‘Get on with it, man,’ snapped Sean irritably, not bothering to answer the question. Dirk saluted his father with the cut-glass tumber and smiled knowingly.
‘You make the laws, Father, you and your friends in the Cabinet and in the Provincial Assembly, and you can change them. That’s your end of the bargain.’
Sean had drawn a swelling chestful of cigar smoke as Dirk spoke, and now he let it trickle out so that his head was wreathed in drifting blue smoke as he replied.
‘Let’s get this clear. You put up the money and I force through Parliament legislation repealing the proclamation of these lands we need between Nkomo and the Bubezi Rivers?’
‘And the Bubezi Valley,’ Dirk cut in.
‘And the Bubezi Valley. Then I arrange that some front company gets control of that land, even if it’s only on a thousand-year ground rental?’
Dirk nodded. ‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘What about the cost of the dam and the new railroad to the dam – have you got that type of capital?’ Mark could hardly believe what he was hearing, that Sean Courtney was haggling over the assets of the nation, treasures that had been entrusted to him as a high representative of the people. He wanted to shout out, to lash out at them as they schemed. The deep affection he had felt moments before turned slowly to a deep sense of outrage and betrayal.
‘Nobody has that type of capital,’ Dirk told him. ‘I’ve had my people work out a rough estimate, and there will be little change left out of four million pounds. No individual has that sort of money.’
‘So?’ Sean asked, the wreaths of cigar smoke drifted away from his head and it seemed to Mark that he had aged suddenly. His face was grey and haggard, the deep-set eyes turned by a trick of the light into the dark empty eye-sockets of a skull.
‘The Government will build them for us,’ and Dirk chuckled richly, as he resumed his pacing. ‘Or rather, they’ll build dam and railway for the nation. To open up valuable natural resources.’ Dirk chuckled again. ‘And imagine the prestige of the man that shepherds these measures through Parliament, the man who brings progress and civilization into the wilderness.’ He picked up the brandy glass and tossed off half the contents. ‘It would all be named after him – the Sean Courtney Dam perhaps?’
‘It sounds impressive.’
‘A fitting monument, Father,’ Dirk lifted the glass to his father.
‘But what of the tribal lands, Dirk?’ Sean used his son’s name for the first time, Mark noticed, and glanced sharply at him.
‘We’ll move the blacks out,’ Dirk told him casually. ‘Find a place for them in the hills.’
‘And the game reserves?’
‘Good God, are we going to let a few wild animals stand in the way of a hundred million pounds?’ He shook the handsome head of curls in mock dismay. ‘Before we flood the valley, you can take a hunting safari there. You always did enjoy the hunt, didn’t you? I remember you telling me about the big elephant hunts in the old days.’
‘Yes,’ Sean nodded heavily. ‘I killed a lot of elephant.’
‘So, Father, we are agreed then?’ Dirk stopped once more before Sean, and there was for the first time an anxious air, a small frown of worry puckering his bold high forehead. ‘Do we work together?’
Sean was silent for seconds longer, staring at the blotter on his desk-top, then he raised his head slowly and he looked sick and very old.
‘What you have told me – the sheer size of it all – has taken me completely by surprise.’ He spoke carefully, measuring each word.
‘It’s big and it’s going to take guts,’ Dirk agreed. ‘But you have never been frightened before, Father. You told me once, “If you want something, go out and get it – for one thing is sure as all hell, nobody is going to bring it to you.”’
‘I am older now, Dirk, and a man grows tired, loses the strength of his youth.’
‘You’re as strong as a bull.’
‘I want time to think about it.’
‘How long?’ Dirk demanded.
‘Until,’ Sean faltered, and thought a moment, ‘until after the next parliamentary sessions. I will need to speak to people, examine the feasibility of the whole idea.’
‘It’s too long,’ Dirk scowled, and suddenly the face was no longer beautiful, the eyes changed, coming together into a mean ferrety look.
‘It’s the time I need.’
