He camped there that night, sweeping a bed on the bare ground below an acacia thorn tree and eating bully beef and maize porridge by the light of the fire of acacia wood that burned with its characteristic bright white flame and smell of incense.
General Sean Courtney stood at the heavy teak sideboard, with its tiers of engraved glass mirrors and displays of silver plate. In one hand he held the ivory-handled carving fork and in the other the long Sheffield knife.
He used the knife to illustrate the point he was making to the guest-of-honour at his table.
‘I read it through in a single day, had to stay up until after midnight. Believe me, Jan, it’s his best work yet. The amount of research – quite extraordinary.’
‘I look forward to reading it,’ said the Prime Minister, nodding acknowledgement to the author of the work under discussion.
‘It’s still in manuscript. I am not entirely satisfied yet, there is still some tidying up to do.’
Sean turned back to the roast and, with a single practised stroke of the blade for each, cut five thin slices of pink beef rimmed with a rind of rich yellow fat.
With the fork he lifted the meat on to the Rosenthal porcelain plate and immediately a Zulu servant in a flowing white kanza robe and red pillbox fez carried the plate to Sean’s place at the head of the long table.
Sean laid the carving-knife aside, wiped his hands on a linen cloth, and then followed the servant to the table and took his seat.
‘We were wondering if you might write a short foreword for the book,’ Sean said, as he raised a cut crystal glass of glowing red wine to the Prime Minister, and Jan Christiaan Smuts inclined his head on narrow shoulders in an almost birdlike gesture. He was a small man, and the hands laid before him on the table were almost fragile; he had the mien of a philosopher, or a scholar, which was not dispelled by the neat pointed beard.
Yet it was hard to believe that he was small. There was a vital force and awesome presence about him that belied the high, rather thin voice in which he replied,
‘Few things would give me as much pleasure. You do me honour.’
He seemed to bulk huge in his chair, such was the power of character he commanded.
‘I am the one who is honoured,’ Colonel Garrick Courtney replied gravely from across the table, bowing slightly — and Sean watched his brother fondly.
‘Poor Garry,’ he thought, and then felt a guilty stab. Yet it seemed so natural to think of him in those terms. He was frail and old now, bowed and grey and dried out, so that he seemed smaller even than the little man opposite him.
‘Have you a title yet?’ asked Jan Smuts.
‘I have thought to call it The Young Eagles. I hope you do not find that too melodramatic for a history of the Royal Flying Corps.’
‘By no means,’ Smuts contradicted him. ‘I think it excellent.’
‘Poor Garry,’ Sean thought again. Since Michael had been shot down, the book filled the terrible gap that his son’s death had left; but it had not prevented him from growing old. The book was a memorial to Michael, of course, an act of great love — ‘This book is dedicated to Captain Michael Courtney D.F.C., one of the Young Eagles who will fly no more.’ Sean felt the resuscitation of his own grief, and he made a visible effort to suppress it.
His wife saw the effort, and caught his eye down the length of the table. How well she knew him after all these years, how perfectly she could read his emotions, she thought, as she smiled her sympathy for him, and saw him respond, the wide shoulders squaring up and heavy bearded jaws firming as he smiled back at her.
Deftly she changed the mood. ‘General Smuts has promised to walk around the gardens with me this afternoon, Garry, and advise me on planting out the proteas he brought me from Table Mountain. You are also such a knowledgeable botanist. Will you join us?’
‘As I warned you, my dear Ruth,’ said Jan Smuts in that ready, yet compelling voice, ‘I do not give much hope for their survival.’
‘Perhaps the leucadendrons,’ ventured Garry, ‘if we find a cool, dryish placer
‘Yes,’ agreed the General, and immediately they fell into an animated discussion. She had done it so skilfully, that she seemed to have done nothing.
Sean paused in the doorway of his study and ran a long lingering gaze over the room. As always, he felt a glow of pleasure at re-entering this sanctuary.
