by Wilbur Smith
Shasa spoke for another thirty minutes and when he ended, his own fervour and sincerity had exhausted him; but then he saw how he had finally convinced his colleagues and he knew the results were worth the effort. He was convinced that from the horror of Sharpeville he could mount a fresh endeavour that would carry them to greater heights of prosperity and strength.
Shasa had always been resilient, with extraordinary recuperative powers. Even in his Air Force days, when he brought the squadron in from a sortie over the Italian lines and the others had sat around the mess, stunned and shattered by the experience, he had been the first to recover and to start the repartee and boisterous horseplay. Shasa left the cabinet room drained and exhausted but by the time he had driven the vintage Jaguar SS around the mountain and through the Anreith gate of Weltevreden, he was sitting up straight in the bucket seat, feeling confident and jaunty again.
The harvest was long past and the labourers were in the vineyards pruning the vines. Shasa parked the Jaguar and went down between the rows of bare leafless plants to talk to them and give them encouragement. Many of these men and women had been on Weltevreden since Shasa had been a child, and the younger ones had been born here. Shasa looked upon them as an extension of his family and they in turn regarded him as their patriarch. He spent half an hour with them listening to their small problems and worries, and settling most with a few words of assurance, then he broke off and left them abruptly as a figure on horseback came down the far side of the vineyard at full gallop.
From the corner of the stone wall Shasa watched Isabella gather her mount, and he stiffened as he realized what she was going to do. The mare was not yet fully schooled and Shasa had never trusted her temperament. The wall was of yellow Table Mountain sandstone, five foot high.
‘No, Bella!’ he whispered. ‘No, baby!’
But she turned the mare and drove her at the wall, and the horse reacted gamely. Her quarters bunched and the great muscles rippled below the glossy hide. Isabella lifted her and they went up.
Shasa held his breath, but even in his suspense he could appreciate what a magnificent sight they made, horse and rider, thoroughbreds both – the mare with her forelegs folded up under her chest and her ears pricked forward, soaring away from the earth, and Isabella leaning back in the saddle, her back arched and her young body supple and lovely, long legs and fine thrusting breasts, red mouth laughing and her hair flying free, sparkling with ruby lights in the late yellow sunlight.
Then they were over and Shasa exhaled sharply. Isabella swung the mare down to where he stood at the corner.
‘You promised to ride with me, Pater,’ she scolded him. Shasa’s instinct was to reprimand her for that jump, but he prevented himself. He knew she would probably respond by pulling the mare’s head around and taking the jump again from this side. He wondered just when he had lost control of her, and then grinned ruefully as he answered himself. ‘About ten minutes after she was born.’
The mare was dancing in a circle and Isabella flung her hair back with a toss of her head.
‘I waited almost an hour for you,’ she said.
‘Affairs of state—’ Shasa began.
‘That’s no excuse, Pater. A promise is a promise.’
‘It’s still not too late,’ he pointed out, and she laughed as she challenged him.
‘I’ll race that old banger of yours down to the stables!’ And she booted the mare into a gallop.
‘Not fair,’ he called after her. ‘You have too much start,’ but she turned in the saddle and stuck her tongue out at him. He ran to the Jag, but she cut across North Field and was dismounted by the time he drove into the stableyard.
She tossed her reins to a groom and ran to embrace him. Isabella had a variety of kisses, but this type, lingering and loving, with a little bit of ear-nuzzling at the end, was reserved for when she badly wanted something from him, something that she knew he was going to try to refuse.
While he pulled on his riding boots she sat close beside him on the bench and told him a funny story about her sociology professor at varsity.
‘This huge shaggy St Bernard wandered into the lecture theatre and Prof. Jacobs was quick as a flash. Better that the dogs should come to learning, he said, than learning should go to the dogs.’ She was a natural mimic. As they left the saddle room, she hugged his arm.
‘Oh, Daddy, if only I could find a boy like you, but they’re all so utterly dreary.’
