by Wilbur Smith
The concert was over, the crowds were breaking up. The helicopter she had heard must have come in to pick up Jagger and his Rolling Stones. There was little chance of her rejoining her friends now; they would be lost in the multitude. She looked around her just once more, swiftly but despairingly. Still no sign of that dark wavy head of hair. She tossed her own head and lifted her chin.
‘Who needs him anyway, damned dago?’ she muttered furiously, and struck out down the pavement.
Behind her there was a chorus of whistles and catcalls, and someone, one of the Angels, began calling the step for her. ‘Left, right, left – shake, rattle and roll.’
She knew that her high heels were making her bottom waggle furiously. She hopped on one foot and then the other as she pulled off her shoes and then fled barefoot down the pavement. She had left her car at the embassy carpark in the Strand, so she had to take the Tube from Lancaster Gate station to reach it.
Her car was a brand-new Mini-Cooper, the very latest 1969 model. Daddy had given it to her for her birthday, and had had it customized for her by the same body shop that had done Antony Armstrong-Jones’s Mini. They had souped up its engine, upholstered it in white Connolly leather like a Rolls and resprayed it the same glitter silver as Daddy’s new Aston Martin with her initials in gold leaf on the door. All the swinging set were driving Minis; there were more of them than Rollses or Bentleys parked outside Annabel’s on a Saturday night.
Bella threw her shoes into the tiny back seat and revved the engine until the needle went into the red; the tyres squealed and left black smears on the ramp of the carpark. As she glanced back at them in the rear-view mirror it gave her a dark satanic pleasure.
She drove with abandon, protected from the wrath of the Metropolitan Police by her diplomatic plates. She wasn’t really entitled to them, but Daddy had wangled them for her.
She beat her own record back to Highveld, the ambassador’s residence in Chelsea, and Daddy’s official Bentley with its pennants on the wings was parked at the entrance and Klonkie, the chauffeur, grinned and saluted her. Daddy had brought most of his own staff from Cape Town.
Bella controlled her mood long enough to give Klonkie her sweetest smile and toss him the keys. ‘Put my car away for me, there’s a dear, Klonkie.’ Daddy was tremendously strict about the way she treated the servants. She could take her moods out on anyone but them. ‘They are part of the family, Bella.’ And most of them had indeed been at Weltevreden, the family home at the Cape of Good Hope, since before she was born.
Daddy was at his desk in his study on the ground floor overlooking the garden. He had discarded his coat and tie, and the desk-top was piled with official documents, but he tossed down his pen and swivelled his chair towards her as she came in. His face lit up at the sight of her.
Bella dropped into his lap and kissed him. ‘God,’ she murmured, ‘you are the most beautiful man in the world.’
‘Far be it from me to question your good judgement,’ Shasa Courtney smiled, ‘but may I ask what has brought this on?’
‘Men are either boars or bores,’ she said. ‘All except you, of course.’
‘Ah! And what has young Roger done to arouse your ire? To me, he seemed fairly inoffensive, if not actually insipid.’
Roger was the one who had escorted her to the concert. She had left him on the crowded lawn in front of the stage, but now it took her a moment to remember him.
‘I’m off men for life,’ Isabella declared. ‘I shall probably hie me to a nunnery.’
‘Could you possibly eschew holy orders at least until tomorrow? I do need a hostess for dinner this evening, and we haven’t yet arranged the seating.’
‘All done, long ago,’ she said. ‘Before I left for the concert.’
‘The menu?’
‘Chef and I settled that last Friday. Don’t panic, Papa. All your favourites: Coquilles St Jacques and lamb from Camdeboo.’ Shasa served only lamb reared on his own farms in the Karoo. The desert scrub gave the flesh a distinctive herby flavour. All the embassy beef came from his extensive ranches in Rhodesia, and the wines from the vineyards of Weltevreden where for the last twenty years Shasa’s German winemaker had laboured with rare skill and dedication to raise the quality of the vintage to the point where now Shasa would back it against nearly any of the second crus of Burgundy. His ambition was still to make a wine that would compare with some of the great and noble houses of the Côte d’Or.
