He turned now, thrusting his head forward and staring into Mark’s face. The wind had ruffled his beard, and he had long ago stripped off his black tie and thrust it into a pocket. The golden rays of the rising sun caught his eyes and they were a peculiarly beautiful shade of blue.
‘Do you want the job?’ he demanded.
‘Yes, sir,’ Mark answered instantly, dazzled by the prospect of an endless association with this incredible man.
‘You haven’t asked about the money?’ growled Sean.
‘Oh, the money isn’t important.’
‘Lesson one.’ Sean cocked a beetling black eyebrow over the amused blue twinkle of his eye. ‘The money is always important.’
The next time Mark entered the gates of Emoyeni was to enter a new life, an existence beyond any he had ever imagined; and yet, in all the overpowering new experience, even in the whirl of having to adjust to new ideas, to the daunting procession of visitors and endless new tasks, there was one moment that Mark dreaded constantly. This was his next meeting with Miss Storm Courtney.
However, he would never know if it had not been carefully arranged by General Courtney, but Storm was not at Emoyeni on Mark’s first day, nor during the days that followed, although the memory of her presence seemed everywhere in the portraits and photographs in every room, especially the full-length oil in the library where Mark spent much of his time. She was dressed in a full-length ivory-coloured dress, seated at the grand piano in the main drawing-room, and the artist had managed to capture a little of her beauty and spirit. Mark found the tantalizing scrutiny which the portrait directed at him disconcerting.
Quickly a relationship was established between Mark and the General, and during the first few days, the last of Sean’s misgivings were set at rest. It was seldom that the close proximity of another human being over an extended period of time did not begin to irritate Sean, and yet with this youngster he found himself seeking his company. His first ideas had been that Mark should be taught to deal with day-to-day correspondence and all the other timeconsuming trivia, leaving Sean a little more leisure and time to devote to the important areas of business and politics.
Now he would drift through into the library at odd times to discuss an idea with Mark, enjoying seeing it through younger and fresher eyes. Or he might dismiss his chauffeur and have Mark drive the Rolls out to one of the sawmills, or to a board meeting in the city, sitting up front beside him on the journey and reminiscing about those days in France, or going further back to the time before Mark was born, enjoying Mark’s engrossing interest in talks of gold-prospecting and ivory-hunting in the great wilderness beyond the Limpopo River in the north.
‘There will be an interesting debate in the Assembly today, Mark. I am going to give that bastard Hendricks hell on the Railway budget. Drive me down, and you can listen from the visitors’ gallery.
‘Those letters can wait until tomorrow. There’s been a breakdown at the Umvoti Sawmill, we’ll take the shotguns and on the way back try and pick up a couple of guineafowl.
‘Drillhall at eight o’clock tonight, Mark. If you aren’t doing anything important—’ which was a command, no matter how delicate the phrasing, and Mark found himself sucked gently back into the ranks of the peacetime regiment. He found it different from France, for he now had powerful patronage. ‘You are no use to me as third rank marker. You’re getting to know the way I work, son, and I want you at hand even when we are playing at soldiers. Besides,’ and here Sean grinned that evil, knowing grin, ‘you need a little time for range practice.’
At the next turn-out, still not accustomed to the speed with which things happened in the world ruled by Sean Courtney, Mark found himself in the full fig of Second Lieutenant, including Sam Browne cross-strap and shining single pips on his shoulders. He had expected antagonism, or at least condescension from his brother officers, but found that when he was placed in command of range drill, he was received with universal enthusiasm.
In the household Mark’s standing was not at first clear. He was awed by the mistress of Emoyeni, by her mature beauty and cool efficiency. She was remote but courteous for the first two weeks or so, referring to him as ‘Mr Anders’, and any request was preceded by a meticulous ‘please’ and followed by an equally punctilious ‘thank you’.
