Power of the Sword

by Wilbur Smith

  Somebody reached through the jagged hole in the shop window and grabbed an armful of men’s suits. Further down the street another window went with a shattering of glass shards, and the police grouped more tightly and moved forward.

  Tara was trying desperately to help restore order, pleading with the laughing looters as they stampeded into the shops, but she was shoved aside and almost knocked down and trampled underfoot.

  ‘Go home, whitey,’ one of the gang members shouted in her face. ‘We don’t want you here.’ Then he ducked into the doorway of the shop and picked up a new Singer sewing-machine in his arms.

  ‘Stop it!’ Tara met him as he came back through the door of the shop. ‘Put it back. You are spoiling everything. Don’t you see that’s what they want you to do?’ She beat her clenched fists on the man’s chest, and he recoiled before her fury. However, the lane was jammed with humanity, looters, gang members, ordinary citizens and political protesters, confused and angry and afraid. From the end of the lane the police charged in a phalanx; batons rising and falling, sjamboks swinging, they began to sweep the mob down the street.

  Tara ran out of the looted store just at the moment when a large constable in dark blue uniform was laying on his baton with a will, his target a skinny little Malay tailor who had scampered out of his shop to try to retrieve a bolt of looted cloth.

  The constable hit the tailor with a full swing of the baton, crushing his red pillbox fez, and when the little man dropped on the paving stones, stooped over him to aim another blow at his head. Tara launched herself at the policeman. It was a reflex action, like a lioness protecting one of her cubs. The policeman was bent forward, his back to her, and Tara took him off balance. He went down sprawling, but Tara had a death grip on his baton and the wrist-strap parted.

  Suddenly she found herself armed and triumphant with the blue-jacketed enemy of the proletariat, minions of the bourgeoisie, before her.

  She had come in behind the rank of advancing police as they passed the shop, and their backs were turned to her. The thuds of the swinging batons and the terrified squeals of the victims infuriated her. There were the poor and the needy and the oppressed and here were the oppressors – and here also with raised baton was Tara Malcomess.

  Normally it would have taken Shasa little over half an hour to drive the Jaguar from the Anreith gates of Weltevreden to the charge office in Victoria Street. This afternoon it took him almost an hour and a good deal of fast talking.

  The police had cordoned off the area from Observatory Main Road right to the old fort on the extreme south end of the Grand Parade. An ominous shroud of black smoke hung over District Six and drifted out over Table Bay and the police at the roadblocks were tense and on edge.

  ‘You can’t go in there, sir,’ a sergeant flagged down the Jaguar. ‘Nobody allowed in there. Those black bastards are throwing bricks and burning everything in sight.’

  ‘Sergeant, I have just had a message. My fiancée is in there and she needs me. She’s in terrible trouble – you have to let me go to her.’

  ‘Orders, sir, I’m sorry.’ There were half a dozen constables at the barricade, four of them coloured municipal police.

  ‘Sergeant, what would you do if it were your wife or mother who needed you?’

  The sergeant glanced around him sheepishly. ‘I tell you what I’ll do, sir. My men are going to open the roadblock for one minute and we are going to turn our backs. I never saw you and I don’t know nothing about you.’

  The streets were deserted but littered with debris, loose stones and bricks and broken glass that crunched under the tyres of the Jaguar. Shasa drove fast, appalled at the destruction he saw around him, slitting his eyes against the drifts of smoke that obscured his vision every few hundred yards. Once or twice he saw figures lurking in the alleys, or watching from the upper windows of the undamaged buildings, but nobody attempted to stop him or attack him. Nevertheless, it was with intense relief that he reached the police station in Victoria Road, and the protection of the hastily marshalled police riot squads.

  ‘Tara Malcomess.’ The sergeant at the front desk of the charge office recognized the name immediately. ‘Yes, you could say that we know about her! After all, it took four of my men to carry her in here.’

  ‘What are the charges, Sergeant?’

