They have been around for forty years or so, and they are dedicated to peaceful negotiations. The leaders are decent men." 'They were,' Manfred corrected him. 'But the old leaders have been superseded by younger more dangerous men. Men like Mandela and Tambo and others even more evil. As I said before, times change - we must change with them." 'I had not realized that the threat was so real." 'Few people do,' Manfred agreed. 'But I assure you Meneer, that there is a nest of snakes breeding in our little paradise." They walked on in silence, down to the clay-surfaced airstrip where Shasa's blue and silver Mosquito stood. While Shasa climbed into the cockpit and readied the machine for flight, Manfred stood quietly at the wingtip watching him. After Shasa had completed all his checks, he came back to Manfred.
'There is one certain way to defeat this enemy,' Shasa said. 'This new militant ANC." 'What is that, Meneer?" 'To pre-empt their position. Take away from our black people the cause of complaint,' Shasa said.
Manfred was silent, but he stared at Shasa with those implacable yellow eyes. Then Manfred asked, picking his words carefully, 'Are you suggesting that we give the natives political rights, Meneer? Do you think that we should give in to the parrot cry of "One man, one vote" - is that what you believe, Meneer?" On Shasa's reply rested all Manfred's plans. He wondered if he could have been so wrong in his selection. Any man who believed that could never be a member of the National Party, let alone bear the responsibility of cabinet rank.
His relief was intense as Shasa dismissed the idea contemptuously.
'Good Lord, no! That would be the end of us and white civilization in the land. Blacks don't need votes, they need a slice of the pie. We must encourage the emergence of a black middle class, they will be our buffer against the revolutionaries. I never saw a man yet with a full belly and a full wallet who wanted to change things." Manfred chuckled. 'That's good, I like it. You are correct, Meneer.
We need massive wealth to pay for our concept of apartheM. It will be expensive, we accept that. That is why we have chosen you. We look to you to find the money to pay for our future." Shasa held out his hand and Manfred took it. 'On a personal level, Meneer, I am pleased to hear that your wife has taken notice of whatever you said to her. Reports from my special branch indicate that she has given up her liberal left wing associations and is no longer taking any part in political protests." 'I convinced her how futile they were,' Shasa smiled. 'She has decided to become an archaeologist instead of a Bolshevik." They laughed together, and Shasa climbed back into the .cockpit.
The engines started with a stuttering roar and a mist of blue smoke blew from the exhaust ports, clearing quickly. Shasa lifted a hand in salute and closed the canopy.
Manfred watched him taxi down to the end of the strip then come thundering back, and hurtle aloft in a flash of silver and blue. He shaded his eyes to watch the Mosquito bank away towards the south, and he felt again that strange almost mystic bond of blood and destiny to the man under the perspex canopy as Shasa waved in farewell. Though they had fought and hated each other, their separate people were bound together by a similar bond and at the same time held apart by religion and language and political beliefs.
'We are brothers, you and I,' he thought. 'And beyond the hatred lie the dictates of survival. If you join us, then other Englishmen may follow you, and neither of us can survive alone. Afrikaner and Englishman, we are so bound together that if one goes down, we both drown in the black ocean."' 'Garrick has to wear glasses,' Tara said, and poured esh coffee into Shasa's cup.
'Glasses?" He looked up from his newspaper. 'What do you mean glasses?" 'I mean eye glasses - spectacles. I took him to the optician while you were away. He is shortsighted." 'But nobody in our family has ever worn glasses." Shasa looked down the breakfast table at his son, and Garrick lowered his head guiltily. Until that moment he had not realized that he had disgraced the entire family. He had believed the humiliation of spectacles was his alone.
'Glasses." Shasa's scorn was undisguised. 'While you are having him fitted with glasses, you might as well get them to fit a cork in the end of his whistle to stop him wetting his bed also." Sean let out a guffaw and dug an elbow into his brother's ribs, and Garrick was stung into self-defence. 'Gee, Dad, I haven't wet my bed since last Easter,' he declared furiously, red-faced with embarrassment and close to tears of humiliation.
Sean made circles with his thumbs and forefingers and peered through them at his brother.
'We will have to call you "Owly Wet Sheets",' he suggested, and as usual Michael came to his brother's defence.
'Owls are wise,' he pointed out reasonably. 'That's why Garry came top in his class this term. Where did you come in yours, Sean?".
and Sean glared at him wordlessly. Michael always had a mild but stinging retort.
'All right, gentlemen." Shasa returned to his newspaper. 'No bloodshed at the breakfast table, please." Isabella had been out of the limelight for long enough. Her father had given far too much of his attention to her brothers, and she hadn't yet received her dues. Her father had arrived home late the previous evening, long after she was in bed, and the traditional ceremony of home-coming had not been fully enacted. Certainly he had kissed and pampered her and told her how beautiful she was, but one vital aspect had been neglected, and though she knew it was bad manners to ask, she had contained herself long enough.
'Didn't you even bwing me a pwesent?" she piped, and Shasa lowered his newspaper again.
'A pwesent? Now what on earth is a pwesent?" 'Don't be a silly-billy, Daddy - you know what it is." 'Bella, you know you mustn't beg for presents,' Tara chided.
'If I don't tell him, Daddy might just forget,' Isabella pointed out reasonably, and made her special angel face at Shasa.
'My goodness gracious me." Shasa snapped his fingers. 'I did almost forget!" And Isabella hopped her lace-clad bottom up and down on her high stool with excitement. 'You did You did bring me one!" 'Finish your porridge first,' Tara insisted, and Isabella's spoon clanked industriously on china as she devoured the last of it and scraped the plate clean.
They all trooped though from the breakfast room to Shasa's study.
'I'm the likklest one. I get my pwesent first." Isabella made up the rules of life as she went along.
'All right, likklest one. Step to the front of the line, please." Her face a masterpiece of concentration, Isabella stripped away the wrappings from her gift.
'A doll!" she squeaked and showered kisses upon its bland china face. 'Her name is Oleander, and I love her already." Isabella was the owner of what was probably one of the world's definitive collections of dolls, but all additions were rapturously received.
When Sean and Garry were handed their long packages, they went still with awe. They knew what they were - they had both of them pleaded long and eloquently for this moment and now that it had arrived, they were reluctant to touch their gifts in case they disappeared in a puff of smoke. Michael hid his disappointment bravely; he had hoped for a book, so secretly he empathized with his mother when she cried with exasperation, 'Oh, Shasa, you haven't given them guns?" All three rifles were identical. They were Winchester repeaters in .22 calibre, light enough for the boys to handle.
'This is the best present anybody ever gave me." Sean lifted his weapon out of the cardboard box and stroked the walnut stock lovingly.
The too." Garrick still couldn't bring himself to touch his. He knelt over the open package in the middle of the study floor, staring raptly at the weapon it contained.