Rage

RAGE

By Wilbur Smith

Synopsis:

In the decades after World War II, South Africa struggles against the tribal violence at its heart. It is a conflict vividly mirrored by one family--the Courtneys--unified by a magnificent rage to live, shattered by a lust for power.

I dedicate this book to my wife.

RAGE

Tara Courtney had not worn white since her wedding day. Green was her favourite colour, for it best set off her thick chestnut hair.

However, the white dress she wore today made her feel like a bride again, tremulous and a little afraid but with a sense of joy and deep commitment. She had a touch of ivory lace at the cuffs and the high neckline, and had brushed her hair until it crackled with ruby lights in the bright Cape sunshine. Excitement had rouged her cheeks and although she had carried four children, her waist was slim as a virgin's. So the wide sash of funereal black that she wore over one shoulder was all the more incongruous: youth and beauty decked in the trappings of mourning. Despite her emotional turmoil, she stood with her hands clasped in front of her and her head bowed, silent and still.

She was only one of almost fifty women, all dressed in white, all draped with the black sashes, all in the same attitude of mourning, who stood at carefully spaced intervals along the pavement opposite the main entrance of the parliament buildings of the Union of South Africa.

Nearly all of the women were young matrons from Tara's own set, wealthy, privileged and bored by the undemanding tenor of their lives. Many of them had joined the protest for the excitement of defying established authority and outraging their peers. Some were seeking to regain the attentions of their husbands which after the first decade or so of marriage were jaded by familiarity and fixed more on business or golf and other extra marital activity. There was, however, a hard nucleus to the movement consisting mostly of the older women, but including a few of the younger ones like Tara and Molly Broadhurst. These were moved only by revulsion at injustice.

Tara had tried to express her feelings at the press conference that morning when a woman reporter from the Cape Argus had demanded of her, 'Why are you doing this, Mrs Courtney?" and she had replied, 'Because I don't like bullies, and I don't like cheats." For her that attitude was partially vindicated now.

'Here comes the big bad volf,' the woman who stood five paces on Tara's right said softly. 'Brace up, girls!" Molly Broadhurst was one of the founders of the Black-Sash, a small determined woman in her early thirties whom Tara greatly admired and strove to emulate.

A black Chevrolet with government licence plates had drawn up at the corner of Parliament Square and four men climbed out on to the pavement. One was a police photographer and he went to work immediately, moving quickly down the line of white-clad, blackdraped women with his Hasselblad camera, photographing each of them. He was followed by two of the others brandishing notebooks.

Though they were dressed in dark, ill-cut business suits, their clumpy black shoes were regulation police issue and their actions were brusque and businesslike as they passed down the ranks demanding and noting the names and addresses of each of the protesters. Tara, who was fast becoming something of an expert, guessed that they probably ranked as sergeants in the special branch, but the fourth man she knew by name and by sight, as did most of the others.

He was dressed in a light grey summer suit with brown brogues, a plain maroon tie and a grey fedora hat. Though of average height and unremarkable features, his mouth was wide and friendly, his smile easy as he lifted his hat to Molly.

'Good morning, Mrs Broadhurst. You are early. The procession won't arrive for another hour yet." 'Are you going to arrest us all again today, Inspector9' Molly demanded tartly.

'Perish the thought." The inspector raised an eyebrow. 'It's a free country, you know." 'You could have fooled me." 'Naughty Mrs Broadhurst!" He shook his head. 'You are trying to provoke me." His English was excellent, with only a faint trace of an Afrikaans accent.

'No, Inspector. We are protesting the blatant gerrymandering of this perverse government, the erosion of the rule of law, and the abrogation of the basic human rights of the majority of our fellow South Africans merely on the grounds of the colour of their skins." 'I think, Mrs Broadhurst, you are repeating yourself. You told me all this last time we met." The inspector chuckled. 'Next you'll actually be demanding that I arrest you again. Let's not spoil this grand occasion--' 'The opening of this parliament, dedicated as it is to injustice and oppression, is a cause for lament not celebration." The inspector tipped the brim of his hat, but beneath his flippant attitude was a real respect and perhaps even a little admiration.

'Carry on, Mrs Broadhurst,' he murmured. 'I'm sure we'll meet again soon,' and he sauntered on until he came opposite Tara.

'Good morning to you, Mrs Courtney." He paused, and this time his admiration was unconcealed. 'What does your illustrious husband think of your treasonable behaviour?" 'Is it treason to oppose the excesses of the National Party and its legislation based on race and colour, Inspector?" His gaze dropped for a moment to her bosom, large and yet finely shaped beneath the white lace, and then returned to her face.

'You are much too pretty for this nonsense,' he said. 'Leave it to the grey-headed old prunes. Go home where you belong and look after your babies." 'Your masculine arrogance is insufferable, Inspector." She flushed with anger, unaware that it heightened the looks he had just complimented.

'I wish all traitoresses looked the way you do. It would make my job a great deal more congenial. Thank you, Mrs Courtney." He smiled infuriatingly and moved on.

'Don't let him rattle you, my dear,' Molly called softly. 'He's an expert at it. We are protesting passively. Remember Mahatma Gandhi?

With an effort Tara controlled her anger, and reassumed the attitude of the penitent. On the pavement behind her the crowds of spectators began to gather. The rank of white-clad women became the object of curiosity and amusement, of some approbation and a great deal of hostility.

'Goddamn commies,' a middle-aged man growled at Tara. 'You want to hand the country over to a bunch of savages. You should be locked up, the whole lot of you? He was well dressed, and his speech cultivated. He even wore the small brass tin hat insignia in his lapel to signify that he had served with the volunteer forces during the war against fascism. His attitude was a reminder of just how much tacit support the ruling National party enjoyed even amongst the English-speaking white community.

Tara bit her lip and forced herself to remain silent, head bowed, even when the outburst earned a ragged ironical cheer from some of the coloured people in the growing crowd.

It was getting hot now, the sunshine had a flat Mediterranean brilliance, and though the mattress of cloud was building up above the great flat-topped bastion of Table Mountain, heralding the rise of the south-easter, the wind had not yet reached the city that crouched below it. By now the crowd was dense and noisy, and Tara was jostled, she suspected deliberately. She kept her composure and concentrated on the building across the road from where she stood.

Designed by Sir Herbert Baker, that paragon of Imperial architects, it was massive and mposing, red brick colonnaded in shimmering white - far from Tara's own modern taste, which inclined to uncluttered space and lines, to glass and light Scandinavian pine furnishing. The building seemed to epitomize all that was inflexible and out-dated from the past, all that Tara wanted to see torn down and discarded.

Her thoughts were broken by the rising hum of expectation from the crowd around her.

'Here they come,' Molly called, and the crowd surged and swayed and broke into cheers. There was the clatter of hooves on the hardmetalled roadway and the mounted police escort trotted up the avenue, pennants fluttering gaily at the tips of their lances, expert horsemen on matched chargers whose hides gleamed like burnished metal in the sunlight.

The open coaches rumbled along behind them. In the first of these rode the governor-general and the prime minister. There he was, Daniel Malan, champion of the' Afrikaners, with his forbidding almost froglike features, a man whose only consideration and declared intent was to keep his Volk supreme in Africa for a thousand years, and no price was for him too high.

Tara stared at him with palpable hatred, for he embodied all that she found repellent in the government which now held sway over the land and the peoples which she loved so dearly. As the coach swept past where she stood, their eyes met for a fleeting moment and she tried to convey the strength of her feelings, but he glanced at her without a flicker of acknowledgement, not even a shadow of annoyance, in his brooding gaze. He had looked at her and had not seen her, and now her anger was tinged with despair.

'What must be done to make these people even listen?" she wondered, but now the dignitaries had dismounted from the carriages and were standing to attention during the playing of the national anthems. And though Tara did not know it then, it was the last time 'The King' would be played at the opening of a South African Parliament.

The band ended with a fagfare of trumpets and the cabinet ministers followed the governor-general and the prime minister through the massive front entrance doors. They were followed in turn by the opposition front-benchers. This was the moment Tara had been dreading, for her own close family now formed part of the procession. Next behind the leader of the opposition came Tara's own father with her stepmother on his arm. They made the most striking couple in the long procession, her father tall and dignified as a patriarchal lion, while on his arm Centaine de Thiry CourtneyMalcomess was slim and graceful in a yellow silk dress that was perfect for the occasion, a jaunty brimless hat on her small neat head with a veil over one eye; she seemed not a year older than Tara herself, though everybody knew she had been named Centaine because she had been born on the first day of the twentieth century.

Tara thought she had escaped unnoticed, for none of them had known she intended joining the protest, but at the top of the broad staircase the procession was held up for a moment and before she entered the doorway Centaine turned deliberately and looked back.

From her vantage point she could see over the heads of the escort and the other dignitaries in the procession, and from across the road she caught Tara's eye and held it for a moment. Although her expression did not alter, the strength of her disapproval was even at that range like a slap in Tara's face. For Centaine the honour, dignity and good name of the family were of paramount importance. She had warned Tara repeatedly about making a public spectacle of herself and flouting Centaine was a perilous business, for she was not only Tara's stepmother but her mother-in-law as well, and the doyenne of the Courtney family and fortune.

Halfway up the staircase behind her Shasa Courtney saw the direction and force of his mother's gaze, and turning quickly to follow it saw Tara, his wife, in the rank of black-sashed protesters.

When she had told him that morning at breakfast that she would not be joining him at the opening ceremony, Shasa had barely looked up from the financial pages of the morning newspaper.

Suit yourself, my dear. It will be a bit of a bore,' he had murmured. 'But I would like another cup of coffee, when you have a moment." Now when he recognized her, he smiled slightly and shook his head in mock despair, as though she were a child discovered in some naughty prank, and then he turned away as the procession moved forward once again.

He was almost impossibly handsome, and the black eye-patch gave him a debonair piratical look that most women found intriguing and challenging. Together they were renowned as the handsomest young couple in Cape Town society. Yet it was strange how the passage of a few short years had caused the flames of their love to sink into a puddle of grey ash.

'Suit yourself, my dear,' he had said, as he did so often these days.

The last back-benchers in the procession disappeared into the House, the mounted escort and empty carriages trotted away and the crowds began to break up. The demonstration was over.

'Are you coming, Tara?" Molly called, but Tara shook her head.

'Have to meet Shasa,' she said. 'See you on Friday afternoon." Tara slipped the wide black sash off over her head, folded it and placed it in her handbag as she threaded her way through the dispersing crowd. She crossed the road.

She saw no irony in now presenting her parliamentary pass to the doorman at the visitors' entrance and entering the institution against whose actions she had been so vigorously protesting. She climbed the side staircase and looked into the visitors' gallery. It was packed with wives and important guests, and she looked over their heads down into the panelled chamber below to the rows of sombre-suited members on their green leather-covered benches, all involved in the impressive ritual of parliament. However, she knew that the speeches would be trivial, platitudinous and boring to the point of pain, and she had been standing in the street since early morning. She needed to visit the ladies room as a matter of extreme urgency.

She smiled at the usher and withdrew surreptitiously, then turned and hurried away down the wide panelled corridor. When she had finished in the ladies room, she headed for her father's office, which she used as her own.

As she turned the corner she almost collided with a man coming in the opposite direction. She checked only just in time, and saw that he was a tall black man dressed in the uniform of a parliamentary servant.

She would have passed on with a nod and a smile, when it occurred to her that a servant should not have been in this section of the building during the time when the House was in session, for the offices of the prime minister and the leader of the opposition were at the end of the corridor. Then again, although the servant carried a mop and pail, there was something about him that was neither menial nor servile and she looked sharply at his face.

She felt an electric tingle of recognition. It had been many years, but she could never forget that face - the features of an Egyptian pharaoh, noble and fierce, the dark eyes alive with intelligence. He was still one of the finest-looking men she had ever seen, and she remembered his voice, deep and thrilling so that the memory of it made her shiver slightly. She even remembered his words: 'There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords ... to devour the poor from the earth." It was this man who had given her the first glimmer of understanding as to what it was like to be born black in South Africa. Her true commitment dated from that distant meeting. This man had changed her life with a few words.

She stopped, blocking his path, and tried to find some way to convey her feelings to him, but her throat had closed and she found she was trembling from the shock. The instant he knew he had been recognized, he changed, like a leopard coming on guard as it becomes aware of the hunters. Tara sensed she was in danger, for a sense of African cruelty invested him, but she was unafraid.

'I am a friend,' she said softly, and stood aside to let him pass.

Our cause is the same." He did not move for a moment, but stared at her. She knew that Then he passed around the corner him, and her heart throat.

he would never forget her again, his scrutiny seemed to set her skin on fire, and then he nodded.

'I know you,' he acknowledged, and once again his voice made her shiver, deep and melodious, filled with the rhythm and cadence of Africa. 'We will meet again." on and without a backward glance disappeared of the panelled corridor. She stood staring after was pounding, her breath burned the back of her 'Moses Gama,' she whispered his name aloud. 'Messiah and warrior of Africa --' then she paused and shook her head. 'What are you doing here, in this of all places?" The possibilities intrigued and stirred her, for now she knew with a deep instinct that the crusade was afoot, and she longed to be part of it. She wanted to do more than merely stand on a street corner with a black sash draped over her shoulder. She knew Moses Gama had only to crook his finger and she would follow him, she and ten million others.

'We will meet again,' he had promised, and she believed him.

Light with joy she went on down the passageway. She had her own key to her father's office and as she fitted it to the lock, her eyes were on a level with the brass plate: COLONEL BLAINE MALCOMESS DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION With surprise she found that the lock was already opened, and she pushed the door wide and went in.

Centaine Courtney-Malcomess turned from the window beyond the desk to confront her. 'I have been waiting for you, young lady." Centaine's French accent was an affectation that annoyed Tara. She has been back to France just once in thirty-five years, she thought, and lifted her chin defiantly.

'Don't toss your head at me, Tara chbrie,' Centaine went on.

'When you act like a child, you must expect to be treated as a child." 'No, Mater, you are wrong. I do not expect you to treat me as a child, not now or ever. I am a married woman of thirty-three years of age, the mother of four children and the mistress of my own establishment." Centaine sighed. 'All right,' she nodded. 'My concern made me illmannered, and I apologize. Let's not make this discussion any more difficult for each other than it already is." 'I was not aware that we needed to discuss anything." 'Sit down, Tara,' Centaine ordered, and Tara obeyed instinctively ,! !

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and then was annoyed with herself for doing so. Centaine took her father's chair behind the desk, and Tara resented that also - it was Daddy's chair and this woman had no right to it.

'You have just told me that you are a wife with four children,' Centaine spoke quietly. 'Would you not agree that you have a duty--' 'My children are well cared for,' Tara flared at her. 'You cannot accuse me of that." 'And what about your husband and your marriage9." 'What about Shasa?" Tara was immediately defensive.

'You tell me,' Centaine invited.

'It's none of your business." 'Oh, but it is,' Centaine contradicted her. 'I have devoted my entire life to Shasa. I plan for him to be one of the leaders of this nation." She paused and a dreamy glaze covered her eyes for a moment, and she seemed to squint slightly.

Tara had noticed that expression before, whenever Centaine was in deep thought, and now she wanted to break in upon it as brutally as she could. 'That's impossible and you know it." Centaine's eyes snapped back into focus and she glared at Tara.

'Nothing is impossible - not for me, not for us." 'Oh yes it is,' Tara gloated. 'You know as well as I do that the Nationalists have gerrymandered the electorate, that they have even loaded the Senate with their own appointees. They are in power for ever. Never again will anyone who is not one of them, an Afrikaner Nationalist, ever be this country's leader, not until the revolution and when that is over, the leader will be a black man,' Tara broke off and thought for an instant of Moses Gama.

'You are naYve,' Centaine snapped. 'You do not understand these things. Your talk of revolution is childish and irresponsible." 'Have it your own way, Mater. But deep down you know it's so.

Your darling Shasa will never fulfill your dream. Even he is beginning to sense the futility of being in opposition for ever. He is losing interest in the impossible. I wouldn't be surprised if he decides not to contest the next election, gives up the political aspirations that you have foisted on him and simply goes off to make himself another trillion pounds." 'No,' Centaine shook her head. 'He won't give up. He is a fighter like I am." 'He'll never be even a cabinet minister, let alone prime minister,' Tara stated flatly.

'If you believe that, then you are no wife for my son,' Centaine said.

Wou said it,' Tara said softly. 'You said it, not me." Oh, Tara, my dear, i am sorry." Centaine reached across the desk but it was too broad for her to touch Tara's hand. 'Forgive me. I lost my temper. All this is so desperately important to me. I feel it so deeply, but I did not mean to antagonize you. I want only to help you - I am so worried about you and Shasa. I want to help, Tara.

Won't you let me help you?" 'I don't see that we need help,' Tara lied sweetly. 'Shasa and I are perfectly happy. We have four lovely children--' Centaine made an impatient gesture. 'Tara, you and I haven't always seen eye to eye. But I am your friend, I truly am. I want the best for you and Shasa and the little ones. Won't you let me help you?" 'How, Mater? By giving us money - you have already given us ten or twenty million - or is it thirty million pounds? I lose track sometimes." 'Won't you let me share my experience with you? Won't you listen to my advice?" 'Yes, Mater, I'll listen. I don't promise to take it, but I'll listen to it." 'Firstly, Tara dear, you must give up these crazy left-wing activities. You bring the whole family into disrepute. You make a spectacle of yourself, and therefore of us, by dressing up and standing on street corners. Apart from that, it is positively dangerous. The Suppression of Communism Act is now law. You could be declared a communist, and placed under a banning order. Just consider that, you would become a non-person, deprived of all human rights and dignity. Then there is Shasa's political career. What you do reflects on him." 'Mater, I promised to listen,' Tara said stonily. 'But now I withdraw that promise. I know what I am doing." She stood up and moved to the door where she paused and looked back. 'Did you ever think, Centaine Courtney-Malcomess, that my mother died of a broken heart, and it was your blatant adultery with my father that broke it for her? Yet you can sit there smugly and advise me how to conduct my life, so as not to disgrace you and your precious son." She went out and closed the heavy teak door softly behind her.

Shasa Courtney lolled on the opposition front bench with his hands pushed deeply into his pockets, his legs thrust out and crossed-at the ankles, and listened intently to the minister of police outlining the legislation which he intended bringing before the House during the current session.

The minister of police was the youngest member of the cabinet, a man of approximately the same age as Shasa, which was extraordinary. The Afrikaner revered age and mistrusted the inexperience and impetuosity of youth. The average age of the other members of the Nationalist cabinet could not be less than sixty-five years, Shasa reflected, and yet here was Manfred De La Rey standing before them, a mere stripling of less than forty years, setting out the general contents of the Criminal Law Amendment Bill which he would be proposing and shepherding through its various stages.

'He is asking for the right to declare a state of emergency which will put the police above the law, without appeal to the courts,' Blaine Malcomess grunted beside him, and Shasa nodded without looking at his father-in-law. Instead he was watching the man across the floor.

Manfred De La Rey was speaking in Afrikaans, as he usually did.

His English was heavily accented and laboured, and he spoke it unwillingly, making only the barest gesture towards the bilingualism of the House. On the other hand, when speaking in his mother tongue, he was eloquent and persuasive, his oratorial attitudes and devices were so skilled as to seem entirely natural and more than once he raised a chuckle of exasperated admiration from the opposition benches and a chorus of 'Haar, boot!" from his own party.

'The fellow has a damned cheek." Blaine Malcomess shook his head. 'He is asking for the right to suspend the rule of law and impose a police state at the whim of the ruling party. We'll have to fight that tooth and nail." 'My word!" Shasa agreed mildly, but he found himself envying the other man, and yet mysteriously drawn to him. It was strange how their two destinies seemed to be inexorably linked.

