Power of the Sword

From the morning they reached the border post at Rundu and went ashore to meet the police sergeant who was in command, they seemed constantly to be with strangers, always on their guard so that every glance that passed between them, every word or stolen caress, made them more dreadfully aware of impending separation. Only when the dusty police truck carried them down the last hills into Windhoek was the torturous process completed.

The world awaited them: Isabella, lovely and tragic in her wheelchair, and her daughters bubbling with laughter, mischievous and enchanting as elves, competing for Blaine's embraces; the superintendent of police and the territorial secretary and droves of petty officials and reporters and photographers; TWentyman-jones and Abe Abrahams, Sir Garry and Lady Courtney, who had hurried up from their estate at Lady-burg the moment they heard of the robbery, and piles of messages of concern and congratulation, telegrams from the prime minister and from the Ou Baas, General Smuts, and from a hundred friends and business associates.

Yet Centaine felt detached from the hubbub. She watched it all through a screen of gossamer which muted sound and shape and gave it a dreamlike quality as though half of her was far away, drifting upon a beautiful green river, making love in the warm soft night while the mosquitoes whined outside the protective net, walking hand in hand with the man she loved, a tall strong gentle man with soft green eyes, the hands of a pianist and lovely sticky-out ears.

From her railway coach she telephoned Shasa and tried to sound enthusiastic about the fact that he was now the captain of his cricket eleven and about his mathematics marks which had at last taken an upward turn.

I don't know when I will be back at Weltevreden, cheri.

I have so many things to see to. We never recovered the diamonds, I'm afraid. There will have to be talks with the bank and I'll have to make new arrangements. No, of course not, silly boy! Of course we aren't poor, not yet, but a million pounds is a lot of money to lose, and then there will be the trial. Yes, he is an awful man, Shasa, but I don't know if they will hang him. Good Lord, no! They won't let us watch- TWice that first day of their separation she telephoned the residency in the forlorn hope that Blaine would answer, but it was a woman, either a secretary or Isabella, and each time she hung up without speaking.

They met again at the administrator's office the next day.

Blaine had called a press conference and there was a crowd of journalists and photographers packed into the ante-chamber.

Once again Isabella was there in her wheelchair, with Blaine attentive and dutiful and unbearably handsome behind her.

it took all Centaine's acting ability to shake hands in a friendly fashion, and then to joke lightly with the members of the press, even posing with Blaine for the photographs, and at no time to allow herself to moon at him. But afterwards as she drove herself back to the offices of the Courtney Mining and Finance Company, she had to pull off into a side road and sit quietly for a while to compose herself. There had been no opportunity for a single private exchange with Blaine.

Abe was waiting for her the moment she walked in through the front doors and he followed her up the stairs and into her office. 'Centaine, you are late. They have been waiting in the boardroom for almost an hour. I can't say with any great display of patience either. Let them wait! she told him with bravado she did not feel. 'They had better get accustomed to it., The bank was her single largest creditor.

The loss of the stones has frightened ten different shades of yellow out of them, Centaine. The bank directors had been demanding this meeting since the minute they heard she had arrived back in town.

Where is Dr Twenty-man-jones? He is in there with them, pouring oil on the troubled waters. Abe laid a thick folder in front of her. 'Here are the schedules of the interest repayments. She glanced at them. She already knew them by heart. She could recite dates and amounts and rates. She had already prepared her strategy in detail but it was all dreamy and unreal, like a children's game.

Anything new that I should know about before we go into the lions den? she asked.

A long cable from Lloyds of London. They have repudiated the claim. No armed escort. Centaine nodded. We expected that. Will we take them to court? What do you advise? I am taking silk's opinion on that, but my own feeling is that it will be a waste of time and money. Anything else? De Beers, he said. A message from Sir Ernest Oppenheimer himself. Sniffing around already, is he? She sighed, trying to make herself care, but she thought of Blaine instead.

She saw him bending over the wheelchair. She pushed the image from her mind and concentrated on what Abe was telling her.

Sir Ernest is coming up from Kimberley. He will be arriving in Windhoek on Thursday. By some lucky chance, she smiled cynically.

He requests a meeting at your earliest convenience. He has a nose like a hyena and the eyesight of a vulture, Centaine said. He can smell blood and pick out a dying animal from a hundred leagues. 'He is after the H'ani Mine, Centaine. He has been lusting after the H'ani for thirteen years. They are all after the H'ani, Abe. The bank, Sir Ernest, all the predators. By God, they'll have to fight me for it. They stood up and Abe asked, Are you ready? Centaine glanced at herself in the mirror over the mantel, touched her hair, wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, and suddenly it all clicked into crisp focus again. She was going into battle, her mind cleared, her wits sharp, she smiled a bright, confident, patronizing smile at herself.

She was ready again.

Let's go! she said, and as they marched into the long boardroom with its stinkwood table and the six huge magically lyrical Pierneef murals of the desert places decorating the walls, she lifted her chin and her eyes sparkled with assumed confidence.

Do forgive me, gentlemen, she cried lightly, attacking immediately with the fall force of her personality and sexual allure and watching them wilt before it, but I assure you that you now have me, and my full attention, for as long as you want me. Deep inside her there was still that empty aching place which Blaine had filled for a few fleeting moments, but it was buttressed and fortified, she was impregnable once again, and as she took the leather upholstered chair at the head of the table she recited silently to herself like a mantra: 'The H'ani belongs to me, no one shall take it from me. Manfred De La Rey moved as swiftly through the darkness as the two grown men who led him northwards. The humiliation and pain of his father's dismissal had invoked within him a new defiance and steely determination. His father had called him a blubbering ninny.

But I am a man now, he told himself, striding onwards after the dark figure of Swart Hendrick. I will never cry again. I am a man, and I will prove it every day I live. I will prove it to you, Pa. if you are watching over me still, you will never have to be ashamed of me again., Then he thought of his father alone and dying upon the hilltop, and his grief was overwhelming. Despite his resolution, his tears rose to swamp him and it took all his strength and his will to thrust them down.

I am a man now. He fixed his mind upon it, and indeed he stood as tall as a man, almost as tall as Hendrick, and his long legs thrust him forward tirelessly. I will make you proud of me, Papa. I swear it. I swear it before God. He neither slackened his pace nor uttered a single complaint throughout that long night, and the sun was clear of the treetops when they reached the river.

As soon as they had drunk Hendrick had them up again and moving northwards. They travelled in a series of loops, swinging away from the river during the day, hiding out in the dry mopani, and then turning back to slake their thirst and follow the riverbank all the hours of darkness.

it was twelve of these nights of hard marching before Hendrick judged them clear of any pursuit.

When will we cross the river, Hennie? Manfred asked.

Never, Swart Hendrick told him.

But it was my father's plan to cross to the Portuguese, to Alves De Santos the ivory trader, and then to travel to Luanda. That was your father's plan, Hendrick agreed. But your father is not with us. There is no place for a strange black man in the north. The Portuguese are even harder than the Germans or the English or the Boers. They will cheat us out of our diamonds, and beat us like dogs and send us to work on their labour gangs. No, Manie, we are going back, back to ovamboland and our brothers of the tribe, where everyone is a friend and we can live like men and not animals. The police will find us, Manie argued.

No man saw us. Your father made certain of that. But they know you were my father's friend. They will come for you. Hendrick grinned. In Ovamboland my name is not Hendrick, and a thousand witnesses will swear I was always in my kraal and knew no white robber.

To the white police all black men look the same, and I have a brother, a clever brother, who will know how and where to sell our diamonds for us. With these stones I can buy two hundred fine cattle and ten fat wives. No, Manie, we are going home. And what will happen to me, Hendrick? I cannot go with you to the kraals of the Ovambo. There is a place and a plan for you. Hendrick placed his arm around the white boy's shoulders, a paternal gesture.

Your father has entrusted you to me. You do not have to fear. I will see you safe before I leave you. When you go, Hendrick, I will be alone. I will have nothing. And the black man could not answer him. He dropped his arm and spoke brusquely. It is time to march again; a long, hard road lies ahead of us.

They left the river that night and turned back towards the south-west, skirting the terrible wastes of Bushmanland, keeping to the gentler, better watered lands, striking a more leisurely pace but still avoiding all habitation or human contact until, on the twentieth day after leaving Lothar De La Rey on his fatal hilltop, they followed a wooded ridge through well-pastured country and at last in the dusk looked down on a sprawling Ovambo village.

The conical huts of thatch were built in haphazard clusters of four or five, each surrounded by an enclosure of woven grass matting, and these were grouped around the big central cattle kraal with its palisade of poles set into the earth. The smell of wood-smoke drifted up to them on pale blue wisps, and it mingled with the arnmoniacal scent of cattle dung and the floury smell of maize cakes baking on the coals. The cries of children's laughter and the voices of the women were melodious as wild bird calls. They picked out the gaudy flashes of the skirts of bright trade cotton as the women came up in single file from the water-hole with brimming clay pots balanced gracefully upon their heads.

However, they made no move to approach the village.

Instead they lay concealed upon the ridge, watching for strangers or any sign of the unusual, even the smallest hint of danger, Hendrick and Klein Boy quietly discussing each movement they spotted, each sound that carried up from the village until Manfred grew impatient.

Why are we waiting, Hennie? Only the stupid young gemsbok rushes eagerly into the pitfall, Hendrick grunted. We will go down when we are certain. In the middle of the afternoon a small black urchin drove a herd of goats up the slope. He was stark naked except for the slingshot hanging around his neck, and Hendrick whistled softly.

The child started and stared at their hiding-place fearfully.

Then, when Hendrick whistled again, he crept towards them cautiously. Suddenly he crinkled into a grin too big and white for his grubby face and he rushed straight at Hendrick.

Hendrick laughed and lifted him onto his hip, and the child gabbled at him in ecstatic excitement.

This is my son,Hendrick told Manie, and then he questioned the child and listened to his piping replies with attention.

There are no strangers in the village, he grunted. The police were here, asking for me, but they have gone. Still carrying the child, he led them down the hill towards the largest of the clusters of huts, and he stooped through the opening in the matting fence. The yard was bare and swept, the circle of huts facing inwards. There were four women working in a group, all of them wearing only loincloths of coloured trade cotton; they rocked on the balls of their feet, singing softly in chorus, stamping and crushing the raw dried maize in tall wooden mortars, their bare breasts jerking and quivering with each stroke of the long poles they wielded as pestles in time to their chant.

one of the women shrieked when she saw Hendrick and rushed to him.

She was an ancient crone, wrinkled and toothless, her pate covered with pure white wool. She dropped on her knees and hugged Hendrick's thick powerful legs, crooning with happiness.

My mother, said Hendrick, and lifted her to her feet.

Then they were surrounded by a swarm of delighted chattering women, but after a few minutes Hendrick quieted them and shooed them away.

You are lucky, Manie, he grunted, with a sparkle in his eyes. 'You will be allowed only one wife. At the entrance to the farthest hut the only man in the kraal sat on a low carved stool. He had kept completely aloof from the screeching excitement, and now Hendrick crossed to him. He was much younger than Hendrick, with paler, almost honey-coloured skin. However, his muscle had been forged and tempered by hard physical labour, and there was a confidence about him, that of a man who has striven and succeeded. He had also an air of grace, and fine intelligent features with a Nilotic cast like those of a young pharaoh. Surprisingly he held a thick battered book in his lap, a copy of Macaulay's History of England.

He greeted Hendrick with calm reserve, but their mutual affection was apparent to the white Boy watching them.

This is my clever young brother; same father, but different mothers. He speaks Afrikaans and much better English than even I do, and he reads books. His English name is Moses. I see you, Moses. Manie felt awkward under the penetrating scrutiny of those dark eyes.

I see you, little white boy. Do not call me "boy", Manie said hotly. I am not a boy The men exchanged glances and smiled. Moses is a bossboy on the H'ani Diamond Mine, Hendrick explained in placatory fashion, but the tall Ovambo shook his head and replied in the vernacular.

No longer, Big Brother. I was sacked over a month ago. So I sit here in the sun drinking beer and reading and thinking, performing all those onerous tasks which are a man's duty. They laughed together, and Moses clapped his hands and called to the women imperiously.

Bring beer, do you not see how my brother thirsts? For Hendrick it was good to divest himself of his western European clothing and dress again in the comfortable loincloth, to let himself drift back into the pace of village life.

It was good to savour the tart effervescent sorghum beer, thick as gruel and cool in the clay pots, and to talk quietly of cattle and game, of crops and rain, of acquaintances and friends and relatives, of deaths and births and matings. It was a long leisurely time before they came circumspectly to the pressing issues which had to be discussed.

Yes, Moses nodded. The police were here. Two dogs of the white men in Windhoek who should be ashamed to have betrayed their own tribe.

They were not dressed in uniform, but still they had the stink of police upon them. They stayed many days, asking questions about a man called Swart Hendrick, smiling and friendly at first, then angry and threatening. They beat a few of the women, your mother, He saw Hendrick stiffen and his jaw clench and went on quickly, She is old but tough. She has been beaten before; our father was a strict man. Despite the blows, she did not know Swart Hendrick, nobody knew Swart Hendrick, and the police dogs went away. They will return, said Hendrick, and his half-brother nodded.

Yes. The white men never forget. Five years, ten years.

They hanged a man in Pretoria for killing a man twenty-five years before. They will return. They drank in turn from the pot of beer, sipping with relish and then passing the black pot from hand to hand.

So there was talk of a great robbery of diamonds on the road from the H'ani, and they mentioned the name of the white devil with whom you have always ridden and fought, with whom you went out on the big green to catch fish. They say that you were with him at the taking of the diamonds, and that they will hang you on a rope when they find you. Hendrick chuckled and counterattacked. I also have heard stories of a fellow who is neither unknown nor unrelated to me. I have heard he is well versed in the disposal of stolen diamonds. That all the stones taken from the H'ani Mine pass through his hands. Now who could have told you such vile lies? Moses smiled faintly, and Hendrick gestured to Klein Boy. He brought a rawhide bag from its hiding place and placed it in front of his father. Hendrick opened the flap and, one at a time, lifted out the small packages of brown cartridge paper and laid them on the hard bare earth of the yard, fourteen in a row.

His brother took up the first package and with his sheath knife split the wax seal. This is the mark of the H'ani Mine, he remarked, and carefully unfolded the paper. His expression did not change as he examined the contents. He placed the package aside and opened the next. He did not speak until he had opened all fourteen, and studied them.

Then he said softly, Death. There is death here. A hundred deaths, a thousand deaths. Can you sell them for us? Hendrick asked, and Moses shook his head.

I have never seen such stones, so many together. To try to sell these all at once would bring disaster and death upon us all. I must think upon this, but in the meantime we dare not keep these deadly stones in the kraal. The next morning in the dawn the three of them, Hendrick and Moses and Klein Boy, left the village together and climbed to the crest of the ridge where they found the leadwood tree that Hendrick remembered from the days when he roamed here as a naked herdboy. There was a hollow in the trunk, thirty feet above the ground, which had been the nesting hole of a pair of eagle owls.

While the others stood guard, Klein Boy climbed to the nesting hole, carrying the rawhide bag.

It was many days more before Moses gave his carefully considered summation.

My brother, you and I are no longer of this life or this place. Already I have seen the first restlessness in you. I have seen you look out to the horizon with the expression of a man who longs to breast them. This life, so sweet at first, palls swiftly. The taste of beer goes flat on the tongue, and a man thinks of the brave things he has done, and the braver things which wait for him still somewhere out there. Hendrick smiled. You are a man of many skills, my brother, even that of looking into a man's head and reading his secret thoughts. We cannot stay here. The death stones are too dangerous to keep here, too dangerous to sell., Hendrick nodded. I am listening, he said.

There are things which I have to do. Things which I believe are in my destiny, and of which I have never spoken, not even to you. 'Speak of them now. I speak of the art which the white men call politics and from which we as black men are excluded. Hendrick made a dismissive scornful gesture. You read too many books. There is no profit or reward in that business. Leave it to the white men. You are wrong, my brother. In that art lie treasures which make your little white stones seem paltry. No, do not scoff. Hendrick opened his mouth and then closed it slowly. He had not truly thought about this before, but the young man facing him had a powerful presence, a quivering intensity which stirred and excited him although he did not understand fully the implication of his words.

My brother, I have decided. We will leave here. It is too small for us. Hendrick nodded. The thought did not disturb him. He had been a nomad all his life, and he was ready to move on again.

Not only this kraal, my brother. We will leave this land. 'Leave this land! Hendrick started up and then sank back on his stool.

,We have to do this. This land is too small for us and the stones. Where will we go? His brother held up his hand. We will discuss that soon, but first you must rid us of this white child you have brought amongst us. He is even more dangerous than the stones. He will bring the white police down upon us even more swiftly.

When you have done that, my brother, we will be ready to go on to do what we have to do. Swart Hendrick was a man of great strength, both physical and mental. He feared very little, would attempt anything and suffer much for what he wanted, but always he had followed someone else. Always there had been a man even fiercer and more fearless than he to lead him.

We will do as you say, my brother, he agreed, and he knew instinctively that he had found someone to replace the man he had left to die upon a rock in the desert.

I will wait here until the sun rises tomorrow, Swart Hendrick told the white boy. If you do not return by then, I will know you are safe. ,Will I see you again, Hennie? Manie asked wistfully, and Hendrick hesitated on the brink of empty promise.

I think that our feet will be on different paths from now on, Manie. He reached out and placed a hand on Manfred's shoulder. But I shall think of you often, and, who knows, one day the paths may come together again. He squeezed the boy's shoulder and he noticed that it was sheathed in muscle, like that of a man full grown. Go in peace, and be a man like your father was. He pushed Manfred away lightly, but the white boy lingered. Hendrick, he whispered, there are many things I want to say to you, but I do not have the words.

Hendrick said. We both know. It does not have to be spoken of. Go, Manie. Manfred picked up his pack and blanket roll and stepped out of the undergrowth onto the dusty rutted road. He started down towards the village, towards the spire of the church which he recognized somehow as a symbol of a new existence, that at once both beckoned and repelled him.

At the bend in the road he looked back. There was no sign of the big Ovambo, and he turned and trudged down the main street towards the church at the far end.

Without conscious decision he turned from the main street down a side opening and approached the pastory along the sanitary lane as he had done on the last visit with his father. The narrow lane was hedged with fleshy moroto plants, and he whiffed the sanitary buckets behind the little sliding doors of the outhouses that backed onto the lane. He hesitated at the back gate of the pastory and then lifted the latch and started at a snail's pace up the long pathway.

Halfway along the path he was stopped by a bellow, and he stared about him apprehensively. There was another roar and a loud voice lifted in exhortation or acrimonious argument. It came from a ramshackle building at the bottom of the yard, a large woodshed perhaps.

Manfred sidled down towards the shed and peered around the jamb of the door. The interior was dark but as his eyes adjusted Manfred saw that it was a toolroom, with an anvil and forge at one end and tools hanging on the walls. The earthen floor was bare and in the centre of it knelt Tromp Bierman, the trumpet of God.

He was wearing dark suit trousers and a white shirt with the white tie of his office. His suit jacket hung on a pair of blacksmith's tongs above the anvil. Tromp Bierman's bushy beard was pointed to the roof and his eyes were closed, his arms lifted in an attitude of surrender or supplication; but his tone was far from submissive.

Oh Lord God of Israel, I call upon you most urgently to give answer to your servant's prayers for guidance in this matter. How can I perform your will if I do not know what it is? I am only a humble instrument, I dare not take this decision alone. Look down, oh Lord God, have pity on my ignorance and stupidity and make known your intentions, Tromp broke off suddenly and opened his eyes. The great shaggy leonine head turned, and the eyes, like those of an Old Testament prophet, burned into Manfred's soul.

Hastily Manfred snatched the shapeless sweatstained hat from his head and held it with both hands to his chest.

