Текст книги "Power of the Sword"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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Текущая страница: 42 (всего у книги 51 страниц)

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.

The wheels of the wagons were bound together with trekchains and the spaces between them blocked with thorn branches. The Voortrekkers stood to the barricade with their long muzzle loaders, all of them veterans of a dozen such battles, brave men and the finest marksmen in the world.

They shot down the Zulu hordes, choking the river from bank to bank with dead men and turning its waters crimson, so that for ever after it was known as Blood river.

On that day the might of the Zulu empire was shattered, and the Voortrekker leaders, standing bare-headed on the battlefield, made a covenant with God to celebrate the anniversary of the victory with religious service and thanksgiving for all time.

This day had become the most holy date in the Calvinistic Afrikaner calendar after the day of Christ's birth. It celebrated all their aspirations as a people, it commemorated their sufferings and honoured their heroes and their forefathers.

Thus the hundredth anniversary of the battle had peculiar significance for the Afrikaners and during the protracted celebrations the leader of the Nationalist Party declared, We must make South Africa safe for the white man. It is shameful that white men are forced to live and work beside lesser breeds; coloured blood is bad blood and we must be protected from it. We need a second great victory if white civilization is to be saved. Over the months that followed, Dr Malan and his Nationalist Party introduced a series of racially orientated bills to the House. These ranged from making mixed marriages from a crime, to the physical segregation of the whites from men of colour, whether Asiatic or African, and disenfranchising all coloured persons who already had the vote while ensuring that those who did not have it, remained without it. Up until the middle of 1939 Hertzog and Smuts had managed to head off or defeat these proposals.

The South African census distinguished between the various racial groups, the Cape-coloured and other mixed breeds'. These were not, as one might believe, the progeny of white settlers and the indigenous tribes, but were rather the remnants of the Khoisan tribes, the Hottentots and Bushmen and Damaras, together with descendants of Asiatic brought out to the Cape of Good Hope slaves who had been in the ships of the Dutch East India Company.

Taken together they were an attractive people, useful and productive members of a complex society. They tended to be small-boned and light-skinned with almond eyes in faintly oriental features. They were cheerful, clever and quickwitted, fond of pageant and carnival and music, dextrous and willing workers, good Christians or devout Muslims.

They had been civilized in Western European fashion for centuries and had lived in close and amiable association with the whites since the days of slavery.

The Cape was their stronghold and they were better off than most other coloured groups. They had the vote, albeit on a separate roll from the whites, and many of them, as skilled craftsmen and small traders, had achieved a standard of living and affluence surpassing that of many of their white neighbours. However, the majority of them were domestic servants or urban labourers surviving just above or below subsistence level. These people now became the subject of Dr Daniel Malan's attempts to enforce segregation in the Cape as well as every other corner of the land.

Hertzog and Smuts were fully aware that many of their own followers sympathized with the Nationalists, and that to oppose them rigidly might easily bring down the delicate coalition of their United Party. Reluctantly they put together a counter-proposal, for residential segregation, which would disrupt the delicate social balance as little as possible and which, while making law a situation which already existed, would appease their own party and cut the ground from under the Nationalist opposition's feet.

We aim to peg the present position, General Jan Smuts explained, and a week after this explanation a large orderly crowd of coloured people, joined by many liberal whites, gathered in the Greemnarket Square in the centre of Cape Town peaceably to protest against the proposed legislation.

Other organizations, the South African Communist Party and the African National Congress, the Trotsky National Liberation League and the African Peoples Organization, scented blood in the air and their members swelled the ranks of the gathering, while in the front row centre, right under the hastily erected speakers stand, auburn hair shining and grey-blue eyes flashing with righteous ardour, stood Tara Malcomess. At her side, but slightly below her level, was Hubert Langley, backed by a group of Huey's sociology students from the University. They stared up at the speaker, enthralled and enchanted.

This fellow is very good, Hubert whispered. I wonder why we have never heard of him before. He is from the Transvaal, one of his students had overheard and leaned across to explain. One of the top men in the African National Congress on the Witwatersrand. Hubert nodded. Do you know his name? Gama, Moses Gama. Moses, the name suits him, the one to lead his people out of captivity., Tara thought that she had seldom seen a finer-looking man, black or white. He was tall and lean, with the fare of a young pharaoh, intelligent, noble and fierce.

