With his cigar Sean waved her into the wingback chair facing his desk, and it seemed to dwarf her. Garry took another chair to the side.
I've spoken to Garry, Sean opened, without preliminaries. I've told him the circumstances of Michael's death, before the wedding. He sat down behind his desk and turned his own gold wedding ring on his finger thoughtfully.
We all of us here know that in every sense but the legal one, Michael was your husband, and the natural father of Michel. However, technically Michel is, he hesitated, Michel is illegitimate. In the eyes of the law, he is a bastard. The word shocked Centaine. She stared at Sean through the rising wreaths of cigar smoke while the silence drew out.
We can't have that, Garry broke it. He's my grandson.
We can't have that.
No, Sean agreed. We can't have that. With your consent, my dear, Garry's voice was almost a whisper, I should like to adopt the lad. Centaine turned her head towards him slowly, and he hurried on, It would only be a formality, a legal device to ensure his status in the world. It could be done most discreetly, and it would in no way affect the relationship between you. You would still be his mother and have custody of him, while I would be honoured to become his guardian and do for him all the things that his father cannot. Centaine winced, and Garry blurted, Forgive me, my dear, but we have to talk about it. As Sean has said, we all accept that you are Michael's widow, we would want you to use the family name and we would all treat you as though the ceremony had taken place that day, he broke off, and coughed throatily. Nobody would ever know, except the three of us in this room, and Anna. Would you give your consent, for the child's sake? Centaine stood up and crossed to where Garry sat.
She sank on to her knees before him and placed her head in his lap.
Thank you, she whispered. You are the kindest man I know. You have truly taken the place of my own father now.
The months that followed were the most contented that Centaine had ever known, secure and sunny and rewarding, filled with the sound of Shasa's laughter, and with the benign if diffident presence of Garry Courtney always in the background and the more substantial figure of Anna in the foreground.
Centaine rode every morning before breakfast and again in the cool of the evening, and often Garry accompanied her, regaling her with tales of Michael's childhood or relating the family history as they climbed the forested tracks along the escarpment or paused to water the horses at the pool below the falls of the river where the spray and white water fell a hundred feet over wet black rock.
The rest of the day was spent in choosing curtaining and wallpaper, and supervising the artisans who were redecorating the house, consulting with Anna on the restructuring of Theuniskraal's domestic arrangements, romping with Shasa and trying to prevent the Zulu servants from spoiling him utterly, taking instruction from Garry Courtney in the subtle art of steering and driving the big Fiat tourer, in pondering the printed invitations that arrived with every day's mail, and generally taking over the management and running of Theuniskraal as she had that of the chateau at Mort Homme.
Every afternoon she and Shasa took tea with Garry in the library where he had been ensconced for most of the day, and with his gold-rimmed spectacles on the end of his nose he would read aloud to her his day's writings.
Oh, it must be wonderful to have such a gift! she exclaimed, and he lowered the sheaf of manuscript. You admire those of us that write2 he asked. You are a breed apart. Nonsense, my dear, we are very ordinary people except that we are vain enough to believe that other people might want to read what we have to say. I wish I could write. You can, your penmanship is excellent.'I mean really Write.'You can. Help yourself to paper and get on with it. If that's what you want. But, she stared at him aghast, what could I write about? Write about what happened to you out there in the desert. That would do very well for a beginning, I should say. it took three days for her to accustom herself to the idea, and brace herself to the effort. Then she had the servants move a table into the gazebo at the end of the lawns and sat down at it with a pencil in her hand, a pile of Garry's blank paper in front of her and terror in her heart. She experienced that same terror each day thereafter when she drew the first blank sheet of paper towards her, but it passed swiftly as the ranks of words began to march down across the emptiness.
She moved pleasant and familiar things into the gazebo to alleviate the loneliness of creative endeavour a pretty rug for the tiled floor, a Delft vase on the table-top which Anna filled with fresh flowers each day, and in front of her she placed O'wa's clasp knife. She used it to resharpen her pencils.
At her right hand she placed a velvet-lined jewelbox and in it she laid H'ani's necklace. Whenever she lacked inspiration, she threw down her pencil and took up the necklace. She rubbed the bright stones between her fingets like Greek worry beads and their smooth touch seemed to calm her and recharge her determination.
Every afternoon from the end of lunch until it was time to take tea with Garry in the library, she wrote at the table in the gazebo, and Shasa slept in the cot beside her or climbed over her feet.
it did not take many days for Centaine to realize that she could never show what she was putting on to the paper to another living soul. She found that she could hold nothing back, that she was writing with a brutal candour that admitted no reserve or equivocation.
Whether it was the details of her lovemaking with Michael, or the description of the taste of rotten fish in her mouth as she lay dying beside the Atlantic, she knew that nobody could read them without being shocked and horrified.
It's for myself alone, she decided. At the end of each session when she laid the handwritten sheets on the jewelbox on top of H'ani's necklace, she was suffused with a sense of satisfaction and worthwhile achievement.
There were, however, a few jarring notes in this symphony of contentment.
Sometimes in the night she would rise to the surface of consciousness and reach instinctively for the lithe golden body that should have been beside hers, longing for the feel of hard smooth muscle and the touch of long silky hair that smelled like the sweet grasses of the desert.
Then she would come fully awake and lie in the darkness hating herself for her treacherous longings and burning with shame that she had so debased the memory of Michael and O'wa and little H'ani.
On another morning Garry Courtney sent for her and, when she was seated, handed her a package.
This came with a covering note to me. It's from a lawyer in Paris. What does it say, Papa? My French is awful, I'm afraid, but the gist of the matter is that your father's estates at Mort Homme have been sold to defray his
