by Wilbur Smith
When the draft finally arrived, Centaine deposited the most part with the Ladyburg Bank at 31⁄2 per cent interest, indulging only her new passion for speed. She used £120 to buy herself a ‘T’ model Ford, resplendent in brass and glistening black paintwork, and when for the first time she tore up the driveway of Theuniskraal at thirty miles per hour, the entire household turned out to admire the machine. Even Garry Courtney hurried from the library, his gold-rimmed spectacles pushed up on top of his head, and it was the first time he ever chided her.
‘You must consult me, my dear, before you do these things – I will not have you squandering your own savings. I am your provider, and besides which—’ he looked lugubrious ‘ – I was looking forward to buying you a motorcar for your next birthday. You have gone and spoiled my plans.’
‘Oh, Papa, do forgive me. You have given us so much already, and we love you for it.’
It was true. She had come to love this gentle person in many ways as she had loved her own father, but in some ways even more strongly, for her feelings towards him were bolstered by growing respect for and awareness of his unvaunted talents and his hidden qualities, his deep humanity and his fortitude in the face of a fate that had deprived him of a limb, a wife and a son, and had withheld from him until this late hour a loving family.
He treated her like the mistress of his household, and this evening he was discussing the guest-list for the dinnerparty they were planning.
‘I must warn you about this fellow Robinson. I gave myself pause before inviting him, I’ll tell you!’
Her mind had been on these other things, however, not on the invitation list, and she started.
‘I am so sorry, Papa,’ she apologized, ‘I did not hear what you were saying. I am afraid I was dreaming.’
‘Dear me,’ Garry smiled at her. ‘I thought I was the only dreamer in the family. I was warning you about our guest of honour.’
Garry liked to entertain twice a month, not more often, and there were always ten dinner guests, never more.
‘I like to hear what everybody has to say,’ he explained. ‘Hate to miss a good story at the end of the table.’
He had a discerning palate and had accumulated one of the finest cellars in the country. He had stolen his Zulu chef from the Country Club in Durban, so his invitations were sought after even though acceptance usually involved a train journey and an overnight stay at Theuniskraal.
‘This fellow Joseph Robinson may have a baronetcy, which in many cases is the mark of an unprincipled scoundrel too cunning to have been caught out, he may have more money than even old Cecil John ever accumulated – the Robinson Deep and Robinson Goldmine belong to him, as does the Robinson Bank – but he is as mean as any man I’ve ever met. He’ll spend £10,000 on a painting and grudge a starving man a penny. He is also a bully and the greediest, most heartless man I’ve ever met. When the prime minister first tried to get a peerage for him, there was such an outcry that he had to drop the idea.’
‘If he is so awful, why do we invite him, Papa?’
Garry sighed theatrically. ‘A price I have to pay for my art, my dear. I am going to try to prise from the fellow a few facts that I need for my new book. He is the only living person who can give them to me.’
‘Do you want me to charm him for you?’
‘Oh no, no! We don’t have to go that far, but you could wear a pretty dress, I suppose.’
Centaine chose the yellow taffeta with the embroidered seed-pearl bodice that exposed her shoulders, still lightly tanned by the desert sun. As always, Anna was there to prepare her hair and help her dress for the dinner.
Centaine came through from her private bathroom, which was one of the great luxuries of her new life, with a bathrobe wrapped around her still-damp body and a hand towel around her head. She left wet footprints on the yellow wood floor as she crossed to her dressing-table.
Anna, who was seated on the bed restitching the hook and eye on the back of the yellow dress, bit off the thread, spat it out and mumbled, ‘I have let it out three full centimetres. Too many of these fancy dinner-parties, young lady.’ She laid out the dress with care and came to stand behind Centaine.
‘I do wish you would sit down to dinner with us,’ Centaine grumbled. ‘You aren’t a servant here.’ Centaine would have had to be blind not to have realized the relationship that was flourishing between Garry and Anna. So far, however, she had not found an opportunity of discussing it, though she longed to share Anna’s joy, if only vicariously.