When the General and Mark were at Emoyeni for the midday meal, Mark was served by one of the servants from a silver tray in the library, and in the evenings, after he had taken his leave from the General, he climbed on the elderly Ariel Square Four motorcycle he had acquired, and clattered off down the hill into the sweltering basin of the city to his verminous lodgings in Point Road.
Ruth Courtney was watching Mark with an even shrewder eye than her husband had used. Had he in any way fallen short of her standards, she would have had no compunction in immediately bringing all her influence to bear on Sean for his dismissal.
One morning while Mark was at work in the library, Ruth came in from the garden with an armful of cut flowers.
‘Don’t let me disturb you.’ She began to arrange the flowers in the silver bowl on the central table. For the first few minutes she worked in silence, and then in a natural and friendly manner, she began to chat to Mark, quietly drawing from him the details of his domestic arrangements - where he slept and ate, and who did his laundry, and secretly she was appalled.
‘You must bring your laundry up here, to be done with the household washing.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs Courtney. I don’t want to be a nuisance.’
‘Oh nonsense, there are two dhobi wallahs with nothing else to do but wash and iron.’
Even Ruth Courtney, one of the first ladies of Natal, still a renowned beauty as a matron well past forty years of age, was not immune to Mark’s unstudied appeal. To his natural charm was added the beneficial effect his coming had upon her own man.
Sean seemed younger, more lighthearted in these last weeks, and watching it, she realized that it was not only the burden of routine work that had been lifted from him. The boy was giving him back a little of that spirit of youth, that freshness of thought, that energy and enthusiasm for the things of life that had gone slightly stale and seemed no longer quite worth the effort.
It was their custom to spend the hour before bed in Ruth’s boudoir, Sean lounging in a quilted dressing-gown, watching her brush out her hair and cream her face, smoking his last cigar, discussing the day’s events while he enjoyed her still slim lithe body under the thin silk of her nightdress, feeling the slow awakening of his own body in anticipation of the moment when she would turn from watching him in the mirror and rise, holding out one hand to him, and lead him through into the bedroom, to the huge four-poster bed under the draped and tasselled velvet canopy.
Three or four times in the weeks since Mark’s arrival in the household, Sean had made a remark so radical, so unlike his usual old-fashioned conservative self, that Ruth had dropped the silver hairbrush into her lap and turned to stare at him.
Each time he had laughed self-consciously and held up a hand to prevent her teasing. ‘All right, I know what you’re going to say, but I was discussing it with young Mark.’ He would chuckle again. ‘That boy talks a lot of good sense.’
Then one evening, after Mark had been with them just over a month, they had sat in companionable silence for a while when Sean said suddenly, ‘Young Mark, doesn’t he remind you of Michael?’
‘I hadn’t noticed – no, I don’t think so.’
‘Oh, I don’t mean in looks. It’s just something about the way he thinks.’
Ruth felt the old crushing regret welling up within her like a cold dark tide. She had never given Sean a son. It was the only true regret, the only shadow on all their sunlit years together. Her shoulders sagged now, as though under the burden of her regret, and she looked at herself in the mirror, seeing the guilt of her inadequacy in her own eyes.
Sean had not noticed, had gone on blithely, ‘Well, I can hardly wait until February.
It’s going to break Hamilton’s heart to hand over that big silver mug. Mark’s changed the whole spirit of the team. They know they can win now, with him shooting number one.’
She had listened quietly, hating herself for not being able to give him what he had wanted so badly, and she glanced down at the little carved statue of the God Thor on her dressing-table. It had stood there all these years since Sean had given it to her, a talisman of fertility. Storm had been conceived in the height of a raging electrical thunderstorm, and had been named for it. He had joked that it needed thunder and had given her the little godlet.
‘A fat lot of help you were,’ she thought bitterly, and looked up at her own body under the silk in the mirror.