I have come back, Oom, he said. Just like you said I must. Tromp stared at him ferociously. He saw a sturdy lad, broad-shouldered and with powerful shapely limbs, a head of dusty golden curls and contrasting eyebrows black as coal dust over strange topaz-coloured eyes. He tried to see beyond the pale surface of those eyes and was aware of an aura of determination and lucid intelligence that surrounded the youth.

Come here, he ordered, and Manfred dropped his pack and went to him. Tromp seized him by the hand and dragged him down.

Kneel, Jong, get down on your knees and give thanks to your Maker. Praise the Lord God of your fathers that he has heard my supplications on your behalf. Dutifully Manfred closed his eyes and clasped his hand.

Oh Lord, forgive your servant's importunity in bringing to your notice such other trivial matters, when in fact you were occupied with more dire affairs. We thank you for delivering into our care this young person, whom we shall temper and hone into a sword. A mighty blade that shall strike down the Philistine, a weapon that shall be wielded to your glory, in the just and righteous cause of your chosen people, the Afrikaner VoLk. He prodded Manfred with a forefinger like a pruning shear.

Amen! Manfred gasped at the pain.

We will glorify and praise you all the days of our life, O Lord, and we beg of you to bestow upon this chosen son of our people the fortitude and the determination, The prayer, punctuated by Manfred's fervent Amens lasted until Manfred's knees ached and he was dizzy with fatigue and hunger. Then suddenly Tromp hauled him to his feet and marched him up the path to the kitchen door.

Mevrou, the trumpet of God sounded. Where are you, woman? Trudi Bierman rushed breathlessly into the kitchen at the summons and then stopped aghast, staring at the boy in ragged, filthy clothing.

My kitchen, she wailed. My beautiful clean kitchen. I have just waxed the floor.

The Lord God has sent this Jong to us, Tromp intoned.

We will take him into our home. He will eat at our table, he will be as one of our own. But he is filthy as a kaffir. Then wash him, woman, wash him. At that moment a girl slipped timidly through the doorway behind the matronly figure of Trudi Bierman and then stiffened like a frightened fawn as she saw Manfred.

Manfred barely recognized Sarah. She had filled out, firm well-scrubbed flesh covered her elbows, which had so recently been bony lumps on sticklike arms. Her once pale cheeks were apple pink, the eyes that had been lacklustre were clear and bright, her blond hair, brushed until it shone,

was plaited into twin pigtails and pinned on top of her head, and she wore long modest but spotless skirts to her ankles.

She let out a cry and rushed at Manfred with arms outstretched, but Trudi Bierman seized her from behind and shook her soundly.

You lazy wicked girl. I left you to finish your sums. Back you go this instant. She pushed her roughly from the room and turned back to Manfred, her arms folded and her mouth pursed.

You are disgusting, she told him. Your hair is long as a girl's. Those clothes, Her expression hardened even more fearsomely. And we are Christian folk in this house. We'll have none of your father's godless wild ways, do you understand? I'm hungry, Aunt Trudi. You'll eat when everybody else eats, and not before you are clean. She looked at her husband. Menheer, will you show the boy how to build a fire in the hotwater geyser? She stood in the doorway of the tiny bathroom and remorselessly supervised his ablutions, brushing aside all his attempts at modesty and his protests at the temperature of the water, and when he faltered, taking the bar of blue mottled soap herself and scrubbing his most tender and intimate creases and folds.

Then with only a skimpy towel about his waist she led him by the ear down the back steps and sat him on a fruit box. She armed herself with a pair of sheep shears and Manfred's blond hair fell about his shoulders like wheat before the scythe. When he ran his hand over his scalp it was stubbly and bristly and the back of his neck and the skin behind his ears felt cool and draughty.

Trudi Bierman gathered up his discarded clothing with a pantomime of distaste and opened the furnace of the geyser.

Manfred was only just in time to rescue his jacket, and when she saw his expression as he backed away from her, holding the garment behind his back and surreptitiously fingering the small lumps in the lining, she shrugged.

Very well, perhaps with a wash and a few patches. In the meantime I'll find you some of the dominie's old things. Trudi Bierman took Manfred's appetite as a personal challenge to her kitchen and her culinary skills. She kept heaping his plate even before he had finished, standing over him with a ladle in one hand and the handle of the stew-pot in the other. When at last he fell back satiated, she went to fetch the milk tart from the pantry with a victorious gleam in her eye.

As strangers in the family, Manfred and Sarah were allocated the lowliest seats in the centre of the table, the two plump, pudding-faced, blond Bierman daughters sitting above them.

Sarah picked at her food so lightly that she earned Trudi Bierman's ire. I didn't cook good food for you to fiddle with, young lady. You'll sit here as long as it takes you to clean your plate, spinach and all, even if that takes all night., And Sarah chewed mechanically, never taking her eyes from Manfred's face.

It was the first time that Manfred had paid for a meal with two graces, before and after, and each of them seemed interminable. He was nodding and swaying in his chair when Tromp Bierman startled him fully awake with an Amen like a salvo of artillery.

The pastory was already groaning at the seams with Sarah and the Bierman offspring. There was no place for Manfred, so he was allocated a corner of the tool-shed at the bottom of the yard. Aunt Trudi had turned a packing case on end to act as a cupboard for his few cast-off items of clothing and there was an iron bed with a hard lumpy coir mattress and a faded old curtain hung on a string to screen his sleeping corner.

Don't waste the candle, Aunt Trudi cautioned him from the doorway of the tool-shed. You will only get a new one on the first day of each month. We are thrifty folk here.

None of your father's extravagances, thank you! Manfred pulled the thin grey blanket over his head to protect his naked scalp from the chill. It was the first time in his life that he had had a bed and room of his own and he revelled in the sensation, sniffing the aroma of axle grease and paraffin and the dead coals in the forge as he fell asleep.

He woke to a light touch on his cheek and cried out confused images rushed out of the darkness to terrify him.

He had dreamed of his father's hand, reeking of gangrene, that had reached across from the far side of the grave and he struggled up from under the blanket.

Manie, Manie. It's me. Sarah's voice was as terrified as his own cry had been. She was silhouetted by the moonlight through the single un-curtained window, thin and shivering in a white nightdress, her hair brushed out and hanging to her shoulders in a silvery cloud.

What are you doing here? he mumbled. You mustn't come here. You must go. If they find you here they will, he broke off. He was not sure what the consequences would be, but he knew instinctively that they would be severe.

This strange but pleasant new sense of security and belonging would be shattered.

I've been so unhappy. He could tell by her voice that she was crying. Ever since you went away. The girls are so cruel they call me vuilgoed, "trash". They tease me because I can't read and do sums the way they can and because I speak funny. I've cried every night since you went away. Manfred's heart went out to her, and despite his nervousness at being discovered, he reached out for her and drew her down onto the bed. I'm here now. I'll look after you, Sarie, he whispered. I won't let them tease you any more. She sobbed against his neck, and he told her sternly, I don't want any more crying, Sarie. You aren't a baby any more. You must be brave. I was crying because I was happy, she sniffed.

No more crying, not even when you are happy, he ordered. Do you understand? And she nodded furiously, and made a little choking sound as she brought her tears under control.

I've thought about you every day, she whispered. I prayed to God to bring you back like you promised. Can I get into bed with you, Manie? I'm cold. No, he said firmly. You must go back, before they catch you here. Just for a moment, she pleaded and before he could protest she had wriggled around, lifted the blanket and slipped under the corner.

She wrapped herself around him. The nightdress was thin and worn, her body cold and shivery, and he could not bring himself to chase her out.

,Five minutes, he muttered. Then you have to go. Swiftly the heat flowed back into her small body, and her hair was soft against his face and smelt good, like the fur of an unweaned kitten, milky and warm. She made him feel old and important, and he stroked her hair with a paternal proprietary feeling.

Do you think God answers our prayers? she asked softly.

I prayed the hardest I know how, and here you are, just like I asked. She was silent a moment. But it took a long time and a lot of prayers. I don't know about prayers, he admitted. My pa never prayed much. He never taught me how. Well, you better get used to it now, she warned him. In this house, everybody prays all the time. When she at last crept out of the tool-shed back to the big house, she left a warm patch on the mattress, and a warmer place in his heart.

It was still dark when Manfred was roused by a blast from the Trumpet of God in person.

Ten seconds and then you get a bucket of cold water, long. And Uncle Tromp led him, shivering and covered in goosebumps, to the trough beside the stables.

Cold water is the best cure for the sins of the young flesh, Jong, Uncle Tromp told him with relish. You will muck out the stables and curry the pony before breakfast, do you hear? The day was a dizzying succession of labour and prayer, the household chores sandwiched between long sessions of school work and even longer sessions on their knees, while either Uncle Tromp or Aunt Trudi exhorted God to step up their performance or visit them with all kinds of retribution.

Yet by the end of the first week Manfred had subtly rearranged the pecking order amongst the perman younger members of the household. He had quelled the Bierman girls first furtive but concerted attempts at mockery with a steady implacable stare from his yellow eyes, and they retreated in twittering consternation.

Over the school books it was different. His cousins were all dedicated scholars, with the benefit of a lifetime of enforced study. As Manfred grimly applied himself to the tome of German grammar and Melckes Mathematics for Secondary Schools, their smug self-satisfied smiles at his floundering replies to Aunt Trudi's catechism were all the incentive he needed.

I'll show them, he promised himself, and he was so committed to the task of catching and overhauling his cousins that it was days before he became aware of how the Bierman girls were victimizing little Sarah. Their cruelty was refined and secretive; a jibe, a name, a mocking face; calculated exclusion from their games and laughter; sabotage of her domestic chores, a soot stain on garments Sarah had just ironed, rumpled linen on a bed she had just made, grease marks on dishes she had washed; and vicious grins when Sarah was chastised for laziness and negligence by Aunt Trudy who was only too pleased to perform this godly duty, with the back of a hairbrush.

Manfred caught each of the Bierman girls alone. Held them by the pigtails and looked into their eyes from a range of a few inches while he spoke in a soft measured voice that hissed with passion and ended - and don't run and tell tales to your mother, either. Their deliberate cruelty ended with dramatic suddenness, and under Manfred's protection Sarah was left severely alone.

At the end of that first week, after the fifth church service of a long, tedious Sunday, one of the cousins appeared in the doorway of the tool-shed where Manfred was stretched on his bed with his German grammar.

My pa wants to see you in his study. And the messenger wrung one hand in a parody of looming disaster.

Manfred soused his short-cropped hair under the tap and tried to brush it flat in the splinter of mirror wedged above his bed. It immediately sprang up again in damp spikes and he gave up the effort and hurried to answer the summons.

He had never been allowed into the front rooms of the pastory. They were sacrosanct, and of these the dominie's

study was the holy of holies. He knew from warnings, repeated by his cousins with morbid relish, that a summons to this room was always associated with punishment and pain. He trembled on the threshold, knowing that Sarah's nightly visits to the tool-shed had been discovered, and he started wildly at the bellow that answered his timid knock, then pushed the door open slowly and stepped inside.

Uncle Tromp stood behind the sombre stinkwood desk, leaning on clenched fists that were placed in the centre of the blotter. Come in, Jong. Shut the door. Don't just stand there! he roared and dropped heavily into his chair.

Manfred stood before him, trying to form the words of repentance and atonement, but before he could utter them, Uncle Tromp spoke again.

Well, Jong, I have had reports of you from your aunt. His tone was at odds with his ferocious expression. She tells me that your education has been sadly neglected, but that You are willing and seem to be applying yourself. Manfred sagged with relief so intense that he had difficulty following the long exhortation that followed. We are the underdogs, long. We are the victims of oppression and Milnerism. Manfred knew about Lord Milner from his father; the notorious English governor and opponent of Afrikanderdom under whose decree all children who spoke the Afrikaans language in school were forced to wear a dunce's cap with the legend I am a donkey, I spoke Dutch inscribed upon it. There is Only one way that we can overcome our enemies, Jong. We have to become cleverer and stronger and more ruthless than they are. The Trumpet of God became so absorbed by his own words, that he lifted his gaze to the elaborate patterns of the fancy plastered ceiling and his eyes glazed over with a mixture of religious and political fanaticism, leaving Manfred free to glance around him furtively at the over-furnished room.

Bookshelves covered three walls, all of them stacked with religious and serious tomes. John Calvin and the authors of the Presbyterian form of church government predominated, though there were works of history and philosophy, law and biography, dictionaries and encyclopaedia and shelves of hymns and collected sermons in High Dutch, German and English.

The fourth wall, directly behind Uncle Tromp's desk, carried a gallery of photographs, stern ancestors in Sunday finery in the top row and then, below them, devout congregations or learned members of synod, all featuring amongst them the unmistakable likeness of Tromp Bierman - a gradually maturing and ageing succession of Tromps, from cleanshaven and bright-eyed youth to bearded leonine maturity in the front row.

Then, quite incongruously and startlingly, a framed and yellowing photograph, the largest of them all and situated in the most prominent position, depicting a young man stripped to the waist, wearing full-length tights, and about his middle a magnificent belt, gleaming with engraved silver buckles and medallions.

The man in the photograph was Tromp Bierman aged no more than twenty-five, cleanshaven, his hair parted in the middle and plastered flat with brilliantine, his powerful body marvellously muscled, his clenched fists held before him, crouching in the classic stance of the pugilist. A small table in front of him held a treasure of glittering cups and sporting trophies. The young man smiled out of the photograph, strikingly handsome, and in Manfred's eyes, impossibly dashing and romantic.

You are a boxer, he blurted out, unable to contain his wonder and admiration, and the Trumpet of God was cut off in mid-blast. The great shaggy head lowered, the eyes blinking as they readjusted to reality and then swivelling to follow Manfred's gaze.

Not just a boxer, said Uncle Tromp. But a champion.

Light heavyweight champion of the Union of South Africa. He looked back and saw the expression on Manfred's face, and his own expression warmed and melted with remembrance and gratification.

Did you win all those cups, and that belt? I surely did, Jong.

I smote the Philistines hip and thigh. I struck them down in their multitudes. Did you only fight Philistines, Uncle Tromp? They were all Philistines, Jong. As soon as they stepped into the ring with me they became Philistines and I fell upon them without mercy, like the hammer and the sword of the Almighty. Tromp Bierman lifted his clenched fists in front of him and shot out a swift tattoo of punches, firing them across the desk, stopping each blow only inches from Manfred's nose.

I made my living with these fists, jong. All corners at ten pounds a time. I fought Mike Williams and put him down in the sixth, the great Mike Williams himself. He grunted as he weaved and boxed in his chair Ha! Ha! Left! Right!

Left! I even thrashed the black Jephta, and I took the title from Jack Lalor in 1916. I can still hear the cheers now as Lalor hit the canvas. Sweet, my Jong, so very sweet, he broke off, and replaced his hands in his lap, his expression becoming dignified and stern once again. Then your Aunt Trudi and the Lord God of Israel called me from the ring to more important work. And the gleam of battle lust faded regretfully from Uncle Tromp's eyes.

Boxing and being champion, that would be the most important thing for me, Manfred breathed, and Tromp's gaze focused thoughtfully upon him. He looked him over carefully from the top of his cropped head to his large but well-proportioned feet in battered velskoen.

YOU want to learn to fight? He dropped his voice, and glanced at the door, a conspiratorial gesture.

Manfred could not answer; his throat was closed with excitement, but he nodded vigorously and Uncle Tromp went on in his normal piercing tones.

Your Aunt Trudi doesn't approve of brawling. Quite right too! Fisticuff s are for hooligans. Put the thought from your mind, Jong. Think on higher planes. He shook his head so A vigorously that his beard was disarranged, it took that effort to dislodge the notion from his own head, and he combed his beard with his fingers as he went on.

TO return to what I was saying. Your aunt and I think it best that you drop the name De La Rey for the time being.

You shall adopt the name Bierman until the notoriety of your father's trial fades. There has already been too much mention of that name in the newspapers, those organs of Lucifer. Your aunt is quite right in not allowing them into this house. There will be a great hoo-ha once the trial of your father begins in Windhoek next month. It could bring shame and disgrace on you and this family. My father's trial? Manfred stared at him without comprehension. But my father is dead. Dead? Is that what you thought? Tromp stood up and came around the desk. Forgive me, Jong. He placed both his huge hands on Manfred's shoulders. I have caused you unnecessary suffering by not speaking of this earlier. Your father is not dead. He has been captured by the police, and he will stand trial for his life at the Supreme Court in Windhoek on the twentieth of next month. He steadied Manfred as the boy reeled at the impact of the words and then went on with a gentle rumble. Now you understand why we want you to change your name, Jong. Sarah had hurried through her ironing and sneaked out of the house. She was perched now on top of the woodpile with her knees drawn up under her chin, hugging her legs with both arms as she watched Manfred at work. She loved to watch him with the axe. It was a long two -handed axe, with a red-painted head and a bright edge to the blade. Manie sharpened it on the whetstone until he could shave the fine gold hair off the back of his hand with it.

He had taken off his shirt and given it to her to hold. His chest and back were all shiny with sweat. She liked the way he smelled when he sweated, like newly baked bread, or like a sun-warm fig just picked from the tree.

Manfred laid another log in the cradle and stood back. He spat on the palms of his hands. He always did that and she involuntarily worked up a ball of spit in her own mouth in sympathy. Then he hefted the long axe and she tensed herself .

Five times table, he ordered, and swung the axe in a long looping blow. It hummed faintly over his head as he brought it down. The bright blade buried itself in the log with a clunk and at the same instant Manie gave a sharp explosive grunt of effort.

Five ones are five, she recited in time to the swinging axe.

Five twos are ten. Manie grunted and a white wedge of wood flew as high as his head.

Five threes are fifteen. The axe head spun a bright circle m the yellow light of the lowering sun, and Sarah chanted shrilly as the wood chips pelted down like hail.

The log dropped from the cradle in two pieces just as Sarah cried, 'Five tens are fifty. Manie stepped back and leaned on the axe handle, and grinned at her.

Very good, Sarie, not a single mistake. She preened with pleasure, and then stared over his shoulder, her expression suddenly stricken and guilty. She leapt down from the woodpile and in a swirl of skirts scampered back up the path to the house.

Manie turned quickly. Uncle Tromp was leaning against the corner of the tool-shed watching him.

I'm sorry, Uncle Tromp. He ducked his head. I know she shouldn't be here, but I just can't send her away. Uncle Tromp pushed himself away from the wall and came slowly to where Manfred stood. He moved like a great bear with long arms dangling, and he circled Manfred slowly, examining him with a small distracted frown creasing his forehead.

Manfred squirmed self-consciously, and Uncle Tromp prodded his gut with a large painful finger.

How old are you, jong? Manfred told him and Uncle Tromp nodded. 'Three years to full growth. You'll class light-heavy, I'd say, unless you make a spurt at the end and go full heavyweight. Manfred felt his skin prickle at the unfamiliar but somehow tremendously exciting terms, and Uncle Tromp left him and went to the woodpile. Deliberately he stripped off the dark jacket of his suit and folded it neatly. He laid it on the woodpile and then un-knotted. his white minister's tie and laid that meticulously on top of his jacket. He came back to Manfred rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt.

So you want to be a boxer? he asked, and Manfred nodded, unable to speak.

Put the axe away. Manfred buried the blade in the chopping stump and faced his uncle again. Uncle Tromp held up his open right hand, palm towards Manfred.

Hit it, he said. Manfred clenched his fist and made a tentative rOund-arm swing.

,you aren't knitting socks, long, you aren't kneading bread.

What are you, a man or a kitchen maid? Hit it, man. Hit it!

That's better, don't swing it around the back of your head, shoot it out! Harder! Harder! That's more like it. Now your left, that's it! Left! Right! Left! Uncle Tromp was holding up both hands now, swaying and dancing in front of him, and Manfred followed him eagerly, socking alternate fists into the big open palms.

All right. Tromp dropped his hands. Now hit me. Hit me in the face. Go on, hard as you can. Right on the button.