We live in time of sorrow and great danger, Moses Gama's voice had a range and timbre that made Tara shiver involuntarily. A time that was foreseen in the Book of Proverbs., He paused and then spread his hands in an eloquent gesture as he quoted. There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords and there jaw teeth as knives to devour the poor from the earth, and the needy from among men. d again.

That's magnificent! Tara shivered again. MY friends, we are the poor and the needy. When each of us stands alone we are weak, alone we are the prey for those with teeth like swords. But together we can be strong.

if we stand together, we can resist them. Tara joined in the applause, clapping until the palms of her hands were numb, and the speaker stood calmly waiting for silence. Then he went on, The world is like a great pot of oil slowly heating. When it boils over there will be turmoil and steam and it will feed the fire beneath it. The flames will fly up to the sky and afterwards nothing will be the same again. The world we know will be altered for ever, and only one thing is certain, as certain as the rise of tomorrows sun. The future belongs to the people, and Africa belongs to the Africans. Tara found she was weeping hysterically as she clapped and screamed her adulation.

After Moses Gama, the other speakers were dull and halting and she was angry with their ineptitude, but when she looked for him in the crowd Moses Gama had disappeared.

A man like him dare not stay too long in one place, Hubert explained. They have to move like the will o' the wisp to keep ahead of the police. A general never fights in the front line. They are too valuable to the revolution to be used as cannon-fodder. Lenin only returned to Russia after the fighting was over. But we will hear of Moses Gama again mark my words. Around them the crowd was being marshalled to form up into a procession behind a band, a fifteen-piece marching band, any gathering was an excuse for the Cape-coloured people to make music, and in ranks four and five abreast the demonstration began to snake out of the square. The band played 'Alabama', setting a festive mood, and the crowd was laughing and singing; it seemed a parade rather than a demonstration.

We will be peaceful and orderly, the organizers reinforced their previous orders, passing them down the column. No trouble, we want no trouble with the police. We are going to march to the Parliament building and hand a petition to the prime minister. There were two or three thousand in the procession, more than they had hoped for. Tara marched in the fifth rank just behind Dr Goollarn Gool and his daughter Cissie and the other coloured leaders.

With the band leading them, they turned into Adderley Street, the main city thoroughfare. As they marched up towards the Parliament building, the ranks of the procession were swelled by the idlers and the curious, so that as their leaders attempted to turn into Parliament Lane, they were followed by a column of five thousand, a quarter of a mile long, almost half of whom were there for the fun and the excitement, rather than from any political motives.

At the entrance to Parliament Lane a small detachment of police was waiting for them. The road had been barricaded, and there were more police armed with batons and sjamboks, those long black whips of hippohide, being held in reserve further up the road in front of the fence of castiron palings which protected the Parliament building.

The procession came to a ragged halt at the police barrier and Dr Gool signalled the band to silence, then went forward to parley with the white police inspector commanding the detail while the photographers and reporters from local newspapers crowded around them to record the negotiations.

I wish to present a petition to the prime minister on behalf of the coloured people of the Cape Province, Dr Gool began.

Dr Gool, you are conducting an unlawful assembly and I must ask you to get your people to disperse, the police inspector countered. None of his men had been issued with firearms and the atmosphere was almost friendly. One of the trumpet-players blew a loud raspberry and the inspector smiled at the insult and wagged his finger like a schoolmaster at the culprit; the crowd laughed. This was the kind of paternal treatment which everybody understood.

Dr Gool and the inspector haggled and argued in a goodnatured fashion, undeterred by pleasantries from the wags in the crowd, until finally a parliamentary messenger was sent for. Dr Gool handed him the petition and then returned to address the procession.

By this time many of the idlers had lost interest and drifted away; only the original nucleus of the procession remained.

MY friends, our petition has been conveyed to the prime minister, Dr Gool told them. We have achieved our object and we can now rely on General Hertzog, as a good man and a friend of the people, to do the just thing. I have promised the police that we will all go home quietly now, and that there will be no trouble. We have been insulted, Hubert Langley called out loudly.

They will not even deign to speak to us. Make them listen to us, another voice called and there was loud agreement and equally loud dissent. The procession began to lose its orderly form and to heave and sway.

Please! My friends -'Dr Gool's voice was almost drowned in the uproar, and the police inspector called an order and the reserves moved down the street and formed up behind the barricade, batons at the ready, facing the head of the procession.

