by Wilbur Smith
As he said this, Michael glanced at her midriff significantly, but Isabella concentrated all her attention on the traffic to avoid an explanation and at last parked the Mini in the mews garage at the back of the square.
Michael was suffering from jet-lag, so she ran him a foam bath and brought him a whisky and soda. While he was soaking, she sat on the closed lid of the toilet-seat and chatted. She would never have contemplated sharing a bathroom with either Sean or Garry, but between Michael and herself nudity was natural and unremarked.
‘Do you remember that silly little nonsense rhyme?’ Michael asked at last. ‘How did it go again?
“Dum de dum-dum,
And her father said, ‘Nelly,
There is more in your belly
Than ever went in through your mouth!’”’
Isabella chuckled unashamedly. ‘Is that what they call “the trained journalistic eye”? You don’t miss anything, do you, Mickey?’
‘Miss it?’ he laughed with her. ‘Your tummy damn near knocked out my trained journalistic eye!’
‘Pretty, isn’t it?’ Isabella pushed it out as far as it would go, and patted it proudly.
‘Stunning!’ Michael agreed. ‘And I am sure that Pater and Nana would agree if they could see it.’
‘You won’t tell, will you, Mickey?’
‘We don’t tell each other’s secrets, you and me. Never have, never will. But what are you going to do with the eventual, ah, result?’
‘My son, your nephew – you call that a result? Shame on you, Mickey. Ramón calls it the greatest miracle and mystery of the universe.’
‘Ramón! So that is the culprit’s name. I hope he’s wearing bullet-proof knickers when Nana catches up with him toting her trusty old shotgun, loaded with buckshot.’
‘He’s a marqués, Mickey. The Marqués de Santiago y Machado.’
‘Ah, that might make a difference. Nana is enough of a snob to be impressed. She will probably reduce the charge from buckshot to birdshot.’
‘By the time Nana finds out about it, I’ll be a marquesa.’
‘So the nefarious Ramón intends making an honest woman out of you, does he? When?’
‘Well, there is a little bit of a hitch,’ she admitted.
‘You mean he’s married already.’
‘How did you know that, Mickey?’ She gaped at him.
‘And his wife won’t give him a divorce?’
‘Mickey!’
‘My love, that’s the hoariest old chestnut in the packet.’ Michael stood up, cascading soapy bath water, and reached for the towel.
‘You don’t know him, Mickey. He’s not like that.’
‘May I take that as an impartial and totally unbiased opinion?’ Michael stepped out of the bath, and began to towel himself down.
‘He loves me.’
‘So I see.’
‘Don’t be flippant.’
‘Make me a promise, Bella. If anything goes wrong, come to me first. Will you promise me that?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I promise. You are still my very best friend. I promise, but nothing is going to go wrong. You just wait and see.’
She took him to dinner at Ma Cuisine in Walton Street. The restaurant was so popular that they would never have got a table had not Isabella made the reservation the very day that she heard Michael was coming to London.
‘I like escorting a pregger,’ Michael remarked as they settled at the table. ‘Everybody smiles at me, as though I am responsible.’
‘Nonsense. It’s simply because you are so handsome.’ They talked about their work. Isabella made him promise to read her thesis and make suggestions. Then Michael explained that the main reason he was in London was to write a series of articles on the anti-apartheid movement, and the South African political exiles living in Britain.
‘I have arranged interviews with some of the leading lights: Oliver Tambo, Denis Brutus . . .’
‘Do you think our censors will let you publish the article?’ Isabella asked. ‘They’ll probably ban the entire edition again, and Garry will be furious. Anything that affects the profits makes Garry furious.’
Michael chuckled. ‘Poor old Garry.’ That title was habitual but no longer appropriate. ‘Life is so simple for him – not the black and white of morality, but the black and red of the bank statement.’
With the dessert Michael asked suddenly, ‘How is Mater? Have you seen her lately?’
‘Not Mater, nor Mother, nor even Mummy,’ Isabella corrected him tartly. ‘You know that she thinks those terms terribly bourgeois. But to answer your question – no, I haven’t seen Tara for some time.’
