Wilbur Smith - C08 Golden Fox

by C08 Golden Fox(Lit)

  On the dais, Dandy Lass curtsied politely in front of the prime minister, and at a word from Centaine offered him her right paw. The crowd loved it when John Vorster stooped to shake the proffered paw.

  As he handed Centaine the enormous silver trophy, the prime minister smiled at her. For a man with such a formidable reputation for ruthless strength and granite resolve, his smile was boyishly infectious and his blue eyes twinkled.

  As he shook Centaine's hand, he leant a little closer, so that she alone could hear his words.

  "Don't you and your family find that unbroken success in everything you do becomes monotonous, Centaine?' he asked. They had come to first-name terms only in the last year or so.

  "We try to be brave about enduring it, Uncle John,' she assured him gravely.

  The prime minister made a short and uncontroversial speech of congratulation, and then circulated around the marquee with the alacrity of an adroit political games man. Smiling and shaking hands and passing on, he reached the end of the tent where Centaine was holding court.

  "Once again my congratulations, Centaine. I wish I could stay longer to help you celebrate your famous victory.' He glanced at his wristwatch.

  "You have been generous with your time,' Centaine agreed. 'But, before you leave, may I introduce the only one of my grandchildren whom you have not met?' She beckoned to Isabella, who was hovering close by. "Isabella has been in London serving as hostess to Shasa during his term at South Africa House." As Isabella came forward, Centaine was watching the prime minister's craggy bulldog features attentively. She knew that Vorster was no philanderer; he could never have reached his position in the iron Calvinistic coils of his party if he had been. But despite the fact that for thirty years he had been happily and securely married he was still very much a man, and no man could remain unmoved when he looked at Isabella Courtney for the first time. Centaine saw the shift in his gaze, and the way he hid his quick flare of attention behind that formidable frown.

  Centaine and Isabella had planned for this meeting with care, ever since Isabella had amazed both Centaine and Shasa by her sudden declared intention to enter the political arena.

  "She'll get over it,' Shasa predicted, but Centaine had shaken her head.

  "Bella has changed. Something has happened to her since she went to London with you. She went as a flighty spoiled little bitch-" 'Oh, come, Mater.' Predictably Shasa had risen to his precious daughter's defence, but Centaine went on without check.

  "But she has returned a mature woman. However, there is more than that to it. She has steel now. She has a cutting edge, and there is something else.' Centaine had hesitated as she tried to define it. 'She has shed her romantic view of life; it is as though she has experienced a revelation, as though she has suffered and learnt to hate, as though she has come through some portentous crisis and armed herself for whatever lies ahead." 'It's not like you to make these fanciful flights of imagination,' Shasa had chaffed her, but Centaine had insisted.

  "You mark my words, Bella has found her direction and she will prove herself as tough and ruthless as any of US. 'Surely not as tough and ruthless as you, Mater?

  "Have your little joke, Shasa Courtney, but time will prove me right." Centaine's eyes had gone out of focus and squinted slightly. Shasa knew that expression so well, when his mother indulged in furious concentration. He called them her scheming eyes. Then her eyes came back into focus. 'She is going far, Shasa, probably further than even you and I could dream - and I am going to help her." And so, Centaine had arranged this meeting, and now she watched her grand-daughter acquit herself with all the aplomb that she had expected of her.

  Vorster asked Isabella: 'So how did you enjoy the English winters?' And it was clear that he expected a trivial response, but Isabella said: 'It was worth putting up with them, if only to meet Harold Wilson and to have a first-hand account of the Labour government's attitude and intentions towards all of us who live in southern Africa." Vorster's expression changed as he realized that there was a brain behind that lovely young face. He dropped his voice, and they talked quietly for a few minutes longer before Centaine intervened again.

  "Isabella has just received her doctorate in political theory from London University.' Artlessly she tossed out a little more ground bait.

  "Oh so!' Vorster nodded. 'Do we have a budding Helen Suzman in our midst?" He was referring to the only we member of the South African parliament, the staunchest champion of human rights and the only really galling liberal thorn in the complacently thick hide of the Nationalist majority.

  Isabella laughed, that husky sexual chuckle which she knew could stir even the most hidebound misogynist. 'Perhaps,' she agreed. 'A seat in the house might be my ultimate ambition, but that is still far ahead, and I don't think I would be as nayve as Mrs. Suzman, Prime Minister. My politics is very much in tune with that of my father and my grandmother.' Which of course made her a conservative, and now Vorster's regard was sharp blue and attentive as he studied her.

  "The world is changing, Prime Minister.'Centaine seized the moment. "One day, there may even be a place in your cabinet for a woman, don't you think?" Vorster smiled and switched easily from English into Afrikaans.

  "Even Doctor Courtney agrees that day is still far ahead. However, I do concede that such a pretty face would do much to lighten the deliberations of us ugly old men." The change of language was, of course, a test. Nobody in South Africa with political aspirations could survive without fluency in Afrikaans, the language of the politically dominant group.

