile and wave as Shasa passed, and the men, doubled under the overflowing baskets of red grapes, grinned at him also.
Young Sean was on one of the wagons in the centre of the field, walking the draught horses slowly, keeping pace with the harvest. The wagon was piled high with ripe grapes that glowed like rubies where the powdery bloom had been rubbed from their skin.
When he saw his father, Sean tossed the reins to the driver who had been tactfully supervising him, and leapt over the side of the wagon and raced down the rows of vines to intercept the green Jaguar. He was only eleven years old, but big for his age. He had inherited his mother’s clear shining skin and Shasa’s looks, and although his limbs were sturdy, he ran like an antelope, springy and quick on his feet. Watching him Shasa felt that his heart might burst with pride.
Sean flung open the passenger door of the Jag and tumbled into the seat, where he abruptly recovered his dignity.
