'Never count your kob before it's in the pickle barrel,' Manfred counselled, and the boy laughed.
Manfred never touched him in front of others, not even in front of his mother and the girls, but he remembered the enormous pleasure it had given him when he was Lothar's age to have his own father's embrace, and so at times when they were alone together like this he would let his true feelings show. He let his arm slip down off the rock and fall around the boy's shoulders and Lothar froze with joy and for a minute did not dare to breathe. Then slowly he leaned closer to his father and in silence they watched the tip of the long rod nod in rhythm to the ocean.
'And so, Lothie, have you decided what you want to do with your life when you leave Paul Roost Paul Roos was the leading Afrikaans medium school in the Cape Province, the South African equivalent of Eton or Harrow for Afrikaners.
'Pa, I've been thinking." Lothar was serious. 'I don't want to do law like you did, and I think medicine will be too difficult." Manfred nodded resignedly. He had come to terms with the fact that Lothar was not academically brilliant, but just a good average student. It was in all the other fields that he excelled. Already it was clear that his powers of leadership, his determination and courage, and his athletic prowess were all exceptional.
'I want to join the police,' the boy said hesitantly. 'When I finish at Paul Roos, I want to go to the police academy in Pretoria." Manfred sat quietly, trying to hid'lde his surprise. It was probably the last thing he would have thought of himself.
At last he said. 'Ja, why not! You'd do well there." He nodded.
'It's a good life, a life of service to your country and your Volk." The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Lothar was ..... making.a, perfect, cheic.- and-all caurserthe laet- that hid's :father ;,'as---minister of police wouldn't hurt the boy's career either. He hoped he would stick to it. 'Ja,' he repeated, 'I like it." 'Pa, I wanted to ask you--' Lothar started, and the tip of the rod jerked, bounced straight, and then arced over boldly. Manfred's old hat was thrown clear of the spinning reel as the line hissed from it in a blur.
Father and son leapt to their feet and Manfred seized the heavy bamboo and leaned back against it to set the hook.
'It's a monster,' he shouted, as he felt the weight of the fish, and the flow of line never checked, even when he thrust the palm of the leather mitten he wore against the flange of the reel to brake it.
Within seconds blue smoke burned from the'friction of reel and leather glove.
When it seemed that the last few turns of line would be stripped from the spindle of the reel, the fish stopped, and two hundred yards out there under the smoky grey waters it shook its head doggedly so the rod butt kicked against Manfred's belly.
With Lothar dancing at his side, howling encouragement and advice, Manfred winched in the fish, pumping the rod to recover a few turns of line at a time, until the reel was almost full again and he expected to see the quarry thrashing in the surf below the rocks.
Then suddenly the fish made another long heavy run, and he had to begin the laborious back-straining task all over again.
At last they saw it, deep in the water below the rocks, its side shining like a great mirror as it caught the sun. With the rod bent taut as a longbow, Manfred forced it up until it flapped ponderously, washing back and forth in the suck and thrust of the waves, gleaming in marvelous iridescent shades of rose and pearl, its great jaws gaping with exhaustion.
'The gar' Manfred shouted. 'Now, Lothie, now!" and the boy sprang down to the water's edge with the long pole in his hands and buried the point of the gaff hook into the fish's shoulder, just behind the gills. A flush of blood stained the waters pink, and then Manfred threw down his rod and jumped down to help Lothar with the gaff pole.
Between them they dragged the fish, flapping and thumping, up the rocks above the high-water mark.
'He's a hundred pounds if he's an ounce,' Lothar exulted. 'Ma and the girls will be up till midnigtit pickling this one." Lothar carried the rods and the fishing box while Manfred slung the fish over his shoulder, a short loop of rope through its gills, and they trudged back around the curve of white beach. On the rocks of the next headland, Manfred lowered the fish for a few minutes to rest. Once he had been Olympic light heavyweight champion, but he had fleshed out since those days, his belly was softening and spreading and his breath was short.
'Too much time behind my desk,' he thought ruefully, ,and sank down on a black boulder. As he mopped his face he looked around him.
This place always gave him pleasure. It grieved him that he could find so little time in his busy life to come here. In their old student days he and Roelf Stander, his best friend, had fished and hunted on this wild unspoiled stretch of coast. It had belonged to Roelf's family for a hundred years, and RoeIf would never have sold the smallest piece of it to anybody but Manfred.
In the end he had sold Manfred a hundred acres for one pound. 'I don't want to get rich on an old friend,' he had laughed away Manfred's offer of a thousand. 'Just let us have a clause in the contract of sale that I have a right of first option to buy it back at the same price at your death or whenever you want to sell." There beyond the headland on which they sat was the cottage that he and Heidi had built, white stucco walls and thatch, the only sign of human habitation. Roelf's own holiday house was hidden beyond the next headland, but within easy walking distance so they could be together whenever both families were on holiday at the same time.
There were so many memories here. He looked out to sea. That was where the German U-boat had surfaced when it had brought him back in the early days of the war. Roelf had been on the beach, waiting for him, and had rowed out in the darkness to fetch him and his equipment ashore. What mad exciting days those had been, the danger and the fighting, as they had struggled to raise the Afrikaner Volk in rebellion against the English-lover Jan Christian Smuts, and to declare South Africa a republic under the protection of Nazi Germany - and how very close they had come to success.
He smiled and his eyes glowed at the memory. He wished he could tell the boy about it. Lothie would understand. Young as he was, he would understand the Afrikaner dream of republic and he would be proud.
However that was a story that could never be told. Manfred's attempt to assassinate Jan Smuts and precipitate the rebellion had failed. He had been forced to fly the country, and to languish for the rest of the war in a far-off land,-while RoeIf and the other patriots had been branded traitors and hustled into Jannie Smuts' internment camps, humiliated and reviled until the war ended.
How it had all changed. Now they were the lords of this land, although nobody outside the inner circle knew the part that Manfred De La Rey had played in those dangerous years. They were the overlords, and once again the dream of republic burned brightly, like a flame on the altar of Afrikaner aspirations.
His thoughts were broken up by the roar of a low-flying aircraft overhead, and Manfred looked up. It was a sleek blue and silver machine, turning away steeply to line up for the airstrip that lay just beyond the first line of hills. The airstrip had been built by the public works department when Manfred had achieved full ministerial rank.
It was essential that he was in close contact with his department at all times, and from that landing-field an airforce plane could fetch him within hours if he were needed in an emergency.
Manfred recognized this machine and knew who was flying it, but frowned with annoyance as he stood up and hefted the huge carcass of the fish again. He treasured the isolation of this place, and fiercely resented any unwarranted intrusion. He and Lothar set off on the last leg of the long haul back to the cottage.
Heidi and the girls saw them coming, and ran down the dunes to meet them and then surrounded Manfred, laughing and squealing their congratulations. He plodded up the soft dunes, with the girls skipping beside him, and hung the fish on the scaffold outside the kitchen door.