by Wilbur Smith
As Garry opened the door across the gallery facing Centaine’s room, his mood changed dramatically, and as she stepped into the room, Centaine realized the reason.
Michael’s presence was everywhere. From the framed photographs on the walls he smiled down at her; Michael in rugby football togs standing arms folded across his chest with fourteen other grinning young men, Michael in white cricket flannels with bat in hand, Michael with a shotgun and a brace of pheasant, and the shock drained the blood from Centaine’s face.
‘I thought it would be appropriate for Michel to have his father’s room,’ Garry murmured apologetically. ‘Of course, my dear, if you don’t agree, there are fifteen other rooms to choose from.’
Slowly Centaine looked around her at the shotguns in their racks, and the fishing-rods and cricket-bats standing in the corner, at the books on the shelves above the writing-desk, at the oilskins and tweed jackets hanging from their pegs.
‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘This will be Shasa’s room, and we’ll keep it just as it is.’
‘Oh, good!’ Garry nodded happily. ‘I’m so glad you agree.’ And he bustled out into the gallery, shouting orders at the servants in Zulu.
Centaine moved slowly around the room, touching the bed on which Michael had slept, stopping to press a fold of the rough tweed jacket against her cheek and imagining she could smell that special clean odour of his body upon the cloth, moving on to his desk and tracing with her fingertips his initials ‘MC’ carved in the oaken top, lifting down a copy of Jock of the Bushveld from the shelf and opening it at the flyleaf: ‘This book was stolen from Michael Courtney.’ She closed the book and turned back to the door.
There was a mild commotion in the passageway, and Garry bustled back, directing two of the Zulu servants who were staggering under the weight of a child’s cot. Its high sliding sides and massive mahogany construction would have caged a full-grown lion.
‘This was Michael’s – I think it should hold his son, what do you think, my dear?’ Before Centaine could answer, the telephone rang demandingly in the hall downstairs.
‘Show them where to put it, my dear,’ Garry called as he dashed out again. He was gone for almost half an hour, and Centaine heard the telephone jangling at irregular intervals. When Garry came rushing in again, he was bubbling over.
‘Damned telephone just won’t stop. Everybody wants to meet you, my dear. You are a very famous lady. Another ruddy journalist wants to interview you—’
‘I hope you told them “no”, Papa.’ It seemed that in the last two months every journalist in the Union had requested an interview. The story of the lost girl rescued from the African wilds with her infant had, for the moment, captivated the fickle interest of every newspaper editor from Johannesburg and Sydney to London and New York.
‘I sent him packing,’ Garry assured her. ‘But there is someone else very eager to see you again.’
‘Who is it?’
‘My brother, General Courtney – he and his wife have come up from their home in Durban to their other home in Lion Kop. They want us to go across to have luncheon and spend the day with them tomorrow. I accepted on your behalf. I hope I did the right thing?’
‘Oh, yes – oh, indeed yes!’
Anna refused to accompany them to the luncheon at Lion Kop.
‘There is too much that needs doing here!’ she declared. The servants of Theuniskraal had already given her the name ‘Checha’ – ‘Hurry up!’ the first word of the Zulu language Anna had learned, and all of them had conceived for her a wary and growing respect.
So Garry and Centaine drove up the escarpment with Shasa on the seat between them and as they pulled up before the sprawling homestead of Lion Kop with its lovely thatched roof, the familiar burly, bearded figure came limping swiftly down the front stairs to take both of Centaine’s hands in his.
‘It’s like having you back from the dead,’ Sean Courtney said softly. ‘Words cannot express what I feel.’ Then he turned to take Shasa from Garry’s arms. ‘So this is Michael’s son!’ Shasa crowed with delight, grabbed a double handful of the general’s beard and attempted to pull it out by the roots.
Ruth Courtney, Sean’s wife, in that period of her life beyond forty years of age and below fifty when a magnificent woman reaches the zenith of her beauty and elegance, kissed Centaine’s cheek and told her gently, ‘Michael was a very special person to us, and you will take his place in our hearts.’