He had first met Manfred De La Rey twenty years ago, and for no apparent reason the two of them had flown at each other on the spot like young game cocks ,and fought a bloody bout of fisticuffs. Shasa grimaced at the way it had ended, the drubbing he had received still rankled even after all that time. Since then their paths had crossed and recrossed.

In 1936 they had both been on the national team that went to Adolf Hitler's Olympic Games in Berlin, but it had been Manfred De La Rey in the boxing ring who collected the only gold medal the team had won, while Shasa returned empty-handed. They had hotly and acrimoniously contested the same seat in the 1948 elections that had seen the National Party come sweeping to power, and again it was Manfred De La Rey who had won the seat and taken his place in parliament, while Shasa had to wait for a by-election in a safe United Party constituency to secure his own place on the opposition benches from which to confront his rival once again. Now Manfred was a minister, a position that Shasa coveted with all his heart, and with his undoubted brilliance and oratorical skills together with growing political acumen and a solid power base within the party, Manfred De La Rey's future must be unbounded.

Envy, admiration and furious antagonism - that was what Shasa Courthey felt as he listened to the man across the floor from him, and he studied him intently.

Manfred De La Rey still had a boxer's physique, wide shoulders and powerful neck, but he was thickening around the waist and his jawline was beginning to blur with flesh. He wasn't keeping himself in shape and hard muscle was turning flabby. Shasa glanced down at his own lean hips and greyhound belly with self-satisfaction and then concentrated again on his adversary.

Manfred De La Rey's nose was twisted and there was a gleaming white scar through one of his dark eyebrows, injuries he had received in the boxing ring. However, his eyes were a strange pale colour, like yellow topaz, implacable as the eyes of a cat and yet with the fire of' his fine intellect in their depths. Like all the Nationalist cabinet ministers, with the exception of the prime minister himself, he was a highly educated and brilliant man, devout and dedicated, totally convinced of the divine right of his party and his Volk.

'They truly believe they are God's instruments on earth. That's what makes them so damned dangerous." Shasa smiled grimly as Manfred finished speaking and sat down to the roar of approval from his own side of the House. They were waving order papers, and the prime minister leaned across to pat Manfred's shoulder, while a dozen congratulatory notes were passed to him from the back benches.

Shasa used this distraction to murmur an excuse to his father-inlaw. 'You won't need me for the rest of the day, but if you do, you'll know where to find me." Then he stood up, bowed to the Speaker and, as unobtrusively as possible, headed for the exit. However, Shasa was six foot one inch tall and with the black patch over one eye and his dark waving hair and good looks, he drew more than a few speculative glances from the younger women in the visitors' gallery, and a hostile appraisal from the government benches.

Manfred De La Rey glanced up from the note he was reading as Shasa passed, and the look they exchanged was intent but enigmatic.

Then Shasa was out of the chamber and he shrugged off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder, as he acknowledged the salute of the doorman and went out into the sunshine.

Shasa did not keep an office in the parliament building, for the seven-storied Centaine House, the headquarters of the Courthey Mining and Finance Co. Ltd was just two minutes' walk across the !

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i llil iji gardens. As he strode along under the oaks he mentally changed hats, doffing his political topper for the businessman's Homburg.

Shasa kept his life in separate compartments, and he had trained himself to concentrate on each in its turn, without ever allowing his energy to dissipate by spreading it too thinly.

By the time he crossed the road in front of St George's cathedral and went into the revolving glass front door of Centaine House, he was thinking of finance and mining, juggling figures and choices, weighing factual reports against his own instincts, and enjoying the game of money as hugely as he had the rituals and confrontations on the floor of the houses of parliament.

The two pretty girls at the reception desk in the entrance lobby with its marbled floors and columns burst into radiant smiles.

'Good afternoon, Mr Courtney,' they chorused, and he devastated them with his smile as he crossed to the lifts. His reaction to them was instinctive; he liked pretty females around him, although he would never touch one of his own people. Somehow that would have been incestuous, and unsporting for they would not have been able to refuse him, too much like shooting a sitting bird. Still the two young females at the desk sighed and rolled their eyes as the lift doors closed on him.

Janet, his secretary, had heard the lift and was waiting as the doors opened. She was more Shasa's type - mature and poised, groomed and efficient, and though she made little attempt to conceal her adoration, Shasa's self-imposed rules prevailed here also.

'What have we got, Janet."?" he demanded, and as she followed him across the ante-chamber to his own office, she read off his appointments for the rest of the afternoon.

He went first to the ticker-tape in the corner and ran the closing prices through his fingers. Anglos had dropped two shillings, it was almost time to buy again.

'Ring Allen and put him off. I'm not ready for him yet,' he told Janet and went to his desk. 'Give me fifteen minutes and then get David Abrahams on the phone." As she left the room Shasa settled to the pile of telex sheets and urgent messages that she had left on his blotter. He worked swiftly through them, undistracted by the magnificent view of Table Mountain through the window on the opposite wall, and when one of the phones rang he was ready for David.

'Hello, Davie, what's happening in Jo'burg?" It was a rhetorical question, he knew what was happening and what he was going to do about it. The daily reports and estimates were amongst the pile on his desk, but he listened carefully to David's rsum& David was group managingldirector. He had been with Shasa since varsity days and he was a close to Shasa as no other person, with the exception of Centaine, had come.

Although the H'am diamond mine near Windhoek in the north was still the fountainhead of the company's prosperity, and had been for the thirty-two years since Centaine Courtney had discovered it, under Shasa's direction the company had expanded and diversified until he had been forced to move the executive headquarters from Windhoek to Johannesburg. Johannesburg was the commercial centre of the country and the move was inevitable, but Johannesburg was also a bleak, heartless and unattractive city. Centaine CourtneyMalcomess refused to leave the beautiful Cape of Good Hope to live there, so the company's financial and administrative headquarters remained in Cape Town. It was a clumsy and costly duplication, but.

Centaine always got her way. Moreover, it was convenient for Shasa to be so close to parliament and as he loved the Cape as much as she did, he did not try to change her mind.

Shasa and David spoke for ten minutes before Shasa said, 'Right, we can't decide on this on the phone. I'll come up to you." 'When?" 'Tomorrow afternoon. Sean has a rugby match at ten in the morning. I can't miss it. I promised him." David was silent a moment as he considered the relative importance of a schoolboy's sporting achievement against the possible investment of something over ten million pounds in the development of the company's options on the new Orange Free State goldfields.

'Give me a ring before you take off,' David agreed with resignation. 'I'll meet you at the airfield myself." Shasa hung up and checked his wristwatch. He wanted to get back to Weltevreden in time to spend an hour with the children before their bath and dinner. He could finish his work after his own dinner.

He began to pack the remaining papers on his desk into his black crocodile-skin Herm6s briefcase, when Janet tapped on the interleading door and came into his office.

'I'm sorry, sir. This has just been delivered by hand. A parliamentary messenger, and he said it was very urgent." Shasa took the heavy-quality envelope from her. It was the type of expensive stationery reserved for use by members of the cabinet and the flap was embossed with the coat of arms of the Union, the quartered shield and rampant antelopes supporting it with the motto in the ribbon beneath Ex Unitate Vires - Strength through Unity.

'Thank you, Janet." He broke the flap with his thumb and took out a single sheet of notepaper. It was headed: 'Office of the Minister of Police', and the message was handwritten in Afrikaans.

Dear Mr Courtney, Knowing of your interest in hunting, an important personage has asked me to invite you to a springbok hunt on his ranch over the coming weekend. There is an airstrip on the property and the coordinates are as follows: 28ø32'S 26ø16'E.

I can assure you of good sport and interesting company. Please let me know if you are able to attend.

Sincerely, Manfred De La Rey.

Shasa grinned and whistled softly through his teeth as he went to the large-scale map on the wall and checked the coordinates. The note amounted to a summons, and he could guess at the identity of the important personage. He saw that the ranch was in the Orange Free State just south of the goldfields at Welkom, and it would mean only a minor detour off his return course from Johannesburg to reach it.

'I wonder what they are up to now,' he mused, and he felt a prickle of anticipation. It was the kind of mystery he thoroughly enjoyed, and he scribbled a reply on a sheet of his personal notepaper.

Thank you for your kind invitation to hunt with you this weekend.

Please convey my acceptance to our host and I look forward to the hunting.

As he sealed the envelope he muttered, 'In fact, you'd have to nail both my feet to the ground to keep me away." In his green Jaguar SS sports car, Shasa drove through the massive white-painted gateway of Weltevreden. The pediment had been designed and executed in 1790 ty Anton Anreith, the Dutch East India Company's architect and sculptor, and such an exquisite work of art was a fitting entrance to the estate.

Since Centaine had handed the estate over to him and gone to live with Blaine Malcomess on the far side of the Constantia Berg mountains, Shasa had lavished the same love and care upon Weltevreden as she had before. The name translated from the Dutch as 'Well Satisfied' and that was how Shasa felt as he slowed the Jaguar to a walking-pace, so as not to blow dust over the vineyards that flanked the road.

The harvest was in full swing, and the headscarves of the women working down the rows of shoulder-high vines were bright spots of colour that vied with the leaves of red and gold. They straightened up to smile and wave as Shasa passed, and the men, doubled under the overflowing baskets of red grapes, grinned at him also.

Young Sean was on one of the wagons in the centre of the field, walking the draught horses slowly, keeping pace with the harvest.

The wagon was piled high with ripe grapes that glowed like rubies where the powdery bloom had been rubbed from their skin.

When he saw his father, Sean tossed the reins to the driver who had been tactfully supervising him, and leapt over the side of the wagon ad raced down the rows of vines to intercept the green Jaguar. He was only eleven years old, but big for his age. He had inherited his mother's clear shining skin and Shasa's looks, and although his limbs were sturdy, he ran like an antelope, springy and quick on his feet. Watching him Shasa felt that his heart might burst with pride.

Sean flung open the passenger door of the Jag and tumbled into the seat, where he abruptly recovered his dignity.

'Good evening, Papa,' he said, and Shasa put an arm around his shoulders and hugged him.

Hello, sport. How did it go today?" ' They drove down past the winery and the stables and Shasa parked in the converted barn where he kept his collection of a dozen vintage cars. The Jaguar had been a gift from Centaine and he favoured it even over the 1928 Phantom I Rolls Royce with Hooper coachwork beside which he parked it.

The other children had witnessed his arrival from the nursery windows and came pelting down across the lawns to meet him.

Michael, the youngest boy was leading, with Garrick, his middle son, a good five lengths back. Less than a year separated each of the boys. Michael was the dreamer of the family, a fey child who at nine years of age could lose himself for hours in Treasure Island or spend an afternoon with his box of water-colours, lost to all else in the world. Shasa embraced him as affectionately as he had his eldest, and then Garrick came up, wheezing with asthma, pale-faced and skinny, with wispy hair that stuck up in spikes.

'Good afternoon, Papa,' he stuttered. He really was an ugly little brat, Shasa thought, and where the hell did he get them from, the asthma and the stutter?

'Hello, Garrick." Shasa never called him 'son' or 'my boy' or 'sport' as he did the other two. It was always simply 'Garrick' and he patted the top of his head lightly. It never occurred to him to embrace the child, the little beggar still peed his bed and he was ten years old.

Shasa turned with relief to meet his daughter.

'Come on, my angel, come to your daddy!" And she flew into his arms and shrieked with rapture as he swung her high, then wrapped both arms around his neck and showered warm wet kisses on his face.

'What does my angel want to do now.9' Shasa asked, without lowering her to earth.

'I wanna wide,' Isabella declared, and she was already wearing her new jodhpurs.

'Then wide we shall,' Shasa agreed. Whenever Tara accused him of encouraging her lisp, he protested, 'She's only a baby." 'She's a calculating little vixen who knows exactly how to twist you around her little finger - and you let her do it." Now he swung her up on to his shoulders, and she sat astride his neck and took a handful of his hair to steady herself while she bounced up and down chanting, 'I love my daddy." 'Come on, everybody,' Shasa ordered. 'We are going for a wide before dinner." Sean was too big and grown up to hold hands, but he kept jealously close to Shasa's right side; Michael was on his left clinging unashamedly to Shasa's hand, while Garrick trailed five paces behind looking up adoringly at his father.

'I came first in arithmetic today, Daddy,' Garrick said softly, but in all the shouting and laughter Shasa didn't hear him.

The grooms had the horses saddled up already, for the evening ride was a family ritual. In the saddle room Shasa slipped off his city shoes and changed them for old well-polished riding boots, before he lifted Isabella on to the back of her plump little piebald Shetland. Then he went up into the saddle of his own stallion and took Isabella's lead rein from the groom.

'Company, forward - walk, march, trot!" He gave the cavalry command and pumped his hand over his head, a gesture which always reduced Isabella to squeals of delight, and they clattered out of the stableyard.

They made t. he familiar circuit of the estate, stopping to talk with any of the coloured boss-boys they met, and exchanging shouted greetings with the gangs of labourers trudging home from the vineyards.

Sean discussed the harvest with his father in adult terms, sitting straight and important in the saddle, until Isabella, feeling left out, intervened and immediately Shasa leaned over to listen deferentially to what she had to tell him.

The boys ended the ride as always with a mad gallop across the polo fields and up the hill to the stables. Seam riding like a centaur, was far ahead of the rest of them, Michael was too gentle to use the whip and Garrick bounced awkwardly in the saddle. Despite Shasa's drilling, his seat was atrocious with toes and elbows sticking out at odd angles.

ii . .

i:!

'He rides like a sack of potatoes,' Shasa thought with irritation, following them at the sedate pace set by Isabella's portly Shetland on the lead rein. Shasa was an international polo player, and he took his middle son's maladroit seat as a personal affront.

Tara was in the kitchens overseeing the last-minute details for dinner, when they came trooping in. She looked up and greeted Shasa casually.

'Good day?" She was wearing those appalling trousers in faded blue denim which Shasa detested. He liked feminine women.

'Not bad,' he answered, trying to divest himself of Isabella who was still wrapped around his neck. He dislodged her and handed her over to Nanny.

'We are twelve for dinner." Tara turned her attention back to the Malay chef who was standing by dutifully. 'Twelve?" Shasa asked sharply.

'I invited the Broadhursts at the last moment." 'Oh God,' Shasa groaned.

'I wanted some stimulating conversation at the table for a change, not just horses and shooting and business." 'Last time she came to dinner your and Molly's stimulating conversation broke the party up before nine o'clock." Shasa glanced at his wristwatch. 'I'd better think about dressing." 'Daddy, will you feed me?" Isabella called from the children's dining-room beyond the kitchen.

'You are a big girl, angel,' he answered. 'You must learn to feed yourself." 'I can feed myself- I just like it better when you do it. Please, Daddy, pretty please a trillion times." 'A trillion?" Shasa asked. 'I am bid one trillion - any advance on a trillion?" but he went to her summons.

You spoil her,' Tara said. 'She's becoming impossible." 'I know,' said Shasa. 'You keep telling me." Shasa shaved quickly while his coloured valet laid out his dinnerjacket in the dressing-room and put the platinum and sapphire studs into his dress shirt. Despite Tara's vehement protests he always insisted on black tie for dinner.

'It's so stuffy and old-fashioned and snobby." 'It's civilized,' he contradicted her.

When he was dressed, he crossed the wide corridor strewn with oriental carpets, the walls hung with a gallery of Thomas Baines water-colours, tapped on Tara's door and went in to her invitation.

Tara had moved into this suite while she was carrying Isabella, and had stayed here. Last year she had redecorated it, removing the

!"

i11/ ?

velvet drapes and George II and Louis XIV furniture, the Qm silk carpets and the magnificent oils by De Jong and Naud, strippin the flocked wallpaper and sanding the golden patina off the yellov wood floor until it looked like plain deal.

Now the walls were stark white with only a single enormot painting facing the bed; it was a monstrosity of geometrical shape in primary colours in the style of Mir6, but executed by an ur known art student at the Cape Town University Art School an of no value. To Shasa's mind paintings should be pleasing dec orations but at the same time good long-term investments. Thi thing was neither.

The furniture Tara had chosen for her boudoir was made of an gular stainless steel and glass, and there was very little of it. The be was almost flat on the bare boards of the floor. 'It's Swedish decor,' she had explained.

Send it back to Sweden,' he had advised her.

Now he perched on one of the steel chairs and lit a cigarette. Sh4

frowned at him in the mirror.

'Forgive me." He stood up and went to flick the cigarette out o the window. 'I'll be working late after dinner,' he turned back to her 'and I wanted to warn you before I forget that I'm flying up to Jo'burg tomorrow afternoon and I'll be away for a few days, mayb five or six." 'Fine." She pursed her lips as she applied her lipstick, a pale mauve shade that he disliked intensely.

'One other thing, Tara. Lord Littleton's bank is preparing to underwrite the share issue for our possible new development on the Orange Free State goldfields. I would take it as a personal favour it you and Molly could refrain from waving your black sashes in his face and from regaling him with merry tales of white injustice and bloody black revolution." 'I can't speak for Molly, but I promise to be good." 'Why don't you wear your diamonds tonight?" he changed the subject. 'They look so good on you." She hadn't worn the suite of yellow diamonds from the H'am Mine since she had joined the Sash movement. They made her feel like Marie Antoinette.

'Not tonight,' she said. 'They are a little garish, it's really just a family dinner party." She dusted her nose with the puff and looked at him in the mirror.

'Why don't you go down, dear. Your precious Lord Littleton will be arriving at any moment." 'I just want to tuck Bella up first." He came to stand behind her.

They stared at each other in the mirror, seriously.

'What happened to us, Tara?" he asked softly.

'I don't know what you mean, dear,' she replied, but she looked down and adjusted the front of her dress carefully.

'I'll see you downstairs,' he said. 'Don't be too long, and do make a fuss of Littleton. He's important, and he likes the girlies." After he had closed the door Tara stared at it for a moment, then she repeated his question aloud. 'What happened to us, Shasa? It's quite simple really. I just grew up and lost patience with the trivialities with which you fill your life." On the way down she looked in on the children. Isabella was asleep with teddy on top of her face. Tara saved her daughter from suffocation and went to the boys' rooms. Only Michael was still awake.

He was reading.

'Lights out!" she ordered.

'Oh, Mater, just to the end of the chapter." 'Out!" 'Just this page." 'Out, I said!" And she kissed him lovingly.

At the head of the staircase she drew a deep breath like a diver on the high board, smiled brightly and went down into the blue drawingroom where the first guests were already sipping sherry.

Lord Littleton was much better value than she had expected - tall, silver-haired and benign.

'Do you shoot?" she asked at the first opportunity.

'Can't stand the sight of blood, me dear." 'Do you ride?" 'Horses?" he snorted. 'Stupid bloody animals." 'I think you and I are going to be good friends,' she said.

There were many rooms in Weltevreden that Tara disliked; the dining-room she actively hated with all those heads of long-dead animals that Shasa had massacred staring down from the walls with glass eyes. Tonight she took a chance and seated Molly on the other side of Littleton and within minutes Molly had him hooting with delighted laughter.

When they left the men with the port and Hauptmanns and went through to the ladies room, Molly pulled Tara aside, bubbling over with excitement.

'I've been dying to get you alone all ex/ening,' she whispered.

'You'll never guess who is in the Cape at this very moment." 'Tell me." 'The secretary of the African National Congress - that's who.

Moses Gama, that's who." Tara went very still and pale and stared at her.

'He's coming to our home to talk to a small group of us, Tara. I invited him, and he especially asked for you to be present. I didn't know you knew him." 'l met him only once --' she corrected herself, 'twice." 'Can you come?" Molly insisted. 'It'll be best if Shasa does not know about it, you understand." 'WhenT 'Saturday evening, eight o'clock." 'Shasa will be away and I'll be there,' Tara said. 'I wouldn't miss it for the world." Sean Courthey was the stalwart of the Western Province Preparatory School first fifteen, or Wet Pups, as the school was known. Quick and strong he ran in four tries against the Rondebosch juniors and converted them himself, while his father and two younger brothers stood on the touchline and yelled encouragement.

