Jakobus came to her side now. 'Can I get you another orange juice, Mama? Your glass is empty." 'No, thank you, Kobus. Stay with me for a while. I see so little of you these days." The men had charged their beer tankards and led by Manfred trooped towards the barbecue fires on the far side of the pool. Amid laughter and raillery Manfred and Lothar were tying candy-striped aprons around their waists and arming themselves with long-handled forks.
On a side table there was a huge array of platters piled with raw meat, lamb chops and sosaties on long skewers, German sausages and great thick steaks, enough to feed an army of starving giants and, Sarah calculated sourly, costing almost her husband's monthly salary.
Since Manfred and his one-armed demented father had mysteriously acquired shares in that fishing company in South West Africa, he had become not only famous and powerful, but enormously rich as well. Heidi had a mink coat now and Manfred had purchased a large farm in the rich maize-producing belt of the Orange Free State.
It was every Afrikaner's dream to own a farm, and Sarah felt her envy flare as she thought about it. All that should have been hers.
She had been deprived of what was rightly hers by that German whore. The word shocked her, but she repeated it silently - whore!
He was mine, whore, and you stole him from me.
Jakobus was talking to her, but she found it difficult to follow what he was saying. Her attention kept stealing back to Manfred De La Rey. Every time his great laugh boomed out she felt her heart contract and she watched him from the corners of her eyes.
Manfred was holding court; even dressed in that silly apron and with a cooking fork in his hand, he was still the focus of all attention and respect. Every few minutes more guests arrived to join the gathering, most of them important and powerful men, but all of them gathered slavishly around Manfred and deferred to him.
'We should understand why he did it,' Jakobus was saying, and Sarah forced herself to concentrate on her son. 'Who did it, dear?" she asked vaguely.
'Mama, you haven't been listening to a word,' Jakobus smiled gently. 'You really are a little scatterbrain sometimes." Sarah always felt vaguely uncomfortable when he spoke to her in such a familiar fashion, none of her friends' children would show such disrespect, even in fun.
'I was talking about Moses Gama,' Jakobus went on, and at the mention of that name everybody within earshot turned towards the two of them.
'They are going to hang that black thunder, at last,' somebody said, and everybody agreed immediately.
'Ja, about time." 'We have to teach them a lesson - you show mercy to a kaffir and he takes it as weakness." 'Only one thing they understand --' 'I think it will be a mistake to hang him,' Jakobus said clearly, and there was a stunned silence.
'Kobie! Kobie!" Sarah tugged at her son's arm. 'Not now, darling.
People don't like that sort of talk,' 'That is because they never hear it - and they don't understand it,' Jakobus explained reasonably, but some of them turned away deliberately while a middle-aged cousin of Manfred's said truculently, 'Come on, Sarie, can't you stop your brat talking like a commie." 'Please, Kobie,' she used the diminutive as a special appeal, 'for my sake." Manfred De La Rey had become aware of the disturbance and the flare of hostility amongst his guests, and now he looked across the fires on which the steaks were sizzling and he frowned.
'Don't you see, Mama, we have to talk about it. If we don't, people will never hear any other point of view. None of them even read the English newspapers--' 'Kobie, you will anger your uncle Manie,' Sarah pleaded. 'Please stop it now." 'We Afrikaners are cut off in this little make-believe world of ours.
We think that if we make enough laws the black people will cease to exist, except as our servants --' Manfred had come across from the fires now, and his face was dark with anger.
'Jakobus Stander,' he rumbled softly. 'Your father and your mother are my oldest and dearest friends, but do not trespass on the hospitality of this house. I will not have wild and treasonable ideas bandied about in front of my family and friends. Behave yourself, or leave immediately." For a moment it seemed the boy might defy him. Then he dropped his gaze and mumbled, 'I'm sorry, Oom Manie." But when Manfred turned and strode back to the barbecue fire, he said just loud enough for Sarah to hear, 'You see, they won't listen. They don't want to hear. They are afraid of the truth. How can you make a blind man see?" Manfred De La Rey was still inwardly seething with anger at the youth's ill-manners, but outwardly he was his usual bluff self as he resumed his self-imposed duties over the cooking fires, and led the jovial banter of his male guests. Gradually his irritation subsided, and he had almost put aside Moses Gama and the long shadow that he had thrown over them all, when his youngest daughter came running down from the long low ranch-type house. 'Papa, Papa, there is a telephone call for you." 'I can't come now, skatjie,' Manfred called. 'We don't want our guests to starve. Take a message." 'It's Oom Dame,' his daughter insisted, 'and he says he must talk to you now. It's very important." Manfred sighed and grumbled good-naturedly as he untied his apron, and handed his fork to RoeIf Stander. 'Don't let them burn!" and he strode up to the house.
'Ja.t' he barked into the telephone.
'I don't like to disturb you, Manie." 'Then why do you do it9." Manfred demanded. Dame Leroux was a senior police general, and one of his most able officers. 'It's this man Gama." Let the black bastard hang. That is what he wants." 'No! He wants to do a deal." 'Send someone else to speak to him, I do not want to waste my time." 'He will only talk to you, and we believe he has something important he will be able to tell you." Manfred thought for a moment. His instinct was to dismiss the request out of hand, but he let reason dictate to him.
'All right,' he agreed heavily. 'I will meet him." There would also be a perverse pleasure in confronting a vanquished foe. 'But he is going to hang - nothing will stop that,' he warned quietly.
The prison authority had confiscated the leopard-skin robes of chieftainship, and Moses Gama wore the prison-issue suiting of coarse unbleached calico.
The long unremitting strain of awaiting the outcome of his appeal had told heavily. For the first time Vicky noticed the frosting of white in his cap of dark crinkling hair, and his features were gaunt, his eyes sunken in dark bruised-looking hollows. Her compassion for him threatened to overwhelm her, and she wished that she could reach out and touch him, but the steel mesh screen separated them.
'This is the last time I am allowed to visit you,' she whispered, 'and they will only let me stay for fifteen minutes." 'That will be long enough, for there is not much to say, now that the sentence has been confirmed." 'Oh, Moses, we were wrong to believe that the British and the Americans would save you." 'They tried,' he said quietly.