'Tricia, please come in here a moment.' When she stood in the doorway, he pointed at the ceiling. 'What do you make of that?' Tricia looked mystified and came to stand beside his chair. They both peered at the damage.
'Oh, I know,' Tricia looked relieved, 'but I'm not supposed to tell you.' 'Spit it out, woman!' Shasa ordered.
'Your wife, Mrs Courtney, said she was planning some renovations to your office as a surprise. I suppose she has asked Maintenance to do the work for her.' 'Damn!' Shasa didn't like surprises which interfered with the comfortable tenor of his existence. He liked his office the way it was and he didn't want anybody, particularly anyone of Tara's avant garde taste, interfering with something that worked extremely well as it was.
'I think she is planning to change the curtains also,' Tricia added innocently. She didn't like Tara Courtney. She considered her shallow, insincere and scheming. She didn't approve of her disrespectful attitude to Shasa, and she wasn't above sowing a few seeds of dissension. If Shasa were free, there was just a chance, a very small and remote chance that he might see her clearly and realize just how much she, Tricia, felt for him, 'And she was talking about altering the light fittings,' she added.
Shasa jumped up from his desk and went to touch his curtains. He and Centaine had studied at least a hundred samples of fabric before choosing this one. Protectively he rearranged the drapes, and then he noticed the second hole in the ceiling and the thin insulated wire that protruded from it. He had difficulty controlling his fury in front of his secretary.
'You get on to Maintenance,' he instructed. 'Talk to Odendaal himself, not one of his workmen, and you tell him I want to know exactly what is going on. Tell him whatever it is, it's damned shoddy workmanship and that there is plaster all over my desk.' Tll do that this morning,' Tricia promised, and then, placatingly, 'It's ten minutes to, Mr Courtney - you don't want to be late.' Manfred De La Rey was just leaving his own office as Shasa came down'the passage, and they fell in side by side.
'Have you found out anything?' 'No - have you?' Manfred shook his head. 'It's too late anyway- nothing we can do now.' Shasa saw Blaine Malcomess at the door of the dining-room and went to greet him. They filed into the panelled dining-room together.
'How is Mater?' 'Centaine is fine - looking forward to seeing you for dinner tomorrow evening.' Centaine was holding a dinner party in Littleton's honour out at Rhodes Hill. 'I left her giving the chef a nervous breakdown.' They laughed together and then found their seats in the front row of chairs. As minister and deputy leader of the opposition, they both warranted reserved seats.
Shasa swivelled in his seat and looked to the back of the large hall where the press cameras had been set up. He picked out Kitty Godolphin, looking tiny and girlish beside her camera crew, and she winked at him mischievously. Then the two prime ministers were taking their places at the top table and Shasa leaned across to Manfred De La Rey and murmured, 'I hope this isn't all a boo-ha over nothing - and that Supermac has really got something of interest to tell us.' Manfred shrugged. 'Let's hope it isn't too exciting either,' he said.
'Sometimes it's safer to be bored --' but he broke off as the Speaker of the House called for silence and rose to introduce the prime minister of Great Britain and the packed room, filled with the most powerful men in the land, settled into attentive and expectant silence.
Even when Macmillan, tall and urbane and strangely benign in expression, rose to his feet, Shasa had no sense of being at the anvil while history was being forged and he crossed his arms over his chest and lowered his chin in the attitude of listening and concentration in which he followed all debate and argument.
Macmillan spoke in an unemotional voice, but with weight and lucidity, and his text had all the indications of having been carefully prepared, meticulously polished and rehearsed.
'The most striking of all the impressions I have formed since I left London a month ago,' he said, 'is the strength of this African national consciousness. In different places it may take different forms, but it is happening everywhere. The wind of change is blowing through the continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact. Our national policies must take account of it.' Shasa sat up straight and unfolded his arms, and around him there was a similar stirring of incredulity. It was only then that Shasa realized with a clairvoyant flash that the world he knew had altered its shape, that in the fabric of life that had held together their diverse nation for almost three hundred years, the first rent had been torn by a few simple words, a rent that could never be repaired. While he attempted to grasp the full extent of the damage, Macmillan was going on in those plummy measured tones.
'Of course, you understand this as well as anyone. You are sprung from Europe, the home of nationalism.' Cunningly, Macmillan was including them in his new sweeping view of Africa. 'Indeed, in the history of our times yours will be recorded as the first of the African nationalisms.' Shasa glanced at Verwoerd beside the British prime minister and he could see that he was agitated and alarmed. He had been caught unawares by Macmillan's stratagem of withholding his text from him.
'As a fellow member of the Commonwealth, it is our earnest desire to give South Africa our support and encouragement, but I hope you won't mind me saying frankly that there are some aspects of your policies which make it impossible for us to do this without being false to our own deep convictions about the political destinies of free men.' Macmillan was announcing nothing less than a parting of ways and Shasa was devastated by the idea. He wanted to leap to his feet and shout, 'But I am British also - you cannot do this to us.' He looked around him almost pleadingly and saw his own deep distress echoed on the faces of Blaine and most of the other English members of the House.
Macmillan's words had devastated them.
Shasa's mood persisted over the remainder of that day and the next. The atmosphere at the meetings with Littleton and his advisers was one of mourning, and though Littleton himself was apologetic and conciliatory, they all knew that the damage was real and irreparable. The fact was undeniable. Britain was dropping them. She might go on trading with them, but at arm's length. Britain had chosen sides.
Late on the Friday a special session of the House was announced for the following Monday, when Verwoerd would make his accounting to his parliament and his people. They had the weekend to brood over their fate. Mactnillan's speech even cast a shadow over Centaine's dinner party on the Friday evening, and Centaine took it as a personal insult.
The man's timing is atrocious,' she confided to Shasa. 'The day before my party! Perfidious Albion!' 'You French have never trusted the British,' Shasa teased her, his first attempt at humour in forty-eight hours.
'Now I know why,' Centaine retorted. 'Look at the man - typically English. He hides expediency in a cloak of high moral indignation.
He does what is best for England and makes himself a saint while he does it.' It was left for Blaine Malcomess to sum up after the women had left the men to their port and cigars in Rhodes Hill's magnificent dining-room.
'Why are we so incredulous?' he asked. 'Why do we feel it so impossible that Britain would reject us, simply
