Manfred liked them to wear national dress on Sundays.
Uncle Tromp ended with a salvo that thrilled his flock with the threat of hell-fire, and they rose to sing the final hymn. Sharing the hymn book with Heidi, Manfred examined her handsome Germanic features. She was a wife to be proud of, a good housekeeper and mother, a fine companion whom he could trust and confide in, and a glittering ornament to his political career. A woman like this could stand beside any man, even the prime minister of a powerful and prosperous nation. He let himself dwell on that secret thought. Yet everything was possible, he was a young man, the youngest by far in the cabinet, and he had never made a political mistake. Even his wartime activities gave him credit and prestige with his peers, although few people outside the inner circle knew of the full role he had played in the militant anti-British pro-Nazi secret army of the Ossewa Brandwag.
Already they were whispering that he was the coming man, and it was evident in the huge respect that was shown him as the service ended and the congregation left the church. Manfred stood, with Heidi beside him, on the lawns outside the church while one after another important and influential men came up to deliver social invitations, to ask a favour, to congratulate him on his speech intro ducing the new Criminal Law Amendment Bill in the House, or simply to pay their respects. It was almost twenty minutes before he was able to leave the church grounds.
The family walked home. It was only two blocks under the green oaks that lined the streets of Stellenbosch, the small university town which was the citadel of Afrikaner intellectualism and culture. The three girls walked ahead, Lothar followed them and Manfred with Heidi on his arm brought up the rear, stopping every few paces to acknowledge a greeting or exchange a few words with a neighbour or a friend or one of Manfred's constituents.
Manfred had purchased the house when they had arrived back from Germany after the war. Although it stood in a small garden, almost facing on to the street, it was a large house with spacious high-ceilinged rooms that suited the family well. Manfred had never seen any reason to change it, and he felt comfortable with Heidi's formal Teutonic furnishings. Now Heidi and the girls rushed through to help the servants in the kitchen, and Manfred went around the side of the house to the garage. He never used his official chauffeurdriven limousine at weekends, and he brought out his personal Chevrolet sedan and drove to fetch his father for the family Sunday luncheon.
The old man seldom attended church, especially when the Reverend Tromp Bierman was preaching. Lothar De La Rey lived alone on the smallholding that Manfred had bought for him on the outskirts of the town at the foot of the Helshoogte Pass. He was out in the peach orchard pottering with his beehives and Manfred paused by the gate to watch him with a mixture of pity and deep affection.
Lothar De La Rey had once been tall and straight as the grandson who now bore his name, but the arthritis he had contracted during ú the years in Pretoria Central Prison had bowed and twisted his body and turned his single remaining hand to a grotesque claw. His left arm was amputated above the elbow, too high to fit an artificial limb. He had lost it during the robbery that led to his imprisonment.
He was dressed in dirty blue dungarees, with a stained brown hat on his head, the brim drooped over his eyes. One sleeve of the dungaree was pinned back.
Manfred opened the gate and went down into the peach orchard where the old man was stooping over one of the wooden hives.
'Good morning, Pa,' Manfred said softly. 'You aren't ready yet." His father straightened up and stared at him vaguely, and then started with surprise.
'Manie! Is it Sunday again already?" 'Come along, Pa. Let's get you tidied up. Heidi is cooking a roast of pork - you know how you love pork." He took the old man's hand, and led him unprotestingly up to the cottage.
'It's a mess, Pa." Manfred looked around the tiny bedroom with distaste. The bed had obviously been slept in repeatedly without being remade, soiled clothing was strewn on the floor and used plates and mugs stood on the bedside table. 'What happened to the new maid Heidi found for you.9' 'I didn't like her, cheeky brown devil,' Lothar muttered. 'Stealing the sugar, drinking my brandy. I fired her." Manfred went to the cupboard and found a clean white shirt. He helped the old man undress.
'When did you last bath, PaT he asked gently.
'Hey?" Lotlar peered at him.
'It doesn't matter." Manfred buttoned his father's shirt. 'Heidi will find another maid for you. You must try and keep her longer than a week this time." It wasn't the old man's fault, Manfred reminded himself. It was the prison that had affected his mind. He had been a proud free man, a soldier and a huntsman, a creature of the wild Kalahari Desert. You cannot cage a wild animal. Heidi had wanted to have the old man to live with them, and Manfred felt guilty that he had refused. It would have meant buying a larger home, but that was the least of it. Manfred could not afford to have Lothar dressed like a coloured labourer wandering vaguely around the house, coming into his study uninvited when he had important visitors with him, slobbering his food and making inane statements at the dinner table when he was entertaining. No, it was better for all of them, the old man especially, that he lived apart. Heidi would find another maid to take care of him, but he felt corrosive guilt as he took Lothar's arm and led him out to the Chevrolet.
He drove slowly, almost at a walking pace, steeling himself to do what he had been unable to do during the years since Lothar had been pardoned and freed from prison at Manfred's instigation.
'Do you remember how it was in the old days, Pa? When we fished together at Walvis Bay?" he asked, and the old man's eyes shone. The distant past was more real to him than the present, and he reminisced happily, without hesitation recalling incidents and the names of people and places from long ago.
'Tell me about my mother, Pa,' Manfred invited at last, and he hated himself for leading the old man into such a carefully prepared trap.
'Your mother was a beautiful woman,' Lothar nodded happily, repeating what he had told Manfred so many times since childhood.
'She had hair the colour of the desert dunes, with the early sun shining on them. A fine woman of noble German birth." 'Pa,' Manfred said soly. 'You aren't telling me the truth, are you'?" He spoke as though to a naughty child. 'The woman you call my mother, the woman who was your wife, died years before I was born. I have a copy of the death certificate signed by the English doctor in the concentration camp. She died of diphtheria, the white sore throat." He could not look at his father as he said it, but stared ahead through the windscreen, until he heard a soft choking sound beside him and with alarm turned quickly. Lothar was weeping, tears slid down his withered old cheeks.
Tm sorry, Pa." Manfred pillled the Chevrolet off the road and switched off the engine. 'I shouldn't have said that." He pulled the white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to his father.
Lothar wiped his face slowly, but his hand was steady, and his wandering mind seemed to have been concentrated by the shock.
'How long have you known that she was your real mother?" he asked, and his voice was firm and sure. Manfred's soul quailed, he had hoped to hear his father deny it.
'She came to see me when first I stood for parliament. She blackmailed me, for her other son's sake. I had him in my power.