by Wilbur Smith
‘I wonder how many chapters you read before you screwed your best friend’s wife,’ Shasa thought, but said aloud, ‘Yes, the Book is a great comfort,’ and tried not to feel a hypocrite as he went through to dress.
Heidi laid an enormous breakfast, everything from steak to pickled fish, but Shasa ate an apple and drank a cup of coffee before he excused himself.
‘The forecast on the radio is for rain later. I want to get back to Cape Town before the weather closes in.’
‘I will walk up to the airstrip with you.’ Manfred stood up quickly.
Neither of them spoke until the track reached the ridge, and then Manfred asked suddenly, ‘Your mother — how is she?’
‘She is well. She always is, and she never seems to age.’ Shasa watched his face, as he went on, ‘You always ask about her. When did you last see her?’
‘She is a remarkable woman,’ Manfred said stolidly, avoiding the question.
‘I have tried to make up in some way for the damage she has done your family,’ Shasa persisted, and Manfred seemed not to have heard. Instead he stopped in the middle of the track, as if to admire the view, but his breathing was ragged. Shasa had set a fast pace up the hill.
‘He’s out of condition,’ Shasa gloated. His own breathing was unruffled, and his body lean and hard.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Manfred said, and only when he made a gesture that swept the wide horizon, did Shasa realize that he was talking about the land. He looked and saw that from the ocean to the blue mountains of the Langeberge inland, it was indeed beautiful.
‘And the Lord said unto him, “This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed”,’ Manfred quoted softly. ‘The Lord has given it to us, and it is our sacred duty to keep it for our children. Nothing else is important compared to that duty.’
Shasa was silent. He had no argument with that sentiment, although the expression of it was embarrassingly theatrical.
‘We have been given a paradise. We must resist with our lives all efforts to despoil it, or to change it,’ Manfred went on. ‘And there are many who will attempt just that. They are gathering against us already. In the days ahead we will need strong men.’
Again Shasa was silent, but now his agreement was tinged with scepticism. Manfred turned to him.
‘I see you smile,’ he said seriously. ‘You see no threat to what we have built up here on the tip of Africa?’
‘As you have said, this land is a paradise. Who would want to change it?’ Shasa asked.
‘How many Africans do you employ, Meneer?’ Manfred seemed to change course.
‘Almost thirty thousand altogether,’ Shasa frowned with puzzlement.
‘Then you will soon learn the poignancy of my warning,’ Manfred grunted. ‘There is a new generation of troublemakers who have grown up amongst the native people. These are the bringers of darkness. They have no respect for the old orders of society which our forefathers so carefully built up and which have served us so faithfully for so long. No, they want to tear all that down. As the Marxist monsters destroyed the social fabric of Russia, so they seek to destroy all that the white man has built up in Africa.’
Shasa’s tone was disparaging as he replied. ‘The vast bulk of our black peoples are happy and law-abiding. They are disciplined and accustomed to authority, their own tribal laws are every bit as strict and circumscribing as the laws we impose. How many agitators are there amongst them, and how great is their influence? Not many and not much, would be my guess.’
‘The world has changed more in the short time since the end of the war than it ever did in the hundred years before that.’ Manfred had recovered his breath now, and he spoke forcefully and eloquently in his own language. ‘The tribal laws which governed our black peoples are eroded as they leave the rural areas and flock to the cities in search of the sweet life. There they learn all the white man’s vices, and they are ripened for the heresies of the bringers of darkness. The respect that they have for the white man and his government could easily turn to contempt, especially if they detect any weakness in us. The black man respects strength and despises weakness, and it is the plan of this new breed of black agitators to test our weaknesses and expose them.’
‘How do you know this?’ Shasa asked and then immediately was angry with himself. He did not usually deal in banal questions, but Manfred answered seriously.
‘We have a comprehensive system of informers amongst the blacks, it is the only way a police force can do its job efficiently. We know that they are planning a massive campaign of defiance of the law, especially those laws that have been introduced in the last few years – the Group Areas Act and the Population Registration Act and the pass laws, the laws necessary to protect our complicated society from the evils of racial integration and miscegenation.’
