She doesn't want to be disturbed, he warned, but Lothar De La Rey stepped past him, so closely that Shasa could smell the fish smell on his oilskins and see the small white fish scales stuck to his tanned skin.
You'd best knock, Shasa dropped his voice, but Lothar ignored him and flung the door of the office open so that it crashed back on its hinges. He stood in the open door and Shasa could see past him. His mother rose from the straight-backed chair by the window and faced the door.
She was slim as a girl, and the yellow crape-de-chine of her dress was draped over her small fashionably flattened breasts and was gathered in a narrow girdle low around her hips. Her narrow-brimmed cloche hat was pulled down, covering the dense dark bush of her hair, and her eyes were huge and almost black.
She looked very young, not much older than her son, until she raised her chin and showed the hard, determined line of her jaw and the corners of her eyes lifted also and those honey-coloured lights burned in their dark depths. Then she was formidable as any man Lothar had ever met.
They stared at each other, assessing the changes that the years had wrought since their last meeting.
How old is she? Lothar wondered, and then immediately remembered. She was born an hour after midnight on the first day of the century. She is as old as the twentieth century
that's why she was named Centaine. So she's thirty-one
years old, and she still looks nineteen, as young as the day
I found her, bleeding and dying in the desert with the
wounds of lion claws deep in her sweet young flesh.
He has aged, Centaine thought. Those silver streaks in
the blond, those lines around the mouth and eyes. He'll be over forty now, and he has suffered -- but not enough. I am glad I didn't kill him, I'm glad my bullet missed his heart. It would have been too quick. Now he is in my power and he'll begin to learn the true-
Suddenly, against her will and inclination, she remembered
the feel of his golden body over hers, naked and
smooth and hard, and her loins clenched and then dissolved
so she could feel their hot soft flooding, as hot as the blood
that mounted to her cheeks and as hot as her anger against
herself and her inability to master that animal corner of her
motions. In all other things she had trained herself like an
athlete, but always that unruly streak of sensuality was just
beyond her control.
She looked beyond the man in the doorway, and she saw ... ...
Shasa standing out in the sunlight, her beautiful child,
watching her curiously, and she was ashamed and angry to
have been caught in that naked and unguarded moment
when she was certain that her basest feelings had been on
open display.
Close the door, she ordered, and her voice was husky
and level. Come in and close the door. She turned away and
stared out of the window, bringing herself under complete
control once More before turning back to face the man she
had set herself to destroy.
The door closed and Shasa suffered an acute pang of disappointment . He sensed that something vitally important was taking place. That blond stranger with the cat-yellow eyes who knew his name and its derivation stirred something in him, something dangerous and exciting. Then his mother's reaction, that sudden high colour coming up her throat into her checks and something in her eyes that he had never seen before, not guilt, surely? Then uncertainty, which was totally uncharacteristic. She had never been uncertain of anything in the world that Shasa knew of. He wanted desperately to know what was taking place behind that closed door. The walls of the building were of corrugated galvanized iron sheeting.
If you want to know something, go and find out. it was one of his mother's adages, and his only compunction was that she might catch him at it as he crossed to the side wall of the office, stepping lightly so that the gravel would not crunch under his feet, and laid his ear against the sun-heated corrugated metal.
Though he strained, he could only hear the murmur of voices. Even when the blond stranger spoke sharply, he could not catch the words, while his mother's voice was low and husky and inaudible.
The window, he thought, and moved quickly to the corner. As he stepped around it, intent on eavesdropping at the open window, he was suddenly the subject of attention of fifty pairs of eyes. The factory manager and his idle workers were still clustered at the main doors, and they fell silent and turned their full attention upon him as he appeared round the corner.
Shasa tossed his head and veered away from the window.
They were all still watching him and he thrust his hands into the pockets of his Oxford bags and, with an elaborate show of nonchalance, sauntered down towards the long wooden jetty as though this had been his intention all along.
Whatever was going on in the office now was beyond him, unless he could wheedle it out of his mother later, and he didn't think there was much hope of that. Then suddenly he noticed the four squat wooden trawlers moored alongside the jetty, each lying low in the water under the glittering silver cargo they carried, and his disappointment was a little mollified. Here was something to break the monotony of his hot dreary desert afternoon and his step quickened as he went onto the timbers of the jetty. Boats always fascinated him.
