She was still, at sixty-nine years of age, a magnificent woman, handsome and vigorous, but at no time in her life could she have equalled her grand-daughter who now stood in the bright noonday of her youth.
Isabella cut the tip of the cigar with the gold cutter from her father's desk. She lit the cedarwood taper from the fire and held it for him until the cigar was drawing evenly. Then she extinguished the taper and went to dribble a little Cognac into the crystal balloon glass.
'Professor Symmonds read the latest section of my thesis this morning.' 'Ah, you are still gracing the University with your presence, are you?' Shasa studied his daughter's bare shoulders in the soft light of the fire.
She had inherited that skin from her mother, as lustrous and unblemished as ivory.
'He thinks it is good.' Isabella ignored the jibe.
'If it is up to the same standard as the first hundred pages that you let me read, then Symmonds is probably correct.' 'He wants me to stay on here to finish it.' She was not looking at him.
Shasa felt the sick little slide of dread in his chest.
'Here in London, on your own?' His response was instantaneous.
'On my own? With five hundred friends, the staff of Courtney Enterprises' London office, my mother... !'She brought the brandy balloon to him.
'Not really abandoned completely in a strange city, Papa.' Shasa made a noncommittal noise in his throat and tasted the Cognac, searching desperately for some better reason why she should accompany him back to the Cape.
'Where would you stay?' he grumped.
'That wasn't even a good try,' she laughed at him openly, and took the cigar from his hand. She drew upon it with pursed red lips, and then blew a feather of smoke into his face. 'In Cadogan Square there is a flat which cost you almost a million pounds. It is standing empty.' She gave him back the cigar.
She was right of course. Since the official ambassadorial residence went with the job, the family flat had been unused. He was silent, driven to the ropes, and Isabella gathered herself for the coup de grdce.
'You are the one who was so frightfully keen on my doctorate, Pater. You won't deprive me of it now, will you?' Shasa rallied gamely. 'Since you have obviously thought this all out so carefully, you must already have spoken to your grandmother.' Isabella stooped over him as he sat in the armchair and kissed the top of his head.
'I was hoping that you would speak tonana for me, my darling Daddy.' Shasa sighed. 'Witch,' he murmured. 'You make me a party to my own undoing.' She could rely, on her father to take care of Nana, but there was still Nanny to consider. However, Isabella softened her up for a day or two beforehand by reciting the names and virtues of all seventeen of the grandchildren who so eagerly awaited her return to Weltevreden. Nanny had been away from home for three years, and three long English winters.
'Just think of it, Nanny. It will be spring at the Cape when the boat docks, and Johannes will be waiting on the pier.' Johannes was the head groom at Weltevreden and Nanny's favourite son. The old woman's eyes shone.
So when Isabella finally broke the news Nanny threw her hands around and wailed about ingratitude and the decay of the modern generation's sense of duty. Then she sulked for two days but without real venom.
Isabella went down to Southampton to see them all off. Shasa's new Aston Martin was hoisted on board the Union Castle liner by one of the giraffe-necked cranes, and then the servants lined up on the pier for their farewells. She embraced them all, from the Malay chef to Klonkie the chauffeur. Nanny burst into tears when Isabella kissed her.
'You'll probably never see this old woman again. You'll miss me when I've gone. Think of how I nursed you when you was a baby...' 'Go on with you, Nanny. You'll be there to nurse all my babies for me.' It was a dangerous subject to broach, but Nanny's perceptions were dulled. The promise drove off the shadow of her imminent demise, and she cheered noticeably.
'You come home soon now, child, you hear, where old Nanny can keep an eye on you. All that hot Courtney blood - we'll find you a good clean South African boy.' When Isabella came to say goodbye to Shasa, unexpectedly she found herself also dissolving into a salty wash of tears. Shasa handed her the crisp white handkerchief from the pocket of his double-breasted blazer. When she had dried up and given it back to him, he blew his own nose loudly and then dabbed at his single eye.
'Damned wind!' he explained. 'Got a bit of grit in it.' As the liner pulled away from the wharf and headed down-river, he was a tall and elegant figure at the ship's rail, high above her; but he stood alone, slightly separated from the other passengers. He had never remarried since the divorce. She knew that since then he had been seeing literally dozens of women, all elegant and talented and nubile, but he always walked on alone.