Anna seized the silver-backed brush and attacked Centaine’s hair with long powerful strokes which jerked her head backwards.
‘You want me to waste my time listening to a lot of fancy folk hissing away like a gaggle of geese?’ She imitated the sibilance of the English tongue so cleverly that Centaine giggled delightedly. ‘No, thank you, I can’t understand a word of that clever chatter and old Anna is a lot happier and more useful in the kitchen keeping an eye on those grinning black rogues.’
‘Papa Garry so wants you to join the company, he’s spoken to me ever so often. I think he is becoming so fond of you.’
Anna pursed her lips and sniffed. ‘That’s enough of that nonsense, young lady,’ she said firmly, as she set down the brush and arranged the fine yellow net over Centaine’s hair, capturing its springing curls in the spangled mesh set with yellow sequins. ‘Pas mal!’ She stood back and nodded critical approval. ‘Now for the dress.’
She went to fetch it from the bed, while Centaine stood up and slipped the bathrobe from her shoulders. She let it fall to the floor and stood naked before the mirror.
‘The scar on your leg is healing well, but you are still so brown,’ Anna lamented, and then broke off and stood with the yellow dress half-extended, frowning thoughtfully, staring at Centaine.
‘Centaine!’ Her voice was sharp. ‘When did you last see your moon?’ she demanded, and Centaine stooped and snatched up the fallen robe, covering herself with it defensively.
‘I was sick, Anna. The blow on my head – and the infection.’
‘How long since your last moon?’ Anna was remorseless.
‘You don’t understand, I was sick. Don’t you remember when I had pneumonia I also missed—’
‘Not since the desert!’ Anna answered her own question. ‘Not since you came out of the desert with that German, that cross-breed German Afrikaner.’ She threw the dress on to the bed and pulled the covering robe away from Centaine’s body.
‘No, Anna, I was sick.’ Centaine was trembling. Up to that minute she had truly closed her mind against the awful possibility that Anna now presented.
Anna placed her big callused hand on Centaine’s belly, and she cringed from the touch.
‘I never trusted him, with his cat’s eyes and yellow hair and that great bulge in his breeches,’ Anna muttered furiously. ‘Now I understand why you would not speak to him when we left, why you treated him like an enemy, not a saviour.’
‘Anna, I have missed before. It could be—’
‘He raped you, my poor child! He violated you! You could not help it. That is how it happened?’
Centaine recognized the escape that Anna was offering her, and she yearned to take it.
‘He forced you, my baby, didn’t he? Tell Anna.’
‘No, Anna. He did not force me.’
‘You allowed him – you let him?’ Anna’s expression was formidable.
‘I was so lonely.’ Centaine sank down on to the stool and covered her face with her hands. ‘I had not seen another white person for almost two years, and he was so kind and beautiful, and I owed him my life. Don’t you understand, Anna? Please say you understand!’
Anna enfolded her in those thick powerful arms, and Centaine pressed her face into her soft warm bosom. Both of them were silent, shaken and afraid.
‘You cannot have it,’ Anna said at last. ‘We will have to get rid of it.’
The shock of her words racked Centaine, so she trembled afresh and tr
ied to hide from the dreadful thought.
‘We cannot bring another bastard to Theuniskraal, they would not stand for it. The shame would be too much.
They have taken one, but Mijnheer and the general could not take another. For the sake of all of us, Michael’s family and Shasa, for yourself, for all those whom I love, there is no choice in the matter. You must get rid of it.’
‘Anna, I can’t do that.’
‘Do you love this man who put it in your belly?’
‘Not now. Not any more. I hate him,’ she whispered. ‘Oh God, how I hate him!’
‘Then get rid of his brat before it destroys you and Shasa and all of us.’
The dinner was a nightmare. Centaine sat at the bottom of the long table and smiled briefly, though her eyes burned with shame and the bastard in her belly felt like an adder, coiled and ready to strike.