‘She is our mother, Bella.’
‘She might have thought of that when she deserted Pater and the rest of us and ran off with a black revolutionary and bore him a little brown bastard.’
‘And you might be a shade more charitable when it comes to bearing bastards,’ Michael said mildly, and then saw the hurt in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Bella, but as in your case there are reasons for all things. We shouldn’t judge her too harshly. Pater can’t be the easiest man in the world to be married to, and not everybody can play the game to the rules that Nana lays down. Some of us don’t have the killer instincts finely enough developed. I don’t think Tara fitted into the family at all, not from the very beginning. She never was an élitist. Her sympathies were always with the underdog, and then Moses Gama came into her life . . .’
‘Mickey darling’ – Isabella leant across the table and took his hand – ‘you are the most compassionate, understanding person in the world. You spend your life making excuses for us, protecting us from the Fates. I do love you so much. I don’t even want to fight or argue with you.’
‘Good.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘Then, you’ll come along to see Tara with me. She writes to me regularly. She adores you, Isabella, and she misses you terribly. It hurts her when you avoid her.’
‘Oh, Mickey, you set a trap for me, you devil.’ She thought furiously for a second. ‘But what about my condition? I was hoping to be a little more discreet.’
‘Tara is your mother, she loves you, and they don’t come any more broad-minded than our Tara. She’s not going to do anything to hurt you, you know that.’
‘To please you,’ she sighed, and capitulated. ‘Only to please you, Mickey.’
So on the following Saturday morning they walked down Brompton Road, and Michael had to stretch his long legs to match her flowing athletic stride.
‘Are you training to have a sprog-bod, or for the next Olympics?’ he asked with a grin.
‘You smoke too much,’ Isabella scoffed at him.
‘My only vice.’
Tara Courtney, or Tara Gama as she now called herself, was the manageress of a small residential hotel off Cromwell Road, and her clientele was composed almost exclusively of expatriates and new immigrants from Africa and India and the Caribbean.
It always amazed Isabella that an area like this existed only twenty minutes’ walk from the grandeur of Cadogan Square. The Lord Kitchener Hotel was as shabby and rundown as its manageress. Again it amazed Isabella that her mother was the same person who had once presided over the great château of Weltevreden. Isabella’s earliest memories were of her mother in a full-length ball-gown, with yellow diamonds from the Courtney mine at H’ani glittering at her smooth white throat and on her earlobes, her dark auburn hair piled high on her lovely head as she came down the sweep of the marble staircase. Isabella had never suspected the terrible dissatisfaction and misery that must have festered beneath that regal façade.
Now Tara’s magnificent head of hair had greyed, and she had touched it up with a cheap home-dye job that came up in variegated tones of ginger and brazen plum. Her skin that Isabella had inherited in all its silken perfection had withered and bagged and wrinkled with neglect. There were little blackheads lodged in the enlarged pores around the creases between her nose and cheeks, and her false teeth were too large for her mouth, distorting the swee
t line of her lips.
She rushed down the front steps of the hotel to embrace Isabella in a cloud of pungent Cologne. Isabella returned her hug with the strength of a guilty conscience.
‘Let me look at my darling daughter.’ She held Isabella at arm’s length, and her eyes dropped immediately. ‘You have grown more beautiful, Bella, if that were possible, but the reason is pretty obvious. I see you are carrying a little bundle of fun and joy.’
Isabella’s smile crooked with annoyance, but she ignored the reference.
‘You look well, Mummy – Tara, I mean.’ Tara wore the self-conscious uniform of the militant left winger: a shapeless grey cardigan over a full-length granny-print shift and men’s open brown sandals.
‘It’s been months,’ Tara complained, ‘almost a year, and you live just down the road. How can you neglect your old mum so?’
Michael intervened smoothly, deflecting Tara’s self-pity, embracing her with unfeigned warmth and enthusiasm. She turned to him with theatrical mother-love.
‘Mickey, you were always the sweetest and most loving of all my children.’
