There was nothing Tara could think of that could fulfill her more than taking him in her arms and telling him, 'You are my baby, my own true baby, and I love you as much as I love your father." But she could not even let him sit on the seat beside her in case they were seen together.
They drove out across the Cape Flats towards Somerset West, but before they reached the village, Moses turned off onto a side track, through the dense stands of Port Jackson willow until they came out on to the long deserted curve of beach with the green waters of False Bay before them, and on each side the mountainous ramparts that formed the horns of the wide bay.
Moses parked the Chev and fetched the picnic basket from the boot, and then the three of them followed the footpath along the top of the beach until they reached their favourite spot. From here anyone approaching along the beach would be obvious from half a mile, while inland the exotic growth formed an almost impenetrable jungle. The only persons likely to venture this far along the lonely beach were surf fishermen casting into the tumbling waves for kob and steenbras, or lovers seeking seclusion. Here they felt safe.
Tara helped Benjamin change into his bathing-costume, and then all three of them went hand in hand to the enclosed rock pool where the child splashed and played like a spaniel puppy. When at last he was chilled through and tired, Tara towelled down his shivering body and dressed him again. Then he helped Moses build a fire amongst the dunes and grill the raw sausages and chops upon the coals.
After they had eaten, Benjamin wanted to swim again, but gently Tara forbade him. 'Not on a full stomach, darling." So he went to search for shells along the tide-mark of the beach, and Tara and Moses sat on the crest of the dune and watched him. Tara was as happy and contented as she could ever remember being until Moses broke the silence.
'This is what we are working for,' he said. 'Dignity and a chance for happiness for all in this land." 'Yes, Moses,' she whispered.
'It is worth any price." 'Oh, yes,' she agreed fervently. 'Oh yes!" 'Part of the price is the execution of the architect of our misery,' he said sharply. 'I have kept this from you until now, but Verwoerd must die and all his henchmen with him. Destiny has appointed me his executioner - and his successor." Tara paled at his words, but they came as such a shock that she could not speak. Moses took her hand with a strange and unusual gentleness.
'For you, for me and for the child - that he may live with us in the sunshine of freedom." She tried to speak, but her voice faltered, and he waited patiently until she was able to enunciate. 'Moses, you promised!" 'No." He shook his head. 'You persuaded yourself of that, and it was not the time to disillusion you." 'Oh God, Moses!" The enormity of it crashed in upon her. 'I thought you were going to blow up the empty building as a symbolic gesture, but all along you planned to --' she broke off, unable to complete the sentence, and he did not deny it.
'Moses - my husband Shasa, he will be on the bench beside Verwoerd." 'Is he your husband?" Moses asked. 'Is he not one of them, one of the enemy?" She lowered her eyes to acknowledge the truth of this, and then suddenly she was agitated again. 'My father - he will be in the House." 'Your father and your husband are part of your old life. You have left that behind you. Now, Tara, I am both your father and your husband, and the struggle is your new life." 'Moses, isn't there some way they can be spared?" she pleaded.
He did not speak, but she saw the answer in his eyes and she covered her face with both hands and began to weep. She wept silently, but the spasms of grief shook her whole body. Down on the beach the child's happy cries came to her faintly on the wind, and beside her Moses sat unmoving and without expression. After a while, she lifted her head and wiped the tears from her face with the palms of her hands.
'I'm sorry, Moses,' she whispered. 'I was weak, please forgive me.
I was mourning my father, but now I am strong again, and ready to do whatever you require of me." The test match against the visiting Argentinian polo team was the most exciting event that had taken place at Weltevreden in a decade or more.
As mistress of the estate, the planning and organization of the event should have fallen to Tara, but her lack of interest in the sport and her poor organizational skills were too much for Centaine Courtney-Malcomess to abide. She began by giving discreet advice and ended in exasperation by taking all responsibility out of her daughter-in-law's hands. The result was that the occasion was in every respect a towering success. After Centaine had chivvied the coloured greensman, and with Blaine's expert advice, the turf on the field was green and velvety, the going beneath it neither hard enough to jar the legs of the ponies nor soft enough to slow them down. The goalposts were painted in the colours of the teams, the pale blue and white of Argentina, and orange, blue and white of South Africa, and two hundred flags in the same colours flew from the grandstand.
The stand itself was freshly painted, as were the fence pickets and the stables. A fence was erected to keep the general public out of the chfiteau's private grounds, but the new facilities designed by Centaine especially for the occasion included an extension to the grandstand, with public toilets below and an open air restaurant that could seat two hundred guests. The extensions to the stables were sufficient for fifty ponies, and there were new quarters for the grooms. The Argentinians had brought their own, and they wore traditional gaucho costume with wide hats and their chaps decorated with silver coins.
Garry tore himself away from his new office at Centaine House which was on the top floor, only three doors down from Shasa, and he spent two days at the stables watching and learning from these masters of horsecraft and the game of polo.
Michael had at last managed to secure an official assignment. He blissfully believed that the Golden City Mail in Johannesburg had appointed him their local correspondent on his own merits as a cubreporter. Centaine, who had made a discreet telephone call to the chairman of Associated Newspapers of South Africa who owned the Mail, did nothing to disillusion him. Michael was to be paid five guineas for the day, plus a shilling a word for any copy of his actually printed by the newspaper. He interviewed every member of both teams, including the reserves, all the grooms, the umpire and referees.
He drew up a full history and score card of all previous matches played between the two countries going back to the 1936 Olympic Games, and he worked out the pedigrees of all the ponies - but here he showed restraint by limiting the listing to only two generations.
Even before the match day he had written enough to make Gone with the Wind look like a pamphlet. Then he insisted on telephoning this important copy through to a long-suffering sub at the newspaper offices, and the telephone charges far outstripped his five-guinea salary.
'Anyway, Mickey,' Shasa consoled him, 'if they print everything you have written at a shilling a word, you'll be a millionaire." The big disappointment for the family came on the Wednesday when the South African team was announced. Shasa was chosen to play in his usual position at Number Two but he was passed over for the captaincy. This went to Max Theunissen, a flamboyant, hardriding millionaire farmer from Natal who was a long-time rival of Shasa's, ever since their first meeting on this same field as juniors many years before.
Shasa hid his disappointment behind a rueful grin. 'It means more to Max than it does to me,' he told Blaine, who was one of the selectors, and Blaine nodded.