Mark drove fast, concentrating all his attention on the twisting treacherous road through the mountains, driving the big heavily laden Rolls down the path of its own glaring brass-bound headlights, up Baines Kloof where the mountain fell away on his left hand sheer into the valley, past Worcester with its orderly vineyards standing in dark lines in the moonlight, before the final ascent up the Hex River Mountains to the rim of the flat compacted shield of the African interior.
They came out over the top, and the vast land stretched away ahead of them, the dry treeless karroo, where the flat-topped kopjes made strangely symmetrical shapes against the cold starry sky.
Now at last, Mark could relax in the studded leather driver's seat, driving instinctively, the road pouring endlessly towards him, pale and straight out of the darkness, and he could tune his ears to the voice of the two men in the rear seat. What they don't understand, old Sean, is that if we do not employ every black man who offers himself for work no, more than that, if we don't actively recruit all the native labour we can get hold of, it will result not-only in fewer jobs for white men, but, in the long run, it will mean, finally, no jobs at all for the white men of Africa. A jackal, small and furry as a puppy, lolloped into the path of the headlights with its ears erect, and Mark steered carefully to miss it, his own ears cocked for Sean's reply.
They think only of today. His voice was deep and grave. We must plan for ten years from now, for thirty, fifty years ahead, for a nation firm and undivided. We cannot afford once again to have Afrikander against Briton, or worse, we dare not have white against black. It is not enough that we are forced to live together, we must learn to work together. Slowly, slowly, old Sean, the Prime Minister chuckled. Don't let dreams run away with reality. I don't deal in dreams, Jannie. You should know that. If we don't want to be torn to pieces by our own people, we must give all of them, black, white and brown, a place and a share. They ran on hard into the endless land, and the light of a lonely farm house on a dark ridge emphasized how vast and empty it was. Those who clamour so loudly for less work and more pay may find that what benefit they get now will have to be paid for at a thousand percent interest some day in the future. A payment in misery and hunger and suffering, Sean Courtney was speaking again. If we are to steer off the reef of national disaster, then men will have to learn to work again, and to take seriously once more the demands of a disciplined and orderly society. Have you ever wondered, Sean, at how many people these days depend for their livelihood on nothing else but finding areas of dispute between the employers and the employed, between labour and management? Sean nodded, taking it up where Smuts left off. As though the two were not shackled to each other with bonds that nothing can break. They travel the same road, to the same goal, bound together irretrievably by destiny. When one stumbles, he brings the other down on bloody knees, when one falls the other comes down with him Slowly, as the stars made their circuit of grandeur across the heavens, the talk in the back seat, of the Rolls dwindled into silence.
Mark glanced in the mirror and saw that Sean Courtney was asleep, a travelling rug about his shoulders and his black beard on his chest.
His snores were low and regular and deep, and Mark felt a rush of feeling for the big man. It was a fine mixture of respect and awe, of pride and affection. I suppose that is what you would feel, if you had a father, he thought, and then, embarrassed by the strength and presumption of his feeling, he once again concentrated all his attention on the road.
The night wind had sifted the sky with fine dust, and the dawn was a thing of unbelievable splendour. From horizon to horizon, and right across the vaulted domes of the heavens, vibrant colour throbbed and glowed and flamed, until at last the sun thrust clear of the horizon. We won't stop in Bloemfontein or any of the big towns, Mark. We don't want anybody to see the Prime Minister.
Sean leaned across the back of the seat. We'll need petrol, General. Pick one of the roadside pumps, Sean instructed. Try and find one with no telephone lines. It was a tiny iron-roofed general dealer's store set back from the road under two scraggy eucalyptus blue gum trees. There was no other building in sight, and the open empty veld stretched dry and sun-scared to the circle of the horizon. The plaster walls of the store were cracked and in need of whitewash, plastered with advertisement boards for Bovril and Joko tea. The windows were shuttered and the door locked, but there were no telephone lines running from the solitary building to join those that followed the road, and a single red-painted petrol pump stood at rigid attention in the dusty yard below the stoep.
Mark blew a long continuous blast on the Rolls' horn, and while he was doing so, the Prime Minister's black Cadillac that was following turned off the main road and parked behind them. The driver and the three members of the ministerial staff climbed out and stretched their stiff muscles.
When the proprietor of the store emerged at last, unshaven, red-eyed, but cheerfully doing up his breeches, he spoke no English. Mark asked in Afrikaans, Can you fill up both cars? While the storekeeper swung the handle of the pump back and forth, and the fuel rose alternatively into the two one-gallon glass bowls on the top of the pump, his wife came out from the store with a tray of steaming coffee mugs and a platter of crisp golden freshly baked rusks.
They ate and drank gratefully, and were ready to go on again within twenty minutes.
The storekeeper stood in the yard, scratching the stubble of his beard and watched the twin columns of red dust billowing into the northern sky. His wife came out on to the stoep and he turned to squint up at her. Do you know who that was? he asked, and she shook her head.
That was Clever Jannie, and his English gun-men.
Didn't you see the uniform the young one wore? He spat into the red dirt, and his phlegm balled and rolled, Khaki!
Damned khaki! He ripped the word out bitterly, and went around the side of the building to the little lean-to stable.
He was clinching the girth on the old sway-backed grey mare, when she followed him into the stall. It's none of our business, Hendrick. Let it stand. None of our business? he demanded indignantly. Didn't I fight khaki in the English war, didn't I fight it again in 1916 when we rode with old De Wet, isn't my brother a rock-breaker on the Simmer and Jack mine, and isn't that where Clever Jannie is going with his hangmen? He swung up on the mare and put his heels to her. She jumped away, and he pointed her at the ridge. It was eight miles to the railway siding, and there was a telegraph in the ganger's cottage; the ganger was a cousin of his. The Railway Workers Union was out in sympathy with the miners now. The Action Committee would have the news in Johannesburg by lunch time that Clever Jannie was on his way.
While Mark Anders drank coffee at the wayside store, Fergus MacDonald lay under the hedge at the bottom of a garden ablaze with crimson cannas in orderly beds, and peered through a pair of binoculars down the slope at the Newlands Police Station. They had sand-bagged the windows and doors.
The lady of the house had sat onher veranda the previous evening, drinking coffee and counting forty-seven police constables arriving by motor lorry to reinforce the station.
Her son was a shift boss on the Simmer and Jack. Whoever commanded the police at Newlands was no soldier, Fergus decided, and grinned that wolfish wicked grin.
