accused, and then he saw her mind beginning to work like a cash register.
He almost laughed out loud. 'No. It's true.'
'God!' She sat down limply. 'It will nearly double your salary.' He looked at her dispassionately, and not for the first time felt a great wash of relief as he realized he was no longer shackled to her.
'It's usual to offer congratulations,' he prompted her.
'You don't deserve it.' She was angry now. 'You are a selfish, philandering bastard, Rodney Ironsides, you don't deserve the good things that keep happening to you.' He had cheated her. She could have been the General Manager's wife, first lady of the gold fields Now she was a divorcee, stuck with a miserable four fifty a month. It had seemed good before, but 'not now.
'I hope you will 'have enough conscience to make a suitable adjustment for Melanie and me.. We are entitled to a share.' The door burst open and Melanie Ironsides arrived at a gallop to wrap herself around Rod's neck. She had long blonde hair and green eyes.
'I got nine out of ten for spelling!'
'You're not clever, you're a genius. Also you're beautiful.'
'Will you carry me down to the car, Daddy?' 'What's wrong? Your legs in plaster?'
'Please, please, pretty please times three.' Patti interrupted the love feast. 'Have you got your jersey, young lady?' And Melanie flew.
'I'll have her back before seven,' said Rod.
'You haven't answered my question.' Patti was surly. 'Do we get a share?' 'Yes, of course,' said Rod. 'The same big juicy four fifty you've had all along.' They had been in Rod's apartment ten minutes when the doorbell announced Terry's arrival. She was in jeans and a checked shirt with her hair in a plait, and she greeted Rod self- consciously.
When he introduced her to Melanie, she did not look much older than his daughter.
The two girls summed each other up solemnly. Melanie was suddenly very demure and refined, and Rod was relieved to see that Terry had the good sense not to gush over the child.
They were in the Maserati and half way to the village of Parys on the Vaal River before Melanie had completed her microscopic scrutiny of 'Can I come up front and sit on your lap?' she asked at last.
'Yes, of course.' Terry was hard put to conceal her relief and pleasure. Melanie scrambled over the seat and settled on Terry's lap.
'You are pretty,' Melanie gave her considered opinion.
'Thank you. So are you.'
'Are you Daddy's girlfriend?' Melanie demanded. Terry glanced across at Rod, then burst out laughing.
'Almost,' she gurgled, and then all three of them were laughing.
They laughed often that day. It was a day of sunshine and laughter.
Melanie Terry and Rod walked together with fingers almost touching through the green paddocks along the willow lined bank of the Vaal.
Melanie ran ahead of them shrieking with glee at the antics of the foals.
They went up to the stables where Melanie fed sugar lumps to a winner of the Cape Metropolitan Handicap and then kissed his velvety muzzle.
They swam in the pool beside the elegant whitewashed homestead, laughter mingling with the splashes, and when they drove back to Johannesburg in the evening Melanie curled in exhausted slumber on Terry's lap, her head cushioned on Terry's bosom.
Terry waited in the Maserati while Rod carried the sleeping child up to her mother, and when he returned and slipped into the driver's seat, Terry murmured, 'My car is at your apartment. You'll have to take me with you.' Neither of them spoke until they were back in Rod's sitting-room. Then he said, 'Thank you for a wonderful day.' And he took her to his chest and kissed her.
In the darkness she lay pressed to his sleeping body, clinging to him, as though he might be taken from her. She had never felt such intensity of emotion before, it was a compound of awed wonder and gratitude. She had just been admitted to a new level of human experience she had never suspected existed. The sheets were stil damp.
She felt bruised internally, aching, a slow voluptuous pulse of pain that she cherished.
Lightly she touched his body, not wanting to wake him, running her fingertips through the coarse curls that covered his chest, marvelling still at the infinity that separated this from what she had known before.
She shuddered with almost unbearable pleasure as she remembered his voice describing her body to her, making her proud of it for the first time in her life. She remembered the words he had used to tell her exactly what they were doing together, and the feel of his hands, so gentle, sure, so lovingly possessive upon her.
