daffodil yellow, Centaine's racing colours, and with the Courtney insignia, a stylized silver diamond, embroidered in one comer. She 17e fell in beside her mistress, heeling perfectly as Centaine started up towards the dais. The crowd laughed and applauded. Woman and dog made an elegant pair of thoroughbreds, and Dandy Lass grinned and lolled her tongue and wagged her tail at the fun of it.
On the dais, Dandy Lass curtsied politely in front of the prime minister, and at a word from Centaine offered him her right paw. The crowd loved it when John Vorster stooped to shake the proffered paw.
As he handed Centaine the enormous silver trophy, the prime minister smiled at her. For a man with such a formidable reputation for ruthless strength and granite resolve, his smile was boyishly infectious and his blue eyes twinkled.
As he shook Centaine's hand, he leant a little closer, so that she alone could hear his words.
'Don't you and your family find that unbroken success in everything you do becomes monotonous, Centaine?' he asked. They had come to first-name terms only in the last year or so.
'We try to be brave about enduring it, Uncle John,' she assured him gravely.
The prime minister made a short and uncontroversial speech of congratulation, and then circulated around the marquee with the alacrity of an adroit political games man. Smiling and shaking hands and passing on, he reached the end of the tent where Centaine was holding court.
'Once again my congratulations, Centaine. I wish I could stay longer to help you celebrate your famous victory.' He glanced at his wristwatch.
'You have been generous with your time,' Centaine agreed. 'But, before you leave, may I introduce the only one of my grandchildren whom you have not met?' She beckoned to Isabella, who was hovering close by. 'Isabella has been in London serving as hostess to Shasa during his term at South Africa House.' As Isabella came forward, Centaine was watching the prime minister's craggy bulldog features attentively. She knew that Vorster was no philanderer; he could never have reached his position in the iron Calvinistic coils of his party if he had been. But despite the fact that for thirty years he had been happily and securely married he was still very much a man, and no man could remain unmoved when he looked at Isabella Courtney for the first time. Centaine saw the shift in his gaze, and the way he hid his quick flare of attention behind that formidable frown.
Centaine and Isabella had planned for this meeting with care, ever since Isabella had amazed both Centaine and Shasa by her sudden declared intention to enter the political arena.
'She'll get over it,' Shasa predicted, but Centaine had shaken her head.
'Bella has changed. Something has happened to her since she went to London with you. She went as a flighty spoiled little bitch-' 'Oh, come, Mater.' Predictably Shasa had risen to his precious daughter's defence, but Centaine went on without check.
'But she has returned a mature woman. However, there is more than that to it. She has steel now. She has a cutting edge, and there is something else.' Centaine had hesitated as she tried to define it. 'She has shed her romantic view of life; it is as though she has experienced a revelation, as though she has suffered and learnt to hate, as though she has come through some portentous crisis and armed herself for whatever lies ahead.' 'It's not like you to make these fanciful flights of imagination,' Shasa had chaffed her, but Centaine had insisted.
'You mark my words, Bella has found her direction and she will prove herself as tough and ruthless as any of US. 'Surely not as tough and ruthless as you, Mater?
'Have your little joke, Shasa Courtney, but time will prove me right.' Centaine's eyes had gone out of focus and squinted slightly. Shasa knew that expression so well, when his mother indulged in furious concentration. He called them her scheming eyes. Then her eyes came back into focus. 'She is going far, Shasa, probably further than even you and I could dream - and I am going to help her.' And so, Centaine had arranged this meeting, and now she watched her grand-daughter acquit herself with all the aplomb that she had expected of her.
Vorster asked Isabella: 'So how did you enjoy the English winters?' And it was clear that he expected a trivial response, but Isabella said: 'It was worth putting up with them, if only to meet Harold Wilson and to have a first-hand account of the Labour government's attitude and intentions towards all of us who live in southern Africa.' Vorster's expression changed as he realized that there was a brain behind that lovely young face. He dropped his voice, and they talked quietly for a few minutes longer before Centaine intervened again.
'Isabella has just received her doctorate in political theory from London University.' Artlessly she tossed out a little more ground bait.
