by Wilbur Smith
He would not push Mandela further now, that could only lose Moses some of his gains. He would not give Mandela the opportunity to explain that he might be willing to use harder measures in the future. He had made Mandela appear a pacifist in the eyes of the militants, and in contrast had shown them his own fierce heart.
He drew back disdainfully from Nelson Mandela and he gave a soft scornful chuckle, as he glanced at the young men at the end of the table and shook his head as though he had given up on a dull and stubborn child.
Then he sat down, crossed his arms over his chest and let his chin sink forward on his chest. He took no further part in the conference, remaining a massive brooding presence, by his very silence mocking Mandela’s proposals for limited acts of sabotage on government property.
He had given them fine words, but Moses Gama knew that they would need deeds before they all accepted him as the true leader.
‘I will give them a deed – such a deed that will leave not a doubt in their hearts,’ he thought, and his expression was grim and determined.
The motorcycle was a gift from his father. It was a huge Harley Davidson with a seat like a cowboy saddle and the gear shift was on the side of the silver tank. Sean was not quite sure why Shasa had given it to him. His final results at Costello’s Academy didn’t merit such paternal generosity. Perhaps Shasa was relieved that he had managed to scrape through at all, and on the other hand perhaps he felt that encouragement was what Sean needed now, or again it might merely be an expression of Shasa’s guilt feelings towards his eldest son. Sean didn’t care to consider it too closely. It was a magnificent machine, all chrome and enamel and red glass diamond reflectors, flamboyant enough to catch the eye of any young lady, and Sean had wound it up to well over the ton on the straight stretch of road beyond the airport.
Now, however, the engine was burbling softly between his knees, and as they reached the crest of the hill he switched off the headlight and then as gravity took the heavy machine, he cut the engine. They free-wheeled down silently in darkness, and there were no street lights in this elegant suburb. The plots of land around each grand home were the size of small farms.
Near the foot of the hill Sean swung the Harley Davidson off the road. They bumped through a shallow ditch into a clump of trees. They climbed off and Sean pulled the motorcycle up on to its kick stand.
‘OK?’ he asked his companion. Rufus was not one of Sean’s friends whom he could invite back to Weltevreden to meet the folks. Sean had only met him through their mutual love for motorcycles. He was smaller than Sean by at least four inches, and at first glance appeared to be a skinny runt of a lad with a grey complexion as though road grime and sump oil had soaked into his skin. He had nervously shy mannerisms, hanging his head and avoiding eye contact. It had taken some time for Sean to realize that Rufus’s lean body was sinewy hard, that he was as quick and agile as a whippet, and that his whining voice and shifty eyes hid a sharp street-wise intelligence and a caustic and irreverent wit. It had not taken long after that for him to be promoted to the rank of principal lieutenant in Sean’s gang.
Since graduating without particular distinction from Costello’s Academy, his father had insisted that Sean enter articles with the object of one day becoming a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. The auditors of the Courtney Mining and Finance, Messrs Rifkin and Markovitch, had been prevailed upon, not without some misgivings on their part, to accept Sean as an articled clerk. This employment was not as dreary as Sean had at first imagined. He had no compunction in using the family name and his boundless charm to work himself into the plummiest audits, preferably of those companies which employed a large female staff, and none of the senior partners had courage enough to report to Shasa Courtney that his favourite son was on a free ride. The Courtney account was worth almost a quarter of a million pounds annually.
Sean was never more than an hour late for work in the morning, his hangover or his lack of sleep hidden by gold-framed aviator’s glasses and his brilliant smile. A little judicious rest during the morning and some light banter with the typists and female clerks would set him up for a lunch at the Mount Nelson or Kelvin Grove which ended just in time for a swift return to the office to hand in an imaginative report to the senior partner, after which he was free for a game of squash or an hour’s polo practice at Weltevreden.
