by Wilbur Smith
As he straightened up again, with water dripping from his hair and running down his bare chest, he was abruptly aware of the presence of a stranger.
‘Get me a towel, Ruda,’ he snapped, and his eldest daughter ran to his bidding.
‘I was not expecting you.’ Manfred glowered at Shasa Courtney. ‘My family and I like to be alone here.’
‘Forgive me. I know I am intruding.’ Shasa’s shoes were floury with dust. It was a mile walk from the airstrip. ‘I am sure you will understand when I explain that my business is urgent and private.’
Manfred scrubbed his face with the towel while he mastered his annoyance, and then, when Heidi came out with the camera in her hand, he introduced her gruffly.
Within minutes Shasa had charmed both Heidi and the girls into smiles, but Lothar stood behind his father and only came forward reluctantly to shake hands. He had learned from his father to be suspicious of Englishmen.
‘What a tremendous kob,’ Shasa admired the fish on the scaffold. ‘One of the biggest I have seen in years. You don’t often get them that size any more. Where did you catch it?’
Shasa insisted on taking the photographs of the whole family grouped around the fish. Manfred was still bare-chested, and Shasa noticed the old bluish puckered scar in the side of his chest. It looked like a gunshot wound, but there had been a war and many men bore scars of that nature now. Thinking of war wounds, he adjusted his own eye-patch self-consciously as he handed the camera back to Heidi.
‘You will stay to lunch, Meneer?’ she asked demurely.
‘I don’t want to be a nuisance.’
‘You are welcome.’ She was a handsome woman, with a large high bosom and wide fruitful hips. Her hair was dense and golden blonde, and she wore it in a thick plaited rope that hung almost to her waist, but Shasa saw Manfred De La Rey’s expression and quickly transferred all his attention back to him.
‘My wife is right. You are welcome.’ Manfred’s natural Afrikaner duty of hospitality left him no choice. ‘Come, we will go to the front stoep until the women call for us to eat.’
Manfred fetched two bottles of beer from the ice-chest and they sat in deckchairs, side by side, and looked out over the dunes to the wind-flecked blue of the Indian Ocean.
‘Do you remember where we first met, you and I?’ Shasa broke the silence.
‘Ja,’ Manfred nodded. ‘I remember very well.’
‘I was back there two days ago.’
‘Walvis Bay?’
‘Yes. To the canning factory, the jetty where we fought,’ Shasa hesitated, ‘where you thumped me, and pushed my head into a mess of dead fish.’
Manfred smiled with satisfaction at the memory. ‘Ja, I remember.’
Shasa had to control his temper carefully. It still rankled and the man’s smugness infuriated him, but the memory of his childhood victory had softened Manfred’s mood as Shasa had intended it should.
‘Strange how we were enemies then, and now we are allies,’ Shasa persisted, and let him think about that for a while before he went on. ‘I have most carefully considered the offer you made to me. Although it is difficult for a man to change sides, and many people will put the worst construction on my motives, I now see that it is my duty to my country to do what you suggest and to employ what talent I have for the good of the nation.’
‘So you will accept the Prime Minister’s offer?’
‘Yes, you may tell the Prime Minister that I will join the government, but in my own time and my own way. I will not cross the floor of the House, but as soon as parliament is dissolved for the coming elections, I will resign from the United Party to stand for the National Party.’
‘Good,’ Manfred nodded. ‘That is the honourable way.’
But there was no honourable way, Shasa realized, and was silent for a moment before he went on.
‘I am grateful for your part in this, Meneer. I know that you have been instrumental in affording me this opportunity. In view of what has happened between our families, it is an extraordinary gesture you have made.’
‘There was nothing personal in my decision.’ Manfred shook his head. ‘It was simply a case of the best man for the job. I have not forgotten what your family has done to mine – and I never will.’
‘I will not forget either,’ Shasa said softly. ‘I have inherited guilt – rightly or wrongly, I will never be sure. However, I would like to make some reparation to your father.’
