'It's super, Dad,' said Michael, holding his rifle awkwardly and his smile was unconvincing.
'Don't use that word, Mickey,' Tara snapped. 'It's so American and vulgar." But she was angry with Shasa, not Michtel.
'Look." Garry touched his rifle for the first time. 'My name - it's got my own name on it." He stroked the engraving on the barrel with his fingertip, then looked up at his father with myopic adoration.
'I wish you'd brought them anything but guns,' Tara burst out. 'I asked you not to, Shasa. I hate them." 'Well, my dear, they must have rifles if they are coming on a hunting safari with me." 'A safari!" Sean shouted gleefully. 'When?" 'It's time you learned about the bush and the animals." Shasa put his arm around Sean's shoulders. 'You can't live in Africa without knowing the 'difference between a scaly anteater and a chacma baboon." Garry snatched up his new rifle and went to stand as close to his father's side as he could, so that Shasa could also put his other arm around his shoulders - if he wanted to. However, Shasa was talking to Sean.
'We'll go up to south west in the June hols, take a couple of trucks from the H'am Mine and drive through the desert until we reach the Okavango Swamps." 'Shasa, I don't know how you can teach your own children to kill those beautiful animals. I really don't understand it,' Tara said bitterly.
'Hunting is a man's thing,' Shasa agreed. 'You don't have to understand - you don't even have to watch." 'Can I come, Dad?" Garry asked diffidently, and Shasa glanced at him.
'You'll have to polish up your new specs, so you can see what you're shooting at." Then he relented. 'Of course you are coming, Garry,' and then he looked across at Michael, standing beside his mother. 'What about you, Mickey? Are you interested?" Michael glanced apologetically at his mother before he replied softly. 'Gee, thanks Dad. It should be fun." 'Your enthusiasm is touching,' Shasa grunted and then, 'Very well, gentlemen, all the rifles locked in the gun room, please.
Nobody touches them again without my permission and my supervision. We'll have our first shooting practice this evening when I get back home." Shasa made a point of getting back to Weltevreden with two hours of daylight in hand, and he took the boys down to the range he had built over which to sight in his own hunting rifles. It was beyond the vineyards and far enough from the stables not to disturb the horses or any of the other livestock.
Sean with the coordination of a born athlete, was a natural shot.
The light rifle seemed immediately an extension of his body, and within minutes he had mastered the art of controlling his breathing and letting the shot squeeze away without effort. Michael was nearly as good, but his interest wasn't really in it and he lost concentration quickly.
Garry tried so hard that he was trembling, and his face was screwed up with effort. The horn-rimmed spectacles which Tara had fetched from the optician that morning kept sliding down his nose and misting over as he aimed, and it took ten shots for him finally to get one on the target.
'You don't have to pull the trigger so hard, Garry,' Shasa told him with resignation. 'It won't make the bullet go any farther or any faster, I assure you." It was almost dark when the four of them got back to the house, and Shasa led them down to the gun room and showed them how to clean their weapons before locking them away.
'Scan and Mickey are ready to have a crack at the pigeons,' Shasa announced, as they trooped upstairs to change for dinner. 'Garry, you will need a little more practice, a pigeon is more likely to die of old age than one of your bullets." Sean shouted with laughter. 'Kill them with old age, Garry." Michael did not join in. He was imagining one of the lovely blue and pink rock pigeons that nested on the ledge outside his bedroom window, dying in a drift of loose feathers, splattering ruby drops as it fluttered to earth. It made him feel physically sick, but he knew his father expected it of him.
That evening as usual the children came one at a time to say goodnight to Shasa as he was tying his black bow tie. Isabella was first.
'I'm not going to sleep a wink until you come home tonight, Daddy,' she warned him. 'I'm just going to lie all by myself in the dark." Sean came next. 'You are the best Dad in the world,' he said as they shook hands. Kissing was for sissies.
'Will you let me have that in writing?" Shasa asked solemnly.
It was Michael who was always the most difficult to answer. 'Dad, do animals and birds hurt a lot when you shoot them?" 'Not if you learn to shoot straight,' Shasa assured him. 'But, Mickey, you have too much imagination. You can't go through life worrying about animals and other people all the time." 'Why not, Dad?" Michael asked softly, and Shasa glanced at his wristwatch to cover his exasperation.
'We have to be at Kelvin Grove by eight. Do you mind if we go into that some other time, Mickey?" Garrick came last. He stood shyly in the doorway of Shasa's dressing-room, but his voice shook with determination as he announced, 'I'm going to learn to be a crack shot, like Sean. You'll be proud of me one day, Dad. I promise you." Garrick left his parents' wing and crossed to the nursery. Nanny stopped him at Isabella's door.
'She's asleep already, Master Garry." In Michael's room they discussed the promised safari, but Mickey's attention kept wandering back to the book in his hands, and after a few minutes Garry left him to it.
He looked into Sean's room cautiously, ready to take flight if his elder brother showed any signs of becoming playful. One of Sean's favourite expressions of fraternal affection was known as a chestnut and consisted of a painful knuckling of Garry's prominent ribcage.
However, this evening Sean was hanging backwards over his bed, heels propped on the wall and the back of his head almost touching the floor, a Superman comic book held at arm's length above his face.
'Goodnight, Sean,' Garry said.
'Shazam!" said Sean without lowering the comic book.
Garrick retreated thankfully to his own room and locked the door.
Then he went to stand before the mirror and regard the reflection of his new horn-rimmed spectacles.
'I hate them,' he whispered bitterly, and when he removed them they left red indentations on the bridge of his nose. He went down on his knees, removed the skirting board under the built-in wardrobe and reached into the secret recess beyond. Nobody, not even Sean, had discovered this hiding place.
Carefully he withdrew the precious package. It had cost him eight weeks of his accumulated pocket money, but was worth every penny.
It had arrived in a plain wrapper with a personal letter from Mr Charles Atlas himself. 'Dear Garrick,' the letter had begun, and Garry had been overcome with the great man's condescension.
He laid out the course on his bed and stripped to his pyjama pants as he revised the lessons.
'Dynamic tension,' he whispered aloud, and he took up his stance before the mirror. As he began the sequence of exercises he kept time with the soft chant of, 'More and more in every way, I'm getting better every day." When he finished he was sweating heavily but he made an arm and studied it minutely.
'They are bigger,' he tried to put aside his doubts as he poked the little walnut of muscle that popped out of his straining biceps, 'they really are!" He stowed the course back in its hidy-hole and replaced the skirting board. Then he took his raincoat from the wardrobe and spread it on the bare boards..
Garrick had read with admiration how Frederick Selous, the famous African hunter, had toughened himself as a boy by sleeping uncovered on the floor in winter. He switched out the light and settled down on the raincoat. It was going to be a long uncomfortable night, he knew from experience, already the floor boards were like iron, but the raincoat would prevent Sean detecting any nocturnal spillage when he made his morning inspection, and Garrick was certain that his asthma had improved since he had stopped sleeping on a soft mattress with a warm eiderdown over him.