Rage (45 page)

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Authors: Wilbur Smith

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‘Which one?'
‘The story of the puppet – Pinocchio, is it? What was the name of the cricket?'
‘Jiminy Cricket,' Shasa told him.
‘Yes, in the meantime you will be my Jiminy Cricket. Do you accept the task?'
‘We both know it is my duty, Prime Minister.' As Shasa said it, he thought cynically, ‘Isn't it remarkable that once ambition has dictated, duty so readily concurs?'
T
hey were dining out that night, but Shasa went to Tara's room to tell her the news as soon as he had dressed.
She watched him in the mirror as he explained his reasons for accepting the appointment. Her expression was solemn but her voice had a brittle edge of contempt in it as she said, ‘I am delighted for you. I know that is what you want, and I know that you will be so busy you will not even notice that I am gone.'
‘Gone?' he demanded.
‘Our bargain, Shasa. We agreed that I could go away for a while when I felt the need. Of course, I will return – that was also part of our bargain.'
He looked relieved. ‘Where will you go – and for how long?'
‘London,' she replied. ‘And I should be away several months. I want to attend a course on archaeology at London University.' She tried to hide it from him, but she was wildly, deliriously excited. She had only heard from Molly that afternoon, just after the new cabinet had been announced. Molly had a message. Moses had at last sent for her, and she had already booked passage for Benjamin, Miriam and herself on the
Pendennis Castle
to Southampton. She would take the child to meet his father.
The mailship sailing was an exciting event in which the citizens of the mother city, of whatever station in life, could join gaily. The deck was crowded and noisy. Paper streamers
joined the tall ship to the quayside with a web of colour that fluttered in the south-easter. A coon band on the dock vied with the ship's band high up on the promenade deck, and the old Cape favourite ‘Alabama' was answered by ‘God Be With You Till We Meet Again'.
Shasa was not there. He had flown up to Walvis Bay to deal with some unforeseen problem at the canning factory. Nor was Sean, he was writing exams at Costello's Academy, but Blaine and Centaine brought the other three children down to the docks to see Tara off on her voyage.
They stood in a small family group, surrounded by the crowd, each of them holding a paper streamer and waving up at Tara on the first-class ‘A' deck. As the gap between the quay and the ship's side opened, the foghorns boomed, and the paper streamers parted and floated down to settle on the dark waters of the inner harbour. The tugs pushed the great bows around until they lined up with the harbour entrance, and under the stern the gigantic propeller chopped the water into foam and drove her out into Table Bay.
Tara ran lightly up the companionway to her stateroom. She had protested only mildly when Shasa had insisted that she cancel her original bookings in tourist and travel first class. ‘My dear, there are bound to be people we know on board. What would they think of my wife travelling steerage?'
‘Not steerage, Shasa – tourist.'
‘Everything below “A” deck is steerage,' he had replied, and now she was glad of his snobbery, for the stateroom was a private place where she could have Ben all to herself. It would have excited curiosity if she had been seen with a coloured child on the public deck. As Shasa had pointed out, there were watching eyes on board, and the reports would have flown back to Shasa like homing pigeons.
However, Miriam Afrika had good-naturedly agreed to wear a servant's livery and to act out the subterfuge of being Tara's maid during the voyage. Her husband had reluctantly let her go with Tara to England, despite the disruption to his own household. Tara had compensated him generously and Miriam had come aboard with the child registered as her own.
Tara hardly left her stateroom during the entire voyage, declining the captain's offer to join his table and shunning the cocktail parties and fancy-dress dance. She never tired of being with Moses' son, her love was a hunger that could never be appeased and even when, exhausted by her attentions, Benjamin fell asleep in his cot, Tara hovered over him constantly. ‘I love you,' she whispered to him, ‘best in the world after your daddy,' and she did not think of the other children, not even Michael. She ordered all their meals to be sent up to her suite, and ate with Benjamin, almost jealously taking over his care from Miriam. Only late at night with the greatest reluctance did she let her carry the child away to the tourist cabin on the deck below.
The days sped by swiftly and, at last, holding Benjamin's hand she stepped off the gangplank to the boat train in Southampton Docks for the ride up to London.
Again at Shasa's insistence, she had taken the suite at the Dorchester overlooking the Park that the family always used, with a single room at the back for Miriam and the baby for which she requested a separate bill and paid in cash out of her own pocket so that Shasa would have no record of it on her bank statement.
There was a message from Moses waiting for her at the porter's desk when she registered. She recognized the handwriting. She opened the envelope the moment she entered the suite, and felt the cold slide of disappointment. He wrote very formally:
Dear Tara,
I am sorry I was not able to meet you. However, it is necessary for me to attend important talks in Amsterdam with our friends. I will contact you immediately on my return.