After the final whistle blew Shasa lingered just long enough to congratulate his son, with an effort restraining himself from hugging the sweaty grinning youngster with grass stains on his white shorts and a graze on one knee. A display like that in front of Sean's peers would have mortified him horribly. Instead they shook hands.

'Well played, sport. I'm proud of you,' he said. 'Sorry about this weekend, but I'll make it up to you." And although the expression of regret was sincere, Shasa felt a buoyancy of his spirits as he drove out to the airfield at Y0ungsfield. Dicky, his erk, had the aircraft out of the hangar and ready for him on the hardstand.

Shasa climbed out of the Jaguar and stood with his hands in his pockets and the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, staring at the sleek machine with rapture.

It was a DH 98 Mosquito fighter bomber. Shasa had bought it at one of the RAF disposal sales at Biggin Hill and had it completely stripped and overhauled by D Havilland trained riggers. He had even had them re-glue the sandwich construction of the wooden bodywork with the new Araldite wonder glue. The original Rodux adhesives had proves unreliable under tropical conditions. Stripped of all armaments and military fittings, the Mosquito's already formidable performance had been considerably enhanced. Not even Courtney Mining could afford one of the new civilian jet-engined aircraft, but this was the next best thing.

The beautiful machine crouched on the hardstand like a falcon at hate, the twin Rolls Royce Merlin engines ready to roar into life and hurtle her into the blue. Blue was her colour, sky blue and silver; she shone in the bright Cape sunlight and on her fuselage where once the RAF roundel had been was now emblazoned the Courtney Company logo, a stylized silver diamond, its facets entwined with the Company's initials.

'How is the port number two magneto?" Shasa demanded of Dicky as he sauntered across in his oily overalls. The little man bridled.

'Ticking over like a sewing machine,' he answered. He loved the machine even more than Shasa did, and any imperfection, no matter how minor, wounded him deeply. When Shasa reported one, he took it very badly. He helped Shasa load his briefcase, overnight bag and guncase into the bomb bay which had been converted into a luggage compartment.

'All tanks are full,' he said, and stood aside looking superior as Shasa insisted on checking them visually, and then made a fuss of his walk-around inspection.

'She'll do,' Shasa agreed at last and could not resist stroking the wing, as though it were the limb of a lovely woman.

Shasa switched to oxygen at eleven thousand feet and levelled out at Angels twenty, grinning into his oxygen mask at the old airforce slang. He tuned her for cruise, carefully watching the exhaust gas temperatures and engine revs and then settled back to enjoy it.

Enjoy was too mild a term for it. Flying was an exultation of spirit and a fever in his blood. The immense lion-tawny continent drifted by beneath him, washed by a million suns and burned by the ..... hot. her. b-.see.nted- K-a-rooMnds ira-aeicvi'e-hide.-riven-a&-wrinkid and scarred with donga and canyon and dried riverbed. Only up here, high above it, did Shasa truly realize how much he was a part of it, how deep was his love for it. Yet it was a hard land and cruel, and it bred hard men, black and white, and he knew that he was one of them. There is no place for weaklings here, he thought, only the strong can flourish.

Perhaps it was the pure oxygen he breathed, enhanced by the ecstasy of flight, but his mind seemed clearer up here. Issues that had been obscure became lucid, uncertainties resolved, and the hours sped away as swiftly as the lovely machine streaked across the blue so that when he landed at Johannesburg's civilian airport, he knew with certainty what had to be done. David Abrahams was waiting for him, lanky and skinny as ever, but he was balding a little and he had taken to wearing gold-rimmed spectacles which gave him a perpetually startled expression. Shasa jumped down off the wing of the Mosquito and they embraced happily. They were closer than brothers. Then David patted the aircraft's wing.

'When do I get to fly her again?" he asked wistfully. David had got a DFC in the western desert and a bar to it in Italy. He had been credited with nine kills and ended the war as a wing commander, while Shasa had been a mere squadron leader when he had lost hi eye in Abyssinia and been invalided home.

'She's too good for you,' Shasa told him and slung his luggag( into the back seat of David's Cadillac.

As David drove out through the airfield gates they exchanger family news. David was married to Mathilda Janine, Tara Courtney': younger sister, so David and Shasa were brothers-in-law. Shas boasted about Sean and Isabella without mentioning his other twt sons and then they went on to the real objects of their meeting.

These, in order of importance, were, first, the decision whether o not to exercise the option on the new Silver River mining'prospect ir the Orange Free State. Then there was the trouble with the company's chemical factory on the Natal coast. A local pressure group was kicking up a rumpus about poisoning the sea bed and reefs in the area where the factory was discharging effluent into the sea. And finally, there was David's crazy fixation, from which Shasa was finding it difficult to dislodge him, that they should spend some.

thing over a quarter of a million pounds on one of those new elephant ine electric calculators.

'The Yanks did all the calculations for the atomic bomb with one of them,' David argued. 'And they call them computers, not calculators,' he corrected Shasa.

'Come on, Davie, what are we going to blow up?" Shasa protested.

'I'm not designing an A-bomb." 'Anglo-American have one. It's the wave of the future, Shasa.

We'd better be on it." 'It's a quarter-million-pound wave, old son,' Shasa pointed out.

'Just when we need every penny for Silver River." 'If we'd had one of these computers to analyse the geological drilling reports from Silver River, we'd have already saved ourselves almost the entire cost of the thing, and we'd be a lot more certain of our final decision than we are how." 'How can a machine be better than a human brain?" 'Just come and have a_look at it,' David pleaded. 'The university has just installed an IBM 701. I have arranged a demonstration r you this afternoon." 'Okay, Davie,' Shasa capitulated. 'I'll look, but that doesn't mean I'm buying." The IBM supervisor in the basement of the engineering faculty building was no more than twenty-six years of age.

'They're all kids,' David explained. 'It's a young people's science." The supervisor shook hands with Shasa, and then removed her horn-rimmed spectacles. Suddenly Shasa's interest in electronic computers burgeoned. Her eyes were clear bright green and her hair was the colour of wild honey made from mimosa blossom. She wore a green sweater of tight-fitting angora wool, and a tartan skirt which left her smooth tanned calves bare. It was immediately obvious that she was an expert, and she answered all Shasa's questions without hesitation in a tantalizing southern drawl.

'Marylee has a master's in electrical engineering from MIT,' David murmured, and Shasa's initial attraction was spiced with respect.

'It's so damned big,' he protested. 'It fills the entire basement. The ruddy thing is the size of a four-bedroomed house." 'Cooling,' Marylee explained. 'The heat build-up is enormous.

'Most of the bulk is oil cooling baffles." 'What are you processing at the moment?" 'Professor Dart's archaeological material from the Sterkfontein caves. We are correlating about two hundred thousand observations of his against over a million from the sites in East Africa." 'How long will that take you?" 'We started the run twenty minutes ago, we'll finish it before we shut down at five o'clock." 'That's in fifteen minutes,' Shasa chuckled. 'You're having me on!" 'I wouldn't mind,' she murmured speculatively, and when she smiled her mouth was wide and moist and kissable.

'You say you shut down at five?" he asked. 'When do you start up again?" 'Eight tomorrow morning." 'And the machine stands idle overnight?" Marylee glanced down the length of the basement. David was at the other end watching the print-out and the hum of the computer covered their voices.

'That's right. It will stand idle all tonight. Just like me." Clearly she was a lady who knew exactly what she wanted, and how to get it. She looked at him directly, challengingly.

'We can't have that,' Shasa shook his head seriously. 'One thing my mummy taught me was 'Waste not, want not'. I know a place called the Stardust. The band is far beyond belief. I will wager a pound to a weekend in Paris that I can dance you until you plead for mercy." 'It's a bet,' she agreed as seriously. 'But do you cheat?" 'Of course,' he answered. David was coming back and Shasa went on smoothly and professionally. 'What about running costs?" 'All in, including insurance and depreciation, a little under four thousand pounds a month,' she told him with a matching businesslike expression.

As they said goodbye and shook hands, she slipped a card into Shasa's palm. 'My address,' she murmured.

'Eight o'clock?" he asked.

'I'll be there,' she agreed.

In the Cadillac, Shasa lit a cigarette and blew a perfect smoke ring that exploded silently against the windscreen.

'Okay, Davie, contact the dean of engineering first thing tomorrow. Offer to hire that monster all its down time from five o'clock in the evening until eight the next morning, and weekends also.

Offer him four thousand a month and point out that he'll get the use of it for free. We'll be paying all his costs." David turned to him with a startled expression and almost drove up on to the pavement, then corrected with a wild swing of the wheel.

'Why didn't I think of that?" he wondered when he had the Cadillac under control.

'You have to get up earlier,' Shasa grinned and then went on, 'Once we know how much time we will need on the thing, we'll sublet the surplus time to a couple of other non-competitor companies who must be thinking about buying a computer themselves. That way we'll get our own usage free, and when IBM have improved the design and made the damned thing smaller, then we will buy our own." 'Son of a gun." David shook his head in awe. 'Son of a gun." Then with sudden inspiration, Tll get young Marylee on our payroll --' 'No,' said Shasa sharply. 'Get someone else." David glanced at him again and his excitement faded. He knew his brother-in-law too well.

'You won't be taking up Matty's invitation to dinner this evening, will you?" he asked morosely.

'Not this evening,' Shasa agreed. 'Give her my love and apologies." 'Just be careful. It's a small own and you are a marked man,' David warned as he dropped Shasa off at the Carlton Hotel where the company kept a permanent suite. 'Do you think you will be fit for work tomorrow?" 'Eight o'clock,' Shasa told him. 'Sharp!" By mutual agreement the dance competition at the Stardust was declared a draw, and Shasa and Marylee got back to his Carlton suite a little after midnight.

Her body was young and smooth and hard and just before she drifted off to sleep with her thick honey-coloured hair spread on his bare chest, she whispered drowsily, 'Well, I guess that's about the only thing my IBM 701 can't do for me." Shasa was in the Courtney mining offices fifteen minutes before David the next morning. He liked to keep everybody on their toes.

Their offices occupied the entire third floor of the Standard Bank building in Commissioner Street. Although Shasa owned a prime piece of real estate on the corner of Diagonal Street opposite the stock exchange and within yelling distance of Anglo American Corporation's head office, he hadn't yet got around to building on it; any spare money in the company always seemed to be earmarked for mining options or extensions or other income-producing enterprises.

The young blood on the Courtney executive board was judicially leavened with a few grey heads. Doctor Twenty-man-Jones was still there, in an old-fashioned black alpaca jacket and string tie, hiding his affection for Shasa behind a mournful expression. He had run the very first prospect on the H'am diamond mine for Centaine back in the early twenties and was one of the three most experienced and gifted mining consultants in southern Africa, which meant the world.

David's father Abraham Abrahams was still head of the legal section, perched up beside his son, bright and chirpy as a little silver sparrow. His files were piled high on the table in front of him, but he seldom had to refer to them. With half a dozen other newcomers whom Centaine and Shasa between them had hand-picked, it was a balanced and functional team.

'Let's talk about the Courtney chemical plant at Chaka's Bay first." Shasa brought the meeting to order. 'How much meat is there in the beef against us, Abe?" 'We are running hot sulphuric acid into the sea at a rate of between eleven and sixteen tons per day at a concentration of one in ten thousand,' Abe Abrahams told him matter-of-factly. 'I've had an independent marine biologist do a report on it for us." He tapped the document. 'It isn't good. We have altered the pH for five miles along the coastline:' 'You haven't circulated this report?" Shasa asked sharply.

'What do you think?" Abe shook his head.

'All right, David. What will it cost us to modify the manufficturing procedure on the fertilizer division to dispose of the acid waste some other way?" 'There are two possible modifications,' David told him. 'The simplest and cheapest is trucking the effluent in tankers, but then we have to find another dumping ground. The ideal solution is recycling the acid." 'Costs?" 'One hundred thousand pounds per annum for the tankers - one shot of almost three times that for the other way." 'A year's profits down the drain,' Shasa said. 'That's not acceptable.

ii!i iiii 'il Who is this Pearson woman that is heading up the protest? Can we reason with her?" Abe shook his head. 'We have tried.

She is holding the whole committee together. Without her they would crumble." 'What is her position?" 'Her husband owns the local bakery." 'Buy it,' said Shasa. 'If he won't sell, let him know discreetly that we will open another bakery in competition and subsidize its product.

I want this Pearson woman far away and long ago. Any questions?" He looked down the table. Everybody was busy making notes, nobody looked at him and he wanted to ask them reasonably, 'All right, gentlemen, are you prepared to spend three hundred thousand pounds to give a good home to the oysters and the sea urchins of Chaka's Bay?" 'No questions!" he nodded instead. 'All right, let's take on the big one now. Silver River." They all shifted in their seats, and there was simultaneous and nervous exhalation of breath.

'Gentlemen, we have all read and studied Dr Twenty-man-Jones's geological report based on his drilling on the property. It is a superb piece of work, and I don't have to tell you that it's the best opinion you'll get on Harley Street. Now I want to hear from each of you your own opinions as departmental heads. Can we start with you, Rupert?" Rupert Horn was the junior member of the executive team. As treasurer and chief accountant he filled in the financial background.

'If we let the option lapse, we shall be writing off the two point three million that we have spent on exploration over the last eighteen months. If we take up the option it will mean an initial payment of four million on signature." 'We can cover that from the rainy-day account,' Shasa intervened.

'We are holding four point three million in the provisional fund,' Rupert Horn agreed. 'We have it invested in Escom 7% Stock at present, but once we utilize that fund we will be in an extremely exposed position." One after the other, in ascending order of seniority, Shasa's managers gave their views as seen from their own departments, and David put it all together at the end.

'So it seems that we have twenty-six days remaining on the option, and four million to pay if we take it up. That is going to leave us bare'hummed, and facing development costs of three million pounds for the main shaft alone, plus another five million for plant, interest and running costs to see us into the production phase, four years from now in 1956." He stopped and they all watched intently while Shasa selected a cigarette and tapped it lightly on the lid of his gold case.

Shasa's expression was deadly serious. He knew better than any of them that the decision could destroy the company or take it up onto a new high plateau, and nobody could make that decision for him.

He was up on the lonely pinnacle of command.

'We know there is gold down there,' he spoke at last. 'A thick rich reef of it. If we reach it, it will go on producing for the next fifty years. However, gold is standing at thirty-five dollars an ounce. The Americans have pegged it, they have threatened to keep the price there for all time. Thirty-five dollars an ounce - and it will cost us between twenty and twenty-five an ounce to go down that deep and bring it to the surface. A slim margin, gentlemen, much too slim." He lit the cigarette, and they all sighed and relaxed, at the same time disappointed and relieved. It would have been glorious to make the charge, but disastrous to have failed. Now they would never know. But Shasa hadn't finished. He blew a spinning smoke-ring down the length of the table, and went on.

'However, I don't think the Americans are going to be able to keep the lid on the gold price much longer. Their hatred of gold is emotional, not based on economic reality. I know, deep down in my guts, that the day is not far off when we will see gold at sixty dollars and one day, sooner than any of us think, it will be a hundred and fifty dollars - perhaps even two hundred!" They stirred with disbelief, and Twenty-man-Jones looked as though he might break down and weep in the face of such wild optimism, but Shasa ignored him and turned to Abe Abrahams.

'Abe, at noon on the eighteenth of next month, twelve hours before the option expires, you will hand over a cheque for four million to the owners of Silver River farms, and take possession of the property in the name of a company to be formed." Shasa turned to David.

'At the same time we will simultaneously open subscription lists on the Johannesburg and London stock exchanges for ten million œ1 shares in the Silver River gold-mining property. You and Doctor Twenty-man-Jones will start today drawing up the prospectus.

Courtney Mining will register the property in the name of the new company in return for the balance of five million shares transferred into our name. We will also be responsible for the management and development." Quickly, succinctly, Shasa laid out the structure, financing and management of the. new company, and more than once these wily seasoned campaigners glanced up from their notepads in blatant admiration of some deft and unusual touch he added to the scheme.

'Is there anything I have left out?" Shasa asked at the end, and when they shook their heads, he grinned. David was reminded strongly of the movie he and Matty had taken the children to see the previous Saturday afternoon, The Sea Hawk, though the eye-patch made Shasa look even more piratical than Errol Flynn had done in the title role.

'The founder of our company, Madame Centaine de Thiry Courtney-Malcomess, has never approved of the consumption of alcohol in the boardroom. However --' Still grinning, Shasa nodded at David, who went to open the main doors of the boardroom and a secretary wheeled in a trolley on which the rows of glasses clinked and the green bottles of Dam Perignon swished in their silver icebuckets. 'Old customs give way to new,' Shasa said, and drew the first cork with a discreet pop.

Shasa throttled back the Rolls Royce engines and the Mosquito sank down through the ribbons of scattered cirrus cloud, and the endless golden plains of the high African shield came up to meet her. Off to the west Shasa could just make out the clustered buildings of the mining town of Welkom, centre of the Orange Free State goldfields.

Founded only a few years previously, when the vast Anglo American Corporation began opening up these fields, it was already a model town of over a hundred thousand persons. ---Shasa-ttipT, ed hs-xygcrc mask. and lc .:t-dagle or} his kesa-s he leaned forward on his straps and peered ahead through the windshield ahead of the Mosquito's blue nose.

He picked out the tiny steel tower of the drilling rig almost lost in the immensity of the dusty plain, and using it as a landmark traced the gossamer thread of fences that enclosed the Silver River farms eleven thousand acres, most of it bare and undeveloped. It wa, amazing that the geologists of the big mining houses had overlooked this little pocket, but then nobody could have reasonably expected the gold reef to spur off like that - that is, nobody but TwentymanJones and Shasa Courtney.

Yet the reef was as far beneath the earth as the Mosquito nox circled above it. It seemed impossible that any human endeavom would be able to burrow down that deep, but already Shasa coulc see in his imagination the tall headgear of the Silver River mair towering two hundred feet above the bleak plain, with its shaf stabbing down a mile and more into the underground river of precious metal.

'And the Yanks can't hold out for ever - they will have to let golc go free,' he told himselfi He stood the Mosquito on one wing and on the instrument panel the gyro compass revolved smoothly. Shasa lifted the wing and she was precisely on her new heading of 125ø.

'Fifteen minutes, with these winds,' he grunted, as he marked the large-scale map on his knee, and the fine exaltation of spirit stayed with him for the remainder of the flight until he saw the dark pencilline of smoke rising into the still air dead ahead. They had put up a smoke beacon to guide him in.

There was a Dakota parked in front of the lonely galvanized ironclad hangar at the end of the strip. The big aircraft had airforce markings. The runway was of rolled yellow clay, hard and smooth and the Mosquito settled to it with barely a jolt. It had taken endless practice to develop that sort of distance judgement after he had lost the eye.

Shasa slid back the canopy and taxied towards the hangar. There was a green Ford pick-up near the mast of the windsock, and a lone figure dressed in khaki shorts aqd shirt stood beside the smoke pot, fists clenched on his hips, watching Shasa taxi up and cut the engines.

Then as Shasa jumped down, he stepped forward and offered his right hand, but his expression, solemn and reserved, was at odds with the welcoming gesture.

'Good afternoon, Minister." Shasa was as unsmiling and their grip was hard but brief. Then as Shasa looked deeply into Manfred De La Rey's pale eyes, he had a strange feeling of djd vu, of having stared into those same eyes in desperate circumstances before. He had to shake his head slightly to be rid of it.

'I am glad for both our sakes that you were able to come. Can I help you with your bags?" Manfred De La Rey asked.

'Don't worry. I can manage." Shasa went back to tie down and secure the Mosquito and fetch his luggage from the bomb bay, while Manfred doused the smoke pot.