Let's see you knock me on my back. Manfred dropped his hands and stepped back.

I can't do that, Uncle Tromp, he protested.

Can't do what, Jong? What can't you do? couldn't hit you. It wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be respectful. So we are talking respect now, not boxing. We are talking powder puffs and ladies gloves, are we? Uncle Tromp roared. I thought you wanted to fight. I thought you wanted to be a man and now I find a snot-nosed whining baby. He changed his voice to a cracked falsetto. It wouldn't be right, Uncle Tromp, it wouldn't be respectful, he mimicked.

Suddenly his right shot out and the open palm b cracked against Manfred's cheek, a stinging slap that left the scarlet imprint of fingers on his skin.

You're not respectful, Jong. You're yellow. That's what you are, a yellow-bellied whimpering little boy. You're not a man! You'll never be a fighter! The other huge paw blurred with speed, coming so fast and unexpectedly that Manfred barely saw it. The pain of the blow filled his eyes with tears.

We'll have to find a skirt for you, girlie, a yellow skirt. Uncle Tromp was watching him carefully, watching his eyes, praying silently for it to happen as he poured withering contempt on the sturdy youth who retreated, bewildered and uncertain. He followed and struck again, cutting Manfred's lower lip, splitting the soft skin against his teeth, leaving a smear of blood down his chin.

Come on! he exhorted silently, behind the jeering flood of insults. Come on, please, come on! Then with a great explosion of joy that filled his chest to bursting, he saw it happen. Manfred dropped his chin, and his eyes changed. Suddenly they glowed with a cold yellow light, implacable as the stare of a lion in the moment before it launches its charge, and the youth came at him.

Though he had been waiting for it, expecting it, praying for it, still the speed and savagery of the attack caught Uncle Tromp off balance. Only the old fighter's instinct saved him, and he deflected that first murderous assault, sensing the power in the fists that grazed his temple and ruffled his beard as they passed, and for the first few desperate seconds

there was no time for thought. All his wits and attention were needed to stay on his feet and keep the cold, ferocious animal he had created at bay.

Then experience and ring-craft, long forgotten, reasserted themselves, and he ducked and dodged and danced easily just beyond the boy's reach, deflecting the wild punches, watching objectively as though he sat in a ringside seat, assessing with rising delight the way in which the untutored youth used either fist with equal power and dexterity.

A natural two-handed puncher! He doesn't favour his right, and he gets his shoulders behind every punch without being taught how! he exulted.

Then he looked again at the eyes and felt a chill of awe at what he had loosed upon the world.

He's a killer. He recognized it. He has the instinct of the leopard who kills for the taste of blood and the simple joy of it. He no longer sees me. He sees only the prey before him. That knowledge had distracted him. He caught a right-hander on his upper arm and it jarred the teeth in his jaws and the bones of his ankles. He knew it would bruise him from the shoulder to the elbow, and his breath burned in his throat. His legs were turning to lead. He could feel his heart drumming against his ribs. Twenty-two years since he had been in the ring; twenty-two years of Trudi's cooking and his most vigorous exercise undertaken either at his desk or in the pulpit, while the youth before him was like a machine, boring in remorselessly, both fists swinging, those yellow eyes fixed upon him in a murderous myopic stare.

Uncle Tromp gathered himself, waited for the opening as Manfred swung right-handed, and then he counter-punched with his left, always his best, the same blow that had dropped black Jephta in the third, and it went in with that beautiful little click of bone against bone.

Manfred dropped to his knees, stunned, the killing yellow light fading from his eyes to be replaced by a dull bemused look, as though awakening from a trance.

That's it, Jong. The Trumpet of God's fine note was reduced to a breathy gasp. Down on your knees and give thanks to your Maker. Uncle Tromp lowered his bulk beside Manfred and placed a thick arm around his shoulders. He raised his face and his unsteady voice to heaven. Almighty God, we give You thanks for the strong body with which You have endowed Your young servant. We give You thanks also for his natural left, while realizing that it will need a lot of hard work - and we humbly beseech You to look favourably upon our efforts to instil in him even the rudiments of footwork. His right hand is a blessing directly from You, for which we will always be eternally grateful, though he will have to learn not to telegraph it five days in advance of the punch. Manfred was still shaking his head and rubbing his jaw, but he responded to the probing thumb in his ribs with a fervent Amen. We will begin roadwork immediately, O Lord, while we set up a ring in the tool-shed in which to learn the ropes, and we humbly beseech Your blessing on our enterprise and Your cooperation in keeping it from coming to the notice of Your servant's partner in holy matrimony, Trudi Bierman. Most afternoons, under the pretext of visiting one of his parishioners, Uncle Bierman would put the pony in the trap and drive out of the front gate with a flourish, waving to his wife on the front stoep. Manfred would be waiting at the clump of camel-thorn trees beside the main Windhoek road, already barefoot and stripped to khaki shorts, and he would trot out and fall in beside the trap as Uncle Tromp shook the fat pony into a canter.

five miles today, Jong, down to the river bridge and back, and we'll do it a bit faster than yesterday. The gloves that Uncle Tromp had smuggled down from the trunk in the loft were cracked with age, but they patched them with wood-glue and the first time he laced them onto Manfred's hands he watched while the lad lifted them to his nose and sniffed them.

The smell of leather and sweat and blood, long. Fill your nostrils with it. You'll live with it from now on. Manfred punched the tattered old gloves together, and for a moment that flat yellow light glowed in his eyes again, then he grinned.

They feel good, he said.

Nothing feels better, Uncle Tromp agreed, and led him to the heavy canvas kitbag filled with river sand that hung from the rafters in the corner of the tool-shed.

To begin with I want to see that left hand do some work.

it's like a wild horse; we have to break it and train it, teach it not to waste strength and effort. it has to learn to do our bidding, not flap around in the air. They built the ring together, quarter-full size for the tool-shed would take no more, and they sank the corner poles deep in the earthern floor and cemented them in. Then they stretched a sheet of canvas over the floor. The canvas and the cement had been commandeered from one of Uncle Tromp's wealthy parishioners, For the glory of God and the VoLk, an appeal that could not be lightly dismissed.

Sarah, sworn to secrecy by the most solemn and dreadful oath that Manfred and Uncle Tromp could concoct between them, was allowed to watch the ring-work, even though she was a thoroughly partisan audience and she cheered shrilly and shamelessly for the younger participant.

After two of these sessions, which left Uncle Tromp unmarked but blowing like a steam engine, he shook his head ruefully. It's no use, Jong, either we have to find you another sparring partner, or I'll have to start training again myself., Thereafter the pony was left tethered in the camel-thorn clump and Uncle Tromp grunted and gasped beside Manfred on the long runs, while the sweat fell from his beard like the first rains of summer.

However, his protuberant gut shrivelled miraculously, and soon from under the layers of soft fat that covered his shoulders and chest the outline of hard muscle reappeared.

Gradually they stepped up the rounds from two to four minutes with Sarah, elected official timekeeper, measuring each round with Uncle Tromp's cheap silver pocket watch which made up for its dubious accuracy by its size.

It was almost a month before Uncle Tromp could say to himself, though he would never have dreamed of saying it to Manfred, He is starting to look like a boxer now., Instead he said: Now I want speed.

I want you to be fast as a mamba brave as a ratel. The mamba was the most dreaded of all Africa's serpents.

It could grow as thick as a man's wrist and reach twenty feet in length. Its venom could inflict death on a fully grown man in four minutes, an excruciating death. The mamba was so swift that it could overhaul a galloping horse, and the strike was so swift as to cheat the eye.

Fast as a mamba, brave as a ratel,Uncle Tromp repeated, as he would a hundred, a thousand times in the years ahead.

The ratel was the African honey badger, a small animal with a loose but thick tough skin that could defy the bite of a mastiff or the fangs of a leopard, a massive flattened skull from which the heaviest club bounced harmlessly, and the heart of a lion, the courage of a giant. Normally mild and forbearing, it would fearlessly attack the largest adversary the instant that it was provoked. Legend had it that the ratel possessed an instinct for the groin and that it would rush in and rip the testicles out of any male animal, man or bull buffalo or lion, who threatened it.

I've got something to show you, Jong. Uncle Tromp led Manfred to the big wooden chest against the back wall of the tool-shed and opened the lid. It's for you. I ordered it by mail order from Cape Town. It arrived on the train yesterday. He placed the tangle of leather and rubber in Manfred's arms.

What is it, Uncle Tromp? Come, I'll show you. Within minutes Uncle Tromp had rigged the complicated contraption.

Well, what do you think, Jong? He stood back, beaming hugely through his beard.

It's the best present anyone has ever given me, Uncle Tromp. But what is it? You call yourself a boxer and you don't know a speed bag when you see one! A speed bag! It must have cost a lot of money. it did, Jong, but don't tell your Aunt Trudi. What do we do with it? 'This is what we do! cried Uncle Tromp, and he started the bag rattling against the frame in a rapid staccato rhythm, using both fists, taking the ball on the bounce, keeping it going unerringly until at last he stepped back panting.

Speed, jong, fast as a mamba. Faced with Uncle Tromp's generosity and enthusiasm, Manfred had to gather all his courage to speak the words that had been burning his tongue all these weeks.

He waited until the last possible moment of the last possible day before blurting out. I have to go away, Uncle Tromp, and he watched in agony the disappointment and disbelief flood over the craggy bearded face that he had come so swiftly and naturally to love.

Go away? You want to leave my house? Uncle Tromp stopped short in the dust of the Windhoek road and wiped the sweat from his face with the threadbare towel draped around his neck. Why, Jong, why? My pa, Manfred answered. My pa's trial starts in three days time. I have to be there, Uncle Tromp. I have to go, but I will come back. I swear I will come back, just as soon as I can. Uncle Tromp turned from him and began to run again, pounding down the long straight road, the dust puffing from under his bearlike feet at each pace, and Manfred sprinted up beside him. Neither of them spoke again until they reached the clump of trees where the pony trap was hitched.

Oom Tromp climbed up into the driver's seat and picked up the reins. He looked down at Manfred standing beside the front wheel.

I wish, Jong, that I had a son of my own to show me such loyalty, he rumbled softly, and shook the pony into a trot.

The following evening, long after dinner and the evening prayers, Manfred lay on his bed, the candle on the shelf above his head carefully screened so that not a glimmer could alert Aunt Trudi to his extravagance. He was reading Goethe, his father's favourite author. It wasn't easy. His German had improved vastly. On two days a week Aunt Trudi insisted that no other language was spoken in the household, and she initiated erudite discussion at the dinner-table in which all members of the family were expected nay, forced, to participate. Still Goethe wasn't a Tromp, and Manfred was concentrating so fiercely on his convoluted use of verbs that he didn't know Uncle Tromp was in the room until his shadow fell across the bed and the book was lifted from his hand.

you will ruin your eyes, Jong. Manfred sat up quickly and swung his legs off the bed while Uncle Tromp sank down beside him.

For a few moments the old man leafed through the book.

Then he spoke without looking up. Rautenbach is going in to Windhoek tomorrow in his T-model Ford. He is taking in a hundred turkeys to market, but he will have room for you on the back. You'll have to put up with flying feathers and turkey shit, but it's cheaper than the train. Thank you, Uncle Tromp. There is an old widow in town, devout and decent, also a very good cook. She'll take you in. I've written to her. He drew a sheet of his notepaper from his pocket and placed it in Manfred's lap. The single sheet was folded and sealed with a blob of red wax, a back country minister's stipend could not encompass the luxury of envelopes.

Thank you, Uncle Tromp. Manfred could think of nothing else to say. He wanted to fling his arms round that thick bearlike neck and lay his cheek against the coarse grey-shot beard, but he controlled himself.

There may be other expenses, Uncle Tromp gruffed. I don't know how you will get back here. Anyway, He groped in his pocket, seized Manfred's wrist with the other hand, and pressed something into his open palm.

Manfred looked down at the two bright half-crown coins in his hand and shook his head slowly.

Uncle Tromp Say nothing, jong, especially not to your Aunt Trudi. Uncle Tromp began to stand, but Manfred caught his sleeve.

Uncle Tromp. I can pay you back, for this and all the other things. I know you will, Jong. You will pay me back a thousand times, in pride and joy one day. No, no, not one day. Now. I can pay you back now. Manfred sprang eagerly from the bed and ran to the upended packing case standing on four bricks that was his wardrobe. He knelt and thrust his arm into the space below the box and brought out a yellow tobacco bag. He hurried back to where Uncle Tromp sat on the iron bed, pulling open the drawstring of the small pouch, his hands shaking with excitement and eagerness to please.

Here, Uncle Tromp, open your hand. Smiling indulgently Uncle Tromp held out his huge paw, the back of it covered with coarse black curls, the fingers thick as good farmer's sausages.

What have you here, Jong? he demanded jovially, and then the smile froze as Manfred spilled a cascade of glittering stones into his hand.

Diamonds, Uncle Tromp, Manfred whispered. Enough to make you a rich man. Enough to buy you anything you need. Where did you get these, Jong? Uncle Tromp's voice was calm and dispassionate. How did you come by these? My pa, my father. He put them into the lining of my jacket. He said they were for me, to pay for my education and my upbringing to pay for all the things that he wanted to do for me but had never been able. So! said Uncle Tromp softly. It is all true then, all of what the newspapers say. It isn't just English lies. Your father is a brigand and a robber. The huge hand clenched into a fist over the glittering treasure. And you were with him, jong. You must have been there when he did these terrible things that they accuse him of, that they will try and condemn him for. Were you with him, Jong? Answer me! His voice was rising like a storm wind, and now he let out a bellow. Did you commit this great evil with him, Jong? The other hand shot out and seized the front of Manfred's shirt. He pulled Manfred's face to within inches of his own jutting beard. Confess to me, jong. Tell it all to me, every last scrap of evil. Were you with him when your father attacked this Englishwoman and robbed her? No! No! Manfred shook his head wildly. It's not true.

My father wouldn't do a thing like that. They were our diamonds. He explained it to me. He went to get back what was rightfully ours. 'Were you with him when he did this thing, Jong? Tell me the truth, Uncle Tromp interrupted him with another roar.

Tell me, were you with him? No, Uncle Tromp. He went alone. And when he came back he was hurt. His hand, his wrist, Thank you, Lord! Uncle Tromp looked upwards with relief. Forgive him for he knew not what he did, O Lord.

He was led into sin by an evil man. My father isn't evil, Manfred protested. He was cheated out of what was truly his. 'Silence, Jong. Oom Tromp rose to his full height, splendid and awesome as a biblical prophet. Your words are an offence in the sight of God. You will make retribution here and now. He dragged Manfred across the toolroom and pushed him in front of the black iron anvil.

Thou shalt not steal. That is the very word of God. He placed one of the diamonds in the centre of the anvil. These stones are the ill-begotten fruits of a terrible evil. He reached to the rack beside him and brought down a fourpound sledgehammer. They must be destroyed. He thrust the hammer into Manfred's hands.

Pray for forgiveness, Jong. Beg the Lord for his charity and forgiveness, and strike! Manfred stood with the hammer in his hands, holding it at high port across his chest, staring at the diamond on the anvil.

Strike, Jong! Break that cursed thing or be for ever cursed by it, roared Uncle Tromp. Strike, in the name of God. Rid yourself of the guilt and the shame. Slowly Manfred raised the hammer on high and then paused. He turned and looked at the fierce old man.

Strike swiftly, roared Uncle Tromp. Now! And Manfred swung, the same fluid, looping, overhead blow with which he chopped wood, and he grunted with effort as the head of the hammer rang on the anvil.

Manfred lifted the hammer slowly. The diamond was crushed to white powder, finer than sugar, but still the vestiges of its fire and beauty remained as each minute crystal caught and magnified the candlelight; and when Uncle Tromp brushed the diamond dust from the anvil top with his open hand it fell in a luminous rainbow cloud to the earthen floor.

Uncle Tromp laid another fiery stone upon the anvil, a fortune such as few men could amass in ten years of unremitting labour, and stood back.

Strike! he cried, and the hammer hissed as it turned in the air, and the anvil rang like a great gong. The precious dust was brushed aside and another stone laid in its place.

Strike! roared the Trumpet of God, and Manfred worked with the hammer, grunting and sobbing in his throat with each fateful blow until at last Uncle Tromp cried: Praised be the name of the Lord. It is done! And he fell on his knees, dragging Manfred down with him, and side by side they knelt before the anvil as though it were an altar and the white diamond dust coated their knees as they prayed.

Oh Lord Jesus, look upon this act of penance with favour.

Thou who gave up Thy life for our redemption, forgive Thy young servant whose ignorance and childishness has led him into grievous sin. It was after midnight and the candle was guttering in a puddle of its own wax before Uncle Tromp rose from his knees and pulled Manfred up with him.

Go to your bed now, jong. We have done all we can to save your soul for the time being. He watched while Manfred undressed and slipped under the grey blanket. Then he asked quietly: If I forbade you to go to Windhoek in the morning, would you obey me? My father, whispered Manfred.

Answer me, Jong, would you obey me? I don't know, Uncle Tromp, but I don't think I could. My pa, I You have so much to repent already. It would not do to add the sin of disobedience to your load. Therefore, I place no such restriction upon you. You must do what loyalty and your conscience dictate. But for your own sake and mine, when you reach Windhoek, use the name of Bierman not De La Rey, Jong, do you hear me? Judgement today! I make a rule never to predict the outcome of any piece of legislation or judicial process, Abe Abrahams announced from his chair facing Centaine Courtney's desk. However, today I break my own rule. I predict that the man will get the rope. No question about it. How can you be that certain, Abe? Centaine asked quietly, and Abe looked at her with covert admiration for a moment before replying. She was wearing a simple lowwaisted dress which could justify its expense only by its exquisite cut and the fineness of the silk jersey material. It showed off her fashionable small bosom and boyishly slim hips as she stood against the french windows. The bright white African sunlight behind her formed a nimbus about her head, and it took an effort to look away from her and to concentrate on the burning cheroot which he held up to enumerate his points.

Firstly, the small matter of guilt. Nobody, not even the defence, has made any serious attempt to suggest anything other than he is guilty as all hell. Guilty in intention and execution, guilty of planning it in detail and carrying it out as planned, guilty of all manner of aggravating circumstances, including attacking and robbing a military remount depot, firing on the police and wounding one of them with a grenade. The defence has as good as admitted their only hope will be to pull some arcane technical rabbit from the legal hat to impress His Lordship, a hope which so far has not materialized. Centaine sighed. She had spent two days in the witness stand. Though she had remained calm and unshakable in the face of the most rigorous and aggressive cross-examination, she was exhausted by it, and haunted by a sense of culpability, of having driven Lothar to that desperate criminal folly, and now guilty of heading the pack that was pulling him down and would soon rend him with all the vindictiveness that the law allowed.

Secondly, Abe waved the cheroot, the man's record.

During the war he was a traitor and a rebel with a price on his head, a desperado with a long string of violent crimes to his discredit. He was pardoned for his wartime crimes, Centaine pointed out. A full pardon signed by the prime minister and the minister of justice. Still, they will count against him. Abe wagged his head knowingly. Even the pardon will make it worse for him: biting the hand of mercy, flouting the dignity of the law.

The judge won't like that, believe me. Abe inspected the end of the cheroot. It was burning evenly with a firm inch of grey ash and he nodded approvingly. Thirdly, he went on, the man has shown no remorse, not a jot nor a shred of it. He has refused to tell anybody what he did with the filthy loot. M He broke off as he saw Centaine's distress at the mention of the missing diamonds, and continued hurriedly: Fourthly, the emotional aspects of the crime, attacking a lady of the highest standing in the community. He grinned suddenly.

