If you want to know something, go and find out. it was one of his mother's adages, and his only compunction was that she might catch him at it as he crossed to the side wall of the office, stepping lightly so that the gravel would not crunch under his feet, and laid his ear against the sun-heated corrugated metal.
Though he strained, he could only hear the murmur of voices. Even when the blond stranger spoke sharply, he could not catch the words, while his mother's voice was low and husky and inaudible.
The window, he thought, and moved quickly to the corner. As he stepped around it, intent on eavesdropping at the open window, he was suddenly the subject of attention of fifty pairs of eyes. The factory manager and his idle workers were still clustered at the main doors, and they fell silent and turned their full attention upon him as he appeared round the corner.
Shasa tossed his head and veered away from the window.
They were all still watching him and he thrust his hands into the pockets of his Oxford bags and, with an elaborate show of nonchalance, sauntered down towards the long wooden jetty as though this had been his intention all along.
Whatever was going on in the office now was beyond him, unless he could wheedle it out of his mother later, and he didn't think there was much hope of that. Then suddenly he noticed the four squat wooden trawlers moored alongside the jetty, each lying low in the water under the glittering silver cargo they carried, and his disappointment was a little mollified. Here was something to break the monotony of his hot dreary desert afternoon and his step quickened as he went onto the timbers of the jetty. Boats always fascinated him.
This was new and exciting. He had never seen so many fish, there must be tons of them. He came level with the first boat. It was grubby and ugly, with streaks of human excrement down the sides where the crew had squatted on the gunwale, and it stank of bilges and fuel oil and unwashed humanity living in confined quarters. It had not even been graced with a name: there were only the registration and licence numbers painted on the wave-battered bows.
A boat should have a name, Shasa thought. It's insulting and unlucky not to give it a name. His own twenty- five-foot yacht that his mother had given him for his thirteenth birthday was named The Midas Touch, a name that his mother had suggested.
Shasa wrinkled his nose at the smell of the trawler, disgusted and saddened by her disgracefully neglected condition.
If this is what Mater drove all the way from Windhoek for, He did not finish the thought for a boy stepped around the far side of the tall angular wheelhouse.
He wore patched shorts of canvas duck, his legs were brown and muscled and he balanced easily on the hatch coarning on bare feet.
As they became aware of each other both boys bridled and stiffened, like dogs meeting unexpectedly; silently they scrutinized each other.
A dandy, a fancy boy, Manfred thought. He had seen one or two like him on their infrequent visits to the resort town of Swakopmund up the coast. Rich men's children dressed in ridiculous stiff clothing, walking dutifully behind their parents with that infuriating supercilious expression upon their faces. Look at his hair, all shiny with brilliantine, and he stinks like a bunch of flowers. One of the poor white Afrikaners, Shasa recognized his type. A bywoner, a squatter's kid. I His mother had forbidden him to play with them, but he had found that some of them were jolly good fun. Their attraction was of course enhanced by his mother's prohibition. One of the sons of the machine-shop foreman at the mine imitated bird calls in such an amazingly lifelike manner that he could actually call the birds down from the trees, and he had shown Shasa how to adjust the carburettor and ignition on the old Ford which his mother allowed him to use, even though he was too young to have a driver's licence. While the same boy's elder sister, a year older than Shasa, had shown him something even more remarkable when they had shared a few forbidden moments together behind the pumphouse at the mine. She had even allowed him to touch it and it had been warm and soft and furry as a new-born kitten cuddling up there under her short cotton skirt, a most remarkable experience which he intended to repeat at the very next opportunity.
This boy looked interesting also, and perhaps he could show Shasa over the trawler's engine-room. Shasa glanced back at the factory. His mother was not watching and he was prepared to be magnanimous.
Hello. He made a lordly gesture and smiled carefully. His grandfather, Sir Garrick Courtney, the most important male person in his existence, was always admonishing him. By birth you have a specially exalted position in society. This gives you not only benefit and privilege, but a duty also. A true gentleman treats those beneath his station, black or white, old or young, man or woman, with consideration and courtesy. My name is Courtney, Shasa told him. 'Shasa Courtney.
My uncle is Sir Garrick Courtney and my mother is Mrs Centaine de Thiry Courtney. He waited for the deference that those names usually commanded, and when it was not evident, he went on rather lamely. 'What's your name? My name is Manfred, the other boy replied in Afrikaans and arched those dense black eyebrows over the amber eyes.
They were so much darker than his streaked blond hair that they looked as though they had been painted on. Manfred De La Rey, and my grandfather and my great-uncle and my father were De La Rey also and they shot the shit out of the English every time they met them. Shasa blushed at this unexpected attack and was on the point of turning away when he saw that there was an old man leaning in the window of the wheelhouse, watching them, and two coloured crewmen had come up from the trawler's forecastle. He could not retreat.
We English won the war and in 1914 we beat the hell out of the rebels, he snapped.
Well! Manfred repeated, and turned to his audience. This little gentleman with perfume on his hair won the war. The crewmen chuckled encouragement. Smell him, his name should be Lily, Lily the perfumed soldier. Manfred turned back to him, and for the first time Shasa realized that he was taller by a good inch and his arms were alarmingly thick and brown. So you are English, are you, Lily? Then you must live in London, is that right, sweet Lily? Shasa had not expected a poor white boy to be so articulate, nor his wit to be so acerbic. Usually he was in control of any discussion.
Of course I'm English, he affirmed furiously, and was seeking a final retort to end the exchange and allow him to retire in good order from a situation over which he was swiftly losing control.
Then you must live in London, Manfred persisted.
I live in Cape Town. Hah! Manfred turned to his growing audience. Swart Hendrick had come across the jetty from his own trawler, and all the crew were up from the forecastle. That's why they are called Soutpiel, Manfred announced.
There was an outburst of delighted guffaws at the coarse expression. Manfred would never have used it if his
