by Wilbur Smith
‘How much?’ Moses asked with a smile. ‘How much did he need to compensate him for a marriage outside the tribe?’
‘Five hundred head of prime cattle, all cows in calf, none older than three years,’ Hendrick scowled with outrage. ‘All Zulus are thieves and he claims to be a prince, which makes him a prince of thieves.’
‘Naturally you agreed to his first price?’ Moses asked.
‘Naturally I argued for two more days.’
‘The final price?’
‘Two hundred head,’ Hendrick sighed. ‘Forgive me, my brother. I tried, but the old dog of a Zulu was like a rock. It was his very lowest price for the moon of his night.’
Moses Gama leaned back in his chair, and thought about it. It was an enormous price. Prime cattle were worth £50 the head, but unlike his brother, Moses Gama had no yen for money other than as a means to procure an end.
‘Ten thousand pounds?’ he asked softly. ‘Do we have that much?’
‘It will hurt. I will ache for a year as though I have been whipped with a sjambok,’ Hendrick grumbled. ‘Do you realize just how much else a man could buy with ten thousand pounds, my brother? I could get you at least ten Xhosa maidens, pretty as sugar birds and plump as guinea fowl, each with her maidenhead attested by the most reliable midwife—’
‘Ten Xhosa maidens would not bring the Zulu people within my reach,’ Moses cut him off. ‘I need Victoria Dinizulu.’
‘The lobola is not the only price demanded,’ Hendrick told him. ‘There is more.’
‘What else?’
‘The girl is a Christian. If you take her, there will be no others. She will be your only wife, my brother, and listen to a man who has paid for wisdom in the heavy coin of experience. Three wives are the very minimum a man needs for contentment. Three wives are so busy competing with one another for their husband’s favour that a man can relax. Two wives are better than one. However, a single wife, a one and only wife, can sour the food in your belly and frost your hair with silver. Let this Zulu wench go to someone who deserves her, another Zulu.’
‘Tell her father that we will pay the price he asks and that we agree to his terms. Tell him also that if he is a prince, then we expect him to provide a marriage feast that befits a princess. We expect a marriage that will be the talk of Zululand from the Drakensberg Mountains to the ocean. I want every chieftain and elder of the tribe there to see me wed, I want every counseller and induna, I want the King of the Zulus himself to come and when they are all assembled, I will speak to them.’
‘You might as well talk to a troop of baboons. A Zulu is too proud and too full of hatred to listen to sense.’
‘You are wrong, Hendrick Tabaka.’ Moses laid his hand on his brother’s arm. ‘We are not proud enough, nor do we hate enough. What pride we do have, the little hatred that we do have, is misspent and ill-directed. We waste it on each other, on other black men. If all the tribes of this land took all their pride and all their hatred and turned it on the white oppressor – then how could he resist us? This is what I will talk about when I speak at my wedding feast. This is what I have to teach the people. It is for this that we are forging Umkhonto we Sizwe, the Spear of the Nation.’
They were silent awhile. The depth of his brother’s vision, the terrible power of his commitment, always awed Hendrick.
‘It will be as you wish,’ he agreed at last. ‘When do you wish the wedding to take place?’
‘On the full moon of mid-winter.’ Moses did not hesitate. ‘That will be the week before our campaign of defiance begins.’
Again they were silent, until Moses roused himself. ‘It is settled, then. Is there anything else we should discuss before we take the evening meal?’
‘Nothing.’ Hendrick rose to his feet and was about to call his women to bring their food, when he remembered. ‘Ah. There is one other thing. The white woman, the woman who was with you at Rivonia — do you know the one?’
Moses nodded. ‘Yes, the Courtney woman.’
‘That is the one. She has sent a message. She wishes to see you again.’
‘Where is she?’
‘She is close by, at a place called Sundi Caves. She has left a telephone number for you. She says it is an important matter.’