‘How would you do that, Meneer?’ Manfred asked stiffly. ‘How would you compensate a man for the loss of his arm and for all those years spent in prison? How will you pay a man for the damage to his soul that captivity has inflicted?’
‘I can never fully compensate him,’ Shasa agreed. ‘However, suddenly and unexpectedly I have been given the opportunity to restore to your father a large part of that which was taken from him.’
‘Go on,’ Manfred invited. ‘I am listening.’
‘Your father was issued a fishing licence in 1929. I have searched the records. That licence is still valid.’
‘What would the old man do with a fishing licence now? You don’t understand – he is physically and mentally ruined.’
‘The fishing industry out of Walvis Bay has revived and is booming. The number of licences has been severely limited. Your father’s licence. is worth a great deal of money.’
He saw the shift in Manfred’s eyes, the little sparks of interest swiftly screened.
‘You think my father should sell it?’ he asked heavily. ‘And by any chance would you be interested in buying it?’ He smiled sarcastically.
Shasa nodded. ‘Yes, of course I’d like to buy it, but that might not be best for your father.’ Manfred’s smile withered, he hadn’t expected that.
‘What else could he do with it?’
‘We could re-open the factory and work the licence together as partners. Your father puts up the licence, and I put up the capital and my business skills. Within a year or two, your father’s share will almost certainly be worth a million pounds.’
Shasa watched him carefully as he said it. This was more, much more than a business offer. It was a testing. Shasa wanted to reach beyond the man’s granite crust, that monumental armour of puritanical righteousness. He wanted to probe for weaknesses, to find any chinks that he could exploit later.
‘A million pounds,’ he repeated. ‘Perhaps even a great deal more.’ And he saw the sparks in the other man’s fierce pale eyes again, just for an instant, the little yellow sparks of greed. The man was human after all. ‘I can deal with him now,’ Shasa thought, and to cover his relief he lifted his briefcase from the floor beside his deckchair and opened it on his lap.
‘I have worked out a rough agreement—’ he took out a sheaf of typed blue foolscap sheets ‘— you could show it to your father, discuss it with him.’
Manfred took the sheets from him. ‘Ja, I will see him when I return home next week.’
‘There is one small problem,’ Shasa admitted. ‘This licence was issued a long time ago. The government department may wish to repudiate it. It is their policy to allow only four licences—’
Manfred looked up from the contract. ‘That will be no problem,’ Manfred said, and Shasa lifted his beer tankard to hide his smile. They had just shared their first secret. Manfred De La Rey was going to use his influence for personal gain. Like a lost virginity, the next time would be easier.
Shasa had realized from the beginning that he would be an outsider in a cabinet of Afrikaner Nationalists. He desperately needed a trustworthy ally amongst them, and if that ally could be linked to him by shared financial blessings and a few off-colour secrets, then his loyalty would be secured. Shasa had just achieved this, with the promise of vast profits to himself to sweeten the bargain. A good day’s work, he thought, as he closed the briefcase with a snap.
‘Very good, Meneer. I’m grateful to you for having given me your time. Now I will leave you to enjoy what remains of your holiday undisturbed.’
Manfred looked up. ‘Meneer, my wife is preparing lunch for us. She will be very unhappy if you leave so soon.’ At last his smile was genial. ‘And this evening I will have a few good friends visit me for a braaivleis, a barbecue. There are plenty of spare beds. Stay the night. You can leave early tomorrow morning.’
‘You are very kind.’ Shasa sank back in his chair. The feeling between them had changed, but Shasa’s intuition warned him there were hidden depths in their relationship which still had to be plumbed, and as he smiled into Manfred De La Rey’s topaz-coloured eyes, he felt a sudden small chill, a cold wind through a chink in his memory. Those eyes haunted him. He was trying to remember something. It remained obscure but somehow strangely menacing. Could it have been from their childhood fight? he wondered. But he did not think so. The memory was closer than that, and more threatening. He almost grasped it, and then Manfred looked down at the contract again, almost as though he had sensed what Shasa was searching for, and the shape of the memory slipped away beyond Shasa’s grasp.
