handful of his hair, threw him face down over the desk.
The Old Man had beaten him before, but never like this.
Mad with rage the Old Man’s blows had been unaimed, some fell across Johnny’s back.
Yet in the agony it was deadly important to the boy that he should not cry out. He bit through his lip so the taste of blood was salt and copper in his mouth. He must not hear me cry! And he choked back the moans feeling his pyjama trousers hanging heavy and sodden with blood.
His silence served only as a goad to the Old Man’s fury.
Flinging the cane aside, he pulled the boy upright and attacked him with his hands. Slamming Johnny’s head from side to side with full, open-handed blows that burst in Johnny’s skull with blinding flashes of light.
Still Johnny kept on his feet, clinging to the edge of the desk.
His lips broken and swollen and his face bloated and darkening with bruises, until at last the Old Man was driven far beyond the borders of sanity. He bunched his fist and drove it into Johnny’s face - and with a wonderful sense of relief Johnny felt the pain go out in a warm flood of darkness.
He heard voices first. A strange voice: As though he’s been savaged by a wild beast. I’ll have to inform the police.” Then a voice he recognized. It took him a little time to place it. He tried to open his eyes but they seemed locked tight, his face felt enormous, swollen and hot. He forced the fat lids of his eyes back and recognized Michael Shapiro, the Old Man’s secretary. He was talking quietly to the other man.
There was the smell of antiseptic and the doctor’s bag lay open on the table beside the bed.
“Listen, Doctor. I know it looks bad - but hadn’t you better talk to the boy before you stir up the police?” They both looked towards the bed.
“He’s conscious.” The doctor came to him quickly. “What happened to you, Johnny? Tell us what happened. Whoever did this to you will be punished - I promise you.” The words were wrong. Nobody must ever punish the Old Man.
Johnny tried to speak but his lips were stiff and swollen.
He tried again.
“I fell,” he said. “I fell. Nobody! Nobody! I fell down.” When the doctor had gone Mike Shapiro came and stood over him. His Jewish eyes were dark with pity, and something else - anger perhaps, or admiration. “I’m taking you to my house, Johnny. You will be all right now.” He stayed two weeks under the care of Michael Shapiro’s wife, Helen. The scabs came away, the bruises faded to a dirty yellow, but his nose stayed crooked with a lump at the bridge. He studied his new nose in the mirror, and liked it.
It made him look like a boxer, he thought, or a pirate, but it was many months before the tenderness passed and he could finger it freely.
“Listen, Johnny, you are going to a new school. A fine boarding-school in Grahamstown.” Michael Shapiro tried to sound enthusiastic. Grahamstown was five hundred miles away. “In the holidays you’ll be going to work in Namaqualand - learning all about diamonds and how to mine them.
You’ll enjoy that, won’t you?” Johnny had thought about it for a minute, watching Michael’s face and reading in it his shame.
“I won’t be going home again then?” By home he meant the house on Wynberg Hill. Michael shook his head.
“When will I see ” Johnny hesitated as he tried to find the right words,” - when will I see them again?”
“I don’t know, Johnny,” Michael answered him honestly.
As Michael had promised it was a fine school.
On his first Sunday after the church service, he had followed the other boys back to their classroom for the session of compulsory letter-writing. The others had immediately begun dashing off hasty scribbles to their parents. Johnny sat miserably until the master in charge stopped at his desk.
“Aren’t you going to write home, Lance?” he asked kindly.
“I’m sure they’ll all want to hear how you are.” Johnny picked up his pen obediently, and puzzled over the blank writing-pad.
He wrote at last: Dear Sir, I hope you will be pleased to hear that I am now at school. The food is good, but the beds are very hard.
We go to church every day and play rugby football.
Yours faithfully, Johnny.
From then until he left school and went up to University three years later, he wrote every week to the Old Man.
Every letter began with the same salutation and went on, “I hope you will be pleased to hear-” There was never a reply to any of these letters.
Once each term he received a typewritten letter from Michael Shapiro setting out the arrangements that had been made for the school holidays. Usually these involved a train journey hundreds of miles across the Karroo to some remote village in the vast dry wasteland, where a light aircraft belonging to Van Der Byl Diamonds was waiting to fly him still deeper into the desert to one of the Company’s concession areas. Again, as Michael Shapiro had promised, he learned about diamonds and how to mine them.
When the time to move on to University arrived, it was completely natural that he chose to take a degree in Geology.
During all that time he was an outcast from the van der Byl family. He had seen none of them - not the Old Man, nor Tracey, nor even Benedict.
Then, in one long eventful afternoon, he saw all three of them.
It was his final year at University. His degree was a certainty. He had headed the lists at every examination from his first year onwards.
He had been elected the senior student of Stellenbosch University, but now there was a further honour almost within his grasp.
In ten days” time the National Selectors would announce the rugby team to meet the New Zealand All Black touring team - and Johnny’s place at flank forward was as certain as his degree in Geology.
The sporting press had nicknamed Johnny “Jag Hond” after that ferocious predator of the African wilds, the Cape hunting dog; an animal of incredible stamina and determination that savages its prey on the run. The nickname had stuck fast, and Johnny was a favourite of the crowds.
In the line-up of the team from Cape Town University was another crowd-pleaser whose place in the National Side to meet the All Blacks seemed equally assured. From his position at full back Benedict van der Byl dominated the field of play with a grace and artistry that were almost godlike. He had grown tall and wide-shouldered, with long powerful legs and dark brooding good looks.
Johnny led the visiting team out on to the smooth green velvet field, and while he jogged and flexed his back and shoulders he looked up at the packed stands seeking assurance that the high priests of rugby football were all there.
He saw Doctor Danie Craven sitting with the other selectors in their privileged position below the Press enclosure. While in front of the Doctor, leaning back to exchange a few words with him, sat the Prime Minister.
This meeting between the two universities was one of the high spots of the rugby season, and the aficionados travelled thousands of miles to watch it.
The Prime Minister smiled and nodded, then leaned forward to touch the shoulder of the big white-headed figure that sat in the row below him.
Johnny felt an electric tingle run up his spine as the white head lifted and looked directly at him. It was the first time he had seen the Old Man in the seven years since that terrible night.
Johnny lifted an arm in salute, and the Old Man stared at him for long seconds before he turned away to speak with the Prime Minister.
Now the drum majorettes came out in ranks on to the field.
White-booted, dressed in Cape Town University colours with short swinging skirts and tall hats, they highstepped and paraded, lovely young girls flushed with excitement and exertion.
The roar of the crowd drummed with the blood in Johnny’s ears, for Tracey van der Byl was leading the first rank. He knew her instantly, despite the passage of years in which she had grown to young womanhood.
Her legs and arms were sun-bronzed and her dark hair hung glossily to her shoulders. She cavorted and