He usually took dinner at home, it was cheaper than eating out, and although Shasa added substantially to the miserly salary paid by Messrs Rifkin and Markovitch, Sean was always in a financial crisis. After dinner he was free to shed his dinner jacket and black tie and change into a leather cycling jacket and steel-shod boots and then his other life beckoned, the life so different from his diurnal existence, a life of excitement and danger, full of colourful fascinating beings, of eager women and satisfying companions, of deliberate risks and wild adventures – like the one this evening.
Rufus unzipped his black leather jacket and grinned at him. ‘Ready, willing and able, as the actress said to the bishop.’ Under the jacket he wore a black roll-neck sweater, black trousers and on his head a black cloth cap.
They didn’t have to discuss what they were about to do. They had worked together on the same kind of job four times already, and all the planning had been gone over in detail. However, Rufus’s grin was pale and tense in the starlight beneath the trees. This was their most ambitious project yet. Sean felt the delicious blend of fear and excitement like raw spirit in his blood tingling and charging him.
This was what he did it for, this feeling, this indescribable euphoria with which danger always charged him. This was just the first tickle of it, it would grow stronger, more possessing, as the danger increased. He often wondered just how high he could go, there must be a zenith beyond which it was not possible to rise, but unlike the sexual climax which was intense but so fleeting, Sean knew he had not even approached the ultimate thrill of danger. He wondered what it would be like, killing a man with his bare hands? Killing a woman the same way – but doing it as she reached her own climax beneath him? The very idea of that always gave him an aching erection, but until those opportunities presented themselves, he would savour the lesser moments such as these.
‘Nail?’ Rufus asked, offering him his cigarette tin, but Sean shook his head. He wanted nothing to blunt his enjoyment, not nicotine nor alcohol, he wanted to experience the utmost enjoyment of every instant.
‘Smoke half of it and then follow me,’ he ordered, and slipped away amongst the trees.
He followed the footpath along the low bank of the stream and then crossed at a shallow place, stepping lightly over the exposed rocks. The high diamond-mesh security fence was on the opposite bank, and he squatted below it. He didn’t have to wait long. Within seconds a wolflike shape appeared out of the darkness beyond the fence, and the moment it saw him the German shepherd rushed at him, hurling itself against the heavy-gauge wire fence.
‘Hey, Prince,’ Sean said quietly, leaning toward the animal, showing not the least sign of fear. ‘Come on, boy, you know me.’
The dog recognized him at last. It had only barked once, not creating enough of an uproar to alert the household, and now Sean gently pushed his fingers through the diamond mesh, talking softly and soothingly. The dog sniffed his hand and its long tail began to wave back and forth in friendly salutation. Sean had a way with all living creatures, not only humans. The dog licked his fingers.
Sean whistled softly and Rufus scrambled up the bank behind him. Immediately the German shepherd stiffened and the hair on its back came erect. It growled throatily and Sean whispered, ‘Don’t be a fool, Prince. Rufus is a friend.’
It took another five minutes for Sean to introduce the two of them, but at last in response to Sean’s urging, Rufus gingerly put his fingers through the mesh and the dog sniffed them carefully and wagged his tail.
‘I’ll go over first,’ Sean said, and swarmed up the high fence. There were three strands of barbed wire at the top, but Sean flic
ked his body over, feet first, arching his back like a gymnast. He dropped lightly to earth and the dog rose on its hind legs and placed its front paws on his chest. Sean fondled his head, holding him while Rufus came over the barbed wire with even greater agility than Sean had.
‘Let’s go,’ Sean whispered, and with the guard dog padding along beside them they went up towards the house, crouching as they ran and keeping to the shadow of the ornamental shrubs until they flattened against the wall, shrinking into the leafy ivy that covered the brickwork.
The house was a double-storeyed mansion, almost as imposing as Weltevreden. It belonged to another leading Cape family, close friends of the Courtneys. Mark Weston had been at school with Shasa and in the same engineering class at university. His wife, Marjorie, was a contemporary of Tara Courtney’s. They had two teenage daughters, the elder of which Sean had deprived of her virginity the previous year, and then dropped without another phone call.