A helpless female so unable to defend herself that she bit his arm off. She frowned and he became serious again. Your own courage and integrity will count heavily against him, your dignity in the witness box. You have seen the newspapers: Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale in one person, the veiled suggestion that his attack upon you might have been more dastardly and beastly than modesty will allow you to tell. The judge will want to reward you with the man's head on a platter. She looked at her wristwatch. The court will reconvene in forty minutes. We should go up the hill. Abe stood up immediately. 'I love to watch the law in operation, the dignified and measured pace of it, the trappings and ritual of it, the slow grinding of evidence, the sorting of the chaff from the wheat Not now, Abe, she stopped him as she adjusted her hat in the mirror above the mantel, draping the black veil over one eye, setting the small brim at an elegant angle and then picking up her crocodile-skin handbag and tucking it under her arm. Without any further oratory from you, let's just go and see this awful thing through. They drove up the hill in Abe's Ford. The press was waiting for them in front of the courthouse, thrusting their cameras into the open window of the Ford and blinding Centaine with bursting flash bulbs. She shielded her eyes with her handbag but the moment she stepped out of the automobile they were around her in a pack, yelling their questions.

Arhat will you feel if they hang him? What about the diamonds? Can your company survive without them, Mrs Courtney? Do you think they'll do a deal for the diamonds? What are your feelings? Abe ran interference for her, barging his way through the crowd, dragging her by the wrist into the comparative quiet of the courthouse.

Wait here for me, Abe, she ordered, and slipped away down the passageway, weaving through the crowd that was waiting for the doors of the main courtroom to open. Heads turned to watch her and a buzz of comment followed her down the passage, but she ignored it and turned the corner towards the ladies toilets. The office set aside for the defence was directly opposite the ladies room and Centaine glanced around to make sure she was unobserved, then turned to that door, tapped upon it sharply, pushed it open and stepped inside. She shut the door behind her and, as the defence counsel looked up, she said: 'Excuse this intrusion, gentlemen, but I must speak to you. Abe was still waiting where she had left him when Centaine returned only minutes later.

Colonel Malcomess is here, he told her, and all her other preoccupations were forgotten for the moment.

Where is he? she demanded eagerly. She had not seen Blaine since the second day of the trial when he had given his evidence in that ringing tenor lilt that raised the fine hair on the back of Centaine's neck, evidence that was all the more damning for its balanced unemotional presentation. The defence had tried to trip him on his description of the shooting of the horses and the grenade attack, but had swiftly sensed that he would provide little for their comfort and let him leave the stand after a few futile minutes of cross-examination. Since then Centaine had looked for him unavailingly each day.

Where is he? she repeated.

He has gone in already, Abe replied, and Centaine saw that while she had been away the ushers had opened the double doors to the main courtroom.

Charlie is holding seats for us. No need to join the scrum. Abe took her arm and eased her through the moving crowd.

The ushers recognized her and helped clear the aisle for her to reach the seats in the third row that Abe's assistant was holding for them.

Centaine was covertly searching through the bustle for Blaine's tall form, and she started when the press of bodies opened for a moment and she saw him on the opposite side of the aisle. He was searching also and saw her a moment later; his reaction was as sharp as hers had been. They stared at each other from a few yards that seemed to Centaine to be an abyss wide as an ocean; neither of them smiled as they held each other's eyes. Then the crowd in the aisle intervened once again, and she lost sight of him. She sank down in the seat beside Abe and made a little show of searching in her handbag to give herself time to recover her composure.

Here he is, Abe exclaimed, and for a moment she thought he was referring to Blaine. Then she saw that the warders were bringing Lothar De La Rey through from the cells.

Although she had seen him in the dock for every one of the last five days, she was still not hardened to the change in him. Today wore a workman's shirt and dark slacks. The clothes seemed too large for him, and one sleeve was pinned up loosely over his stump. He shuffled like an old man and one of the warders had to help him up the steps into the dock.

His hair was completely white now, even his thick dark eyebrows were laced with silver. He was impossibly thin and his skin had a greyish lifeless look; it hung in little loose folds under his jaw and on his scrawny neck. His tan had faded to the yellowish colour of old putty.

As he sank onto the bench in the dock, he lifted his head and searched the gallery of the court. There was a pathetic anxiety in his expression as he ran his eyes swiftly over the packed benches. Then Centaine saw the little flare of joy in his eyes and his masked smile as he found what he was seeking. She had watched this scene enacted every morning for five days, and she twisted in her seat and looked up at the gallery behind her. But from where she sat the angle was wrong.

She could not see who or what had attracted Lothar's attention.

Silence in court, the usher called and there was a shuffling and scrabbling as the body of the court came to its feet and judge Hawthorne led his two assessors to their seats.

He was a silver-haired little man with a benign expression and lively sparkling eyes behind his pince-nez. He looked more like a schoolmaster than the hanging judge that Abe said he was.

Neither he nor his assessors wore wigs or the colourful robes of the English courts. Roman Dutch law was more sombre in its trappings. They wore simple black gowns and white swallow-tailed neckties, and the three of them conferred quietly, inclining their heads together while the body of the court settled down and the coughing and throatclearing and foot-shuffling abated. Then judge Hawthorne looked up and went through the formality of convening the court and the charge sheet was read once again.

Now an expectant hush fell over the courtroom. The reporters leaned forward with their notebooks poised; even the barristers in the front row of benches were silenced and stilled. Lothar was expressionless but deathly pale as he watched the judge's face.

judge Hawthorne was concentrating on his notes, heightening the tension with subtle showmanship until it was barely supportable. Then he looked up brightly and launched without preliminaries into the delivery of his summation and judgement.

First he detailed each of the charges, beginning with the most serious: three counts of attempted murder, two of assault with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm, one of armed robbery. There were twenty-six charges in all and it took almost twenty minutes for the judge to cover each of them.

The prosecution has presented all these charges in an orderly and convincing manner. The red-faced prosecutor preened at the compliment and Centaine felt an unreasonable irritation at this petty vanity.

This court was particularly impressed with the evidence of the main prosecution witnesses. His Excellency the Administrator's testimony was a great help to me and my assessors. We were most fortunate in having a witness of this calibre to relate the details of the pursuit and arrest of the accused, from which arise some of the most serious charges in this case. The judge looked up from his notes directly at Blaine Malcomess. I wish to record the most favourable impression that Colonel Malcomess made upon this court, and we have accepted his evidence without reservation. From where she was sitting Centaine could see the back of Blaine's head. The tips of his large ears turned pink as the judge looked at him, and Centaine felt a rush of tenderness as she noticed. His embarrassment was somehow endearing and touching.

Then the judge looked at her.

The other prosecution witness who conducted herself impeccably and whose evidence was unimpeachable, was Mrs Centaine Courtney. The court is fully aware of the great hardship with which Mrs Courtney has been inflicted and the courage which she has displayed, not only in this courtroom. Once again, we were most fortunate to have the benefit of her evidence in assisting us to reach our verdict., While the judge was speaking, Lothar De La Rey turned his head and looked at Centaine steadily. Those pale accusing eyes disconcerted her and she dropped her own gaze to the handbag in her lap to avoid them.

In contrast, the defence was able to call only one witness, and that was the accused himself. After due consideration, we are of the opinion that much of the accused's evidence was unacceptable. The witness's attitude was at all times hostile and uncooperative. In particular we reject the witness's assertion that the offences were committed singlehanded, and that he had no accomplices in their commission. Here the evidence of Colonel Malcomess, of Mrs Courtney and of the police troopers is unequivocal and collaborative. Lothar De La Rey turned his head slowly in the judge's direction once more and stared at him with that flat, hostile expression which had so antagonized judge Hawthorne over the five long days of the trial, and the judge returned his gaze levelly as he went on.

Thus we have considered all the facts and the evidence presented to us and are unanimous in our verdict. On all twenty-six charges we find the accused, Lothar De La Rey, guilty as charged.

Lothar neither flinched nor blinked, but there was a concerted gasp from the body of the court, followed immediately by a buzz of comment. Three of the reporters leapt up and scampered from the courtroom, and Abe nodded smugly beside Centaine.

I told you, the rope, he murmured. He will swing, for sure. The ushers were attempting to restore order. The judge came to their assistance.

He rapped his gavel sharply and raised his voice. I will not hesitate to have this court cleared, he warned, and once again a hush settled over the courtroom.

Before passing sentence, I will listen to any submissions in mitigation that the defence may wish to put to the bench. judge Hawthorne inclined his head towards the young barrister charged with the defence, who immediately rose to his feet.

Lothar De La Rey was destitute and unable to afford his own defence. Mr Reginald Osinond had been appointed by the court to defend him. Despite his youth and inexperience, it was his first defence on a capital charge, Osmond had thus far acquitted himself as well as could have been expected, given the hopeless circumstances of his client's case. His cross-examination had been spirited and nimble, if ineffectual, and he had not allowed the prosecution to make any gratuitous gains.

If it please my lord, I should like to call a witness to give evidence in mitigation. Come now, Mr Osmond, surely you don't intend to introduce a witness at this stage? Do you have precedents for this? The judge frowned.

I respectfully commend your lordship to the matter of the Crown versus Van der Spuy 1923 and to the Crown versus Alexander 1914. The judge conferred for a few moments with his assessors and then looked up with a stagy sigh of exasperation. Very well, Mr Osmond. I am going to allow you your witness. Thank you, my lord. Mr Osmond was so overcome with his own success that he stuttered a little as he blurted eagerly: I call Mrs Centaine de Thiry Courtney to the stand. This time there was a stunned silence. Even judge Hawthorne fell back in his tall carved chair before a buzz of surprise and delight and anticipation swept through the court. The press were standing to get a view of Centaine as she rose and from the gallery a voice called: Put the noose around the bastard's neck, luv. Judge Hawthorne recovered'swiftly and his eyes flashed behind his pince-nez as he glared up at the gallery, trying to identify the wag.

I will not tolerate a further outburst. There are severe penalties for contempt of court, he snapped, and even the journalists sat down again hurriedly and, chastened, applied themselves to their notepads.

The usher handed Centaine into the witness stand and then swore her in while every man in the room, including those on the bench, watched, most of them in open admiration, but a few, including Blaine and Abraham Abrahams, with puzzlement and perturbation.

Mr Osmond stood to open his examination, his voice pitched low with nervous respect.

Mrs Courtney, will you please tell the court how long you have known the accused, he corrected himself hurriedly, for now Lothar De La Rey was no longer merely accused, he had been convicted. the prisoner. I have known Lothar De La Rey for nearly fourteen years., Centaine looked across the room at the stooped grey figure in the dock.

Would you be good enough to describe, in your own words, the circumstances of your first meeting, It was in 1919. I was lost in the desert. I had been a castaway on the Skeleton Coast after the sinking of the Protea Castle. For a year and a half I had been wandering in the Kalahari desert with a small group of San Bushmen., All of them knew the story. At the time it had been a sensation, but now Centaine's narrative, related in her French accent, brought it all vividly to life.

She conjured up the desolation and misery, the fearful hardships and loneliness that she had endured, and the room was deathly quiet. Even judge Hawthorne was hunched down in his chair, supporting his chin on his clenched fist, absolutely still as he listened. They were all with her as she struggled through the clinging sand of the Kalahari, dressed in the skins of wild animals, her infant son on her hip, following the tracks of a horse, a shod horse, the first sign of civilized man that she had encountered in all those desperate months.

They chilled with her and shared her despair as the African night fell across the desert and her chances of succour receded; they willed her onwards, through the darkness, seeking the glow of a camp-fire far ahead, then started in horror as she described the sinister shape, dark with menace, that suddenly confronted her, and flinched as though they also had heard the roar of a hungry lion close at hand.

Her audience gasped and stirred as she described her fight for her life and the life of her infant; the way the circling lion drove her up into the highest branches of a tall mopani and then climbed up towards her like a cat after a sparrow.

Centaine described the sound of its hot panting breath in the darkness and at last the shooting agony as the long yellow claws hooked into the flesh of her leg and she was drawn inexorably from her perch.

She could not go on, and Mr Osmond prompted her gently.

Was it at this stage that Lothar De La Rey intervened? Centaine roused herself. I'm sorry. It all came back to me, Please, Mrs Courtney, do not tax yourself. judge Hawthorne rushed to her aid. I will recess the court if you need time, No, no, my lord. You are very kind, but that won't be necessary. She squared her shoulders and faced them again.

Yes, that was when Lothar De La Rey came up. He had been camped close at hand, and was alerted by the roars of the animal. He shot the lion dead while it was in the act of savaging me. He saved your life, Mrs Courtney. He saved me from a dreadful death, and he saved my child with me. Mr Osmond bowed his head in silence, letting the court savour the full drama of the moment, then he asked gently: What happened after that, madarn? I was concussed by my fall from the tree; the wound in my leg mortified. I was unconscious for many days, unable to care for myself or my son. What was the prisoner's reaction to this? He cared for me. He dressed my wounds. Tended every need of mine and of my child. He saved your life a second time? Yes. She nodded. He saved me once again. Now, Mrs Courtney. The years passed. You became a wealthy lady, a millionairess? Centaine was silent, and Osmond went on. Then one day three years ago the prisoner approached you for financial assistance for his fishing and canning enterprise. Is that correct? He approached my company, Courtney Mining and Finance, for a loan, she said, and Osmond led her through the series of events up to the time that she had closed down Lothar's canning factory.

So, Mrs Courtney, would you say that Lothar De La Rey had reason to believe that he had been unfairly treated, if not deliberately ruined by your action? Centaine hesitated. My actions were at all times based on sound business principles. However, I would readily concede that from Lothar De La Rey's standpoint, it could have seemed that my actions were deliberate. At the time, did he accuse you of attempting to destroy him? She looked down at her hands and whispered something.

I am sorry, Mrs Courtney. I must ask you to repeat that. And she flared at him, her voice cracking with strain. Yes, damn it. He said that I was doing it to destroy him. Mr Osmond! The judge sat up straight, his expression I must insist that you treat your witness in a more severe.

considerate fashion. He sank back in his seat, clearly moved by Centaine's recital, and then raised his voice again. I will recess the court for fifteen minutes to allow Mrs Courtney time to recover herself. When they reconvened, Centaine entered the witness stand again and sat quietly while the formalities were completed and Mr Osmond prepared to continue his examination.

From the third row Blaine Malcomess smiled at her encouragingly, and she knew that if she did not look away from him every single person in the courtroom would be aware of her feelings. She forced herself to break contact with his eyes and instead looked up at the gallery above his head.

It was an idle glance. She had forgotten the way in which Lothar De La Rey searched the gallery each morning, but now she was seeing it from the same angle as he did from the dock. And suddenly her eyes flicked to the furthest corner of the gallery, drawn irresistibly by another set of eyes, by the intensity of a glowering gaze that was fastened upon her, and she started and then swayed in her seat, giddy with shock, for she had stared once again into Lothar's eyes: Lothar's eyes as they had been when first she met him, yellow as topaz, fierce and bright, with dark brows arched over them, young eyes, unforgettable, unforgotten eyes. But the eyes were not set in Lothar's face, for Lothar sat across the courtroom from her, bowed and broken and grey. This fare was young, strong and full of hatred, and she knew, she knew with a mother's sure instinct. She had never seen her younger son, at her insistence, he had been taken away, wet from the womb, at the very moment of birth, and she had turned her head away so as not to see his squirming naked body. But now she knew him, and it was as though the very core of her existence, the womb which had contained him, ached at this glimpse of his face, and she had to cover her mouth to prevent herself crying out with the pain of it.

Mrs Courtney! Mrs Courtney! The judge was calling her, his tone quickening with alarm, and she forced herself to turn her head towards him.

Are you all right, Mrs Courtney? Are you feeling well enough to continue? Thank you, my lord, I am quite well. Her voice seemed to come from a great distance, and it took all her willpower not to look back at the youth in the gallery, at her son, Manfred.

Very well, Mr Osmond. You may proceed. It required an enormous effort of will for Centaine to concentrate on the questions as Osmond led her once more over the robbery and the struggle in the dry river-bed.

So then, Mrs Courtney, he did not lay a finger upon you until you attempted to reach the shotgun? No. He did not touch me until then. 'You have already told us that you had the shotgun in your hand and were attempting to reload the weapon. That is correct. Would you have used the weapon if you had succeeded in reloading it? Yes. Can you tell us, Mrs Courtney, would you have shot to kill? I object, my lord! The prosecutor sprang angrily to his feet. That question is hypothetical. Mrs Courtney, you do not have to answer that question, if you do not choose, judge Hawthorne told her.

I will answer. Centaine sai c early. Yes, I would have killed him. Do you think the prisoner knew that? My lord, I object. The witness cannot possibly know. Before the judge could rule, Centaine said clearly, He knew me, he knew me well. He knew I would kill him if I had the chance. The pent-up emotion of the courtroom exploded in ghoulish relish and it was almost a minute before quiet could be restored. in the confusion Centaine looked up at the corner of the high gallery again. It had taken all her self-control not to do so before.

The corner seat was empty. Manfred had gone, and she felt confused by his desertion. Osmond was questioning her again, and she turned to him vaguely.

I'm sorry. Will you repeat that, please? I asked, Mrs Courtney, if the prisoner's assault on you, as you stood there with the shotgun in your hands intent on killing him My lord, I object. The witness was intent only on defending herself and her property, the prosecutor howled.

You'll have to rephrase that question, Mr Osmond. Very well, my lord. Mrs Courtney, was the force that the prisoner used against you inconsistent with that needed to disarm you? I'm sorry. Centaine could not concentrate. She wanted to search the gallery again. I don't understand the question. Did the prisoner use more force than that necessary to disarm you and prevent you shooting him? No. He simply pulled the shotgun away from me. And later when you had bitten his wrist. When you had buried your teeth in his flesh, inflicting a wound that later would result in the amputation of his arm, did he strike you or inflict any other injury upon you in retaliation? No. 'The pain must have been intense, and yet he did not use undue force upon you? No. She shook her head. He was, Centaine searched for the word, he was strangely considerate, almost gentle!

I see. And before he left you, did the prisoner make sure that you had sufficient water for survival? And did he give you advice concerning your well-being? He checked that I had sufficient spare water, and he advised me to stay with the wrecked vehicle until I was rescued., Now, Mrs Courtney, Osmond hesitated delicately. There has been speculation in the press that the prisoner might have made some form of indecent assault- Centaine interrupted him furiously. 'That suggestion is repugnant and totally false. Thank you, madam. I have only one more question. You knew the prisoner well. You accompanied him while he was hunting to provide meat for you and your child once he had rescued you. You saw him shoot? I did. In your opinion, if the prisoner had wanted to kill you or Colonel Malcomess, or any of the police officers pursuing him, could he have done so? 'Lothar De La Rey is one of the finest marksmen I have ever known. He could have killed all of us on more than one occasion. I have no further questions, my lord. judge Hawthorne wrote at length on the notepad before him and then tapped his pencil thoughtfully upon the desk for another few seconds before he looked up at the prosecutor.

Do you wish to cross-examine the witness? The prosecutor came to his feet scowling sulkily. I have no further questions for Mrs Courtney. He sat down again, folded his arms and stared angrily at the revolving punkah fan on the ceiling.

Mrs Courtney, the court is grateful to you for your further evidence. You may now return to your seat. Centaine was so intent on searching the gallery for her son that she tripped on the steps at the foot of the tiers of benches and both Blaine and Abe jumped up to help her.

Abe reached her first and Blaine sank back into his seat as Abe led Centaine to hers.

Abe, she whispered urgently. There was a lad in the gallery while I was giving evidence. Blond, around thirteen years old, though he looks more like seventeen. His name is Manfred, Manfred De La Rey.

Find him. I want to speak to him. Now? Abe looked surprised.

Right now. The submission in mitigation. I'll miss it. Go!

she snapped. Find him. And Abe jumped up, bowed to the bench and hurried out of the courtroom just as Mr Reginald Osmond rose to his feet once again.

Osmond spoke with passion and sincerity, using Centaine's evidence to full advantage, repeating her exact words: "He saved me from a dreadful death, and he saved my child with me." Osmond paused significantly and then went on.

