by Wilbur Smith
‘My God,’ Blaine breathed, ‘that’s a new line. It used always to be the Afrikaner Republic exclusively, and nobody took it seriously, least of all the Afrikaners. But this time he is serious, and he has started something that is going to raise a stink. I remember all too well the controversy over the flag, back in the 1920s. That will seem like a love feast compared to the idea of a republic—’ He broke off to listen as Verwoerd ended:
‘Thus I give you my assurance that from now on the sacred ideal of Republic will be passionately pursued.’
When the Prime Minister finished speaking, Shasa crossed the room and switched off the radio; then he turned and stood with his hands thrust deeply into his pockets, and his shoulders hunched as he studied their faces. They were all of them subdued and shaken. For one hundred and fifty years the country had been British, and there was a pride and a vast sense of security in that state. Now it was to change, and they were afraid. Even Shasa felt strangely bereft and uncertain.
‘He doesn’t mean it. It’s just another sop for his own people. They are always ranting about the republic,’ Centaine said hopefully, but Blaine shook his head.
‘We don’t know this man very well yet. We only know what he wrote when he was editor of Transvaler, and we know with what vigour and determination he has set about segregating our society. There is one other thing we have learned about him. He is a man who means exactly what he says, and who will let nothing stand in his way.’ He reached across and took Centaine’s hand. ‘No, my heart. You are wrong. He means it.’
They both looked up at Shasa, and Centaine asked for both of them, ‘What will you do, chéri?’
‘I am not sure that I will have any choice. They say he brooks no opposition, and I opposed him. I lobbied for Dönges. I may not be on the list when he announces his cabinet on Monday.’
‘It will be hard to move to the back bench again,’ Blaine remarked.
‘Too hard,’ Shasa nodded. ‘And I will not do it.’
‘Oh, chéri,’ Centaine cried. ‘You would not resign your seat – after all we have sacrificed, after all our hard work and hopes.’
‘We’ll know on Monday,’ Shasa shrugged, trying not to let them see how bitterly disappointed he was. He had held true power for too short a time, just long enough to learn to enjoy the taste of it. He knew, furthermore, that there was so much he had to offer his country, so many of his efforts almost ready for harvesting. It would be hard to watch them wither and die with his own ambitions, before he had even tasted the first sweets, but Verwoerd would sack him from his cabinet. He could not doubt it for a moment.
“‘If you can meet with triumph and disaster”,’ Centaine quoted, and then laughed gaily, with only the barest tremor in it. ‘Now, chéri, let’s open a bottle of champagne. It’s the only way to treat those two impostors of Kipling’s.’
Shasa entered his office in the House, and looked around it regretfully. It had been his for five years, and now he would have to pack up his books and paintings and furniture; the panelling and carpeting he would leave as a gift to the nation. He had hoped to make a larger bequest than that, and he grimaced and went to sit behind his desk for the last time and try to assess where he had erred and what he could have done if he had been allowed. The telephone on his desk rang, and he picked it up before his secretary in the outer office could reach it.
‘This is the Prime Minister’s secretary,’ the voice told him, and for a moment he thought of the dead man and not his successor.
‘The Prime Minister would like to see you as soon as is convenient.’
‘I will come right away, of course,’ Shasa replied, and as he replaced the receiver he thought, ‘So he personally wants to have the pleasure of chopping me down.’
Verwoerd kept him waiting only ten minutes and then rose from behind his desk to apologize as Shasa entered his office. ‘Forgive me. It has been a busy day,’ and Shasa smiled at the understatement. His smile was not forced, for Verwoerd was displaying all his enormous charm, his voice soft and lulling, unlike the higher harsher tone of his public utterances, and he actually came around the desk and took Shasa’s arm in an avuncular grip. ‘But, of course, I had to speak to you, as I have spoken to all the members of my new cabinet.’
Shasa started so that he pulled his arm out of the other man’s grip, and they turned to face each other.