‘So good to look at, and so damned useless!’ She did not usually curse, it was a measure of her distress. Lovely as it was, her body would not bear another child. All it was good for now was to give him pleasure. She stood up abruptly, her nightly ritual incomplete, and she crossed to where he sat and removed the cigar from his lips, crushing it out deliberately in the big glass ashtray.
Surprised, he looked up at her, about to ask a question, but the words never reached his lips. Her eyelids were half hooded, they drooped languorously, and her lips pouted slightly to reveal the white small teeth, and there were spots of hectic colour on her high beautifully moulded cheekbones.
Sean knew this expression and the mood it heralded. He felt his heart lurch and then begin to pound like an animal in the cage of his ribs. Usually their loving was a thing of depth and mutual compassion, a thing grown strong and good over the years, a complete blending of two persons, symbolic of their lives together — but once in a rare while, Ruth would droop her eyelids and pout that way with the colour in her cheeks, and what followed was so wild and wanton and uncontrolled that it reminded him of some devastating natural phenomenon.
She pushed one slim pale hand into his gown, and long nails raked lightly across his stomach so that his skin was instantly tingling and alive, and she leaned forward and with the other hand twined her fingers into his beard and twisted his face up to her and kissed him full on the lips, thrusting a sharp pink tongue deep into his mouth.
Sean let out a growl, and seized her, trying to draw her down into his lap and at the same time pulling open the bodice of her nightdress so that her small pointed breasts fell free, but she was quick and strong, twisting out of his grip, the ivory and pink sheen of her skin glowing through the transparent silk of her gown and her bared breasts joggling delightfully as she flew on long shapely legs into the bedroom, her laughter mocking and goading and inviting.
The following morning, Ruth cut an armful of crimson and white carnations and carried them into the library where young Mark Anders was at work. He stood up immediately and as she replied to his greeting, she studied his face. She had not truly realized how handsome he was, and she saw now that it was a face that would age well. There was a good bone structure and a proud strong nose. He was one of those lucky ones who would improve with the addition of a few wrinkles and lines around the eyes, and a little silver in the hair. That was a long way off, however; now it was the eyes that demanded attention.
‘Yes,’ she thought, looking into his eyes. ‘Sean is right. He has the same strength and goodness that Michael had.’
She watched him surreptitiously as she worked at her flower arrangement, deliberately picking the words as she began to chat to him, and when she had completed the flower bowl, she stood back to admire her work and spoke without looking at him.
‘Why don’t you join us for lunch on the terrace, Mark?’ and the use of his name was deliberate, both of them very conscious of it as it was spoken. ‘Unless you’d prefer to continue eating here.’
Sean glanced up from his newspaper as Mark came out on to the terrace, but his expression did not change as Ruth waved Mark to the seat opposite him and he immediately plunged back into the paper and angrily read out the editorial to them, mocking the writer by his tone and emphasis before crumpling the news-sheet and dropping it beside his chair.
‘That man’s a raving bloody idiot — they should lock him up.’
‘Well, sir,’ Mark began delicately.
Ruth sighed a silent breath of relief for she had not consulted Sean on the new luncheon arrangements, but the two of them were instantly in deep discussion, and when the main course was served, Sean growled, ‘Take care of the chicken, Mark, and I’ll handle the duck,’ so that the two of them were carving and arguing at the same time, like members of the same family, and she covered her smile with her table napkin as Sean ungraciously conceded a debating point to his junior.
‘I’m not saying you are right, of course, but if you are, then how do you account for the fact that—’
And he was attacking again from a different direction, and Ruth turned to listen as Mark adroitly defended himself again; as she listened, she began to appreciate a little more why Sean had chosen him.
It was over the coffee that Mark learned at last what had become of Storm Courtney.
Sean suddenly turned to Ruth. ‘Was there a letter from Storm this morning?’ When she shook her head he went on, ‘That damned uppity little missy must learn a few manners – there hasn’t been a letter in nearly two weeks. Just where are they supposed to be now?’
