Well, if you haven't got anything saved, you'd best put a few pounds
aside before they lay you off in August. How does a man do that?
How do I save, with a wife and six kids? Fourie demanded hopelessly.
I tell you what. Lothar took his arm in a friendly concerned grip. Let's get out of here. I'll buy a bottle of brandy.
Let's go some place where we can talk. The sun was up by the time Lothar got back to the camp the following morning. They had emptied the brandy bottle while they talked the night away. The driver was intrigued tempted by Lothar's proposition but unsure and afraid.
and Lothar had to explain and convince him of every single point, particularly of his own safety. Nobody will ever be able to point a finger at you. I give you my sacred word on it. You will be protected even if something goes wrong, and nothing will go wrong. Lothar had used all his powers of persuasion, and he was tired now as he trudged through the encampment and squatted down beside Hendrick.
Coffee? he asked and belched the taste of old brandy into his mouth.
Finished. Hendrick shook his head.
Where is Manfred? Hendrick pointed with his chin. Manfred was sitting under a thorn bush at the far end of the camp. The girl Sarah was beside him, their blond heads almost touching as they pored over . a sheet of newsprint. Manfred was writing on the margin of the page with a charcoal stick from the camp fire.
Manie is teaching her to read and write, Hendrick explained.
Lothar grunted and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. His head ached from the brandy.
Well, he said. We've got our man. Ali! Hendrick grinned. 'Then we will need the horses., The private railway coach had once belonged to Cecil Rhodes and the De Beers Diamond Company. Centaine Courtney had purchased it for a fraction of the price that a new carriage would have cost her, a fact that gave her satisfaction. She was still a Frenchwoman and knew the value of a sou and a franc. She had brought out a young designer from Paris to redecorate the carriage in the Art Deco style, which was all the rage, and he had been worth every penny of his fee.
She looked around the saloon, at the uncluttered lines of the furnishings, at the whimsical nude nymphs which supported the bronze light-fittings and the Aubrey Beardsley designs inlaid with exquisite workmanship into the lightwood panelling and she remembered that the designer had struck her at first as being a homosexual, with his long flowing locks, his darkly decadent eyes and the features of a beautiful, bored and cynical faun. Her first estimate had been far wide of the truth, as she had discovered to her delight on the circular bed which he had installed in the coach's main bedroom suite. She smiled at the memory and then checked the smile as she saw that Shasa was watching her.
You know, Mater, I sometimes think I can see what you are thinking, just by looking into your eyes. He said these disconcerting things sometimes, and she was sure that he had grown another inch in the last week.
I certainly hope that you cannot. She shivered. It's cold in here. The designer had incorporated, at enormous expense, a refrigeration machine which cooled the air in the saloon. Do turn that thing off, She stood up from her desk and went out through the frosted glass doors onto the balcony of the coach and the hot desert air rushed at her and flattened her skirts across her narrow boyish hips. She lifted her face to the sun and let the wind ruffle her short curly hair.
What time is it? she asked with her eyes closed and face uplifted, and Shasa who had followed her out leaned against the balcony rail and consulted his wristwatch.
We should be crossing the Orange river in the next ten minutes, if the engine driver has kept us on schedule. I never feel as though we are home until I cross the Orange. Centaine went to lean beside him and slipped her arm through his.
The Orange river drained the western watershed of the southern African continent, rising high in the snowy mountains of Basutoland and running down fourteen hundred miles through grassy veld and wild gorges, at some seasons a clear slow trickle and at other times a thunderous brown flood bringing down the rich chocolate silts so that some called it the Nile of the south. it was the boundary between the Cape of Good Hope and the former German colony of South West Africa.
The locomotive whistled and the coupling jolted as the brakes squealed.
We are slowing for the bridge. Shasa leaned out over the balcony, and Centaine bit back the caution that came automatically to her lips.
Beg your pardon, you can't baby him forever, Missus, Jock Murphy had advised her. He's a man now, and a man's got to take his own chances., The tracks curved down towards the river, and they could see the Daimler riding on the flat bed behind the locomotive.
It was a new vehicle; Centaine changed them every year.
However, it also was yellow, as they all were, but with a black bonnet and black piping around the doors. The train journey to Windhoek saved them the onerous drive across the desert, but there was no line out to the mine.
There it is! Shasa called. There is the bridge The steelwork seemed feathery and insubstantial as it crossed the half mile of riverbed, leapfrogging across its concrete buttresses. The regular beat of the bogey wheels over the cross ties altered as they ran out onto the span, and the steel girders beneath them rang like an orchestra.
The river of diamonds, Centaine murmured as she leaned shoulder to shoulder with Shasa and peered down into the coffee-brown waters that swirled around the piers of the bridge beneath them.
Where do the diamonds come from? Shasa asked. He knew the answer, of course, but he liked to hear her tell it to him.
The river gathers them up, from every little pocket and crevice and pipe along its course. It picks up those that were flung into the air during the volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the continent's existence. For hundreds of millions of years it has been concentrating the diamonds and carrying them down towards the coast. She glanced sideways at him. And why aren't they worn away, like all the other pebbles? Because they are the hardest substance in nature. Nothing wears or scratches a diamond, he answered promptly.