For some minutes the mood was ugly and confused, and then the coloured leaders prevailed and the procession began to break up and disperse, except for a hard core of three or four hundred. All of these were young, many of them students, both black and white, and Tara was one of the few females amongst them.

The police moved forward and firmly herded them away from the barricade, but spontaneously they re-formed into a smaller but more cohesive band and began marching back towards District Six, the almost exclusively coloured area of the city which abutted onto the central commercial area, but whose diffuse and indistinct boundaries would be one of the subjects of the proposed legislation physically to segregate the racial groups.

The younger, more aggressive marchers linked arms and began to chant and sing, and the police detachments shadowed them, firmly frustrating their efforts to turn back into the central area of the city, shepherding them towards their own areas.

Africa for the Africans, they chanted as they marched.

We are all the same colour under the skin. Bread and freedom., Then Hubert Langley's students became more lyrical and picked up the ancient refrain of the oppressed that he had taught them: When Adam delved and Eve span Who was then the gentleman?

The band began to play the more modern protest: Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord., And after that they launched into: Nkosi sikelela Africa God Save Africa. As they entered the narrow lanes and higgledy-piggledy alleys of District Six, the street gangs emerged to watch with interest, and then to join the fun. In the crowded streets were those with personal scores to settle, and there were also the blatantly criminal and opportunistic gang members.

A half brick came sailing in a high arc out of the packed ranks and crashed through the plate-glass window front of one of the white general dealers, a man notorious for overcharging and restricting credit. The crowd was galvanized, a woman screamed, men began to howl like wolves in a pack.

Somebody reached through the jagged hole in the shop window and grabbed an armful of men's suits. Further down the street another window went with a shattering of glass shards, and the police grouped more tightly and moved forward.

Tara was trying desperately to help restore order, pleading with the laughing looters as they stampeded into the shops, but she was shoved aside and almost knocked down and trampled underfoot.

Go home, whitey, one of the gang members shouted in her face. 'We don't want you here. Then he ducked into the doorway of the shop and picked up a new Singer sewingmachine in his arms.

Stop it! Tara met him as he came back through the door of the shop. ]Put it back. You are spoiling everything. Don't you see that's what they want you to do? She beat her clenched fists on the man's chest, and he recoiled before her fury. However, the lane was jammed with humanity, looters, gang members, ordinary citizens and political protesters confused and angry and afraid. From the end of the lane the police charged in a phalanx; batons rising and falling, siamboks swinging, they began to sweep the mob down the street.

Tara ran out of the looted store just at the moment when a large constable in dark blue uniform was laying on his baton with a will, his target a skinny little Malay tailor who had scampered out of his shop to try to retrieve a bolt of looted cloth.

The constable hit the tailor with a full swing of the baton, crushing his red pillbox fez, and when the little man dropped on the paving stones, stooped over him to aim another blow at his head. Tara launched herself at the policeman. It was a reflex action, like a lioness protecting one of her cubs. The policeman was bent forward, his back to her, and Tara took him off balance. He went down sprawling, but Tara had a death grip on his baton and the wrist-strap parted.

Suddenly she found herself armed and triumphant with the blue-jacketed enemy of the proletariat, minions of the bourgeoisie, before her.

She had come in behind the rank of advancing police as they passed the shop, and their backs were turned to her.

The thuds of the swinging batons and the terrified squeals of the victims infuriated her. There were the poor and the needy and the oppressed and here were the oppressors, and here also with raised baton was Tara Malcomess.

Normally it would have taken Shasa little over half an hour to drive the Jaguar from the Anreith gates of Weltevreden to the charge office in Victoria Street. This afternoon it took him almost an hour and a good deal of fast talking.

The police had cordoned off the area from Observatory Main Road right to the old fort on the extreme south end of the Grand Parade. An ominous shroud of black smoke hung over District Six and drifted out over Table Bay and the police at the roadblocks were tense and on edge.

You can't go in there, sir, a sergeant flagged down the Jaguar. 'Nobody allowed in there. Those black bastards are throwing bricks and burning everything in sight. Sergeant, I have just had a message. My fiance is in there and she needs me. She's in terrible trouble, you have to let me go to her. Orders, sir, I'm sorry. There were half a dozen constables at the barricade, four of them coloured municipal police.