When it came to transporting this fare from the Cape of Good Hope to London, Courtney shipping lines ran a weekly refrigerated vessel on the Atlantic route.
‘. . . and I picked up your dinner-jacket from the cleaner’s this morning, and I had Budds in Piccadilly Arcade make you three more dress-shirts and a dozen new eye-patches. Your others were all getting so tatty. I’ve thrown them out.’
Still sitting in his lap, she adjusted his eye-patch. Shasa had lost his left eye flying Hurricanes against the Italians in Abyssinia during the Second World War. The black silk eye-patch gave him a dashing piratical air.
Now Shasa smiled complacently. When he had first invited Bella to come to London with him, she had only recently turned twenty-one years of age, and he had thought long and hard before foisting the onerous task of official embassy hostess on to one so young. He need not have worried. After all, she had been trained by her grandmother. Added to which they had brought the chef and butler and half the staff from the Cape with them, so she started with her own highly trained team.
In three years, Isabella had built up a reputation in the diplomatic circle, and her invitations were sought after, except by those embassies whose countries no longer maintained relations with South Africa.
‘Do you want me to cover for you while you sneak off with your Israeli pal for half an hour after dinner to build an atom bomb?’
‘Bella!’ Shasa frowned quickly. ‘You know I don’t like remarks like that.’
‘Joke, Daddy. There is nobody to hear us.’
‘Even in private and in fun, Bella.’ Shasa shook his head severely. That had been uncomfortably close to the truth. The Israeli military attaché and Shasa had been involved in a courtship dance for almost a year now, and they had gone far beyond the stage of flirtation already.
She kissed him, and his expression softened. ‘I must go and bath.’ She stood up from his lap. ‘The invitations are for eight-thirty. I’ll come and do your tie for you at ten past.’ Shasa had tied his own bow for forty years, until Isabella had decided that he was incapable of doing so.
Shasa’s eyes dropped to her legs. ‘If your skirts get any shorter, mademoiselle, your belly-button will be winking at the moon.’
‘You really must try not to be an old fogey. It’s most unbecoming in one of the swingingest papas of the twentieth century.’ She headed for the door, deliberately accentuating the movement of her lower body under the offending article of clothing, and Shasa sighed as the door closed.
‘That’s a load of dynamite with a very short fuse,’ he murmured. ‘Perhaps, in a way, it’s a good thing that we are going home.’
In September, Shasa’s three-year ambassadorial stint would be up. Isabella would once more go under the control and discipline of Centaine Courtney-Malcomess, her grandmother. Shasa realized that his own efforts in that direction had been less than totally successful, and he would hand over the responsibility with relief.
Thinking of their imminent return to Cape Town, Shasa glanced back at the papers on his desk. The years in the London embassy had been a political penance for him. When the prime minister, Hendrick Verwoerd, had been assassinated in 1966, Shasa had made a serious miscalculation and backed the wrong man to succeed to the premiership. The result of that mistake had been that once John Vorster had become prime minister, Shasa had been shunted into this political backwater; but, as so many times before, he had turned disaster into triumph.
Using all his gifts and natural abilities, his shrewd business acumen, his presence and good looks, his
charm and powers of persuasion, he had done much to deflect from his homeland the building wrath and contempt of the world, particularly that of Britain’s Labour government and her Commonwealth, most of whose members were nations headed by black or Asian premiers. John Vorster had taken these achievements into account. Before leaving South Africa, Shasa had been intimately concerned with Armscor, and Vorster had offered him the job of chairman of Armscor on his return home.
Armscor was, put simply, the largest industrial undertaking that had ever existed on the African continent. It was the country’s answer to the arms boycott, begun by America’s President Dwight Eisenhower and now being extended rapidly by other nations in an attempt to leave South Africa defenceless and vulnerable. Armscor – Armaments Development and Production Company – was the entire defence industry of the country under single management, state-sponsored to the extent of billions upon billions of dollars.
