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Authors: Wilbur Smith

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‘I have tried to look upon it that way.' The headmaster shook his head regretfully. ‘In view of the special relationship that your family has to the school, I have been as lenient as I can be. However,' he paused meaningfully, ‘we are not dealing simply with an isolated instance. Not simply one or two boyish pranks, but a state of mind, an entire behaviour pattern which is most alarming.' The headmaster broke off to accept the cup of tea that Tara passed across the table to him. ‘Forgive me, Mrs Courtney, this is as painful to me as it must be to you.'
Tara said quietly, ‘I can believe that. I know you look upon each of your boys as one of your own sons.' And she glanced at Shasa. ‘My husband has been reluctant to come to terms with the problem.' She hid her smug satisfaction behind a sorrowful but brave little smile. Sean had always been Shasa's child, strong-willed and thoughtless of others. She had never understood nor accepted that cruel streak in him. She recalled his selfishness and lack of gratitude even before he could talk. As an infant when he had gorged himself at her breast, he would let her know he was satiated by biting her nipple with sufficient force to bruise her painfully. She had loved him, of course, but had found it hard to like him. As soon as he had learned to walk, he headed straight for his father, staggering after him like a puppy, and his first word had been ‘Dada'. That hurt her, after she had carried him big and heavy in her belly and given him birth and suck, ‘Dada'. Well, he was Shasa's child now and she sat back and watched him grapple with the problem, feeling a spiteful pleasure at his discomfort.
‘He's a natural sportsman,' Shasa was saying, ‘and a born leader. He has a good mind – I am convinced that he will pull himself together. I gave him a good thrashing after his
school report at the end of last term, and I'll give him another this evening to get him in the right frame of mind.'
‘With some boys the cane has no effect, or rather it has the opposite of the desired effect. Your Sean looks upon corporal punishment the way a soldier looks on his battle wounds, as a mark of his courage and fortitude.'
‘I have always been against my husband beating the children,' Tara said, and Shasa flashed her a warning look, but the headmaster went on.
‘I have also tried the cane on Sean, Mrs Courtney. He seems positively to welcome that punishment as though it affords him some special distinction.'
‘But he is a good athlete,' Shasa repeated rather lamely.
‘I see you choose, as I would, the term “athlete” rather than “sportsman”,' the headmaster nodded. ‘Sean is precocious and mature for his age. He is stronger than the other boys in his group and has no qualms in using his strength to win, not always in accordance with the rules of the game.' The headmaster looked at Shasa pointedly. ‘He does have a good brain, but his school marks indicate that he is not prepared to use it in the classroom. Instead he applies his mind to less commendable enterprises.' The headmaster paused, sensing that this was not the moment to give a doting father concrete examples. He went on: ‘He is also, as you have noted, a born leader. Unfortunately, he gathers about him the least desirable elements in the school, which he has formed into a gang with which he terrorizes the other boys, even those senior to him are afraid of him.'
‘I find this difficult to accept.' Shasa was grim-faced.
‘To be blunt, Mr Courtney: Sean seems to have a vindictive and vicious streak in him. I am, of course, looking for an improvement in him. However, if that is not soon forthcoming, I will have to make a serious decision over Sean's future at Bishops.'
‘I had set my heart on him being head boy, as I was,' Shasa admitted, and the headmaster shook his head.
‘Far from becoming head boy, Mr Courtney, unless Sean has pulled up his socks by the end of the year, I am, with the greatest reluctance, going to have to ask you to remove him from Bishops altogether.'
‘My God!' Shasa breathed. ‘You don't really mean that?'
‘I'm sorry to say that I do.'
I
t was quite remarkable that Clare East had ever been employed by the headmaster of Bishops. The explanation was that the appointment was a temporary one, a mere six-month contract, to fill in after the unexpected resignation of the previous art master on the grounds of ill-health. The salary offered was such that it had attracted only two other applications, both patently unsuitable.
Clare had come to the interview with the headmaster dressed in clothes she had not worn for six years, not since she was twenty-one years of age. She had exhumed them from a forgotten cabin trunk for the occasion, a high-buttoned dress in drab green that conformed closely to the head's own ideas of suitable apparel for a school-mistress. Her long black hair she had plaited and twisted up severely behind her head, and the portfolio of her painting she had chosen to show him was composed of landscapes and seascapes and still lifes, subjects which had interested her at about the same time as she had bought the chaste woollen dress. At Bishops, art was not one of the mainstream subjects, but merely a catch-all for the pupils who showed little aptitude for the sciences.
Once Clare had charge of the art school, which was situated far enough from the main buildings as to offer her a certain freedom of behaviour, she reverted to her usual style of dress: wide loose skirts in vivid colours and flamboyant patterns, worn with Mexican-style blouses like those that Jane Russell had worn in
The Outlaw
. She had
seen the movie five times while she was attending the London School of Arts, and modelled herself on Jane Russell, though of course Clare knew her own breasts were better than Russell's, just as big but higher and more pointed.