Waiting behind her was a young woman, and Centaine recognized her immediately from the framed photograph that the general had kept with him in France. Storm Courtney was even more beautiful than her photograph, with a skin like a rose petal and her mother’s glowing Jewish eyes, but there was a pout to her lovely mouth and the petulant expression of a child indulged to the highest degree of discontent. She greeted Centaine in French.
‘Comment vas-tu, chérie?’ Her accent was atrocious. They looked into each other’s eyes and their dislike was strong, mutual and clearly acknowledged by both of them.
Beside Storm was a tall, slim young man with a serious mien and gentle eyes. Mark Anders was the general’s private secretary, and Centaine liked him as instinctively as she had disliked the girl.
General Sean Courtney took Centaine on one arm and his wife on the other and led them into the homestead of Lion Kop.
Though the two houses were separated by only a few miles, they could have been worlds apart. The yellow wood floor of Lion Kop gleamed with wax, the paintings were in light cheerful colours – Centaine recognized a whimsical Tahitian scene by Paul Gauguin – and everywhere there were great bowls of fresh flowers.
‘If you’ll excuse Garry and myself for a few minutes, ladies, we’ll leave young Mark here to entertain you.’
Sean led his brother away to his study while his secretary poured each of the ladies a cordial.
‘I was in France with the general,’ Mark told Centaine, as he brought her glass to her, ‘and I know your village of Mort Homme quite well. We were billeted there while waiting to go up the line.’
‘Oh, how wonderful to have a memory of my home!’ Centaine cried, and impulsively touched his arm, and from across the drawing-room Storm Courtney, who was curled with an elaborately languid air on the silk-covered sofa, shot Centaine a look of such undiluted venom as to make her exult silently.
‘Alors, chérie! So that is the way it is!’ And she turned back to Mark Anders and looked up into his eyes and exaggerated her throaty French accent.
‘Do you perhaps recall the château, beyond the church to the north of the village?’ she asked, making the question sound like an invitation to forbidden delights, but Ruth Courtney intuitively caught the whiff of gunpowder in the air and intervened smoothly.
‘Now, Centaine, come and sit by me,’ she ordered. ‘I want to hear all about your incredible adventures.’
So Centaine repeated, for the fiftieth time since her rescue, her carefully edited version of the torpedoing and her subsequent wanderings in the desert.
‘Extraordinary!’ Mark Anders interjected at one stage. ‘I have often admired the Bushman paintings in the caves of the Drakensberg Mountains, some of them are really quite beautiful, but I did not realize that there were still wild Bushmen in existence. They were hunted out of these mountains sixty years ago – dangerous and treacherous little blighters by all accounts – and I understood that they had all been exterminated.’
On the silk sofa Storm Courtney shuddered theatrically. ‘I just can’t think how you could bear to let one of those little yellow monsters touch you, chérie. I know I would have simply expired!’
‘Bien sûr, chérie, and you would not have enjoyed eating live lizards and locusts either?’ Centaine asked sweetly, and Storm paled.
Sean Courtney stumped back into the drawing-room and interrupted them. ‘Well, now, it’s good to see how already you are one of the family, Centaine. I know that you and Storm are going to be great chums, what?’
‘Indubitably, Pat
er,’ Storm murmured and Centaine laughed.
‘She is so sweet, your Storm, I love her already.’ Centaine chose unerringly the one adjective ‘sweet’ that brought forth a blooming of furious roses in Storm’s perfect cheeks.
‘Good! Good! Is the lunch ready, my love?’ and Ruth rose to take Sean’s arm and lead them all out on to the patio where the table was set under a canopy of jacaranda. The very air seemed coloured purple and green by the sunlight through the blossom-laden boughs, and they might have been in an underwater grotto.
The Zulu servants, who had been hovering expectantly, at a nod from Sean bore Shasa away like a prince to the kitchens. His pleasure in their smiling black faces was as obvious as their delight in him.