‘Rome,’ said Ruth.
‘Rome!’ grunted Sean. ‘With a bunch of Latin lovers pinching her backside.’
‘Sean!’ Ruth reprimanded him primly.
‘Beg your pardon.’ He looked a little abashed, and then grinned wickedly. ‘But she’s probably putting it in the correct position for pinching right at this moment, if I know her.’
That night when Mark sat down to write to Marion Littlejohn, he realized how the mere mention of Storm Courtney’s name had altered his whole attitude to the girl he was supposed to marry. Under the enormous workload which Sean Courtney had dropped casually on his shoulders, Mark’s letter to Marion was no longer a daily ritual, and at times there were weeks between them.
On the other hand, her letters to him never faltered in regularity and warmth, but he found that it was not really the pressure of work that made him keep deferring their next meeting. He sat now chewing the end of his pen until the wood splintered, seeking words and inspiration, finding it difficult to write down flowery expressions of undying love on every page; each empty page was as daunting as a Saharan crossing, yet it had to be filled.
‘We will be travelling to Johannesburg next weekend to compete in the annual shooting match for the Africa Cup,’ he wrote, and then pondered how to get a little more mileage out of that intelligence. It should be good for at least a page.
Marion Littlejohn belonged to a life that he had left behind him when he passed through the gates of Emoyeni. He faced this fact at last, but was none the less dismayed by the sense of guilt the knowledge brought him, and he tried to deny it and continue with the letter but images kept intruding themselves – and the main of these was a picture of Storm Courtney, gay and sleek, glitteringly beautiful and as unobtainable as the stars.
The Africa Cup stood almost as high as a man’s chest on a base of polished ebony. The Emoyeni houseboys had polished it for three days before they had achieved the lustre that General Courtney found acceptable, and now the cup formed the centre-piece of the buffet table, elevated on a pyramid of yellow roses.
The buffet was set in the antechamber to the main ballroom, and both rooms overflowed with the hundreds of guests that Sean Courtney had invited to celebrate his triumph. He had even invited Colonel Hamilton of the Cape Town Highlanders to bring his senior officers by Union Castle liner, travelling first class, as the General’s guests to attend the ball.
Hamilton had refused by means of a polite thank-you note, four lines long, without counting the address and the closing salutation. The cup had been in the Cape Town Castle since it had been presented by Queen Victoria in the first year of the Boer War, and Hamilton’s mortification added not a little to Sean
Courtney’s expansive mood.
For Mark it had been the busiest period he had known since coming to Emoyeni. Ruth Courtney had come to place more and more trust in Mark, and under her supervision he had done much of the work of preparing the invitations and handling the logistics of food and liquor.
Now she had him dancing with all of the ugly girls who would otherwise have sat disconsolately along the wall, and at the end of each dance, the General summoned him with an imperious wave of his cigar above the heads of his guests to the buffet table where he had taken up a permanent stance close to the cup.
‘Councillor, I want you to meet my new assistant – Mark, this is Councillor Evans. That’s right, Pussy, this is the young fellow who clinched it for us.’
And while Mark stood, colouring with embarrassment, the General repeated for the fifth or sixth time that evening a shot by shot account of the final day’s competition when the two leading regiments had tied in the team events, and the judges had asked for an individual re-shoot to break the deadlock.
‘A crosswind gusting up to twenty or thirty miles an hour, and the first shoot at two hundred yards—’
Mark marvelled at the intense pleasure this trinket gave the General. A man whose fortune was almost beyond calculation, whose land could be measured by the hundred square miles, who owned priceless paintings and antique books, jewellery and precious stones, houses and horses and yachts – but none of them at this moment as prized as this glittering trifle.
‘Well, I was marking myself,’ the General had taken enough of his own good whisky to begin acting out his story, and he made the gesture of crouching down in the bunker and looking up at the targets, ‘and I don’t mind telling you that it was the worst hour of my life.’