They left again in the pitch darkness before dawn, and at sunrise they stopped and brewed coffee on a fire of camel-thorn branches; the grainy red wood burned with an intense blue flame and gave to the coffee a peculiar and delicious aroma. They ate the picnic breakfast that the rest-house cook had provided and washed it down with the smoky coffee and watched the sunrise smearing the sky and desert with bronze and gilding it with gold leaf. As they went on, so the sun rose higher and drained the land of colour, washing it with its silver-white bleach.
Stop here! Centaine ordered suddenly, and when they climbed up onto the roof of the Daimler and stared ahead, Shasa was puzzled.
What is it, Mater? Don't you see it, cheri? She pointed, 'There! Above the horizon. It floated in the sky, indistinct and ethereal.
It's standing in the sky, Shasa exclaimed, discerning it at last.
The mountain that floats in the sky, Centaine murmured. Each time she saw it like this the wonder of it was still as fresh and enchanting as the first time. The place of All Life. She gave the hills their Bushman name.
As they drove on so the shape of the hills hardened, becoming a sheer rock palisade below which were spread the open mopani forests. In places the cliffs were split and riven with gulleys and gorges. In others they were solid and tall and daubed with bright lichens, sulphur yellow and green and orange.
The H'ani Mine was nestled beneath one of these sheer expanses of rock, and the buildings seemed insignificant and incongruous in this place.
Centaine's brief to Twenty-man-Jones had been to make them as unobtrusive as possible, without, of course, affecting the productivity of the workings, but there was a limit to just how far he had been able to follow her instructions. The fenced compounds of the black workers and the weathering grounds for the blue diamondiferous earth were extensive, while the steel tower and elevator of the washing gear stuck up high as the derrick of an oil rig.
However, the worst depredation had been caused by the appetite of the steam boiler, hungry as some infernal Baal for cordwood. The forest along the foot of the hills had been cut down to satisfy it, and the second growth had formed a scraggly unsightly thicket in place of the tall grey-barked timber.
Twenty-man-Jones was waiting for them as they climbed out of the dusty Daimler in front of the thatched administration building.
Good trip, Mrs Courtney? he asked, lugubrious with pleasure. 'You'll want a rest and clean up, I expect. You know better than that, Dr Twenty-man-Jones. Let's get down to work. Centaine led the way down the wide verandah to her own office. Sit beside me, she ordered Shasa as she took her seat at the stinkwood desk.
They began with the recovery reports, then went on to the cost schedules; and as Shasa struggled to keep up with the quick calling and discussion of figures, he wondered how his mother could change so swiftly from the girl companion who had hopped around in imitation of a springbok only the previous day.
Shasa, what did we establish was the cost per carat if we average twenty-three carats per load? She fired the question at Shasa suddenly, and when he muffed it she frowned. This isn't the time for dreams. And she turned her shoulder to him to emphasize the rebuke. 'Very well, Dr TWentyman-Jones, we have avoided the unpleasant long enough. Let us consider what economies we have to institute to meet the quota cut and still keep the H'ani Mine working and turning a profit. It was dusk before Centaine broke off and stood up. We'll pick it up from there tomorrow. She stretched like a cat and then led them out onto the wide verandah.
Shasa will be working for you as we agreed. I think he should begin on the haulage. I was about to suggest it, Ma'am. What time do you want me? Shasa asked.
The shift comes on at five am but I expect Master Shasa will want to come on later? Twenty-man-Jones glanced at Centaine. It was, of course, a challenge and a test, and she remained silent, waiting for Shasa to make the decision on his own account. She saw him struggling with himself. He was at that stage of growth when sleep is a drug and rising in the morning a brutal penance.
I'll be at the main haulage at four-thirty, sir, he said, and Centaine relaxed and took his arm.
Then it had best be an early night. She turned the Daimler into the avenue of small iron-roofed cottages which housed the white shift bosses and artisans and their families. The orders of society were strictly observed on the H'ani Mine. It was a microcosm of the young nation. The black labourers lived in the fenced and guarded compounds where whitewashed buildings resembled rows of stables. There were separate, more elaborate quarters for the black boss-boys, who were allowed to have their families living with them. The white artisans and shift bosses were housed in the avenues laid out at the foot of the hills, while the management lived up the slopes, each building larger and the lawns around it more extensive the higher it was sited.
As they turned at the end of the avenues there was a girl sitting on the stoep of the last cottage and she stuck her tongue out at Shasa as the Daimler passed. It was almost a year since Shasa had last seen her and nature had wrought wondrous changes in her during that time. Her feet were still bare and dirty to the ankles, and her curls were still wind-tousled and sun-streaked, but the faded cotton of her blouse was now so tight that it constricted her blossoming breasts. They were forced upwards and bulged out over the top in a deep cleavage and Shasa wriggled in the seat as he realized that the twin red-brown coin-shaped marks on the blouse, though they looked like stains, were in fact showing through the thin cloth from beneath.
Her legs had grown longer, her knees were no longer knobbly, and they shaded from coffee brown at the ankles to smooth cream on the inside of her thighs. She sat on the edge of the verandah with her knees apart and her skirts pulled high and rucked up between her legs. As Shasa's gaze dropped, she let her knees fall a little further open. Her nose was snubbed and sprinkled with freckles, and she wrinkled it as she grinned. it was a sly cheeky grin, and her tongue was bright pink between white teeth.
Guiltily Shasa jerked his eyes away and stared ahead through the windshield. But he remembered vividly every last detail of those forbidden minutes behind the pump-house and the heat rose in his cheeks. He could not help glancing at his mother. She was looking ahead at the road and had not noticed. He felt relief until she murmured, She is a common little hussy, ogling everything in pants. Her father is one of the men we are retrenching. We'll be rid of her before she causes real trouble for us and herself. He should have known she had not missed that brief exchange. She saw everything, he thought, and then he felt the impact of her words. The girl was being sent away, and he was surprised by his feeling of deprivation. It was a physical ache in the floor of his stomach.
What will happen to them, Mater? he asked softly. I mean, the people we are firing. While he had listened to his mother and Twenty-man-jones discussing the retrenchments, he had thought of them merely as numbers; but with that glimpse of the girl, they had become flesh and blood. He remembered his adversary the blond boy, and the little girl that he had seen from the window of the railway coach, standing beside the tracks in the hobo camp, and he imagined Annalisa Botha in the place of that strange girl.