The seventeen-year-old child had suffered a nervous breakdown, refusing to eat, threatening suicide and weeping endlessly until she had had to be taken out of school. Marjorie Weston had sent for Sean to try to remonstrate with him, and persuade him to let her daughter down gently. She had arranged the meeting without her daughter’s knowledge, and while her husband was on one of his regular business trips to Johannesburg.
She took Sean to her sewing room on the ground floor and locked the door. It was Thursday afternoon, the servants’ day off, and her younger daughter was at school while the eldest, Veronica, was in her bedroom upstairs palely pining.
Marjorie patted the sofa. ‘Please come and sit next to me, Sean.’ She was determined to keep the interview friendly. It was only when he was beside her that Marjorie realized how infernally goodlooking he was. Even more so than his father, and Marjorie had always had a strong fancy for Shasa Courtney.
She found that she was becoming a little breathless as she reasoned with Sean, but it was only when she placed her hand on his bare arm and felt the elastic muscle under the smooth young skin that she realized what was happening.
Sean had the philanderer’s sure and certain instinct, perhaps he had inherited it from his father. He hadn’t really thought about Veronica’s mother that way. God! She was as old as his mother. However, since Clare East he had always had a taste for older women, and Marjorie Weston was slim and athletic from swimming and tennis and meticulously tanned to disguise the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and the first signs of crêping at her throat; and where Veronica was vacuous and simpering, her mother was poised and mature, but with the same mauve-blue eyes that had first attracted him to the daughter and an even more carefully groomed mane of thick tawny hair.
As Sean became aware of her excitement, the flush of blood beneath her tan, the agitated breathing that made her bosom beneath the angora jersey and pearls work like a bellows and the subtle change in her body odour that the average male would not have noticed, but which to Sean was like an invitation on an embossed card, he found his own arousal was spiced by the perversity of the situation.
‘A double,’ he thought. ‘Mother and daughter – now that’s something different.’
He didn’t have to plot further, he let his infallible instinct guide him.
‘You are much more attractive than your daughters could ever be – the main reason I broke off with Ronny was I couldn’t bear being near you without being able to do this—’ and he leaned over her and kissed her with an open mouth.
Marjorie had believed herself to be in complete control of the situation right up until the moment she tasted his mouth. Neither of them spoke again until he was kneeling in front of her, holding her knees apart with both hands, and she was sprawled across the sofa with her pleated skirt rucked up around her waist. Then she panted brokenly, ‘Oh Christ, I can’t believe this is happening – I must be crazy.’
Now she sat at the foot of the stairs in her satin bathrobe. She was naked under the robe and every few seconds she shivered in a brief spasm. The night was warm, and the house was in darkness. The girls were asleep upstairs and Mark was away on one of his regular business trips. This was the first chance at an assignation there had been in almost two weeks and she was shivering with anticipation. She had switched off the burglar alarms at nine o’clock as they had arranged – Sean was almost half an hour late. Perhaps something had happened and he wasn’t coming after all. She hugged herself and shivered miserably at the thought, then she heard the light tap on the glass of the french windows leading on to the swimming-pool patio, and she leapt to her feet and raced across the darkened room. She found she was panting as she fumbled with the latch.
Sean stepped into the room and seized her. He was so tall and powerful that she turned to putty in his arms. No man had ever kissed her like this, so masterfully and yet so skilfully. She sometimes wondered who had taught him and then was consumed by jealousy at the thought. Her need of him was so intense that waves of giddy vertigo washed over her and without his arms to support her she was certain she would have sagged to the floor. Then he tugged at the knot that secured the belt of her robe. It came undone and he thrust his hand into the opening. She shifted her weight, setting her feet wider apart so he could reach her more easily, and she gave a stifled gasp as she felt him slip his forefinger into her and she pushed hard against his hand.
‘Lovely,’ Sean chuckled in her ear. ‘Like the Zambezi River in flood.’