‘Long may they remain that way,’ he wished fervently.
He made a cup with his hands for her to mount, but she laughed at him and sprang to the saddle easily on those long lovely legs.
‘Come on, slowcoach. It’ll be dark soon.’
Shasa enjoyed being alone with her. She enchanted him with her mercurial changes of mood and subject. She had a quick mind and quirky sense of humour to go with her extraordinary face and body, but she alarmed him when she showed flashes of that restless refusal to concentrate for long on a single topic. Sean had been like that, needing constant stimulation to hold his interest, easily bored by anything that could not keep the same breathless pace that he set. Shasa was amazed that Isabella had lasted out a year of university studies, but he was resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going to graduate. Every time they discussed it, she was more disparaging of the academic life. Make-believe, she called it. Kid’s stuff. And when he replied, ‘Well, Bella, you are still a kid,’ she bridled at him.
‘Oh, Daddy, you don’t understand!’
‘Don’t I? Don’t you think I was your age oncer
‘I suppose so – but that was in biblical times, for God’s sake.’
‘Ladies don’t swear,’ he remonstrated automatically.
She attracted admirers in slavish droves, and treated them with callous indifference for a while and then dropped them with almost feline cruelty, and all the time the restlessness in her was more apparent.
‘I should have been stricter with her right from the beginning,’ he decided grimly, and then grinned. ‘What the hell, she’s my only indulgence – and she’ll be gone soon enough.’
‘Do you know that when you smile like that you are the sexiest man in the world?’ she interrupted his thoughts.
‘What do you know about sexiness, young lady?’ he demanded gruffly to cover his gratification, and she tossed her head at him.
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’
‘No, thank you,’ he refused hastily. ‘I’d probably have a hernia on the spot.’
‘My poor old Daddy.’ She edged the mare over until their knees touched and she leaned across to hug him.
‘All right, Bella,’ he smiled. ‘You’d better tell me what you want. Your heavy artillery has demolished my defences entirely.’
‘Oh, Daddy, you make me seem so scheming. I’ll race you down to the polo grounds.’
He let her lead, holding his stallion’s nose just behind her stirrup all the way down the hill. Nonetheless, she was flushed with triumph as she pulled in the mare and turned back to him.
‘I had a letter from Mater,’ she said.
For a moment Shasa didn’t realize what she had said, then his smile iced over and he glanced at his gold Rolex wristwatch.
‘We’d better be getting back.’
‘I want to talk about my mother. We haven’t talked about her since the divorce.’
‘There isn’t anything to discuss. She’s out of our lives.’
‘No.’ Isabella shook her head. ‘She wants to see me – me and Mickey. She wants us to go to London and visit her.’
‘No,’ he said fiercely.
‘She’s my mother.’
‘She signed away all claim to that title.’
‘I want to see her – she wants to see me.’
‘We’ll talk about it some other time.’
‘I want to talk about it now. Why won’t you let me go?’
‘Your mother did things which put her beyond the pale. She would exert an influence of evil upon you.�
�
‘Nobody influences me – unless I want them to,’ she said. ‘And what did Mother do anyway? Nobody has ever explained that.’
‘She committed an act of calculated treachery. She betrayed us all – her husband, her father, her family, her children and her country.’
‘I don’t believe it.’ Isabella shook her head. ‘Mater was always so concerned for everybody.’
‘I cannot, and will not, give you all the details, Bella. Just believe me when I tell you that if I had not spirited her out of the country, she would have stood trial as an accessory to the murder of her own father and for the crime of high treason.’
They rode up to the stables in silence, but as they entered the yard and dismounted, Isabella said quietly, ‘She should have the chance to explain it to me herself.’
‘I can forbid you to go, Bella, you are still a minor. But you know I won’t do that. I’ll simply ask you not to go to London to see that woman.’
‘I’m sorry, Daddy. Mickey is going, and I am going with him.’ She saw his expression, and went to him quickly. ‘Please try to understand. I love you, but I love her too. I have to go.’
