He did this to my son, didn't he? And she saw the confirmation in his face before he looked away.
Shasa coughed and brought up another trickle of fish slime and yellow vomitus, and immediately he was stronger. His eyes focused and his breathing eased.
Get out of here. Centaine leaned protectively over Shasa's body.
I'll see you both in hell, you and your bastard. Now get out of my sight. The track from Walvis Bay ran through the convoluted valleys of the great orange dunes, thirty kilometres to the railhead at Swakopmund. The dunes towered three and four hundred feet on either side. Mountains of sand with knife-edge crests and smooth slip faces, they trapped the desert heat in the canyons between them.
The track was merely a set of deep ruts in the sand, marked on each side by the sparkling glass of broken beer bottles. No traveller took this thirsty road without adequate supplies for the journey. At intervals the tracks had been obliterated by the efforts of other drivers, unskilled in the art of desert travel, to extract their vehicles from the clinging sands, leaving gaping traps for those who followed.
Centaine drove hard and fast, never allowing her engine revolutions to drop, keeping her momentum even through the churned-up areas and holes where the other vehicles had bogged down, directing the big yellow car with deft little touches of the wheel so that the tyres ran straight and the sand did not pile and block them.
She held the wheel in a racing driver's grip, leaning back against the leather seat with straight arms ready for the kick of the wheel, watching the tracks far ahead and anticipating each contingency long before she reached it, sometimes snapping down through the gears and swinging out of the ruts to cut her own way around a bad stretch. She scorned even the elementary precaution of travelling with a pair of black servants in the back seat to push the Daimler out of a sand trap.
Shasa had never known his mother to bog down, not even on the worst sections of the track out to the mine.
He sat up beside her on the front seat. He wore a suit of old but freshly laundered canvas overalls from the stores of the canning factory. His soiled clothing stinking of fish and speckled with vomit was in the boot of the Daimler.
His mother hadn't spoken since they had driven away
from the factory. Shasa glanced surreptitiously at her, dreading her pent-up wrath, not wanting to draw attention to himself, yet despite himself unable to keep his eyes from her face.
She had removed the cloche hat and her thick dark cap of hair, cut fashionably into a short Eton crop, rippled in the wind and shone like washed anthracite.
,Who started it? she asked, without taking her eyes from the road.
Shasa thought about it. I'm not sure. I hit him first, but he paused. His throat was still painful.
Yes? she demanded.
It was as though it was arranged. We looked at each other and we knew we were going to fight. She said nothing and he finished lamely. 'He called me a name. What name? I can't tell you. It's rude. "I asked what name? Her voice was level and low, but he recognized that husky warning quality.
He called me a Soutpiel, he replied hastily. He dropped his voice and looked away in shame at the dreadful insult, so he did not see Centaine struggle to stifle the smile and turn her head slightly to hide the sparkle of amusement in her eyes.
I told you it was rude, he apologized.
So you hit him, and he's younger than you. He had not known that he was the elder, but he was not surprised that she knew it. She knew everything.
He may be younger, but he's a big Afrikaner ox, at least two inches taller than I am, he defended himself quickly.
She wanted to ask Shasa what her other son looked like.
Was he blond and handsome as his father had been? What colour were his eyes? Instead she said, And so he thrashed you. I nearly won. Shasa protested stoutly. I closed his eyes and I bloodied him nicely. I nearly won. Nearly isn't good enough, she said. In our family we don't nearly win, we simply win!
He fidgeted uncomfortably and coughed to relieve the pain in his injured throat.
You can't win, not when someone is bigger and stronger than you, he whispered miserably.
Then you don't fight him with your fists, she told him.
You don't rush in and let him stick a dead fish down your throat. He blushed painfully at the humiliation. You wait your chance, and you fight him with your own weapons and on your own terms. You only fight when you are sure you can win. He considered that carefully, examining it from every angle. That's what you did to his father, didn't you? he asked softly, and she was startled by his perception so that she stared at him and the Daimler bumped out of the ruts.
Quickly she caught and controlled the machine, and then she nodded. Yes. That's what I did. You see, we are Courtneys. We don't have to fight with our fists. We fight with power and money and influence. Nobody can beat us on our own ground. He was silent again, digesting it carefully, and at last he smiled. He was so beautiful when he smiled, even more beautiful than his father had been, that she felt her heart squeezed by her love.
