Rage (84 page)

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Authors: Wilbur Smith

BOOK: Rage
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‘No!' Isabella recoiled, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘How do you know all this?'
‘From the signed confession of Moses Gama, the man himself. I can arrange for you to see a copy, but that is not
really necessary. You will almost certainly meet your bastard half-brother in London. He is living there with your mother. His name is Benjamin Afrika.'
Isabella jumped up and carried her plate to the kitchenette. She dumped the food into the garbage bin and without looking around, she asked, ‘Why are you telling me all this?'
‘So that you will know your duty.'
‘I don't understand.' She still would not look at him.
‘We believe your mother and her associates are planning some sort of violent action against this country. We are not sure what it is. Any information on their activities would be invaluable.'
Isabella turned slowly and stared at him. Her face was pale and stricken.
‘You want me to spy on my own mother?'
‘We simply would like to know the names of the people you meet in her company while you are in London.'
She was not listening. She cut in on what he was saying.
‘You planned this. You picked me out, not because you thought I was attractive or sweet or desirable. You deliberately set out to seduce me, just for this.'
‘You are beautiful, not attractive. You are magnificent, not sweet,' he said.
‘And you are a bastard, a ruthless heartless bastard.'
He stood up and went to where his clothes hung behind the door.
‘What are you going to do?' she demanded.
‘Get dressed and go,' he told her.
‘Why?'
‘You called me a bastard.'
‘You are.' Her eyes were glutted with tears. ‘An irresistible bastard. Don't go, Lothar, please don't go.'
I
sabella was relieved when her father told her that he was unable to fly to London with her and Michael. Meeting her mother again after all these years, and after what Lothar had told her, would be difficult enough, without her father there to complicate matters and confuse her feelings. She had, indeed, tried to beg off going to London herself. She wanted to be close to Lothar, but he had been the one who insisted she make the trip.
‘I will be back in Johannesburg and we wouldn't see much of each other anyway,' he told her. ‘And besides that you have your duty and you have given me your word.'
‘I know Daddy would give me a PR job with the company in Jo'burg. I could get a flat and we could see lots of each other, I mean lots and lots!'
‘When you come back from London,' he promised.
T
here were representatives from South Africa House and the London office of Courtney Mining to meet Isabella and Michael at Heathrow and a company limousine to take them to the Dorchester.
‘Pater always overdoes it by a mile,' Michael remarked, embarrassed by the reception. ‘We could have taken a taxi.'
‘No point in being a Courtney, unless you get to enjoy it,' Isabella disagreed.
When Isabella was shown up to her suite, which looked out over Hyde Park, there was an enormous bouquet of flowers waiting for her with a note:
Sorry I can't be with you, darling. Next time we will paint the town bright scarlet together.
Your old Dad.
Even before the porter had brought her bags up, Isabella dialled the number that Tara had given her and she was answered on the third ring.
‘This is the Lord Kitchener Hotel, may I help you?'
It was strangely nostalgic to be greeted by an African accent in a strange city.
‘May I speak to Mrs Malcomess, please?'
In her letter Tara had warned her that she had reverted to her maiden name after the divorce.
‘Hello, Mater.' Isabella tried to sound natural when Tara came on the line, but Tara's delight was unrestrained.
‘Oh, Bella darling, where are you? Is Mickey with you? How soon can you get here? You have got the address, haven't you? It's so easy to find.'
Isabella tried to match Michael's enthusiasm and excitement as they drove through the streets of London and the taxi-driver pointed out the landmarks they passed, but she was in a funk at the prospect of seeing her mother again.
It was one of those rather seedy little tourist hotels in a side street off the Cromwell Road. Only part of the neon sign was lit. THE ORD KITCH, it flashed in electric blue, and on the glass of the front door were plastered the emblems of the AA and
Routiers
and a blaze of credit card stickers.
Tara rushed out through the glass doors while they were still paying off the taxi. She embraced Michael first, which gave Isabella a few moments to study her mother.
She had put on weight, her backside in the faded blue jeans was huge, and her bosom hung shapelessly in the baggy man's sweater.
‘She's an old bag.' Isabella was appalled. Even though Tara had never gone to any pains with her appearance, she had always had an air of freshness and neatness. But now her hair had turned grey, and she had obviously made a half-hearted attempt to henna it back to its original colour, and then given up. The grey was streaked brassy ginger and violent mulberry red, and it was twisted up into a careless
bun at the nape of her neck from which particoloured wisps had escaped.