Her long hair she wore in a different style every day, and when she was teaching she always kicked off her sandals and strode around the art room barefooted, smoking thin black Portuguese cigarettes which one of her lovers brought her in packs of a thousand.
Sean had absolutely no interest in art. He had filtered down to this class by a process of natural rejection. Physics and chemistry demanded too much effort, and geography, the next lowest subject, was an even greater bore than paintbrushes.
Sean fell in love with Clare East the very moment that she walked into the art room. The first time she had paused at his easel to inspect the mess of colour he had smeared on his sheet of art paper, he realized that she was an inch shorter than he was, and when she reached up to correct one of his shaky outlines, he saw that she had not shaved her armpit. That bush of dark coarse hair, glistening with sweat, induced the hardest and most painful erection he had ever experienced.
He tried to impress her with manly strutting behaviour, and when that failed, he used an oath in her presence that he usually reserved for one of his polo ponies. Clare East sent him to the head with a note and the head gave him four strokes of his heavy Malacca cane, accompanying the beating with a few words of counsel.
‘You will have to learn, young man, WHACK, that I will not allow you to compound atrocious behaviour, WHACK, with foul language, WHACK, especially in the presence of a lady, WHACK.'
‘Thank you very much, Headmaster.' It was traditional to express gratitude for these ministrations, and to refrain
from rubbing the injured area in the great man's presence. When Sean returned to the art room, his ardour, far from being cooled by the Malacca cane, was rather inflamed to unbearable proportions, but he realized he had to change tactics.
He discussed it with his henchman, Snotty Arbuthnot, and was only mildly discouraged by Snotty's advice. ‘Forget it, man. Every fellow in school is whacking away thinking about Marsh Mallows—' the nickname was a reference to Clare East's bosom – ‘but Tug saw her at the movies with some chap of at least thirty, with a moustache and his own car. They were smooching away like mad dogs in the back row. Why don't you go and see Poodle instead?'
Poodle was a sixteen-year-old from Rustenberg Girls' School, just across the railway line from Bishops. She was a young lady with a mission in life, to see as many boys across the borders of manhood as she could fit into her busy afternoons. Though Sean had never spoken to her, she had been a spectator at every one of his recent cricket matches and she had sent a message to him through a mutual friend suggesting a meeting in the pine forest on Rondebosch Common.
‘She looks like a poodle,' Sean dismissed the suggestion scornfully, and resigned himself to distant adoration of Clare East, until one day he was searching her desk for those black Portuguese cigarettes for which he had developed a taste. Love did not mean he could not steal from her. In a locked drawer which he picked with a paper clip, he came across a stiff cardboard folder tied with green ribbons. The folder contained over twenty pencil drawings of nude male models, all of them signed and dated by Clare East, and after the first jealous shock, Sean realized that each drawing was of a different subject with only one common feature. While the models' faces had been roughed in, their genitals had been depicted in minute and loving detail, and all of them were fully tumescent.
What Sean had discovered was Clare's collection of scalps, or an equivalent thereof. Clare East had strong tastes, but even more than garlic and red wine she needed men in her diet. This was so evident in the secret folder that all Sean's deflated hopes were once more revived, and that night he commissioned Michael, for the sum of five shillings, to paint a portrait of Clare East in Sean's art book.
Michael was in the junior art class and was able to make his studies for the portrait without the model's knowledge, and the completed work surpassed even Sean's expectations. He submitted the portrait and at the end of the following session Clare dismissed the class with a rider, ‘Oh Sean, will you please remain behind?'
When the art room was cleared, she opened his art book at the painting of herself.
‘Did you do this, Sean?' she asked. ‘It really is very good.' The question was innocent enough, but the difference between the portrait and Sean's own murky compositions was so evident that even he saw the danger of claiming authorship.
‘I was going to tell you I did it,' he admitted openly, ‘but I can't lie to you, Miss East. I paid my brother to do it for me.'
‘Why, Sean?'
‘I suppose because I like you so much,' he mumbled, and to her surprise she saw that he was actually blushing. Clare was touched. Up to that time she had actively disliked this boy. He was brash and cocky and a disruptive influence in her class. She was certain that it was he who was stealing her cigarettes.
This unsuspected sensitivity surprised her, and suddenly she realized that his bumptious behaviour had been to attract her attention. She relented towards him, and over the following days and weeks she showed Sean that she had forgiven him, by giving him small largesse – from a special
smile to an extra few minutes of her time tidying up his creative efforts.
In return Sean began leaving gifts in her desk, thereby confirming her suspicion that he had been into it before. However, the theft of cigarettes stopped and she accepted the offerings of fruit and flowers without comment, just a smile and a nod as she passed his easel.
Then one Friday afternoon she opened her drawer and there lay a blue enamel box with ‘Garrards' in gold lettering on the lid. She opened it with her back turned to the class, and she started uncontrollably and almost dropped the box as she realized that it contained a brooch of white gold. The centrepiece was a large star sapphire, and even Clare, who was no judge of gems, realized that it was an exquisite stone. It was surrounded by small diamonds set in a star pattern. Clare experienced a giddy rush of avarice. The brooch must certainly be worth many hundreds of pounds, more money than she had ever had in her hand at one time, more than a year's salary at her present parsimonious rate of pay.
