“Put that down,“snapped Benedict.
“You know what the Old Man thinks about this sort of thing, don’t you, Benedict?” Suddenly Benedict went pale.
“He wouldn’t believe you.”
“Yes, he would.” Johnny tossed the reel on the table and turned back to Benedict. “He believes me because I’ve never lied to him.” Benedict hesitated, wiped his lips nervously with the back of his hand.
“I haven’t seen her for two weeks. She was renting a place in Chelsea. Stark Street. Number 23. She came to see me.”
“What for?”
“I lent her a couple of pounds,” Benedict muttered sulkily.
“A couple of pounds?“Johnny asked.
“All right, a couple of hundred. After all, she is my sister.”
“Damn decent of you,“Johnny lauded him. “Write down the address.”
Benedict crossed to the leather-topped writing desk and scribbled on a card. He came back and handed the card to Johnny.
“You like to think you’re big and dangerous, Lance.” His voice was pitched low but it shook with fury. “Well, I’m dangerous too - in a different sort of way. The Old Man can’t live for ever, Lance. When he’s gone I’m coming after you.
“You frighten the hell out of me.“Johnny grinned at him, and went down to the car.
The traffic was solid in Sloane Square as Johnny eased the Jaguar slowly down towards Chelsea. There was plenty of time to think; to remember how close they had been the three of them. He and Tracey and Benedict.
Running together as wild young things with the endless beaches and mountains and sun-washed plains of Namaqua land as their playground.
That was before the Old Man made the big strike on the Slang River, before there was money for shoes. When Tracey wore dresses made from flour sacks sewn together, and they rode to school each day, all three of them bare-back on a single pony like a row of bedraggled little brown sparrows on a fence.
He remembered how the long sun-drenched weeks while the Old Man was away were spent in laughter and secret games. How they climbed the kopie behind the mud-walled shack each evening and looked towards the north across the limitless land, flesh-coloured and purple in the sunset, searching for the wisp of dust in the distance that would mean the Old Man was coming home.
Then the almost painful excitement when the dusty, rackety Ford truck with its mudguards tied on with wire was suddenly there in the yard, and the Old Man was climbing down from the cab, a sweat-stained hat on the back of his head and the dust thick in the stubble of his beard, swinging Tracey squealing above his head. Then turning to Benedict, and lastly to Johnny. Always in that order - Tracey, Benedict, Johnny.
Johnny had never wondered why sometimes he was not first. It was always that way. Tracey, Benedict, Johnny. The same way as he had never wondered why his name was Lance and not van der Byl. Then it had come to an end suddenly, the whole brightly sunlit dream of childhood was gone and lost.
“Johnny, I’m not your real father. Your father and mother died when you were very young.” And Johnny had stared at the Old Man in disbelief.
“Do you understand, Johnny?”
“Yes, Pa.” Tracey’s hand groped for his beneath the table top like a little warm animal. He jerked his own hand away from it.
“I think you’d better not call me that any more, Johnny.” He could remember the exact tone of the Old Man’s voice, neutral, matter of fact, as it splintered the fragile crystal of his childhood to fragments. The loneliness had begun.
Johnny accelerated the Jaguar forward and swung into the King’s
Road. He was surprised that the memory hurt so intensely - time should have mellowed and softened it.
His life from then on had become a ceaseless contest to win the Old Man’s approval - he dare not hope for his love.
Soon there were other changes, for a week later the old Ford had come roaring unexpectedly out of the desert in the night, and the barking of the dogs and the Old Man’s shouted laughter had brought them, sleepy-eyed, tumbling from their bunks.
The Old Man had lit the Petromax lamp and sat them on the kitchen chairs about the scrubbed deal table. Then with the air of a conjuror he had lain something that looked like a big lump of broken glass on the table.
The three sleepy children had stared at it solemnly, not understanding. The harsh glare of the Petromax was captured within the crystal, captured, repeated, magnified and thrown back at them in fire and blue lightning.
“Twelve carats - ” gloated the Old Man, “blue-white and perfect, and there is a cartload more where that came from.” After that there were new clothes and motor cars, the move to Cape Town, the new school and the big house on Wynberg Hill - but always the contest. The contest that did not earn the Old Man’s approval as it was designed to do, but earned instead Benedict van der Byl’s jealousy and hatred.
Without his drive and purpose, Benedict could not hope to match Johnny’s achievements in the classroom and on the sports field. He fell far behind the pace that Johnny set - and hated him for it.
The Old Man did not notice for he was seldom with them now. They lived alone in the big house with the thin silent woman who was their housekeeper, and the Old Man came infrequently and for short periods.
Always he seemed tired and distracted. Sometimes he brought presents for them from London and Amsterdam and Kimberley, but the presents meant very little to them. They would have liked it better had it stayed the way it was in the desert.
In the void left by the Old Man the hostility and rivalry between Johnny and Benedict flourished to such proportions that Tracey was forced to choose between them. She chose Johnny.
In their loneliness they clung to each other.
The grave little girl and the big gangling boy built together all against the loneliness. It was a bright secure place where the sadness could not reach them - and Benedict was excluded from it.
Johnny swung the Jaguar out of the line of traffic into Old Church Street, down towards the river in Chelsea. He drove automatically and the memories came crowding back.
He tried to recapture and hold the castle of warmth and love that he and Tracey had built so long ago, but instantly his mind leapt to the night on which it had collapsed.
One night in the old house on Wynberg Hill Johnny had come awake to the sound of distant weeping. He had gone barefooted in his pyjamas, following that heartrending whisper of grief. He was afraid, fourteen years old and afraid in the dark house.
Tracey was weeping into her pillow and he had stooped over her.
“Tracey. What is it? Why are you crying?” She had jumped up, kneeling on the bed, and flung both arms about his neck.
“Oh, Johnny. I had a dream, a terrible dream. Hold me, please.
Don’t go away, don’t leave me.” Her whisper was still thick and muffled with tears. He had gone into her bed and held her until at last she slept.
Every night after that he had gone to her room. It was innocent and completely childlike, the twelve-year-old girl and the boy who was her brother, in fact if not in name.
They held each other in the bed, and whispered and laughed secretly until sleep carried them both away.
Then suddenly the castle was blasted by the bright electric glare of the overhead light. The Old Man was standing in the door of the bedroom, and Benedict was behind him in his pyjamas dancing with excitement and chanting triumphantly.
“I told you, Pa! I told you so!” The Old Man was shaking with rage, the bush of grey hair standing erect like the mane of a wounded lion. He had dragged Johnny from the bed, and struck away Tracey’s clinging hands.
“You little whore,” he bellowed, holding the terrified boy easily with one hand and leaning forward to strike his daughter in the face with his open hand. Leaving her sobbing, face down on the bed, he dragged Johnny down the passages to the study on the ground floor. He threw him into the room with a violence that sent him staggering against the desk.
The Old Man had gone to the rack and taken out a light Malacca cane. He came to Johnny and, taking a