Yours sincerely,
Moses Gama.
She was thrown into black despair by the tone of the letter and the dashing of her expectations. Without Miriam and the child she would have despaired. However, they passed the waiting days in the parks and Zoo, and in long walks along the river bank and through London's fascinating alleys and convoluted streets. She shopped for Benjamin at Marks & Spencer and C & A, avoiding Harrods and Selfridges, for those were Shasa's haunts.
Tara registered at the university for the course in African archaeology. She did not trust Shasa not to check that she had done so. In accordance with Shasa's other expectations she even dressed in her most demure twin set and pearls and took a cab up to Trafalgar Square to make a courtesy call on the High Commissioner at South Africa House. She could not avoid his invitation to lunch and had to show a bright face during a meal whose menu and wine-list and fellow guests could have been taken straight from a similar gathering at Weltevreden. She listened to the editor of the
Daily Telegraph,
who sat beside her, but kept glancing out of the windows at Nelson's tall column, and longed to be free as the cloud of pigeons that circled it. Her duty done, she escaped at last, only just in time to get back to the Dorchester and give Ben his bath.
She had bought him a plastic tugboat at Hamley's toy shop which was a great success, and Ben sat in the bath and chuckled with delight as the tugboat circled him.
Tara was laughing and drying her hands when Miriam came through from the lounge to the bathroom.
‘There is somebody to see you, Tara.'
‘Who is it?' Tara demanded without rising from where she knelt beside the bath.
‘He wouldn't give his name.' Miriam kept a straight face. ‘I will finish bathing Ben.'
Tara hesitated, she did not want to waste a minute away from her son. ‘Oh all right,' she agreed, and with the towel in her hand she went through to the lounge, and stopped abruptly in the doorway.
The shock was so intense that her face drained of blood and she swayed giddily and had to snatch at the door jamb to steady herself.
‘Moses,' she whispered, staring at him.
He wore a long tan-coloured trenchcoat, and the epauletted shoulders were spattered with rain drops. The coat seemed to accentuate his height and the breadth of his shoulders. She had forgotten the grandeur of his presence. He did not smile, but regarded her with that steady heart-checking stare of his.
‘Moses,' she said again, and took a faltering step towards him. ‘Oh, God, you'll never know how slowly the years have passed since last I saw you.'
‘Tara.' His voice thrilled every fibre of her being. ‘My wife,' and he held out his arms to her.
She flew to him and he enfolded her and held her close. She pressed her face to his chest and clung to him, inhaling the rich masculine smell of his body, as warm and exciting as the herby smell of the African noonday. For many seconds neither of them moved or spoke except for the involuntary tremors that shook Tara's body and the little moaning sound she made in her throat.
Then gently he held her off and took her face between his hands and lifted it to look into her eyes.
‘I have thought about you every day,' he said, and suddenly she was weeping. The tears streamed down her cheeks, and into the corners of her mouth, so that when he
kissed her, their metallic salt mingled with the slick taste of his saliva.
Miriam brought Benjamin out to them, clean and dry and dressed in his new blue pyjamas. He regarded his father solemnly.
‘I greet you, my son,' Moses whispered. ‘May you grow as strong and beautiful as the land of your birth,' and Tara thought that her heart might stop with the pride and sheer joy of seeing them together for the first time.
Though the colour of their skins differed, Benjamin was caramel and chocolate cream while Moses was amber and African bronze, Tara could see the resemblance in the shape of their heads and the set of jaw and brow. They had the same wide-spaced eyes, the same noses and lips, and to her they were the two most beautiful beings in her existence.
T
ara kept the suite at the Dorchester, for she knew that Shasa would contact her there and that any invitations from South Africa House or correspondence from the university would be addressed to her at the hotel. But she moved into Moses' flat off the Bayswater Road.
The flat belonged to the Ethiopian Emperor, and was kept for the use of his diplomatic staff. However, Haile Selassie had placed it at Moses Gama's disposal for as long as he needed it. It was a large rambling apartment, with dark rooms and a strange mixture of furnishings, well-worn Western sofas and easy chairs with hand-woven woollen Ethiopian rugs and wall hangings. The ornaments were African artefacts, carved ebony statuettes, crossed two-handed broadswords, bronze Somali shields and Coptic Christian crosses and icons, in native silver studded with semi-precious stones.
They slept on the floor, in the African manner, on thin
hard mattresses filled with coir. Moses even used a small wooden head stool as a pillow, though Tara could not accustom herself to it. Benjamin slept with Miriam in the bedroom at the end of the passage.
Love-making was as naturally part of Moses Gama's life as eating or drinking or sleeping, and yet his skills and his consideration of her needs were an endless source of wonder and delight to her. She wanted more than anything else in life to bear him another child. She tried consciously to open the mouth of her womb, willing it to expand like a flower bud to accept his seed, and long after he had fallen asleep she lay with her thighs tightly crossed and her knees raised so as not to spill a precious drop, imagining herself a sponge for him, or a bellows to draw his substance up deeply into herself.