I'll remember that, he said. Next time I meet him, I'll remember what you said. Neither of them doubted for a moment that the two boys would meet again, and that when they did, they would continue the conflict that had begun that day.
The breeze was onshore and the stink of rotting fish was so strong that it coated the back of Lothar De La Rey's throat and sickened him to the gut.
The four trawlers still lay at their berths but their cargoes were no longer glittering silver. The fish had packed down and the top layer of pilchards had dried out in the sun and turned a dark, dirty grey, crawling with metallic green flies as big as wasps. The fish in the holds had squashed under their own weight, and the bilge pumps were pouring out steady streams of stinking brown blood and fish oil that discoloured the waters of the bay in a spreading cloud.
All day Lothar had sat at the window of the factory office while his coloured trawler-men and packers lined up to be paid. Lothar had sold his old Packard truck and the few sticks of furniture from the corrugated shack in which he and Manfred lived. These were the only assets that did not belong to the company and had not been attached. The second-hand dealer had come across from Swakopmund within hours, smelling disaster the way the vultures do, and he had paid Lothar a fraction of their real value.
There is a depression going on, Mr De La Rey, everybody is selling, nobody is buying. I'll lose money, believe me. With the cash that Lothar had buried under the sandy floor of the shack there was enough to pay his people two shillings on each pound that he owed them for back wages.
He did not have to pay them, of course, it was the company's responsibility, but that did not occur to him, they were his people.
I'm sorry, he repeated to each one of them as they came to the pay window. That's all there is. And he avoided their eyes.
When it was all gone, and the last of his coloured people had wandered away in disconsolate little groups, Lothar locked the office door and handed the key to the deputy sheriff .
Then he and the boy had gone down to the jetty for the last time and sat together with their legs dangling over the end. The stink of dead fish was as heavy as their mood.
I don't understand, Pa. Manfred spoke through his distorted mouth with the crusty red scab on the upper lip. We caught good fish.
We should be rich. What happened, Pa? We were cheated, Lothar said quietly. Until that moment there had been anger, no bitterness, just a feeling of numbness. Twice before he had been struck by a bullet. The .303
Lee Enfield bullet on the road to Ornaruru when they were opposing Smuts invasion of German South West Africa, and then much later the Luger bullet fired by the boy's mother.
He touched his chest at the memory, and felt the rubbery puckered pit of the scar through the thin cotton of his khaki shirt.
It was the same thing, first the shock and the numbness and then only much later the pain and the anger. Now the anger came at him in black waves, and he did not try to resist. Rather he revelled in it; it helped to assuage the memory of abasing himself, pleading for time from the woman with the taunting smile in her dark eyes.
Can't we stop them, Pa? the boy asked, and neither of them had to define that them'. They knew their enemy.
They had grown to know them in three wars; in 1881 the first Boer War, then again in the Great Boer War of 1899
when Victoria called her khaki multitudes from across the oceans to crush them, and then in 1914 when the British puppet Jannie Smuts had carried out the orders of his imperial masters.
Lothar shook his head, unable to answer, choked by the strength of his anger.
There must be a way, the boy insisted. We are strong. He recalled the feeling of Shasa's body slowly weakening in his grip and he flexed his hands involuntarily. It's ours, Pa.
This is our land. God gave it to us, it says so in the Bible. Like so many before him, the Afrikaner had interpreted that book in his own way. He saw his people as the children of Israel, and Southern Africa as the promised land flowing with milk and honey.
Lothar was silent and Manfred took his sleeve. God did give it to us, didn't he, Pa? Yes. Lothar nodded heavily.
Then they've stolen it from us: the land, the diamonds, and the gold and everything, and now they have taken our boats and our fish. There must be a way to stop them, to win back what belongs to us. 'It's not as easy as that. Lothar hesitated how to explain it to the child. Did he truly understand it himself, how it had happened? They were squatters in the land that their fathers had wrested from the savages and the wilderness at the point of their long muzzle-loading guns.
When you grow up you'll understand, Manie, he said.
When I grow up I'll find a way to beat them. Manfred said it so forcefully that the scab on his lip cracked open and a droplet like a tiny ruby glowed upon it. I'll find a way to get it back from them. You'll see if I don't, Pa. Well, my son, perhaps you will. Lothar placed his arm around the boy's shoulders.
Remember Grandpa's oath, Pa? I'll always remember. The war against the English will never end. They sat together until the sun touched the waters of the bay and turned them to molten copper, and then in the darkness they went up the jetty, out of the stench of decaying fish and along the edge of the dunes.
