Golden Fox c-12

by Wilbur Smith

  "So sorry you won't be able to stay over with us for the big day, Holly darling." Even Michael came in for praise, albeit much fainter praise, with the publication of his most recent book. 'One doesn't have to agree with your conclusions or with the solutions which you suggest, Mickey dear, to appreciate just how much thought and hard work went into the writing of it." When she asked them to rise and drink a toast to 'our family and every single person in it' they responded with gusto. Then Shasa came to the head of the table to take her arm and lead her through into the blue drawing-room where coffee and liqueurs and cigars were waiting. Centaine would never accede to the barbarous custom of leaving the men alone with their cigars after dinner. If there was anything worth talking about, then she wanted to be part of those discussions.

  Quickly Michael crossed to Isabella as she rose from her seat at the table and took her arm.

  "I've missed you, Bella. Why didn't you answer my letters? There is so much I want to know. Ramsey and Nicky-' He saw her expression change, and his alarm was quick.

  "Is something wrong, Bella?" 'Not now, Mickey,' she warned him quickly. This was the first time they had spoken in almost six months, since Nicky had gone.

  She had not telephoned him or answered his letters. Moreover, she had avoided being alone with him ever since he had arrived at Weltevreden that morning.

  "There is something wrong,' Michael insisted.

  "Smilev she ordered him, smiling herself. 'Don't make a fuss. I'll come to your room later. No questions now.' She squeezed his arm, and laughed gaily as they all trooped through to the blue drawing-room and clustered round attentively while Centaine settled herself in her customary place on the long sofa facing the roaring log fire in the Adam fireplace.

  "Let me have my girls with me tonight,' she decided, and picked out Holly.

  "Come and sit this side, my dear.' She patted the sofa beside her. "Bella, you on this side of me, please." Centaine seldom did anything without good reason, and as soon as the servants had given them coffee and Shasa had poured Cognac for the men she played her high card.

  "I've been waiting for a chance to do this, Holly,' she said in a voice that commanded all their attention. 'And I suppose your birthday is the best excuse I'll ever have. You are my eldest grand-daughter, so I'm going to establish a little family tradition tonight." Centaine reached up behind her own neck and unclasped the necklace she wore and held it in her hands, a glittering treasure, over a thousand carats of perfect yellow diamonds. Each stone had personally been selected by Centaine Courtney from the production of her fabulous H'ani mine in the far north. It had taken ten years for her to accumulate them, and Garrards of London had designed and manufactured the setting in pure platinum.

  "Something so lovely should only be worn by a beautiful woman,' Centaine whispered regretfully, and the tears that sparkled in her dark eyes were genuine. 'Alas, I no longer fulfill that requirement, so it is time for me to pass them on to somebody who does." She turned to Holly. 'Wear these with joy,' she said and hung them at her throat.

  Holly sat as though stunned, and everybody in the room was silent with awe.

  They all knew what that necklace meant to Centaine; they knew that she placed a far higher value on it than the mere two million sterling which the Lloyd's assessors had recently decided was its intrinsic worth.

  Holly lifted her right hand and stroked the bright stars at her throat with a look of total disbelief on her delicate features, then she choked and sobbed and turned to Centaine and -embraced her. The two women clung together for a moment before Holly could find her voice. It was muffled and small, but all of them heard it clearly.

  "Thank you, Nana.' Only close members of the family called Centaine that, and Holly had never done so before.

  Centaine held her tightly, closing her eyes and pressing her face against Holly's golden head so that none of them would see the little smile of triumph on her lips and the satisfied gleam through the tears in her eyes.

  Nanny was waiting in Isabella's suite.

  "It's after one o'clock,' Isabella exclaimed. 'I've told you not to wait up for me, you silly old woman." 'I've been waiting up for you twenty-five years.' Nanny came to unhook the back of her dress.

  "It makes me feel terrible,' Isabella protested.

  "It makes me feel good,' Nanny grunted. 'I don't feel happy 'less I know what you been up to, missy. I'll run your bath - didn't do it before, didn't want it to turn cold." 'A bath at one o'clock in the morning!'Isabella dismissed the idea strenuously. She had not allowed Nanny to see her naked since her return.

  The old woman's eyes were much too sharp. She would pick up the tiny changes that childbirth had wrought on Isabella's body: the darkening and enlarging of her nipples, the faint stria where the skin had stretched across her hips and lower belly.

  She sensed that Nanny was becoming suspicious at this change of behaviour, and to divert her she said: 'Off with you now, Nanny. Go and warm Bossie's bed for him." Nanny looked shocked. 'Who's been telling you scandal stories?' she demanded.

  "You're not the only one who knows what's going on at Weltevreden," Isabella informed her gleefully. 'Old Bossie has been after you for years.

  About time you took pity on him. He's a good man.' Bossie was the estate blacksmith who had come to work for Centaine as an apprentice thirty-five years ago. 'You go off and hammer his anvil for him." "That's dirty talk,' Nanny sniffed. 'A real lady don't talk dirty." Nanny tried to hide her confusion behind a prim expression, but backed off towards the door, and Isabella sighed with relief as it closed behind her.