The glass doors opened now on to the massed banks of flowers, and the smoking plumes of the fountain, yet the thick walls ensured that the room remained cool even in the sleepy hush of midday.
He crossed to the desk of stinkwood — dark and massive and polished, so that it shone even in the cool gloom – and he lowered himself into the swivel chair, feeling the fine leather stretch and give under his weight.
The day’s mail was neatly arranged on a silver salver at his right hand, and he sighed when he saw that, despite the careful screening by the senior clerk down at the city Head Office, there were still not much less than a hundred envelopes awaiting him.
He delayed the moment by swinging the chair slowly to look once again about the room. It was hard to believe it had been designed and decorated by a woman – unless it was a woman who loved and understood her man so well that she could anticipate his lightest whim and fancy.
Most of the books were bound in dark green leather, and stamped on their spine in gold leaf with Sean’s crest. The exceptions were the three ceiling-high shelves of first editions with African themes. A dealer in London, and another in Amsterdam had carte blanche instructions from Sean to search for these treasures. There were autographed first editions by Stanley, Livingstone, Comwallis Harris, Burchell, Munro and almost every other African explorer or hunter who had ever published.
The dark panelled woodwork between the book shelves was studded with the paintings of the early African artists; the Baines glowed like rich gems in their flamboyant colours and naïve, almost childlike, depiction of animal and countryside. One of these was set in an intricately carved frame of Rhodesian redwood and engraved, ‘To my friend David Livingstone, from Thomas Baines.’
These links with history and the past always warmed Sean with pleasure, and he fell into a mild reverie.
The deep carpeting deadened her footsteps, but there was the light perfume on the air that warned Sean of her presence, and he swung his chair back to the desk. She stood beside his chair, slim and straight as a girl still.
‘I thought you were walking with Garry and Jan.’
Ruth smiled then, and seemed as young and beautiful as when he had first met her so many years before. The cool gloom of the room disguised the little lines at the corners of her eyes and the light streaking of silver in the dark hair drawn back from her temples and caught with a ribbon at the back of her neck.
‘They are waiting for me, but I slipped away for a moment to make certain that you had all you wanted.’ She smiled down at him, and then selected a cigar from the silver humidor and began to prepare it.
‘I will need an hour or two,’ he said, glancing at the pile of mail.
‘What you really need, Sean, is an assistant.’ She cut the cigar carefully, and he grunted.
‘You can’t trust any of these young people—’ and she laughed lightly as she placed the cigar between his lips.
‘You sound as old as the prophets.’ She struck a Vesta and waved it to clear the sulphur before she held it to the tip of the cigar. ‘It’s a sign of old age to mistrust the young.’
‘With you beside me, I’ll be young for ever,’ he told her, still awkward with a compliment after all these years and she felt her heart swell with her love, knowing the effort it had required.
She stooped quickly and kissed his cheek, and with a speed and strength that still astonished her, one of his thickly muscled arms whipped around her waist and she was lifted into his lap.
‘You know what happens to forward young ladies – don’t your He grinned at her, his eyes crinkling wickedly.
‘Sean,’ sh
e protested, in mock horror. ‘The servants! Our guests!’ She struggled out of his embrace with the warmth and wetness of his kiss still on her lips, together with the tickle of his whiskers and the taste of his cigar, and rearranged her skirts and her hair.
‘I’m a fool.’ She shook her head sorrowfully. ‘I always trust you.’ And then they smiled at each other, lost for a moment in their love.
‘My guests,’ she remembered suddenly, a hand flying to her mouth. ‘May I set the tea for four o’clock? We’ll have it down at the lake. It’s a lovely day.’
When she had gone, Sean wasted another minute staring after her through the empty doorway into the gardens. Then he sighed again, contentedly, and drew the silver salver of mail towards him.
He worked quickly, but with care, pencilling his instructions at the foot of each page and initialling them with a regal ‘S.C.’