‘They’ll spoil him, if you let them,’ Ruth warned Centaine. ‘Only one thing a Zulu loves better than his cattle, and that’s a boy child. Now, will you sit next to the general, my dear?’
During the luncheon Sean made Centaine the complete centre of attention, while Storm tried to look aloof and bored at the end of the table.
‘Now, my dear, I want to hear all about it.’
‘Oh God, Pater, we’ve just been over it all.’ Storm rolled her eyes.
‘Language, girl,’ Sean warned her, and then to Centaine, ‘Begin on the last day I saw you, and don’t leave anything out, do you hear? Not a single thing!’
Throughout the meal Garry was withdrawn and silent, in contrast to his ebullient mood of the last weeks, and after the coffee he stood up quickly when Sean said, ‘Well, everybody, you must excuse us for a few minutes. Garry and I are taking Centaine off for a little chat.’
The general’s study was panelled in mahogany, the books on the shelves were bound in maroon calf, while the chairs were upholstered in buttoned brown leather.
There were oriental carpets on the floor and an exquisite little bronze by Anton Van Wouw on the corner of his desk, ironically a sculpture of a Bushman hunter with his bow in his hand, peering out across the desert plains from under his other hand. It reminded Centaine so vividly of O’wa that she drew breath sharply.
With his cigar Sean waved her into the wingback chair facing his desk, and it seemed to dwarf her. Garry took another chair to the side.
‘I’ve spoken to Garry,’ Sean opened, without preliminaries. ‘I’ve told him the circumstances of Michael’s death, before the wedding.’
He sat down behind his desk and turned his own gold wedding ring on his finger thoughtfully.
‘We all of us here know that in every sense but the legal one, Michael was your husband, and the natural father of Michel. However, technically Michel is,’ he hesitated, ‘Michel is illegitimate. In the eyes of the law, he is a bastard.’
The word shocked Centaine. She stared at Sean through the rising wreaths of cigar smoke while the silence drew out.
‘We can’t have that,’ Garry broke it. ‘He’s my grandson. We can’t have that.’
‘No,’ Sean agreed. ‘We can’t have that.’
‘With your consent, my dear,’ Garry’s voice was almost a whisper, ‘I should like to adopt the lad.’ Centaine turned her head towards him slowly, and he hurried on, ‘It would only be a formality, a legal device to ensure his status in the world. It could be done most discreetly, and it would in no way affect the relationship between you. You would still be his mother and have custody of him, while I would be honoured to become his guardian and do for him all the things that his father cannot.’ Centaine winced, and Garry blurted, ‘Forgive me, my dear, but we have to talk about it. As Sean has said, we all accept that you are Michael’s widow, we would want you to use the family name and we would all treat you as though the ceremony had taken place that day,’ he broke off, and coughed throatily. ‘Nobody would ever know, except the three of us in this room, and Anna. Would you give your consent, for the child’s sake?’
Centaine stood up and crossed to where Garry sat. She sank on to her knees before him and placed her head in his lap.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘You are the kindest man I know. You have truly taken the place of my own father now.’
The months that followed were the most contented that Centaine had ever known, secure and sunny and rewarding, filled with the sound of Shasa’s laughter, and with the benign if diffident presence of Garry Courtney always in the background and the more substantial figure of Anna in the foreground.
Centaine rode every morning before breakfast and again in the cool of the evening, and often Garry accompanied her, regaling her with tales of Michael’s childhood or relating the family history as they climbed the forested tracks along the escarpment or paused to water the horses at the pool below the falls of the river where the spray and white water fell a hundred feet over wet black rock.
The rest of the day was spent in choosing curtaining and wallpaper, and supervising the artisans who were redecorating the house, consulting with Anna on the restructuring of Theuniskraal’s domestic arrangements, romping with Shasa and trying to prevent the Zulu servants from spoiling him utterly, taking instruction from Garry Courtney in the subtle art of steering and driving the big Fiat tourer, in pondering the printed invitations that arrived with every day’s mail, and generally taking over the management and running of Theuniskraal as she had that of the château at Mort Homme.