Yet the times they were alone were far too short for Tara, and it irked her that the flat seemed always filled with strangers. She hated to share Moses with them, wanting him all for herself. He understood this, and when she had been churlish and sulky in the presence of others, he reminded her sternly.
‘I am the struggle, Tara. Nothing, nobody, comes ahead of that. Not even my own longings, not my life itself can come before my duty to the cause. If you take me, then you make that same sacrifice.'
To moderate the severity of his words, he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the mattress, and made love to her until she sobbed and rolled her head from side to side, delirious with the power and wonder of it, and then he told her, ‘You have as much of me as any person will ever have. Accept that without complaint, and be grateful for it, for we never know when one of us may be called to sacrifice it all. Live now, Tara, live for our love this day, for there may never be a tomorrow.'
‘Forgive me, Moses,' she whispered. ‘I have been so small and petty. I will not disappoint you again.'
So she put aside her jealousy and joined in his work, and looked upon the men and women who came to the Bayswater Road no longer as strangers and interlopers, but as comrades – part of their life and the struggle. Then she could realize what a fascinating slice of humanity they represented. Most of them were Africans, tall Kikuyus from Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta's young men, the warriors of Mau Mau, once even the little man with a great heart and brain, Hastings Banda, spent an evening with them. There were Shonas and Shangaans from Rhodesia, Xhosas and Zulus from her own South Africa and even a few of Moses' own tribe from Ovamboland. They had formed a fledgling freedom association which they called South West Africa People's Organization, and they wanted Moses' patronage, which he gave them willingly. Tara found it difficult to think of Moses as belonging to a single tribe, all of Africa was his fief, he spoke most of their separate languages and understood their specific fears and aspirations. If ever the word ‘African' described one man, that man was Moses Gama.
There were others who came to the flat in Bayswater Road; Hindus and Moslems and men of the north lands, from Ethiopia and Sudan and Mediterranean Africa, some of them still living under colonial tyranny, others newly liberated and eager to help their suffering fellow Africans.
There were white men and women also, speaking in the accents of Liverpool and the north country, of the coal mines or the mills; and other white men and women whose English was halting and laboured, but whose hearts were fierce, patriots from Poland and East Germany and the Soviet bloc, some from Mother Russia herself. All had a common love of freedom and hatred of the oppressor.
From the unlimited letter of credit that Shasa had given her to his London bank, Tara filled the flat with good food and liquor, taking a vindictive pleasure in paying out
Shasa's money for the very best fillet steak and choice lamb, for turbot and sole and lobster.
For the first time she derived pleasure from ordering burgundies and clarets of the best vintages and noblest estates, about which she had listened to Shasa lecturing his dinner guests so pompously. She laughed delightedly when she watched the enemies of all Shasa stood for, the ones called the ‘bringers of darkness', quaffing his wines as though they were Coca-Cola.
She had not prepared food for a long time, the chef at Weltevreden would have been mortified if she had attempted to do so, and now she enjoyed working with some of the other women in the kitchen. The Hindu wives showed her how to make wondrous curries and the Arab women prepared lamb in a dozen exciting ways, so that every meal was a feast and an adventure. From the impecunious students to the heads of revolutionary governments and the leaders in exile of captive nations, they came to talk and plan, to eat and drink and exchange ideas even more heady than the wines that Tara poured for them.
Always Moses Gama was at the centre of the excitement. His vast brooding presence seemed to inspire and direct their energies, and Tara realized that he was making bonds, forging loyalties and friendships to carry the struggle onwards to the next plateau. She was immensely proud of him, and humbly proud of her own small part in the grand enterprise. For the very first time in her life she felt useful and important. Until the present time she had spent her life in trivial and meaningless activity. By making her a part of his work, Moses had made her a whole person at last. Impossible as it seemed, during those enchanted months her love for him was multiplied a hundredfold.
Sometimes they travelled together, when Moses was invited to speak to some important group, or to meet representatives of a foreign power. They went to Sheffield
and Oxford to address elements from opposite ends of the political spectrum, the British Communist Party and the Association of Conservative Students. One weekend they flew to Paris to meet with officials from the French directorate of foreign affairs and a month later they even went to Moscow together. Tara travelled on her British passport and spent the days sightseeing with her Russian Intourist guide while Moses was closeted in secret talks in the offices of the fourth directorate overlooking the Gorky Prospekt.