  Isabella switched as easily as he had done. Her vocabulary was wide, her grammar perfect and her accent rang sweetly, even in the ear of a born Afrikaner.

  Vorster smiled again, this time with pleasure, and continued the conversation for a few minutes more before glancing pointedly at his wristwatch and speaking to Centaine.

  "I must go now. I have another function to attend.' He turned back to Isabella. 'Totsiens, Doctor Courtney, until we meet again. I will be watching your progress with interest." Centaine and Shasa walked with him from the marquee to where his official car and driver waited on the edge of the polo-ground.

  "Totsims, Centaine.'Vorster shook her hand. 'I congratulate you on the rearing of your grand-daughter. I recognize many traits which she can only have inherited from you." When Centaine returned to the marquee, she looked around quickly. Isabella was already the centre of a circle of eager males.

  "She has them panting like puppy dogs.' Centaine suppressed a smile and caught her grand-daughter's eye. Isabella left her admirers and came to her immediately, and Centaine took her arm in a comfortable proprietorial gesture.

  ISO 'Well done, missy. You behaved like a veteran. Uncle John likes you. I rather think that we are on our way."

  That evening, only the family sat down to dinner at the long table in Weltevreden's main dining-room. However, Centaine had ordered the antique Limoges dinner service and the best silver. The table was resplendent in candlelight and a massed display of yellow roses. As was usual on these family evenings, the women wore long dresses and the men were in black tie.

  Only Sean was missing.

  Sean had been invited - or, rather, Centaine had summoned him - but he was hunting with one of his most valuable clients on the Rhodesian concession and had sent his humble apologies. Centaine had accepted them reluctantly.

  She had wanted them all to celebrate her triumph with Dandy Lass, but she conceded that business came first.

  The German industrialist that Sean was guiding paid for sixty-three days of hunting each year at five hundred dollars a day. Of course, his vast business commitments in Germany would not allow him to spend that much time in the hunting-veld. He was lucky if he could fit in two weeks in any one year. However, he paid for the additional days to secure the right to hunt three elephant instead of one. Sean had to be on call for him, even though he usually gave only a few days' notice of his intended arrival.

  Centaine missed her eldest grandson. Sean
was the handsomest and wildest of the three of them, but his presence was always stimulating. He seemed to charge the very air around him with the static electricity of danger and excitement. It had cost her and the family tens of thousand of dollars to bail him out of the various scrapes that his tempestuous nature led him into. Although she always expressed her outrage at these expenditures in the severest terms, secretly she did not grudge them. Her only fear was that one day Sean would go too far and get himself into real trouble from which even Centaine would be unable to extricate him. She dismissed that thought.

  Tonight was not the night for morbid fancies.

  The tall silver trophy glittered in the centre of the long table. It stood on a pyramid of yellow roses. It was strange what satisfaction that bauble gave her. It had cost her countless hours of hard work in the field, but the winning had made it all worthwhile. It had always been like that for her. The burning need to excel was in her blood. She had passed on that divine contagion to those she loved.

  At the far end of the table Shasa tapped the crystal glass in front of him with a silver spoon and in the ensuing silence rose to his feet. He was tall and elegant in his impeccable dinner-jacket and black tie. He began one of those speeches for which he was renowned - easy and flowing, the wit and sentiment so cleverly timed and blended that he could at one moment raise a storm of laughter and at the next moisten every eye with a skilfully turned phrase.

  Although he heaped her with praise and turned the attention of every person in the room full upon her, Centaine found her own mind wandering to her other grandchildren. They were all hanging on their father's lips, so engrossed by his words that they were unaware of Centaine's appraisal.

  Garry sat at her right hand as befitted his importance in the family hierarchy. From the runt of the litter, myopic, weedy and asthmatic, he had transformed himself with little or no help from her or any of them into this bull of power and confidence. Now he was the helmsman of the family fortune, chairman of Courtney Enterprises. His bulk threatening the fragile legs of the genuine Chippendale chair, his thumbs were hooked into the pockets of his discreetly brocaded waistcoat. His dress shirt was a snowy expanse over the great chest, and the starched wing collar too tight for 2 neck swollen not with fat but with muscle and sinew. His dense black hair stood up in a cockscomb at the crown, and his thick horn-rimmed spectacles glittered in the candlelight. His laughter rocked the room; fun and unrestrained, it greeted each of Shasa's sallies and it was so infectious that it transformed even his father's mildest remarks into wild hilarity.

  Centaine switched her gaze to Garry's wife. Holly sat beside Shasa at the far end of the table. She was almost ten years Garry's senior. Centaine had opposed the union with all her power and cunning. Of course, she had not succeeded in preventing the marriage. She admitted to herself now that it had been a serious error of judgement to attempt to do so. She would now have had more control and influence over Holly had she not made the attempt. Instead she had raised barricades of mistrust in Holly's mind that she might never be able to pull down.

  She had been wrong about Holly. She had proved the perfect wife for Garry.