The prisoner believed that he deserved the gratitude and generosity of Mrs Courtney. He placed himself in her power by borrowing money from her, and he came to believe mistakenly, but genuinely, that his trust in her had been betrayed. His eloquent plea for mercy went on for almost half an hour, but Centaine found herself thinking of Manfred rather than the plight of his father. The look which the boy had levelled at her from the gallery troubled her deeply.

The hatred in it had been a palpable thing and it resuscitated her sense of guilt, a guilt which she believed she had buried so many years before.

He will be alone now. He will need help, she thought. I have to find him. I have to try and make it up to him in some way. She realized then why she had so steadfastly denied the boy over all these years, why she had thought of him only as Lothar's bastard', why she had gone to extreme lengths to avoid any contact with him. Her instinct had been correct.

just a single glimpse of his face and all the defences which she had built up so carefully came tumbling down, all the natural feelings of a mother which she had buried so deeply were revived to overwhelm her.

Find him for me, Abe, she whispered, and then realized that Reginald Osmond had completed his submission with a final plea: Lothar De La Rey felt that he had been grievously wronged. As a result, he committed a series of crimes which were abhorrent and indefensible. However, my lord, many of his actions prove that he was a decent and compassionate man, caught up in stormy emotions and events too powerful for him to resist. His sentence must be severe. Society demands that much. But I appeal to your lordship to show a little of the same Christian compassion that Mrs Courtney has displayed here today, and to refrain from visiting upon this hapless man, who has already lost one of his limbs, the extreme penalty of the law. He sat down in a silence that lasted for many long seconds, Until judge Hawthorne looked up from the reverie into which he had sunk.

Thank you, Mr Osmond. This court will recess and reconvene at two o'clock this afternoon, at which time we will impose sentence. Centaine hurried from the courtroom, searching eagerly for Abe or for another glimpse of her son. She found Abe on the front steps of the courthouse, in deep conversation with one of the police guards. But he broke off and came to her immediately.

Did you find him? she demanded anxiously.

I'm sorry, Centaine. No sign of anyone of that description. I want the boy found and brought to me, Abe. Use as many men as you need. I don't care what it costs. Search the town. Do everything possible to find him. He must be staying somewhere. All right, Centaine. I'll get on to it right away. You say his name is Manfred De La Rey, then he will be related to the prisoner? His son, she said.

I see. Abe looked at her thoughtfully. May I ask why you Want him so desperately, Centaine? And what you are going to do with him when you find him? No, you may not ask. Just find him., Why do I want him? she repeated Abe's question to herself wonderingly. Why do I want him after all these years And the answer was simple and self-evident. Because he is my son.

And what will I do with him if I find him? He is poisoned against me. He hates me. I saw that in his eyes. He does not know who I really am. I saw that also. So what will I do when I meet him face to face, and she answered herself as simply: I don't know, I just do not know. The maximum penalty provided by law for the first three offences on the prisoner's charge sheet is death by hanging, said judge Hawthorne. The prisoner has been found guilty of these and the further offences with which he has been charged. In the normal course of events this court would have had no hesitation in inflicting that supreme penalty upon him. However, we have been given pause by the extraordinary evidence of an extraordinary lady. The submissions made voluntarily by Mrs Centaine de Thiry Courtney are all the more remarkable for the fact that she has suffered most grievously at the prisoner's hands, physically, emotionally and materially, and also for the fact that her admissions might be construed by small-minded and mean persons as invidious to Mrs Courtney herself.

In twenty-three years service on the bench I have never been privileged to witness such a noble and magnanimous performance in any courtroom, and our own deliberations must, by necessity, be tempered by Mrs Courtney's example. judge Hawthorne bowed slightly towards where Centaine sat, then took the pince-nez from his nose and looked at Lothar De La Rey.

The prisoner will rise, he said.

Lothar De La Rey, you have been found guilty of all the various charges brought against you by the Crown, and for purpose of sentence, these will be taken as one. It is, therefore, the sentence of this court that you be imprisoned at hard labour for the rest of your natural life. For the first time since the beginning of the trial, Lothar De La Rey showed emotion. He recoiled from the judge's words. His face began to work, his lips trembling, one eyelid twitched uncontrollably, and he lifted his remaining hand, palm up, in appeal towards the dark-robed figure on the bench.

Kill me, rather. A wild heart-cry. Hang me rather than lock me up like an animal, The warders hurried to him, seized him from either side and led him shaking and calling out piteously from the dock, while a hush of sympathy held the whole room. Even the judge was affected, his features set and grim as he stood up and slowly led his assessors from the room. Centaine remained sitting, staring at the empty dock as the subdued crowd filed out of the double doors like mourners leaving a funeral, Kill me, rather! She knew that plea would stay with her for the rest of her life. She bowed her head and covered her eyes with her hands. In the eye of her mind she saw Lothar as he had been when she first met him, hard and lean as one of the red Kalahari lions, with pale eyes that looked to far horizons shaded blue by distance, a creature of those great spaces washed with white sunlight. And she thought of him now, locked in a tiny cell, deprived for the rest of his life of the sun and the desert wind.

Oh Lothar, she cried in the depths of her soul. How could something once so good and beautiful have ended like this? We have destroyed each other, and destroyed also the child that we conceived in that fine noon of our love. She opened her eyes again. The courtroom had emptied and she thought she was alone until she sensed a presence near her and she turned quickly and Blaine Malcolmess was there.

Now I know how right it was to love you, he said softly.

He stood behind her, his head bowed over her, and she looked up at him and felt the terrible regret and sorrow begin to lift.

Blaine took her hand that lay along the back of the bench and held it between both of his. I have been struggling with myself all these last days since we parted, trying to find the strength never to see you again. I almost succeeded. But you changed it all by what you did today. Honour and duty and all those other things no longer mean anything to me when I look at you now. You are part of me. I have to be with you. When? As soon as possible, he said.

Blaine, in my short life I have done so much damage to others, inflicted so much cruelty and pain. No more. I also cannot live without you, but nothing else must be destroyed by our love. I want all of you, but I will accept less, to protect your family. It will be hard, perhaps impossible, he warned her softly.

But I accept your conditions. We must not inflict pain on others. Yet I want you so much I know, she whispered, and stood up to face him. Hold me, Blaine, just for a moment. Abe Abrahams was searching for Centaine through the empty passages of the courthouse. He reached the double doors of the courtroom and pushed one leaf open quietly.

Centaine and Blaine Malcomess stood in the aisle between the tiers of oak benches. They were in each other's arms, oblivious to anything around them, and he stared for a moment without comprehension, then softly closed the door again and stood guard before it, wracked by fear and happiness for her.

You deserve love, he whispered. Pray God, this man can give it to you. Eden must have been like this, Centaine thought. And Eve must have felt the way I do today. She drove slower than her usual frantic pace. Although her heart cried out for haste, she denied it to make the anticipation keener.

I have been without sight of him for five whole months, she whispered. Five minutes longer will only make it sweeter when at last I am in his arms again. Despite Blaine's assurances and best intentions, the conditions that Centaine had placed upon them had prevailed.

They had not been alone together since those stolen moments in the empty courtroom. During most of that time they had been separated by hundreds of miles, Blaine shackled by his duties in Windhoek, Centaine at Weltevreden, fighting desperately day and night for the survival of her financial empire which was now in its death throes, stricken by the loss of the diamond shipment, no part of which had ever een recovered . In her mind she compared it to the hunting arrow of O'wa, the little yellow Bushman: a tiny reed, frail and feather-light, but tipped with virulent poison which not the greatest game of the African veld could withstand. It weakened and slowly paralysed the quarry, which first reeled and swayed on its feet, then dropped and lay panting, unable to rise, waiting for the cold lead of death to seep through the great veins and arteries or for the swift mercy stroke of the hunter.

That is where I am now, down and paralysed, while the hunters close in on me. All these months she had fought with all her heart and all her strength, but now she was tired, tired to every last fibre of muscle and mind, sick tired to her bones. She looked up at the rearview mirror above her head and hardly recognized the image that stared back at her with stricken eyes, dark with the heavy mascara of fatigue and despair. Her cheekbones seemed to gleam through the pale skin, and there were chiselled lines of exhaustion at the corners of her mouth.

But today I will set despair aside. I won't think about it, again, not for a minute. Instead I will think of Blaine and this magical display that nature has laid out for me. She had left Weltevreden at dawn and was now one hundred and twenty miles north of Cape Town, driving through the vast treeless plains of Namaqualand, heading down to where the green Benguela current caressed Africa's rocky western shores, but she was not yet in sight of the ocean.

The rains had come late this year, delaying the spring explosion of growth, so that although it was only weeks before Christmas, the veld was ablaze with its royal show of colour. For most of the year these plains were dun and windswept, sparsely populated and uninviting.

But now the undulating expanses were clothed in an unbroken mantel so bright and vividly coloured that it confused and tricked the eye. Wild blooms of fifty different varieties and as many hues covered the earth in banks and flocks and stands, massed together with their own kind so that they resembled a divine patchwork quilt, so bright that they seemed to burn with an incandescent light that was reflected from the very heavens and the eye ached with so much colour.

Closer at hand the earthen road, rough and winding, was the only reference point in this splendid chaos, and even it was soon obliterated by flowers. The twin tracks were separated by a dense growth of wild blooms that filled the middle ridge between them and swept the underside of the old Ford with a soft rushing sound like the water of a mountain stream as Centaine drove slowly up another gentle undulation and stopped abruptly at the top. She switched off the engine.

The ocean lay before her, its green expanse flecked with brilliant white and lapped by this other ocean of blazing blooms. Through the open window the sea wind ruffled Centaine's hair and caused the fields of wild flowers to nod and sway in unison, keeping time to the swells of ocean beyond.

She felt the care and terrible strain of those last months recede in the face of so much vibrant beauty, and she laughed spontaneously at the joy of it and shaded her eyes from the glare of orange and red and sulphur-yellow flower banks and searched the seashore eagerly.

It's a shack, Blaine had warned her in his last letter. Two rooms and no running water, an earth latrine and an open hearth. But I have spent my holidays there since a child and I love it. I have shared it with nobody else since my father's death. I go there alone whenever I can. You will be the first. And he had drawn a map of the road to it.

She picked it out immediately, standing on the edge of the ocean, perched upon the horn of rock where the shallow bay turned. The thatched roof had blackened with age but the thick adobe walls were whitewashed as bright as the foam that curled out on the green sea, and a wisp of smoke smeared towards her from the chimney.

Beyond the building she saw movement and picked out a tiny human shape on the rocks at the edge of the sea, and suddenly she was desperate with haste.

The engine would not fire, though she cranked the starter until the battery faltered.

Merde! And double merde! It was an old vehicle, used and abused by one of her under-managers on the estate until she had commandeered it to replace the ruined Daimler, and now its failure was an unwelcome reminder of her financial straits, so different from when she had driven a new daffodilyellow Daimler every year.

She let off the handbrake and let the Ford trundle down the slope, gathering speed until she jumped the clutch and the engine started with a shudder and roar of blue smoke and she flew down the hill and parked behind the whitewashed shack.

She ran out onto the black rocks above the water and the swaying beds of black-stemmed kelp that danced to the scend of the sea, and she waved and shouted, her voice puny on the wind and the rumble of the ocean but he looked up and saw her and came at a run, jumping from rock to slippery wet rock.

He wore only a pair of khaki shorts, and he carried a bunch of live rock lobsters in one hand. His hair had grown since last she had seen him. It was damp and curly with sea salt, and he was laughing, his mouth open and his big teeth flashing whitely and he had grown a mustache. She wasn't sure whether she liked that, but the thought was lost in the tumult of her own emotions and she ran to meet him and flung herself against his bare chest.

Oh Blaine, she sobbed. Oh God, how I've missed you. Then she lifted her mouth to him. His face was wet with seaspray and it was salty on his lips. His mustache prickled.

She had been right first time, she didn't like it, but then he lifted her high and was running with her towards the shack, and she held him tightly with both arms around his neck, bouncing in his arms, jolted by his long strides, and laughing breathlessly with her own fierce need of him.

Blaine sat on a three-legged stool in front of the open hearth on which a fire of milkwood burned and perfumed the air with its fragrant incense. Centaine stood before him, working up a lather in the china shaving mug with his badger-hair brush, while Blaine complained.

It took five months to grow, and I was so proud of it. He twirled the ends of his mustache for the last time. It's so dashing, don't you think? No, said Centaine firmly. I do not. I'd prefer to be kissed by a porcupine. She bent over him and lathered both sides of his upper lip with a thick foam, and then stood back and surveyed her handiwork with a critical eye.

Perched on the stool Blaine was still stark naked from their love-making, and suddenly Centaine grinned wickedly.

Before he could fathom her intentions or move to protect himself, she had stepped forward again and daubed his most intimate extremity with a white blob of lather from the brush.

He looked down at himself, appalled. Hi-in too? he demanded.

That would be cutting off my nose to spite my own face, she giggled. Or something like that. Then she put her head on one side and gave her considered opinion. The little devil looks a lot better with a mustache than you do. Careful with that adjective Iittle", he admonished her, and reached for his towel. Come along, old fellow, you don't have to put up with this disrespect. He wrapped the towel around his waist and Centaine nodded.

That's better. Now I can concentrate on the job without distraction, and she took up the cut-throat razor that lay ready on the table-top and stropped it on the leather with quick practised strokes.

Where did you learn that? I am beginning to feel jealous. My papa, she explained. I always trimmed his moustaches. Now hold still! She took the tip of his large nose between thumb and forefinger and lifted it.

For what we are about to receive, Blaine's voice was muffled by her grip on his nose. He closed his eyes and winced as the steel rustled over his upper lip, and a few moments later Centaine stepped back and wiped the lather and hair from the blade, laid the razor aside and came back to dry his upper lip and then stroke the smooth skin with her fingertip.

It looks better; it feels better, she told him. But there is still the final test. And she kissed him.

Hmmm! She murmured her approval, and then still without breaking the kiss she wriggled round and sat on his lap.

It went on for a long time until she broke away and looked down. The towel had slipped. I say, here comes the little moustached devil again, obviously spoiling for trouble. She reached down and gently wiped away the last traces of lather from the tip.

You see! Even he looks a lot better cleanshavem, Blaine stood up with her in his arms. I think it is time, woman, that you learned the hard way that you can get away with just so much and then we must establish who is the boss around here. And he carried her to the bunk against the far wall.

Much later they sat side by side cross-legged on the bunk with a single brightly coloured Basuto blanket draped over their bare shoulders, leaning together and watching the fire shadows flicker along the rough plastered walls, listening to the wind off the ocean soughing around the eaves of the thatched roof in the darkness outside, cupping their hands around steaming mugs of fish soup.

One of my specialities, Blaine had boasted, and it was thick with chunks of fresh galjoen fish and lobster that he had caught that day. 'Wonderful powers of rejuvenation for those suffering from over-exertion. Blaine recharged the mugs twice, for they were both ravenous, and then Centaine went to the fire, her naked body gleaming in the ruddy glow of the firelight, to bring him a smouldering twig to light his cheroot. When it was burning evenly, she climbed under the blanket again and snuggled against him.

Did you ever find that young boy you were looking for? he asked lazily. Abe Abrahams came to me for help, you know. He was unaware how the question had affected her, for she controlled the reflex stiffening of her body and simply shook her head. No. He disappeared. He was Lothar De La Rey's son. I deduced that. Yes, she agreed. I was worried about him. He must have been deserted and alone after his father's sentence. I'll keep looking for him, Blaine promised. And let you know if anything comes up. He stroked her hair. You are a kind person, he murmured. There was no reason why you should concern yourself with the boy. They were silent again, but reference to the outside world had broken the spell and started a trail of thought that was unpleasant but had to be followed to the end.

How is Isabella? she asked, and felt the muscles of his chest tighten and swell beneath her cheek, but he inhaled a puff from the cheroot before he answered.

Her condition is deteriorating. Atrophy of the nerves of her lower body. Ulceration. She has been in Groote Schuur hospital since Monday. The ulcers at the base of her spine will not heal. I'm sorry, Blaine. That is how I have managed to get away these few days.

The girls are with their grandmother. That makes me feel awful. I would feel worse if I couldn't see you, he replied.

Blaine, we must keep to our resolution. We must never hurt her or the girls. He was silent again, then abruptly he flicked the stub of the cheroot across the room into the fire. It looks as though she will have to go to England. There is a surgeon at Guy's Hospital who has performed miracles. When? Her heart felt like a cannonball in her chest, suffocating her with its weight.

Before Christmas. It depends on the tests they are doing now. 'You will have to go with her, of course. That would mean resigning as administrator and damaging my chances, he broke off; he had never discussed his ambitions with her.

Your chances of a place in a future cabinet and possibly one day the premiership, she finished for him.

He stirred, taking her face between his hands and turning it gently so he could look into her eyes. You knew? he asked, and Centaine nodded.

Do you think that cruel of me? he asked. That I could let Isabella go on her own, for my selfish ambitions? No, she said seriously. I know about ambition. I offered, he said, while unquiet shadows clouded the green of his eyes. Isabella would not accept it. She insisted that I stay here. He laid her head back against his chest and stroked the hair back from her temple. She is an extraordinary person, such courage. The pain is almost unceasing now. She cannot sleep without laudanum, and always more pain and more laudanum.. It makes me feel so guilty, Blaine, but no matter what, I am glad for the opportunity to be with you. I am taking nothing from her. But that was not true, and she knew it. She lay awake long after he was asleep.

She lay with her ear pressed to his chest and listened to his heart and the slow filling and emptying of his lungs.

When she woke he was dressed in the old pair of khaki shorts and taking down a bamboo fishing rod with an old Scarborough reel from the rack on the wall above the hearth.

Breakfast in twenty minutes, he promised, leaving her cuddled down in the bunk, but he was back before then carrying a gleaming gunmetal and silver fish almost as long as his arm. He arranged it on a grid over the embers and then came to her and pulled the blanket off.

Swim! he grinned sadistically, and she screamed.

You are crazy. It's freezing! I'll die of pneumonia. She protested as wildly all the way down to the deep rock-lined pool in which be dunked her.

The water was clear as air and so cold that when they clambered out their bodies glowed bright pink all over and her nipples were standing out as hard and dark as ripe olives.

But the icy water had honed their appetites and they sprinkled lemon juice on the hot succulent white flesh of the Galjoen and wolfed ic down with chunks of brown bread and salty yellow farm butter.

Satiated at last they sat back and Blaine looked at her. She wore only one of his navy blue roll-necked fisherman's jerseys but the hem reached almost to her knees. She had piled her damp unruly tangle of hair on top of her head and tied it there with a yellow ribbon.

We could go for a walk, he suggested. Or, She thought about that for a few seconds and then decided.

I rather think I'll settle for the or. Your wish, madam, is my command, he replied courteously, and stood over her to lift the heavy jersey off over her head.

In the middle of the morning he lay flat on his back on the bunk while Centaine was propped on an elbow above him, tickling his lips and closed eyelids with a feather that she had plucked from the seam of one of the pillows.

Blaine, she said softly. I am selling Weltevreden. He opened his eyes, caught her wrist and sat up quickly.

Selling? he demanded. Why? I have to, she answered simply. 'The estate, the house and everything in it. But why, my darling? I know how much it means to you.

Why sell it? Yes, Weltevreden means a great deal to me, she agreed But the H'ani Mine means more. If I sell the estate, there is just a chance, a very small chance, that I will be able to save the mine. I didn't know, he said gently. I had no idea things were that bad., How could you know, my love? She caressed his face.

Nobody else does. But I don't understand. The Hlani Mine, surely it is making profits sufficient- No, Blaine. Nobody is buying diamonds nowadays.

Nobody is buying anything any more. This depression, this terrible depression! Our quota has been slashed. The prices we are being paid for our stones are less than half of what they were five years ago. The H'ani Mine is not quite breaking even. It is losing a small amount every month. But if I can hold on until the economy of the world turns around, she broke off. The only chance I have of doing that is by selling Weltevreden. That is all I have left to sell.