It was an enormous and exciting challenge, especially since the multifarious companies that made up the Courtney financial and business empire were being well managed. During the three years of his ambassadorial duties, Shasa had allowed the management and control to pass gradually, in an orderly fashion, into the hands of his son Garry Courtney. Garry was making an amazing success of it for one so young; but, then, Shasa had not been much older when he had become chairman of Courtney Enterprises.
Then, again, Garry had the day-to-day backing of his grandmother, Centaine Courtney-Malcomess, the founder and dowager empress of the empire. He also had, working under him, the management team of experts that Centaine and Shasa between them had meticulously assembled over the previous forty years.
This in no way detracted from Garry’s achievements, not least of which was the fashion in which he had steered them all through the recent collapse of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange which had stripped up to sixty per cent of the value off some share prices. In some remarkable fashion that would have done credit to either Shasa or Centaine, Garry had anticipated the end of the wild bull run that had preceded the collapse. Far from being damaged or destroyed, Courtney Enterprises had come through the ordeal even more powerful and cash-liquid, and in a better position to take advantage of the bargains that the market was now offering.
No – Shasa smiled and shook his head – Garry was doing great things, and it would be bitterly unfair to come in above him again. However, Shasa was still a young man, not much over fifty years of age. When he got home he would need something to keep his wits sharp and his juices flowing. The Armscor job was perfect.
Of course, he would keep his seat on the Courtney board, but he could devote most of his time and energy to Armscor. Many of the subcontracts could be steered in the direction of the Courtney companies. Both enterprises might benefit enormously from this mutual association, and Shasa would have the additional pleasure and comfort of warming his patriotic ardour at the fire of capitalistic rewards.
Isabella’s remark that he had objected to earlier was directly related to his new appointment. He had used his diplomatic connections with the Israeli embassy to initiate and then pursue the idea of a joint nuclear project between the two states. Tonight he would be handing over another batch of documents to the Israeli attaché to be forwarded in the diplomatic bag to Tel Aviv.
He glanced at his wristwatch. He still had twenty minutes before he must go up to change for dinner, and he switched all his concentration back to the papers in front of him.
Nanny had laid out the Zandra Rhodes couture model and run Isabella’s bath. ‘You are late, Miss Bella. And I still have to do your hair.’ She was a Cape Coloured, her Hottentot blood mixed with that of most of the world’s seafaring nations.
‘Don’t fuss so, Nanny,’ Isabella protested, but Nanny swept her off to the bathroom with as little ceremony as she had when Isabella was five years old.
While Isabella sank with a luxurious sigh chin-deep into the steaming foam, Nanny gathered up her discarded clothes.
‘Your dress is stained with grass, child, and your new panties are torn. What you been up to?’ Nanny washed all Isabella’s underclothes by hand; she would trust no laundry with them.
‘I’ve been playing touch-rugby with a Hell’s Angel, Nanny. Our team won thirty–love.’
‘You’ll get yourself in bad trouble. All the Courtneys got hot blood.’ Nanny held up the torn panties and examined them with heavy disapproval. ‘Long past time you were safely married.’
‘You’ve got a dirty mind. Now tell me what’s been happening today. What about Klonkie’s new girl-friend?’ Isabella knew how to distract her.
Nanny was an inveterate gossip, and this was the time of day when she brought Isabella up to date on the doings and undoings of the entire household. While she chattered, Isabella made little murmurs of encouragement, but she was listening with only half her attention, and when she stood up to soap herself she examined her body in the steamy full-length mirror across the room.
‘Do you think I’m getting fat, Nanny?’
‘You are so skinny, that’s why no boy married you yet,’ Nanny sniffed, and went through to the bedroom.
Isabella tried to be completely objective as she studied herself. Was there any way in which her body could be improved? Should her bosom be a little bigger? And did the tips point outwards at too acute an angle? Were her hips too wide or should her bottom be smaller? After critical reflection, she shook her head. It all looked just about perfect from where she stood. ‘Ramón de Santiago y Machado,’ she whispered, ‘you will never know what you missed.’ And why did that make her feel so miserable?
