Mahobo's Kloof. He delighted in the long ranks of sweating, singing
black men as they opened the rich, red earth and placed the fragile
little saplings.
Dirk was Sean's constant companion in these days , His attendance in
the schoolhouse became more sporadic. Convinced that Dirk would never
become a scholar, Sean tacitly condoned the gastric disturbances that
prevented Dirk leaving for school in the mornings, but cleared
miraculously a few minutes later and allowed him to follow Sean out
into the plantations. Dirk aped Sean's stance, his seat in the saddle,
and his long reaching walk. He listened carefully to Sean's words and
repeated them later without omitting the oaths. In the late afternoons
they hunted quail and pheasant and guinea, fowl along the slopes of the
escarpment. On Sunday when Sean rode across to his neighbours for a
bush buck shoot, or a poker session, or merely to drink brandy and
talk, then Dirk went with him.
Despite Sean's protest, Ada returned with her girls to the cottage on
Protea Street. So the homestead of Lion Kop was a vast empty shell.
Sean and Dirk used only three of the fifteen rooms, and even these were
sparsely furnished. No carpets on the floor, nor pictures on the
walls. A few leather, thonged chairs, iron bedstead, plain deal
tables, and a cupboard or two. Piled in odd corners were the books and
fishing, rods; a pair of shotguns and a rifle on the rack beside the
fireplace. The yellow, wood floor was unpolished with dust and bits of
fluff beneath the chairs and beds, dark stains left by the litter of
pointer puppies; and in Dirk's bedroom, which Sean never visited, there
was a welter , , ANN of old socks and soiled shirts, school exercise
books and trophies of the hunt.
Sean had no interest in the house. It was a place to eat an sleep, it
had a roof to keep the rain out, a fireplace for warmth, and lamplight
so that he could indulge his new appetite for reading. With reading
glasses purchased from a travelling salesman on his nose, Sean spent
his evenings wading through books on politics and travel, economics and
surveying, mathematics and medicine, while Dirk, ostensibly preparing
his schoolwork, sat across the fireplace from him and watched him
avidly. Some nights when Sean was engaged in correspondence, he would
forget that Dirk was there and the boy would sit up until after
midnight.
Sean was now corresponding with both Jannie Niemand and Jan Paulus
Leroux. These two had become a political team in the Transvaal, and
were already bringing gentle pressure to bear on Sean. They wanted him
to organize the equivalent of their South Africa Party, and to lead it
in Natal. Sean hedged. Not yet, perhaps later he told them.
Once a month he received and answered a long letter from John Acheson.
Acheson had returned to England and the gratitude of the nation. He
was now Lord Caisterbrook and from his seat in the House of Lords he
kept Sean informed of the temper and mood of the English people and the
affairs of State.
Sometimes, more often than was healthy, Sean thought about Ruth.
Then he became angry and sad and desperately lonely.