That way I might be able to hold on until the middle of next year, and surely this terrible depression must be over by then! Yes, of course it will! he agreed readily, and then after a pause, I have some money, Centaine She laid her fingers on his lips, smiled sadly and shook her head.

He lifted her hand away from his mouth and insisted, If you love me then you must let me help you., Our bargain, Blaine, she reminded him. Nobody else must be hurt. That money belongs to Isabella and the girls. It belongs to me, he said. And if I choose, I Blaine! Blaine! she stopped him. A million pounds might save me now, a million pounds! Do you have that much?

Any lesser amount would be wasted, simply disappear into the bottomless pit of my debts. He shook his head slowly. So much? Then he admitted regretfully, No. I don't have a third part of that, Centaine. Then we will not speak of it again, she told him firmly.

Now show me how to catch crayfish for dinner. I don't want to talk of anything unpleasant for the rest of our time together. There will be plenty of time for ugliness when I get home. on their last afternoon they climbed the slope behind the shack, wading hand in hand through the bright banks of wild blooms. The pollen painted their legs the colour of saffron and the bees rose in noisy swarms as they disturbed them, then resettled as they passed on.

Look, Blaine, see how every flower turns its head to follow the sun as it moves across the sky. I am like one of them, and you are my sun, my love. They wandered along the slope, and Blaine plucked the choicest blooms and plaited them into a crown. He placed it on her head. I crown you Queen of my heart, he intoned, and though he smiled when he said it, his eyes were serious.

They made love lying on the mattress of wild flowers, crushing the stems and leaves beneath them, enveloped in the herby aroma of their juices and the perfume of their blooms, and afterwards Centaine asked him as she lay in his arms, Do you know what I'm going to do? Tell me, he invited, his voice drowsy from their loving.

I'm going to give them something to talk about, she said.

A year from now they may say, "Centaine Courtney went out," but they'll have to add, "but she went out in style." What do you propose? Instead of the usual Christmas high jinks, I'm going to throw a bash to end all bashes! Open house at Weltevreden for a week, champagne and dancing every night. It will also throw the creditors off the scent for a while longer, he grinned at her. But I don't suppose you had thought of that, had you? You devious little vixen. 'That's not the only reason. it will give us an excuse to be together in public. You will be there, won't you? That depends. He was serious again, and they both knew it depended on Isabella, but he did not say it. I'd have to find a pretty good excuse. I'll give you an excuse, she said excitedly. I'll make it a polo week, a twenty-goal tournament. I'll invite teams from all over the country, all the top players. You are the national captain. You could not reasonably refuse, could you? I don't see how, he agreed. Talk about devious! And he shook his head in admiration.

It will give you a chance to meet Shasa. I told you he had been pestering me ever since he heard that I knew you. That I'd enjoy. 'You will have to put up with a bit of hero-worship. You could invite a few junior teams, Blaine suggested.

Give them a tournament of their own. I'd like to watch your son ride. Oh, Blaine! What a wonderful idea! She clapped her hands excitedly. My poor darling. It will probably be Shasa's last chance to ride his own ponies. Of course, I will have to sell them when I sell Weltevreden. The shadows were in her eyes again for a moment, but then she rallied and her eyes sparkled. But as I said, we'll go out in style. Shasa's team, the Weltevreden Invitation, under 16 years, had won through to the final round of the junior league, mostly by virtue of their handicap allowance. Shasa was the only plus player. Of the other three members of the team, two were scratch handicaps and the third was a minus one.

However, they had finally come up against the Natal Juniors, four of the top youngsters, all of them two- and three-goal players except their captain. Max Theunissen had only made the age limit by a few months. He was rated five goals, the best in Africa for his age, with height and weight in the saddle, a good eye and a powerful wrist. He used all these advantages to the full, adopting a hard driving style of play.

Shasa was the next best rated player in the country, at four goals, but he lacked the older boy's weight and strength, Max was backed by his strong team-mates, and all Shasa's skill and determination were not sufficient to prevent his team crumbling under the onslaught, leaving Shasa virtually unaided to try and stern the rout.

in five chukkas Max had pounded in nine goals against Shasa's best efforts in defence, wiping out the Weltevreden team's handicap start, so that on handicap the teams were all square as they came in to change ponies for the last chukka.

Shasa flung himself out of the saddle, his face flushed with exertion and frustration and anger and shouted at his chief groom. 'Abel, you didn't tighten the girth properly. The coloured groom bobbed his head nervously. You checked it, Master Shasa. Don't answer back, man. But he wasn't even looking at Abel. He was glaring across the field at the Natal pony lines where Max Theunissen was surrounded by a cluster of his admirers. I'll ride Tiger Shark for this chukka, he shouted at Abel over his shoulder.

You said Plum Pudding, Abel protested.

And now I say Tiger Shark. Change the saddles and check the bandages on his forelegs. Plum ]Pudding was a small pony, getting a little on in years and round in the middle, but still with an uncanny instinct to judge the run of the ball and set Shasa up for the shot. The two of them had developed a marvelous rapport.

However, as befitted his advancing years, Plum Pudding was becoming cautious. He no longer enjoyed a heavy ride off and flinched from putting his plump shoulder to that of another pony at full gallop.

Shasa had seen that at the other lines Max Theunissen had called for his black stallion, Nemesis. on this pony he had terrorized the junior league over the past four days, riding so cunningly close to foul play that the umpires had difficulty bringing him to book; he had succeeded in frightening most of the young lighter riders off the line even when they had the right of way, and riding off those who had the courage to stand up to him with such sadistic vigour that there had been two or three close calls even one accident, when little Tubby Vermeulen from the Transvaal had been brought down so heavily that he had broken his wrist and dislocated his shoulder.

Come on, Abel, don't just stand there. Get the saddle on Tiger Shark. Tiger Shark was a young bay stallion with only a year's schooling behind him, an ugly animal with a hammer head and immensely powerful shoulders which gave him a hump-backed appearance. His temperament was equally unattractive. He kicked and bit without provocation or warning, was sometimes almost urunanageable, and he had a vicious aggressive streak that seemed to rejoice in the command to barge in for the ride off; he had never yet flinched from heavy contact. In any other circumstance Shasa would have stayed with Plum Pudding, but Max had saddled Nemesis and Shasa could guess what was coming.

The shaft of his stick had cracked in the final seconds of the last chukka and he unwound the strap from his wrist and threw it on the ground and called across to his number two as he went to the wagon for a replacement.

Bunty, you must come up faster and move inside for my cross. Don't keep falling back, man. Shasa broke off, becoming aware of the hectoring tone of his own voice as he realized that Colonel Blaine Malcomess, the national captain and Shasa's particular demi-god, was watching him.

He had come up silently and was now leaning against the rear wheel of the wagon, one ankle crossed over the other, his arms folded over his chest, the wide-brimmed Panama hat canted over one eye and an enigmatic half-smile on his wide mouth. Shasa was sure that it showed disapproval and he tried to smooth over his scowl.

Hello, sir. We're taking a bit of a drubbing, I'm afraid, and he forced a rueful and unconvincing smile. No matter what they taught you at Bishops, he didn't like losing, not one little bit.

Far from being censorious of Shasa's bad temper, Blaine was delighted with it. The will to win was the single most important asset, and not only on the polo ground. He had not been sure that Shasa Courtney had it; for a person of his age he covered up very well.

Offering a beautiful but urbane face to his elders, deferring attentively to them with the oldfashioned manners drummed into him by his mother and his school, and remaining at all times difficult to fathom.

a However, Blaine had been watching him carefully over the last four days. He had seen that Shasa had a strong natural seat on a horse, a marvelous eye and a fluid stroke hinging on a powerful wrist.

He was fearless and full of dash, which often meant he was penalized for cutting across the line and for other dangerous play. But Blaine knew that with experience he would learn to disguise his hard play and not rnake it so apparent to the umpires.

The other requirements for a top international-class player were great stamina, which would come with age, dedicated application and experience. This last item was so vitally important -hat a player only reached the high noon of his career at forty years or later. Blaine himself was only just peaking and could look forward to another ten years at the top.

Blaine had seen Shasa Courtney had promise, and now in thought of him the will to win and his bitter anger at the defeat. He smiled as he remembered his own reply when at that age his father had told him: 'Blaine, you must learn to be a better loser. He had replied from the benefit of all sixteen years Of acquired wisdom, Yes, sir, but I don't intend to get in enough practice to become really good at it. Blaine stifled the smile and spoke softly. Shasa, can we have a word, please? Of course, sir. Shasa hurried to his summons, pulling off his hard cap respectfully.

You're letting Max rattle you, Blaine said quietly. You've been using Your noggin up to now. I n the first four chukkas You held them to four goals, but in the last chukka Max knocked in five. Yes, sir. Shasa scowled again unconsciously.

Think, lad. What has changed? Shasa shook his head and then blinked as it dawned on

him. He's pulling me across onto his offside. Right, Blaine nodded. He's taking you on his strong side.

Nobody has had a go at him from his other side, not once in five days. Change sides with Bunty and come at him on the nearside; come in steeply and barge him hard, just once.

Something tells me young Max isn't going to like his own medicine.

I think only one dose will be necessary. Nobody has yet seen the true colour of Master Theunissen's liver.

My guess is that it has a streak of yellow in it. You mean, foul him, sir? Shasa stared at him wonderingly. All his life he had been coached in the games of young gentlemen. This was the first time he had received this type of advice.

Perish the thought. Blaine winked at him. Let's just learn to be good losers, shall we? They had established this peculiar accord from the moment Centaine had first introduced them. Of course Blaine's reputation had made it easier for him; he had Shasa's respect and admiration before they had even met and, given Blaine's experience as an officer and politician in the art of bending others to his will, it had been a simple matter for him to make the most of his advantage with one so inexperienced and gullible.

Besides that, Blaine had truly and deeply wanted it to be good between them. Not only for the reason that Shasa was the son of the woman he loved, but because the boy was comely and charismatic, because he was quick-witted and had proved himself fearless and dedicated, and because Blaine did not have, and knew he never would have, a son of his own.

Stick with him, Shasa, and play him at his own game, he ended his advice, and Shasa smiled, his face radiant with pleasure and determination.

Thank you, sir. He clapped his hard hat on his head and strode away, the shaft of his mallet over his shoulder, the back of his white breeches stained brown with dubbin from the saddle and the sweat drying in salty white crystals between the shoulders of his bright yellow jersey.

Bunty, we are changing sides, he called, and when Abel led Tiger Shark up, Shasa. punched his shoulder lightly. You are right, you old thunder, I did check the girth myself. He made a show of doing it again, and Abel grinned delightedly when Shasa looked up from the girth buckle and told him, Now you can't blame me again. Without touching the stirrups he swung up onto Tiger Shark's back.

Blaine pushed himself away from the wagon wheel and sauntered back towards the grandstand, his eyes instinctively sweeping the throng for the bright yellow of Centaine's hat.

She was in a circle of males. Blaine recognized Sir Garry Courtney and General Smuts amongst them, together with three other influential men, a banker, a cabinet minister in the Hertzog government and Max Theunissen's father.

A pretty average sort of bunch for Madame Courtney. Blaine winced at the jealous pang he could not harden himself to accept.

Centaine's invitations had been sent out not only to the best players in the country but to all the most influential and important men in every other field: politicians, academics, great landowners and mining magnates, businessmen and newspaper editors, even a few artists and writers.

The chateau of Weltevreden was unable to house them all and she had taken over every room at the neighbouring Alphen Hotel, once also part of the Cloete family estate, to accommodate the overflow. Together with all her local there were well over two hundred from out of town.

guests, She had chartered a special train to bring down the upcountry contingent and their ponies, and for five days the entertainment had been continuous.

junior league polo in the mornings, an al fresco banquet at lunch time, senior polo in the afternoon, followed by an elaborate buffet dinner and all-night dancing.

Half a dozen bands played in relays, providing non-stop music through the days and nights. In between there were cabaret turns and fashion shows, a charity sale of art and rare wines, another sale of yearling thoroughbreds, a concours d'dftance for motor vehicles and lady drivers, a treasure hunt, a fancy-dress evening, tennis, croquet and bridge tournaments, show-jumping, a motor cyclist on a wall of death, Punch and Judy for the children and a team of professional nannies to keep the little ones occupied.

And I am the only one who knows what it is all about. Blaine looked up the stand at her. It's crazy and in a way immoral. It's no longer her money to spend. But I love her for her courage in the midst of misfortune. Centaine sensed him watching and her head turned quickly to him. For a moment they stared at each other, the distance between them not muting the intensity of their gaze, then she turned back to General Smuts and laughed gaily at what he was saying.

Blaine longed to go to her, just to be near to her, just to smell her perfume and listen to that husky voice with its touch of French accent, but instead he strode determinedly across the front of the stand to where Isabella sat in her wheelchair. This was the first day that Isabella had felt strong enough to attend the tournament and Centaine had arranged for a special ramp to be built to allow her wheelchair to reach the first tier of seats in the stand for a view of the field.

Isabella's silver-haired mother sat on one side of her and she was surrounded by four of her close girl friends and their husbands; but her two daughters came streaking down from the stand as soon as they saw Blaine, holding up their skirts to the knees with one hand and cramming their widebrimmed beribboned straw hats onto their heads with the other while they gabbled shrilly for his attention and then hopped along on each side of him, clinging to his hands and dragging him up to his seat beside Isabella.

Dutifully Blaine kissed the pale silky cbeek that Isabella Offered him. The skin was cool, and he caught a whiff of laudanum. on her breath. The pupils of her large eyes were dilated from the drug, giving them a touchingly vulnerable look.

I missed you, darling, she whispered, and it was the truth.

The moment Blaine had left her, she had looked around desperately to find Centaine Courtney, her torment only easing a little when she saw Centaine surrounded by admirers higher in the stand.

I had to chat to the boy, Blaine excused himself. Are you feeling better? Thank you. The laudanum is working now. She smiled up at him, so tragic and brave that he stooped once more and kissed her forehead. Then as he straightened he glanced guiltily in Centaine's direction, hoping that she had not noticed that spontaneous gesture of tenderness; but she was watching him, and she looked away quickly.

Papa, the teams are coming out. Tara tugged him down into his seat. Come on, Weltevreden, she shrieked, and Blaine could concentrate on the match rather than his own dilemma.

Changing sides Shasa led his team past the grandstand, cantering easily down the sideline, standing in the stirrups to adjust the chinstrap of his cap and searching for Blaine in the stand. They caught each other's eye and Shasa grinned as Blaine gave him a laconic thumbs up. Then he dropped back into the saddle and swung Tiger Shark around to face the Natal team as they rode out in their white breeches and caps, black boots and black short-sleeved shirts, looking tough and expert.

Max Theunissen frowned as he realized that Shasa had changed sides, and he circled out and flashed a hand signal to his number two on the far side of the field and then came back around again just as the umpire trotted to the centre and dropped the white bamboo root ball.

The last chukka opened with a confused scrappy m86e, with hacked shots missing and the ball trampled and rolling under the ponies hooves. Then it popped clear and Bunty leaned out of the saddle and hit his first good shot of the match, a high forehand drive that lofted well up-field and his pony went after it instinctively, bearing Bunty along on the line whether he liked it or not.

It was Bunty's shot, so he had the right of way and his pony came in perfectly to set him up, but Max Theunissen wheeled Nemesis and the black stallion was at full gallop within two strides. Max's father had not paid 11,000 for nothing, and the big powerful horse came down on Bunty like an avalanche.

Bunty looked over his shoulder and Shasa saw him blanch.

Your line, Bunty, Shasa screamed to encourage him. Stay on it! But at the same time he saw Max deliberately press his toe into the back of the stallion's gleaming shoulder, and Nemesis altered his angle. It was a dangerous and menacing attack, and if Bunty had stood up to it, it would have been a blatant foul. But these tactics of terror worked yet again and Bunty sawed his pony's head frantically and broke away, giving up the line. Max swept onto it triumphantly, gathering himself and leaning out of the saddle, lifting his stick high in the foreswing and concentrating all his attention on the white ball that jumped and kicked over the turf directly ahead of him, setting up to take it on the backhand.

He had overlooked Shasa on his nearside, and was unprepared for the blazing burst of speed with which Tiger Shark responded to the drive of Shasa's heels as he came in at a legitimate angle for the ride off.

Neither of them had struck the ball last; it was therefore fair ball, each of them with equal right of way. But as they came together, both horses at full gallop, Tiger Shark just a head behind the big black stallion, Shasa gave him the toe signal behind the shoulder and Tiger Shark responded joyously. He changed angle sharply and barged with all the power of his great misshapen shoulders. The collision was so unexpectedly violent that Shasa was almost unseated himself and was thrown up onto Tiger Shark's neck.

However, Blaine had been right, it was Max Theunissen's weak side, the one he had so assiduously protected all along, and Tiger Shark had timed the exploitation of his weakness perfectly. Nemesis reeled away and stumbled, his head going down between his front knees, and Max Theunissen was airborne, thrown high over his pony's head, somersaulting in mid-air but with the reins still in his hands, and for a terrible panicky moment Shasa knew he had killed him.

Then with an agility born of fear and natural athletic ability, Max switched around like a cat in the air and landed awkwardly, heavily but on his feet on the turf. For a few moments he was still too terrified and shocked to speak, and Shasa hauled himself back into the saddle and got Tiger Shark in hand as the whistles of the two umpires shrilled from both sides of the field. Max Theunissen started to scream hysterically.

He fouled me, a deliberate foul. He crossed my line. I could have been killed. Max was white and shaking, droplets of spittle flying from his quivering lips, and he was jumping up and down on the same spot like a petulant child, wild with frustration and fright.

The umpires were conferring in the middle of the field, and Shasa had an impulse to try and influence them with his own protestations of innocence, but good sense prevailed and he turned Tiger Shark back with all the dignity he could assemble, looking straight ahead, ignoring the roar of the crowd, but sensing that the roar was more an appreciation of justice, a bully caught in his own snare, than the expression of outraged sense of sportsmanship.

The umpires could not agree. They turned and trotted across the field to speak to the referee who came down from the grandstand to meet them.

Good shot, Shas! Bunty rode up to him. That will give the beggar something to write home about. They might send me off, Bunty, Shasa replied.

You never crossed his line, Bunty defended him hotly. I saw it all., But the fire in Shasa's blood was cooling and suddenly he thought what his grandfather would say, and even more unpleasant how his mother would react if he were sent off in front of her guests, bringing disgrace to their house. He looked nervously across at the stands, but it was too far to make out the expression on Blaine Malcomess face. High in the stand he saw the yellow fleck of his mother's hat, and to his fevered eye it seemed to be set at a disapproving angle, but now the umpires were cantering back, one of them coming directly towards Shasa and reining in before him, his expression severe.

Mr Courtney! Sir! Shasa straightened in the saddle, ready for the worst.

This is a formal warning, sir. You are officially warned for dangerous play. I acknowledge your warning, sir. Shasa tried to match his expression to the forbidding countenance of the umpire, but his heart was singing. He had got away with it.

Play on, Mr Courtney, said the umpire, and just before he turned away, Shasa saw the twinkle in his eye.

There were three minutes left in the final chukka as Max rode down to drive the ball deeply into their territory with his penalty shot; but there to pick it up was Shasa's number three and he hit a wobbling, bouncing ball out to the left field.

Good oh, Stuffs! Shasa was delighted. Thus far Stuffs Goodman had done nothing to distinguish himself. The relentless Natal attack had dispirited him, and more than once he had been the victim of Max Theunissen's robust play. This was the first time Stuffs had completed a pass and Shasa moved in to receive, then took the ball up field.

But Bunty was hanging back again, and without support Shasa's attack was ridden down by a phalanx of Natal riders and the game reverted to an untidy m06e while the seconds ticked away. The umpire blew up the m86e and gave the shot to Natal.

Dashed if we aren't going to hold them to a draw. Bunty looked at his wristwatch and called across to Shasa as they fell back to receive the next Natal shot.