This was new and exciting. He had never seen so many fish, there must be tons of them. He came level with the first boat. It was grubby and ugly, with streaks of human excrement down the sides where the crew had squatted on the gunwale, and it stank of bilges and fuel oil and unwashed humanity living in confined quarters. It had not even been graced with a name: there were only the registration and licence numbers painted on the wave-battered bows.
A boat should have a name, Shasa thought. It's insulting and unlucky not to give it a name. His own twenty-five-foot yacht that his mother had given him for his thirteenth birthday was named The Midas Touch, a name that his mother had suggested.
Shasa wrinkled his nose at the smell of the trawler, disgusted and saddened by her disgracefully neglected condition.
If this is what Mater drove all the way from Windhoek for, He did not finish the thought for a boy stepped around the far side of the tall angular wheelhouse.
He wore patched shorts of canvas duck, his legs were brown and muscled and he balanced easily on the hatch coarning on bare feet.
As they became aware of each other both boys bridled and stiffened, like dogs meeting unexpectedly; silently they scrutinized each other.
A dandy, a fancy boy, Manfred thought. He had seen one or two like him on their infrequent visits to the resort town of Swakopmund up the coast. Rich men's children dressed in ridiculous stiff clothing, walking dutifully behind their parents with that infuriating supercilious expression upon their faces. Look at his hair, all shiny with brilliantine, and he stinks like a bunch of flowers. One of the poor white Afrikaners, Shasa recognized his type. A bywoner, a squatter's kid. I His mother had forbidden him to play with them, but he had found that some of them were jolly good fun. Their attraction was of course enhanced by his mother's prohibition. One of the sons of the machine-shop foreman at the mine imitated bird calls in such an amazingly lifelike manner that he could actually call the birds down from the trees, and he had shown Shasa how to adjust the carburettor and ignition on the old Ford which his mother allowed him to use, even though he was too young to have a driver's licence. While the same boy's elder sister, a year older than Shasa, had shown him something even more remarkable when they had shared a few forbidden moments together behind the pumphouse at the mine. She had even allowed him to touch it and it had been warm and soft and furry as a new-born kitten cuddling up there under her short cotton skirt, a most remarkable experience which he intended to repeat at the very next opportunity.
This boy looked interesting also, and perhaps he could show Shasa over the trawler's engine-room. Shasa glanced back at the factory. His mother was not watching and he was prepared to be magnanimous.
Hello. He made a lordly gesture and smiled carefully. His grandfather, Sir Garrick Courtney, the most important male person in his existence, was always admonishing him. By birth you have a specially exalted position in society. This gives you not only benefit and privilege, but a duty also. A true gentleman treats those beneath his station, black or white, old or young, man or woman, with consideration and courtesy. My name is Courtney, Shasa told him. 'Shasa Courtney.
My uncle is Sir Garrick Courtney and my mother is Mrs Centaine de Thiry Courtney. He waited for the deference that those names usually commanded, and when it was not evident, he went on rather lamely. 'What's your name? My name is Manfred, the other boy replied in Afrikaans and arched those dense black eyebrows over the amber eyes.
They were so much darker than his streaked blond hair that they looked as though they had been painted on. Manfred De La Rey, and my grandfather and my great-uncle and my father were De La Rey also and they shot the shit out of the English every time they met them. Shasa blushed at this unexpected attack and was on the point of turning away when he saw that there was an old man leaning in the window of the wheelhouse, watching them, and two coloured crewmen had come up from the trawler's forecastle. He could not retreat.
We English won the war and in 1914 we beat the hell out of the rebels, he snapped.
Well! Manfred repeated, and turned to his audience. This little gentleman with perfume on his hair won the war. The crewmen chuckled encouragement. Smell him, his name should be Lily, Lily the perfumed soldier. Manfred turned back to him, and for the first time Shasa realized that he was taller by a good inch and his arms were alarmingly thick and brown. So you are English, are you, Lily? Then you must live in London, is that right, sweet Lily? Shasa had not expected a poor white boy to be so articulate, nor his wit to be so acerbic. Usually he was in control of any discussion.
Of course I'm English, he affirmed furiously, and was seeking a final retort to end the exchange and allow him to retire in good order from a situation over which he was swiftly losing control.
Then you must live in London, Manfred persisted.
I live in Cape Town. Hah! Manfred turned to his growing audience. Swart Hendrick had come across the jetty from his own trawler, and all the crew were up from the forecastle. That's why they are called Soutpiel, Manfred announced.