Moses Gama was clearly annoyed. ‘I told her not to try and contact me,’ he said. ‘I warned her of the dangers.’ He stood up and paced the floor. ‘Unless she learns discipline and self-control, she will be of no value to the struggle. White women are like that, spoiled and disobedient and self-indulgent. She must be trained—’
Moses broke off and went to the window. Something in the yard had caught his attention, and he called out sharply.
‘Wellington! Raleigh! Come here, both of you.’
A few seconds later the two boys shuffled self-consciously into the room, and stood just inside the door, hanging their heads guiltily.
‘Raleigh, what has happened to you?’ Hendrick demanded angrily. The twins had changed their furs and loincloths for their ordinary clothing, but the gash in Raleigh’s forehead was still weeping through the wad of grubby rags he had strapped on it. There were speckles of blood on his shirt, and the swelling had closed one eye.
‘Baba!’ Wellington started to explain: ‘It was not our fault. We were set upon by the Zulus.’ And Raleigh darted a look of contempt at him before he contradicted his twin.
‘We arranged a faction fight with them. It went well, until some of us ran away and left the others.’ Raleigh raised his hand to his injured head. ‘There are cowards even amongst the Xhosa,’ he said, and again glanced at his twin. Wellington stood silent.
‘Next time fight harder and show more cunning,’ Hendrick Tabaka dismissed them and when they scurried from the room he turned to Moses. ‘Do you see, my brother. Even with the children, what hope do you have of changing it?’
‘The hope is with the children,’ Moses told him. ‘Like monkeys, you can train them to do anything. It is the old ones who are difficult to change.’
Tara Courtney parked her shabby old Packard on the edge of the mountain drive and stood for a few seconds looking down on the city of Cape Town spread below her. The south-easter was whipping the waters of Table Bay to cream.
She left the car and walked slowly along the verge, pretending to admire the flush of wild flowers which painted the rocky slope above her. At the head of the slope the grey rock bastion of the mountain rose sheer to the heavens, and she stopped walking and tilted her head back to look up at it. The clouds were driving over the top, creating the illusion that the wall of rock was falling.
Once again she darted a glance along the road up which she had driven. It was still empty. She was not being followed. The police must have finally lost interest in her. It was-weeks since last she had been aware of being tailed.
Her aimless behaviour altered and she returned to the Packard and took a small picnic basket from the boot, then she walked quickly back to the concrete building that housed the lower cable station. She ran up the stairs and paid for a return ticket just as the attendant opened the doors at the end of the waiting room, and the small party of other passengers trooped out to the gondola and crowded into it.
The crimson car started with a jerk and they rose swiftly, dangling below the silvery thread of the cable. The other passengers were exclaiming with delight as the spreading panorama of ocean and rock and city opened below them, and Tara inspected them surreptitiously. Within a few minutes she was convinced that none of them were plainclothes members of the Special Branch and she relaxed and turned her attention to the magnificent view.
The gondola was climbing steeply, rising almost vertically up the face of the cliff. The rock had weathered into almost geometrical cubes, so that they seemed to be the ancient building blocks of a giant’s castle. They passed a party of rock-climbers roped together inching their way hand over hand up the sheer face. Tara imagined being out there, clinging to the rock with the empty drop sucking at her heels, and vertigo
made her sway dizzily. She had to clutch the handrail to steady herself, and when the gondola docked at the top station on the brink of the thousand-foot-high cliff, she escaped from it thankfully.
In the little tearoom, built to resemble an Alpine Chalet, Molly was waiting for her at one of the tables and she jumped up when she saw her friend.
Tara rushed to her and embraced her. ‘Oh, Molly, my dear, dear, Molly, I have missed you so.’
After a few moments they drew apart, slightly embarrassed by their own display and the smiles of the other teashop customers.
‘I don’t want to sit still,’ Tara told her. ‘I’m just bursting with excitement. Come on, let’s walk. I’ve brought some sandwiches and a thermos.’
They left the tearoom and wandered along the path that skirted the precipice. In mid-week there were very few hikers on the mountain, and before they had gone a hundred yards they were alone.
‘Tell me about all my old friends in the Black Sash,’ Tara ordered. ‘I want to know everything you have been doing. How is Derek and how are the children? Who is running my clinic now? Have you been there recently? Oh, I so miss it all, all of you.’