‘What form will this campaign take?’
‘Deliberate disobedience, flouting of the law, boycotts of white businesses and wild-cat strikes in mining and industry.’
Shasa frowned as he made his calculation. The campaign would directly threaten his companies. ‘Sabotage?’ he asked. ‘Destruction of property – are they planning that?’
Manfred shook his head. ‘It seems not. The agitators are divided amongst themselves. They even include some whites, some of the old comrades from the Communist Party. There are a few amongst them who favour violent action and sabotage, but apparently the majority are prepared to go only as far as peaceful protest – for the moment.’
Shasa sighed with relief, and Manfred shook his head. ‘Do not be too complacent, Meneer. If we fail to prevent them, if we show weakness now, then it will escalate against us. Look what is happening in Kenya and Malaya.’
‘Why do you not simply round up the ringleaders now, before it happens?’
‘We do not have such powers,’ Manfred pointed out.
‘Then you should damned well be given them.’
‘Ja, we need them to do our job, and soon we will have them. But in the meantime we must let the snake put its head out of the hole before we chop it off.’
‘When will the trouble begin?’ Shasa demanded. ‘I must make my arrangements to deal with the strikes and disturbances—’
‘That is one thing we are not certain of, we do not think the ANC itself has as yet decided—’
‘The ANC,’ Shasa interjected. ‘But surely they aren’t behind this? They have been around for forty years or so, and they are dedicated to peaceful negotiations. The leaders are decent men.’
‘They were,’ Manfred corrected him. ‘But the old leaders have been superseded by younger, more dangerous men. Men like Mandela and Tambo and others even more evil. As I said before, times change – we must change with them.’
‘I had not realized that the threat was so real.’
‘Few people do,’ Manfred agreed. ‘But I assure you, Meneer, that there is a nest of snakes breeding in our little paradise.’
They walked on in silence, down to the clay-surfaced airstrip where Shasa’s blue and silver Mosquito stood. While Shasa climbed into the cockpit and readied the machine for flight, Manfred stood quietly at the wingtip watching him. After Shasa had completed all his checks, he came back to Manfred.
‘There is one certain way to defeat this enemy,’ Shasa said. ‘This new militant ANC.’
‘What is that, Meneer?’
‘To pre-empt their position. Take away from our black people the cause of complaint,’ Shasa said.
Manfred was silent, but he stared at Shasa with those implacable yellow eyes. Then Manfred asked, picking his words carefully, ‘Are you suggesting that we give the natives political rights, Meneer? Do you think that we should give in to the parrot cry of “One man, one vote” – is that what you believe, Meneer?’ On Shasa’s reply rested all Manfred’s plans. He wondered if he could have been so wrong in his selection. Any man who believed that could never be a member of the National Party, let alone bear the respons
ibility of cabinet rank. His relief was intense as Shasa dismissed the idea contemptuously.
‘Good Lord, no! That would be the end of us and white civilization in the land. Blacks don’t need votes, they need a slice of the pie. We must encourage the emergence of a black middle class, they will be our buffer against the revolutionaries. I never saw a man yet with a full belly and a full wallet who wanted to change things.’
Manfred chuckled. ‘That’s good, I like it. You are correct, Meneer. We need massive wealth to pay for our concept of apartheid. It will be expensive, we accept that. That is why we have chosen you. We look to you to find the money to pay for our future.’
Shasa held out his hand and Manfred took it. ‘On a personal level, Meneer, I am pleased to hear that your wife has taken notice of whatever you said to her. Reports from my Special Branch indicate that she has given up her liberal left-wing associations and is no longer taking any part in political protests.’
‘I convinced her how futile they were,’ Shasa smiled. ‘She has decided to become an archaeologist instead of a Bolshevik.’
They laughed together, and Shasa climbed back into the cockpit. The engines started with a stuttering roar and a mist of blue smoke blew from the exhaust ports, clearing quickly. Shasa lifted a hand in salute and closed the canopy.