They drove up to the house in the Jaguar without speaking again, but as he parked the car and switched off the ignition, Shasa asked, ‘When?’
‘We haven’t decided yet.’
‘I tell you what. We’ll go together some time and perhaps we could go on to Switzerland for a week’s skiing or Italy to do some sight-seeing. We might even stop in Paris to get you a new frock. Lord knows, you are short of clothes.’
‘My dear father, you are a crafty old dog, aren’t you?’
They were still laughing as they went arm in arm up the front steps of Weltevreden. Centaine came out of her study door across the lobby. When she saw them she snatched the gold-rimmed reading glasses off her nose – she hated even the family to see her wearing them – and she demanded, ‘What are you two so merry about? Bella is wearing her triumphant expression. What has she talked you into this time?’
Centaine didn’t wait for an answer, but pointed to the huge banana-shaped package almost ten foot long, wrapped in thick layers of brown hessian, that lay in the middle of the chequered marble floor.
‘Shasa, this arrived for you this morning and it has been cluttering up the house all day. Please get rid of it, whatever it is.’
Centaine had lived on alone at Rhodes Hill for almost a year after Blaine’s death before Shasa had been able to persuade her to close the house up and return to Weltevreden. Now she ran a strict routine to which they were all expected to conform.
‘Now what on earth is this?’ Shasa tentatively attempted to lift one end of the long package, and then grunted. ‘It’s made of lead, whatever it is.’
‘Hold on, Pater,’ Garry called from the top of the staircase. ‘You’ll bust something.’ He came bounding down the stairs, three at a time. ‘I’ll do that for you – where do you want it?’
‘The gun room will do. Thanks, Garry.’
Garry enjoyed showing off his strength and he lifted the heavy package easily, and manoeuvred it down the passageway, then through the gun-room door and laid it on the lion skin in front of the fireplace.
‘Do you want me to open it?’ he asked, and without waiting for an answer went to work on it.
Isabella perched on the desk, determined not to miss anything, and none of them spoke until Garry had stripped away the last sheet of hessian and stood back.
‘It’s magnificent,’ Shasa breathed. ‘I have never seen anything quite like that in my life before.’ It was a single tusk of curved ivory, almost ten foot long, as thick as a pretty girl’s waist at one end and tapering to a blunt point at the other.
‘It must weigh almost a hundred and fifty pounds,’ Garry said. ‘But just look at the workmanship.’
Shasa knew that the ivory workers of Zanzibar were the only ones who could do something like this. The entire length of the tusk had been carved with hunting scenes of exquisite detail and the finest execution.
‘It’s beautiful.’ Even Isabella was impressed. ‘Who sent it to you?’
‘There is an envelope—’ Shasa pointed to the litter of discarded wrappings, and Garry picked it out and passed it to him.
The envelope contained a single sheet of notepaper.
In camp on the Tana River
Kenya.
Dear Dad,
Happy birthday – I’ll be thinking of you on the day. This is my best jumbo to date – 146lbs before the carving.
Why don’t you come hunting with me?
Love,
Sean
With the note in one hand, Shasa squatted beside the tusk and stroked the creamy smooth surface. The carvings depicted a herd of elephant, hundreds of them in a single herd. From old bulls and breeding cows to tiny calves, they fled in a long spiral frieze around the ivory shaft, diminishing in elegant perspective towards the point. The herd was harassed and attacked by hunters along its length, beginning with men in lion skins armed with bows and poisoned arrows, or with broad-bladed elephant spears; towards the end of this primeval cavalcade the hunters were on horseback and wielding modern firearms. The path of the herd was strewn with great fallen carcasses, and it was beautiful and real and tragic.
However, it was neither the beauty nor the tragedy that thickened Shasa’s voice as he said, ‘Will you two leave me alone, please.’ He did not look around at them, he did not want them to see his face.
For once Isabella did not argue, but took Garry’s hand and led him from the room.
