She left the safe door ajar when she brought the gift to him. Sean had demonstrated his gratitude by pulling her skirts up and her peach-coloured satin bloomers down, then sitting her on the edge of her husband's desk, he lifted her knees and placed her feet on each corner of the leather-bound blotter. Then while he stood in front of her and made love to her, he evaluated the contents of the safe over her shoulders.
Sean had heard his father talk about Mark Weston's collection of British and South African gold coins. It was apparently one of the ten most important in private hands anywhere in the world. In addition to the dozen thick leather-bound albums which contained the collection, the middle shelf of the safe held the ledgers and cash books for the running of the estate and household, and a small gentleman's jewel box, while the top shelf was crammed with wads of pristine banknotes still in the bank wrappers and a large canvas bag stencilled 'Standard Bank Ltd' which obviously contained silver.
There could not have been less than œ5,000 in notes and coins in the safe.
Sean had explained to Rufus exactly where to look for the safe combination, how to open the false front of the bookcase and what to expect when he did.
The knowledge that Rufus was at work downstairs and the danger of possible discovery stimulated Sean so that at one point Marjorie blurted, 'You aren't human - you are a machine." He left'her at last, lying in the big bed like a wax doll that had melted in the sun, her limbs soft and plastic, the thick mane of her hair darkened and sodden with her own sweat and her mouth smeared out of shape by exhausted passions. Her sleep was catatonic.
Sean was still pent up and excited. He looked into Mark Weston's study on the way out. The front of the bookcase was open, the safe door wide, the ledgers and cash books tumbled untidily on the floor, and the excitement came on him again in a thick musky wave and he found he was once more fully tumescent.
It was dangerous to remain in the house another minute, and the knowledge made his arousal unbearable. He looked up the marble staircase again and only then did the idea come to him. Veronica's room was the second door down the east wing passage. She might scream if he woke her suddenly, she might hate him so that she would scream when she recognized him, but on the other hand she might not. The risk was lunatic, and Sean grinned in the darkness and started back up the marble staircase.
A silver blade of moonlight pierced the curtains and Fell on Veronica's pale hair that swirled across the pillow. Sean leaned over her and covered her mouth with his hand. She came awake struggling and terrified.
'It's me,' he whispered. 'Don't be afraid, Ronny. It's me." Her struggles stilled, the fear faded from her huge mauve eyes, and she reached up for him with both arms. He lifted his hand off her mouth and she said, 'Oh, Sean, deep down I knew it. I knew you still loved me." Rufus was furious. 'I thought you had been caught,' he whined.
'What happened to you, man?" 'I was doing the hard work." Sean kicked the Harley Davidson and it roared into life. As he turned back on to the road he felt the weight of the saddle bags pull the machine off balance, but he met her easily and straightened up.
'Slow down, man,' Rufus leaned forward from the pillion to caution him. 'You'll wake the whole valley." And Sean laughed in the wild rush of wind, drunk with excitement, and they went up over the crest at a hundred miles an hour.
Sean parked the Harley Davidson on the Kraaifontein road and they scrambled down the bank and squatted in the dry culvert beneath the road. By the light of an electric torch they shared the booty.
'You said there would be five grand,' Rufus whined accusingly.
'Man, there isn't more than a hundred." 'Old man Weston must have paid his slaves." Sean chuckled carelessly as he split the small bundle of bank notes, and pushed the larger pile towards Rufus. 'You need it more than me, kid." The jewel box contained cuff-links and studs, a diamond tie-pin that Sean judged to be fully five carats in weight, masonic medallions, Mark Weston's miniature decorations on a bar - he had won an M.C. at E1 Alamein and a string of campaign medals - a Pathek Philippe dress watch in gold and a handful of other personal items.
Rufus ran over them with an experienced eye. 'The watch is engraved, all the other stuff is too hot to move, too dangerous, man.
We'll have to dump it." They opened the coin albums. Five of them were filled with sovereigns. 'Okay,' Rufus grunted. 'I can move that small stuff, but not these. They are red hot, burn your fingers." With scorn he discarded the albums of heavy coins, the five-pound and five-guinea issues of Victoria and Elizabeth, Charles and the Georges.
After he dropped Rufus off at the illicit shebeen in the coloured District Six where Rufus had parked his own motorcycle, Sean rode out alone along the high winding road that skirts the sheer massif of Chapman's Peak. He parked the Harley on the edge of the cliff. The green Atlantic crashed against the rock five hundred feet below where he stood. One at a time Sean hurled the heavy gold coins out over the edge. He flicked them underhanded, so that they caught the dawn's uncertain light, and then were lost in the shadows of the cliff face as they fell, so he could not see them strike the surface of the water far below. When the last coin was gone, he tossed the empty albums after them and they fluttered as they caught the wind. Then he flung the gold wristwatch and the diamond pin out into the void.
He kept the medals for last. It gave him a vindictive satisfaction to have screwed Mark Weston's wife and daughter, and then to throw his medals into the sea.
When he mounted the Harley Davidson and turned it back down the steep winding road, he pushed the goggles up on to his forehead and let the wind beat into his face and rake his eyes so that the tears streamed back across his cheeks. He rode hard, putting the glistening machine over as he went into the turns so that the footrest struck a shower of sparks from the road surface.
'Not much profit for a night's work,' he told himself, and the wind tore the words from his lips. 'But the thrills, oh, the thrills!" When all his best efforts to interest Sean and Michael in the planetary system of the Courtney companies had resulted in either lukewarm and devioasly feigned enthusiasm or in outright disinterest, Shasa had gone through a series of emotions, beginning with puzzlement.
He tried hard to see how anyone, particularly a young man of superior intellect, and even more particularly a son of his, could find the whole complex interlinking of wealth and opportunity, of challenge and reward, less than fascinating. At first he thought that he was to blame, that he had not explained it sufficiently, that he had somehow taken their response for granted and had through his own omissions, failed to quicken their attention.
To Shasa it was the very stuff of life itselfi His first waking thought each morning and his last before sleep each night, was for the welfare and sustenance of the company. So he tried again, more patiently, more exhaustively. It was like trying to explain colour to a blind man, and from puzzlement Shasa found himself becoming angry.
'Damn it, Mater,' he exploded, when he and Centaine were alone at her favourite place on the hillside above the Atlantic. 'They just don't seem to care." 'What about Garry?" Centaine asked quietly.
'Oh Garry!" Shasa chuckled disparagingly. 'Every time I turn around I trip over him. He is like a puppy." 'I see you have given him his own office on the third floor,' Centaine observed mildly.
'The old broom cupboard,' Shasa said. 'It was a joke really, but the little blighter took it seriously. I didn't have the heart --' 'He takes most things seriously, does young Garrick,' Centaine observed. 'He's the only one who does. He's quite a deep one." 'Oh, come on, Mater! Garry?" 'He and I had a long chat the other day. You should do the same, it might surprise you. Did you know that he's in the top three in his year?" 'Yes, of course, I knew - but I mean, it's only his first year of business administration. One doesn't take that too seriously." 'Doesn't one?" Centaine asked innocently, and Shasa was unusually silent for the next few minutes.