‘Steady on,’ Molly laughed. ‘One question at a time—’ and she began to give Tara all the news. It took time, and while they chatted, they found a picnic spot and sat with their legs dangling over the cliff, drinking hot tea from the thermos, and with scraps of bread feeding the fluffy little hyrax, the rock rabbits that crept out of the crevices and cracks of the cliff.
At last they exhausted their stocks of news and gossip, and sat in companionable silence. Tara broke it at last.
‘Molly, I’m going to have another baby.’
‘Ah ha!’ Molly giggled. ‘So that’s what has been keeping you busy.’ She glanced at Tara’s stomach.
‘It doesn’t.show yet. Are you certain?’
‘Oh, for Pete’s sake, Molly. I’m hardly the simpering virgin, you know. Give me credit for the four I have already! Of course I’m certain.’
‘When is it due?’
‘January next year.’
‘Shasa will be pleased. He dotes on the kids. In fact, apart from money, they are the only things I’ve ever seen Shasa Courtney sentimental about. Have you told him yet?’
Tara shook her head. ‘No. You are the only one I’ve told. I came to you first.’
‘I’m flattered. I wish you both joy.’ Then she paused as she noticed Tara’s expression and studied her more seriously.
‘For Shasa there will be little joy in it, I’m afraid,’ Tara said softly. ‘It’s not Shasa’s baby.’
‘Good Lord, Tara! You of all people—’ Then she broke off, and thought about it. ‘I’m going to ask another silly question, Tara, darling, but how do you know it isn’t Shasa’s effort?’
‘Shasa and I – we haven’t – well, you know – we haven’t been man and wife since – oh, not for ages.’
‘I see.’ Despite her affection and friendship, Molly’s eyes sparkled with interest. This was intriguing. ‘But, Tara love, that isn’t the end of the world. Rush home now and get. Shasa’s pants off. Men are such clots, dates don’t mean much to them, and if he does start counting, you can always bribe the doctor to tell him it’s a prem.’
‘No, Molly, listen to me. If ever he saw the infant, he would know.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Molly, I am carrying Moses Gama’s baby.’
‘Sweet Christ!’ Molly whispered.
The strength of Molly’s reaction brought home to Tara the full gravity of the predicament in which she found herself.
Molly was a militant liberal, as colour-blind as Tara was herself, and yet Molly was stunned by the idea of a white woman bearing a black man’s infant. In this country miscegenation was an offence punishable by imprisonment, but that penalty was as nothing compared to the social outrage it would engender. She would become an outcast and a pariah.
‘Oh dear,’ Molly moderated her language. ‘Oh dear, oh dear! My poor Tara, what a mess you are in. Does Moses know?’
‘Not yet, but I hope to see him soon and I’ll tell him.’
‘You will have to get rid of it, of course. I have an address in Lourenço Marques. There is a Portuguese doctor there. We sent one of our girls from the orphanage to him. He’s expensive, but clean and good, not like some dirty old crone in a back room with a knitting needle.’
‘Oh, Molly, how could you think that of me? How could you believe I would murder my own baby?’
‘You are going to keep it?’ Molly gaped at her.
‘Of course.’
‘But, my dear, it will be—’
‘Coloured,’ Tara finished for her. ‘Yes, I know, probably café au lait in colour and with crispy black hair and I will love it with all my heart. Just as I love the father.’
‘I don’t see how—’
‘That’s why I came to you.’
‘I’ll do whatever you want – just tell me what that is.’
‘I want you to find me a coloured couple. Good decent people, preferably with children of their own, who will take care of the infant for me until I can arrange to take it myself. Of course, they will have all the money they need and more …’ Her voiced trailed off and she stared at Molly imploringly.
Molly considered for a minute. ‘I think I know the right couple. They are both school-teachers and they have four of their own, all girls. They’ll do it for me – but, Tara, how are you going to hide it? It will begin to show soon, you were huge with Isabella. Shasa might not notice, he’s so busy looking into his cheque book, but your mother-in-law is an absolute tartar. You couldn’t get anything by her.’
