The bus pulled away and Miriam Afrika stayed on the platform at the back of the bus, staring back at them until it turned the next corner.
Benjamin came to meet them, his face bright with anticipation. He was growing into a likely lad, and Miriam always dressed him so well - clean white shirt, grey shorts and polished black shoes. His toffee-coloured skin had a scrubbed look and his crisp dark curls were trimmed into a neat cap.
'Isn't he just too gorgeous?' Tara breathed. 'Our son, Moses, our fine son.' The boy opened the door and jumped in besides Moses. He looked up at him with a beaming smile and Moses embraced him briefly.
Then Tara leaned over the seat and kissed him and gave him a brief but fierce hug. In public she had to limit any show of affection, and as he grew older, their relationship became more difficult and obscure.
The child still believed that Miriam Afrika was his mother, but he was almost six years old now, and a bright intelligent and sensitive boy. She knew that he suspected some special relationship between the three of them. These clandestine meetings were too regular, and emotionally charged, for him not to suspect that something had remained to be fully explained to him.
Benjamin had been told merely that they were good friends of the family, but even at his tender age he would be aware of the social taboos that they were flouting, for his very existence must be permeated by the knowledge that white and black were somehow different and set apart from his own light brown, and sometimes he stared at Tara with a kind of wonder as though she were some fabulous creature from a fairy tale.
There was nothing Tara could think of that could fulfill her more than taking him in her arms and telling him, 'You are my baby, my own true baby, and I love you as much as I love your father.' But she could not even let him sit on the seat beside her in case they were seen together.
They drove out across the Cape Flats towards Somerset West, but before they reached the village, Moses turned off onto a side track, through the dense stands of Port Jackson willow until they came out on to the long deserted curve of beach with the green waters of False Bay before them, and on each side the mountainous ramparts that formed the horns of the wide bay.
Moses parked the Chev and fetched the picnic basket from the boot, and then the three of them followed the footpath along the top of the beach until they reached their favourite spot. From here anyone approaching along the beach would be obvious from half a mile, while inland the exotic growth formed an almost impenetrable jungle. The only persons likely to venture this far along the lonely beach were surf fishermen casting into the tumbling waves for kob and steenbras, or lovers seeking seclusion. Here they felt safe.
Tara helped Benjamin change into his bathing-costume, and then all three of them went hand in hand to the enclosed rock pool where the child splashed and played like a spaniel puppy. When at last he was chilled through and tired, Tara towelled down his shivering body and dressed him again. Then he helped Moses build a fire amongst the dunes and grill the raw sausages and chops upon the coals.
After they had eaten, Benjamin wanted to swim again, but gently Tara forbade him. 'Not on a full stomach, darling.' So he went to search for shells along the tide-mark of the beach, and Tara and Moses sat on the crest of the dune and watched him. Tara was as happy and contented as she could ever remember being until Moses broke the silence.
'This is what we are working for,' he said. 'Dignity and a chance for happiness for all in this land.' 'Yes, Moses,' she whispered.
'It is worth any price.' 'Oh, yes,' she agreed fervently. 'Oh yes!' 'Part of the price is the execution of the architect of our misery,' he said sharply. 'I have kept this from you until now, but Verwoerd must die and all his henchmen with him. Destiny has appointed me his executioner - and his successor.' Tara paled at his words, but they came as such a shock that she could not speak. Moses took her hand with a strange and unusual gentleness.
'For you, for me and for the child - that he may live with us in the sunshine of freedom.' She tried to speak, but her voice faltered, and he waited patiently until she was able to enunciate. 'Moses, you promised!' 'No.' He shook his head. 'You persuaded yourself of that, and it was not the time to disillusion you.' 'Oh God, Moses!' The enormity of it crashed in upon her. 'I thought you were going to blow up the empty building as a symbolic gesture, but all along you planned to --' she broke off, unable to complete the sentence, and he did not deny it.
'Moses - my husband Shasa, he will be on the bench beside Verwoerd.' 'Is he your husband?' Moses asked. 'Is he not one of them, one of the enemy?' She lowered her eyes to acknowledge the truth of this, and then suddenly she was agitated again. 'My father - he will be in the House.' 'Your father and your husband are part of your old life. You have left that behind you. Now, Tara, I am both your father and your husband, and the struggle is your new life.' 'Moses, isn't there some way they can be spared?' she pleaded.
He did not speak, but she saw the answer in his eyes and she covered her face with both hands and began to weep. She wept silently, but the spasms of grief shook her whole body. Down on the beach the child's happy cries came to her faintly on the wind, and beside her Moses sat unmoving and without expression. After a while, she lifted her head and wiped the tears from her face with the palms of her hands.
'I'm sorry, Moses,' she whispered. 'I was weak, please forgive me.
I was mourning my father, but now I am strong again, and ready to do whatever you require of me.' The test match against the visiting Argentinian polo team was the most exciting event that had taken place at Weltevreden in a decade or more.
As mistress of the estate, the planning and organization of the event should have fallen to Tara, but her lack of interest in the sport and her poor organizational skills were too much for Centaine Courtney-Malcomess to abide. She began by giving discreet advice and ended in exasperation by taking all responsibility out of her daughter-in- law's hands. The result was that the occasion was in every respect a towering success. After Centaine had chivvied the coloured greensman, and with Blaine's expert advice, the turf on the field was green and velvety, the going beneath it neither hard enough to jar the legs of the ponies nor soft enough to slow them down. The goalposts were painted in the colours of the teams, the pale blue and white of Argentina, and orange, blue and white of South Africa, and two hundred flags in the same colours flew from the grandstand.
The stand itself was freshly painted, as were the fence pickets and the stables. A fence was erected to keep the general public out of the chfiteau's private grounds, but the new facilities designed by Centaine especially for the occasion included an extension to the grandstand, with public toilets below and an open air restaurant that could seat two hundred guests. The extensions to the stables were sufficient for fifty ponies, and there were new quarters for the grooms. The Argentinians had brought their own, and they wore traditional gaucho costume with wide hats and their chaps decorated with silver coins.
Garry tore himself away from his new office at Centaine House which was on the top floor, only three doors down from Shasa, and he spent two days at the stables watching and learning from these masters of horsecraft and the game of polo.