‘All right,’ Dirk agreed, and thrust the scowl aside, smiling down at the massive seated figure. He began the gesture of putting out his right hand, but Sean did not look up and instead he thrust the hand back into his overcoat pocket.
‘I am neglecting my guests,’ said Sean softly. ‘You must excuse me now. Mark will see you out.’
‘You will let me know?’ Dirk demanded.
‘Yes,’ said Sean heavily, still not looking up. ‘I will let you know.’
Mark led Dirk Courtney down to the front doors, and he felt feverish with anger and hatred for him. They walked in silence, side by side, and Mark fought the wild, dark and violent impulses that kept sweeping over him. He hated him for having tarnished the man he had respected and worshipped, for having smeared him with his own filth. He hated him for the old man and for Andersland, and for the dreadful but unknown deeds he had ordered, and he hated him for what he was about to do to that beloved land beyond Chaka’s Gate.
At the front doors, Dirk Courtney took his hat from the table and adjusted it over his eyes as he studied Mark carefully.
‘I am a good friend to have,’ he said softly. ‘My father trusts you, and I am sure he confides in you. You would find me grateful and generous, and I am sure that, since you overheard our conversation, you will know what small items of information might interest me.’
Mark stared at him. His lips felt numb and cold, and his whole body trembled with the effort it took to control himself. He did not trust his own voice to speak.
Dirk Courtney turned away abruptly, not bothering with his reply and he strode lightly down the front steps into the night.
Mark stared after him long after he disappeared. There was the crackling snarl of a powerful engine, the crunch of gravel under spinning wheels, and the twin beams of headlights swept the garden, and were gone.
Mark’s feet kept pace with the furious rush of his anger, and he was almost running when he reached the General’s study. Without knocking, he pushed open the door.
Words threatened to explode out of him – bitter condemnation, accusation and rejection – and he looked to the General’s desk, but it was empty.
He was going to warn the General that he would use any means to expose the foul bargain that had been proposed that evening, he was going to voice his disillusion - his horror that Sean Courtney had even listened to it, let alone given it serious thought and the half-promise of his support.
The General stood at the window, his back to the room and the wide square shoulders slumped. He seemed to have shrunk in size.
‘General,’ Mark’s voice was harsh, strident with his anger and determination, ‘I am leaving now – and I won’t be coming back. But before I go, I want to tell you that I will fight you and your son—’
Sean Courtney turned into the room, his shoulders still drooped and his head held at a listening angle, like that of a blind man, and Mark’s voice trailed away, his fury evaporating.
‘Mark?’ Sean Courtney asked, as though he had forgotten his existence, and Mark stared at him, not believing what he was seeing – for Sean Courtney was weeping.
Bright tears had swamped and blinded his eyes and streamed down the lined and sun-seared cheeks, clinging in fat bright droplets to the coarse curls of his beard. It was one of the most distressing sights Mark had ever witnessed, so harrowing that he wanted to turn away from it – but could not.
‘Get me a drink, son.’ Sean Courtney crossed heavily towards his desk and one of his tears fell to the starched snowy front of his dress shirt, leaving a wet mark on the material.
Mark turned
away, and made a show of selecting a glass and pouring whisky from the heavy decanter. He drew the simple act out and when he turned back Sean Courtney was at his desk.
He held a crumpled white handkerchief in his hand that had damp patches on it, but although his cheeks were dry now, the rims of his eyelids were pink and inflamed and the marvellous sparkling blue clarity of his eyes was dulled with swimming liquid.
‘Thank you, Mark,’ he said as he set the glass on the desk in front of him. Sean did not touch the glass but stared at it, and when he spoke his voice was low and husky.
‘I brought him into the world with my own hands, there was no doctor, I caught him in my own hands stiii wet and warm and slippery – and I was proud. I carried him on my shoulder, and taught him to talk and ride and shoot. There are no words to explain what a man feels for his first-born son,’ Sean sighed, a broken gusty sound. ‘I mourned for him once before, I mourned him as though he was dead, and that was many years ago.’ He drank a little of the whisky and then went on softly, so softly that Mark could hardly hear the words. ‘Now he comes back and forces me to mourn him again, all over again.’