Manfred watched him taxi down to the end of the strip then come thundering back, and hurtle aloft in a flash of silver and blue. He shaded his eyes to watch the Mosquito bank away towards the south, and he felt again that strange almost mystic bond of blood and destiny to the man under the perspex canopy as Shasa waved in farewell. Though they had fought and hated each other, their separate people were bound together by a similar bond and at the same time held apart by religion and language and political beliefs.
‘We are brothers, you and I,’ he thought. ‘And beyond the hatred lie the dictates of survival. If you join us, then other Englishmen may follow you, and neither of us can survive alone. Afrikaner and Englishman, we are so bound together that if one goes down, we both drown in the black ocean.’
‘Garrick has to wear glasses,’ Tara said, and poured fresh coffee into Shasa’s cup.
‘Glasses?’ He looked up from his newspaper. ‘What do you mean, glasses?’
‘I mean eye glasses — spectacles. I took him to the optician while you were away. He is shortsighted.’
‘But nobody in our family has ever worn glasses.’ Shasa looked down the breakfast table at his son, and Garrick lowered his head guiltily. Until that moment he had not realized that he had disgraced the entire family. He had believed the humiliation of spectacles was his alone.
‘Glasses.’ Shasa’s scorn was undisguised. ‘While you are having him fitted with glasses, you might as well get them to fit a cork in the end of his whistle to stop him wetting his bed also.’
Sean let out a guffaw and dug an elbow into his brother’s ribs, and Garrick was stung into self-defence. ‘Gee, Dad, I haven’t wet my bed since last Easter,’ he declared furiously, red-faced with embarrassment and close to tears of humiliation.
Sean made circles with his thumbs and forefingers and peered through them at his brother.
‘We will have to call you “Owly Wet Sheets”,’ he suggested, and as usual Michael came to his brother’s defence.
‘Owls are wise,’ he pointed out reasonably. ‘That’s why Garry came top in his class this term. Where did you come in yours, Sean?’ and Sean glared at him wordlessly. Michael always had a mild but stinging retort.
‘All right, gentlemen.’ Shasa returned to his newspaper. ‘No bloodshed at the breakfast table, please.’
Isabella had been out of the limelight for long enough. Her father had given far too much of his attention to her brothers, and she hadn’t yet received her dues. Her father had arrived home late the previous evening, long after she was in bed, and the traditional ceremony of home-coming had not been fully enacted. Certainly he had kissed and pampered her and told her how beautiful she was, but one vital aspect had been neglected, and though she knew it was bad manners to ask, she had contained herself long enough.
‘Didn’t you even bwing me a pwesent?’ she piped, and Shasa lowered his newspaper again.
‘A pwesent? Now what on earth is a pwesent?’
‘Don’t be a silly-billy, Daddy – you know what it is.’
‘Bella, you know you mustn’t beg for presents,’ Tara chided.
‘If I don’t tell him, Daddy might just forget,’ Isabella pointed out reasonably, and made her special angel face at Shasa.
‘My goodness gracious me.’ Shasa snapped his fingers. ‘I did almost forget!’ And Isabella hopped her lace-clad bottom up and down on her high stool with excitement.
‘You did! You did bring me one!’
‘Finish your porridge first,’ Tara insisted, and Isabella’s spoon clanked industriously on china as she devoured the last of it and scraped the plate clean.
They all trooped though from the breakfast room to Shasa’s study.
‘I’m the likklest one. I get my pwesent first.’ Isabella made up the rules of life as she went along.
‘All right, likklest one. Step to the front of the line, please.’
Her face a masterpiece of concentration, Isabella stripped away the wrappings from her gift.
‘A doll!’ she squeaked and showered kisses upon its bland china face. ‘Her name is Oleander, and I love her already.’ Isabella was the owner of what was probably one of the world’s definitive collections of dolls, but all additions were rapturously received.