  She went through to her bathroom and swiftly removed her make-up, tossed her evening-dress over the back of the sofa for Nanny to deal with in the morning, and slipped into a silk bathrobe. As she belted the robe, she crossed her bedroom and then paused with her fingers on the door-handle.

  "What am I going to tell Mickey?' If she had asked herself that question only three days ago, the answer would have been obvious, but since then circumstances had changed. The packet had arrived.

  The last communication she had received from Joe Cicero had been on the day before she left London to return to the Cape of Good Hope. He had telephoned her at Cadogan Square while she was in the process of packing.

  "Red Rose.' She had recognized the husky wheeze of his voice instantly, and as always it had frozen her with dread and loathing. 'I am going to give you your contact address. Use it only in an emergency. It is an answering service, so do not waste time and energy checking it. A telegram or letter addressed to Hoffman, care of Mason's Agency, io Igo Blushing Lane, Soho, will find me. Memorize that address. Do not write it down." 'I have it,' Isabella whispered.

  "On your return home, you will hire a post-office box at a location not associated with Weltevreden. Use a fictitious name and inform me at the Blushing Lane address when it is established. Is that clear?" Within days of arriving back at Weltevreden, Isabella had driven over the Constantiaberg Pass to the sprawling suburb of Camps Bay on the Atlantic seaboard of the Cape peninsula. The post office there was far enough removed from Weltevreden for none of the postal staff to recognize her. She hired the box in the name of Mrs. Rose Cohen, and sent a registered letter to Blushing Lane with this box number.

  She checked the box for a letter each evening as she returned from her office in Centaine House in central Cape Town, driving the Mini over the neck between Signal Hill and the mountain, the more circuitous route around the back of Table Mountain to reach Weltevredcn. Even though the box remained empty day after day and week after week, she never varied her routine.

  The lack of news of Nicky ate away at the fabric of her soul. The day-to-day events of her life seemed all a sham and a pretence. Although she channelled all her energy into her work as Shasa's assistant, the effort was not the opiate for her pain that she had hoped it might be.

  She smiled and laughed, she rode with Nana and at the weekends played tennis or sailed with her old friends. She worked and played as though
everything was the same, but it was all acting.

  The nights were long and lonely. In the midnight hours, she would resolve to go to Shasa and describe in detail the web in which she was enmeshed, but then in daylight she would ask herself: 'What can Pater do? What can anybody do to help me?' And she remembered Nicky's swollen face and the silver bubbles streaming from his nose as he drowned, and she knew she could not risk that ever happening again. Strangely, the passage of time did not reduce the pain of her loss; instead it seemed to inflame her wounds, and the lack of news of Nicky aggravated them still further. Each day her suffering was harder to bear alone.

  Then she heard that Michael was coming down from Johannesburg to Weltevreden for the trials, and it seemed fortuitous. Michael was the perfect confidant. She would not expect him to do anything except share her suffering and lighten the terrible load which up until now she had carried alone.

  On the Friday before Michael's arrival, she had driven over the neck to Camps Bay and parked the Mini in the street beyond the post office. She walked back slowly and glanced into the side-hall that housed the tiers of tiny steel post-boxes. It was almost six in the evening, and the main post office was long ago closed. There were a couple of teenagers necking in the corner of the postal hall, but they scurried away guiltily as she glared at them. Isabella took the precaution of never approaching or opening her box while a stranger was in the hall.

  She glanced back at the entrance to make sure she was alone, and then inserted her key in the lock of the tiny steel door in the fifth row of tiered boxes. The shock was greater for the fact that she was expecting the box to be empty. Adrenalin squirted into her bloodstream, and she felt her cheeks burn and her breathing choke.

  She snatched up the thick brown envelope and crammed it into her sling bag.

  Then, as guilty as a thief, she slammed and locked the box and ran back to where the Mini was parked. She was trembling so that she had difficulty fitting the key in the door-lock. She was breathing as hard as though she had played a long rally on the tennis-court as she started the Mini and U-turned back across the road.

  She parked above the beach under the palms that line the drive. At this hour the beach was almost deserted. An elderly couple exercised an Irish setter at the edge of the water, and a single bather braved the south-easter and the icy green waters of the Benguela current.

  Isabella rolled up the windows and locked both doors of the Mini before she took the envelope out of her bag and held it in her lap.

  The address was typed, Mrs. Rose Cohen, and the Queen's-head postage-stamps had been franked at Trafalgar Square post office. She turned the envelope over, reluctant to open it, terrified of what it might contain. There was no return address on the reverse. Stidl delaying the moment, she searched for the gold lady's penknife in her bag and carefully slit the flap of the envelope with its razor-edged blade.

  A coloured photograph slid out, and every nerve in her body tingled as she turned it face-up and recognized her son.