‘I am keeping the portfolio of Mines and Industry open, and of course there is no man better qualified for the job than you. I have liked your presentations to the old cabinet. You know what you are talking about.’
‘I cannot pretend not to be surprised, Prime Minister,’ Shasa told him quietly, and Verwoerd chuckled.
‘It is good to be unpredictable at times.’
‘Why? Shasa asked. ‘Why me?’ Verwoerd cocked his head on the side, a characteristic gesture of interrogation, but Shasa insisted, ‘I know you value straight talk, Prime Minister, so I will say it. You have no reason to like me or to consider me an ally.’
‘That is true,’ Verwoerd agreed. ‘But I don’t need sycophants. I have enough of those already. What I have considered is that the job you are doing is vital to the eventual well-being of our land, and that there is no one who could do it better. I am sure we will learn to work together.’
‘Is that all, Prime Minister?’
‘You have mentioned that I like to talk straight. Very well, that is not all. You probably heard me begin my premiership with an appeal for a drawing together of the two sections of our white population, an appeal to Boer and Briton to forget old worn-out antipathy and side by side to build the Republic. How would it look if with the next breath I fired the only Englishman in my government?’
They both laughed, and then Shasa shook his head. ‘On the matter of the Republic I will oppose you,’ he warned, and for a moment saw through a chink the cold and monolithic ego of a man who would never bow to the contrary view, and then the chink was closed and Verwoerd chuckled.
‘Then I will have to convince you that you are wrong. In the meantime you will be my conscience – what is the name of the character in the Disney story?’
‘Which one?’
‘The story of the puppet – Pinocchio, is it? What was the name of the cricket?’
‘Jiminy Cricket,’ Shasa told him.
‘Yes, in the meantime you will be my Jiminy Cricket. Do you accept the task?’
‘We both know it is my duty, Prime Minister.’ As Shasa said it, he thought cynically, ‘Isn’t it remarkable that once ambition has dictated, duty so readily concurs?’
They were dining out that night, but Shasa went to Tara’s room to tell her the news as soon as he had dressed.
She watched him in the mirror as he explained his reasons for accepting the appointment. Her expression was solemn but her voice had a brittle edge of contempt in it as she said, ‘I am delighted for you. I know that is what you want, and I know that you will be so busy you will not even notice that I am gone.’
‘Gone?’ he demanded.
‘Our bargain, Shasa. We agreed that I could go away for a while when I felt the need. Of course, I will return – that was also part of our bargain.’
He looked relieved. ‘Where will you go – and for how long?’
‘London,’ she replied. ‘And I should be away several months. I want to attend a course on archaeology at London University.’ She tried to hide it from him, but she was wildly, deliriously excited. She had only heard from Molly that afternoon, just after the new cabinet had been announced. Molly had a message. Moses had at last sent for her, and she had already booked passage for Benjamin, Miriam and herself on the Pendennis Castle to Southampton. She would take the child to meet his father.
The mailship sailing was an exciting event in which the citizens of the mother city, of whatever station in life, could join gaily. The deck was crowded and noisy. Paper streamers joined the tall ship to the quayside with a web of colour that fluttered in the south-easter. A coon band on the doc
k vied with the ship’s band high up on the promenade deck, and the old Cape favourite ‘Alabama’ was answered by ‘God Be With You Till We Meet Again’.
Shasa was not there. He had flown up to Walvis Bay to deal with some unforeseen problem at the canning factory. Nor was Sean, he was writing exams at Costello’s Academy, but Blaine and Centaine brought the other three children down to the docks to see Tara off on her voyage.
They stood in a small family group, surrounded by the crowd, each of them holding a paper streamer and waving up at Tara on the first-class ‘A’ deck. As the gap between the quay and the ship’s side opened, the foghorns boomed, and the paper streamers parted and floated down to settle on the dark waters of the inner harbour. The tugs pushed the great bows around until they lined up with the harbour entrance, and under the stern the gigantic propeller chopped the water into foam and drove her out into Table Bay.