Sergeant, what would you do if it were your wife or mother who needed you? The sergeant glanced around him sheepishly. I tell you what I'll do, sir. My men are going to open the roadblock for one minute and we are going to turn our backs. I never saw you and I don't know nothing about you. The streets were deserted but littered with debris, loose stones and bricks and broken glass that crunched under the tyres of the Jaguar. Shasa drove fast, appalled at the destruction he saw around him, slitting his eyes against the drifts of smoke that obscured his vision every few hundred yards.

Once or twice he saw figures lurking in the alleys, or watching from the upper windows of the undamaged buildings, but nobody attempted to stop him or attack him.

Nevertheless, it was with intense relief that he reached the police station in Victoria Road, and the protection of the hastily marshalled police riot squads.

Tara Malcomess. The sergeant at the front desk of the charge office recognized the name immediately. Yes, you could say that we know about her! After all, it took four of my men to carry her in here.

What are the charges, Sergeant? Let me see, He consulted the charge sheet. So far we have only got attending an unlawful assembly, wilful destruction of property, inciting to violence, using abusive and threatening language, obstructing the police in the execution of their duty, assaulting a policeman and,or policemen, common assault, assault with an offensive weapon and,or assault with intent. I will put up her bail. That, sir, will cost a pretty penny, I should say. Her father is Colonel Malcomess, the cabinet minister. Well, why didn't you say so before? Please wait here, sir. Tara had a blackened eye and her blouse was torn; her auburn hair stood up in tangled disarray as she peered out at Shasa between the bars of her cell.

What about Huey? she demanded.

Huey can cook in Hades for I care. Then I'm going to cook with him, Tara declared truculently. I'm not leaving here without him. Shasa recognized the obstinate set of her madonna-like features, and sighed. So it cost him one hundred pounds fifty for Tara and fifty for Huey.

I'll be damned if I will give him a lift though, Shasa declared.

Fifty quid is enough for any little bolshevik. He can walk back to his kennel from here. Tara climbed into the front seat of the Jaguar and folded her arms defiantly. Neither of them spoke as Shasa gunned the motor and pulled away with unnecessary violence, burning blue smoke off the bac tyres.

Instead of heading back towards the affluent white southern suburbs, he sent the Jaguar roaring up the lower slopes of Devil's Peak and parked at one of the viewpoints overlooking the smoking and damaged buildings of District Six.

What are you doing? she demanded, as he switched off the engine.

Don't you want to have a look at your handiwork? he asked coldly. Surely you are proud of what you have achieved.

She shifted uneasily in her seat. That wasn't us, she muttered. 'That was the skollie boys and the gangsters. My dear Tara, that is how revolution is supposed to work.

The criminal elements are encouraged to destroy the existing system, to break down the rule of law and order, and then the leaders step in and restore order again by shooting the revolutionaries. Haven't you studied the teachings of your idol Lenin? It was the fault of the police Yes, it's always the fault of the police, that's also part of Lenin's plan. It isn't like that Shut up, he snapped at her. Just for once shut up and listen to me. Up to now I've put up with your Joan of Arc act. It was silly and naive but I tolerated it because I loved you. But when you start burning down people's homes and throwing bricks and bombs, then I don't think it's so funny any more. Don't you dare condescend to me, she flared.

Look, Tara, look down there at the smoke and flames.

Those are the people you pretend to care for, those are the people who you say you want to help. Those are their homes and livelihoods that you have put the torch to. I didn't think, I No, you certainly didn't think. But I am going to tell you something now and you'd better remember it. if you try to destroy this land I love and make its people suffer, then you become my enemy and I will fight you to the death., She was silent for a long time, her head turned away from him and then at last she said softly, Will you take me home, Please? He took the long way home over Kloof Nek and along the Atlantic coast, circling around the far side of Table Mountain to avoid the riot-torn areas and they never spoke again until he parked at last in front of the Malcomess home in Newlands.

Perhaps you are right, Tara said. Perhaps we really are enemies. She climbed out of the Jaguar and stood looking down at him as he sat behind the wheel in the open cockpit.

Goodbye Shasa, she said softly, sadly, and went into the house.

Goodbye, Tara, he whispered. Goodbye, my beloved enemy!

All the Courtneys were gathered in the front room of Weltevreden.

Sir Garrick and Anna sat on the long sofa which was covered with striped Regency patterned damask. They had come down from Natal for Sir Garry's birthday, and the week before they had all climbed Table Mountain for the traditional birthday picnic. it had been a merry occasion and the Ou Baas, General Ian Christian Smuts, had been with them, as he nearly always was.