  ‘Let me see—’ He consulted the charge sheet. ‘So far we have only got attending an unlawful assembly, wilful destruction of property, inciting to violence, using abusive and threatening language, obstructing the police in the execution of their duty, assaulting a policeman and/or policemen, common assault, assault with an offensive weapon and/or assault with intent.’

  ‘I will put up her bail.’

  ‘That, sir, will cost a pretty penny, I should say.’

  ‘Her father is Colonel Malcomess, the cabinet minister.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you say so before? Please wait here, sir.’

  Tara had a blackened eye and her blouse was torn; her auburn hair stood up in tangled disarray as she peered out at Shasa between the bars of her cell.

  ‘What about Huey?’ she demanded.

  ‘Huey can cook in Hades for all I care.’

  ‘Then I’m going to cook with him,’ Tara declared truculently. ‘I’m not leaving here without him.’

  Shasa recognized the obstinate set of her madonnalike features, and sighed. So it cost him one hundred pounds – fifty for Tara and fifty for Huey.

  ‘I’ll be damned if I will give him a lift though,’ Shasa declared. ‘Fifty quid is enough for any little bolshevik. He can walk back to his kennel from here.’

  Tara climbed into the front seat of the Jaguar and folded her arms defiantly. Neither of them spoke as Shasa gunned the motor and pulled away with unnecessary violence, burning blue smoke off the back tyres.

  Instead of heading back towards the affluent white southern suburbs, he sent the Jaguar roaring up the lower slopes of Devil’s Peak and parked at one of the viewpoints overlooking the smoking and damaged buildings of District Six.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, as he switched off the engine.

  ‘Don’t you want to have a look at your handiwork?’ he asked coldly. ‘Surely you are proud of what you have achieved.’

  She shifted uneasily in her seat. ‘That wasn’t us,’ she muttered. ‘That was the skollie boys and the gangsters.’

  ‘My dear Tara, that is how revolution is supposed to work. The criminal elements are encouraged to destroy the existing system, to break down the rule of law and order, and then the leaders step in and restore order again by shooting the revolutionaries. Haven’t you studied the teachings of your idol Lenin?’

  ‘It was the fault of the police—’

  ‘Yes, it’s always the fault of the police – that’s also part of Lenin’s plan.’

  ‘It isn’t like that—’

  ‘Shut up,’ he snapped at her. ‘Just for once shut up and listen to me. Up to now I’ve put up with your Joan of Arc act. It was silly and naive but I tolerated it because I loved you. But when you start burning down people’s homes and throwing bricks and bombs, then I don’t think it’s so funny any more.’

  ‘Don’t you dare condescend to me,’ she flared.

  ‘Look, Tara, look down there at the smoke and flames. Those are the people you pretend to care for, those are the people who you say you want to help. Those are their homes and livelihoods that you have put the torch to.’

  ‘I didn’t think—’

  ‘No, you certainly didn’t think. But I am going to tell you something now and you’d better remember it. If you try to destroy this land I love and make its people suffer, then you become my enemy and I will fight you to the death.’

  She was silent for a long time, her head turned away from him and then at last she said softly, ‘Will you take me home, please?’

  He took the long way home over Kloof Nek and along the Atlantic coast, circling around the far side of Table Mountain to avoid the riot-tor
n areas and they never spoke again until he parked at last in front of the Malcomess home in Newlands.

  ‘Perhaps you are right,’ Tara said. ‘Perhaps we really are enemies.’ She climbed out of the Jaguar and stood looking down at him as he sat behind the wheel in the open cockpit.

  ‘Goodbye Shasa,’ she said softly, sadly, and went into the house.

  ‘Goodbye, Tara,’ he whispered. ‘Goodbye, my beloved enemy.’

  All the Courtneys were gathered in the front room of Weltevreden.

  Sir Garrick and Anna sat on the long sofa which was covered with striped Regency patterned damask. They had come down from Natal for Sir Garry’s birthday, and the week before they had all climbed Table Mountain for the traditional birthday picnic. It had been a merry occasion and the Ou Baas, General Jan Christian Smuts, had been with them, as he nearly always was.

