my son, perhaps you will. Lothar placed his arm around the boy's shoulders.
Remember Grandpa's oath, Pa? I'll always remember. The war against the English will never end. They sat together until the sun touched the waters of the bay and turned them to molten copper, and then in the darkness they went up the jetty, out of the stench of decaying fish and along the edge of the dunes.
As they approached the shack there was smoke rising from the chimney and when they entered the lean-to kitchen, there was a fire on the open hearth. Swart Hendrick looked up from it.
The Jew has taken the table and the chairs, he said. But I hid the pots and the mugs. They sat on the floor and ate straight from the pot, a porridge of maize meal flavoured with salty wind-dried fish.
Nobody spoke until they had finished.
You didn't have to stay. Lothar broke the silence and Hendrick shrugged.
,I bought coffee and tobacco at the store. The money you paid me was just enough. There is no more, Lothar said. It is all gone. 'It's all been gone before. Hendrick lit his pipe with a twig from the fire. We have been broke many times before. This time it is different, Lothar said. This time there is no ivory to hunt or, He broke off as his anger choked him again, and Hendrick poured more coffee into the tin mugs.
It is strange, Hendrick said. When we found her, she was dressed in skins. Now she comes in her big yellow car, he shook his head and chuckled, and we are the ones in rags. It was you and I that saved her, Lothar agreed. More than that, we found her diamonds for her, and dug them from the ground. Now she is rich, Hendrick said, and she comes to take what we have also. She shouldn't have done that. He shook his great black head. No, she shouldn't have done that. Lothar straightened up slowly. Hendrick saw his expression and leaned forward eagerly, and the boy stirred and smiled for the first time.
Yes. Hendrick began to grin. What is it? Ivory is finished it's all been hunted out long ago. No, not ivory. This time it will be diamonds, Lothar replied.
Diamonds? Hendrick rocked back on his heels. What diamonds? 'What diamonds? Lothar smiled at him, and his yellow eyes glowed. 'Why, the diamonds we found for her, of course!
Her diamonds? Hendrick stared at him. The diamonds from the h'ani Mine? How much money have you got? Lothar demanded and Hendrick's eyes shifted. I know you well, Lothar went on impatiently and seized his shoulder. You've always got a little bit salted away. How much? Not much. Hendrick tried to rise but Lothar held him down.
You have earned well this last season. I know exactly how much I have paid you., Fifty pounds,grunted Hendrick.
No. Lothar shook his head. You've got more than that. 'Perhaps a little more. Hendrick resigned himself.
You have got a hundred pounds, Lothar said definitely.
That's how much we will need. Give it to me. You know you will get it back many times over. You always have, and you always will., The track was steep and rocky and the party straggled up it in the early sunlight. They had left the yellow Daimler at the bottom of the mountain on the banks of the Liesbeek stream and begun the climb in the ghostly grey light of predawn.
In the lead were two old men in disreputable clothing, scuffed velskoen on their feet and sweatstained shapeless straw hats on their heads. They were both so lean as to appear half starved, skinny but sprightly, their skin darkened and creased by long exposure to the elements, so that a casual observer might have thought them a couple of old hoboes, and there were enough of that type on the roads and byways in these days of the great Depression.
The casual observer would have been in error. The taller of the two old men limped slightly on an artificial leg and was a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, a holder of the highest award for valour that the Empire could offer, the Victoria Cross, and he was also one of the most eminent military historians of the age, a man so rich and careless of worldly wealth that he seldom bothered to count his fortune.
Old Garry, his companion addressed him, rather than as Sir Garrick Courtney. That is the biggest problem we have to deal with, old Garry. He was explaining in his high, almost girlish voice, rolling his R's in that extraordinary fashion that was known as the 'Malmesbury bray'. Our people are deserting the land and flocking to the cities. The farms are dying, and there is no work for them in the cities. His voice was un-winded although they had climbed 2,000 feet up the sheer turreted side of Table Mountain without a pause, maintaining the pace that had outdistanced all the younger members of the party.
It's a recipe for disaster, Sir Garrick agreed. They are poor on the farms, but when they leave them they starve in the cities. Starving men are dangerous men, Ou Baas. History teaches us that. The man he called old master was smaller in stature, though he carried himself straighter. He had merry blue eyes under the drooping brim of his Panama hat and a grey goatee beard that waggled as he spoke. Unlike Garry, he was not rich; he owned only a small farm on the high frost-browned veld of the Transvaal, and he was as careless of his debts as Garry was of his fortune, but the world was his paddock and had heaped honours upon him. He had been awarded honorary doctorates by fifteen of the world's leading universities, Oxford and Cambridge and Columbia amongst them.
He was the freeman of ten cities, London and Edinburgh and the rest. He had been a general in the Boer forces and now he was general in the army of the British Empire, a Privy Councillor, a Companion of Honour, a King's Counsel, a bencher of the Middle Temple and a Fellow of the Royal Society. His chest was not wide enough for all the stars and ribbons he was entitled to wear. He was without question the cleverest, wisest, most charismatic and influential man that South Africa had ever produced. It was almost as though his spirit was too big to be contained by terrestrial borders, as though he were a true citizen of the wide world. This was the one chink in his armour, and his enemies had sent their poison-tipped arrows through it. His heart is across the sea, not with you, and it had brought down his government of the South African Party of which he had been prime minister, minister of defence and of native affairs. Now he was leader of the opposition. However, he was a man who thought of himself as a botanist by preference and a soldier and politician by necessity.
We should wait for the others to catch up. General Jan Smuts paused on a lichen-covered rocky platform and leaned on his staff. The two of them peered back down the slope.
A hundred paces below them a woman plodded grimly up the path; the outline of her thighs through her heavy calico skirts were thick and powerful as the haunches of a brood mare, and her bare arms were as muscled as those of a wrestler.
My little dove, Sir Garry murmured fondly as he watched his bride. After fourteen long years of courtship she had only acceded to his suit six months before.
Do hurry, Anna, the boy behind her on the narrow path entreated. 'It will be noon before we reach the top and