'Oh so!' Vorster nodded. 'Do we have a budding Helen Suzman in our midst?' He was referring to the only we member of the South African parliament, the staunchest champion of human rights and the only really galling liberal thorn in the complacently thick hide of the Nationalist majority.
Isabella laughed, that husky sexual chuckle which she knew could stir even the most hidebound misogynist. 'Perhaps,' she agreed. 'A seat in the house might be my ultimate ambition, but that is still far ahead, and I don't think I would be as nayve as Mrs. Suzman, Prime Minister. My politics is very much in tune with that of my father and my grandmother.' Which of course made her a conservative, and now Vorster's regard was sharp blue and attentive as he studied her.
'The world is changing, Prime Minister.'Centaine seized the moment. 'One day, there may even be a place in your cabinet for a woman, don't you think?' Vorster smiled and switched easily from English into Afrikaans.
'Even Doctor Courtney agrees that day is still far ahead. However, I do concede that such a pretty face would do much to lighten the deliberations of us ugly old men.' The change of language was, of course, a test. Nobody in South Africa with political aspirations could survive without fluency in Afrikaans, the language of the politically dominant group.
Isabella switched as easily as he had done. Her vocabulary was wide, her grammar perfect and her accent rang sweetly, even in the ear of a born Afrikaner.
Vorster smiled again, this time with pleasure, and continued the conversation for a few minutes more before glancing pointedly at his wristwatch and speaking to Centaine.
'I must go now. I have another function to attend.' He turned back to Isabella. 'Totsiens, Doctor Courtney, until we meet again. I will be watching your progress with interest.' Centaine and Shasa walked with him from the marquee to where his official car and driver waited on the edge of the polo-ground.
'Totsims, Centaine.'Vorster shook her hand. 'I congratulate you on the rearing of your grand-daughter. I recognize many traits which she can only have inherited from you.' When Centaine returned to the marquee, she looked around quickly. Isabella was already the centre of a circle of eager males.
'She has them panting like puppy dogs.' Centaine suppressed a smile and caught her grand-daughter's eye. Isabella left her admirers and came to her immediately, and Centaine took her arm in a comfortable proprietorial gesture.
ISO 'Well done, missy. You behaved like a veteran. Uncle John likes you. I rather think that we are on our way.'
That evening, only the family sat down to dinner at the long table in Weltevreden's main dining-room. However, Centaine had ordered the antique Limoges dinner service and the best silver. The table was resplendent in candlelight and a massed display of yellow roses. As was usual on these family evenings, the women wore long dresses and the men were in black tie.
Only Sean was missing.
Sean had been invited - or, rather, Centaine had summoned him - but he was hunting with one of his most valuable clients on the Rhodesian concession and had sent his humble apologies. Centaine had accepted them reluctantly.
She had wanted them all to celebrate her triumph with Dandy Lass, but she conceded that business came first.
The German industrialist that Sean was guiding paid for sixty-three days of hunting each year at five hundred dollars a day. Of course, his vast business commitments in Germany would not allow him to spend that much time in the hunting-veld. He was lucky if he could fit in two weeks in any one year. However, he paid for the additional days to secure the right to hunt three elephant instead of one. Sean had to be on call for him, even though he usually gave only a few days' notice of his intended arrival.
Centaine missed her eldest grandson. Sean was the handsomest and wildest of the three of them, but his presence was always stimulating. He seemed to charge the very air around him with the static electricity of danger and excitement. It had cost her and the family tens of thousand of dollars to bail him out of the various scrapes that his tempestuous nature led him into. Although she always expressed her outrage at these expenditures in the severest terms, secretly she did not grudge them. Her only fear was that one day Sean would go too far and get himself into real trouble from which even Centaine would be unable to extricate him. She dismissed that thought.
Tonight was not the night for morbid fancies.
The tall silver trophy glittered in the centre of the long table. It stood on a pyramid of yellow roses. It was strange what satisfaction that bauble gave her. It had cost her countless hours of hard work in the field, but the winning had made it all worthwhile. It had always been like that for her. The burning need to excel