Her features had sagged almost to obscure the bone structure which had been one of her most striking assets, and though her eyes were still large and bright the skin around them had creased and bagged.
At last she released Michael, and turned to Isabella.
‘My darling little girl, I would hardly have recognized you. What a lovely young woman you have become.'
They embraced. Isabella recalled how her mother had smelled, it was one of her pleasant childhood memories, but this woman smelled of some cheap and flowery perfume, of cigarette smoke and boiled cabbage, and – Isabella could barely credit her own senses – of underclothing that had been worn too long without changing.
She broke off the embrace, but Tara kept hold of her arm, and with Michael on the other side of her led them into the Lord Kitchener Hotel. The receptionist was a black lad, and Isabella recognized his voice as the one who had answered her phone call.
‘Phineas is from Cape Town also,' Tara introduced them. ‘He is one of our other runaways. He left after the troubles in '61 and, like the rest of us, he won't be going home yet. Now let me show you around the Lordy—' She laughed. ‘That's what my permanent guests call it, the Lordy. I thought of changing the name, it's so colonial and Empire—'
Tara chattered on happily as she led them around the hotel. The carpets in the passages were threadbare, and the rooms had washbasins, but shared the toilet and bathroom at the end of each passage.
Tara introduced them to any of her guests they met in the corridors or public rooms. ‘These are my son and daughter from Cape Town,' and they shook hands with German and French tourists who spoke no English, Pakistanis
and Chinese, black Kenyans and coloured South Africans.
‘Where are you staying?' Tara wanted to know.
‘At the Dorchester.'
‘Of course.' Tara rolled her eyes. ‘Fifty guineas a day, paid for by the sweat of the workers in the Courtney mines. That is what your father would have chosen. Why don't you and Mickey move in here? I have two nice rooms on the top floor free at the moment. You would meet so many interesing people, and we'd see so much more of each other.'
Isabella shuddered at the thought of sharing the toilet at the end of the passage and jumped in before Michael could agree.
‘Daddy would be furious, he has prepaid for us – and now we know our way, it's only a short taxi ride.'
‘Taxis,' Tara sniffed. ‘Why not take the bus or the underground like any ordinary person?'
Isabella stared at her speechlessly. Didn't she understand that they weren't ordinary people? They were Courtneys. She was about to say so, when Michael sensed her intention and intervened smoothly.
‘Of course you are quite right. You'll have to tell us what number bus to take and where to get off, Mater.'
‘Mickey, darling, please don't call me Mater any longer. It's so terribly bourgeois. Call me either Mummy or Tara, but not that.'
‘All right. It will be a little bit strange at first, but OK. I'll call you Tara.'
‘It's almost lunch time,' Tara announced blithely. ‘I asked cook to make a bread-and-butter pudding, I know it's one of your favourites, Mickey.'
‘I'm not awfully hungry, Mater – Tara,' Isabella announced. ‘And it must be jet-lag or something, but—'
Michael pinched her sharply. ‘That's lovely, Tara. We'd love to stay for lunch.'
‘I just have to look into the kitchen – make sure it's all under control – come along.'
As they entered the kitchen a child came running to Tara. He must have been helping the Irish cook, for his hands were white with flour to the elbows. Tara hugged him, happily heedless of the flour that rubbed off on her sweater.
A mat of short woolly curls covered his pate, and his skin was a clear light toffee colour. His eyes were huge and dark, and he had appealing gamin features. He reminded Isabella of any one of the dozens of children of the estate workers on Weltevreden. She smiled at him, and he gave back a cocky but friendly grin.
‘This is Benjamin,' Tara said. ‘And these, Benjamin, are your brother and sister – Mickey and Isabella.'
Isabella stared at the child. She had tried to discount and forget all that Lothar had told her, and in some measure she had succeeded. But now it all came rushing back, the words roaring in her ears like flood waters.
‘Your half-brother is an attractive coffee colour,' Lothar had told her and she wanted to scream, ‘How could you, Mater, how could you do this to us?' But Michael had recovered from his obvious surprise, and now he held out his hand towards the child and said,
‘Hi there, Ben. It's fine that we are brothers – but how about you and me being friends also?'
‘Hey, man – I like that,' Benjamin agreed instantly. To add to Isabella's dismay and confusion, he spoke in a broad South London accent.
Isabella spoke barely a dozen words during lunch. The pea soup was thickened with flour that had not cooked through and it stuck to the roof of her mouth. The boiled silverside lay limply in its own watery gravy, and the cabbage was cooked pink.