As they approached the shack there was smoke rising from the chimney and when they entered the lean-to kitchen, there was a fire on the open hearth. Swart Hendrick looked up from it.
The Jew has taken the table and the chairs, he said. But I hid the pots and the mugs. They sat on the floor and ate straight from the pot, a porridge of maize meal flavoured with salty wind-dried fish.
Nobody spoke until they had finished.
You didn't have to stay. Lothar broke the silence and Hendrick shrugged.
,I bought coffee and tobacco at the store. The money you paid me was just enough. There is no more, Lothar said. It is all gone. 'It's all been gone before. Hendrick lit his pipe with a twig from the fire. We have been broke many times before. This time it is different, Lothar said. This time there is no ivory to hunt or, He broke off as his anger choked him again, and Hendrick poured more coffee into the tin mugs.
It is strange, Hendrick said. When we found her, she was dressed in skins. Now she comes in her big yellow car, he shook his head and chuckled, and we are the ones in rags. It was you and I that saved her, Lothar agreed. More than that, we found her diamonds for her, and dug them from the ground. Now she is rich, Hendrick said, and she comes to take what we have also. She shouldn't have done that. He shook his great black head. No, she shouldn't have done that. Lothar straightened up slowly. Hendrick saw his expression and leaned forward eagerly, and the boy stirred and smiled for the first time.
Yes. Hendrick began to grin. What is it? Ivory is finished it's all been hunted out long ago. No, not ivory. This time it will be diamonds, Lothar replied.
Diamonds? Hendrick rocked back on his heels. What diamonds? 'What diamonds? Lothar smiled at him, and his yellow eyes glowed. 'Why, the diamonds we found for her, of course!
Her diamonds? Hendrick stared at him. The diamonds from the h'ani Mine? How much money have you got? Lothar demanded and Hendrick's eyes shifted. I know you well, Lothar went on impatiently and seized his shoulder. You've always got a little bit salted away. How much? Not much. Hendrick tried to rise but Lothar held him down.
You have earned well this last season. I know exactly how much I have paid you., Fifty pounds,grunted Hendrick.
No. Lothar shook his head. You've got more than that. 'Perhaps a little more. Hendrick resigned himself.
You have got a hundred pounds, Lothar said definitely.
That's how much we will need. Give it to me. You know you will get it back many times over. You always have, and you always will., The track was steep and rocky and the party straggled up it in the early sunlight. They had left the yellow Daimler at the bottom of the mountain on the banks of the Liesbeek stream and begun the climb in the ghostly grey light of predawn.
In the lead were two old men in disreputable clothing, scuffed velskoen on their feet and sweatstained shapeless straw hats on their heads. They were both so lean as to appear half starved, skinny but sprightly, their skin darkened and creased by long exposure to the elements, so that a casual observer might have thought them a couple of old hoboes, and there were enough of that type on the roads and byways in these days of the great Depression.
The casual observer would have been in error. The taller of the two old men limped slightly on an artificial leg and was a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, a holder of the highest award for valour that the Empire could offer, the Victoria Cross, and he was also one of the most eminent military historians of the age, a man so rich and careless of worldly wealth that he seldom bothered to count his fortune.
Old Garry, his companion addressed him, rather than as Sir Garrick Courtney. That is the biggest problem we have to deal with, old Garry. He was explaining in his high, almost girlish voice, rolling his R's in that extraordinary fashion that was known as the 'Malmesbury bray'. Our people are deserting the land and flocking to the cities. The farms are dying, and there is no work for them in the cities. His voice was un-winded although they had climbed 2,000 feet up the sheer turreted side of Table Mountain without a pause, maintaining the pace that had outdistanced all the younger members of the party.
It's a recipe for disaster, Sir Garrick agreed. They are poor on the farms, but when they leave them they starve in the cities. Starving men are dangerous men, Ou Baas. History teaches us that. The man he called old master was smaller in stature, though he carried himself straighter. He had merry blue eyes under the drooping brim of his Panama hat and a grey goatee beard that waggled as he spoke. Unlike Garry, he was not rich; he owned only a small farm on the high frost-browned veld of the Transvaal, and he was as careless of his debts as Garry was of his fortune, but the world was his paddock and had heaped honours upon him. He had been awarded honorary doctorates by fifteen of the world's leading universities, Oxford and Cambridge and Columbia amongst them.