The tall elderly man beside her droned on in a particularly rasping and irritating tone, directing his monologue almost exclusively at Centaine. His bald head had been turned by the sun to the colour of a plover’s egg, but his eyes were strangely lifeless, like those of a marble statue. Centaine could not concentrate on what he was saying, and it became unintelligible as though he were speaking an unknown language. Her mind wandered off to pluck and worry at this new threat that had loomed up suddenly, a threat to her entire existence and that of her son.
She knew that Anna was right. Neither the general nor Garry Courtney could allow another bastard into Theuniskraal. Even if they were able to condone what she had done, and it was beyond reason or hope that they could, even then they could not allow her to bring disgrace and scandal not only upon Michael’s memory, but upon the entire family. It was not possible – Anna’s way was the only escape open to her.
She jumped in her seat and almost screamed aloud.
Below the level of the dinner-table, the man beside her had placed his hand upon her thigh.
‘Excuse me, Papa.’ She pushed back her chair hurriedly, and Garry looked down the length of the table with concern. ‘I must go through for a moment,’ and she fled into the kitchen.
Anna saw her distress and ran to meet her, then led her into the pantry. She locked the door behind them.
‘Hold me, please Anna, I am so confused and afraid – and that awful man—’ she shuddered.
Anna’s arms quieted her, and after a while she whispered, ‘You are right, Anna. We must get rid of it.’
‘We will talk about it tomorrow,’ Anna told her gently. ‘Now bathe your eyes with cold water and go back to the dining-room before you make a scene.’
Centaine’s rebuff had served its purpose, and the tall, bald-headed mining magnate did not even glance at her when she came back to her seat beside him. He was addressing the woman on his other hand, but the rest of the company was listening to him with the attention due to one of the richest men in the world.
‘Those were the days,’ he was saying. ‘The country was wide open, a fortune under every stone, by gad. Barnato started with a box of cigars to trade, bloody awful cigars too, and when Rhodes bought him out he gave him a cheque for £3,000,000, the largest cheque ever issued up to that time, though I can tell you I myself have written a few bigger since then—’
‘And how did you start, Sir Joseph?’
‘Five pounds in my pocket and a nose to sniff out a real diamond from a schlenter – that’s how I got my start.’
‘And how do you do that, Sir Joseph? How do you tell a real diamond?’
‘The quickest way is to dip it into a glass of water, my dear. If it comes out wet, it’s a schlenter. If it comes out dry, it’s a diamond.’
The words passed Centaine without seeming to leave any impression, for she was so preoccupied, and Garry was signalling her from the head of the table that it was time to take the ladies through.
However, Robinson’s words must have made a mark deep in her subconscious, for the next afternoon as she sat in the gazebo staring unseeingly out across the sundrenched lawns, fiddling miserably with H’ani’s necklace, rubbing the stones between her fingers, almost without conscious thought she suddenly leaned over the table and from the crystal carafe poured a tumbler full of spring water.
Then she lifted the necklace over the tumbler and slowly lowered it into the water. After a few seconds she lifted it out and studied it distractedly. The coloured stones glistened with water, and then suddenly her heart began to race. The white stone, the huge crystal in the centre of the necklace, was dry.
She dropped the necklace back into the water and pulled it out again. Her hand began to shake. Like the breast of a swan, shining white, the stone had shed even the tiniest droplets, although it glistened more luminously than the wet stones that surrounded it.
Guiltily she looked around her, but Shasa slept on his back with a thumb deep in his mouth and the lawns were deserted in the noonday heat. For the third time she lowered the necklace into the glass and when the white stone came out dry once again, she whispered softly, ‘H’ani, my beloved old grandmother, will you save us again? Is it possible that you are still watching over me?’
Centaine could not consult the Courtney family doctor in Ladyburg, so she and Anna planned a journey to the capital town of the province of Natal, the sea port of Durban. The pretext for the journey was the perennial feminine favourite, shopping to be done.
They had hoped to get away from Theuniskraal on their own, but Garry would not hear of it.
‘Leave me behind, forsooth! You’ve been on at me, both of you, about a new suit. Well, it’s a fine excuse for me to visit my tailor, and while I’m about it I might even pick up a pair of bonnets or some other little gewgaws for two ladies of my acquaintance.’