  Sir Garry and Lady Anna had planned to return home a few days previously, but then the ghastly news of the German invasion of Poland had broken and they had stayed on at Weltevreden. It was only right that the family should be together in these desperate days.

  The two of them held hands like young lovers as they sat close together. Since his last birthday, Sir Garry had grown a small silver goatee beard, perhaps in unconscious imitation of his old friend General Smuts. It increased his scholarly mien and added a little touch of distinction to his pale aesthetic features. He leaned slightly forward on the sofa, inclined towards his wife but with his attention on the radio cabinet over which Shasa Courtney was fussing, twiddling the tuning knobs and frowning at the crackle and whine of static.

  ‘The BBC is on the forty-one-metre band,’ Centaine told him sharply and glanced at her diamond-studded wristwatch. ‘Do be quick, chéri, or we will miss the transmission.’

  ‘Ah!’ Shasa smiled as the static cleared and the chimes of Big Ben rang out clearly. As they died away the announcer spoke.

  ‘Twelve hundred hours Greenwich Mean Time and in place of the news we are broadcasting a statement by Mr Neville Chamberlain the prime minister—’

  ‘Turn it up, chéri,’ Centaine ordered anxiously, and the fateful words, measured and grave, boomed into the elegant room.

  They listened to it all in complete silence. Sir Garry’s beard quivered, and he took the steel-rimmed spectacles off his nose and absentmindedly chewed on one of the side frames. Beside him Anna wriggled forward onto the edge of the sofa, her thick thighs spread under their own weight; her face slowly turned a deeper shade of brick and her grip on her husband’s hand tightened as she stared at the radio in its mahogany cabinet.

  Centaine sat in the tall wingbacked chair beside the huge stone fireplace. She looked like a young girl in a white summer dress with a wide yellow ribbon around her slim waist. She was thirty-nine years old, but there was not yet a single thread of silver in the dense dark curls of her hair and her skin was clear, the faint crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes smoothed almost entirely by expensive oils and creams. She leaned an elbow on the arm of the chair, and while with one finger she touched her cheek, she never took her eyes off her son.

  Shasa paced the long room, moving from the radio cabinet in its niche between the long flowered curtains, across the highly polished parquet floor with its scattering of oriental carpets until he reached the grand concert piano that stood against the main wall of bookcases at the far end of the room, then turning and coming back with quick restless paces, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bowed in concentration.

  She thought how he looked so much like his father. Though Michael had been older and not quite so handsome, yet they had the same quality of grace. She remembered how she had believed Michael to be immortal, a young god, and she felt the terror enter her soul again – that same helpless crippling terror – as she heard the words of war echo through this beautiful home that she had built as a fortress against the world.

  ‘We are never safe – there is no refuge,’ she thought. ‘It is coming again, and I cannot save those I love. Shasa and Blaine – they will both go and I cannot keep them from it. Last time it was Michael and Papa, this time it’s Shasa and Blaine – and, oh God, I hate it. I hate war and I hate the evil men who make it. Please God spare us this time. You took Michael and Papa, please spare Shasa and Blaine. They are all I have – please don’t take them from me.’

  The deep slow voice spoke into the room, and Shasa froze in the centre of the floor, turning his head to stare over his shoulder at the radio as the voice said:

  ‘And so, it is with the deepest regret that I have to inform you that a state of war now exists between Great Britain and Germany.’

  The transmission ended and was replaced by the slow sad strains of chamber music.

  ‘Turn it off, chéri,’ Centaine said softly, and there was complete silence in the room.

  Nobody moved for many seconds. Then abruptly Centaine rose to her feet. She was smiling gaily as she linked her arm through Shasa’s.

  ‘Lunch is ready everybody,’ she cried lightly. ‘In such lovely weather we will eat on the terrace. Shasa will open a bottle of champagne, and I have managed to get the first oysters of the season.’

  She kept up a bright and cheery monologue until they were all seated at the table and the wine glasses were filled and then suddenly her act collapsed, and she turned to Sir Garry with a tortured expression.