'You brought your own rifle,' Manfred remarked. 'What is it?" 'Seven men Remington magnum." Shasa swung the luggage into the back of the truck and stepped up into the passenger door of the Ford.

'Perfect for this type of shooting,' Manfred approved as he started the truck. 'Long shots over flat ground." He swung on to the track and they drove for a few minutes in silence.

'The prime minister could not come,' he said. 'He intended to be here, but he sent a letter for you. It confirms that I speak with his authority." 'I'll accept that." Shasa kept a straight face.

'The minister of finance is here, and the minister of agriculture is our host - this is his farm. One of the biggest in the Free State."

'I am impressed." 'Yes,' Manfred nodded. 'I think you will be." He stared hard at Shasa. 'Is it not strange how you and I seem doomed always to confront each other?" 'It had crossed my mind,' Shasa admitted.

'Do you think there is some reason for it - something of which we are unaware?" Manfred insisted, and Shasa shrugged.

'I shouldn't think so - coincidence only." The reply seemed to disappoint Manfred.

'Has your mother never spoken about me?" Shasa looked startled. 'My mother! Good Lord, I don't think so.

She may have mentioned you casually - why do you ask?" Manfred seemed not to have heard, he looked ahead. 'There is the homestead,' he said, with a finality that closed the subject.

The track breasted the rim of a shallow valley and the homesteac nestled below them. Here the water must be near the surface for th pasturage was lush and green and the skeletal steel towers of a dozer windmills were scattered down the valley. A plantation of eucalyptu trees surrounded the homestead, and beyond it stood substantia outbuildings, all freshly painted and in good repair. Twenty or mar.

brand new tractors were lined up before one of the long garages, am there were flocks of fat sheep on the pastures. The plain beyond th, homestead reaching almost to the horizon was already ploughed thousands of acres of chocolate loam ready for sowing with maiz seed. This was the heart land of Afrikanerdom, this was where th support of the National Party was solid and unwavering, and i was the reason why under the Nationalists the electoral areas ha, been re-demarcated to swing the centres of power away from th urban concentrations of population to favour these rural constitt encies. That was why the Nationalists would stay in power for eve: and Shasa grimaced sourly. Immediately Manfred glanced at bin but Shasa offered no explanation and they drove down to the horn stead and parked in the farm yard.

There were a dozen men sitting at the long yellow-wood kitche table, smoking and drinking co(fee and chatting while the wome hovered in attendance. The men rose to welcome Shasa and he wel down the table shaking hands with each of them and exchangir polite, if not effusive greetings.

Shasa knew every one of them. He had faced all of them across tl floor of the house and had lashed most of them with his tongue, or in return had been attacked and vilified by each of them, but no they made room for him at the table and the hostess poured strol black coffee for him and placed a dish of sweet cakes and bar baked rusks in front of him. They all treated him with that inna courtesy and hospitality that is the hallmark of the Afrikaner.

Though they were dressed in rough hunting clothing and pretended to be bluff and simple farmers, they were in reality a group of shrewd and adroit politicians, amongst the richest and most powerful men in the land.

Shasa spoke their language perfectly, understood the most heavily veiled references and laughed at their private jokes, but he was not one of them. He was the rooinek, the traditional enemy, and subtly they had closed their ranks against him.

When he had drunk his coffee his host, the minister of agriculture, told him, 'I will show you to your room. You will want to change and unpack your rifle. We will hunt as soon as it is cooler." A little after four o'clock, they set out in a procession of pick-up trucks, the elder more important men riding in the cabs while the others stood in the open backs of the trucks. The cavalcade climbed out of the valley, skirted the ploughed lands and then sped out across the plains towards a line of low hills on the horizon.

They saw game now, small herds of springbok far out on the plain like a fine dusting of cinnamon powder on the pale earth, but the trucks raced on, slowing only as they reached the foot of the rocky hills. The lead truck stopped for a moment and two of the hunters jumped down and scrambled into a shallow donga.

'Good luck! Shoot straight,' they called to them as they passed and a few hundred yards farther the convoy stopped again to let another pair take up their positions.

Within half an hour all of the huntsmen had been hidden in an irregular extended line below the ragged range of hills. Manfred De La Rey and Shasa had been placed together in a cluster of broken grey rock, and they squatted down to wait with their rifles across their laps, staring out across the flats that were speckled with darker scrub.

The trucks, driven by the teenage sons of their host, headed out in a wide circle until they were merely specks against the pale glare of the horizon, each marked by the ostrich feather of dust it drew behind it. Then they turned back towards the hills, travelling more slowly, not much above walking pace, as they began to move the scattered herds of antelope ahead of them.

Shasa and Manfred had almost an hour to wait for the driven game to come within rifle shot, and they chatted in a desultory, seemingly aimless manner, at first touching only lightly on politics, but rather discussing their host, the minister of agriculture, and the other guests. Then quite subtly Manfred changed the direction of their talk and remarked on how little real difference existed between the policies and aspirations of the governing National Party and Shasa's own opposition United Party.

'If you examine it carefully, our differences are only those of style and degree. We both want to keep South Africa safe for the white man and for European civilization. We both know that for all of us apartheid is a matter of life and death. Without it we will all drown in the black sea. Since the death of Smuts, your party has moved sharply towards our own thinking, and the leftists and liberals have begun to split away from you." Shasa was noncommittal, but the point was apt and painful. There were deep cracks appearing in his own party, and every day it became more apparent that they would never again form the government of this land. However, he was intrigued to know where Manfred De La Rey was leading. He had learned never to underestimate this adversary, and he sensed that he was being artfully prepared for the true purpose of this invitation. It was quite obvious that their host had manoeuvred to place them together, and that every other member of the party was privy to the business afoot. Shasa spoke little, conceding nothing, and waited with rising anticipation for the lurking beast to reveal its shape.

'You know that we have entrenched the language and culture of the English-speaking South Africans. There will never be any attempt to erode those rights - we look upon all English speakers of good will who consider themselves South Africans first as our brothers.

Our destinies are linked with chains of steel --' Manfred broke off, and lifted his binoculars to his eyes. 'They are moving in closer now,' he murmured. 'We had better get ready." He lowered the binoculars and smiled carefully at Shasa. 'I have heard that you shoot well. I look forward to a demonstration." Shasa was disappointed. He had wanted to know where the carefully rehearsed recital had been heading, but now he hid his impatience behind that easy smile of his and opened the breech of the rifle across his lap.

'You are right in one thing Minister,' he said. 'We are linked together with chains of steel. Let us hope the weight of them doesn't draw us all under." He saw a strange flash in those topaz yellow eyes, of anger or triumph, he was not certain, and it lasted only an instant.

'I will fire only on a line from dead ahead towards the right,' Manfred said. 'You only in an arc to the left. Agreed?" 'Agreed,' Shasa nodded, although he felt a prickle of irritation at being out-manoeuvred so soon and so easily. Manfred had carefully placed himself to cover the right flank, the natural side for a righthanded marksman to swing.

'You will need the advantage,' Shasa thought grimly and asked aloud. 'I hear you also are a fine shot. What about a small wager on the bag?" 'I do not gamble,' Maned replied easily. 'That is a device of the devil, but I will count the bag with interest,' and Shasa was reminded of just how puritanical was the extreme Calvinism that Manfred De La Rey practised.

Carefully Shasa loaded his rifle. He had hand-loaded his own cartridges for he never trusted mass-produced factory ammunition. The shiny brass cases were filled with a charge of Norma powder that would drive the Nosier Partition bullet at well over three thousand feet a second. The special construction of the bullet would ensure that it mushroomed perfectly on impact.

He worked the bolt and then raised the weapon to his shoulder and used the telescopic sight to scan the plain. The pick-up trucks were less than a mile away, gently weaving back and forth, to prevent the herds breaking back, keeping them moving slowly down towards the line of hills and the hunters hidden below them. Shasa blinked his eye rapidly to clear his vision, and he could make out each individual animal in the herds of antelope trotting ahead of the vehicles.

They were light as smoke, and they rippled like cloud shadow across the plain. Trotting daintily with heads held high and with their horns shaped like perfect miniature lyres, they were graceful and indescribably lovely.

Without stereoscopic vision, Shasa had difficulty in judging distance, but he had developed the knack of defining relative size and added to this a kind of sixth sense that enabled him to pilot an aircraft, strike a polo ball, or shoot as well as any fully sighted person.

The nearest of the approaching antelope were almost at extreme range, when there was a crackle of rifle fire from farther down the line and immediately the herds exploded into silent airy flight. Each tiny creature danoed and bounced on long legs no thicker than a man's thumb. Seeming no longer bounded by the dictates of gravity, every fluid leap blurring against the matching background of parched earth, they tumbled and shot into the mirage-quivering air in the spectacular display of aerobatics that gave them their name, and down each of their backs a frosty mane came erect and shone with their alarm.

It was more difficult than trying to bring down a rocketing grouse with a spreading pattern of shot, impossible to hold the darting ethereal shapes in the cross-hairs of the lens, fruitless to aim directly at the swift creatures - necessary rather to aim at the empty space where they would be a micro second later when the supersonic bullet reached them.

With some men shooting well is skill learned with much practice and concentration. With Shasa it was a talent that he had been born with. As he turned his upper body, the long barrel pointed exactly where he was looking and the cross hairs of the telescopic sight moved smoothly in the centre of his vision and settled on the nimble body of a racing antelope as it went bounding high in the air. Shasa was not conscious of squeezing the trigger, the rifle seemed to fire of its own accord and the recoil drove into his shoulder at precisely the correct instant.

The ram died in the air, turned over by the bullet so his snowy belly flashed in the sunlight, somersaulting to the impetus of the tiny metal capsule as it lanced his heart, and he fell and rolled horned head over dainty hooves as he hit the earth and lay still.

Shasa worked the bolt and picked up another running creature and the rifle fired again and the sharp stink of burned powder prickled his nostrils. He kept shooting until the barrel was hot enough to raise blisters and his eardrums ached to the crackle of shot.

Then the last of the herds were gone past them and over the hills behind them, and the gunfire died away. Shasa unloaded the cartridges that remained in his rifle and looked at Manfred De La Rey.

'Eight,' Manfred said, 'and two wounded." It was amazing how those tiny creatures could carry away a misplaced bullet. They would have to follow them up. It was unthinkable to allow a wounded animal to suffer unnecessarily.

'Eight is a good score,' Shasa told him. 'You can be pleased with your shooting." 'And you?" Manfred asked. 'How many?" 'Twelve,' Shasa answered expressionlessly.

'How many wounded?" Manfred hid his chagrin well enough.

'Oh." Shasa smiled at last. 'I don't wound animals - I shoot where I aim." That was enough. He did not have to rub in salt.

Shasa left him and walked out to the nearest carcass. The springbok lay on its side and in death the deep fold of skin along its back had opened and from it the snowy plume started erect. Shasa went down on one knee and stroked the lovely plume. From the glands in the fold of skin had exuded reddish-brown musk, and Shasa parted the long plume and rubbed the secretion with his forefinger, then raised it to his face and inhaled the honey-scented aroma. It smelled more like a flower than an animal. Then the hunter's melancholy came upon him, and he mourned the beautiful little creature he had killed.

'Thank you for dying for me,' he whispered the ancient Bushman prayer that Centaine had taught him so long ago, and yet the sadness was pleasure, and deep inside him the atavistic urge of the hunter was for the moment replete.

In the cool of the evening the men gathered around the pits of glowing embers in front of the homestead. The braaivleis, or meat bake, was a ritual that followed the hunt; the men did the cooking while the women were relegated to the preparation of salads and pudding at the long trestle tables on the stoep. The game had been marinated or larded or made into spiced sausage, and the livers, kidneys and tripes were treated to jealously guarded recipes before they were laid upon the coals in the grilling pit, while the self-appointed chefs kept the heat of the fires from becoming oppressive with liberal draughts of mampoer, the pungent peach brandy.

A scratch band of coloured farm labourers belted out traditional country airs on banjo and concertina and some of the guests danced on the wide front stoep. A few of the younger women were very interesting, and Shasa eyed them thoughtfully. They were tanned and glowing with health and an Unsophisticated sensuality that was made all the more appealing by the fact of their Calvinist upbringing. Their untouchability and probable virginity made them even more attractive to Shasa who enjoyed the chase as much as the kill.

However, there was too much at stake here to risk giving the slightest offence. He avoided the shy but calculating glances that some of them cast in his direction, and avoided just as scrupulously the savage peach brandy and filled his glass with ginger ale. He knew he would need all his wits before the night was ended.

When their appetites, sharpened on the hunting veld, had been blunted by the steaming platters piled with grilled venison, and the leftovers had been carried away delightedly to the servants' quarters, Shasa found himself sitting at the end of the long stoep farthest from the band. Manfred De La Rey was sitting opposite him, and the two other ministers of the government sprawled contentedly in their deep lounging chairs flanking him. Despite their relaxed attitudes, they watched him warily from the corners of their eyes.

'The main business is about to begin,' Shasa decided, and almost immediately Manfred stirred.

'I was telling Meneer Courtney that in many ways we are very close,' Manfred started quietly, and his colleagues nodded sagely.

'We all want to protect this land and preserve all that is fine and worthwhile in it." 'God has chosen us as guardians - it is our duty to protect all its peoples, and make certain that the identity of each group and each separate culture is kept intact, and apart from the others." It was the party line, this notion of divine selection, and Shasa had heard it all a hurldred times before; so although he nodded and made small noncommittal sounds, he was becoming restless.

'There is still much to be done,' Manfred told him. 'After the next election we will have great labours ahead of us, we are the masons building a social edifice that will stand for a thousand years. A model society in which each group will have its place, and will not intrude upon the space of others, a broad and stable pyramid forming a unique society." They were all silent then for a while, contemplating the beauty of the vision, and though Shasa kept his expression neutral, still he smiled inwardly at the apt metaphor of a pyramid.

There was no doubt in any of their minds as to which group was divinely ordained to occupy the pinnacle.

'And yet there are enemies."?" the minister of agriculture cued Manfred.

'There are enemies, within and without. They will become more vociferous and dangerous as the work goes ahead. The closer we come to success, the more avid they become to prevent us achieving it." 'Already they are gathering." 'Yes,' Manfred agreed. 'And even old and traditional friends are warning and threatening us. America, who should know better, racked by her own racial problems, the unnatural aspirations of the negroes they brought as slaves from Africa. Even Britain with her Mau Mau troubles in Kenya and the disintegration of her Indian Empire wishes to dictate to us and divert us from the course we know is right." 'They believe us to be weak and vulnerable." 'They already hint at an arms embargo, denying us the weapons to defend ourselves against the dark enemy that is gathering in the shadows." 'They are right,' Manfred cut in brusquely. 'We are weak and militarily disorganized. We are at the mercy of their threats --' 'We have to change this,' the finance minister spoke harshly. 'We must make ourselves strong." 'At the next budget the defence allocation will be fifty million pounds, while by the end of the decade it will be a billion." 'We must put ourselves above their threats of sanction and boycott and embargo." 'Strength through Unity, Ex Unitate Vires,' said Manfred De La Rey. 'And yet by tradition and preference, the Afrikaner people have been farmers and country folk. Because of the discrimination which was practised against us for a hundred years and more, we have been excluded from the marketplace of commerce and industry and we have not learned the skills which come so readily to our English-speaking countrymen." Manfred paused, glanced at the other two, as if for approval, and then went on. 'What this country needs desperately is the wealth to make our vision come true. It is a massive undertaking for which we lack the skills. We need a special type of man." They were all looking keenly at Shasa now. 'We need a man with the vigour of youth but the experience of age, a man with proven genius for finance and organization. We can find no member of our own party with those attributes." Shasa stared at them. What they were suggesting was outrageous.

He had grown up in the shadow of Jan Christian Smuts and had a natural and unshakable allegiance to the party that Smuts, that great and good man, had founded. He opened his mouth to answer angrily, but Manfred De La Rey raised his hand to stop him.

'Hear me out,' he said. 'The person chosen for this patriotic work would be immediately given a senior cabinet appointment which the prime minister would create specifically for him. He would become minister of mines and industry." Shasa closed his mouth slowly. How carefully they must have studied him, and how accurately they had analysed him and arrived at his price. The very foundations of his political beliefs and principles were shaken, and the walls cracked through. They had led him up into a high place and shown him the prize that was his for the taking.

At twenty thousand feet Shasa levelled the Mosquito and trimmed for cruise. He increased the flow of oxygen into his mask to sharpen his brain. He had four hours' flying time to Youngsfield, four hours to think it all out carefully, and he tried to divorce himself from the passions and emotions which still swept him along and attempt instead to reach his decision logically - but the excitement intruded upon his meditations. The prospect of wielding vast powers, building up an arsenal that would make his country supreme in Africa and a force in the world was awe-inspiring. That was power. The thought of it all made him slightly light-headed, for it was all there at last, everything he had ever dreamed of. He had only to reach out his hand and seize the moment. Yet what would be the cost in honour and pride - how would he explain to men who trusted him?

Then abruptly he thought of Blaine Malcomess, his mentor and adviser, the man who had stood in the place of his own father all these years. What would he think of this dreadful betrayal that Shasa was contemplating?

'I can do more good by joining them, Blaine,' he whispered into his mask. 'I can help change and moderate them from within more effectively than in opposition, for now I will have the power --' bul he knew he was prevaricating, and all else was dross.

It all came down to that one thing in the end, the power - and he knew that although Blaine Malcomess would never condone what he would see as treachery, there was one person who would understand and give him support and encouragement. For after all it was Centaine Courtney-Malcomess who had so carefully schooled her son in the acquisition and use of wealth and power.

'It could all come true, Mater. It could still happen, not exactly as we planned it, but it could still happen all the same." Then a thought struck him, and a shadow passed across the bright light of his triumph.

He glanced down at the red folder that Manfred De La Rey, minister of police, had given him at the airstrip, just as he was about to climb up into the Mosquito, and which now lay on the copilot's seat beside him.

'There is only one problem we will have to deal with, if you accept our offer,' Manfred had said as he handed it over, 'and it is a serious problem. This is it." .The folder contained a police special branch security report, and the name on the cover was:

TARA ISABELLA COURTNEY the MALCOMESS

Tara Courtney made her round of the children's wing, calling in at each of the bedrooms. Nanny was just tucking Isabella under her pink satin eiderdown, and the child let out a cry of delight when she saw Tara.

'Mummy, Mummy, teddy bbs been naughty. I'm going to make him sleep on the shelf with my other dolls." Tara sat on her daughter's bed and hugged her while they discussed teddy's misdemeanours. Isabella was pink and warm and smelled of soap. Her hair was silky against Tara's cheek and it took an effort for Tara to kiss her and stand up.

'Time to go to sleep, Bella baby." The moment the lights went out Isabella let out such a shriek that Tara was stricken with alarm.

'What is it, baby?" She snapped on the lights again and rushed back to the bed.

'I've forgiven teddy. He can sleep with me after all." The teddy-bear was ceremoniously reinstated in Isabella's favour

!!Z

and she took him in a loving half-nelson and stuck her other thumb in her mouth.

'When is my Daddy coming home?" she demanded drowsily around the thumb, but her eyes were closed and she was asleep before Tara reached the door.

Sean was sitting on Garrick's chest in the middle of the bedroom floor, tweaking the hair at his brother's temples with sadistic finesse.

Tara separated them.

'Sean, you get back to your own room this instant, do you hear me?

I have warned you a thousand times about bullying your brothers. Your father is going to hear all about this when he gets home." Garrick snuffled up his tears and came wheezing to his elder brother's defence.

'We were only playing, Mater. He wasn't bullying me." But she could hear that he was on the verge of another asthma attack. She wavered. She really should not go out, not with an attack threatening, but tonight was so important.

Tll prepare his inhaler and tell Nanny to look in on him every hour until I get back,' she compromised.