‘I am sorry, General. I thought—I believed that you were going to — bargain with him.’
‘That thought dishonours me.’ Sean did not raise his voice nor his eyes. ‘Leave me now, please Mark. We’ll talk about this again at some other time.’
At the door Mark looked back, but the General was not aware of his presence. His eyes were still misty, and seemed to stare at a far horizon. Mark closed the door very softly.
Despite Sean Courtney’s promise to discuss Dirk Courtney’s proposition again, long weeks went by without even the mention of his name. However, though the life at Emoyeni seemed to continue in its busy round, yet there were times when Mark entered the panelled and book-lined study to find the General brooding darkly at his desk, beak-nosed and morbid as some roosting bird of prey, and he withdrew quietly, respecting his melancholy, knowing he was still in mourning. Mark realized it would take time before he was ready to talk.
During this period there were small changes in Mark’s own circumstances. One night, long after midnight, Sean Courtney had entered his dressing-room, to find the lights were still on in the bedroom and Ruth propped on her pillows and reading.
‘You shouldn’t have waited up for me,’ he told her severely. ‘I could have slept on the couch—’
‘I prefer you here.’ She closed the book.
‘What are you reading?’ She showed him the title.
‘D. H. Lawrence’s new novel, Women in Love.’
Sean grinned as he unbuttoned his shirt. ‘Did he teach you anything?’
‘Not yet, but I’m still hoping.’ She smiled at him, and he thought how young and lovely she looked in her lace nightdress. ‘And you? Did you finish your speech?’
‘Yes.’ He sat to remove his boots. ‘It’s a masterpiece — I’m going to tear the bastards to pieces.’
‘I heard Mark’s motorcycle leaving a few minutes ago. You kept him here until midnight.’
‘He was helping me look up some figures and searching Hansard for me.’
‘It’s awfully late.’
‘He’s young,’ grunted Sean. ‘And damned well paid for it.’ He picked up his boots and stumped through into the dressing-room, the limp more noticeable now that he was in his stockinged feet. ‘And I haven’t heard him complain yet.’
He came back in his night-shirt and slipped into bed beside her.
‘If you are going to keep the poor boy to these hours, it’s not fair to send him back to town every night.’
‘What do you suggest?’ he asked, as he wound his gold hunter and then placed it on the bedside table.
‘I could turn the gate-keeper’s cottage into a flat for him. It wouldn’t need much, even though it’s been deserted for years.’
‘Good idea,’ Sean agreed casually. ‘Keep him on the premises so I can really get some work out of him.’
‘You’re a hard man, General Courtney.’ He rolled over and kissed her lingeringly, then whispered in her ear.
‘I am glad you noticed.’
She giggled like a bride and whispered back, ‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘Let’s see if we can teach you something that Mr Lawrence could not,’ he suggested.
The cottage, once it was repainted and furnished with discards from the big house, was by Mark’s standards palatial, and marvellously free of vermin and cockroaches. It was less than half a mile from the main house, and his hours became as irregular as those of his master, his position each day more trusted and naturally integrated into the household. His duties came to cover the entire spectrum from speech-writing and researching, answering all correspondence that was not important enough for the General’s own hand, operating the household accounts, to merely sitting quietly sometimes when Sean Courtney needed somebody to talk to, and acting as a sounding board for arguments and ideas.
Yet there was still time for his old love of reading. There were thousands of volumes that made up the library at Emoyeni and Mark took an armful of them down to the cottage each evening and read until the early hours, devouring with omnivorous appetite history, biography, satire, political treatise, Zane Grey, Kipling and Rider Haggard.
Then suddenly there was a new spirit of excitement and upheaval in Emoyeni as the next session of Parliament approached. This meant that the household must uproot itself, and move almost a thousand miles to Cape Town.