  Nicky sat on a blue blanket on a garden lawn. He wore only a napkin. He was sitting up unsupported, and she reminded herself that he was nearly seven months old. He had grown, his cheeks were not so chubby, his limbs longer and sleeker. His hair was thicker and longer, curling darkly on to his forehead. His expression was quizzical, but there was a smile hovering at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were bright and green as emeralds.

  "Oh God. He's more beautiful!' she gasped, holding the photograph up to the light to study every tiny detail of his face. 'He's grown so big already, and sitting up on his own. My clever little manikin.' She touched the image and then saw with consternation that she had left a fingerprint on the glossy surface of the photograph. She wiped it off carefully with a Kleenex.

  "My baby,' she whispered, and felt her loss tear at her heart with renewed ferocity. 'Oh, my babyp The sun had sunk to touch the line of the horizon far out on the Atlantic before she could rouse herself. Only then, as she returned the photograph to the envelope, did she realize that she had overlooked the other items it contained.

  First, there was a photostat copy of a page from what was obviously a medical register at some children's clinic, but the name and address of the clinic had been obliterated. It was written in Spanish.

  His name was at the head of the sheet, 'Nicholas Miguel Ramsey de Machado', followed by his date of birth and a record of weekly visits to the clinic.

  Each dated entry was in a variety of handwritings and signed by the clinic's doctors or sisters.

  It showed his weight and diet and dental records. She saw that on 15 July he had been treated for a rash that the doctor diagnosed as prickly heat and two weeks later for a mild oral thrush. Otherwise he was healthy and normal. With a rush of maternal pride, she read that his first two teeth had erupted at four months, and he, weighed almost sixteen kilos.

  Isabella turned to the last folded sheet of paper that the envelope contained and immediately recognized the handwriting. It was in Spanish, in Adra's firm restrained hand.

  Sefiorita Bella, Nicky grows every day stronger and cleverer. He has a temper like one of the bulls of the corrida. He can crawl on hands and knees almost as fast as I can run, and I expect that at any day now he will rise up on his back legs and walk.

  The first word he spoke was 'Mamma', and I tell him each day how beautiful you are and how one day you will come to him. He does not yet understand, but one day he will.

  I think of you often, sefiorita. You must believe that I will care for Nicky with my own life. Please do not do anything to endanger him.

  Respectfully, Adra Olivares The warning contained in the last line twisted like a knife between her ribs, and was more urgent and poignant for being so mildly expressed. She knew then that she could never risk telling anyone, not Pater or Nana' or even Michael.

  She hesitated now with her hand on the handle of her bedroom door. 'I have to lie to you, Mickey. I'm sorry. Perhaps, one day, I will tell you the truth.' She listened for a moment, but the great house was silent, and she turned the handle and quietly swung the door open.

  The long gallery was deserted with only the night lights burning in their brackets on the wood-panelled walls. On bare feet, Isabella slipped silently over the Persian carpets scattered on the parquet floor. Since he was so seldom at Weltevreden, Michael kept his old room in the nursery wing.

  He was sitting up in bed reading. As soon as she pushed the door open, he dropped the book on the bedside table and lifted the bedclothes for her.

  As she climbed in beside him, he tucked the eiderdown around her shoulders and she clung to him, shivering with misery. They held each other for a long time in silence before Michael invited her gently.

  "Tell me, Bella.' Even then she could not say it immediately. Her good intentions wavered, she felt the desperate temptation to ignore Adra's warning. Mickey was the only one of the family who knew that Ramsey and Nicky even existed. She wanted desperately to blurt it all out to him and have his gentle warming comfort to help fill the terrible void in her soul.

  Then the image of Nicky that she had watched on the video film flashed before her eyes once more. She drew a deep breath and pressed her face to Michael's chest. 'Nicky is dead,' she whispered, and felt him flinch in her embrace. He did not reply at once.

  "It's true,' she consoled herself silently. 'Nicky is dead to all of us now.' And yet the words seemed a dreadful betrayal of Michael and of Nicky.

  She did not, dare not, trust him. She had denied the existence of her own son to him, and the falsehood seemed to increase her own misery and isolation, if that were possible.

  "How?' Michael asked at last, and she had anticipated the question.

  "Cot death,' she whispered. 'I went to wake him for his feed, and he was cold and dead." She felt Michael shiver against her. 'Oh God! My poor Bella! How horrible!

  How cruel!" The reality was crueller and more horrible than he could imagine, but she could not share it with him.

  After a
long minute, he asked: 'Ramsey? Where is Rarnen? He should be here to comfort you.'.

  "Ramsey,' she repeated the name, trying to keep fear out of her voice. "When Nicky was gone, Ramsey changed completely. I think he blamed me. His love for me died with Nicky.' She found herself weeping now, hard tearing sobs that expressed all the grief and terror and loneliness that had haunted her for so long. 'Nicky is gone. Ramsey is gone. I will never see either of them again, not as long as I live." Michael hugged her tightly. His body was hard and warm and strong.