Michael was reading, and barely looked up to receive her kiss.

'Lights out at nine o'clock. Promise me, darling." She tried never to let it show, but he was always her favourite.

'I promise, Mater,' he murmured and under cover of the eiderdown carefully crossed his fingers.

On the way down the stairs she glanced at her wristwatch. It was five minutes before eight. She was going to be late, and she stifled her maternal feelings of guilt and fled out to her old Packard.

Shasa detested the Packard, taking its blotched sun-faded paintwork and its shabby stained upholstery as an affront to the family dignity. He had given her a new Aston Martin on her last birthday, but she left it in the garage. The Packard suited her Spartan image: of herself as a caring liberal, and it blew a streamer of dirty smoke as she accelerated down the long driveway, taking a perverse pleasure in sending a pall of fine dust over Shasa's meticulously groomed vineyards. It was strange how even after all these years she felt herself a stranger at Weltevreden, and alien amongst its treasures and stuffy old-fashioned furnishings. If she lived here another fifty years it would never be her home, it was Centaine Courtney-Malcomess' home, the other woman's touch and memory lingered in every room that Shasa would never allow her to redecorate.

She escaped through the great ostentatious Anreith gateway into the real world of suffering and injustice, where the oppressed masses wept and struggled and cried out for succour and where she felt useful and relevant, where in the company of other pilgrims she could march forward to meet a future full of challenge and change.

The Broadbursts' home was in the middle-class suburb of Pinelands, a modern ranch-type home with a flat roof and large picture windows, with ordinary functional mass-produced furniture and nylon wall-to-wall carpets. There were dog hairs on the chairs, well thumbed intellectual books piled in odd corners or left open on the dining-room table, children's toys abandoned in the passageways, and cheap reproductions of Picasso and Modigliani hanging askew on the walls marked with grubby little fingerprints. Tara felt comfortable and welcome here, mercifully released from the fastidious splendour of Weltevreden.

Molly Broadhurst rushed out to meet her as she parked the Packard.

She was dressed in a marvellously flamboyant caftan.

'You're late!" She kissed Tara heartily and dragged her through the disorder of the lounge to the music room at the rear.

The music room was an afterthought stuck on to the end of the house without any aesthetic considerations and was filled now with Molly's guests who had been invited to hear Moses Gama. Tara's spirits soared as she looked around her, they were all vibrant creative people, all of them spirited and articulate, filled with the excitement of living and a fine sense of justice and outrage and rebellion.

This was the type of gathering that Weltevreden would never see.

Firstly, black people were included, students from the black University of Fort Hare and the fledgling University of the Western Cape, teachers and lawyers and even a black doctor, all of them political activists who, although denied a voice or a vote in the white parliament, were beginning to cry out with a passion that must be heard.

There was the editor of the black magazine Drum and the local correspondent of the Sowetant named after that sprawling black township.

Just to mingle socially with blacks made her feel breathlessly daring.

The whites in the room were no less extraordinary. Some of them had been members of the Communist Party of South Africa before that organization had been disbanded a few years previously. There was a man called Harris who she had met before at Molly's house.

He had fought with the Irgun in Israel against the British and the Arabs, a tall fierce man who inspired a delicious fear in Tara. Molly hinted that he was an expert in guerrilla warfare and sabotage, and certainly he was always travelling secretly around the country or slipping across the border into neighbouring states on mysterious business. ú Talking earnestly to Molly's husband was another lawyer from Johannesburg, Brain Fischer, who specialized in defending black clients charged under the myriad laws that were designed to muzzle and disarm them and restrict their movements. Molly said that Brain was reorganizing the old Communist Party into underground cells, and Tara fantasized that she might one day be invited to join one of these cells.

In the same group was Marcus Archer, another ex-communist and an industrial psychologist from the Witwatersrand. He was responsible for the training of thousands of black workers for the goldmining industry, and Molly said that he had helped to organize the black mineworkers' union. Molly had also whispered that he was a homosexual, and she had used an odd term for it that Tara had never heard before. 'He's gay, gay as a lark." And because it was totally unacceptable to polite society, Tara found it fascinating.

'Oh God, Molly,' Tara whispered. 'This is so exciting. These are all real people, they make me feel as though I am truly living at last." 'There he is." Molly smiled at this outburst and dragged Tara with her through the press of bodies.

Moses Gama leaned against the far wall faced by a half circle of admirers, yet standing head and shoulders above them, and Molly pushed her way into the front row.

Tara found herself staring up at Moses Gama, and she thought that even in this brilliant company he stood out like a black panther in a pack of mangy alley cats. Though his head seemed carved from a block of black onyx, and his handsome Nilotic features were impassive, yet there was a force within him that seemed to fill all the room. It was like standing on the high slopes of a dark Vesuvius, knowing that at any instant it could boil over into cataclysmic eruption.

Moses Gama turned his head and looked at Tara. He did not smile, but a shadowy thing moved in the depths of his dark gaze.

'Mrs Courtney - I asked Molly to invite you." 'Please don't call me that. My name is Tara." 'We must talk later, Tara. Will you stay?" She could not answer, she was too overcome at being singled out, but she nodded dumbly.

'If you are ready, Moses, we can begin,' Molly suggested, and taking him out of the group led him to the raised dais on which the piano stood.

'People! People! Your attention, please!" Molly clapped her hands, and the animated chatter died away. Everybody turned towards the dais. 'Moses Gama is one of the most talented and revered of the new generation of young black African leaders. He has been a member of the African National Congress since before the war, and a prime mover in the formation of the African Mineworkers' Union.

Although the black trade unions are not officially recognized by the government of the day, yet the secret union of mineworkers is one of the most representative and powerful of all black associations, with more than a hundred thousand paid-up members. In 1950 Moses Gama was elected Secretary of the ANC, and he has worked tirelessly, selflessly and highly effectively in making the heart cry of our black citizens heard, even though they are denied a voice in their own destiny. For a short while Moses Gama was an appointed member of the government's Natives' Representative Council, that infamous attempt to appease black political aspirations, but it was he who resigned with the now celebrated remark, 'I have been speaking into a toy telephone, with nobody listening at the other end." There was a btirst of laughter and applause from the room, and then Molly turned to Moses Gama.

'I know that you have nothing to tell us that will comfort and soothe us - but, Moses Gama, in this room there are many hearts that beat with yours and are prepared to bleed with yours." Tara applauded until the palms of her hands were numb, and then leaned forward to listen eagerly as Moses Gama moved to the front of the dais.

He was dressed in a neat blue suit and a dark blue tie with a white shirt. Strangely, he was the most formally dressed man in a room full of baggy woollen sweaters and old tweed sports coats with leather patches on the elbows and gravy stains on the lapels. His suit was severely cut, draped elegantly from wide athletic shoulders, but he imparted to it a panache that made it seem that he wore the leopardskin cloak of royalty and the blue heron feathers in his close-cropped mat of hair. His voice was deep and thrilling.

'My friends, there is one single ideal to which I cling with all my heart, and which I will defend with my very life, and that is that every African has a primary, inherent and inalienable right to the Africa which is his continent and his only motherland,' Moses Gama began, and Tara listened, enchanted, as he detailed how that inherent right had been denied the black man for three hundred years, and how in these last few years since the Nationalist government had come to power, those denials were becoming formally entrenched in a monumental edifice of laws and ordinances and proclamations which was the policy of apartheid in practice.

'We have all heard it said that the whole concept of apartheid is so grotesque, so obviously lunatic, that it can never work. But I warn you, my friends, that the men who have conceived this crazy scheme are so fanatical, so obdurate, so convinced of their divine guidance, that they will force it to work. Already they have created a vast army of petty civil servants to administer this madness, and they have behind them the full resources of a land rich in gold and minerals. I warn you that they will not hesitate to squander that wealth in building up this ideological Frankenstein of theirs. There is no price in material wealth and human suffering that is too high for them to contemplate." Moses Gama paused and looked down upon them, and it seemed to Tara that he personally felt every last agony of his people, and was filled with suffering beyond that which mortal men could bear.

'Unless they are opposed, my friends, they will create of this lovely land a desolation and an abomination; a land devoid of compassion, of justice, a land materially and spiritually bankrupt." Moses Gama spread his arms. 'These men call those of us who defy them traitors. Well, my friends, I call any man who does not oppose them a traitor - a traitor to Africa." He was silent then, glaring this accusation at them, and they were struck dumb for a moment, before they began to cheer him. Only Tara remained still in the uproar, staring up at him, she had no voice, and she was shivering as though there was malaria in her blood.

Moses' head sank until his chin was on his chest, and they thought he had finished. Then he raised that magnificent head again and spread his arms.

'Oppose them? How do we oppose them? I reply to you - we oppose them with all our strength and all our resolve and with all our hearts.

If no price is too high for them to pay, then no price is too high for us. I tell you, my friends, there is nothing --' He paused for emphasis '--nothing I would not do to further the struggle. I am prepared both to die and to kill for it." The room was silent in the face of such deadly resolve. For those of them who were practitioners of elegant, socialist dialectic, the effete intellectuals, such a declaration was menacing and disquieting, it had the sound of breaking bones in it and the stench of freshspilled blood.

'We are ready to make a beginning, my friends, and already 'our plans are far advanced. Starting in a few months' time we will conduct a nationwide campaign of defiance against these monstrous apartheid laws. We will burn th passes which we are ordered by act of parliament to carry, the hated dompas which is akin to the star that the Jews were forced to wear, the document that marks us as racial inferiors. We will make a bonfire of them and the smoke of their burning will sting and offend the nostrils of the civilized world.

We will sit in the whites-only restaurants and cinemas, we will ride in the whites-only coaches of the railways, and swim from the whites, only beaches. We will cry out to the fascist police, Come! Arrest us.

And in our thousands we will overflow the white man's jails and block his law courts with our multitudes until the whole giant apparatus of apartheM breaks down under the strain." Tara lingered afterwards as he had asked her to, and when Molly had seen most of her guests leave, she came and took Tara's arm. 'Will you risk my spaghetti Bolognaise, Tara dear? As you know, I'm the worst cook in Africa, but you are a brave girl." Only a half dozen of the guests had been invited to remain for a late dinner and they sat out on the patio.

The mosquitoes whined around their heads and every once in a while a shift of the wind brought a sulphurous whiff from the sewerage works across the Black River. It did not seem to spoil their appetites and they tucked into Molly's notorious spaghetti Bolognaise and washed it down with tumblers of cheap red wine. Tara found it a relief from the elaborate meals that were served at Weltevreden, accompanied always by the quasi-religious ceremony of tasting wines that cost a working man's monthly wage for the bottle. Here food and wine were merely fuel to power the mind and tongue, not for gloating over.

Tara sat beside Moses Gama. Although his appetite was hearty, he hardly touched the tumbler of wine. His table manners were African. He ate noisily with an open mouth, but strangely this did not offend Tara in the least. Somehow it confirmed his differentness, marked him as a man of his own people.

At first Moses gave most of his attention to the other guests, replying to the questions and comments that were called down the table to him. Then gradually he concentrated on Tara, at first, including her in his general conversation, and at last, when he had finished eating, turning in his chair to face her fully and lowering his voice to exclude the others.

'I know your family,' he told ler. 'Know them well, Mrs Centaine Courtney and more especially your husband, Shasa Courtney." Tara was startled. 'I have never heard them speak of you." 'Why would they do so? In their eyes I was never important. They would have forgotten me long ago." 'Where did you know them and when?" 'Twenty years ago. Your husband was still a child. I was a bossboy, a supervisor on the H'am diamond mine in South West Africa." 'The H'am,' Tara nodded. 'Yes, the fountainhead of the Courtney fortune." 'Shasa Courtney was sent by his mother to learn the workings of the mine. He and I were together for a few weeks, working side by side--' Moses broke off and smiled. 'We got along well, as well as a black man and a little white baas ever could, I suppose. We talked a great deal, and he gave me a book. Macaulay's History of England. I still have it. I recall how some of the things I said puzzled and disturbed him. He told me once, "Moses, that is politics. Blacks don't take part in politics. That's white men's business."' Moses chuckled at the memory, but Tara frowned.

'I can hear him say it,' she agreed. 'He hasn't changed much in twenty years,' and Moses stopped laughing.

'Your husband has become a powerful man. He has great wealth and influence." Tara shrugged. 'What good is power and wealth unless it is used with wisdom and compassion." 'You have compassion, Tara,' he said softly. 'Even if I did not know of the work that you do for my people, I would sense it in you." Tara lowered her eyes from his smouldering regard.

'Wisdom." His voice sank even lower. 'I think you have that also.

It was wise not to speak of our last meeting in front of others." Tara's head came up and she stared at him. In the evening's excitement she had almost forgotten their encounter in the forbidden corridors of parliament.

'Why?" she whispered. 'Why were you there?" 'One day I may tell you,' he replied. 'When we have become friends." 'We are friends,' she said, and he nodded.

'Yes, I think we are friends, but friendships have to be tried and proven. Now, tell me about your work, Tara." 'It's so very little that I am able to do ' and she told him about the clinic and the feeding scheme for the children and the old people, unconscious of her own enthusiasm and animation until he smiled again.

'I was right, you do have compassion, Tara, enormous compassion. I would like to see this work. Is it possible?" 'Oh, would you come - that would be marvelous!" Molly brought him out to the clinic the following afternoon.

The clinic was on the southern edge of the black township of Nyanga - the name meant 'dawn' in the Xhosa language, but was hardly apt. Like most black townships it comprised row upon row of identical brick cottages with asbestos sheet roofs separated by dusty lanes; although aesthetically ugly and uninspiring, the accommodation was adequate and offered reticulated water, mains sewerage and electricity.

However, beyond the township proper, in the bushy dune country of the Cape Flats, had sprung up a shanty town that housed the overflow of black migrants from the impoverished rural areas, and Tara's clinic found its main clientele amongst these wretches.

Proudly Tara led Moses and Molly around the small building.

'Being the weekend, none of our volunteer doctors are here today,' she explained and Moses stopped to chat with the black nurses and with some of the motKers waiting patiently with their small children in the yard.

Afterwards she made coffee for all three of them in her tiny office and when Moses asked how the clinic was financed, Tara told him vaguely.

'Oh, we get a grant from the local provincial government--' but Molly Blackhurst cut in.

'Don't let her fool you - most of the running costs come out of her own pocket." 'I cheat my husband on the housekeeping,' Tara laughed, dismissing it lightly.

'Would it be possible for us to drive around the squatter slums?

I'd like to see them." Moses looked at Molly, but she bit her lip and glanced at her wristwatch.

'Oh, damn, I have to get back,' and Tara intervened quickly.

'Don't worry, Molly. I can drive Moses around. You get on back and I will drop him off at your house later this evening." In the old Packard ,they bumped over the sandy tracks amongst the overgrown dunes, where the Port Jackson willow had been cleared to make way for hutments of rusty corrugated iron and cardboard and tattered plastic sheeting. Now and then they stopped and walked amongst the shanties. The south-easter was roaring in off the bay, filling the air with a mist of dust. They leaned against it as they walked.

The people knew Tara and smiled and called greetings to her as she passed, and the children ran to meet her and danced around her begging for the cheap boiled sweets she kept in her pocket.

'Where do they get water?" Moses asked, and she showed him how the older children had banded old oil drums with discarded car tyres.

They filled the drums at a communal water tap at the boundary of the official township a mile away, and rolled the drums back to their hovels.

'They cut the Port Jackson willow for fuel,' Tara told him. 'but in winter the children are always full of colds and flu and pneumonia.

You don't have to ask about about sewerage--' she sniffed at the thick odour of the shallow toilet pits, screened with strips of old burlap.

It was half dark when Tara parked the Packard at the back door of the clinic and switched off the engine. They sat quietly for a few minutes.

'What we have seen is no worse than a hundred other shanty towns, places where I have lived most of my life,' Moses said. 'I am sorry." 'Why do you apologize?" Moses asked.

'I don't know, I just feel guilty." She knew how inadequate it sounded and she opened the door of the Packard.

'There are some papers I must get from my office. I won't be a minute, and then I will drive you back to Molly's house." The clinic was deserted. The two nurses had locked up and gone home an hour before. Tara let herself in with her own key and went through the single consulting room to her own office. She glanced at herself in the mirror above the washstand in the corner as she washed her hands. She was flushed and her eyes sparkled. She was so accustomed to the squalor of the squatter camps that it had not depressed her as it once had; instead she felt tingling alive and strangely elated.

She stuffed the folder of correspondence and bills into her leather sling bag and locked the drawer of her desk, made sure the plug of the electric kettle was pulled out of the wall-socket and that the windows were closed, then switched off the lights and hurried out into the consulting room. She stopped with surprise. Moses Gama had followed her into the building and was sitting on the white draped examination bed against the far wall.

'Oh,' she recovered. 'Sorry I took so long--' He shook his head, then stood up and crossed the tiled floor. He stopped, facing her. She felt awkward and uncertain as he studied her face solemnly.

'You are a remarkable woman,' he said in a deep quiet voice that she had not heard him use before. 'I have never met another white woman like you." She could think of no reply, and he went on softly, 'You are rich and privileged. You are gifted with everything that your life can offer you, and yet you come here. To this poverty and misery." He reached out and touched her arm. His palm and the inside of his fingers were a pale rose colour, contrasting vividly with the back of his hand and his dark muscular forearm, and his skin felt cool.

She wondered if it were really so, or if her own skin was hot.

She felt hot, she felt a furnace glow deep within her. She looked down at his hand on her smooth pale arm. She had never been touched by a black man before, not deliberately, not lingeringly like this.

She let the strap of the sling bag slide off her shoulder and it fell to the tiled floor with a thud. She had been holding her own hands clasped in front of her hips in an instinctively defensive gesture but now she let them fall to her sides, and almost without conscious volition arched her back and pushed her lower body towards him.

At the same time she raised her head and looked squarely into his eyes. Her lips parted and her breathing quickened. She saw it reflected in his own eyes and she said, 'Yes." He stroked her arm, up from the elbow to the shoulder, and she shuddered and closed her eyes. He touched her left breast and she did not pull away. His hand closed around her, she felt it fill his grip, and her flesh hardened, her nipple swelled and thrust out into his palm and he squeezed her. The feeling was so intense it was almost painful and she gasped as it rippled down her spine spreading like wavelets when a stone is thrown into a quiet pool.

Her arousal was so abrupt that she was unprepared. She had never considered herself a sensual person. Shasa was the only man she had ever known and it took all his skill and patience to quicken her body, but now at a touch her bones well soft with desire and her loins melted like wax in the flame and she could not breathe, so strong was her need of this man.

'The door,' she blurted. 'Lock the door." Then she saw that he had already barred the door, and she was grateful for it, for she felt that she could not have brooked the delay.

He picked her up quickly and carried her to the bed. The sheet that covered it was spotless and so crisply starched that it crackled softly under her weight.

He was so huge that he terrified her, and though she had borne four children, she felt as though she was being split asunder as his blackness filled her, and then the terror passed to be replaced by a strange sense of sanctity. She was the sacrificial lamb, with this act she was redeeming all the sins of her own race, all the trespasses that they had committed against his ]people down the centuries; she was wiping away the guilt that had been her stigmata since as far back as she could remember.

When at the end he lay heavy upon her with his breathing roaring in her ears and the last wild convulsions racking hisgreat black muscles, she clung to him with a joyous gratitude. For he had, at one and the same time, set her free from guilt and made her his slave for ever.

Subdued by the sadness of after love, and by the certain knowledge that her world was for ever altered, Tara was silent on the drive back to Molly's home. She parked a block before she reached it, and keeping the engine running she turned to examine his face in the reflection of the street lights.

'When will I see you again?" she asked the question that countless women in her position had asked before her. Do you wish to see me again?" 'More than anything else in my life." She did not at that moment even ttiink of her children. He was the only thing in her existence.