Lightly Ruth Courtney referred to this annual political migration as the ‘Great Trek’, but the description was justified, for it meant moving the family, fifteen of the senior servants, three automobiles, a dozen horses, all the clothing, silver, glassware, papers, books and other incidentals that would be necessary to sustain in the correct style a busy social and political season of many months, while General Courtney and his peers conducted the affairs of the nation. It meant also closing Emoyeni and opening the house in Newlands, below the squat bulk of Table Mountain.
In the middle of all this frantic activity, Storm Courtney arrived home from the grand tour of the British Isles and the Continent on which she and Irene Leuchars had been chaperoned by Irene’s mother. In her last letter to Ruth Courtney, Mrs Leuchars had admitted herself to be both physically and mentally exhausted. ‘You will never know, my dear, the terrible weight of responsibility I have been under. We have been followed across half the world by droves of eager young men — Americans, Italians, Frenchmen, Counts, Barons, sons of industrialists, and even the son of the dictator of a South American Republic. The strain was such that at one period I could bear it no longer and locked both girls in their room. It was only later that I discovered they had escaped by means of a fire escape and danced until the following morning at some disreputable boite de nuit in Montparnasse.’ With the tact of a loving wife, Ruth refrained from showing the letter to Sean Courtney and so he prepared to welcome his daughter with all the enthusiasm of a doting father, unclouded by awareness of her recent escapades.
Mark was for once left out of the family preparations and he watched from the library window when Sean handed his wife into the Rolls. He was dressed like a suitor in crisply starched fly-away collar, a gay silk cravat, dark blue suit with white carnation in the button-hole and a beaver tilted jauntily over one eye; his beard was trimmed and shampooed and there was a merry anticipatory sparkle in his eyes, and he twirled his cane lightly as he went round to his own seat.
The Rolls purred away, almost two hours ahead of the time when the mailship was scheduled to berth at No. 1 wharf. It was followed at a respectful distance by the second Rolls which would be needed for the conveyance of Storm Courtney’s baggage.
Mark lunched alone in the study and then worked on, but his concentration was broken by the imminent arrival of the returning cavalcade, and when it came, he hurried to the windows.
He caught only a glimpse of Storm as she left the car and danced up the front steps hand in hand w
ith her mother. They were followed immediately by the General, his cane snapping a staccato beat off the marble as he hurried to match their swiftness; on his face he wore an expression that tried to remain severe and stern but kept breaking into a wide beaming grin.
Mark heard the laughter and the excited murmur of the servants assembled to greet her in the entrance hall, and Storm’s voice giving a new sweet lilt to the cadence of the Zulu language as she went to each of them in turn.
Mark returned to his open books, but did not look down at them. Instead he was savouring that one glimpse he had of Storm.
She had grown somehow lovelier; he had not believed it possible, but it had happened. It was as though the divine essence of young womanhood had been distilled in her, all the gaiety and grace, all the warmth and smoothness, the texture of skin and silken hair, the perfect moulding of limb and the delicate sculpturing of feature, the musical lilt of her voice, clear as the ring of crystal, the dancing grace of her movements, the very carriage of the small perfect head on bare brown shoulders.
Mark sat bemused, acutely aware of the way in which the whole huge house had changed its mood since she entered it, had become charged with her spirit, as though it had been waiting for this moment.
Mark had excused himself from dinner that evening, not wanting to intrude on the family’s first evening together. He intended going down to the drill-hall for the weekly muster, and afterwards he would dine with some of the other young bachelor officers. At four o’clock, he left the house through a side entrance and went down to the cottage to bath and change into his uniform.
He was thundering out of the gates of Emoyeni on the Ariel Square Four when he remembered that the General had asked for the Railway report to be left on his desk. In the distraction of Storm’s arrival, he had forgotten it, and now he swung the heavy machine into a tight turn and tore back up the driveway.
In the paved kitchen yard he pulled the motorcycle up on its stand, and went in through the back door.