‘No! — but tell them politely. S.C.’
‘Let me have the previous year’s figures of purchase – and delay the next shipment against bank guarantee. S.C.’
‘Why did this come to me? Send it to Barnes. S.C.’
‘Agreed. S.C.’
To Atkinson for comment, please. S.C.’
The subjects were as diverse as the writers — politicians, financiers, supplicants, old friends, chancers, beggars — they were all there.
He flicked over a sealed envelope and stared at it for a moment, not recognizing the name or the occasion.
‘Mark Anders Esq., Natal Motors, West Street, Durban.’
It was written in the hand that was so bold and flourishing that nobody could mistake it for any other but his own, and he remembered sending the letter.
Somebody had written across the envelope, ‘Left – no forwarding address – return to sender.’
Sean clamped the cigar in the corner of his mouth and slit the flap with a Georgian silver paper-knife. The card was embossed with the regimental crest.
The Colonel-in-Chief and the officers of the Natal Mounted Rifles request the pleasure of MARK ANDERS ESQ. at a regimental reunion dinner to be held at the Old Fort …
Sean had written in the boy’s name in the blank space, and at the end of the card, ‘Do try to come. S.C.’
Now it was returned, and Sean scowled. As always, he was impatient and frustrated by even the slightest check in his plans. Angrily he tossed both card and envelope at the wastepaper bin, and they both missed, fluttering to the carpet.
Surprisingly, even to himself, his mood had altered, and though he worked on, he fumed and gruffed now over his correspondence and his instructions became barbed.
‘The man is a fool or a rogue or both – under no circumstances will I recommend him to a post of such importance, despite the family connection! S.C.’
After another hour, he had finished and the room was hazed with cigar smoke. He lay back in the chair and stretched voluptuously like an old lion, then glanced at the wall clock. It was five minutes short of four o’clock, and he stood up.
The offending card caught his eye again, and he stooped quickly and picked it up, reading it again as he crossed the room, tapping the stiff cardboard thoughtfully on the open palm of his hand as he limped out heavily into the sunlight and across the wide lawns.
The gazebo was set on a constructed island in the centre of the lake with a narrow causeway joining it to the lawns.
Sean’s household and guests were gathered there already, sitting about the table in the shade under the crazily contrived roof of the gazebo with its intricate cast-iron work painted with carnival colours. Already a host of wild duck had gathered about the tiny island, quacking loudly for pieces of biscuit and cake.
Storm Courtney saw her father coming across the lawns, and she let out one small excited squeak, leapt from the tea table and flew down the causeway to meet him before he reached the lake.
He lifted her easily, as though she were still a baby, and when he kissed her, she inhaled the smell of him. It was one of the lovely smells of her existence, like the smell of rain on hot dry earth, or horses, or the sea. He had a special perfume like old polished leather.
When he lowered her, she took his arm and pressed close to him, matching her light quick step to his limp.
‘How was your lunch appointment?’ he asked, looking down on her shining lovely head, and she rolled her eyes and then squinted ferociously.
‘He is a very presentable young man,’ Sean told her sternly. ‘An excellent young man.’
‘Oh, Daddy, from you that means he is a weak-minded bore.’
‘Young lady, I would like to remind you that he is a Rhodes scholar, and that his father is the Chief Justice.’
‘Oh, I know all that – but, Daddy, he just hasn’t got zing!’
Even Sean looked for an instant nonplussed. ‘And what, may I ask, is “zing”?’
‘Zing is indefinable,’ she told him seriously, ‘but you’ve got zing! You’re the zingiest man I know.’
And with that statement Sean found all his fatherly advice and disapproving words gone like migrating swallows, and he grinned down at her, shaking his head.
‘You don’t really believe that I swallow all your soft soap, do you?’
‘You’ll never believe it, Daddy, but Payne Bros. have got in twelve actual Patou Couture models – they’re absolutely exclusive – and Patou is all the rage now—’
‘Women in savage, barbaric colours, driven mad by those machiavellian scheming monsters of Paris,’ growled Sean, and Storm giggled delightedly.