'It will be dangerous." 'I know." 'The penalties if we are discovered - disgrace, ostracism, imprisonment. Your life would be destroyed." 'My life was a sham,' she said softly. 'Its destruction would be no great loss." He studied her features carefully, searching for insincerity. At last he was satisfied.

'I will send for you, when it is safe." 'I will come immediately, whenever you call." 'I must leave you now. Take me back." She parked at the side of Molly's house, in the shadow where they could not be observed from the road.

'Now the subterfuge and dissembling begins,' she thought calmly.

'I was right. It will never be the same again." He made no attempt to embrace her, it was not the African way.

He stared at her, the whites of his eyes gleaming like ivory in the half dark.

'You realize that when you choose me you choose the struggle?" he asked.

'Yes, I know that." 'You have become a warrior and you and your wants, even your life, are of no consequence. If you have to die for the struggle, I will not lift my hand to save you." She nodded. 'Yes, I know that." The nobility of the concept filled her chest and made it difficult for her to breathe so her voice was laboured as she whispered, 'Greater love hath no man - I will make any sacrifice you ask of me." Moses went to the guest bedroom which Molly had allocated to him, and as he washed his face in the basin Marcus Archer slipped into the room without knocking, closed the door and leaned against it, watching Moses in the mirror.

'Well?" he asked at last, as though he was reluctant to hear the answer.

'Just as we planned it." Moses dried his face on a clean towel.

'I hate the silly little bitch,' Marcus said softly.

'We agreed it was necessary." Moses selected a fresh shirt from the valise on his bed.

'I know we agreed,' Marcus said. 'It was my suggestion, if you remember, but-I do not have to like her for it." 'She is an instrument.

It is folly to let your personal feelings intrude." Marcus Archer nodded. In the end he hoped he could act like a true revolutionary, one of the steely hard men which the struggle needed, but his feelings for this man, Moses Gama, were stronger than all his political convictions.

He knew that it was completely one-sided. Over the years Moses Gama had used him as cynically and as calculatingly as he now planned to use the Courtney woman. His vast sexual appeal was to Moses Gama merely another weapon in his arsenal, another means of manipulating people. He could use it on men or women, young or old, no matter how attractive or unappealing, and Marcus admired him for the ability, and at the same time was devastated by it.

'We leave for the Witwatersrand tomorrow,' he said, as he pushed himself away from the door, for the moment controlling his jealousy.

'I have made the arrangements." 'So soon?" Moses asked.

'I have made the arrangements. We will travel by car." It was one of the problems which dogged their work. It was difficult for a black man to travel about the huge sub-continent, liable as he was at any time to demands to show his dompas and to interrogation when the authority realized that he was far from the domicile shown on the pass without apparent reason, or that the pass had not been stamped by an employer.

Moses' association with Marcus and the nominal employment he provided with the Chamber of Mines gave him valuable cover when it was necessary to travel, but they always needed couriers. That was one of the functions that Tara Courtney would perform. In addition she was by birth and by marriage highly placed, and the information she could provide would be of the greatest value in the planning.

Later, after she had proved herself, there would be other, more dangerous work.

In the end, Shasa Courtney realized, it was his mother's advice which would tip the fine balance and decide whether he accepted or rejected the offer that had been made to him during the springbok hunt on the open plains of the Orange Free State.

Shasa would have been the first to despise any other man of his age who was still firmly enmeshed in the maternal apron strings, but he never considered that this applied to him. The fact that Centaine Courtney-Malcomess was his mother was merely incidental. What influenced him was that she was the shrewdest financial and political brain he had access to; she was also his business partner and his only true confidante. To make such an important decision without consulting her never even occurred to him.

He waited a week after his return to Cape Town to let his own feelings distil out, and for an opportunity to have Centaine alone, for he was in no doubt as to what his stepfather's reaction would be to the proposal. Blaine Malcomess was the opposition representative on the parliamentary sub-committee examining the proposed establishment of an oil-from-coal project, part of the government's long-term plan to reduce the country's reliance on imported crude oil. The committee was going to take evidence on site, and for once Centaine was not accompanying her husband. That was the opportunity Shasa needed.

It was less than half an hour's drive from Weltevreden, across the Constantia Nek pass and down the other side of the mountains to the Atlantic seaboard where the home that Centaine had made for Blaine stood on five hundred acres of wild protea-covered mountainside that dropped steeply down to rocky headlands and white beaches. The original house, Rhodes Hill, had been built during Queen Victoria's reign by one of the old mining magnates from the Rand, but Centaine had stripped the interior and refurbished it completely.

She was waiting for Shasa on the verandah when he parked the Jaguar, and ran up the steps to embrace her.

'You're getting too thin,' she scolded him fondly. She had guessed from his telephone call that he wanted a serious discussion, and they had their own traditions. Centaine was dressed in an open-neck cotton blouse and slacks with comfortable hiking boots, and without discussing it she took his arm and they set out along the path that skirted her rose gardens and climbed the untended hillside.

The last part of the ascent was steep and the path rough, but Centaine took it without pause and came out on the summit ahead of him.

Her breathing was hardly altered, and within a minute had returned to normal. 'She keeps herself in wonderful condition, Heaven alone knows what she spends on health cures and potions, and she exercises like a professional athlete,' Shasa thought as he grinned down at her proudly.

He placed an arm around her small firm waist.

'Isn't it beautiful.*' Centaine leaned lightly against him and looked out over the cold green Benguela current, as it swirled, decked in lacy foam, around Africa's heel, which like a medieval knight was spurred and armoured with black rock. 'This is one of my favourite places." 'Whoever would have guessed it,' Shasa murmured, and led her to the flat lichen-covered rock that was her seat.

She perched up on it, hugging her knees and he sprawled on the bed of moss below her. They were both silent for a few moments, and Shasa wondered how often they had sat like this at this special place of hers, and how many heavy decisions they had taken here.

'Do you remember Manfred De La Rey?" he asked suddenly, but he was unprepared for her reaction. She started and looked down at him, colour draining from her cheeks, with an expression he could not fathom.

'Is something wrong, Mater?" He began to rise, but she gestured at him to remain seated.

'Why do you ask about him?" she demanded, but he did not reply directly.

'Isn't it strange how our paths seem to cross with his family? Ever since his father rescued us, when I was an infant and we were castaways living with the Bushmen in the Kalahari." 'We needn't go over all that again,' Centaine stopped him, and her tone was brusque. Shasa realized he had been tactless. Manfred's father had robbed the H'am Mine of almost a million pounds' worth of diamonds, an act of vengeance for fancied wrongs that he had convinced himself Centaine had inflicted on him. For that crime he had served almost fifteen years of a life sentence for robbery, and had been pardoned only when the Nationalist government had come to power in 1948. At the same time the Nationalists had pardoned many other Afrikaners serving sentences for treason and sabotage and arched robbery, convicted by the Smuts' government when they had attempted to disrupt the country's war effort against Nazi Germany. However, the stolen diamonds had never been recovered, and their loss had almost destroyed the fortune that Centaine Courtney had built up with so much labour, sacrifice and heartache.

'Why do you mention Manfred De La Rey?" she repeated her question.

'I had an invitation from him to a meeting. A clandestine meeting - all very cloak and dagger." 'Did you go?" He nodded slowly. 'We met at a farm in the Free State, and there were two other cabinet ministers present." 'Did you speak to Manfred alone?" she asked, and the tone of the question, the fact that she used his Christian name, caught Shasa's attention. Then he remembered the unexpected question that Manfred De La Rey had put to him.

'Has your mother ever spoken about me?" he had asked, and faced by Centaine's present reaction to his name, the question took on a new significance.

'Yes, Mater, I spoke to him alone." 'Did he mention me?" Centaine demanded, and Shasa gave a little chuckle of puzzlement.

'He asked the same question - whether you ever spoke about him.

Why are the two of you so interested in each other?" Centaine's expression turned bleak, and he saw her close her mind to him. It was a mystery he would not solve by pursuing it openly, he would have to stalk it.

'They made me a proposition." And he saw her interest reawaken.

'Manfred? A proposition? Tell me." 'They want me to cross the floor." She nodded slowly, showing little surprise and not immediately rejecting the idea. He knew that if Blaine were here it would have been different. Blaine's sense of honour, his rigid principles, would have left no room for manoeuvre. Blaine was a Smuts man, heart and blood, and even though the old field-marshal had died of a broken heart soon after the Nationalists unseated him and took over the reins of power, still Blaine was for ever true to the old man's memory.

'I can guess why they want you,' Centaine said slowly. 'They need a top financial brain, an organizer and a businessman. It's the one thing they lack in their cabinet." He nodded. She had seen it instantly, and his enormous respect for her was confirmed yet again.

'What price are they willing to pay?" she demanded.

'A cabinet appointment - minister of mines and industry." He saw her eyes go out of focus, and cross in a myopic stare as she gazed out to sea. He knew what that expression meant. Centaine was calculating, juggling with the future, and he waited latiently until her eyes snapped back into focus.

'Can you see any reason for refusing?" she asked.

'How about my political principles?" 'How do they differ from theirs?" 'I am not an Afrikaner." 'That might be to your advantage. You will be their token Englishman. That will give you a special status. You will have a freer rein.

They will be more reluctant to fire you than if you were one of their own." 'I don't agree with their native policy, this apartheid thing of theirs, it's just financially unsound." 'Good Lord, Shasa. You don't believe in equal political rights for blacks, do you? Not even Jannie Smuts wanted that. You don't want another Chaka ruling us, black judges and a black police force working for a black dictator?" She shuddered. 'We'd get pretty short shrift from them." 'No, Mater, of course not. But this apartheid thing is merely a device for grabbing the whole pie. We have to give them a slice of it, we can't hog it all. That's a certain recipe for eventual bloody revolution." 'Very well, chbri. If you are in the cabinet, you can see to it that they get a fair crack of the whip." He looked dubious, and made a side-show of selecting a cigarette from his gold case and lighting it.

'You have a special talent, Shasa,' Centaine went on persuasively.

'It's your duty to use it for the good of all." Still he hesitated, he wanted her to declare herself fully. He had to know if she wanted this as much as he did.

'We can be honest with each other, chbri. This is what we have worked towards since you were a child. Take this job and do it well, after that who knows what else may follow." They were both silent then, they knew what they hoped would follow. They could not help themselves, it was their nature always to strive towards the highest pinnacle.

'What about Blaine?" Shasa said at last. 'How will he take it? I don't look forward to telling him." 'I'll do that,' she promised. 'But you will have to tell Tara." 'Tara,' he sighed. 'Now that will be a problem." They were silent again, until Centaine asked, 'How will you do it?

If you cross the floor it will expose you to a blaze of hostile publicity." So it was agreed without further words, only the means remained to be discussed.

'At the next general election I will simply campaign in different colours,' Shasa said. 'They will give me a safe seat." 'So we have a little time to arrange the details then." They discussed them for another hour, planning with all the meticulous attention that had made them such a formidably successful team over the years, until Shasa looked up at her.

'Thank you,' he said simply. 'What would I ever do without you!

You are tougher and cleverer than any man I know." 'Get away with you,' she smiled. 'You know how I hate praise." They both laughed at that absurdity.

'I'll walk you down, Mater." But she shook her head.

'I've still got some thinking to do. Leave me here." She watched him go down the hill and her love and pride was so intense as to almost suffocate her.

'He is everything I ever wanted in a son, and he has fulfilled all my expectations, a thousand times over. Thank you, my son, thank you for the joy you have always given me." Then abruptly the words 'my son' triggered another reaction, and her mind darted back to the earlier part of their conversation.

'Do you remember Manfred De La ReyT Shasa had asked her, but he could never know what the answer to that must be.

'Can a woman ever forget the child she bears?" she whispered the reply aloud, but her words were lost on the wind and on the sound of the green surf breaking on the rocky shore below the hill.

Every pew of the church was filled. The women's bonnets were colourful as a field of wild Namaqua daisies in the springtime, while the men's suits were sombre and severe. All their faces were upturned towards the magnificent carved pulpit of polished black stinkwood in which stood the most reverend Tromp Bierman, moderator of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa.

Manfred De La Rey considered once again how much Uncle Tromp had aged in the years since the war. He had never fully recovered from the pneumonia he had contracted in the concentration camp at Koffiefontein, where that English-lover Jannie Smuts had incarcerated him with hundreds of other patriotic Afrikaners for the duration of the English war with Germany.

Uncle Tromp's beard was snow white now, even more spectacular than the curly black bush it once had been. The hair on his head, also white, had been close cropped to conceal its sparsity and it glittered like powdered glass on the high-domed pate, but his eyes were full of fire as he glowered at his congregation, and his voice that had earned him the sobriquet 'The Trumpet of God' had lost none of its power and rolled like a cannonade against the high-arched ceiling of the nave.

Uncle Tromp could still pack the pews, and Manfred nodded soberly but proudly as the thunderous outpouring burst over his head. He was not really listening to the words, merely enjoying the sense of continuity that filled him, the world was a safe good place when Uncle Tromp was in his pulpit. Then a man could trust in the God of the Volk which he evoked with so much certainty, and believe in the divine intervention which directed his life.

Manfred De La Rey sat in the ant pew at the right side of the nave nearest the aisle. It was the most prestigious position in the congregation, and rightly so for Manfred was the most powerful and important man in the church. The pew was reserved for him and his family, and their names were gold-leafed on the hymn books that lay beside each seat.

Heidi, his wife, was a magnificent woman, tall and strong, her bare forearms below the puff sleeves were smooth and firm, her bosom large and shapely, her neck long and her thick golden hair plaited into ropes that were twisted up under the wide-brimmed black hat. Manfred had met her in Berlin when he had been the gold medallist light heavyweight boxer at the Olympic Games in 1936, and Adolf Hitler himself had attended their wedding. They had been separated during the war years, but afterwards Manfred had brought her out to Africa with their son, little Lothar.

Lothar was almost twelve years old now, a fine strong boy, blond as his mother, and upright as his father. He sat very straight in the family pew, his hair neatly slicked down with Brylcreem and the stiff white collar biting into his neck. Like his father, he would be an athlete, but he had chosen the game of rugby at which to excel. His three younger sisters, blond and pretty in a fresh-faced healthy way, sat beyond him, their faces framed by the hoods of their traditional voortrekker bonnets and full-length skirts reaching to their ankles.

Manfred liked them to wear national dress on Sundays.

Uncle Tromp ended with a salvo that thrilled his flock with the threat of hell-fire, and they rose to sing the final hymn. Sharing the hymn book with Heidi, Manfred examined her handsome Germanic features. She was a wife to be proud of, a good housekeeper and mother, a fine companion whom he could trust and confide in, and a glittering ornament to his political career. A woman like this could stand beside any man, even the prime minister of a powerful and prosperous nation. He let himself dwell on that secret thought. Yet everything was possible, he was a young man, the youngest by far in the cabinet, and he had never made a political mistake. Even his wartime activities gave him credit and prestige with his peers, although few people outside the inner circle knew of the full role he had played in the militant anti-British pro-Nazi secret army of the Ossewa Brandwag.

Already they were whispering that he was the coming man, and it was evident in the huge respect that was shown him as the service ended and the congregation left the church. Manfred stood, with Heidi beside him, on the lawns outside the church while one after another important and influential men came up to deliver social invitations, to ask a favour, to congratulate him on his speech intro ducing the new Criminal Law Amendment Bill in the House, or simply to pay their respects. It was almost twenty minutes before he was able to leave the church grounds.

The family walked home. It was only two blocks under the green oaks that lined the streets of Stellenbosch, the small university town which was the citadel of Afrikaner intellectualism and culture. The three girls walked ahead, Lothar followed them and Manfred with Heidi on his arm brought up the rear, stopping every few paces to acknowledge a greeting or exchange a few words with a neighbour or a friend or one of Manfred's constituents.

Manfred had purchased the house when they had arrived back from Germany after the war. Although it stood in a small garden, almost facing on to the street, it was a large house with spacious high-ceilinged rooms that suited the family well. Manfred had never seen any reason to change it, and he felt comfortable with Heidi's formal Teutonic furnishings. Now Heidi and the girls rushed through to help the servants in the kitchen, and Manfred went around the side of the house to the garage. He never used his official chauffeurdriven limousine at weekends, and he brought out his personal Chevrolet sedan and drove to fetch his father for the family Sunday luncheon.

The old man seldom attended church, especially when the Reverend Tromp Bierman was preaching. Lothar De La Rey lived alone on the smallholding that Manfred had bought for him on the outskirts of the town at the foot of the Helshoogte Pass. He was out in the peach orchard pottering with his beehives and Manfred paused by the gate to watch him with a mixture of pity and deep affection.

Lothar De La Rey had once been tall and straight as the grandson who now bore his name, but the arthritis he had contracted during ú the years in Pretoria Central Prison had bowed and twisted his body and turned his single remaining hand to a grotesque claw. His left arm was amputated above the elbow, too high to fit an artificial limb. He had lost it during the robbery that led to his imprisonment.

He was dressed in dirty blue dungarees, with a stained brown hat on his head, the brim drooped over his eyes. One sleeve of the dungaree was pinned back.

Manfred opened the gate and went down into the peach orchard where the old man was stooping over one of the wooden hives.

'Good morning, Pa,' Manfred said softly. 'You aren't ready yet." His father straightened up and stared at him vaguely, and then started with surprise.

'Manie! Is it Sunday again already?" 'Come along, Pa. Let's get you tidied up. Heidi is cooking a roast of pork - you know how you love pork." He took the old man's hand, and led him unprotestingly up to the cottage.

'It's a mess, Pa." Manfred looked around the tiny bedroom with distaste. The bed had obviously been slept in repeatedly without being remade, soiled clothing was strewn on the floor and used plates and mugs stood on the bedside table. 'What happened to the new maid Heidi found for you.9' 'I didn't like her, cheeky brown devil,' Lothar muttered. 'Stealing the sugar, drinking my brandy. I fired her." Manfred went to the cupboard and found a clean white shirt. He helped the old man undress.

'When did you last bath, PaT he asked gently.

'Hey?" Lotlar peered at him.

'It doesn't matter." Manfred buttoned his father's shirt. 'Heidi will find another maid for you. You must try and keep her longer than a week this time." It wasn't the old man's fault, Manfred reminded himself. It was the prison that had affected his mind. He had been a proud free man, a soldier and a huntsman, a creature of the wild Kalahari Desert. You cannot cage a wild animal. Heidi had wanted to have the old man to live with them, and Manfred felt guilty that he had refused. It would have meant buying a larger home, but that was the least of it. Manfred could not afford to have Lothar dressed like a coloured labourer wandering vaguely around the house, coming into his study uninvited when he had important visitors with him, slobbering his food and making inane statements at the dinner table when he was entertaining. No, it was better for all of them, the old man especially, that he lived apart. Heidi would find another maid to take care of him, but he felt corrosive guilt as he took Lothar's arm and led him out to the Chevrolet.

He drove slowly, almost at a walking pace, steeling himself to do what he had been unable to do during the years since Lothar had been pardoned and freed from prison at Manfred's instigation.

'Do you remember how it was in the old days, Pa? When we fished together at Walvis Bay?" he asked, and the old man's eyes shone. The distant past was more real to him than the present, and he reminisced happily, without hesitation recalling incidents and the names of people and places from long ago.

'Tell me about my mother, Pa,' Manfred invited at last, and he hated himself for leading the old man into such a carefully prepared trap.

'Your mother was a beautiful woman,' Lothar nodded happily, repeating what he had told Manfred so many times since childhood.

'She had hair the colour of the desert dunes, with the early sun shining on them. A fine woman of noble German birth." 'Pa,' Manfred said soly. 'You aren't telling me the truth, are you'?" He spoke as though to a naughty child. 'The woman you call my mother, the woman who was your wife, died years before I was born. I have a copy of the death certificate signed by the English doctor in the concentration camp. She died of diphtheria, the white sore throat." He could not look at his father as he said it, but stared ahead through the windscreen, until he heard a soft choking sound beside him and with alarm turned quickly. Lothar was weeping, tears slid down his withered old cheeks.