  Holly had recognized those qualities in him that none of them, not even Ccntaine, had fully perceived. She had brought them to full flower and carefully nurtured his self-confidence. In large measure she was responsible for Garry's success. She had given him strength and unflagging support. She had given him love and happiness, and she had given him three sons and a daughter. Centaine smiled as she thought of those little scamps asleep in the nursery wing upstairs, and then sighed and frowned. The reserve that Holly still felt towards her was a barrier between her and her great-grandchildren. Garry and Holly lived in Johannesburg, the nation's financial centre, a thousand miles from Weltevreden.

  The head office of Courtney Enterprises was in Johannesburg, as was the Stock Exchange. Garry was one of the main players; he had to be at the centre of the arena. Thus there was every reason for him and Holly to have left Weltevreden, but Centaine felt that Holly was keeping the children from her. Although it was only a three-hour flight in the company jet which Garry loved to pilot himself, yet these days Centaine very seldom saw them at Weltevreden. She wanted desperately to have the children close to her to guide and influence them, to protect and train them as she had their father, but Holly was the key. She would have to redouble her efforts to win her round. Now she deliberately caught her eye down the length of the long table, and smiled at her with all the warmth and affection she could convey.

  Holly smiled back, blonde and serene, her beauty given an extraordinary dimension by those particoloured eyes, one blue, the other a startling violet.

  "I'll make you like and trust me yet,' Centaine promised silently. "You'll not be able to hold out for ever, not against me. I'll have those children.

  This family is mine, those children are mine. You'll not keep them from me much longer." Shasa had said something about her that she had missed in her preoccupation. Now every head at the table was turned towards Centaine, and they were all applauding with enthusiasm. She smiled and nodded her acknowledgement of whatever compliment Shasa had paid her, and as the applause faded Shasa continued.

  "You may have thought to yourselves as you watched her handling Dandy Lass today that it was a remarkable accomplishment. For any other woman, it might have been so, but here we have the lady who faced down a man-eating lion with me as an infant strapped upon her back...' Shasa was reciting once again all the old stories about her that were the weft and the warp of the family legend. In itself this recitation at every important occasion had become tradition and, though they had all heard them a hundred times, their enjoyment was as fresh as ever.

  Only one person at the table looked faintly embarrassed by the extravagance of Shasa's eulogy.

  Centaine felt a chill little breeze of annoyance ruffle the silken surface of her self-satisfaction. Of all her grandchildren the one for whom she felt the least warmth and concern was Michael. He sat near the centre of the long table at the lowliest position, not simply because he was the youngest of her grandsons. Michael did not fit into Centaine's scheme of things. There were secret depths and hidden places in his nature that she had not yet fathomed, and which therefore annoyed her.

  She had never been able to wean Michael away from his natural mother. Even the thought of Tara Courtney sent a scalding acidic rush of hatred through Centaine's bowels. Tara had outraged every principle and concept of decency and morality that Centaine held sacrosanct. She was a Marxist and a miscegenist, a traitor and a patricide. A portion of Centaine's feelings towards Tara were passed on to this one of her sons.

  The force of her gaze must have been fierce enough for Michael to sense it.

  He glanced up at her suddenly and paled under Centaine's dark eyes, then looked away again hurriedly, almost guiltily.

  At Shasa's insistence, an dover her objections, the family had acquired a controlling interest in the media company which counted amongst its assets the Golden City Mail newspaper. Shasa's motive had been to secure a place for Michael at the top of his chosen profession. His idea had been to build up the Mail as a powerful and conservative voice of reason, and for Michael, once he had earned his spurs, to take over as publisher and editor. That day had not yet dawned, and Michael was still only a deputy editor. If it had been left to Shasa, he would have pushed Michael earlier.

  However, both Garry and Centaine had kept his paternal indulgence in check.

  The two of them had reasoned that Michael was not yet ready for the job.

  His financial and administrative instincts were under-developed and his political judgement was naive, perhaps irreparably flawed. It was Michael's influence on editorial policy that continually nudged the Mail off the centre of the road, slanting it dangerously to the left, so that the newspaper had become distrusted not only by Government but also by the establishment of finance and mining and industry, those who paid for advertising space.

  On
three previous occasions the Mail had been banned by govcrnment decree, each time at a financial cost that infuriated Garry and with a loss of prestige and influence that made Centaine uneasy.

  He's not a true Courtney, Centaine thought, as she studied Michael's pretty features. Even Bella has more steel in one of her little fingers than he has in his entire body. Michael is a waverer and a bleeder. His concern is for strangers and for the losers, not for the family. For Centaine that was the most heinous form of treachery. He doesn't take after any of us; he takes after his mother. And that was her most damning judgement. He has even tried to corrupt Bella. Centaine knew about the presence of her two grandchildren at the anti-apartheid rally in Trafalgar Square. They had been photographed by South African intelligence from the windows of South Africa House, and Centaine had received a warning call from one of her important contacts in the Government.

  Fortunately, Centaine had been able to smooth things over. Bella had done some undercover work for South African intelligence during her passionate love-affair with Lothar De La Rey. Lothar had been a colonel in the police at the time, and he was now a Member of Parliament and a deputy minister in the Ministry of Law and Order.