‘You are talking to yourself again, child.’ Nanny came back with a bath-towel the size of a bed-sheet and held it open for her. ‘Out you get now. We are running out of time.’ She enveloped Isabella in the towel as she stepped out of the bath, and vigorously began to rub her back dry. It was no good trying to convince Nanny that she could dry herself.
‘Don’t be so rough.’ Isabella had been making the same protest for twenty years, and Nanny ignored it.
‘How many times have you been married, Nanny?’
‘You know well that I been married four times, but I only been churched just once.’ Nanny checked and looked at her with new attention. ‘Why you ask about marrying? Did you find something interesting, that’s why the torn panties?’
‘You vulgar old woman!’ Isabella avoided her eyes and snatched up her Thai-silk gown on the way to the bedroom.
She picked up the hairbrush and made one stroke through her hair before Nanny took it away from her.
‘That’s my job, child,’ she said firmly; and Isabella sat down and closed her eyes, giving herself up to the familiar comfort of having Nanny brush out her hair for her.
‘Do you know, I think I’ll have a baby, just so you’ll have someone else to fuss over, and get you off my back.’
Nanny missed a stroke, taken by the attractions of that proposal, and then she said sternly, ‘You get yourself married first before we talk babies.’
The Zandra Rhodes creation was an ethereal cloud of subtle colour, spangled with sequins and seed pearls. Even Nanny nodded and looked complacent as Isabella pirouetted in front of her.
Isabella was halfway down the staircase on her way to a last-minute conference with Chef when a thought occurred to her and she stopped abruptly. The Spanish chargé d’affaires was one of tonight’s dinner guests, and it took only a second for her to rearrange the table seating in her mind.
‘Yes, of course.’ The Spanish chargé nodded immediately she mentioned the name. ‘An old Andalusian family. As I recall, the Marqués de Santiago y Machado left Spain and went to Cuba after the Civil War. He had considerable sugar and tobacco interests on the island at one time, but I imagine Castro changed all that.’
A marqués – the reply silenced Isabella for a moment. Her knowledge of Spanish nobility was less than elementary, but she imagined that a marqués ranked just below a duke.
‘The Marquesa Isabella de
Santiago y Machado.’ With awe she allowed herself to consider the prospect, and she saw again in her mind’s eye those deadly green eyes and for a moment she had difficulty breathing. Her voice was still ragged as she asked: ‘How old is the marqués?’
‘Oh, he would be getting on a little now. That is, if he is still alive. He must be in his late sixties or early seventies.’
‘He had a son perhaps?’
‘That I don’t know.’ The chargé shook his head. ‘But it would be easy to find out. If you wish, I will make some enquiries for you.’
‘Oh, that would be so kind of you.’ Isabella laid her hand on his arm and gave him her most brilliant smile.
Marqués or not, you don’t get away from Isabella Courtney that easily, she thought smugly.
‘It took you almost two weeks to make contact, and then when you had at last done so you immediately allowed the subject to escape.’ The man seated at the head of the table stubbed out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray in front of him and immediately lit another. The first two fingertips of his right hand were stained dark yellow, and the smoke from the oval Turkish cigarettes that he smoked incessantly had already tarred the air in the small room to a blue fog. ‘Was that in accordance with your orders?’ he asked.
Ramón Machado shrugged lightly. ‘It was the only certain way of getting and holding her attention. You must realize that this woman is accustomed to male adulation. She has only to lift a finger and men come swarming about her. I think you must trust my judgement in this matter.’
‘You allowed her to get away.’ The older man knew he was repeating himself, but this fellow needled him.
He did not like him, and did not know him well enough yet to trust him. Not that he ever fully trusted any one of his operatives. However, this one was too self-assured, too disrespectful. He had turned aside the rebuke with a shrug, where another might have cringed. He had blatantly set his own judgement above that of a superior officer.