Heidi De La Rey came out on to the verandah in her apron, but she had changed out of her faded old skirt and twisted her plaited hair up on top of her head.
‘Lunch is ready — and I do hope you eat fish, Meneer Courtney.’
Shasa set out to charm the family during lunch. Heidi and the girls were easy. The boy Lothar was different, suspicious and withdrawn. However, Shasa had three sons of his own, and he drew him out with stories of flying and hunting big game, until despite himself the boy’s eyes shone with interest and admiration.
When they rose from the table, Manfred nodded grudgingly. ‘Ja, Meneer, I must remember never to underestimate you.’
That evening a small group comprising a man and woman and four children came straggling over the dunes from the south, and Manfred’s children rushed out to meet them and lead them up on to the verandah of the cottage.
Shasa stayed in the background throughout the noisy greetings of the two families. Theirs was obviously a close relationship of long standing.
Of course, Shasa recognized the head of the other family. He was a big man, even heavier in build than Manfred De La Rey. Like him, he had also been a member of the boxing team that had participated in the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936. He had been a senior lecturer in law at Stellenbosch University, but had recently resigned to become a junior partner in the firm of Van Schoor, De La Rey and Stander, the firm in which Manfred De La Rey had become the senior partner after the death of old Van Schoor some years before.
Apart from his law practice, Roelf Stander acted as Manfred’s chief party organizer and had managed Manfred’s 1948 campaign for him. Although not himself a member of parliament, he was a leg man of the National Party and Shasa knew that he was almost certainly a member of the Broederbond, the Brotherhood, that clandestine society of elite Afrikaners.
When Manfred De La Rey began to introduce them, Shasa saw that Roelf Stander recognized him and looked a little sheepish.
‘I hope you aren’t going to throw eggs at me again, Meneer Stander,’ Shasa challenged him, and Roelf chuckled.
‘Only if you make another bad speech, Meneer Courtney.’
During the 1948 election, in which Shasa had been defeated by Manfred De La Rey, this man had organized the gang of bully boys who had broken up Shasa’s election meetings. Though Shasa was smiling now, his resentment was almost as fierce as it had been at the time. It had always been standard Nationalist tactics to break up the meetings of their opponents. Manfred De La Rey sensed the hostile feelings between them.
‘We will soon be on the same side,’ he said, as he stepped between them placatingly and placed a hand on each of their arms. ‘Let me find a beer for both of you and we’ll drink to letting bygones be bygones.’
The two of them turned away and quickly Shasa scrutinized Roelf Stander’s wife. She was thin, almost to the point of starvation, and there was an air of resignation and weariness about her, so it took a moment for even Shasa’s trained eye to see how pretty she must once have been, and how attractive she still was. She was returning his scrutiny, but dropped her eyes the moment they met Shasa’s single eye.
Heidi De La Rey had not missed the exchange and now she took the woman’s arm and led her forward.
‘Meneer Courtney, this is my dear friend Sarah Stander.’
‘Aangename kennis,’ Shasa bowed slightly. ‘Pleasant meeting, Mevrou.’
‘How do you do, Squadron Leader,’ the woman replied quietly, and Shasa blinked. He had not used his rank since the war. It was, of course, poor form to do so.
‘Have we met?’ he asked, for once off-balance and the woman shook her head quickly and turned to Heidi to speak about the children. Shasa was unable to pursue the matter, for at that moment Manfred handed him a beer and the three men carried their tankards down off the stoep to watch Lothar and the Standers’ eldest boy, Jakobus, build the fire for the barbecue. Though the masculine conversation was informed and their views interesting – both Manfred and Roelf Stander were educated and highly intelligent men – Shasa found his thoughts returning to the thin pale woman who had used his Air Force rank. He wished for the opportunity to speak to her alone, but realized that was unlikely and dangerous. He knew very well how protective and jealous the Afrikaners were of their women, and how easy it would be to precipitate an ugly and damaging incident. So he kept away from Sarah Stander, but for the rest of the evening observed her carefully, and so gradually became aware of undercurrents of emotion in the relationships of the two families. The two men seemed very close and it was obvious that their friendship was of long standing, but with the women it was different. They were just too kind and considerate and appreciative of each other, the certain indications of deep-seated female antagonism. Shasa stored that revelation, for human relationships and weaknesses were essential tools of his trade, but it was only later in the evening that he made two other important discoveries.
