He usually took dinner at home, it was cheaper than eating out, and although Shasa added substantially to the miserly salary paid 'by Messrs Rifkin and Markovitch, Sean was always in a financial crisis.
After dinner he was free to shed his dinner jacket and black tie and change into a leather cycling jacket and steel-shod boots and then his other life beckoned, the life so different from his diurnal existence, a life of excitement and danger, full of colourful fascinating beings, of eager women and satisfying companions, of deliberate risks a: wild adventures - like the one this evening.
Rufus unzipped his black leather jacket and grinned at hiJ 'Ready, willing and able, as the actress said to the bishop." Und the jacket he wore a black roll-neck sweater, black trousers and his head a black cloth cap.
They didn't have to discuss what they were about to do. They hi worked together on the same kind of job four times already, and the planning had been gone over in detail. However, Rufus's gr was pale and tense in the starlight beneath the trees. This was the most ambitious project yet. Sean felt the delicious blend of fear or excitement like raw spirit in his blood tingling and charging him.
This was what he did it for, this feeling, this indescribable euphor with which danger always charged him. This was just the first tick of it, it would grow stronger, more possessing, as the danger il creased. He often wondered just how high he could go, there mu: be a zenith beyond which it was not possible to rise, but unlike tk sexual climax which was intense but so fleeting, Sean knew he had not even approached the ultimate thrill of danger. He wondered what it would be like, killing a man with his bare hands? Killing a woma the same way - but doing it as she reached her own climax beneat him? The very idea of that always gave him an aching erection, bu until those opportunities presented themselves, he would savour th lesser moments such as these.
'Nail?" Rufus asked, offering him his cigarette tin, but Sean shoal his head. He wanted nothing to blunt his enjoyment, not nicotine no alcohol, he wanted to experience the utmost enjoyment of every instant 'Smoke half of it and then follow me,' he ordered, and slipper away amongst the trees.
He followed the footpath along the low bank of the stream an( then crossed at a shallow place, stepping lightly over the exposer rocks. The high diamond-mesh security fence was on the opposit bank, and he squatted below it. He didn't have to wait long. Withir seconds a wolflike shape appeared out of the darkness beyond the fence, and the moment it saw him the German shepherd rushed all him, hurling itself against the heavy-gauge wire fence.
'Hey, Prince,' Sean said quietly, leaning toward the animal, showing not the least sign of fear. 'Come on, boy, you know me." The dog recognized him at last. It had only barked once, not creating enough of an uproar to alert the household, and now Sean gently pushed his fingers through the diamond mesh, talking softly and soothingly. The dog .sniffed his hand and its long tail began to wave back and forth in friendly salutation. Sean had a way with all living creatures, not only humans. The dog licked his fingers.
Sean whistled softly and Rufus scrambled up the bank behind him. Immediately the German shepherd stiflened and the hair on its back came erect. It growled throatily and Sean whispered, 'Don't be a fool, Prince. Rufus is a friend." it took another five minutes for Sean to introduce the two of them, but at last in response to Sean's urging, Rufus gingerly put his fingers through the mesh and the dog sniffed them carefully and wagged his tail.
TI1 go over first,' Sean said, and swarmed up the high fence. There were three strands of barbed wire at the top, but Sean flicked his body over, feet first, arching his back like a gymnast. He dropped lightly to earth and the dog rose on its hind legs and placed its front paws on his chest. Sean fondled his head holding him while Rufus came over the barbed wire with even greater agility than Sean had.
'Let's go,' Sean whispered, and with the guard dog padding along beside them they went up towards the house, crouching as they ran and keeping to the shadow of the ornamental shrubs until they flattened against the wall, shrinking into the leafy ivy that covered the brickwork.
The house was a double-storied mansion, almost as imposing as Weltevreden. It belonged to another leading Cape family, close friends of the Courtneys. Mark Weston had been at school with Shasa and in the same engineering class at university. His wife, Marjorie, was a contemporary of Tara Courtney's. They had two teenage daughters, the elder of which Sean had deprived of her virginity the previous year, and then dropped without another phone call.
The seventeen-year-old child had suffered a nervous breakdown, refusing to eat, threatening suicide and weeping endlessly until she had to be taken out of school. Marjorie Weston had sent for Sean to try to remonstrate with him, and persuade him to let her daughter down gently. She had arranged the meeting without her daughter's knowledge, and while her husband was on one of his regular business trips to Johannesburg.
She took Sean to her sewing room on the ground floor and locked the door. It was Thursday afternoon, the servants' day off, and her younger daughter was at school while the eldest, Veronica, was in her bedroom upstairs palely pining.
Marjorie patted the sofa. 'Please come and sit next to me, Sean." She was determined to keep the interview friendly. It was only when he was beside her that Marjorie realized how infernally good-looking he was. Even more so than his father, and Marjorie had always had a strong fancy for Shasa Courtney.
She found that she was becoming a little breathless as she reasoned with Sean, but it was only when she placed her hand on his bare arm and felt the elastic muscle under the smooth young skin that she realized what was happening.
Sean had the philanderer's sure and certain instinct, perhaps he had inherited it from his father. He hadn't really thought about Veronica's mother that way. God! She was as old as his mother.
However, since Clare East he had always had a taste for older women, and Marjorie Weston was slim and athletic from swimming and tennis and meticulously tanned to disguise the crow's feet at the corners of her eyes and the first signs of craping at her throat; and where Veronica was vacuous and simpering, her mother was poised and mature, but with the same mauve-blue eyes that had first attracted him to the daughter and an even more carefully groomed mane of thick tawny hair.
As Sean became aware of her excitement, the flush of blood beneath her tan, the agitated breathing that made her bosom beneath the angora jersey and pearls work like a bellows and the subtle change in her body odour that the average male would not have noticed, but which to Sean was like an invitation on an embossed card, he found his own arousal was spiced by the perversity of the situation.
'A double,' he thought. 'Mother and daughter - now that's something different." He didn't have to plot further, he let his infallible instinct guide him.
'You are much more attractive than your daughters could ever be - the main reason I broke off with Ronny was I couldn't bear being near you without being able to do this --' and he leaned over her and kissed her with an open mouth.
Marjorie had believed herself to be in complete control of the situation right up until the moment she tasted his mouth. Neither of them spoke again until he was kneeling in front of her, holding her knees apart with both hands, and she was sprawled across the sofa with her pleated skirt rucked up around her waist. Then she panted brokenly, 'Oh Christ, I can't believe this is happening - I must be crazy." Now she sat at the foot of the stairs in her satin bathrobe. She was naked under the robe and every few seconds she shivered in a brief spasm. The night was warm, and the house was in darkness. The girls were asleep upstairs and Mark was away on one of his regular business trips. This was the first chance at an assignation there had been in almost two weeks and she was shivering with anticipation.