He was so unashamed, taking such obvious joy in her, that the reserves which the barren years of her marriage had placed in her mind were swept away and she was able to go with Rodney Ironsides beyond the storm into that tranquil state where mind and body are completely at peace.
She became aware of him awakening beside her, and she touched his face, his lips and his eyes with her fingertips.
'Thank you,' she whispered, and he seemed to understand, for he took her head and drew it gently down into the hollow of his shoulder.
'Sleep now,' he told her softly, and she closed her eyes and lay very still and quiet beside him, but she did not sleep. She would not miss one moment of this experience. RROD's letter of appointment lay on his desk when he arrived at his office at seven- thirty on the Monday, morning.
He sat down and lit a cigarette. Then he began to read it slowly, savouring each word.
'Duly instructed by the Board of Directors,' it began, and ended, it remains only to render the congratulations of the Board, and to voice their confidence in your ability.' Dimitri came through from his office, distracted.
'Hey! Rod! Christ what a start to the week! We've got a fault in the main high voltage cable on 90 level, and-'
'Don't come squealing to me,' Rod cut him short. 'I'm not the Underground Manager.' Dimitri gaped at him, taken by surprise.
'What the hell, have they fired you?' 'Next best thing,' said Rod and flipped the letter across the desk.
'Look what the bastards have done to me.' Dimitri read and then whooped, 'My God, Rod! My God!' He shot down the passage to carry the news to the other line managers. Then they were all in his office, shaking his hand. He judged most of their reactions as favourable though occasionally he detected a false note. A twinge of envy here, one there who had recently had his ears burned by the Ironsides tongue, and an incompetent who knew his job was now in danger. The phone rang.
Rod answered it, his expression changed and he cleared his office with a peremptory wave.
'Hirschfeld here.'
'Morning, Mr. Hirschfeld.'
'Well, you've got your chance, Ironsides.'
'I'm grateful for it.'
'I want to see you. I'll give you today to sort yourself out.
Tomorrow morning at nine o'clock, my office at Reef Buildings.' 'I'll be there.'
'Good.' Rod hung up, and the day dissolved into a welter- of activity and reorganization, constantly interrupted by a stream of well-wishers.
He was still running the Underground Manager's job in addition to the General Manager's.
It would be some considerable time before a new Underground Manager would be transferred in from one of the other group mines. He was trying to arrange his move to the big office in the main Administrative Block up on the ridge, when he had another visitor, Frank Lemmer's secretary, Miss. Lily Jordan, looking like a wardress from Ravensbruck in a severe grey flannel suit.
'Mr. Ironsides, you and I have not seen eye to eye in the past.' This was the understatement of the year. 'It is unlikely that we will in the future. Therefore, I have come to render my resignation. I have made arrangements.' The phone rang. Dan Stander's voice, breezy and carefree.
'Rod, I'm in love.'
'Oh Christ, no!' Rod groaned. 'Not this morning.'
'I've got to thank you for introducing me to her. She's the most wonderful-'
'Yeah, yeah!' Rod cut him short. 'Look, Dan, I'm rather busy. Some other time, all right?'
'Oh yes, I forgot. You are the new General Manager they tell me.
Congratulations. You can buy me a drink at the Club. Six o'clock.'
'Right. By then I'll need one.' Rod hung up, and faced the hanging-judge expression of Miss. Lily Jordan.
'Miss. Jordan, in the past our interests have conflicted. In the future they will not. You are the best private secretary within a hundred miles of the Sander Ditch. I need you, the Company needs you.' That was the magic word. Miss. Jordan had twenty-five years service with the Company. She wavered visibly. Please Miss. Jordan, give me a chance.'
Shamelessly Rod switched on his most engaging smile. Miss. Jordan's femininity was not so completely atrophied that she could resist that smile.
'Very well , then, Mr. Ironsides. I'll stay on initially until