There was an outburst of delighted guffaws at the coarse expression. Manfred would never have used it if his father had been present. The translation was Salt Prick and Shasa flushed and instinctively bunched his fists at the insult.
A Soutpiel has one foot in London and the other in Cape Town, Manfred explained with relish, and his willy-wagger dangling in the middle of the salty old Atlantic Ocean. You'll take that back! Anger had robbed Shasa of a more telling rejoinder. He had never been spoken to in this fashion by one of his inferiors.
Take it back, you mean like you pull back your salty foreskin? When you play with it? Is that what you mean? Manfred asked. The applause had made him reckless, and he had moved closer, directly under the boy on the jetty.
Shasa launched himself without warning and Manfred had not anticipated that so soon. He had expected to trade a few more insults before they were both sufficiently worked up to attack each other.
Shasa dropped six feet and hit him with the full weight of his body and his outrage. The wind was driven out of Manfred's lungs in a whoosh as, locked together, they went flying backwards into the morass of dead fish.
They rolled over and with a shock Shasa felt the other boy's strength. His arms were hard as timber balks and his fingers felt like iron butcher's hooks as he clawed for Shasa's face. only surprise and Manfred's winded lungs saved him from immediate humiliation, and almost too late he remembered the admonitions of Jock Murphy, his boxing instructor.
Don't let a bigger man force you to fight close. Fight him off. Keep him at arm's length. Manfred was clawing at his face, trying to get an arm around him in -a half Nelson, and they were floundering into the cold slippery mass of fish. Shasa brought up his right knee and, as Manfred reared up over him, he drove it into his chest. Manfred gasped and reeled back, but then as Shasa tried to roll away, he lunged forward again for the head lock. Shasa ducked his head and with his right hand forced Manfred's elbow up to break the grip, then as Jock had taught him, he twisted out against the opening he had created. He was helped by the fish slime that coated his neck and Manfred's arm like oil, and the instant he was free he threw a punch with his left hand.
Jock had drilled him endlessly on the short straight left.
The most important punch you'll ever use. it wasn't one of Shasa's best, but it caught the other boy in the eye with sufficient force to snap his head back and distract him just long enough to let Shasa get onto his feet and back away.
By now the jetty above them was crowded with coloured trawler-men in rubber boots and blue rollneck jerseys. They were roaring with delight and excitement, egging on the two boys as though they were game cocks.
Blinking the tears out of his swelling eye, Manfred went after Shasa, but the fish clinging to his legs hampered him, and that left shot out again. There was no warning; it came straight and hard and unexpectedly, stinging his injured eye so that he shouted with anger and groped wildly for the lighter boy.
Shasa ducked under his arm and fired the left again, just the way Jock had taught him.
Never telegraph it by moving the shoulders or the head, he could almost hear Jock's voice, just shoot it, with the arm alone. He caught Manfred in the mouth, and immediately there was blood as Manfred's lip was crushed onto his own teeth.
The sight of his adversary's blood elated Shasa and the concerted bellow of the crowd evoked a primeval response deep within him. He used the left again, cracking it into the pink swollen eye.
When you mark him, then keep hitting the same spot. Jock's voice in his head, and Manfred shouted again, but this time he could hear the pain as well as the rage in the sound.
It's working, Shasa exulted. But at that moment he ran backwards into the wheelhouse and Manfred, realizing his opponent was cornered, rushed at him through the slimy fish, spreading both arms wide, grinning triumphantly, his mouth full of blood from his cut lip and his teeth dyed bright pink.
In panic Shasa dropped his shoulders, braced himself for an instant against the wheelhouse timbers and then shot forward, butting the top of his head into Manfred's stomach.
Once again Manfred wheezed as the air was forced up his throat, and for a few confused seconds they writhed together in the mess of pilchards, with Manfred gurgling for breath A. and unable to get a hold on his opponent's slippery limbs.
Then Shasa wriggled away and half crawled, half swam to the foot of the wooden ladder of the jetty and dragged himself onto it.
The crowd was laughing and booing derisively as he fled, and Manfred clawed angrily after him, spitting blood and fish slime out of his injured mouth, his chest heaving violently to refill his lungs.
Shasa was halfway up the ladder when Manfred reached up and grabbed his ankle, pulling both his feet off the rungs.
Shasa was stretched out by the heavier boy's weight like a victim on the rack, clinging with desperate strength to the top of the ladder, and the faces of the coloured fishermen e were only inches from his as they leaned over the jetty and howled for his blood, favouring their own.