  ‘We won’t have to go in, will we, Papa? General Hertzog promised he would keep us out. He says it’s an English war. We won’t have to send our men again – not this time, will we, Papa?’

  Sir Garry reached across and took her hand. ‘You and I know what the price was last time—’ his voice choked off and he could not mention Michael’s name. After a moment he gathered himself. ‘I wish I could give you comfort, my dear. I wish I could say what you want to hear.’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ said Centaine miserably. ‘It just isn’t fair.’

  ‘No, I agree it isn’t fair. However, there is a monstrous tyranny abroad, a great evil which will swallow us and our world if we do not resist it.’

  Centaine sprang up from the table and ran into the house. Shasa rose quickly to follow her, but Sir Garry restrained him with a hand on his arm, and ten minutes later Centaine came out again. She had washed her face and refreshed her make-up and she was smiling, but there was a feverish glitter in her eyes as she took her place at the head of the table.

  ‘We are all going to be gay,’ she laughed. ‘That’s an order. No brooding, no morbid thoughts or words – we are all going to be happy—’ she broke off and the laughter wobbled. She had been about to say, ‘for it may be the last time we will all be happy together ever again.’

  On 4 September 1939, the day after Great Britain and France had declared war on Nazi Germany, General Barry Hertzog rose to address the Parliament of the Union of South Africa.

  ‘It is my sad and painful duty to inform the house that the cabinet of the Government is divided on the question of this country’s position in the state of war that exists at present between Britain and France on the one hand and Germany on the other hand.’ He paused and replaced his spectacles to scrutinize the faces of the men who sat beside him on the government front benches, and then went on gravely.

  ‘It is my firm belief that the ultimatum given to Germany by the British Government concerning the occupation of Poland by the German Wehrmacht is not binding upon this country, nor does the German occupation of Poland constitute a threat to the security of the Union of South Africa—’ A great roar of approval went up from the opposition benches and Dr Daniel Malan, froglike and bespectacled, smiled benignly, while on the government benches Smuts and his supporters registered their protest as loudly.

  ‘It is rather a local matter between Germany and Poland,’ Hertzog went on, ‘and it gives this country no cause to join in the declaration of war. Accordingly I propose that South Africa remain neutral; that it cede the naval base at Simonstown to Britain, but in all other respects continue its present relat
ionship with all the belligerents as if no war were being waged.’

  The ageing prime minister was a fluent and persuasive speaker and as he continued enlarging his case for neutrality, Blaine Malcomess on the front bench of the government side was covertly watching the reaction of the Smuts supporters around him.

  He knew which of them were as firmly committed as himself and the Ou Baas to stand by Britain, and which of them were wavering and uncertain. As Hertzog continued speaking, he sensed the swing of emotions towards the old general’s side, and with a sense of disbelief and rising shame he foresaw the ignominious decision that the House was about to take. His anger rose to keep pace with his shame.

  General Hertzog was still speaking, and Blaine was now only listening with half an ear as he scribbled a note to pass across to the Ou Baas, when abruptly his full attention flashed back to what the prime minister was saying.

  ‘Finally, coming to the ethics of the German invasion of Poland, a case could very well be made out for the justification of this action if it were taken into consideration that the security of the German state—’

  Blaine felt his spirits soar, and he sensed rather than saw the sudden shock and revulsion of feeling amongst those who had begun to waver towards the side of neutrality.

  ‘He has gone too far,’ Blaine wrote on a fresh sheet of his notepad. ‘He is defending Hitler’s aggression. We have won.’

  He tore the sheet from the pad and handed it to General Smuts, who read it and nodded slightly, and rose to his feet to put the other side of the argument.

  ‘Britain is our friend, our oldest and our best friend. We must stand by her to the end,’ he said in his high-pitched voice, rolling his r’s in his distinctive Malmesbury bray.

  ‘Far from being a local dispute, the Polish invasion has consequences that reach far beyond Danzig and the corridor, into the hearts and souls of free men in every corner of the globe.’