'Doesn't he ever feel lonely?' she wondered, and waved until he was an indistinguishable speck on the ship's deck.
On the drive back to London, the road kept dissolving before her eyes in a glassy mirage of tears.
'It's the baby,' she tried to excuse herself 'He's making me all gooey and sentimental.' And she clasped her belly and tried to find a lump, and was vaguely disappointed that her muscles were still flat and hard. 'God, what if it's all just a false alarm!' The possibility heightened her melancholy, and she reached for the packet of Kleenex in the cubby-hole of the Mini.
However, when she climbed the stairs to the flat, the door opened before she touched it and Ramsey reached out and drew her into his arms. Her tears were forgotten.
The family flat in Cadogan Square occupied the first two floors of a listed red-brick Victorian house. There were five double bedrooms, and the walls of the master suite were clad with powder-blue and antique silver panelling that had reputedly graced the boudoir of Madame de Pompadour. The plafond was decorated with dancing circles of naked wood-nymphs and leering satyrs. Much to Shasa's chagrin, Isabella referred to the decor as 'Louis Quinze bordello'.
She used it merely as an accommodation address, and called round on Fridays to pick up her mail and have tea with the full-time housekeeper in the ground-floor pantry. The housekeeper was an ally and fielded all the long distance telephone calls from Weltevreden and other parts afar.
Isabella made her true home in Ramsey's tiny flat. When the wardrobe that he allocated to her proved to be inadequate, she rotated her clothes between it and the cavernous storage at Cadogan Square. She found a dainty little lady's writing-bureau in an antique shop in Kensington Church Street which just fitted into the comer beside the bed, and made that her study.
Like a married couple, they settled into a routine. They were up before dawn for gym or riding; Isabella's gynaecologist had forbidden jogging.
'It's a foetus not a milkshake that you are brewing, my dear.' Then, when Ramsey left for the bank, she settled down at her bureau and worked steadily on her thesis until lunchtime. They met at Justin de Blank or the health bar at Harrods, for Isabella had given up alcohol and put herself on a strict diet for the baby's sake.
'I refuse to let myself swell up like a toad. I don't want to revolt you.' 'You are the most desirable woman in existence, and pregnancy has brought you to full bloom,' he contradicted her, and touched her bosom. It was magnificent.
'I asked the gyney, and he said it's quite OK; we don't have to hold back at all,' she giggled. 'I do hope the ambulance that takes me to the maternity home has a comfortable double stretcher so that we can fit in a quickie on the way.' After lunch she went on to visit her tutor or to spend the rest of the afternoon in the reading-room of the British Museum. Finally there was a mad dash back to the flat in the Mini in time to start preparing Ramsey's dinner. Fortunately, Papa had arranged for her to retain her diplomatic plates, and she parked at the kerb right outside the front door and smiled winningly at the hovering traffic warden.
In the evenings they went out less and less frequently, apart from an occasional theatre or an early dinner with Harriet and her latest beau.
Usually they piled all the cushions on the floor and sprawled in front of the television, arguing and discussing and billing and cooing and ignoring the inane burble of 'Coronation Street' and the gameshows.
When at last the taut flat plain of her belly began to bulge she opened the front of her silk dressing-gown and exhibited it proudly. 'Feel id' she urged Ramsey. 'Isn't it wonderful?' He palpated it solemnly. 'Yes,' he nodded sagely. 'Definitely a boy.' 'How do you know?' 'Here.' He took her hand. 'Can't you feel it?' 'Ah, it does stick out a bit. He must take after his papa. Funny how thinking about that makes me feel like bed.' 'Sleepy?' he asked.
'Hardly,' she replied.
Shasa had left her with her Harrods charge-card, and she acquired most of her maternity clothes there, although Harriet kept discovering newly fashionable boutiques that specialized in clothes for the swinging young mother-to-be. Wearing one of her flowing new caftans, she enrolled in the ante- natal classes that her gynaecologist recommended. Suddenly the company and conversation of the other gravid classmates that would once have bored her to distraction was fun and fascination.
At least once a month, Ramsey had to fly out of town on bank business, and each time he was away for a week or more. However, he telephoned her whenever he had an opportunity. Although she missed him more