And Isabella’s smile began to hurt her lips. She wondered just how long she had to stay and when she could escape. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy, and that for once she could expect little support from Michael. Tara linked her arms through theirs. Michael on one side of her and Isabella on the other, she led them into the hotel.
‘I’ve got tea and biscuits ready for you. I’ve been in an absolute tizz ever since Michael called to say you were coming.’
On a Saturday morning the Lord Kitchener’s public lounge was filled with Tara’s guests. The air was thick with tobacco smoke and the cadences of Swahili and Gujarati and Xhosa. Tara introduced them to everybody in the room, even though Isabella had met many of them on her previous visits.
‘My son and daughter from Cape Town in South Africa.’ And she saw how some of the eyes flicked at the name of her country.
The hell with them, too, Isabella decided defiantly. Funny how at home she thought of herself as a liberal, but when she was abroad and encountered that reaction she thought of herself as a patriot.
At last Tara seated them in a corner of the lounge, and while she poured the tea, she asked in a bright and cheery tone that carried clearly to everybody in the large room: ‘So now, Bella, tell me about the baby. When are you expecting it and who is the father?’
‘This is hardly the time or the place, Tara.’ Isabella paled with irritation, but Tara laughed.
‘Oh, we are all just one big family here at the Lordy. You can talk freely.’
This time Michael murmured gently: ‘Bella really doesn’t want all the world to know her private business. We’ll talk about it later, Tara.’
‘You funny old-fashioned thing.’ Tara reached across and tried to hug Isabella again, but spilled some of her tea on her granny-print skirt and gave up the attempt. ‘None of us here worries our head over bourgeois conventions.’
‘That’s enough, Tara,’ Michael said firmly, and then to divert her: ‘Where is Benjamin and how is he doing?’
‘Oh, Ben is my pride and joy.’ Tara took the bait. ‘He just popped out for a few minutes. He had to go down to the school to hand in an essay. He’s such a clever boy, he’s taking his A-levels this year, only sixteen and his headmaster says he is the most brilliant, the cleverest child he has had in Ryham Grammar for the last ten years. All the girls adore him. He’s so good-looking.’ Tara chattered on, and Isabella was relieved not to have to make conversation. Instead she listened to the recital of her half-brother’s virtues.
Benjamin Gama was one of the many reasons that Isabella felt uncomfortable in this other world in which her mother lived. So deep had been the disgrace and so poisonous the scandal that Tara had brought on the Courtney family that her name was never mentioned at Weltevreden. Nana had forbidden it.
Only Michael had ever discussed it with her, and then in the most general terms. ‘I’m sorry, Bella. I’m not going to repeat cruel rumour and hearsay. If you want that, you’ll have to go elsewhere. I’ll only tell you the facts, and those are that when Tara left South Africa after Moses Gama was arrested and imprisoned no charges were ever brought against her and no proof was ever offered to implicate her in any criminal activity.’
‘But didn’t Pater arrange it that way to protect the family reputation?’
‘Why don’t you ask Pater himself?’ She had indeed tentatively broached the subject with her father; but Shasa, for once cold and aloof, had dismissed the enquiry. In an odd way Isabella had been relieved by his refusal to talk about it. Isabella was honest enough to recognize her own cowardice. She didn’t truly want to know the extent of her mother’s guilt. Deep down, she didn’t really want to know if her mother had indeed been a party to the notorious ‘Guy Fawkes’ plot of her lover, Moses Gama, to blow up the South African Houses of Parliament, the attempt which had resulted in the death of Isabella’s grandfather, Tara’s own father. Perhaps her mother was a traitor and a murderess guilty of patricide. At the very least she was certainly a blatant adulteress and a miscegenist, which was a crime under South African law, and once again Isabella wondered just what she was doing here.
Suddenly Tara’s features brightened, and for an instant she recaptured a faint glimmer of her lost beauty.
‘Ben!’ she cried. ‘Look who have come to see us, Benjamin. Your brother and sister. Isn’t that nice?’
Isabella swivelled in her chair, and her half-brother stood in the doorway of the hotel lounge behind her. He had grown again in the year since last she had seen him and obviously he had made that leap from puberty into manhood.