‘I’ve already made plans to cover that. I have convinced Shasa that I have conceived a burning interest in archaeology to replace my political activities and I’ve got a job on the dig at Sundi Caves with the American archaeologist, Professor Marion Hurst, you know.’
‘Yes, I’ve read two of her books.’
‘I’ve told Shasa that I will only be away for two months, but once I’m out of his sight I’ll just keep postponing my return. Centaine will look after the children, I’ve arranged that also, she loves doing it and, the Lord knows, the kids will benefit from it. She’s a much better disciplinarian than I am. They’ll be perfectly behaved angels by the time my beloved mother-in-law is finished with them.’
‘You’ll miss them,’ Molly stated, and Tara nodded.
‘Yes, of course, I shall miss them, but it’s only another six months to go.’
‘Where will you have the child?’ Molly persisted.
‘I don’t know. I can’t go to a recognized hospital or nursing home. Oh God, could you imagine the fuss if I produced a little brown bundle on their clean whites-only sheets, in their lovely clean whites-only maternity hospital. Anyway, there is plenty of time to arrange all that later. The first thing is to get away to Sundi, away from Centaine Courtney-Malcomess’ malevolent eye.’
‘Why Sundi, Tara, what made you choose Sundi?’
‘Because I will be near to Moses.’
‘Is it that important?’ Molly stared at her mercilessly. ‘Do you feel like that about him? It wasn’t just a little experiment, just a little kinky fun to find out what it is really like with one of them?’
Tara shook her head.
‘Are you sure, Tara? I mean I’ve had the same urge occasionally. I suppose it’s natural to be curious, but I’ve never been caught at it.’
‘Molly, I love him. If he asked me, I would lay down my life for him without a qualm.’
‘My poor sweet Tara.’ Tears started in Molly’s eyes, and she reached out with both arms. They hugged desperately and Molly whispered, ‘He is far beyond your reach, my darling. You can never, never have him.’
‘If I can have a little piece of him, for even a little while. That will be enough for me.’
Moses Gama parked the crimson and blue butcher’s van in one of the visitors’ bays and switched off the engine
. In front of him stretched lawns on which a single small sprinkler was trying to atone for all the frosts and drought of the highveld winter, but the Kikuyu grass was seared and lifeless. Beyond the lawn was the long double-storeyed block of the Baragwanath nurses’ home.
A small group of black nurses came up the pathway from the main hospital. They were in crisp white uniform, neat and efficient-looking, but when they drew level with the van and saw Moses at the wheel they dissolved into giggles, hiding their mouths with their hands in the instinctive gesture of subservience to the male.
‘Young woman, I wish to speak to you.’ Moses leaned out of the window of the van. ‘Yes, you!’ The chosen nurse was almost overcome with shyness. Her friends teased her as she approached Moses and paused timidly five paces from him.
‘Do you know Sister Victoria Dinizulu?’
‘Eh he!’ the nurse affirmed.
‘Where is she?’
‘She is coming now. She is on the day shift with me.’ The nurse looked around for escape, and instead picked out Victoria in the middle of the second group of white-clad figures coming up the path. ‘There she is. Victoria! Come quickly!’ the girl cried, and then fled, taking the steps up into the nurses’ home two at a time. Victoria recognized him, and with a word to her friends, left them and cut across the dry brown lawns, coming directly to him. Moses climbed out of the van, and she looked up at him.
‘I’m sorry. There was a terrible bus accident, we were working in theatre until the last case was attended to. I have kept you waiting.’
Moses nodded. ‘It’s not important. We have plenty of time still.’
‘It will take me only a few minutes to change into street clothes,’ she smiled up at him. Her teeth were perfect, so white that they seemed almost translucent, and her skin had the lustre of health and youth. ‘I am so pleased to see you again – but I do have a very big bone to pick with you.’ They were speaking English, and although hers was accented, she seemed confident in the language with a choice of words which matched his own fluency.