I would recommend most strongly that you take the first opportunity of
presenting Debra to Dr. Friedman, and that you place in him your
complete confidence. I might add that the optical unit of Groote Schuur
Hospital is rightly world-renowned and fully equipped to provide any
treatment necessary
, they do not restrict their activities to heart transplants!
I have taken the liberty of showing your letter to General Mordecai, and
of discussing the case with him David folded the letter the carefully.
Why the hell did he have to bring the Brig into it, talk about a war
horse in a rose garden, and he opened the Brig's letter.
Dear David, Dr. Edelman has spoken with me. I have telephoned Friedman
in Cape Town, and he has agreed to see Debra.
For some years I have been postponing a lecture tour to South Africa
which the S. A. Zionist Council has been urging upon me. I have today
written to them and asked them to make the arrangements.
This will give us the excuse to bring Debra to Cape Town. Tell her I
have insufficient time to visit you on your farm but insist upon seeing
her.
I will give you my dates later, and expect to see you then It was in
typical style, brusque and commanding, presupposing aquiescence. It was
out of David's hands now.
There was no turning back, but there was still the chance that it would
not work. He found himself hoping for that, and his own selfishness
sickened him a little.
He turned over the letter and on the reverse he drafted a dummy letter
from the Brig setting out his plans for the forthcoming tour. This was
for Debra, and he found faint amusement in aping the Brig's style, so
that he might read it aloud to Debra convincingly.
Debra was ecstatic when he read it to her and he experienced a twinge of
conscience at his deceit.
It will be wonderful seeing him again, I wonder if Mother will be coming
out with him -? He didn't say, but I doubt it. 'David sorted the
American mail into chronological order from the post marks, and read
them to her. The first two were editorial comment on Burning Bright and
were set aside for detailed reply, but the third letter was another with
hard news.
United Artists wanted to film A Place of our Owen and were talking
impressively heavy figures for the twelve-month option against an
outright purchase of the property and a small percentage of the profits.
However, if Debra would go to California and write the screenplay, Bobby
Dugan felt sure he could roll it all into a quartermillion-dollar
package. He wanted her to weigh the fact that even established
novelists were seldom asked to write their own screenplays- this was an
offer not to be lightly spurned, and he urged Debra to accept.
Who needs people? Debra laughed it away quickly, too quickly, and David
caught the wistful expression before she turned her head away and asked
brighty, Have you got any of that champagne left, Morgan? I think we
can celebrate, don't you?
The way you're going, Morgan, I'd best lay in a store of the stuff, he
