Rage - Smith Wilbur - Страница 78

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! will write to you as soon as I have more definite news. In the meantime I entreat you to continue your valuable work for the cause, in particulal you should make every effort to see that your husband is elected to the government front benches at the elections next month. This will make youl position and value to the struggle unique.

For days after receiving this letter Tara's mood was so light and gay that both Shasa and Centaine remarked on it, and took it as a sign that she had finally accepted'her responsibilities as the mistress of Weltevreden, and was prepared to honour the agreement that she had made with Shasa.

When the prime minister announced the date of the general election, the country was immediately seized by the peculiar frenzy of excitement and intrigue which accompanies all major political activity in South Africa and the newspapers began their strident and partisan pronouncements.

Shasa's resignation from the United Party and his nomination as the Nationalist candidate for the-constituency of South Boland was one of the highlights of the campaign. The English press castigated him, branding him a coward and a traitor, while the Burger and the Transvalet, those stalwarts of the Nationalist cause, hailed him as a far-seeing man of the future and looked forward to the day when all white South Africans, albeit under the firm hand of the National Party, marched shoulder to shoulder towards the golden republic which was the dream of all true South African patriots.

Kitty Godolphin had flown back from New York to cover the elections and to up-date her famous 'Focus on Africa' series that had won her another Emmy and had made her one of the highest paid of the new generation of young, pretty and waspish television commentators.

Shasa's political defection was the headline story when she landed at Jan Smuts airport, and she telephoned him from the airport on his private line and got him in his office just as the board meeting he had been chairing broke up, and he was about to leave Centaine House to fly up to the H'am Mine for his monthly inspection. 'Hi!" she said gaily.

'It's me." 'You bitch." He recognized her voice instantly. 'After what you did to me, I should kick your bottom, wearing hobnailed boots and taking a full swing, at that." 'Oh, did you see it? Wasn't it good? I thought I captured you perfectly." 'Yes, I saw it last month on BBC while I was in London. You made me look like a cross between Captain Bligh and Simon Legree, although more pompous than either and a lot less lovable." 'That's what I said - I got you perfectly." 'I don't know why I am talking to you,' he chuckled despite himself.

'Because you are lusting after my miraculously beautiful body,' she suggested.

'I'd be wiser to make advances to a nest of hornets." 'We aren't talking wisdom here, buddy boy, we are talking lust.

The two are not compatible." And Shasa had a poignant vision of her slim body and her perfect little breasts, and he felt slightly breathless.

'Where are you?" he asked.

'Johannesburg airport." .

What are you doing this evening? He made a qmck calculation.

He could postpone the H'am Mine inspection, and it was four hours' flying time to Johannesburg in the Mosquito.

'I'm open to suggestions,' she told him, 'as long as the suggestions include an exclusive interview for NABS on yofir change of political status and your view of the up-coming elections and what they mean to the ordinary people of this country." 'I should know better,' he said. 'But I'll be there in five hours.

Don't go away." Shasa placed the receiver back on its cradle and stood for a moment wondering at himself. His change of plans would throw the entire company into consternation, for he had a tight schedule laid out for the weeks ahead, including the opening of his election campaign, but the woman had woven some sort of spell around him.

Like a malignant sprite her memory had danced at the edge of his mind all these months, and now the thought of being with her filled him with that quivering expectation he had not known since he was a lad embarking on his very first sexual explorations.

The Mosquito was fuelled and parked on the hardstand ready for the flight to H'am Mine. It took him ten minutes to calculate his new flight plan and file it with air traffic control and then he climbed up into the cockpit and, grinning like a schoolboy playing hookey, he cranked the Rolls Royce Merlin engines.

It was dusk when he landed, but a company car was waiting for him and he drove directly to the Carlton Hotel in the centre of Johannesburg. Kitty was in the lobby as he came in through the revolving doors. She was fresh-faced as a teenager, long-legged and narrow-hipped in blue jeans, and she came to him with childlike enthusiasm and wrapped both arms around his neck to kiss him. Strangers in the lobby must have imagined Shasa was a father greeting his u schoolgirl daughter, and they smiled indulgently.

'They let us into your suite,' she told him as she led him towards the elevator, skipping beside him to keep pace and hugging his arm in a pantomime of adoration. 'Hank had got his camera and lights set up already." 'You aren't even giving me time to visit the heads,' Shasa protested, and she pulled a wry face.

'Let's get it over and done. Tfien we'll have more time for whatever you want to do afterwards." She gave him a devilish grin, and he wagged his head in reluctant acquiescence.

It was deliberate, of course. Kitty was too professional to give him time to pull himself together and concentrate his mind. It was part of her technique to get her subject off-balance, while on the other hand, she had been carefully preparing her own notes and questions during the five hours since they had spoken on the telephone.

She had rearranged the furniture in his suite, making one corner into an intimate nook and Hank had lit it and was standing by with his A rriflex. Shasa shook hands with him and exchanged a friendly greeting while Kitty poured him a massive whisky from the liquor cabinet.

'Take your jacket off,' she instructed as she handed it to him. 'I want you relaxed and casual. 'She led him to the two facing chairs and while he sipped his whisky she lulled him with an amusing account of the flight out which had been delayed by bad weather in London for eight hours. Then Hank gave her the signal and she said sweetly: 'Shasa Courtney, since the turn of this century your family has been a traditional ally of General Smuts. He was a personal friend of your grandfather, and your mother. He was a frequent guest in your house, and sponsored your own entry into the political arena. Now you have turned your back on the United Party which he led, and have deserted the fundamental principles of decency and fair play towards the coloured citizens of this country which were so much a part of General Smuts' philosophy. You have been called a deserter and a turncoat - and worse. Do you think that is a fair description, and if not, why not?" The attack was so swift and savage that for a moment it checked him, but he had known what to expect, and he grinned. He knew he was going to enjoy this.

'General Smuts was a great man, but not quite as saintly towards the natives as you suppose. In all the time he was in power, their political status remained unchanged, and when they stepped out of line, he did not hesitate before sending in the troops and giving them a whiff of grape. Have you ever heard of the Bondelswart rebellion and the Bulhoek massacre?" 'You are suggesting that Smuts also oppressed the native people of this country?" 'No more than a strict headmaster oppresses his children. In the main, he never seriously addressed himself to the coloured question.

He left that for a future generation to settle. We are that future generation." 'All right, so what are you going to do about the black people of this country who outnumber you nearly four to one and have no political rights whatsoever in the land of their birth?" 'Firstly, we will try to avoid the trap of simplistic thinking." 'Can you explain that?" Kitty frowned. She didn't want him to wriggle out of her grip by using vague terminology. 'Give us a concrete example of simplistic thinking." He nodded. 'You glibly use the terms black people and white people, dividing this population into two separate, if unequal, portions. That is dangerous. It might work in America. If all the American blacks were given white faces they would be simply Americans and think of themselves as that--' 'You are suggesting that this is not the case in Africa?" 'I am indeed,' Shasa agreed. 'If all the blacks in this country were given white faces, they would still think of themselves as Zulus and Xhosas and Vendas, and we would still be English and Afrikaners very little would have altered." Kitty didn't like that, it was not what she wanted to tell her audiences.

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