Tara ran lightly up the companionway to her stateroom. She had protested only mildly when Shasa had insisted that she cancel her original bookings in tourist and travel first class. ‘My dear, there are bound to be people we know on board. What would they think of my wife travelling steerage?’
‘Not steerage, Shasa – tourist.’
‘Everything below “A” deck is steerage,’ he had replied, and now she was glad of his snobbery, for the stateroom was a private place where she could have Ben all to herself. It would have excited curiosity if she had been seen with a coloured child on the public deck. As Shasa had pointed out, there were watching eyes on board, and the reports would have flown back to Shasa like homing pigeons. However, Miriam Afrika had good-naturedly agreed to wear a servant’s livery and to act out the subterfuge of being Tara’s maid during the voyage. Her husband had reluctantly let her go with Tara to England, despite the disruption to his own household. Tara had compensated him generously and Miriam had come aboard with the child registered as her own.
Tara hardly left her stateroom during the entire voyage, declining the captain’s offer to join his table and shunning the cocktail parties and fancy-dress dance. She never tired of being with Moses’ son, her love was a hunger that could never be appeased and even when, exhausted by her attentions, Benjamin fell asleep in his cot, Tara hovered over him constantly. ‘I love you,’ she whispered to him, ‘best in the world after your daddy,’ and she did not think of the other children, not even Michael. She ordered all their meals to be sent up to her suite, and ate with Benjamin, almost jealously taking over his care from Miriam. Only late at night with the greatest reluctance did she let her carry the child away to the tourist cabin on the deck below.
The days sped by swiftly and, at last, holding Benjamin’s hand she stepped off the gangplank to the boat train in Southampton Docks for the ride up to London.
Again at Shasa’s insistence, she had taken the suite at the Dorchester overlooking the Park that the family always used, with a single room at the back for Miriam and the baby for which she requested a separate bill and paid in cash out of her own pocket so that Shasa would have no record of it on her bank statement.
There was a message from Moses waiting for her at the porter’s desk when she registered. She recognized the handwriting. She opened the envelope the moment she entered the suite, and felt the cold slide of disappointment. He wrote very formally:
Dear Tara,
I am sorry I was not able to meet you. However, it is necessary for me to attend important talks in Amsterdam with our friends. I will contact you immediately on my return.
Yours sincerely,
Moses Gama.
She was thrown into black despair by the tone of the letter and the dashing of her expectations. Without Miriam and the child she would have despaired. However, they passed the waiting days in the parks and Zoo, and in long walks along the river bank and through London’s fascinating alleys and convoluted streets. She shopped for Benjamin at Marks & Spencer and C & A, avoiding Harrods and Selfridges, for those were Shasa’s haunts.
Tara registered at the university for the course in African archaeology. She did not trust Shasa not to check that she had done so. In accordance with Shasa’s other expectations she even dressed in her most demure twin set and pearls and took a cab up to Trafalgar Square to make a courtesy call on the High Commissioner at South Africa House. She could not avoid his invitation to lunch and had to show a bright face during a meal whose menu and wine-list and fellow guests could have been taken straight from a similar gathering at Weltevreden. She listened to the editor of the Daily Telegraph, who sat beside her, but kept glancing out of the windows at Nelson’s tall column, and longed to be free as the cloud of pigeons that circled it. Her duty done, she escaped at last, only just in time to get back to the Dorchester and give Ben his bath.
She had bought him a plastic tugboat at Hamley’s toy shop which was a great success, and Ben sat in the bath and chuckled with delight as the tugboat circled him.
Tara was laughing and drying her hands when Miriam came through from the lounge to the bathroom.
‘There is somebody to see you, Tara.’
‘Who is it?’ Tara demanded without rising from where she knelt beside the bath.
‘He wouldn’t give his name.’ Miriam kept a straight face. ‘I will finish bathing Ben.’