Draw isn't ruddy good enough, Shasa retorted furiously.

We've got to win. it was bravado, of course. They hadn't seriously attacked the Natal goal in five chukkas. But Bunty's limited ambitions angered Shasa, and Max Theunissen had definitely faded since his spill, no sign of his old dash and fire, and twice he had fallen back avoiding contact when Shasa brought the ball up field, leaving it to his backs to challenge.

Only half a minute left. Despite Shasals boast, Bunty looked delighted at the term upon their sufferings, but at that moment the ball came to him hard and straight. He missed it and before he could turn the Natal attack swept past him and there was only Stuffs Goodman between them and the goal. As Shasa raced back to try and support him, his heart sank. it was all over. it was too much to hope that Stuffs could hit two clean shots in succession, but despite Shasa's misgivings, Stuffs came in, right into the heart of rified but game, and the Natal attack, white-faced and ter made a wild swing at the ball which never came within two feet of it. But his pony was a crafty old stager, clearly exasperated at the standard of his rider's play, and he trampled down the ball, and kicked it clear, right into Bunty's line. Bunty hit another corker, and chased it up field; but the Natal right back was there, driving in furiously, and the two of them ended up in another untidy waltz, swinging around each other, leaning out and hacking wildly, typical with sufjunior league play, neither man strong enough, or with sufficient experience to get another attack under way. The muddle gave both teams time to reorganize themselves andthe the opposing captains were howling at their men for the ball. Let me have it, Bunty! on the left side of the field Shasa was standing in the stirrups, and Tiger Shark was prancing sideways with nervous anticipation, watching the ball with eyes rolling until the whites showed.

Here, Digger, here! howled Max, lying back deep but ready to race up when the ball came clear.

Then Bunty hit his third and last scorcher of the day, right in the sweet spot of the hardwood mallet head, but the ball flew only a few feet before it hit the fore hoof of the Natal back's pony and rebounded under Bunty's stirrups, kicking back into the Weltevreden deep field, right out in the open.

Shasa had anticipated almost instantly and sent Tiger Shark away. He tapped the ball to change its direction and then wheeled Tiger Shark so sharply that the pony went down on his haunches.

Ha! Shasa put his heels in and the pony launched himself into full stride with the ball dribbling along just ahead of him.

Shasa leaned out, concentrating all his attention on the little white ball as it popped and flicked erratically, and he got the head of his mallet to it again, putting top spin on the ball so that it came under control and flew low across the turf, aimed at the Natal goal two hundred yards ahead.

Tiger Shark followed it beautifully, easing out to precisely the right distance for Shasa to get a full shot at it. Plum Pudding couldn't have judged it better, and Shasa hit it again with a neat click of wood on wood, and the ball skipped obediently ahead of him. He looked up over the ball and there was the Natal goal dead ahead, only one hundred and fifty yards away, and a kind of savage joy filled him as he realized that instead of merely holding Natal to the draw, they really did have a chance to win.

Hal he called to Tiger Shark, Hal And the big animal plunged forward under him. At the same moment Max Theunissen on Nemesis wheeled onto the line ahead and rode directly at him.

Down the throat, was the term that described this most hazardous of all interception angles. On two powerful and swift animals they were charging each other down the throat; the roar from the grandstand faded into a horrified hush, and the spectators rose to their feet in unison.

Shasa had only once before witnessed a head-on collision between two big horses at full gallop. That had been at the trials before the Argentinian test match the previous year.

He had been in the top row of the stand and he had heard the bones break clearly from there. One of the riders had burst his spleen and died later in hospital; the other had broken both legs. Afterwards they had shot the ponies as they lay in the middle of the field.

My line! he yelled at Max Theunissen as they swept towards each other.

Damn you, Courtney! Max yelled back defiantly. He had regained his courage, and he glared at Shasa over his pony's head; Shasa saw in his eyes that he was going to force the collision and he shifted slightly in the saddle. Tiger Shark felt it and flinched. They were going to give way, and then without warning Shasa was overwhelmed by the berserker's deadly passion.

Even from the stand Blaine Malcomess sensed it. He recognized that what had seized Shasa was not ordinary courage, rather it was a type of madness, the same madness that had once driven Blaine himself out into no man's land, alone with only a grenade in his hand, straight into the winking red eyes of the German Maxim guns.

He saw Shasa check Tiger Shark's turn and instead force him the opposite way, heading him directly at the black stallion, moving across the line of the ball in a deliberate challenge. it seemed that time slowed for Shasa. His vision was suddenly concentrated to brilliant clarity; he could see the wet pink mucous membrane deep in the flared nostrils of the great stallion in front of him; he could define each minute bubble in the froth that foamed from the corners of his mouth around the snaffle irons, each stiff black bristle in the charcoal velvet of his muzzle, each blood vessel in the lacework that covered the bloodshot corners of the stalhon's eyes and each individual lash that surrounded them.

Shasa looked over the black stallion's head into Max's face. It was contorted with fury. He saw the tiny blisters of sweat on Max's chin, and the gap between his square white incisors as his lips were drawn back in a rictus of determination, and he looked into Max's brown eyes and held their gaze.

It was too late, Shasa judged; they had left it too late to avoid the collision, and as he thought it he saw the sudden shock in Max's face, saw his lips crumple and the flesh of his cheeks frost over with terror and watched him jerk back in the saddle and drag Nemesis head around, pulling him off the line, breaking away right, only just in time.

Shasa swept past him, brushing him aside almost contemptuously, and with the passion still upon him he rose in the stirrups and struck the ball hard and true, driving it between the centre of the posts.

Blaine was still on his feet in the stand as the teams came in, and Shasa was flushed with triumph looking up at him for approbation, and though Blaine gave him only an airy wave and friendly smile, he was almost as exultant as Shasa.

By God, the lad has the makings, he told himself. He really has got it. And he sat down again beside Isabella. She saw his expression; she knew him so well. She knew how desperately he had wanted a son, and the reason for his interest in the boy. It made her feel inadequate and useless and angry.

That child is reckless and irresponsible. She could not help herself, even though she knew that her censure would have the opposite effect on Blaine. He doesn't give a fig for anybody else, but then the Courtneys have always been like that. Some people call it guts, Blaine murmured.

An ugly word for an ugly trait. She knew she was being shrewish; she knew there was a limit to his forbearance, but she could not help this self-destructive urge to try and hurt him. He is like his mother - and she saw the anger snap in Blaine's eyes as he rose to his feet, cutting her off.

I'll see if I can get you some lunch, my dear. He strode away, and she wanted to cry after him: I'm sorry, it was only because I love you so!

Isabella ate no red meat, for it seemed to aggravate her condition, so Blaine was contemplating the display of prawns and crayfish, clams and mussels and fish which formed the centrepiece of the buffet, a pyramid taller than his head, such a veritable work of art that it seemed sacrilegious to make the first inroad upon it. He was not alone in his reluctance; the display was surrounded by an admiring cluster of guests exclaiming with delight and admiration so that Blaine was not aware of Centaine's approach until she spoke just behind his shoulder.

Whatever did you say to my son, Colonel, that turned him into a savage? And he turned quickly, trying to cover the guilty delight that he felt at her closeness. Oh yes, I saw you talking to him before the last chukka, she went on.

Man talk, I'm afraid, not for tender ears. She laughed softly. 'Whatever it was, it worked. Thank you, Blaine. No need for that, the lad did it himself. That last goal was as plucky an effort as I've seen in a long time. He is going to be good, very good indeed. Do you know what I thought as I watched it? she asked softly, and he shook his head, leaning closer for her reply.

I thought Berlin, she told him softly, and he was perplexed for a moment. Then it dawned upon him.

Berlin 1936. The Olympic Games, and he laughed. She must be joking. From junior league to the seniors was the distance to the moon and the stars. Then he saw her expression and he stopped laughing.

You really are serious! He stared at her.

Of course, I won't be able to afford to keep his ponies.

But his grandfather loves to watch him play. He will help, and if he had the advice and encouragement of a really top man, She gave a graceful little shrug, and it was a moment before he could recover from his astonishment sufficiently to reply.

You never fail to amaze me. Is there nothing you won't reach for? Then he saw the sudden, sly, lascivious gleam in her eye, and he went on hurriedly, I withdraw the question, madam. For a moment they looked at each other with the veil stripped aside, their eyes and their love naked for anyone to see. Then Centaine broke the contact.

General Smuts has been asking for you. She changed direction again in that disconcerting mercurial fashion of hers. We are sitting under the oaks behind the stand. Why don't you and your wife join us there? She turned away from him and the throng of her guests opened before her.

Blaine wheeled Isabella slowly across the smooth carpet of mown Kikuyu grass towards the group under the oaks.

The weather had blessed Centaine's tournament; the sky was heron's-egg blue with a silver burst of cloud hanging stationary over the peak of Muizenberg and another thick mattress laid over the massif of Table Mountain that standing cloud known as the table cloth'.

It was windy, of course. It was always windy in December, but Weltevreden was tucked into a protected corner of the Constantia valley; passing overhead, the southeaster froufroued the top leaves of the oaks, barely flickering at the women's skirts, but alleviating what would have been oppressive heat, and sweetening the air to earn its nickname the Cape doctor'.

When she saw Blaine coming, Centaine waved the white jacketed waiter aside and poured champagne with her own hand and brought the glass to Isabella.

Thank, you, no, Isabella rebuffed her sweetly, and for a moment Centaine was at a loss, standing before the wheelchair with the scorned crystal glass in her hand.

Then Blaine rescued her. If it's going begging, Mrs Courtney. He took the glass from her, and she smiled quick gratitude, while the others made room for the wheelchair in the circle and the chairman of the Standard Bank, sitting beside Centaine, took up his monologue where it had been interrupted.

That fellow Hoover and his damned policy of interventionism, he didn't only destroy the economy of the United States but ruined us all in the process. If he had left it alone we'd all be out of this depression by now, but what do we have instead, over five thousand American banks bust this year, unemployment up to twenty-eight millions, trade with Europe at a standstill, the currency of the world in the process of debasement. He has forced one country after another off the gold standard, even Britain has succumbed. We are one of the very few countries that have been able to maintain the gold standard, and believe me it's beginning to hurt. It makes the South African pound expensive, makes our exports expensive, it makes our gold expensive to bring to the surface and God alone knows how long we can hold out. He glanced across the circle at General Smuts. What do you think, Ou Baas, how long can we stay on gold? And the Ou Baas chuckled until his white goatee waggled and his blue eyes sparkled. My dear Alfred, you mustn't ask me. I'm a botanist not an economist. His laughter was infectious, for they all knew that his was one of the most brilliant minds in any field, that this tumultuous twentieth century had so far spewed forth; that he had urged Hertzog to follow Britain's example when she left the gold standard; that he had dined with John Maynard Keynes, the economist of the age, on his last visit to Oxford; and that the two of them corresponded regularly.

Then you must look at my roses, Ou Baas, rather than the gold question, Centaine ordered. She had judged the mood of her guests and sensed that such heavy discussion was making them uncomfortable. Day to day they had to live with the unpleasant reality of a world tottering on the financial brink and they escaped from it now with relief.

The conversation became light and trivial, but with a superficial sparkle like that of the champagne in the longstemmed tulip glasses. Centaine led the banter and laughter, but beneath it was that empty feeling of impending disaster, the insistent aching knowledge that all this was ending, that it was unreal as a dream, that this was the last echo of the past as she was carried forward into a future full of menace and uncertainty, a future over which she would no longer have control.

Blaine looked over her shoulder and clapped lightly, and her other guests joined in a splatter of condescending adult applause.

Hail the conquering hero, somebody laughed, and Centaine turned in her seat. Shasa was standing behind her, dressed in flannels and blazer, his hair wet from the shower and the marks left by the comb still sharply furrowed through it. He was smiling with just the right degree of modesty.

Oh cheri, I'm so proud of you., Centaine jumped up and kissed him impulsively and now he blushed with real embarrassment.

I say, Mater, let's not go all French now, he remonstrated, and he was so beautiful that she wanted to hug him. But she restrained herself and signalled the waiter to bring Shasa a glass of champagne. He glanced at her quizzically; he was usually restricted to lager, and not more than a pint of that either.

Special occasion. She squeezed his arm, and Blaine raised his glass.

Gentlemen, I give you the famous victory of the Weltevreden juniors. Oh, I say, Shasa protested. We had nine goals start. But they all drank, and Sir Garry made a place for Shasa beside him.

Come and sit here, my boy, and tell us how it feels to be champions. Please excuse me, Grandpater, but I have to be with the chaps. We are planning a surprise for later. A surprise? Centaine sat up. She had lived through some of Shasa's surprise turns. The amateur fireworks show during which the old barn had gone up in a most spectacular but unintended display together with the five acres of plantation behind it was only one of his more memorable efforts. What surprise, cheri? If I tell you, it won't be a surprise, Mater. But we are going to clear the field just before the prize-giving, I thought I'd let you know. He gulped the last of the champagne.

Have to run, Mater. See you later. She held out a hand to restrain him, but he was already on his way back towards the grandstand where the other members of the victorious Weltevreden Invitation team were eagerly waiting for him.

They piled into Shasa's old Ford and went roaring up the long driveway towards the chateau. She watched them with trepidation until they were out of sight, and when she looked back Blaine and General Smuts had also left the circle and were strolling away amongst the oaks, their heads inclined towards each other talking earnestly. She watched them surreptitiously. They made an interesting and ill-assorted couple, the spry little white-bearded statesman and the tall handsome warrior and lawyer. Their conversation was obviously engrossing, and they were oblivious to all else as they promenaded slowly back and forth, just out of earshot from where Centaine sat.

When are you returning to Windhoek, Blaine? My wife sails for Southampton in two weeks time. I will return immediately the mail boat leaves. Can you stay over? General Smuts asked. Say until the New Year? I am expecting developments. May I have an inkling what they are? Blaine asked.

I want you back in the House. Smuts evaded the direct question for the moment. I know it will involve sacrifice, Blaine. You are doing an excellent job in Windhoek and building up personal prestige and bargaining power. I am asking you to sacrifice that by resigning the administratorship and contesting the Gardens by-election for the South Africa Party. Blaine did not reply. The sacrifice that the Ou Baas was asking for was onerous.

The Gardens was a marginal seat. There was a real risk of losing it to the Hertzog party and even with a victory he would gain only a seat on the opposition benches, a heavy price to pay for the loss of the administratorship.

We are in opposition, Ou Baas, he said simply, and General Smuts struck at the Kikuyu grass with his cane as he pondered his reply.

Blaine. This is for you only. I must have your word on that. 'Of course. If you trust me now, you will have a ministry within six months. Blaine looked incredulous and Smuts stopped in front of him. 'I see I will have to tell you more. He drew a breath. Coalition, Blaine. Hertzog and I are working out a Coalition cabinet. It looks certain and we will announce it in March next year, three months away. I will be taking justice and it looks as though I will be able to appoint four of my own ministers. You are on my list. I see. Blaine tried to take it in. The news was stupendous.

Smuts was offering him what he had always wanted, a place in the cabinet.

I don't understand, Ou Baas. Why should Hertzog be prepared to negotiate with us now? He knows that he has lost the confidence of the nation and that his own party is becoming unmanageable. His cabinet has become arrogant, if not downright lawless. It is engaging in discretionary rule. Yes, yes, Ou Baas. But surely this is our opportunity!

Look to this last month alone, look to the by-election at Germiston and the results of the Transvaal provincial elections. We won both decisively. If we can force a general election now, we will win. We don't have to form a coalition with the Nationalists. We could win as the South Africa Party on our own terms. The old general was silent for a few moments, his grey beard sunk into his chest and his expression grave. You may be right, Blaine. We might win now, but not on our own showing. The vote would go against Hertzog, not for us. A party victory now would be barren and sterile. We could not justify forcing a general election for the national welfare. It would be party political profiteering and I want no part of that. Blaine could not reply. Suddenly he felt humbled to be in the confidence of such a man. A man so truly great and good that he would unhesitatingly turn his back on the opportunity to profit from his country's agony.

These are desperate times, Blaine. Smuts was speaking softly. 'Storm clouds are gathering all around us. We need a united people. We need a strong coalition cabinet, not a parliament split by party differences. Our economy is tottering on the brink, the gold-mining industry is in jeopardy.

At present costs, many of the older mines are already closing down. others will follow, and when they do it will mean the end of the South Africa that we know and love. In addition to that, the prices of wool and diamonds, our other major exports, have crashed. Blaine nodded soberly. All these factors were the basis of nationwide concern.

I don't have to emphasize the findings of the Wage Commission, Smuts went on. One fifth of our white population has been plunged by drought and primitive farming methods into abject poverty, twenty percent of our productive lands have been ruined by erosion and abuse, probably permanently., The poor whites, Blaine murmured, a great mass of itinerant beggars and starvelings, unemployed and untrained, without skills, without hope. Then we have our blacks, split by twenty tribal divisions, flocking in from the rural districts in search of the good life, die lekkerlewe, and swelling the ranks of the unemployed, finding instead of the good life, crime and illicit liquor and prostitution, building up a pervading discontent, conceiving a fine contempt for our laws and discovering for the first time the sweet attractions of political power. That is a problem we haven't even begun to address or attempt to understand, Blaine agreed. Let us pray our children and our grandchildren do not curse us for our neglect. Let us pray, indeed, Smuts echoed. And while we do so, let us look beyond our own borders for a moment, to the chaos which engulfs the rest of the world. He stabbed at the earth with his cane to mark each point as he made it.

In America the system of credit has collapsed and trade with Europe and the rest of the world has come to a standstill. Armies of the poor and dispossessed roam aimlessly across the continent. He stabbed the point of the cane into the turf. In Germany the Weimar Republic is collapsing after ruining the economy. One hundred and fifty billion Weimar marks to one of the old gold marks, wiping out the nation's savings. Now from the ashes has risen a new dictatorship, founded in blood and violence, which has upon it the stench of immense evil. He struck the earth again, angrily. In Russia a ravening monster is murdering millions of his own countrymen. Japan is in the throes of anarchy.

The military have run riot cutting down the nation's elected rulers, seizing Manchuria and slaughtering the unfortunate inhabitants by the hundreds of thousands, threatening to walk out of the League of Nations when the rest of the world protests. Once again the cane hissed as he slashed at the lush Kikuyu grass. There has been a run on the Bank of England, Great Britain forced off the Gold Standard, and from the vault of history the ancient curse of anti-Semitism has escaped once more and stalks the civilized world. Smuts stopped and faced Blaine squarely. Everywhere we turn there is disaster and mortal danger. I will not attempt to profit from it and in so doing divide this suffering land. No, Blaine, coalition and cooperation, not conflict. How did it all go wrong so swiftly, Ou Baas? Blaine asked softly. It seems just yesterday that we were prosperous and happy. In South Africa a man can be filled with hope at dawn and sick with despair by noon. Smuts was silent for a moment, and then he roused himself.

I need you, Blaine. Do you want time to think about it? Blaine shook his head. No need. You can count on me, Ou Baas. I knew I could. Blaine looked beyond him to where Centaine sat under the oaks and tried to hide his jubilation and to suppress the sense of shame that underlaid it, shame that unlike this saintly little man before him he was to profit from the agony of his country and the civilized world, shame that only now, out of despair and hardship, he would achieve his cherished ambition of cabinet rank. Added to that he would be returning to the Cape, coming in from the desert lands to this lush and beautiful place, coming in to where Centaine Courtney was.

Then his gaze flicked to the thin pale woman in the wheelchair, her beauty fading under the onslaught of pain and drugs, and his guilt and shame balanced almost perfectly his jubilation.

But Smuts was speaking again.