When Sean and Garry were handed their long packages, they went still with awe. They knew what they were – they had both of them pleaded long and eloquently for this moment and now that it had arrived, they were reluctant to touch their gifts in case they disappeared in a puff of smoke. Michael hid his disappointment bravely; he had hoped for a book, so secretly he empathized with his mother when she cried with exasperation, ‘Oh, Shasa, you haven’t given them guns?’
All three rifles were identical. They were Winchester repeaters in .22 calibre, light enough for the boys to handle.
‘This is the best present anybody ever gave me.’ Sean lifted his weapon out of the cardboard box and stroked the walnut stock lovingly.
‘Me too.’ Garrick still couldn’t bring himself to touch his. He knelt over the open package in the middle of the study floor, staring raptly at the weapon it contained.
‘It’s super, Dad,’ said Michael, holding his rifle awkwardly and his smile was unconvincing.
‘Don’t use that word, Mickey,’ Tara snapped. ‘It’s so American and vulgar.’ But she was angry with Shasa, not Michael.
‘Look.’ Garry touched his rifle for the first time. ‘My name — it’s got my own name on it.’ He stroked the engraving on the barrel with his fingertip, then looked up at his father with myopic adoration.
‘I wish you’d brought them anything but guns,’ Tara burst out. ‘I asked you not to, Shasa. I hate them.’
‘Well, my dear, they must have rifles if they are coming on a hunting safari with me.’
‘A safari!’ Sean shouted gleefully. ‘When?’
‘It’s time you learned about the bush and the animals.’ Shasa put his arm around Sean’s shoulders. ‘You can’t live in Africa without knowing the difference between a scaly anteater and a chacma baboon.’
Garry snatched up his new rifle and went to stand as close to his father’s side as he could, so that Shasa could also put his other arm around his shoulders – if he wanted to. However, Shasa was talking to Sean.
‘We’ll go up to the south-west in the June hols, take a couple of trucks from the H’ani Mine and drive through the desert until we reach the Okavango Swamps.’
‘Shasa, I don’t know how you can teach your own children to kill those beautiful animals. I really don’t understand it,’ Tara said bitterly.
‘Hunting is a man’s thing,’ Shasa agreed. ‘You don’t have to understand – you don’t even h
ave to watch.’
‘Can I come, Dad?’ Garry asked diffidently, and Shasa glanced at him.
‘You’ll have to polish up your new specs, so you can see what you’re shooting at.’ Then he relented. ‘Of course you are coming, Garry,’ and then he looked across at Michael, standing beside his mother. ‘What about you, Mickey? Are you interested?’
Michael glanced apologetically at his mother before he replied softly. ‘Gee, thanks Dad. It should be fun.’
‘Your enthusiasm is touching,’ Shasa grunted and then, ‘Very well, gentlemen, all the rifles locked in the gun room, please. Nobody touches them again without my permission and my supervision. We’ll have our first shooting practice this evening when I get back home.’
Shasa made a point of getting back to Weltevreden with two hours of daylight in hand, and he took the boys down to the range he had built over which to sight in his own hunting rifles. It was beyond the vineyards and far enough from the stables not to disturb the horses or any of the other livestock.
Sean, with the co-ordination of a born athlete, was a natural shot. The light rifle seemed immediately an extension of his body, and within minutes he had mastered the art of controlling his breathing and letting the shot squeeze away without effort. Michael was nearly as good, but his interest wasn’t really in it and he lost concentration quickly.
Garry tried so hard that he was trembling, and his face was screwed up with effort. The hom-rimmed spectacles which Tara had fetched from the optician that morning kept sliding down his nose and misting over as he aimed, and it took ten shots for him finally to get one on the target.
‘You don’t have to pull the trigger so hard, Garry.’ Shasa told him with resignation. ‘It won’t make the bullet go any further or any faster, I assure you.’
It was almost dark when the four of them got back to the house, and Shasa led them down to the gun room and showed them how to clean their weapons before locking them away.
‘Sean and Mickey are ready to have a crack at the pigeons,’ Shasa announced, as they trooped upstairs to change for dinner. ‘Garry, you will need a little more practice, a pigeon is more likely to die of old age than one of your bullets.’