Tm sorry, Pa." Manfred pillled the Chevrolet off the road and switched off the engine. 'I shouldn't have said that." He pulled the white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to his father.

Lothar wiped his face slowly, but his hand was steady, and his wandering mind seemed to have been concentrated by the shock.

'How long have you known that she was your real mother?" he asked, and his voice was firm and sure. Manfred's soul quailed, he had hoped to hear his father deny it.

'She came to see me when first I stood for parliament. She blackmailed me, for her other son's sake. I had him in my power.

She threatened to expose the fact that I was her bastard son and destroy my candidacy if I acted against her other son. She dared me to ask you if it was not true, but I could not bring myself to do it." 'It's true,' Lothar nodded. 'I'm sorry, my son. I lied to you only to protect you." 'I know." Manfred reached across and took the bony hand as the old man went on.

'When I found her in the desert, she was so young and helpless and beautiful. I was young and lonely - it was just the two of us, and her infant, alone together in the desert. We fell in love." 'You don't have to explain,' Manfred told him, but Lothar seemed not to hear him.

'One night two wild Bushmen came into our camp. I thought they were marauders, come to steal our horses and oxen. I followed them, and caught up with them at dawn. I shot them down before I was within range of their poison arrows. It was the way we dealt with those dangerous little yellow animals in those days." 'Yes, Pa, I know." Manfred had read the history of his people's conflict with and extermination of the Bushmen tribes.

'I did not know it then, but she had lived with these same two little Bushmen before I found her. They had helped her survive the desert and tended her when she gave birth to her first child. She had come to love them, she even called them "old grandfather" and "old grandmother"." He shook his head wonderingly, still unable to comprehend this relationship of a white woman with savages. 'I did not know it, and I shot them without realizing what they meant to her. Her love for me changed to bitter hatred. I know now that her love could not have been very deep, perhaps it was only loneliness and gratitude and not love at all. After that she hated me, and the hatred extended to my child that she was carrying in her womb. To you, Manie. She made me take you away the moment you were born. She hated us both so deeply that she wanted never to set eyes on you. I cared for you after that." 'You were my father and my mother." Manfred bowed his head, ashamed and angry that he had forced the old man to relive those tragically cruel events. 'What you have told me explains so much that I could never understand." 'da." Lothar wiped fresh tears away with the white handkerchief.

'She hated me, but you see I still loved her. No matter how cruelly she treated me, I was obsessed with her. That was the reason why I committed the folly of the robbery. It was a madness and it cost me this arm/ He held up the empty sleeve. 'And my freedom. She is a hard woman. A woman without mercy. She will not hesitate to destroy anything or anybody who stands in her way. She is your mother, but be careful of her, Manie. Her hatred is a terrible thing." The old man reached across and seized his son's arm, shaking it in his agitation. 'You must have nothing to do with her, Manie. She will destroy you as she has destroyed me. Promise me you will never have anything to do with her or her family." 'I'm sorry, Pa,' Manfred shook his head. 'I am already tied to her through her son,' he hesitated to give voice to the next words, 'to my brother, to my half-brother, Shasa Courtney. It seems, Papa, that our bloodlines and our destinies are so closely tangled together that we can never be free of each other." 'Oh, my son, my son,' Lothar De La Rey lamented. 'Be careful please be careful." Manfred reached for the ignition key to start the engine, but paused before he touched it.

'Tell me, Pa. How do you feel for this woman now - for my mother?" Lothar was silent for a moment before he answered. 'I hate her almost as much as I still love her." 'It is strange that we can love and hate at the same time." Manfred ..... shook, his__head_ slightly- with-vender.--",-hate- her- for- w'oat - she -has done to you. I hate her for all the things she stands for, and yet her blood calls to mine. At the end, when all else is put aside, Centaine Courtney is my mother and Shasa Courtney is my brother. Love or hatred - which will prevail, Papa?" 'I wish I could tell you, my son,' Lothar whispered miserably. 'I can only repeat what I have already told you. Be careful of them, Manie. Mother and son, they are dangerous adversaries." For almost twenty years Marcus Archer had owned the old farmhouse at Rivonia. He had purchased the five-acre smallholding before the area became fashionable. Now the fairways and greens of the Johannesburg Country Club, the most exclusive private club on the Witwatersrand, backed right up against Marcus' boundary. The trustees of the Country Club had offered him fifteen times his original purchase price, over œ100,000, but Marcus steadfastly refused to sell.

On all the other large plots that comprised the Rivonia Estate, the prosperous new owners - entrepreneurs and stockbrokers and successful doctors - had built large pretentious homes, most of them in the low sprawling ranch house style which was the rage, or with pink clay tile roofs, imaginative copies of Mexican haciendas or Mediterranean villas, and they had surrounded the main buildings with paddocks and stables, with tennis courts and swimming-pools and wide lawns that the winter highveld frosts burned the colour of cured tobacco leaves.

Marcus Archer had re-thatched the roof of the old farmhouse, whitewashed the walls, and planted frangipani and bougainvillaea and other flowering shrubs and let the grounds grow wild and unkempt, so that even from its own boundary fence the house was completely screened.

Although the area was now very much a bastion of the wealthy white elite, the Country Club employed a large staff of waiters and kitchen helpers and groundsmen and golf caddies, so black faces were not remarkable, as they might have been on the streets of some of the other wealthy white suburbs. Marcus's friends and political allies could come and go without arousing unwelcome interest. So Puck's Hill, as Marcus had recently renamed his farmhouse, gradually became the rallying ground for some of the most active of the African Nationalist movements, the leaders of black consciousness and their white compatriots, the remnants of the defunct Communist Party.

It was only natural, therefore, that Puck's Hill was chosen as the headquarters for the final planning and coordination of the black disobedience campaign that was about to begin. However, it was not a unified group that came together under Marcus Archer's roof, for although their stated final objective was the same, their separate visions of the future differed widely.

Firstly, there was the old guard of the African National Congress headed by Dr Xuma. They were the conservatives, committed to plodding negotiation with white civil servants within the unyieldin established system.

'You people have been doing that since 1912 when the ANC was formed,' Nelson Mandela glared at him. 'It is time to move on to confrontation, to force our will upon the Boers." Nelson Mandela was a young lawyer, practising on the Witwatersrand in partnership with another activist named Oliver Tambo.

Together they were making a strong challenge for the leadership of the young Turks in the Congress hierarchy.

'It is time for us to move on to direct action." Nelson Mandela leaned forward in his chair and looked down the long kitchen table.

The kitchen was the largest room in Puck's Hill, and all their meetings were held in it. 'We have drawn up a programme of boycott and strike and civil disobedience." Mandela was speaking in English, and Moses Gama sitting near the end of the table watched him impassively, but all the time his mind was racing ahead of the speaker, assessing and evaluating. He as much as any of them present was aware of the undertones in the room. There was not a single black man present who did not cherish, somewhere in his soul, the dream of one day JeadJng aJJ te others, of one day being hailed as the paramount chief of all southern Africa.

Yet the fact that Mandela spoke in English pointed up the single most poignant fact that they had to face: they were all different.

Mandela was a Tembu, Xuma was a Zulu, Moses Gama himself was an Ovambo, and there were half a dozen other tribes represented in the room.

'It would be a hundred times easier if we blacks were all one people,' Moses thought, and then despite himself he glanced uneasily at the Zulus, sitting together as a group across the table. They were the majority, not only in this room, but in the country as a whole.

What if they somehow formed an alliance with the whites? - It was a disquieting thought, but he put it firmly aside. The Zulus were the proudest, most independent of the warrior tribes. Before the white man came, they had conquered all their neighbouring peoples and held them subjugated. The Zulu King Chaka had called them his dogs. Because of their multitudes and their warrior tradition, it was almost certain that the first black president of South Africa would be a Zulu, or someone with very close ties to the Zulu nation. Ties of marriage - not for the first time, Moses thought about that possibility with narrowed eyes, it was time he married anyway. He was almost forty-five years of age. A Zulu maiden of royal blood? He stored the idea for future consideration, and concentrated once again on what Nelson Mandela was saying.

The man had charisma and a presence, and he was articulate and persuasive, a rival - a very dangerous rival. Moses recognized that fact as he had often before. They were all rivals. However, the Youth League of the ANC was Nelson Mandela's power base, the hotheads, young men burning for action, and even now Mandela was proposing caution, tempering his call for action with reservations.

'There must be no gratuitous violence,' he was saying. 'No damage to private property, no danger to human life--' and although Moses Gama nodded wisely, he wondered how much appeal that would have with the rank and file of the Youth League. Would they not prefer the offer of a bloody and glorious victory? That was something else to be considered.

'We must show our people the way, we must demonstrate that we are all one in this enterprise,' Mandela was saying now, and Moses Gama smiled inwardly. The total membership of the ANC was seven thousand, while his secret union of mineworkers numbered almost ten times that figure. It would be as well to remind Mandela and the rest of them of his overwhelming support amongst the best paid and most strategically placed of all the black population. Moses turned slightly and looked at the man who sat beside him, and felt an untoward pang of affection. Hendrick Tabaka had been beside him like this for twenty years.

Swart Hendrick was a big man, as tall as Moses but wider across the shoulder, and heavier around the middle, with thick muscled limbs. His head was round and bald as a cannonball and laced with scars from ancient fights and battles. His front teeth were missing, and Moses remembered how the white man who had done that to him had died.

He was Moses' half-brother, son of the same father, a chief of the Ovambo, but of a different mother. He was the one man in all the world whom Moses trusted, a trust not lightly given but earned over all of those twenty years. He was the only black man in this room who was not a rival, but was instead both comrade and loyal servant.

Swart Hendrick nodded at him unsmilingly and Moses realized that Nelson Mandela had finished speaking and that they were all watching him, waiting for him to reply. He rose slowly to his feet, aware of the impression he was making, and he could see the respect in their expressions. Even his enemies in the room could not entirely conceal the awe which he inspired.

'Comrades,' he began. 'My brothers. I have listened to what my good brother Nelson Mandela has said and I agree with every word of it.

There are just a few points which I feel I must add--' and he spoke for nearly an hour.

Firstly he proposed to them a detailed plan to call a series of wildcat strikes in the mines where the labour force was controlled by his unions.

'The strikes will be in sympathy with the defiance campaign, but we will not call a general strike which would give the Boers an excuse for heavy-handed action. We will bring out only a few mines at any one time, and then only for a limited period, before going back to work, just enough to thoroughly disrupt gold production and to exasperate management. We will nip at their heels like a terrier harassing a lion, ready to spring away the instant he turns. But it will be a warning. It will let them realize our strength, and what would happen if we called a general strike." He saw how they were impressed with his planning, and when he asked for a vote to confirm his proposal, he was given unanimous approval. It was another small victory, another addition to his prestige and influence within the group.

'In addition to the strike action, I would like to propose a boycott of all white-owned business on the Witwatersrand for the duration of the defiance campaign. The people will be allowed to buy their necessities of life from shops owned and run by black businessmen only." Hendrick Tabaka owned over fifty large general dealer stores in the black townships along the gold reef, and Moses Gama was his sleeping partner. He saw the others at the table baulk at the suggestion, and Mandela objected.

'It will cause undue hardship amongst our people,' he said. 'Many of them live in areas where they can trade only with white stores." 'Then they must travel to areas where there are black-owned businesses, and it will do our people no harm to learn that the struggle demands sacrifices from all of us,' Moses answered him quietly.

'A boycott such as you propose would be impossible to enforce,' Mandela insisted, and this time, Hendrick Tabaka replied to the objection.

'We will use the Buffaloes to make 'sure the people obey,' he growled, and now the more conservative members of the Council looked positively unhappy.

The Buffaloes were the union enforcers. Hendrick Tabaka was their commander and they had a reputation for swift, ruthless action.

They were too close to being a private political army for the peace of mind of some of the other men in the room, and Moses Gama frowned slightly. It had been a mistake for Hendrick to mention his Buffaloes at all. Moses hid his chagrin when the vote to declare a boycott of white dealers on the Witwatersrand and enforce it strictly was defeated. It was a victory for Mandela and his moderates. So far the score was even, but Moses was not finished yet.

'There is one other matter I would like to bring up before we adjourn. I would like to consider what lies beyond the defiance campaign. What action do we take if the campaign is crushed by ruthless white police action, and followed by an onslaught on the black leaders and the promulgation of even more draconian laws of domination?" he asked. 'Will our response always be mild and subservient, will we always take off'our caps and mutter "Yes,ømy white baas! No, my white baas"?" He paused, and studied the others, seeing the disquiet he had expected in the faces of old Xuma and the conservatives, but he had not spoken for them. At the far end of the table there were two young men, still in their early twenties. They were observers from the executive of the Youth League of the ANC and Moses knew them both to be militants longing for fierce action. What he was about to say now was for them, and he knew they would take his words back to the other young warriors. It could begin the erosion of Nelson Mandela's support amongst the youth, and the transference of that support to a leader who was prepared to give them the blood and fire for which they hungered.

'I propose the formation of a military wing of the ANC,' Moses said, 'a fighting force of trained men, ready to die for the struggle.

Let us call this army Umkhonto we Sizwe, the Spear of the Nation. Let us forge the spear secretly. Let us hone its edge to razor-sharpness, keeping it hidden, but always ready to strike." He used that deep thrilling tone of his, and he saw the two young men at the end of the table stir eagerly and their faces begin to glow with expectation. 'Let us choose our brightest and fiercest young men, and from them form the impis as our forefathers did." He paused, and his expression became scornful. 'There are old men amongst us, and they are wise. I respect their grey hairs and their experience. But remember, comrades, the future belongs to the young. There is a time for fine words, and we have heard them spoken at our councils - often, too often. There is a time also for action, bold action and that is the world of the young." When at last Moses Gama sat down again he saw that he had moved them all deeply, each in his separate way. Old Xuma was shaking his grey pate, and his lips quivered. He knew his day had passed. Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo watched him impassively, but he saw the fury in their hearts beamed through their eyes. The battle lines had been drawn, and they had recognized their enemy.

Yet, most important of all, he saw the expressions on the faces of the two Youth Leaguers. It was the look of men who had found a new star to follow.

'Since when have you conceived such a burning interest in archaeological anthropology?" Shasa Courtney asked as he shook out the pages of the Cape Times, and turned from the financial section to the sports pages at the rear.

'It was one of my majors,' Tara pointed out reasonably. 'May I pour you another cup of coffee?" 'Thank you, my dear." He sipped the coffee before he spoke again.

'How long do you intend being away?" 'Professor Dart will be giving a series of four lectures on successive evenings, covering all the excavations from his original discovery of the Taung skull, right up to the present time. He has been able to correlate the whole mass of material with one of these new electronic computers." Behind his newspaper Shasa smiled reflectively as he remembered Marylee from MIT and her IBM 701. He wouldn't mind another visit to Johannesburg himself in the near future.

'It's absolutely riveting stuff,' Tara was saying, 'and it all fits in with the new discoveries at Sterkfontein and Makapansgat. It really does seem that southern Africa was the true cradle of mankind, and that Australopithecus is our direct ancestor." 'So you will be away for at least four days?" Shasa interrupted.

'What about the children?" 'I have spoken to your mother. She will be happy to come across and stay at Weltevreden while I am away." 'I won't be able to join you,' Shasa pointed out. 'The third reading of the new Criminal Law Amendment Bill is coming up, and all hands are needed in the House. I could have flown you up in the Mosquito - now you'll have to take the commercial flight on the Viscount." 'What a pity,' Tara sighed. 'You would have enjoyed it. Professor Dart is a fascinating speaker." x 'You'll stay at the Carlton suite, of course. It's standing empty." 'Molly has arranged for me to stay with a friend of hers at Rivonia." 'One of her Bolshies, I presume." Shasa frowned slightly. 'Try not to get yourself arrested again." He had been waiting for an opportunity to talk about her political activities and he lowered the newspaper and looked at her thoughtfully, then realized it was not the correct moment and merely nodded. 'Your grass orphans and your widower will try to bumble along without you for a few days." 'With your mother and sixteen servants at hand, I have no doubt you will survive,' she told him crisply, letting her irritation show through for an instant.

Marcus Archer met her at the airport. He was affable and amusing and while they listened to a Mozart programme on the car radio as they drove out to Rivonia, Marcus discussed the composer's life and works. He knew much more about music than she did, but although she listened to his dissertation with pleasure and attention, she was nevertheless aware of his enmity. It was well concealed, but flashed out in a barbed remark or a spiced glance. He never mentioned Moses Gama's name, and nor did she. Molly had said he was a homosexual, the first she had ever encountered to her certain knowledge, and she wondered if they all hated women.

Puck's Hill was a delight, with its shaggy thatch and unkempt grounds, so different from Weltevreden's carefully manicured splendour.

'You'll find him at the end of the front stoep,' Marcus said, as he parked under one of the bluegums at the rear of the house. It was the first time he had referred to Moses, but even then he did not use his name. He wandered away and left her standing.

She had not known how to dress, though she imagined that he would not approve of slacks. So she had chosen a long loose skirt made of cheap but colourful trade print that she had purchased in Swaziland, and with it wore a simple green cotton blouse with sandals on her feet.

Again, she had not been sure whether she should wear make-up, and she had compromised with a pale pink lipstick and just a touch of mascara. She thought she looked well enough in the mirror of the women's room at the airport as she combed her dense chestnut curls, but was suddenly stricken by the thought that he would find her pale skin insipid and unattractive.

Now standing alone in the sunshine, she was once again attacked by doubts and that terrible sense of inadequacy. If Marcus had been there, she would have begged him to drive her back to the airport, but he had disappeared and so she summoned up all her courage and walked slowly around the side of the whitewashed house.

She paused at the corner and looked down the long covered verandah. Moses Gama was sitting at a table at the far end with his back to her. The table was piled with books and writing materials.

He was wearing a casual white shirt with open neck that contrasted with the marvelous anthracite of his skin. His head was bowed and he was writing rapidly on a block of notepaper.

Timidly she stepped up on to the verandah and although her approach was noiseless, he sensed her presence and turned abruptly when she was half-way down the verandah. He did not smile, but she thought she saw pleasure inhis gaze as he stood up and came to meet her. He did not attempt to embrace her, or kiss her, and she was pleased, for it confirmed his differentness. Instead he led her to the second chair placed beside his table, and seated her in it.

'Are you well?" he asked. 'Are your children well?" The innate African courtesy, always the enquiry and then the offer of refreshment, 'Let me give you a cup of tea." He poured from the tray already set on his cluttered desk, and she sipped with pleasure.

'Thank you for coming,' he said.

'I came as soon as I received your message from Molly, as I promised I would." 'Will you always keep your promises to me?" 'Always,' she answered with simple sincerity, and he studied her face.

'Yes,' he nodded. 'I think you will." She could hold his gaze no longer, for it seemed to sear her soul and lay it bare. She looked down at the table top, at the closely written sheets of his handwriting.

'A manifesto,' he said, following her gaze. 'A blueprint for the future." He selected half a dozen sheets and handed them to her. She set aside her tea cup and took them from his hand, shivering slightly as their fingers touched. His skin was cool - that was one of the things that she remembered.

She read the sheets, her attention becoming fastened upon them more firmly the more she read, and when she finished them, she lifted her eyes to his face again.

'You have a poetry in your choice of words that makes the truth shine more luminously,' she whispered.

They sat on the cool verandah, while outside the brilliant highveld sun threw shadows black and crisp as paper cut-outs beneath the trees and the noonday swooned in the heat, and they talked.

