Rage - Smith Wilbur - Страница 76
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'You look so well, my dear,' he told her, and it was not entirely untrue. She had lost a lot of weight, her waist was once again wasped in and her bosom was magnificent. Despite the gravity of the moment Shasa felt his loins stir as he looked down that cleavage.
'Down boy!" he admonished himself silently and looked away, concentrating on her face. Her skin had cleared, the rings below her eyes were barely discernible and her hair had been washed and set. Obviously she had taken the same pains with her appearance as he had.
'Where are the children?" she demanded immediately.
'Mater has them - so we could talk without interruption." 'How are they, Shasa?" 'They are all just fine. Couldn't be better." He wanted there to be no special pleading on that score.
'I do miss them terribly,' she said. The remark was ominous, and he did not reply. Instead he led her to the summer-house and settled her on the couch facing the waterfall.
'It's so beautiful here." She looked around her. 'It is my favourite spot on all of Weltevreden." She took the wineglass he handed her.
'Better days!" He gave her the toast. They clinked glasses and drank.
Then she set her glass down on the marble table-top and Shasa steeled himself to receive the opening shot of the engagement.
'I want to come back home,' she said, and he spilled white wine down the front of his silk suit, and then dabbed at it with the handkerchief from his breast pocket to give himself time to recover his balance.
In a perverse way he had been looking forward to the bargaining.
He was a businessman, supremely confident in his ability to get the best trade. Furthermore, he had already adjusted to the idea of becoming a bachelor once more, and was beginning to look forward to the delights of that state, even if it cost him a million pounds. He felt the prickle of disappointment.
'I don't understand,' he said carefully.
'I miss the children. I want to be with them - and yet I don't want to take them away from you. They need a father as much as a mother." It was too easy. There had to be more than that, Shasa's bargaining instincts were sure.
I have tried living alone,' she went on. 'And I don't like it. I want to come back." 'So we just pick it up again where we dropped it?" he asked carefully, but she shook her head.
'That's impossible, we both know that." She prevented further questions with a raised hand. 'Let me tell you what I want. I want to have all the benefits of my old life, access to my children, the prestige that goes with the name Courtney and the money not to have to stint -' 'You were always scornful of the position and the money before." He could not prevent the jibe, but she took no offence.
'I had never had to do without it before,' she said simply. 'However, I want to be able to go away for a while when it becomes too much for me here - but I will not embarrass you politically or in any other way." She paused. 'That's all of it." 'And what do I get in return?" he asked.
'A mother for your children, and a public wife. I will preside at your dinner-parties, and make myself agreeable to your associates, I will even help you with your political electioneering, I used to be very good at that." 'I thought that my politics disgusted you." 'They do - but I will never let it show." 'What about my conjugal rights, as they are delicately referred to by the lawyers?" 'No." She shook her head. 'That will only complicate our relationship." She thought of Moses. She could never be unfaithful to him, even if he had ordered it. 'No, but I have no objection to you going elsewhere. You have always been reasonably discreet. I know you will continue to be." He looked at her bosom and felt a twinge of regret, but the bargain she was offering amazed him. He had everything he wanted, and had saved himself a million pounds into the bargain.
'Is that all?" he asked. 'Are you sure?" 'Unless you can think of anything else we should discuss." He shook his head. 'Shall we shake hands on it - and open a bottle of the Widow?" She smiled at him over the rim of her glass to conceal what she truly felt for him and his world, and She made a vow as she sipped the tingling yellow wine.
'You will pay, Shasa Courtney, you will pay for your bargain much more than you ever dreamed." For over a decade Tara had been the mistress of Weltevreden, so there was nothing difficult or alien in taking up that role again, except that now more than ever she felt that she was acting a part in a tedious and unconvincing play.
There were some differences, however. The guest list had altered subtly, and now included most of the top Nationalist politicians and party organizers, and more often than before the conversation at the dinner-table was in Afrikaans rather than English. Tara's knowledge of Afrikaans was adequate, it was after all a very simple language with a grammar so uncomplicated that the verbs were not even conjugated and much of the vocabulary was taken directly from English. However, she had some difficulty with the guttural inflections, and most of the time smiled sweetly and remained silent. She found that by doing so her presence was soon overlooked and she heard much more than she would have had she joined in the conversation.
A frequent visitor to Weltevreden now was the minister of police, Manfred De La Rey, and Tara found it ironical that she was expected to feed and entertain the one man who to her epitomized all that was evil and cruel in the oppressive regime that she hated with all her being. It was like sitting down to a meal with a man-eating leopard, even his eyes were pale and cruel as those of a great predatory cat.
Strangely, she found that despite her loathing, the man fascinated her. It surprised her to find, once she had got over the initial shock of his presence, that he had a fine brain. Of course it was common knowledge that he had been a brilliant student in the law faculty of Stellenbosch University, and before standing for parliament, he had built up a highly successful law practice in his own right. She knew also that no man who was not essentially brilliant was included in the Nationalist cabinet, yet his intelligence was sinister and ominous.
She found herself listening to the most heinous concepts expressed with such logic and eloquent conviction that she had to shake herself out of his mesmeric influence, like a bird trying to break the spell of the cobra's swaying dance.
Manfred De La Rey's relationship to the Courtney family was another enigma to her. It was part of family lore how his father had robbed the H'am Mine of a million pounds of diamonds, and how Blaine, her own father, and Centaine, before she was Blaine's wife, had pursued him into the desert and after a fierce battle captured him. Manfred's father had served fifteen years of a life sentence before being released under the amnesty that the Nationalists had granted to so many Afrikaner prisoners when they came to power in 1948.
The two families should have been bitter enemies, and indeed Tara detected definite traces of that hatred in the occasional tone of a remark and unguarded look that Manfred De La Rey and Shasa directed at each other, and there was a peculiarly brittle and artificial quality to the overtly friendly facade they showed, as though at any moment it might be stripped away and they would fly at each other's throats like fighting dogs.
On the other hand, Tara knew that Manfred was the one who had enticed Shasa into forsaking the ailing United Party and joining the Nationalists with the promise of ministerial rank, and that Shasa had made the De La Reys, father and son, major shareholders and directors in the new fish canning company at Walvis Bay, a company which looked set to turn half a million pounds of profit in its very first year of operation.
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