Sir Garry and Lady Anna had planned to return home a few days reviously, but then the ghastly news of the German invation of Poland had broken and they had stayed on at Weltevrede. It was only right that the family should be together in these desperate days.

The two of them held hands like young lovers as they sat close together. Since his last birthday, Sir Garry had grown a small silver goatee beard, perhaps in unconscious imitation of his old friend General smuts. it increased his scholarly mien and added a little touch of distinction to his pale aesthetic features. He leaned slightly forward on the sofa, inclined towards his wife but with his attentionontheradio cabinet over which Shasa Courtney was fussing, twiddling the tuning knobs and frowning at the crackle and whine of static.

The BBC is on the forty-one-metre band, Centaine told him sharply and glanced at her diamond-studded wristwatch. Do be quick, cheri, or we will miss the transmission!

,Ah! Shasa smiled as the static cleared and the chimes of Big Ben rang out clearly. As they died away the announcer spoke.

Twelve hundred hours Greenwich Mean Time and in place of the news we are broadcasting a statement by Mr Neville Chamberlain the prime minister,, Turn it up, cheri, Centaine ordered anxiously, and the fateful words, measured and grave, boomed into the elegant room.

They listened to it all in complete silence. Sir Garry's beard quivered, and he took the steel-rimmed spectacles off his nose and absentmindedly chewed on one of the side frames. Beside him Anna wriggled forward onto the edge of the sofa, her thick thighs spread under their own weight; her face slowly turned a deeper shade of brick and her grip on her husband's hand tightened as she stared at the radio in its mahogany cabinet.

Centaine sat in the tall wingbacked chair beside the huge stone fireplace. She looked like a young girl in a white summer dress with a wide yellow ribbon around her slim waist. She was thirty-nine years old, but there was not yet a single thread of silver in the dense dark curls of her hair and her skin was clear, the faint crow's feet at the corners of her eyes smoothed almost entirely by expensive oils and creams. She leaned an elbow on the arm of the chair, and while with one finger she touched her cheek, she never took her eyes off her son.

Shasa paced the long room, moving from the radio cabinet in its niche between the long flowered curtains, across the highly polished parquet floor with its scattering of oriental carpets until he reached the grand concert piano that stood against the main wall of bookcases at the far end of the room, then turning and coming back with quick restless paces, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bowed in concentration.

She thought how he looked so much like his father.

Though Michael had been older and not quite so handsome, yet they had the same quality of grace. She remembered how she had believed Michael to be immortal, a young god, and she felt the terror enter her soul again, that same helpless crippling terror, as she heard the words of war echo through this beautiful home that she had built as a fortress against the world.

We are never safe, there is no refuge, she thought. It is coming again, and I cannot save those I love. Shasa and Blaine, they will both go and I cannot keep them from it.

Last time it was Michael and Papa, this time it's Shasa and Blaine – and, oh God, I hate it. I hate war and I hate the evil men who make it. Please God spare us this time. You took Michael and Papa, please spare Shasa and Blaine. They are all I have, please don't take them from me. The deep slow voice spoke into the room, and Shasa froze in the centre of the floor, turning his head to stare over his shoulder at the radio as the voice said: And so, it is with the deepest regret that I have to inform you that a state of war now exists between Great Britain and Germany. The transmission ended and was replaced by the slow sad strains of chamber music.

Turn it off, cheri, Centaine said softly, and there was complete silence in the room.

Nobody moved for many seconds. Then abruptly Centaine rose to her feet. She was smiling gaily as she linked her arm through Shasa's.

Lunch is ready everybody, she cried lightly. in such lovely weather we will eat on the terrace. Shasa will open a bottle of champagne, and I have managed to get the first oysters of the season. She kept up a bright and cheery monologue until they were all seated at the table and the wine glasses were filled and then suddenly her act collapsed, and she turned to Sir Garry with a tortured expression.

We won't have to go in, will we Papa? General Hertzog promised he would keep us out. He says it's an English war.

We won't have to send our men again, not this time, will we Papa? Sir Garry reached across and took her hand. You and I know what the price was last time,, his voice choked off and he could not mention Michael's name. After a moment he gathered himself. I wish I could give you comfort, my dear. I wish I could say what you want to hear. It's not fair, said Centaine miserably. It just isn't fair. 'No, I agree it isn't fair. However, there is a monstrous tyranny abroad, a great evil which will swallow us and our world if we do not resist it., Centaine sprang up from the table and ran into the house.