‘You are a scream, Daddy,’ she told him. ‘Irene’s father has told her she may have one of them – and Mr Leuchars is a mere tradesman!’
Sean blinked to hear the head of one of the largest import houses in the country so described.
‘If Charles Leuchars is a tradesman – what, pray, am I?’ he asked curiously.
‘You are landed gentry, a Minister of the Crown, a General, a hero – and the zingiest man in the world.’
‘I see,’ he could not help but laugh, ‘that I have a position to uphold. Ask Mr Payne to send the account to me.’
She hugged him again, ecstatically, and then for the first time noticed the card he still held in his hand.
‘Oh,’ she exclaimed. ‘An invitation!’
‘Not for you, my girl,’ he warned her, but she had taken it from his hand, and her face changed as she read the name. Suddenly she was quiet and subdued.
‘You are sending that to that – sales person.’
He frowned again, his own mood altering also. ‘I sent it. It was returned. He has left, without a forwarding address.’
‘General Smuts is waiting to talk to you.’ With an effort she recaptured the smile and skipped beside him. ‘Let’s hurry.’
‘It’s serious, old Sean. They are organized, and there is no question but that they are seeking a direct confrontation.’ Jan Christiaan Smuts crumbled a biscuit between his fingers, and tossed it to the ducks. They squabbled noisily, splashing in the clear water and chattering their broad flat bills as they dipped for the scraps.
‘How many white workers will they lay off?’ Sean asked.
‘Two thousand, to begin with,’ Smuts told him. ‘Probably four thousand, all in all. But the idea is to do it gradually, as the blacks are trained to replace them.’
‘Two thousand,’ Sean mused, and he could not help but imagine the wives, and the children – the old mothers, the dependents. Two thousand wage-earners out of work represented much suffering and misery.
‘You like it as little as I do.’ The shrewd little man had read his thoughts; not for nothing did his opponents call him ‘slim Jannie’, or ‘clever Jannie’. ‘Two thousand unemployed is a serious business,’ he paused significantly. ‘But we will find other employment. We need men desperately on the railways and on other projects like the Vaal-Harts irrigation scheme.’
‘They will not earn there the way they do in the mines,’ Sean pointed out.
‘No,’ Jan Smuts drew
out the negative thoughtfully, ‘but should we protect the income of two thousand miners, at the cost of closing the mines themselves?’
‘Surely it is not that critical?’ Sean frowned quickly.
‘The Chairman of the Chamber of Mines assures me that it is – and he has shown me figures to support this view.’
Sean shook his head, half in incredulity and half in anguish. He had been a mine-owner himself once – and he knew the problem of costs, and also the way that figures could be made to speak the language their manipulators taught.
‘You know also, old Sean, you especially — how many others depend for life on those gold mines.’ It was a hard probing statement, with a point like a stiletto. The previous year, for the first time, the sales of timber pit-props from Sean’s sawmills to the gold mines of the Transvaal had exceeded two million pounds sterling. The little General knew it as well as he did.
‘How many men are employed by Natal Sawmills, old Sean, twenty thousand?’
‘Twenty-four thousand,’ Sean answered shortly, one blond eyebrow lifted quizzically, and the Prime Minister smiled softly before going on.
‘There are other considerations, old friend – that you and I have discussed before. On those occasions, it was you who told me that to succeed in the long term, our nation must become a partnership of black man and white, that our wealth must be shared according to a man’s ability rather than the colour of his skin — not so?’
‘Yes,’ Sean agreed.
‘It was I who said we must make haste slowly in that direction, and now it is you who hesitate and baulk.’
‘I also told you that many small steps were surer than a few wild leaps, made under duress, made only with an assegai at your ribs. I said, Jannie, that we should learn to bend so that we might never have to break.’