Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur - Страница 154

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Shasa had met him once before. His name was Hubert Langley and he was one of Tara's bleeding-heart brigade. He wore a shabby tweed jacket with leather elbow patches when most of the other male guests were in morning dress. He was an inch shorter than Tara, with steel-rimmed spectacles and prematurely thinning blond hair. His beard was the colour and texture of the plumage of a day-old chicken, and he lectured in sociology at the university.

Tara had once confided in Shasa. Huey is actually a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, isn't that remarkable? Her voice was awed. He is totally committed and he has an absolutely brilliant mind. One might call him a shining jewel in a greasy and grubby setting, Shasa remarked, thereby precipitating another of their periodic estrangements.

Now he watched as Huey laid one of his freckled paws on Tara's unblemished forearm, and when he touched Tara's cheek with his wispy moustaches and whispered one of the gems from that absolutely brilliant mind into her pink shelllike ear, Shasa realized that slow strangulation was too good for him.

He sauntered across the tent to intervene and Tara greeted him coolly, perfectly hiding the fact that her pulse was thumping loudly in her ears. She hadn't realized how intensely she had missed him until she watched him making his speech, urbane and self-assured, amusing and so infuriatingly good-looking.

However, we are not climbing on the same old merry-goround again, she warned herself, and put up all her defences as he took the chair on the other side of her and smiled at her and teased her lightly while looking at her with open admiration, which was so hard to resist. They had shared so much together, friends and places and fun and fights, and he knew exactly how to tickle her sense of humour. She realized that once she started to laugh it was all over, and she held out against it, but he worked on her defences with skill and perfect timing, adroitly breaking them down as swiftly as she set them up, until at last she surrendered with a tinkle of laughter which she could no longer contain, and he followed up swiftly, cutting her out from Huey's side.

From the balcony Mathilda Janine singled out her elder sister and tossed her bouquet directly at her. Tara made no effort to catch it but Shasa snatched it out of the air and handed it to Tara with a bow, while the other wedding guests applauded and looked knowing.

As soon as David and Matty had departed, dragging a bunch of old shoes and tin cans behind David's old bullnosed Morris, Shasa worked Tara out of the marquee and spirited her away in the Jaguar. He didn't make the mistake of taking her back up the mountain to the Rhodes memorial, the scene of their last historic battle. Instead he drove out to Hout Bay and parked on the top of the precipitous cliffs.

While the sun set in a silent bomb-burst of orange and red into the sombre green Atlantic, they fell upon each other in a frenzy of reconciliation.

Tara's body was divided into two zones by an invisible but distinct line around her waist. On occasions of extreme goodwill such as this, the area above the line was, after a suitable show of resistance, made available to him. However, the area south of the line was inviolate, a restriction that left them both strung up with nervous tension when in the dawn they finally and reluctantly parted with one last lingering kiss at Tara's front door.

This latest reconciliation lasted four months which was a new record for them, and after preparing an emotional balance-sheet on which the many advantages of bachelorhood were overbalanced by one single weighty consideration, I cannot live without her, Shasa formally proposed marriage to Tara Malcomess and was devastated by her reply.

Don't be silly, Shasa, apart from a sort of vulgar animal attraction, you and I have absolutely nothing in common. That is the most utter bilge, Tara, he protested. We come from the same backgrounds, we speak the same language, laugh at the same jokes, 'But Shasa you don't care. You know that I plan to enter Parliament. 'That is a career decision, not a thing of the heart, that isn't caring for the poor and the needy and the helpless.

I care for the poor

You

care for Shasa Courtney, that's who you really care for. Her voice rasped like a stiletto drawn from its sheath.

For you the poor is anybody who can afford to ran only five polo ponies. Your papa had fifteen nags in training at the last count, he pointed out tartly.

You leave my father out of this,, she flashed at him.

Daddy has done more for the black and brown people of this country He held up both hands to stop her. Come on, Tara! You know I am Blaine Malcomess's most ardent admirer. I was not trying to insult him, I was simply trying to get you to marry me. It's no good, Shasa.

It's one of my unshakable convictions that the vast wealth of this land must be redistributed, removed from the hands of the Courtneys and the Oppenheimers and given That's Hubert Langley speaking, not Tara Malcomess.

Your little Commie pal should think of generating new wealth rather than dividing up the old. When you take everything we have, the Courtneys and the Oppenheimers, and share it out equally, there would be enough for a square meal for everybody, twenty-four hours later we would all be starving again, the Courtneys and the Oppenheimers included., There you are! I She was triumphant. You are quite happy to see everybody starve but yourself. He gasped at the injustice, and rallied to launch a fullscale counterattack, but just in time he saw the steely grey battle light in her eyes and checked himself.

If you and I were married,he made his voice humble, you could influence me, persuade me to your way of thinking She had been poised for one of their marvelously exhilarating shouting matches, and now she looked slightly crestfallen.

You crafty little capitalist she said. That's not fighting fair.

I don't want to fight with you, my dear girl. In fact,

what I want to do with you is diametrically the opposite of fighting. Despite herself, she giggled. That's another thing I have against you, you carry your mind around in your underpants. You still haven't answered my question: will you marry me? to hand in by nine o'clock tomorrow I have an essay morning, and I am on duty at the clinic from six o'clock this evening. Please take me home now, Shasa. 'Yes or no? he demanded.

Perhaps, she said, but only after I detect a vast improvement in your social conscience, and certainly not before I have obtained my master's degree. That's another two years. Eighteen months, she corrected him. And even then it's not a promise, it's only a big fat "perhaps"., I don't know if I can wait that long. Then bye-bye, Shasa Courtney. They never extended their record beyond four months, for three days later Shasa received a phone call. He was at a meeting with his mother and the new winemaker that Centaine had recently brought out to Weltevreden from France.

They were discussing the designs for the labels on the latest vintage of Cabernet Sauvignon when Centaine's secretary came through to her office.

There is a phone call for you, Master Shasa. I can't come now. Take a message and I'll call back. Shasa did not even look up from the display of labels on Centaine's desk.

It's Miss Tara, and she says it's urgent. Shasa glanced sheepishly at Centaine. it was one of her strict maxims that business came first, and did not mix with any of his social or sporting activities, but this time she gave him a nod.

I won't be a minute. He hurried out and was back within seconds.

What on earth is it? Centaine stood up quickly when she saw his face.

Tara, he said. It's Tara., Is she all right? She's in jail. In December of the year 1838 on a tributary of the Buffalo river, the Zulu King Dingaan had sent his impis of warriors armed with rawhide shield and assegai against the circle of wagons of the Voortrekkers, the ancestors of the Afrikaner people.

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