They sat at the table with Phineas, the receptionist, and five other of Tara's guests, all black South African expatriates,
and the boisterous conversation was almost entirely conducted in left-wing jargon. The government of which Isabella's beloved father was a minister was always referred to as the ‘racist regime' and Michael joined cheerfully in the discussion about the redistribution of wealth and the return of the land to those who worked it after the revolution had succeeded and the People's Democratic Republic of Azania had been established. Isabella wanted to scream at him, ‘Damn you, Mickey, they are talking about Weltevreden and the Silver River Mine. These are terrorists and revolutionaries – and their sole purpose is to destroy us and our world.'
When the bread-and-butter pudding was served, she could take it no longer.
‘I'm sorry, Tara,' she whispered. ‘I have a splitting headache, and I simply have to get back to the Dorchester and lie down.' She was so pale and discomforted that Tara made only a token protest and genuine noises of concern. Isabella refused to let Michael escort her. ‘I won't spoil your fun. You haven't seen Mater – Tara – in ages. I'll just grab a taxi.'
Perhaps it really was fatigue that had weakened her, but in the cab she found herself weeping with chagrin and shame and fury.
‘Damn her! Damn her to hell,' she whispered. ‘She has disgraced and dishonoured all of us, Daddy and Nana and me and all the family.'
As soon as she reached her room she locked her door, threw herself on the bed and reached for the telephone.
‘Exchange, I want to put a call through to Johannesburg in South Africa—' She read the number out of her address book.
The delay was less than half an hour and then a marvellously homey Afrikaans accent said, ‘This is Police Headquarters, Bureau of State Security.'
‘I want to speak to Colonel Lothar De La Rey.'
‘De La Rey.'
Despite the thousands of miles that separated them, his voice was crisp and clear, and in her imagination she saw him again naked on the beach in the dawn, like a statue of a Greek athlete but with those glowing golden eyes, and she whispered, ‘Oh, God, Lothie, I've missed you. I want to come home. I hate it here.'
He spoke quietly, reassuring and consoling her, and when she had calmed he ordered her, ‘Tell me about it.'
‘You were right. Everything you said was true – even to her little brown bastard, and the people are all revolutionaries and terrorists. What do you want me to do, Lothie? I'll do anything you tell me.'
‘I want you to stay there, and stick it out for the full two weeks. You can telephone me every day, but you must stay on. Promise me, Bella.'
‘All right – but, God, I miss you and home.'
‘Listen, Bella. I want you to go to South Africa House the first opportunity you have. Don't let anybody know, not even your brother Michael. Ask for Colonel Van Vuuren, the military attaché. He will show you photographs and ask you to identify the people you meet.'
‘All right, Lothie – but I've told you twice already how much I miss you, while you, you swine, haven't said a word.'
‘I have thought about you every day since you left,' Lothar said. ‘You're beautiful and funny and you make me laugh.'
‘Don't stop,' Isabella pleaded. ‘Just keep talking like that.'
Adrian Van Vuuren was a burly avuncular man, who looked more like a friendly Free State farmer than a Secret Service man. He took her up to the ambassador's office and introduced her to His Excellency, who knew Shasa well, and they chatted for a few minutes. His Excellency invited
Isabella to the races at Ascot the coming Saturday but Colonel Van Vuuren intervened apologetically.
‘Miss Courtney is doing a little job for us at present, Your Excellency. It might not be wise to make too much public display of her connections to the embassy.'
‘Very well,' the ambassador agreed reluctantly. ‘But you will come to lunch with us, Miss Courtney – not often we have such a pretty girl at our gatherings.'
Van Vuuren gave her the short tour of the embassy and its art treasures, which ended in his office on the third floor.
‘Now, my dear, we have some work for you.'
A pile of albums was stacked on his desk, each full of head-and-shoulder photographs of men and women. They sat side by side and Van Vuuren flicked through the pages, picking out the mug shots of the people she had met at the Lord Kitchener Hotel.
‘You make it easier for us by knowing their names,' Van Vuuren remarked, and turned to a photograph of Phineas, the hotel receptionist.
‘Yes, that's him,' Isabella confirmed, and Van Vuuren looked up his details in a separate ledger. ‘Phineas Mophoso. Born 1941. Member of PAC. Convicted of public violence 16 May 1961. Violated bail conditions. Illegal emigration late 1961. Present location believed UK.'
‘Small fry,' Van Vuuren grunted, ‘but small fry often shoal with big fish.' He offered to provide an embassy car to drive Isabella back to the Dorchester.

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