Sean had taken the piece from his mother's dressingtable and hidden it in the thatch of the saddle room behind the stables until the furore had died down. All the house servants had been interrogated, first by Shasa, who was outraged by this breach of faith. Nothing, apart from liquor, had ever been stolen by his employees before. When his own investigations ran into a dead end, Shasa called in the police. Fortunately for Sean, it transpired that one of the junior maids had previously served a six-month sentence for theft from an employer. She was obviously guilty and the Wynberg magistrate gave her eighteen months, her offence compounded by her obstinate refusal to return the stolen brooch. Since she was now over twenty-one years, the maid was sent to the Pollsmoor Women's Prison.
Sean had waited another ten days for the incident to be forgotten before presenting the gift to the object of his
passion. Clare East was mightily tempted. She realized that the brooch must have been stolen, but on the other hand she was, as usual for her, in serious financial difficulty. This was the only reason she had taken on her present employment. She looked back with nostalgic regret on the idle days of eating and drinking and painting and making love which had led her into her present embarrassed circumstances. The brooch would solve it all. She had no scruples of conscience, but a terror of being convicted of theft. She knew that her free and creative soul would wither behind the bars of a women's prison.
Surreptitiously she returned the brooch to her desk drawer and for the rest of that art period she was distracted and withdrawn. She chain-smoked cigarettes and kept well clear of the rear of the art room, where Sean made a fine picture of innocence as he applied himself with unusual industry to his easel. She did not have to tell him to remain behind when the bell rang at the end of the period. He came to where she sat at her desk.
‘Did you like it?' he asked softly, and she opened the drawer and placed the enamel box in the centre of the desk between them.
‘I cannot accept it, Sean,' she said. ‘You know that very well.' She didn't want to ask him where he had obtained it. She didn't want to know, and involuntarily she reached out to touch the box for the last time. The enamel surface felt like a new-laid egg, smooth and warm to the touch.
‘It's all right,' Sean said quietly. ‘Nobody knows. They think somebody else took it. It's quite safe.'
Had the child seen through her so easily? She started at him. Was it one amoral soul recognizing another? It made her angry to be found out, to have her greed so exposed. She took her hand off the box and placed it in her lap.
She drew a breath, and steeled herself to repeat her refusal, but Sean stilled her by opening his art book and taking out three loose leaves. He placed them beside the
blue enamel box, and she drew a hissing breath. They were her own drawings from her fun folder, signed by herself.
‘I took these – sort of fair exchange,' Sean said, and she looked at him and truly saw him for the very first time.
He was young in years only. In the museum in Athens she had been enchanted by a marble statue of the great god Pan in his manifestation as a young boy. A beautiful child, but about him an ancient evil as enthralling as sin itself. Clare East was not a teacher by vocation, she felt no innate revulsion at the corruption of the young. It was simply that she had not thought of it before. With her hearty sexual appetite she had experienced almost everything else, including partners of her own sex, although those had been unsuccessful experiments long ago put behind her. Men she had known, in the biblical sense, in every possible variation of size and shape and colour. She took and discarded them with a kind of compulsive fervour, seeking always an elusive fulfilment which seemed to dance for ever just beyond her grasp. Often she was afraid, truly terrified, that she had reached the point of satiety, when her pleasure was irreparably blunted and jaded.
Now she was presented with a new and titillating perversion, enough to reawaken the lusty response that she had thought lost for ever. This child's loveliness contained a wickedness that left her breathless as she discovered it.
She had never been paid before, and this mannikin was offering her a prostitute's fee that was princely enough for a royal courtesan. She had never been blackmailed before, and he was threatening her with those unwise sketches. She knew what would happen if they ever fell into the hands of the school governors, and she did not doubt that he would carry out the unspoken threat. He had already hinted that he had placed blame for the theft of the sapphire brooch on an innocent party. Most tantalizing, she had never had a child before. She let her eyes run over him curiously. His skin was clear and firm, with the sweet
gloss of youth on it. The hair on his forearms was silky, but his cheeks were bare. He was using a razor already, and he was taller than she was, a man's outline emerging from boyhood in his shoulders and narrow hips. His limbs were long and shapely, strange that she should never have noticed the muscle in his arms before. His eyes were green as emeralds, or of
crème de menthe
in a crystal glass, and there were tiny flecks of brown and gold surrounding the pupils. She saw those pupils dilate slightly as she leaned forward, deliberately letting the top of her blouse gape open to expose the swell and cleavage of her breasts. Carefully she picked up the enamel box.
‘Thank you, Sean,' she whispered hoarsely. ‘It's a magnificent gift and I shall treasure it.'
Sean picked up the lewd sketches and slipped them into his art book, hostage to the unspoken pact between them.

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