‘Hello, Benjamin,’ she cried too enthusiastically, and although he smiled she sensed the reserve in him, and saw the wariness in his dark eyes.
Tara had not been completely prejudiced by her maternal instincts. Benjamin was indeed a fine-looking lad. His natural African grace had combined well with his mother’s more delicate features. His skin had a coppery tone, and his hair was a neat woolly cap of tight dark curls.
‘Hello, Isabella.’ The south London accent on the tongue of this son of Africa startled her. She made no move to embrace him. From their very first meeting there had been a tacit agreement between them: no displays of simulated affection. They shook hands quickly, and then both stepped back. Before Isabella could think of anything further to say, Benjamin had turned to Michael. Now his smile was a flash of perfect teeth and the sparkle of dark eyes.
‘Mickey!’ he said, and he took two quick light steps to meet his older brother. They clasped each other around the shoulders.
Isabella envied Michael that exceptional ability to evoke trust and liking in everybody around him. Benjamin seemed truly to accept him as a brother and a friend without any of the reserve that he showed towards Isabella. Soon all three of them, Tara, Ben and Mickey, were chatting away with animation. Isabella felt herself excluded from their intimate little circle.
At last one of the black South African students crossed the lounge and spoke to Tara. She looked up in consternation and then glanced at her watch.
‘My goodness, thank you for reminding me, Nelson.’ She smiled up at the student. ‘We were having such a good natter that we completely forgot about the time.’ Tara jumped to her feet. ‘Come on, everybody! If we are going to Trafalgar Square, we had better leave now.’
There was a general exodus from the lounge, and Isabella edged across to Michael.
‘What’s this all about, Mickey? You seem to know what’s going on. Fill me in.’
‘There is a rally in Trafalgar Square.’
‘Oh God, no! Not another one of those anti-apartheid jamborees. Why didn’t you warn me?’
‘It would have given you an excuse to duck out,’ Michael grinned at her. ‘Why don’t you come along?’
‘No, thanks. I’ve lived with that nonsense for the past three years, ever since Pater took over the embassy. What are you getting mixed up
in that ridiculous business for?’
‘It’s my job, Bella my sweeting. That’s what I came to London for, to write about this ridiculous business, as you call it. Come with us.’
‘Why should I bother?’
‘See the world from the other side of the fence for a change – you might find it refreshing – and to be with me. We could have fun together.’ She wavered uncertainly. Despite her disdain for the subject, she loved his company. They truly did have fun together, and with Ramón away she was lonely.
‘Only if we ride on the top of a bus, not on the Tube. You know I can never resist a bus ride.’
They were a party of twenty or so from the Lordy, including Nelson Litalongi, the South African student. Michael found a seat for her on the upper deck of the red bus, and then he and Nelson squeezed in beside her. Tara and Benjamin were in the seat directly in front of them, but they faced around to join in the laughter and the joking. The mood was gay and carefree, and despite herself Isabella found she was indeed having fun. Michael was the centre of everything, and he and Nelson began to sing. They both had fine voices, and the others joined in with the chorus of ‘This Is My Island in the Sun’. Nelson could mimic Harry Belafonte to the life and resembled him except that the tone of his skin was lustrous charcoal. He and Michael had hit it off together from the beginning.
When they climbed off the bus in front of the National Gallery, the demonstrators were already assembling on the open square beneath the tall column, and Michael made a joke about Nelson and Horatio. Everybody laughed, and they trooped across the road into the square, and the pigeons rose in fluttering clouds from around their feet.
There was a temporary platform erected at the end of the square, directly in front of South Africa House, and an area had been roped off, in which a few hundred demonstrators had already assembled. They joined the back ranks, and Tara produced a hand-drawn banner from her plastic shopping-bag and held it aloft.
‘Apartheid is a crime against humanity.’
Isabella edged away from her and tried to pretend they were not related. ‘She really doesn’t mind making a spectacle of herself, does she?’ she whispered to Michael, and he laughed.