There were no trivialities in their discussion, everything he said was thrilling and cogent, and he seemed to inspire her for her replies and' her own observations she knew were measured and lucid and she saw she had aroused and held his interest. She no longer was aware of her small vanities of dress and cosmetics, all that mattered now were the words that they exchanged and the cocoon they wove out of them. With a start she realized that the day had slipped away unnoticed and the short African twilight was upon them. Marcus came to fetch her and show her to her sparsely furnished bedroom.

'We will leave for the museum in twenty minutes,' he told her.

In the lecture theatre of the Transvaal museum the three of them sat near the back. There were half a dozen other blacks in the crowded audience, but Marcus sat between the two of them. A black man beside a white woman would have excited interest, and certain hostility. Tara found it difficult to concentrate on the eminent pro lessor's address, and though she glanced in his direction only once or twice, it was Moses Gama who occupied all her thoughts.

Back at Puck's Hill they sat late in the cavernous kitchen, while Marcus hovered over the Ago stove, joining in their conversation while he produced a meal that even in her preoccupation Tara realized was as good as anything that had ever come out of the kitchens of Weltevreden.

It was after midnight when Marcus stood up abruptly.

'I will see you in the morning,' he said, and the look he gave Tara was once again spiced with venom. She could not understand how she had offended him, but soon it did not matter for Moses took her hand.

'Come,' he said softly, and she thought her legs might not support her weight.

Long afterwards she lay pressed to him, her body bathed in sweat and her nerves still spasming and twitching uncontrollably.

'Never,' she whispered, when she could speak again. 'I have never known anyone like you. You teach me things about myself that I never suspected. You are a magician, Moses Gama. How do you know so much about a woman?" He chuckled softly. 'You know we are entitled to many wives. If a man cannot keep them all happy at the same time, then his life becomes a torment. He has to learn." 'Do you have many wives?" she asked.

'Not yet,' he answered. 'But one day --' 'I will hate every one of them." 'You disappoint me,' he said. 'Sexual jealousy is a silly European emotion. If I were to detect it in you, I would despise you." 'Please,' she said quietly, 'never despise me." 'Then never give me reason, woman,' he commanded, and she knew she was his to command.

She realized that the first day and night with him, spent alone and uninterrupted, was exceptional. She realized also that he must have set the time aside for her, and it must have been difficult to do so for there were others, hundreds of others, demanding his attention.

He was like one of the ancient African kings holding tribal court on the verandah of the old house. There were always men and women waiting patiently under the bluegum trees in the yard for their turn to speak to him. They were of all types and ages, from simple uneducated folk newly arrived from the reserves in the country to sophisticated lawyers and businessmen in dark suits arriving at Puck's Hill in their own automobiles.

They had one thing in common only - the deference and respec they showed Moses Gama. Some of them clapped their hands in th traditional greeting and called him Babo or Nkosi, father or lord others shook his hand in the European manner, but Moses greeted each of them in their own dialect. 'He must speak twenty languages,' Tara wondered.

Mostly he allowed Tara to sit quietly beside his table and he explained her presence with a quiet word. 'She is a friend - you may speak." However, twice he asked her to leave while he spoke to his more important visitors and once when a great black bull of a man, bald and scarred and gap-toothed, arrived in a shiny new Ford sedan, he excused them.

'This is Hendrick Tabaka, my brother,' he said, and the two of them left the verandah and strolled side by side in the sunlit garden just out of earshot of where Tara sat.

What she saw during those days impressed her immensely and confirmed her feelings of reverence for this man. Everything he did, every word he uttered marked him as different, and the respect and adulation showered upon him by his fellow Africans proved that they also recognized that he was the giant of the future.

Tara felt awed that he had selected her for special attention, and yet already saddened by the certain knowledge that she could never have for herself alone any part of him. He belonged to his people, and she must be grateful for the precious grains of his time which she could glean for herself.

Even the evenings that followed, unlike that first evening, were crowded with people and events. Until long after midnight they sat at the table in the kitchen, sometimes as many as twenty of them at one time, smoking and laughing and eating and talking. Such talk, such ideas that lit the gloomy room and shimmered like angels' wings in the air around their heads. Then later, in the quiet dark hours, they made love and she felt as though her body no longer belonged to her but that he had taken it for his own, and devoured it like some darkly beloved predator.

She must have met a hundred new faces in those three short days and nights, and though some of them were hazy and made little lasting impression, it seemed as though she had become a member of a large diffuse new family, and because of the patronage of Moses Gama, she was immediately accepted and accorded complete unquestioning trust by both black and white.

On the last evening before her return to the dream world at Weltevreden, there was a guest beside her at the kitchen table to whom Tara took an instant unqualified liking. She was a young woman, at before. So natural and relaxed and,' sh6 hesitated, 'just like an elder sister or a dear friend." 'A dear friend. Yes, I like that,' Tara agreed. 'And Puck's Hill is probably one of the few places in the whole of this country where we could meet and talk like this." Involuntarily both of them looked up towards the head of the long kitchen table. Moses Gama was watching them intently, and Tara felt her stomach flop over like a stranded fish. For a few moments there, she had been totally engrossed with the Zulu girl, but now her feelings for Moses Gama flooded back at full ebb. She forgot Vicky, until the girl spoke quietly beside her. 'He is a great man - our hope for the future." Tara glanced at her sideways. Vicky Dinizulu's face glowed with hero worship as she smiled shyly at Moses Gama, and jealousy struck Tara such a sickening blow in the pit of her stomach, that for a moment she believed she was going to be physically ill.

The jealousy and terror of imminent separation persisted even after Tara was alone with Moses that night. When he made love to her she wanted to hold him within her for all eternity, knowing that this was the only time that he truly belonged to her. Too soon she felt the great dam burst and flood her and she cried out, pleading for it never to end, but her cry was incoherent and without sense, and then he was gone from within her and she was desolated.

She thought he had fallen asleep, and she lay and listened to his quiet breathing, holding him in the circle of her arms, but he was awake and he spoke suddenly, startling her.

'You were speaking to Victoria Dinizulu,' he said, and it took an effort for her to cast her mind back to the early part of the evening.

'What did you think of her?" he persisted.

'She is a lovely young woman. Intelligent and obviously dedicated.

I like her very much." She tried to be objective, but the sick jealous feeling was there deep in her belly.

'I had her invited,' Moses said. 'It was the first time I have met her." Tara wanted to ask, 'Why? - Why did you invite her?" But she remained silent, dreading the reply, She knew her instincts had been correct.

'She is of the royal house of Zulu,' he said softly.

'Yes. She told me,' Tara whispered.

'She is well favoured, as I was told she was, and her .mother had many sons. They breed many sons in the Dinizulu line. She will make a good wife." 'Wife?" Tara breathed. She had not expected that.

'I need the alliance with the Zulus, they are the largest and most powerful tribe. I will begin the negotiations with her family immediately. I will send Hendrick to Ladyburg to see her father and make the arrangements. It will be difficult, he is one of the old school, dead set against mixed tribal marriages. It must be a wedding that will impress the tribe, and Hendrick will convince the old man of the wisdom of it." 'But, but,' Tara found she was stuttering. 'You hardly know the girl. You spoke barely a dozen words to her all evening." 'What does that have to do with it?" His tone was genuinely puzzled, and he rolled away from her and switched on the bedside light, dazzling her.

'Look at me!" he commanded, taking her by the chin and lifting her face to the light, studying it for a moment and then removing his fingers as though he had touched something loathsome. 'I have misjudged you,' he said scornfully. 'I believed that you were an exceptional person. A true revolutionary, a dedicated friend of the black people of this land, ready to make any sacrifice. Instead I find a weak, jealous woman, riddled with bourgeois white prejudices." The mattress tipped under her as Moses stood up. He towered over the bed.

'I have been wasting my time,' he said, gathered his clothing, and still naked turned towards the door.

Tara threw herself across the room and clung to him, barring his way to the door.

'I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. Forgive me. Please forgive me,' she pleaded with him, and he stood cold and aloof and silent. She began to weep, her tears muffling her voice, until she was no longer making sense.

Slowly she slid down with her arms still encircling him, until she was on her knees hugging his legs.

'Please,' she sobbed. 'I will do anything. Just don't leave me. I will do anything, everything you tell, me to do - only just don't send me away like this." 'Get up,' he said at last, and when she stood before him like a penitent, he said softly, 'You have one more chance. Just one. Do you understand?" and she nodded wildly, still choking on her sobs, unable to answer him. She reached out hesitantly and when he did not pull away, took his hand and led him back to the bed.

As he mounted her again, he knew that at last she was ready, completely prepared. She would do anything and everything he commanded.

In the dawn she came awake to find him leaning over her staring into her face and immediately she relived the night's terror, the dreadful fear of his scorn and rejection. She felt weak and trembly, her tears very close, but he took her calmly and made love to her with a gentle consideration that reassured her and left her feeling whole and vital again. Then he spoke to her quietly.

'I am going to put my trust in you,' he told her, and her gratitude was so strong it left her breathless. 'I am going to accept you as one of us, one of the inner circle." She nodded, but could not speak, staring into his fierce black eyes.

'You know how we have conducted the struggle thus far,' he said, 'we have played by the white man's rules, but he made those rules, and he designed them so we could never win. Petitions and delegations, commissions of enquiry and representations - but in the end there are always more laws made against us, governing every facet of our lives, how we work, where we live, where we are allowed to travel, or eat or sleep or love --' he broke off with an exclamation of scorn. 'The time is coming when we will rewrite the rule book. First, the defiance campaign when we will deliberately flout the mass of laws which bind us, and after that --' Now his expression was savage.

'And after that the struggle will go on and become a great battle." She was silent beside him, studying his face.

'I believe there comes a time when a man confronted by great evil must take up the spear and become a warrior. He must rise up and strike it down." He was watching her, waiting for a reply. 'Yes,' she nodded. 'You are right." 'These are words, ideas, Tara,' he told her. 'But what of action? Are you ready for action?" She nodded. 'I am ready." 'Blood, Tara, not words. Killing and maiming and burning.

Tearing down and destroying. Can you face that, Tara?" She was appalled, facing the reality at last, not merely the dizzy rhetoric. In her imagination she saw the flames roaring up through the great roof of Weltevreden and blood splashed on the walls shining wetly in the sunlight, while in the courtyard lay the broken bodies of children, of her own children, and she was on the very point of rejecting the images when he spoke again.

'Destroying what is evil, Tara, so that we may rebuild a good and just society." His voice was low and compelling, it thrilled like a drug through her veins and the cruel images faded, she looked beyond them to the paradise, the earthly paradise they would build together.

'I am ready,' she said, and there was not a trace of a quaver in her voice.

There was an hour before Marcus would take her to the airport to catch the Viscount flight back to Cape Town. They sat at his table on the verandah, just the two of them, and Moses explained to her in detail what must be done.

'Umkhonto we Sizwe,' he told her. 'The Spear of the Nation." The name shimmered and rang like polished steel in her brain.

'Firstly, you must withdraw from all overt liberal activities. You must abandon your clinic --' 'My clinic!" she exclaimed. 'Oh Moses, my poor little ones, what will they do --' she broke off as she saw his expression.

'You care for the physical needs of a hundred,' he said. 'I'm concerned for the welfare of twenty million. Tell me which is more important." 'You are right,' she whispered. 'Forgive me." 'You will use the excuse of the defiance campaign to make a statement of your disillusion with the freedom movement and to announce your resignation from the Black Sash." 'Oh dear, what will Molly say?" 'Molly knows,' he assured her. 'Molly knows why you are doing it. She will help you in every way. Of course, the police special branch will continue to keep you under observation for a while, but when you give them nothing more for their files, they will lose interest and drop you." She nodded. 'I understand." 'You must take more interest in your husband's political activities, cultivate his parliamentary associates. Your own father is the deputy leader of the opposition, with access to the government ministers.

You must become our eyes and our ears." 'Yes, I can do all that." 'Later, there will be other tasks for you. Many difficult and some even dangerous. Would you risk your life for the struggle, Tara?" 'For you, Moses Gama, I would do more. I would willingly lay down that life for you,' she replied, and when he saw that she meant it, he nodded with deep satisfaction.

'We will meet whenever we can,' he promised her. 'Whenever it is safe to do so." And then he gave her the salute which would become the rallying cry of the defiance campaign, 'Mayibuye! Afrika!" And she replied, 'Mayibuye! Afrika! Africa, let it persist!" 'I am an adulteress,' Tara thought, as she had each morning as she sat at the breakfast table during all the weeks that had passed since she had arrived back from Johannesburg. 'I am an adulteress." And she thought it must show, like a brand upon her forehead for all the world to see. Yet Shasa had greeted her cheerfully on her return, apologizing for sending a driver to meet her at the airport and not coming in person, asking her if she had enjoyed her illicit interlude with Australopithecus. 'Thought you might have gone for someone a little younger. I mean a million years old is just a little long in the tooth, isn't it?" And since then their relationship had continued unaltered.

The children, with the exception of Michael, seemed not to have missed her at all. Centaine had run the household in her absence with her usual iron fist in a candy-flavoured glove and after they had greeted Tara with dutiful but offhand kisses, the children were full of what Nana had done and said, and Tara was painfully aware that she had neglected to bring any presents for them.

Only Michael was different. For the first few days he would not let her out of his sight, but traipsed around behind her, even insisting on spending his precious Saturday afternoon with her at the clinic while his two brothers went off to Newlands Rugby Ground with Shasa to watch Western Province playing the visiting All Blacks team from New Zealand.

Michael's company helped alleviate a little of the pain of making the first arrangements to close down the clinic. She had to ask her three black nursing sisters to start looking for other jobs. 'Of course, you'll be paid your salaries until you find other positions, and I will help you all I can --' But still she had to suffer the reproach in their eyes.

Now, almost a month later, she sat at Weltevreden's laden breakfast table on a Sunday morning in the dappled shade beneath the trellised vines of the terrace, while the servants in crisp white uniform fussed about them. Shasa read aloud extracts from the Sunday Times to which none of them listened, Sean and Garrick wrangled acrimoniously over who was the best full-back in the world, and Isabella clamoured for her daddy's attention. Michael was giving her a detailed account of the plot of the book he was reading, and she felt like an impostor, an actress playing a role for which she had not rehearsed her lines.

Shasa finally crumpled his newspaper and dropped it beside his chair, acceding to Isabella's request to 'Take me on your lap, Daddy!', ignoring Tara's ritual protest and demanded: 'All right, everybody, this meeting will come to order and address the serious question of what we are all going to do with this Sunday." This precipitated a near riot which Isabella punctuated with shrill cries of 'Picnic! Picnic!" and finally picnic it was, after Shasa had used his casting vote in his daughter's favour.

Tara tried to excuse herself, but Michael was so close to tears that she relented and they all rode out together, with the servants and the picnic baskets following them in the little two-wheeled dog cart. Of course they could have gone by car, but the ride was half the fun.

Shasa had had the pool below the waterfall bricked out to make a natural swimming-pool and had built a thatched summer house on the bank. The great attraction was the long slide down the glassy smooth rock of the waterfall on a red rubber inner tube, and the plunge over the final sheer drop into the green pool below, the entire journey accompanied by howls and shrieks of glee. It was sport that never palled and it kept the children busy all morning.

Shasa and Tara, in their bathing-suits, lolled on the grassy bank, basking in the hot bright sunlight. They used to come here often in the first days of their marriage, even before the pool was bricked and the summer house built. In fact Tara was certain that more than one of the children had been conceived on this grassy bank. Some of the warm feelings from those days persisted. Shasa opened a bottle of Riesling, and they were both more relaxed and friendly towards each other than they had been for years.

Shasa sensed his opportunity, fished the wine bottle out of the ice bucket and refilled Tara's glass before he said, 'My dear, have something to tell you that is of great importance to both of us and may quite substantially change our lives." 'He has found another woman,' she thought, half in dread, half in relief, so that she did not at first understand what he was telling her.

Then suddenly the enormity of it crashed in upon her. Shasa was going to join them, he was going across to the Boers. He was throwing in his lot with the band of the 'most evil men that Africa had ever spawned. Those supreme architects of misery and suffering and oppression.

'I believe that I am being offered the opportunity to use my talents and my financial gift for the greater good of this land and its people,' he was saying, and she twirled the stem of the wineglass between her fingers and stared down into the pale golden liquid, not daring to lift her eyes and look at him in case he saw what she was thinking.

'I have considered it from every angle, and I have discussed it with Mater. I think I have a duty to the country, to the family and to myself. I believe that I have to do it, Tara." It was a terrible thing to feel the last blighted fruits of her love for him shrivel and fall away, and then almost instantly she felt free and light, the burden was gone and in its place came a rush of contrary emotion. It was so powerful that she could not put a name to it for a moment, and then she knew it was hatred.

She wondered that she had ever felt guilty on his account, she wondered even that she could ever have loved him. His voice droned on justifying himself, attempting to excuse the inexcusable, and still she knew she dared not look up at him lest he see it in her eyes. She felt an almost irresistible need to scream at him, 'You are callous, selfish, evil, as they are!" and physically to attack him, to claw at his single eye with her nails, and it took all her will power to sit still and quiet. She remembered what Moses had told her, and she clung to his words. They seemed the only sane things in all this madness.

Shasa finished the explanation that he had so carefully prepared for her, and then waited for her reply. She sat on the plaid rug in the sun with her legs curled up under her, staring into the glass in her hands, and he looked at her as he had not done for years and saw that she was still beautiful. Her body was smooth and lightly tanned, her hair sparkled with ruby lights in the sun, and her big breasts that had always enchanted him, seemed to have filled out again. He found himself attracted by her and excited as he had not been for a long time and he reached out gently and touched her cheek.

'Talk to me,' he invited. 'Tell me what you think about it." And she lifted her chin and stared at him. For an instant he was chilled by her gaze, for it was as inscrutable and merciless as the stare of a lioness, but then Tara smiled slightly and shrugged, and he thought that he had been mistaken, it was not hatred he had seen in her eyes.

'You have decided already, Shasa. Why do you need my approval?

I have never been able to prevent you doing anything you wanted to do before. Why would I presume to do that now?" He was amazed and relieved, he had anticipated a bitter battle.

'I wanted you to know why,' he said. 'I want you to know that we both want the same thing - prosperity and dignity for everybody in this land. That we have different ways of trying to achieve it, and I believe that my way is more effective." 'I repeat, why do you need my approval?" 'I need your cooperation,' he corrected her. 'For in a way this opportunity depends on you." 'How?" she asked, and looked away from him to where the children were splashing and cavorting. Only Garrick was not in the water.

Sean had ducked him, and now he sat shivering on the edge of the pool. His thin weedy body was blue with cold. He was fighting for breath, the rack of his ribs sticking out of his chest as he coughed and wheezed.

'Garry,' she called sharply. 'That's enough. Dry yourself and put on your jersey." 'Oh, Ma,' he gasped a protest, and she flared at him.

'Do it this instant." And when he went reluctantly to the summerhouse she turned back to Shasa.

'You want my cooperation?" She felt totally in control of herselfi She would not let him see how she felt towards him and his monstrous intention. 'Tell me what you want me to do." 'It will come as no surprise to you to hear that BOSS, the Bureau of State Security, has quite an extensive file on you." 'In view of the fact that they have arrested me three times,' Tara smiled again, a tight humourless grimace, 'you are right, I'm not surprised." 'Well, my dear, what it boils down to is that it would be impossible for me to hold cabinet rank while you were still raising Cain and committing mayhem with your sisters in the Black Sash." 'You want me to give up my political work? But what about my record? I mean, I am an old hardened jailbird, you know." 'Fortunately the security police regard you with a certain amused indulgence. I have seen a copy of your file. The assessment is that you are a dilettante, naive and impressionable, and easily swayed by your more vicious associates." That insult was difficult to bear. Tara jumped to her feet and strode around the edge of the pool, seized Isabella by the wrist and dragged her from the pool.