Tara hesitated, she did not want to waste a minute away from her son. ‘Oh all right,’ she agreed, and with the towel in her hand she went through to the lounge, and stopped abruptly in the doorway.
The shock was so intense that her face drained of blood and she swayed giddily and had to snatch at the door jamb to steady herself.
‘Moses,’ she whispered, staring at him.
He wore a long tan-coloured trenchcoat, and the epauletted shoulders were spattered with rain drops. The coat seemed to accentuate his height and the breadth of his shoulders. She had forgotten the grandeur of his presence. He did not smile, but regarded her with that steady heart-checking stare of his.
‘Moses,’ she said again, and took a faltering step towards him. ‘Oh, God, you’ll never know how slowly the years have passed since last I saw you.’
‘Tara.’ His voice thrilled every fibre of her being. ‘My wife,’ and he held out his arms to her.
She flew to him and he enfolded her and held her close. She pressed her face to his chest and clung to him, inhaling the rich masculine smell of his body, as warm and exciting as the herby smell of the African noonday. For many seconds neither of them moved or spoke except for the involuntary tremors that shook Tara’s body and the little moaning sound she made in her throat.
Then gently he held her off and took her face between his hands and lifted it to look into her eyes.
‘I have thought about you every day,’ he said, and suddenly she was weeping. The tears streamed down her cheeks, and into the corners of her mouth, so that when he kissed her, their metallic salt mingled with the slick taste of his saliva.
Miriam brought Benjamin out to them, clean and dry and dressed in his new blue pyjamas. He regarded his father solemnly.
‘I greet you, my son,’ Moses whispered. ‘May you grow as strong and beautiful as the land of your birth,’ and Tara thought that her heart might stop with the pride and sheer joy of seeing them together for the first time.
Though the colour of their skins differed, Benjamin was caramel and chocolate cream while Moses was amber and African bronze, Tara could see the resemblance in the shape of their heads and the set of jaw and brow. They had the same wide-spaced eyes, the same noses and lips, and to her they were the two most beautiful beings in her existence.
Tara kept the suite at the Dorchester, for she knew that Shasa would contact her there and that any invitations from South Africa House or correspondence from the university would be addressed to her at the hotel. But she moved into Moses’ flat off the Bayswater Road.
The flat belonged to the Ethiopian Emperor, and was kept for the use of his diplomatic staff. However, Haile Selassie had placed it at Moses Gama’s disposal for as
long as he needed it. It was a large rambling apartment, with dark rooms and a strange mixture of furnishings, well-worn Western sofas and easy chairs with hand-woven woollen Ethiopian rugs and wall hangings. The ornaments were African artefacts, carved ebony statuettes, crossed two-handed broadswords, bronze Somali shields and Coptic Christian crosses and icons, in native silver studded with semi-precious stones.
They slept on the floor, in the African manner, on thin hard mattresses filled with coir. Moses even used a small wooden head stool as a pillow, though Tara could not accustom herself to it. Benjamin slept with Miriam in the bedroom at the end of the passage.
Love-making was as naturally part of Moses Gama’s life as eating or drinking or sleeping, and yet his skills and his consideration of her needs were an endless source of wonder and delight to her. She wanted more than anything else in life to bear him another child. She tried consciously to open the mouth of her womb, willing it to expand like a flower bud to accept his seed, and long after he had fallen asleep she lay with her thighs tightly crossed and her knees raised so as not to spill a precious drop, imagining herself a sponge for him, or a bellows to draw his substance up deeply into herself.
Yet the times they were alone were far too short for Tara, and it irked her that the flat seemed always filled with strangers. She hated to share Moses with them, wanting him all for herself. He understood this, and when she had been churlish and sulky in the presence of others, he reminded her sternly.
‘I am the struggle, Tara. Nothing, nobody, comes ahead of that. Not even my own longings, not my life itself can come before my duty to the cause. If you take me, then you make that same sacrifice.’