So it was a full-scale family expedition, with Shasa and his two Zulu nannies, with both the Fiat and the Ford needed to convey them all down the winding dusty hundred and fifty miles of road to the coast. They descended on the Majestic Hotel on the beach front of the Indian Ocean, and Garry took the two front suites.
It needed all the ingenuity of both Anna and Centaine to evade him for a few hours, but they managed it. Anna had made discreet enquiries and had the name of a doctor with consulting-rooms in Point Road. They visited him under assumed names, and he confirmed what they had both known to be true.
‘My niece has been a widow for two years,’ Anna explained delicately. ‘She cannot afford scandal.’
‘I’m sorry, madam. There is nothing I can do to help you,’ the doctor replied primly, but when Centaine paid him his guinea, he murmured, ‘I will give you a receipt.’ And he scribbled on the slip of paper a name and an address.
In the street Anna took her arm. ‘We have an hour before Mijnheer expects us back at the hotel. We will go – to make the arrangements.’
‘No, Anna,’ Centaine stopped. ‘I have to think about this. I want to be alone for a while.’
‘There is nothing to think about,’ said Anna gruffly.
‘Leave me, Anna, I will be back long before dinner. We will go tomorrow.’ Anna knew that tone and that expression. She threw up her hands and climbed into the waiting rickshaw.
As the Zulu runner bore her off in the high two-wheeled carriage, she called, ‘Think all you like, child, but tomorrow we do it my way.’
Centaine waved and smiled until the rickshaw turned into West Street, then she spun round and hurried back towards the harbour.
She had noticed a shop when they passed it earlier: m. naidoo. jeweller.
The interior was small, but clean and neat, with inexpensive jewellery set out in glass-topped display cabinets. The moment she entered, a plump, dark-skinned Hindu in a tropical suit came through the bead screen from the rear of the building.
‘Good afternoon, honoured madam, I am Mr Moonsamy Naidoo at madam’s service.’ He had a bland face and thick wavy hair dressed with coconut oil until it glowed like coal fresh from the face.
‘I would like to look at your wares.’ Centaine leaned over the glass-topped
counter and studied the display of silver filigree bracelets.
‘A gift for a loved one, of course, good madam, these are truly 100 per cent pure silver hand-manufactured by learned craftsmen of the highest calibre.’
Centaine did not reply. She knew the risks that she was about to take, and she was trying to form some estimate of the man. He was doing the same to her. He looked at her gloves and shoes, infallible gauges of a lady’s quality.
‘Of course, these trinkets are mere bagatelle. If esteemed madam would care to see something more princely, or more princessly?’
‘Do you deal in – diamonds?’
‘Diamonds, most reverend madam?’ His bland plump face creased into a smile. ‘I can show you a diamond fit for a king – or a queen.’
‘And I will do the same for you,’ Centaine said quietly, and placed the huge white crystal on the glass counter-top between them.
The Hindu jeweller choked with shock, and flapped his hands like a penguin. ‘Sweet madam!’ he gasped. ‘Cover it, I beseech you. Hide it from my gaze!’
Centaine dropped the crystal back into her purse and turned towards the door, but the jeweller was there before her.
‘An instant more of your time, devout madam.’
He drew down the blinds over the windows and the glass door, then turned the key in the lock, before he came back to her.
‘There are extreme penalties,’ his voice was unsteady, ‘ten years of durance of the vilest sort – and I am not a well man. The gaolers are most ugly and unkind, good madam, the risks are infinite—’
‘I will trouble you no further. Unlock the door.’
‘Please, dear madam, if you will follow me.’ He backed towards the bead screen, bowing from the waist and making wide flourishing gestures of invitation.
His office was tiny, and the glass-topped desk filled it so there was barely room for both of them. There was one small high window. The air was stifling and redolent with the aroma of curry powder.
‘May I see the object again, good madam?’
Centaine placed it on the centre of the desk, and the Hindu screwed a jeweller’s loupe into his eye before he picked up the stone and held it towards the light from the window.
