'I've been thinking what I should do now, and I have decided to joi] one of the safari companies in Rhodesia or Kenya or Mozambique Then when I've finished my apprenticeship, I'll apply for a huntinl concession of my own. There is a fortune in it and it must be th, best life in the world. Imagine hunting every day!" Shasa had determined to remain withdrawn and stern, and uI until now he had succeeded in speaking barely a word since leavin Cape Town, but at last Sean's total lack of remorse and his cheerfull selfish view of the future forced Shasa to abandon his good intentions.
'From what I hear, you wouldn't last a week without a woman,' he snapped, and Sean smiled.
'Don't worry about me, Pater. There will be bags of jig-jig, that's part of the perks - the clients are old and rich and they bring their daughters or their new young wives with them--' 'My God, Sean, you are completely amoral." 'May I take that as a compliment, sir?" 'Your plans to apply for your own hunting concession and to run your own safari company - what do you intend using in lieu of money?" Sean looked puzzled. 'You are one of the richest men in Africa.
Just think - free hunting whenever you wanted it, Pater. That would be part of our deal." Despite himself, Shasa felt a prickle of temptation. In fact, he had already considered starting a safari operation and his estimates showed that Sean was correct. There was a fortune to be made in marketing the African wilderness and its unique wild life. The only thing that had prevented him doing it before was that he had never found a trustworthy man. who understood the special requirements of a safari company to run it for him.
'Damn it --' he broke off that line of thought, 'I've spawned a devil's pup. He could sell a secondhand car to the judge who was passing the death sentence on him." He felt his anger softened by reluctant admiration, but he spoke grimly. 'You don't seem to understand, Sean. This is the end of the road for you and me." As he said it they topped the rise. Ahead of them lay the Limpopo river, but despite Mister Rudyard Kipling, it was neither grey green nor greasy and there was not a single fever tree on either bank. This was the dry season and though the river was half a mile wide, the flow was reduced to a thin trickle down the centre of the bed. The long low concrete bridge stretched northwards crossing the orangecoloured sand and straggly clumps of reeds.
They drove over the bridge in silence and Shasa stopped the pickup at the barrier. The border post was a small square building with a corrugated-iron roof. Shasa kept the engine of the Ford running.
Sean climbed out and lifted his suitcase out of the back of the truck, then crossed in front of the bonnet and came to Shasa's open window.
'No, Dad." He leaned into the window. 'You and I will never reach the end of the road. I am part of you, and I love you too deeply for that ever to happen. You are the only person or thing I have ever loved." Shasa studied his face for any trace of insincerity, and when he found none, he reached up impulsively and embraced him. He had not meant this to happen, had been determined that it would not, but now he found himself reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket and bringing out the thick sheaf of banknotes and letters that he had carried with him, despite his best intentions to turn Sean loose without a penny.
'Here are a couple of pounds to tide you over,' he said, and his voice was gruff. 'And there are three letters of introduction to people in Salisbury who may be able to help you." Carelessly Sean stuffed them into his pocket and picked up his suitcase.
'Thanks, Pater. I don't deserve it." 'No,' Shasa agreed. 'You don't - but don't worry too much about it. There won't be any more. That's it, Sean, finished. The first and only insraiment of your inheritance." As always Sean's smile was a little miracle. It made Shasa doubt, despite all the evidence, that his son was thoroughly bad.
TI1 write, Pater. You'll see, one day we'll laugh about this - when we are together again." Lugging his suitcase Sean passed through the barrier, and after he disappeared into the customs hut, Shasa was left with an unbearable sense of futility. Was this how it ended after all the care and love over all the years?
Shasa was amused by the ease with which Isabella was able to overcome her lisp. Within two weeks of enrolling at Rustenberg Girls' Senior School, she was talking, and looking, like a little lady.
Apparently the teachers and her fellow pupils had not been impressed by babytalk.
It was only when she was trying to wheedle her father that she still employed the lisp and the pout. She sat on the arm of his chair now and stroked the silver wings of hair above Shasa's ears.
'I have the most beautiful daddy in the world,' she crooned, and indeed the flashes of silver contrasted with the dense darkness of the rest of his hair and the tanned almost unlined skin of his face to enhance Shasa's looks. 'I have the kindest and most loving daddy in the world." 'And I have the most scheming little vixen in the world for a daughter,' he said, and she laughed with delight, a sound that made his heart contract, and her breath in his face smelled milky and sweet as a newborn kitten, but he shored up his crumbling defences.
'I have a daughter who is only fourteen years old--' 'Fifteen,' she corrected him.
'Fourteen and a half,' he countered.
'Almost fifteen,' she insisted.
'A daughter under fifteen years of age, who is much too precious to allow out of my house after ten o'clock at night." 'Oh, my big cuddly growly bear,' she whispered in his ear and hugged him hard, and as she rubbed her soft cheek against his, her breasts pressed against his arm.
Tara's breasts had always been large and shapely, he still found them immensely attractive. Isabella had inherited them from her. Over the last few months Shasa had watched with pride and interest their phenomenal growth, and now they were firm and warm against his arm.
'Are there going to be boys there?" he asked, and she sensed the first rack in his defence.
'Oh, I m not interested in boys, Papa,' and she shut her eyes tight in case a thunderbolt came crashing down on her for such a fib.
These days Isabella could think of little else but boys, they even occupied her dreams, and her interest in their anatomy was so intense that both Michael and Garry had forbidden her to come into their rooms while they were changing. Her candid and fascinated examination was too disconcerting.
'How will you get there and back? You don't expect your mother to wait up until midnight, do you? And I'll be in Jo'burg that night,' Shasa asked and she opened her eyes.
'Stephen can take me and bring me back." 'Stephen?" Shasa asked sharply.
'Mommy's new chauffeur. He's so nice and awfully trustworthyMommy says so." Shasa wasn't aware that Tara had taken on a chauffeur. She usually drove herself, but that reprehensible old Packard of hers had finally given up the ghost when she was away at Sundi and he had prevailed on her to accept a new Chevvy station wagon. Presumably the chauffeur went with it. She should have consulted him - but they had drifted further and further apart over the last few years and seldom discussed domestic routine.
'No,' he said firmly. 'I won't have you driving around on your own at night." 'I'll be with Stephen,' she pleaded, but he ignored the protest. He knew nothing about Stephen, except that he was male and black.
'I'll tell you what. If you can get a written guarantee from one of the other girls' parents - somebody I know - that they will get you there and back before midnight - well, then, all right, you may go." 'Oh Daddy! Daddy!" She showered soft warm kisses on his face, and then leapt up and did a little victory pirouette around his study.