‘He hasn’t forgotten my birthday,’ Shasa murmured, as he stroked the ivory. ‘Not once since he left.’ He coughed and stood up abruptly, jerked the handkerchief from his breast pocket and blew his nose loudly and then wiped his eyes.
‘And I haven’t even written to him, I haven’t even replied to one of his letters.’ He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket and went to stand at the window, staring out over the lawns where the peacocks strutted. ‘The stupid cruel thing is that he has always been my favourite of the three of them. Oh, God, I’d give anything to see him again.’
The rain was icy grey, drifting like smoke over the thick forests of bamboo that cloaked the crests of the Aberdare Mountains.
The four of them moved in single file with the Ndorobo tracker on the point, following the spoor in the forest earth that beneath the litter of fallen bamboo leaves was the colour and consistency of molten chocolate.
Sean Courtney took the second position, covering the tracker and poised to make any quick decision. He was the youngest of the three white men but command had quite naturally devolved upon him. Nobody had contested it.
The third man in the line, Alistair Sparks, was the youngest son of a Kenyan settler family. Although he possessed enormous powers of endurance, was a fine natural shot and a consummate bushman, he was lazy and evasive and needed to be pushed to exercise all his skills to the full.
Raymond Harris was on the drag at number four. He was almost fifty years old, full of malaria and gin, but in his time had been one of the legendary white hunters of East Africa. He had taught Sean everything he knew, until the pupil had excelled the master. Now Raymond was content to bring up the rear and let Sean and Matatu, the tracker, get them into position for the kill.
Matatu was naked except for his filthy tattered loincloth and the rain made tiny rivulets down his glossy black hide. He worked the spoor with the same instinct and superhuman sense of sight, smell and hearing, as one of the wild animals of the forest. They had been following these tracks for two days already, stopping only when the light failed completely each night, and taking up the chase again with the first flush of dawn.
The spoor was running sweet and hot. Sean was probably as good a tracker as a white man could be and he judged that they were only four or five hours behind and gaining swiftly. The quarry had angled up the steep slope of this nameless peak, heading to cross the ridge just below the main crest. Sean caught
glimpses of the top through the dense vault of bamboo over their heads and the blown streamers of misty rain.
Suddenly Matatu stopped dead, and Sean popped his tongue to warn the others and froze with his thumb on the safety-catch of the big double-barrelled Gibbs.
After a moment Matatu turned abruptly aside, dropping the spoor, and went sliding as swiftly and silently as a dark serpent down the slope, away from the line and direction of the quarry.
Five years before, when Sean had first taken Matatu into his service, he might have protested and tried to force him to stay with the run of the spoor, but now he followed without argument, and although he was going at his best hunting speed he just managed to hold the tracker in sight.
Sean was dressed in a cloak of colobus monkey skins and he wore Somali sandals of elephant hide on his feet and a shaggy cap of monkey skin covered his obviously Caucasian hair. His arms, legs and face were blackened with a mixture of rancid hippo fat and soot, and he had not bathed in two weeks. He looked and smelled like the men he was hunting.
There were five Mau Mau in the band that they were pursuing, all of them members of the notorious gang run by the self-styled General Kimathi. Five days previously they had attacked one of the coffee shambas near Nyeri in the foothills of the mountain range. They had disembowelled the white overseer and stuffed his severed genitals into his mouth, and they had chopped off his wife’s limbs with the heavy-bladed pangas, beginning at wrist and ankle and working gradually towards the trunk of her body, until they hacked through the great joints in her shoulders and groin.
Sean and his group of scouts had reached the shamba almost twelve hours after the gang had fled. They had left the Land-Rover and taken the spoor on foot.
Matatu took them directly down the slope. The narrow river at the bottom was a tumultuous silver torrent. Sean stripped off his furs and sandals and went into it naked. The cold chilled his bones until they ached and the roaring waters swirled over his head but he carried the line across and then brought the others safely over.