He intercepted an unguarded look that Sarah Stander directed at Manfred De Le Rey while he was laughing with her husband, and Shasa recognized it instantly as a look of hatred, but that particularly corrosive type of hatred that a woman can conceive for a man whom she once loved. That hatred explained for Shasa the weariness and resignation that had almost ruined Sarah Stander’s beauty. It explained also the resentment that the two women felt for each other. Heidi De La Rey must realize that Sarah had once loved her husband, and that beneath the hatred she probably still did. The play of feelings and emotions fascinated Shasa, he had learned so much of value and had achieved so much in a single day that he was well satisfied by the time that Roelf Stander called his family together.
‘It’s almost midnight, come on, everybody. We have a long walk home.’
Each of them had brought a flashlight, and there was a flurry of farewells, the girls and women exchanging kisses, while first Roelf Stander and then his son Jakobus came to shake Shasa’s hand.
‘Goodbye,’ Jakobus said, with the innate good manners and respect for elders that every Afrikaner child is taught from birth. ‘I would also like to hunt a black-maned lion one day.’
He was a tall well-favoured lad, two or three years older than Lothar; he had been as fascinated as Lothar by Shasa’s hunting stories but there was something familiar about him that had niggled Shasa all evening. Lothar stood beside his friend, smiling politely, and suddenly it dawned on Shasa. The boys had the same eyes, the pale cat-eyes of the De La Reys. For a moment he was at a loss to explain it, and then it all fell into place. The hatred he had observed in Sarah Stander was explained. Manfred De La Rey was the father of her son.
Shasa stood beside Manfred on the top stair of the stoep and they watched the Stander family climb the dunes, the beams of their flashlights darting about erratically and the shrill voices of the children dwindling into the night, and he wondered if he could ever piece together the clues he had gleaned this evening and discover the full extent of Manfred De La Rey’s vulnerability. One day i
t might be vital to do so.
It would be easy enough discreetly to search the records for the marriage date of Sarah Stander and compare it to the birth date of her eldest son, but how would he ever coax from her the true significance of her use of his military rank? She had called him ‘Squadron Leader’. She knew him, that was certain, but how and where? Shasa smiled. He enjoyed a good mystery, Agatha Christie was one of his favourite authors. He would work on it.
Shasa woke with the grey of dawn lining the curtains over his bed, and a pair of bokmakierie shrikes singing over of their complicated duets from the scrub of the dunes. He stripped off the pyjamas Manfred had lent him and shrugged on the bathrobe, before he crept from the silent cottage and went down to the beach.
He swam naked, slashing over-arm through the cold green water and ducking under the successive lines of breaking white surf until he was clear; then he swam slowly parallel to the beach but five hundred yards off. The chances of shark attack were remote, but the possibility spiced his enjoyment. When it was time to go in he caught a breaking wave and rode it into the beach, and waded ashore, laughing with exhilaration and the joy of life.
He mounted quietly to the stoep of the cottage, not wanting to disturb the family, but a movement from the far end stopped him. Manfred sat in one of the deckchairs with a book in his hands. He was already shaved and dressed.
‘Good morning, Meneer,’ Shasa greeted him. ‘Are you going fishing again today?’
‘It’s Sunday,’ Manfred reminded him. ‘I don’t fish on a Sunday.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Shasa wondered why he felt guilty for having enjoyed his swim, then he recognized the antique leather-covered black book that Manfred was holding.
‘The Bible,’ he remarked, and Manfred nodded.
‘Ja, I read a few pages before I begin each day, but on Sunday or when I have a particular problem to face, I like to read a full chapter.’