Every afternoon she and Shasa took tea with Garry in the library where he had been ensconced for most of the day, and with his gold-rimmed spectacles on the end of his nose he would read aloud to her his day’s writings.
‘Oh, it must be wonderful to have such a gift!’ she exclaimed, and he lowered the sheaf of manuscript.
‘You admire those of us that write?’ he asked.
‘You are a breed apart.’
‘Nonsense, my dear, we are very ordinary people except that we are vain enough to believe that other people might want to read what we have to say.’
‘I wish I could write.’
‘You can, your penmanship is excellent.’
‘I mean really write.’
‘You can. Help yourself to paper and get on with it. If that’s what you want.’
‘But,’ she stared at him aghast, ‘what could I write about?’
‘Write about what happened to you out there in the desert. That would do very well for a beginning, I should say.’
It took three days for her to accustom herself to the idea, and brace herself to the effort. Then she had the servants move a table into the gazebo at the end of the lawns and sat down at it with a pencil in her hand, a pile of Garry’s blank paper in front of her and terror in her heart. She experienced that same terror each day thereafter when she drew the first blank sheet of paper towards her, but it passed swiftly as the ranks of words began to march down across the emptiness.
She moved pleasant and familiar things into the gazebo to alleviate the loneliness of creative endeavour, a pretty rug for the tiled floor, a Delft vase on the table-top which Anna filled with fresh flowers each day, and in front of her she placed O’wa’s clasp knife. She used it to resharpen her pencils.
At her right hand she placed a velvet-lined jewelbox and in it she laid H’ani’s necklace. Whenever she lacked inspiration, she threw down her pencil and took up the necklace. She rubbed the bright stones between her fingers like Greek worry beads and their cool smooth touch seemed to calm her and recharge her determination.
Every afternoon from the end of lunch until it was time to take tea with Garry in the library, she wrote at the table in the gazebo, and Shasa slept in the cot beside her or climbed over her feet.
It did not take many days for Centaine to realize that she could never show what she was putting on to the paper to another living soul. She found that she could hold nothing back, that she was writing with a brutal candour that admitted no reserve or equivocation. Whether it was the details of her lovemaking with Michael, or the description of the taste of rotten fish in her mouth as she lay dying beside the Atlantic, she knew that nobody could read them without being
shocked and horrified.
‘It’s for myself alone,’ she decided. At the end of each session when she laid the handwritten sheets on the jewelbox on top of H’ani’s necklace, she was suffused with a sense of satisfaction and worthwhile achievement.
There were, however, a few jarring notes in this symphony of contentment.
Sometimes in the night she would rise to the surface of consciousness and reach instinctively for the lithe golden body that should have been beside hers, longing for the feel of hard smooth muscle and the touch of long silky hair that smelled like the sweet grasses of the desert. Then she would come fully awake and lie in the darkness hating herself for her treacherous longings and burning with shame that she had so debased the memory of Michael and O’wa and little H’ani.
On another morning Garry Courtney sent for her and, when she was seated, handed her a package.
‘This came with a covering note to me. It’s from a lawyer in Paris.’
‘What does it say, Papa?’
‘My French is awful, I’m afraid, but the gist of the matter is that your father’s estates at Mort Homme have been sold to defray his debts.’
‘Oh, poor Papa.’
‘They had presumed that you were dead, my dear, and the sale was ordered by a French court.’
‘I understand.’
‘The lawyer read of your rescue in a Parisian paper, and has written to me explaining the situation. Unfortunately the Comte de Thirty’s debts were considerable, and as you are too well aware, the château and its contents were destroyed in the fire. The lawyer has set out an accounting, and after all the debts were paid and the legal expenses including this fellow’s not inconsiderable fees, were deducted, there is very little that remains to you.’
Centaine’s healthy acquisitive instincts were aroused. ‘How much, Papa?’ she asked sharply.
‘A little less than £2,000 sterling, I’m afraid. He will send a bank draft when we return the acknowledgement to him duly signed and attested. Fortunately I am a commissioner of oaths, so we can do the business privately.’