'You really are a corker when you take the trouble to spruce up like that,' he told her, but she was silent and distracted on the drive around the southern slope of Table Mountain to Groote Schuur.
'Something is worrying you,' Shasa said as he steered the Rolls with one hand and lit a cigarette with his gold Ronson lighter.
'No,' she denied quickly. 'Just the prospect of saying the right things to a room full of strangers." The true reason for her concern was a long way from that. Three hours previously, while Moses drove her back from a meeting of the executive of the Women's Institute, he had told her quietly, 'The date and the time has been set." He did not have to elaborate. Since she had picked him up outside the Parliament House just after ten o'clock the previous Monday, Tara he been haunted night and day by her terrible secret knowledge. 'When?" she whispered.
'During the Englishman's speech,' he said simply, and Tara winced.
The logic of it was diabolical.
'Both houses sitting together,' Moses went on. 'All of them, all the slave-masters and the Englishman who is their accomplice and their protector. They will die together. It will be an explosion that will be heard in every corner of our world." Beside her Shasa snapped the cap of the Ronson and snuffed out the flame. 'It won't be all that unpleasant. I've arranged with protocol that you will be Lord Littleton's dinner partner - you get on rather well with him, don't you?" 'I didn't know he was here,' Tara said vaguely. This conversation seemed so petty and pointless in the face of the holocaust which she knew was coming.
'Special adviser on trade and finance to the British government." Shasa slowed the Rolls and lowered his side window as he turned into the main gates of Groote Schuur and joined the line of limousines that were moving slowly down the driveway. He showed his invitation to the captain of the guard and received a respectful salute.
'Good evening, Minister. Please go straight on down to the front entrance." Groote schuur was high Dutch for 'The Great Barn'. It had once been the home of Cecil John Rhodes, empire builder and adventurer, who had used it as his residence while he was prime minister of the old Cape Colony before the act of Union in 1910 had united the separate provinces into the present Union of South Africa. Rhodes had left the huge house, restored after it was destroyed by fire, to the nation. It was a massive and graceless building, reflecting Rhodes' confessed taste for the barbaric, a mixture of different styles of architecture all of which Tara found offensive.
Yet the view from the lower slopes of Table Mountain out ov the Cape Flats was spectacular, a field of lights spreading out to tl dark silhouette of the mountains that rose against the moonbrigl sky. Tonight the bustle and excitement seemed to rejuvenate t ponderous edifice.
Every window blazed with light and the uniformed footmen wei meeting the guests as they alighted from their limousines an ushering them up the broad front steps to join the reception line i the entrance lobby. Prime Minister Verwoerd and his wife Betsi were at the head of the line, but Tara was more interested in thei guest.
She was surprised by Macmillan's height, almost as tall as Ver woerd, and by the close resemblance he bore to all the cartoons she had seen of him. The tufts of hair above his ears, the horsy teeth an› the scrubby mustache. His handshake was firm and dry and hi, voice as he greeted her was soft and plummy, and then she and Shasa had passed on into the main drawing-room where the other dinner guests were assembling.
There was Lord Littleton coming to her, still wearing the genteelly shabby dinner jacket, the watered silk of: the lapels tinged with the verdigris of age, but his smile was alight with genuine pleasure.
'Well, my dear, your presence makes the evening an occasion for me!" He kissed Tara's cheek and then turned to Shasa. 'Must tell you of our recent travels across Africa - fascinating,' and th three of them were chatting animatedly.
Tara's forebodings were for the moment forgotten, as she exclaimed, 'Now, Milord, you cannot hold up the Congo as being typical of emerging Africa. Left to his own devices, Patrice Lumumba would be an example of what a black leader--' 'Lumumba is a rogue, and a convicted felon. Now Tshombe--' Shasa interrupted her and Tara rounded on him, 'Tshombe is a stooge and a Quisling, a puppet of Belgian colonialism." 'At least he isn't eating the opposition like Lumumba's lads are,' Littleton interjected mildly, and Tara turned back to him with the battle light in her eyes.
'That isn't worthy of somebody--' she broke off with an effort.
Her orders were to avoid radical arguments and to maintain her role as a dutiful establishment wife.
'Oh, it's so boring,' she said. 'Let's talk about the London theatre.
What is on at the moment?" 'Well, just before I left I saw The Caretaker, Pinter's new piece,' Littleton accepted the diversion, and Shasa glanced across the room.
Manfred De La Rey was watching him with those intense pale eyes, and as he caught Shasa's eye he inclined his head sharply.
'Excuse me a moment,' Shasa murmured, but Littleton and Tara were so occupied with each other that they barely noticed him move away and join Manfred and his statuesque German wife.
Manfred always seemed ill at ease in tails, and the starched wing collar of his dress shirt bit into his thick neck and left a vivid red mark on the skin.
'So, my friend,' he teased Shasa. 'The dagoes from South America thrashed you at your horse games, hey?" Shasa's smile slipped a fraction. 'Eight to six is hardly a massacre,' he protested, but Manfred was not interested in his defence.
He took Shasa's arm and leaned closer to him, still smiling jovially as he said, 'There is some nasty work going on." 'Ah!" Shasa smiled easily and nodded encouragement.
'Macmillan has refused to show Doctor Henk a copy of the speech he is going to deliver tomorrow." 'Ah!" This time Shasa had difficulty in maintaining the smile. If this was a fact, then the British prime minister was guilty of a flagrant breach of etiquette. It was common courtesy for him to allow Verwoerd to study his text so as to be able to prepare a reply.
'It's going to be an important speech,' Manfred went on.
'Yes,' Shasa agreed. 'Maud returned to London to consult with him and help him draw it up, they must have been polishing it up since then." Sir John Maud was the British high commissioner to South Africa.
For him to be summoned to London underlined the gravity of the situation.
'You are friendly with Littleton,' Manfred said quietly. 'See if you can get anything out of him, even a hint as to what Macmillan is going to do." 'I doubt he knows much,' Shasa was still smiling for the benefit of anybody watching them. 'But I'll let you know if I can find out anything." The dinner was served on the magnificent East India Company service, but was the usual bland and tepid offering of the civil service chefs whom Shasa was certain had served their apprenticeship on the railways. The white wines were sweet and insipid, but the red was a 1951 Weltevreden Cabernet Sauvignon. Shasa had influenced the choice by making a gift of his own cru for the banquet, and he judged it the equal of all but the very best Bordeaux. It was a pity that the white was so woefully bad. There was no reason for it, they had the climate and the soil. Weltevreden had always concentrated on the red but he made a resolution to improve his own production of whites, even if it meant bringing in another wine-master from Germany or France and buying another vineyard on the Stellenbosch side of the peninsula.
The speeches were mercifully short and inconsequential, a brief welcome from Verwoerd and a short appreciation from Macmillan, and the conversation at Shasa's end of the table never rose above such earth-shaking subjects as their recent defeat by the Argentinians on the polo field, Denis Compton's batting form and Stirling Moss' latest victory in the Mille Miglia. But as soon as the banquet ended Shasa sought out Littleton who was still with Tara, drawing out the pleasure of her company to the last.