I will be staying on here as a guest at Weltevreden for the JT; next four days, Blaine. Sir Garry has bullied me into agreeing to allow him to write my biography and I will be working with him on the first draft. At the same time I will be conducting a series of secret meetings with Barry Hertzog It to agree the final details of the coalition. This is an ideal place for us to talk and I would be obliged if you could keep, yourself available. I will almost certainly be calling upon you!

of course. With an effort Blaine set his own emotions aside. I will be here as long as you need me. Do you want me to submit my resignation to the administrator's office? Draft the letter, Smuts agreed. I will explain your reasons to Hertzog and you can hand it to him in person. Blaine glanced at his watch and the old general said quickly, Yes, you will have to prepare for your match. This frivolity in the midst of such dire events is rather like fiddling while Rome burns, but one must keep up appearances.

I have even agreed to present the prizes. Centaine Courtney is a persuasive lady. So I hope we will meet later, at the prize-giving when I hand you the cup. It was a close thing, but the Cape A! team, led by Blaine Malcomess, held off the most determined efforts of the Transvaal A! in the final match of the tournament to win by three goals. Immediately afterwards all the teams gathered at the foot of the grandstand where the array of silver cups was set out on the prize table but there was an awkward pause in the proceedings. One team was missing: the junior champions.

Where is Shasa? Centaine demanded in a low but furious voice of Cyril Slaine, who was the tournament organizer.

He flapped his hands and looked helpless. He promised me he would be here. If this is his surprise, With an effort Centaine hid her anger behind a gracious smile for the benefit of her interested guests. Well, that is it. We begin without them. She took her place on the front tier of the stand beside the general and held up both hands for attention.

General Smuts, ladies and gentlemen, honoured guests and dear friends. She faltered and looked around uncertainly, her voice overlaid by the drone in the air, a sound that rose steadily in volume, becoming a roar, and every face in the crowd was lifted to the sky, searching, some puzzled, others amused or uneasy. Then suddenly over the oaks at the far end of the polo field flashed the wings of a low-flying aircraft.

Centaine recognized it as a Puss-Moth, a small single-engined machine. It banked steeply towards the grandstand and came straight at them, no more than head high as it raced across the field. Then, when it seemed it would fly straight into the crowded stand, the nose lifted sharply and it roared over their heads as half the spectators ducked instinctively and a woman screamed.

In the moment that it flashed over her, Centaine saw Shasa's laughing face in the side window of the aircraft's cabin, and the flicker of his hand as he waved, and instantly she was transported back over the years, through time and space.

The face was no longer Shasa's but that of Michael Courtney, his father. In her mind the machine was no longer blue and streamlined but had assumed the gaunt old-fashioned lines, the double deck of wings and wire riggings and the open cockpit and daubed yellow paintwork of a wartime scoutplane.

It banked around in a wide circle, appearing once more over the tops of the oaks, and she stood rigid with shock and her soul was riven by a silent scream of anguish as she watched again the shot-riddled yellow scoutplane trying to clear the great beech trees below the chateau of Mort Homme, its engine stuttering and missing.

Michael! She screamed his name in her head and it was like a blinding flash of agony as once again she watched his mortally wounded machine hit the top branches of the tall copper beech and cartwheel, wing over wing as it fell out of the air and struck the earth to collapse in a welter of broken struts and canvas. Again she saw the flames bloom like beautiful poisonous flowers and leap high from the shattered machine, and the dark smoke roll across the lawns towards her, and the body of the man in the open cockpit twist and writhe and blacken as the orange flames sucked upwards and the heat danced in glassy mirage and greasy black smoke and filled her ears with drumming thunder.

Michael! Her jaws were locked closed, her teeth aching at the pressure, and her lips were rimmed with the ice of horror so that the name could not escape from between them.

Then miraculously the image faded, and she saw instead the small blue machine settle sedately onto the green turf of the polo field, its tail dropping onto the skid, the engine beat dwindling to a polite burbling murmur as it swung around at the far end of the field and then taxied back towards the stand, the wings rocking slightly. It stopped below them and the engine cut out with a final hiccough of blue smoke from the exhausts.

The doors on each side of the cabin were flung open and out tumbled Shasa Courtney and his three grinning teammates. It amazed her that they had all crammed into that tiny cockpit.

,surprise, everybody! they howled. Surprise! Surprise! And there was laughter and applause and whistles and catcalls from the stand. An aircraft was still a marvelous novelty, able to attract the attention of even such a sophisticated gathering as this. Probably not more than one in five of them had ever flown in one, and this unexpected and noisy arrival had created an excited laughing mood so that the applause and comment was loud and raucous as Shasa led his team up to the prize table to accept the silver cup from General Smuts.

The pilot of the blue aircraft climbed out of the left-hand door, a stocky bald-headed figure, and Centaine glared at him venomously. She had not known that Jock Murphy included flying among his assorted accomplishments, but she determined that he would rue this prank. She had always done all she could to discourage Shasals interest in aircraft and flying, but it had been difficult. Shasa kept a photograph of his father in flying gear beside his bed and a replica of the SE5a fighter plane hung from the ceiling of his bedroom; over the last few years his questions about flying and his father's military feats had become more insistent and purposeful. She should have been warned by this, of course, but she had been so preoccupied, and it had never occurred to her that he might take to flying without consulting her.

Looking back, she realized that she had been deliberately ignoring the possibility, deliberately avoiding thinking about it, and now the shock was all the more unpleasant.

With the silver cup in his hands Shasa ended his short acceptance speech with the specific assurance: Finally, ladies and gentlemen, you might have thought that Jock Murphy was flying the Puss-Moth. He was not!

He wasn't even touching the controls, were you? He looked across at the bald-headed instructor, who shook his head in collaboration, 'There you are! Shasa gloated. You see, I have decided that I am going to be a flyer, just like my dad., Centaine did not join in the clapping and laughter.

As suddenly as they had arrived and transformed the life of Weltevreden the hundreds of guests had gone, leaving only the ruined turf of the polo ground, the litter and the mountains of empty champagne bottles and piles Of dirty linen in the laundry. Centaine was left also with a feeling of anticlimax. Her last flourish had been made, the last shot in her arsenal fired, and on the Saturday the mail ship docked in Table Bay and brought them an invited but unwelcome visitor.

Damn fellow reminds me of an undertaker standing in for a tax collector, Sir Garry buffed and took General Smuts off to the gunroom which he always used as a study when he visited Weltevreden. The two of them were immersed in the initial consultations for the biography and did not appear again until lunchtime.

The visitor came down to breakfast just as Centaine and Shasa arrived back from their early morning gallop, rosycheeked and starving.

He was examining the hallmarks on the silver cutlery as they entered the dining-room arm in arm through the double doors, laughing at one of Shasa's sallies. However, the mood was instantly shattered, and Centaine bit her lip and sobered when she saw him.

May I introduce my son, Michael Shasa Courtney. Shasa, this is Mr Davenport from London. How do you do, sir. Welcome to Weltevreden. Davenport looked at Shasa with the same appraising stare with which he had been examining the silver.

It means "well satisfied", Shasa explained. From the Dutch, you know, Weltevreden. Mr Davenport is from Sotheby's, Shasa. Centaine filled the awkward pause. He has come to advise me on some of our paintings and furniture. Oh, jolly good, Shasa enthused. 'Have you seen this, sir? Shasa pointed out the landscape in soft oils above the side board. It's my mother's favourite. Painted on the estate where she was born. Mort Homme near Arras. Davenport adjusted his steel-framed spectacles and leaned over the sideboard for a closer view so that his considerable stomach drooped into the salver of fried eggs and left a greasy splotch on his waistcoat.

Signed 1875, he said sombrely. His best period. It's by a chap called Sisley, Shasa volunteered helpfully, Alfred Sisley. He is quite a well-known artist, isn't he, Mater? Cheri, I think Mr Davenport knows who Alfred Sisley is. But Davenport wasn't listening.

We could get five hundred pounds, he muttered, and pulled a notebook from his inner pocket to make an entry.

A fine dusting of dandruff descended from his lank locks at the movement and sprinkled the shoulders of his dark suit.

Five hundred? Centaine demanded unhappily. I paid considerably more than that for it. She poured a cup of coffee, she had never taken to these huge English breakfasts, and carried it to the head of the table.

That is as maybe, Mrs Courtney. We had a better example of his work on auction only last month, "It Ecluded Marly", and it didn't reach the very modest reserve we placed on it.

Buyer's market, I'm afraid, very much a buyer's market. Oh don't worry, sir. Shasa piled eggs onto his plate and crowned them with a wreath of crispy bacon. It's not for sale. My mother would never sell it, would you, Mater? Davenport ignored him and carried his own plate to the vacant seat beside Centaine.

Now, the Van Gogh in the front salon is another matter, he told her as he launched into the smoked kippers with more enthusiasm than he had shown for anything since his arrival. With his mouth full he read from his notebook.

Green and violet wheatfield; furrows lead the eye to golden haloes around the huge orb of the rising sun high in the picture. He closed the book. There is quite a vogue for Van Gogh in America, even in this soft market. Can't tell whether it will last, of course, can't stand him myself, but I will have the picture photographed and send copies to a dozen of our most important clients in the United States. I think we can bank on four to five thousand pounds. Shasa had laid down his knife and fork and was staring from Davenport to his mother with a puzzled and troubled expression.

I think we should talk about this later, Mr Davenport, Centaine intervened hurriedly. I have set aside the rest of the day for you. But let us enjoy our breakfast now., The rest of the meal passed in silence, but when Shasa pushed his plate away, half finished, Centaine rose with him. Where are you going, cheri? The stables. The blacksmith is reshoeing two of my ponies. I'll walk down with you. They took the path along the bottom wall of the Huguenot vineyard, where Centaine's best wine grapes were grown, and around the back of the old slave quarters. Both of them were silent, Shasa waiting for her to speak, and Centaine trying to find the words to tell him. Of course, there was no gentle way of saying it and she had delayed too long already.

Her procrastination had only made it more difficult for her now.

At the gate of the stable yard she took his arm and turned him into the plantation. That man, she began, and then broke off and started again. Sotheby's is the foremost firm of auctioneers in the world. They specialize in works of art. I know, he smiled condescendingly. I'm not a complete ignoramus, Mater. She drew him down onto the oak bench that stood at the edge of the spring. Sweet crystal water burbled out of a tiny rocky grotto and splashed down amongst ferns and green moss-covered boulders into the brick-lined pool at their feet.

The trout in the pool, as long and as thick as Shasa's forearm, came nosing up to their feet, swirling hopefully for their feed.

Shasa, cheri. He has come here to sell Weltevreden for us. She said it clearly and loudly, and immediately the enormity of it came down upon her with the brutal force of a falling oak tree, and she sat numb and broken beside him, feeling herself shrinking and shrivelling, giving in at last to despair.

You mean the paintings? Shasa asked carefully.

Not just the paintings, the furniture, the carpets and the silver. She had to stop to draw breath and control the trembring of her lips. The chateau, the estate, your ponies, everything. He was staring at her, unable to comprehend it. He had lived at Weltevreden since he was four years old, as far back as he could remember.

Shasa, we have lost it all. I have tried since the robbery to hold it together. I was not able to do it. It's gone, Shasa.

We are selling Weltevreden to pay off our debts. There will be nothing left after that. Her voice was cracking again, and she touched her lips to still them before she went on. We aren't rich any more, Shasa. It's all gone. We are ruined, completely ruined. She stared at him, waiting for him to revile her, waiting for him to break as she was about to break, but instead he reached for her and after a moment the stiffness went out of her shoulders and she sagged against him and clung to him for comfort.

We are poor, Shasa, and she sensed him struggling to take it all in, trying to find words to express his confused feelings.

You know, Mater, he said at last, I know some poor people. Some of the boys at school, their parents are pretty hard-up, and they don't seem to mind too much. Most of them are jolly good chaps. It might not be too bad, once we get used to being poor., I'll never get used to it, she whispered fiercely. I will hate it, every moment of it.

And so will I, he said as fiercely. If only I were old enough, if only I could help you., She left Shasa at the blacksmith's shop and returned slowly, stopping often to chat with her coloured folk, the women coming to the stable doors of the cottages with their babies on their hips to greet her, the men straightening up from their labours, grinning with pleasure for they had become her family; to part with them would be more painful even than giving up her carefully accumulated treasures. At the corner of the vineyard she climbed over the stone wall and wandered between the rows of lovingly pruned vines on which the bunches of new grapes already hung weightily, green and hard as musket balls, floury with bloom, and she reached up and took them in her cupped hands as though it was a gesture of farewell and found that she was weeping.

She had been able to contain her tears while she had been with Shasa, but now she was alone, her grief and desolation overwhelmed her and she stood amongst her vines and wept.

Despair drained her and eroded her resolve. She had worked so hard, had been alone so long, and now in ultimate failure she was tired, so tired that her bones ached and she knew that she did not have the strength to start all over again. She knew she was beaten and that from now on her LIFE would be a sad and sorry thing, a grinding daily struggle to maintain her pride while she was reduced to the position of a mendicant. For dearly as she loved Garry Courtney, it would be his charity on which she must rely from now on and her whole being quailed at the prospect. For the very first time in her life she could find neither the will nor the courage to go on.

It would be so good to lie down and close her eyes; a strong desire came upon her, the longing for peace and silence.

I wish it was all over. That there was nothing, no more striving and worrying and hoping. The longing for peace became irresistible, filled her soul, obsessed her so that as she left the vineyard and entered the lane she quickened her step. It will be like sleeping, sleeping with no dreams. She saw herself lying on a satin pillow, eyes closed, tranquil and calm.

She was still in breeches and riding-boots, so she could lengthen her stride. As she crossed the lawns she was running, and she flung open the french doors to her study and, panting wildly, ran to her desk and tore open the drawer.

The pistols had been a gift from Sir Garry. They were in a fitted case of royal blue pigskin with her name engraved on a brass plaque on the lid. They were a matched pair, hand-made by Beretta of Italy for a lady, engraved with exquisite gold inlay and the mother-of-pearl butts were set with small diamonds from the H'ani Mine.

She selected one of the weapons and broke it open. The magazine was loaded, and she snapped it closed and cocked the slide. Her hands were steady and her breathing had eased.

She felt very calm and detached as she lifted the pistol, placed the muzzle to her temple and took up the slack in the trigger with her forefinger.

She seemed to be standing outside herself, looking on almost without emotion other than a faint remorse at the waste and a gentle sense of pity for herself.

Poor Centaine, she thought. What an awful way for it all to end. And she looked across the room at the gilt-framed mirror. There were tall vases set on each side of the glass filled with fresh long-stemmed yellow roses from the gardens, so that her image was framed within blooms as though she were laid out in her coffin and her face was pale as death.

I look like a corpse. She said it aloud, and at the words her longing for oblivion changed instantly to a sickening self-disgust. She lowered the pistol and stared at her image in the mirror, and saw the hot coals of anger begin to burn in her cheeks.

No, merde! she almost shrieked at herself. You don't get out of it that easily. She opened the pistol and spilled the brass-cased cartridges onto the carpet, threw the weapon onto the blotter and strode from the room.

The coloured maids heard the heels of her riding-boots cracking on the marbel treads of the circular staircase and lined up at the door to her suite, smiling happily and bobbing their curtseys.

Lily, you lazy child, haven't you run my bath yet? Centaine demanded, and the two maids rolled their eyes at each other. Then scampered to the bathroom in a convincing pantomime of obedience and duty while the pretty little second maid followed Centaine to her dressing-room picking up the clothing that she deliberately dropped on the floor as she went.

Gladys, you go and make sure Lily runs it deep and hot, she ordered, and the two of them were standing expectantly beside the huge marble tub as Centaine came through in a yellow silk robe and tested the water with one finger.

Lily, do you want to make soup out of me? she demanded, and Lily grinned happily. The water was exactly the right temperature and Centaine's question was acknowledgement of that, a private joke between them. Lily had the bath crystals ready and sprinkled a careful measure on the steaming water.

Here, give it to me, Centaine ordered, and emptied half the jar into the bath. No more half measures. Centaine watched the bubbles foam up over the rim of the tub and slide onto the marble floor with a perverse satisfaction, and the two maids dissolved into giggles at this craziness and fled from the room as Centaine threw off the robe and, gasping with the exquisite agony of the heat, settled chin deep in the foaming water. As she lay there, the image of the pearl-handled pistol reformed in her mind but she drove it forcefully away.

One thing you have never been, Centaine Courtney, is a coward, she told herself; and when she returned to her dressing-room she selected a dress of gay summer colours and she was smiling as she came down the stairs.

Davenport and Cyril Slaine were waiting for her.

This is going to take a long time, gentlemen. Let us begin. Every single item in the huge mansion had to be numbered and described, the value estimated, the more important pieces photographed and everything entered laboriously in the draft catalogue. All this had to be completed before Davenport went back to England on the mail boat in ten days time. He would return in three months to conduct the actual sale.

When the time came for Davenport to leave, Centaine surprised them all when she announced her intention of accompanying him around the mountain to the mail ship dock, a duty which would normally have fallen to Cyril.

The sailing of the mail ship was one of the exciting events of the Cape Town social calendar, and the liner swarmed with passengers and the dozens of guests who had come to wish them bon voyage.

At the first class entry port Centaine checked the passenger list and found the entry under M': Malcomess, Mrs 1. Cabin A 16

f Miss T. Cabin A 17

Malcomess, Miss M. Cabin A 17

Blaine's family was sailing as planned. By agreement she had not seen him since the last day of the polo tournament, and surreptitiously she searched for him now through the smoking saloons and lounges of the liner's first class section.

She could not find him and realized that he was probably in Isabella's suite. The idea of their intimate seclusion galled her and she wanted desperately to go up to Cabin A 16 on the boat deck on the pretext of saying farewell to Isabella, but really to prevent Blaine being alone with her for another minute. Instead she sat in the main lounge and watched Mr Davenport demolishing pink gins, while she smiled and nodded at her acquaintances and exchanged banalities with those friends who paraded through the liner's public cabins determined to see and be seen.

She noted with grim satisfaction the warmth and respect of the greetings and attentions showered upon her. It was clear that the wild extravagance of the polo tournament had served its purpose and allayed suspicions of her financial straits. As yet no rumours had been set free to ravage her position and reputation.

That would change soon, she realized, and the thought made her angry in advance. She deliberately snubbed one of the Cape's most determined aspiring hostesses, publicly refusing her obsequious invitation and noting sardonically how the small cruelty increased the woman's respect. But all the time that she was playing these complicated social games, Centaine was gazing over their heads, looking for Blaine.

The liner's siren blared the final warning and the ship's officers, resplendent in white tropical rig, passed amongst them with the polite instruction: This vessel is sailing in fifteen minutes. Will all those who are not passengers kindly go ashore immediately. Centaine shook hands with Mr Davenport and joined the procession down the steep gangway to the dockside. There she fingered in the jovial press of visitors, staring up the liner's tall side and trying to pick out Isabella or her daughters from the passengers who lined the rail of the boat deck.

Gaily coloured paper streamers fluttered in the southeaster as they were thrown down from the high decks and seized by eager hands on the quayside, joining the vessel to land with a myriad frail umbilical cords, and suddenly Centaine recognized Blaine's eldest daughter. At this distance Tara was looking very grown-up and pretty in a dark dress and with her hair fashionably bobbed. Beside her, her sister had stuck her head through the railings and was furiously waving a pink handkerchief at someone on the dock below.

Centaine shaded her eyes and made out the figure in the wheelchair behind the two girls. Isabella was sitting with her face in shadow, and to Centaine she seemed suddenly to be the final harbinger of tragedy, an inimical force sent to plague her and deny her happiness.

O God, how I wish that she were easy to hate, she whispered, and her eyes followed the direction in which the two children were waving and she began to edge her way through the crowd.

Then she saw him. He had climbed up onto the carriage of one of the giant loading cranes. He was dressed in a creamcoloured tropical suit with his green and blue regimental tie and a wide-brimmed white Panama had which he had taken from his head and was waving at his daughters high above him. The southeaster had tumbled his dark hair onto his forehead, and his teeth were very big and white against the dark mahogany of his tanned face.