When they returned to London, Moses and some of his exiled fellow South Africans organized a protest rally in Trafalgar Square directly opposite the imposing edifice of South Africa House, with its frieze of animal head sculptures and colonnaded front entrance. Tara could not join the demonstration, for Moses warned her that they would be photographed with telescopic lenses from the building, and forbade her to expose herself to the racist agents. She was far too valuable to the cause. Instead she struck upon a delightfully ironic twist, and telephoned the High Commissioner. He invited her to lunch again. She watched from his own office, sitting in one of his easy chairs in the magnificent stinkwood-panelled room, while below her in the square Moses stood beneath a banner APARTHEID IS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY and made a speech to five hundred demonstrators. Her only regret was that the wind and the traffic prevented her hearing his words. He repeated them to her that evening as they lay together on the hard mattress on the floor of their bedroom, and she thrilled to every single word.
One lovely English spring morning they walked arm in arm through Hyde Park, and Benjamin threw crumbs to the ducks in the Serpentine.
They watched the riders in Rotten Row, and admired the show of spring blooms in the gardens as they passed them on their way up to Speakers' Corner.
On the lawns the holiday crowds were taking advantage of the unseasonable sunshine, and many of the men were shirtless while the girls had pulled their skirts high on their thighs as they lolled on the grass. The lovers were entwined shamelessly, and Moses frowned. Public displays of this kind offended his African morality.
As they arrived at Speakers' Corner, they passed the militant homosexuals and Irish Republicans on their upturned milk crates and went to join the group of black speakers. Moses was instantly recognized, he had become a well-known figure in these circles, and half a dozen men and women hurried to meet him; all of them were coloured South African expatriates, and all of them were eager to give him the news.
‘They have acquitted them—'
‘They have set them all free—'
‘Nokwe, Makgatho, Nelson Mandela – they are all free!'
‘Judge Rumpff found every one of them not guilty of treason—'
Moses Gama stopped dead in his tracks and glowered at them as they surrounded him, dancing joyfully, and laughing in the pale English sunlight, these sons and daughters of Africa.
‘I do not believe it,' Moses snarled angrily, and somebody shoved a crumpled copy of the
Observer
at him.
‘Here! Read it! It's true.'
Moses snatched the newspaper from him. He read swiftly, scanning the front-page article. His face was set and bleak, and then abruptly he thrust the paper into his pocket and shouldered his way out of the group. He strode away down the tarmac pathway, a tall brooding figure and Tara had to run with Benjamin to catch up with him.
‘Moses, wait for us.'
He did not even glance at her, but his fury was evident in the set of his shoulders and the fixed snarl on his lips.
‘What is it, Moses, what has made you so angry? We
should rejoice that our friends are free. Please speak to me, Moses.'
‘Don't you understand?' he demanded. ‘Are you so witless that you do not see what has happened?'
‘I don't – I'm sorry—'
‘They have come out of this with enormous prestige, especially Mandela. I had thought that he would spend the rest of his life in prison, or better still, that they would have dropped him through the trap of the gallows.'
‘Moses!' Tara was shocked. ‘How can you speak like that? Nelson Mandela is your comrade.'
‘Nelson Mandela is my rival to the death,' he told her flatly. ‘There can only be one ruler in South Africa, either him or me.'
‘I did not understand.'
‘You understand very little, woman. It is not necessary that you should. All you must learn to do is obey me.'
She annoyed and irritated him with her perpetual moods and jealousies. He found it more difficult each day to accept her cloying adoration. Her soft pale flesh had begun to revolt him and each time it took more of an effort to feign passion. He longed for the day that he could be rid of her – but that day was not yet.
‘I am sorry, Moses, if I have been stupid and made you angry.'
They walked on in silence, but when they came back to the Serpentine, Tara asked diffidently, ‘What will you do now?'
‘I have to lay claim to my rightful place as the leader of the people. I cannot allow Mandela to have a clear field.'
‘What will you do?' she repeated.
‘I must go back – back to South Africa.'
‘Oh, no!' she gasped. ‘You cannot do that. It is too dangerous, Moses. They will seize you the minute you set foot on South African soil.'
‘No,' he shook his head. ‘Not if I have your help. I will remain underground, but I will need you.'
‘Of course. Whatever you want – but, my darling, what will you hope to achieve by taking such a dreadful riskr
With an effort he put aside his anger, and looked down at her.
‘Do you remember where we first met, the first time we spoke to each other?'
‘In the corridors of the Houses of Parliament,' she answered promptly. ‘I will never forget.'
He nodded. ‘You asked me what I was doing there, and I replied that I would tell you one day. This is the day.'
He spoke for another hour, softly, persuasively, and as she listened her emotions rose and fell, alternating between a fierce joy and a pervading dread.
‘Will you help me?' he asked at the end.
‘Oh, I am so afraid for you.'
‘Will you do it?'
‘There is nothing I can deny you,' she whispered. ‘Nothing.'

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