‘Shh,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll wake the girls.’ Marjorie liked to think of herself as genteel and refined, yet his crude words increased her excitation to a fever. ‘Lock the door,’ she ordered him, her voice thick and shaking. ‘Let’s go upstairs.’
He released her and turned to the door. He pressed it closed until the catch snapped and then turned the key and in the same instant reversed the movement, leaving it unlocked.
‘All right.’ He turned back to Marjorie. ‘All set.’
They kissed again, and she ran her hands frantically down the front of his body, feeling the throbbing hardness through the thin cloth. It was she who broke away at last.
‘Oh, God, I can’t wait any longer.’ She took his hand and dragged him up the marble staircase. The girls’ bedrooms were in the east wing and Marjorie locked the heavy mahogany door that secured the master suite. They were safe from discovery here, and at last she could let herself go completely.
Marjorie Weston had been married for over twenty years, and she had taken about the same number of lovers in that time. Some of them had merely been mad one-night frolics, others had been longer, more permanent liaisons. One had lasted for almost all these twenty years, an erratic on-and-off arrangement, passionate interludes interspersed with long periods of denial. However, none of her other lovers had been able to match this stripling in beauty and performance, in physical endurance and in devilish inventiveness, not even Shasa Courtney who was that other long-term lover. The son had the same intuitive understanding of her needs. He knew when to be rough and cruel and when to be loving and gentle, but in other ways he outstripped his father. She had never been able to exhaust him or even to force him to falter, and he had a streak of genuine brutality and inherent evil in him that could terrify her at times. Added to that was the almost incestuous delight of taking the son after having had the father.
Tonight Sean did not disappoint her. While she was driving hard towards her first climax of the evening he suddenly reached out to the bedside table and lifted the telephone receiver.
‘Ring your husband,’ he ordered, and thrust the instrument into her hand.
‘God, are you mad!’ she gasped. ‘What would I say to him?’
‘Do it!’ he said, and she realized that if she refused, he would slap her across the face. He had done that before.
Still holding him between her thighs, she twisted awkwardly and dialled the Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg. When the hotel operator answered, she said, ‘I wish to speak to Mr Mark Weston in Suite 1750.’
‘You are
going through,’ the operator said, and Mark answered on the third ring.
‘Hello, darling,’ Marjorie said, and above her Sean began to move again. ‘I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d ring you. Sorry if I woke you.’
It became a contest, with Sean trying to force her to gasp or cry out, while she attempted to maintain a casual conversation with Mark. When he succeeded and she gave a little involuntary squeal, Mark asked sharply, ‘What was that?’
‘I made myself a cup of Milo and it was too hot. I burned my lip.’
She could see how it was exciting Sean also. His face was no longer beautiful but swollen and flushed so that his features seemed coarsened, and in her she felt him swell and harden, filling her to bursting point, until she could control herself no longer, and she broke off the telephone conversation abruptly. ‘Goodnight, Mark, sleep well,’ and slammed the receiver down on its cradle, just as the first scream came bursting up her throat.
Afterwards they lay still, both of them regaining their breath, but when he tried to roll off her she tightened the grip of her legs and held him hard. She knew that if she could keep him from sliding out, within minutes he would be ready again.
Outside on the front lawn, the dog barked once. ‘Is someone there?’ she asked.
‘No. Prince is just being naughty,’ Sean murmured, but he was listening intently, even though he knew that Rufus was too good to be heard, and they had planned every detail with care. Both he and Rufus knew exactly what they were after.
To commemorate the first month of their affair, Marjorie had bought Sean a set of Victorian dress studs and links in platinum and onyx and diamonds. She had invited him up to the house on a Thursday afternoon and led him through to Mark Weston’s panelled study on the ground floor. While Sean watched, she checked the combination of the wall safe which was discreetly engraved on the corner of the silver-framed photograph of herself and the girls on Mark’s desk, and then she had swung aside the false front of the section of the bookcase that concealed the safe and tumbled the combination of the lock.