Rage (48 page)

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Authors: Wilbur Smith

BOOK: Rage
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‘Oh, God, I can't wait any longer.' She took his hand and dragged him up the marble staircase. The girls' bedrooms were in the east wing and Marjorie locked the heavy mahogany door that secured the master suite. They were safe from discovery here, and at last she could let herself go completely.
Marjorie Weston had been married for over twenty years, and she had taken about the same number of lovers in that time. Some of them had merely been mad one-night frolics, others had been longer, more permanent liaisons. One had lasted for almost all these twenty years, an erratic on-and-off arrangement, passionate interludes interspersed with long periods of denial. However, none of her other lovers had been able to match this stripling in beauty and performance, in physical endurance and in devilish inventiveness, not even Shasa Courtney who was that other long-term lover. The son had the same intuitive understanding of her needs. He knew when to be rough and cruel and when to be loving and gentle, but in other ways he outstripped his father. She had never been able to exhaust him or even to force him to falter, and he had a streak of genuine brutality and inherent evil in him that could terrify her at times. Added to that was the almost incestuous delight of taking the son after having had the father.
Tonight Sean did not disappoint her. While she was driving hard towards her first climax of the evening he suddenly reached out to the bedside table and lifted the telephone receiver.
‘Ring your husband,' he ordered, and thrust the instrument into her hand.
‘God, are you mad!' she gasped. ‘What would I say to him?'
‘Do it!' he said, and she realized that if she refused, he would slap her across the face. He had done that before.
Still holding him between her thighs, she twisted awkwardly and dialled the Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg. When the hotel operator answered, she said, ‘I wish to speak to Mr Mark Weston in Suite 1750.'
‘You are going through,' the operator said, and Mark answered on the third ring.
‘Hello, darling,' Marjorie said, and above her Sean began to move again. ‘I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd ring you. Sorry if I woke you.'
It became a contest, with Sean trying to force her to gasp or cry out, while she attempted to maintain a casual conversation with Mark. When he succeeded and she gave a little involuntary squeal, Mark asked sharply, ‘What was that?'
‘I made myself a cup of Milo and it was too hot. I burned my lip.'
She could see how it was exciting Sean also. His face was no longer beautiful but swollen and flushed so that his features seemed coarsened, and in her she felt him swell and harden, filling her to bursting point, until she could control herself no longer, and she broke off the telephone conversation abruptly. ‘Goodnight, Mark, sleep well,' and slammed the receiver down on its cradle, just as the first scream came bursting up her throat.
Afterwards they lay still, both of them regaining their breath, but when he tried to roll off her she tightened the grip of her legs and held him hard. She knew that if she could keep him from sliding out, within minutes he would be ready again.
Outside on the front lawn, the dog barked once. ‘Is someone there?' she asked.
‘No. Prince is just being naughty,' Sean murmured, but he was listening intently, even though he knew that Rufus was too good to be heard, and they had planned every
detail with care. Both he and Rufus knew exactly what they were after.
To commemorate the first month of their affair, Marjorie had bought Sean a set of Victorian dress studs and links in platinum and onyx and diamonds. She had invited him up to the house on a Thursday afternoon and led him through to Mark Weston's panelled study on the ground floor. While Sean watched, she checked the combination of the wall safe which was discreetly engraved on the corner of the silver-framed photograph of herself and the girls on Mark's desk, and then she had swung aside the false front of the section of the bookcase that concealed the safe and tumbled the combination of the lock.
She left the safe door ajar when she brought the gift to him. Sean had demonstrated his gratitude by pulling her skirts up and her peach-coloured satin bloomers down, then, sitting her on the edge of her husband's desk, he lifted her knees and placed her feet on each corner of the leather-bound blotter. Then while he stood in front of her and made love to her, he evaluated the contents of the safe over her shoulders.
Sean had heard his father talk about Mark Weston's collection of British and South African gold coins. It was apparently one of the ten most important in private hands anywhere in the world. In addition to the dozen thick leather-bound albums which contained the collection, the middle shelf of the safe held the ledgers and cash books for the running of the estate and household, and a small gentleman's jewel box, while the top shelf was crammed with wads of pristine banknotes still in the bank wrappers and a large canvas bag stencilled ‘Standard Bank Ltd' which obviously contained silver. There could not have been less than £5,000 in notes and coins in the safe.
Sean had explained to Rufus exactly where to look for the safe combination, how to open the false front of the bookcase and what to expect when he did.
The knowledge that Rufus was at work downstairs and the danger of possible discovery stimulated Sean so that at one point Marjorie blurted, ‘You aren't human – you are a machine.'
He left her at last, lying in the big bed like a wax doll that had melted in the sun, her limbs soft and plastic, the thick mane of her hair darkened and sodden with her own sweat and her mouth smeared out of shape by exhausted passions. Her sleep was catatonic.
Sean was still pent up and excited. He looked into Mark Weston's study on the way out. The front of the bookcase was open, the safe door wide, the ledgers and cash books tumbled untidily on the floor, and the excitement came on him again in a thick musky wave and he found he was once more fully tumescent.
It was dangerous to remain in the house another minute, and the knowledge made his arousal unbearable. He looked up the marble staircase again and only then did the idea come to him. Veronica's room was the second door down the east wing passage. She might scream if he woke her suddenly, she might hate him so that she would scream when she recognized him, but on the other hand she might not. The risk was lunatic, and Sean grinned in the darkness and started back up the marble staircase.
A silver blade of moonlight pierced the curtains and fell on Veronica's pale hair that swirled across the pillow. Sean leaned over her and covered her mouth with his hand. She came awake struggling and terrified.
‘It's me,' he whispered. ‘Don't be afraid, Ronny. It's me.'
Her struggles stilled, the fear faded from her huge mauve eyes, and she reached up for him with both arms. He lifted his hand off her mouth and she said, ‘Oh, Sean, deep down I knew it. I knew you still loved me.'
Rufus was furious. ‘I thought you had been caught,' he whined. ‘What happened to you, man?'
‘I was doing the hard work.' Sean kicked the Harley
Davidson and it roared into life. As he turned back onto the road he felt the weight of the saddle bags pull the machine off balance, but he met her easily and straightened up.
‘Slow down, man,' Rufus leaned forward from the pillion to caution him. ‘You'll wake the whole valley.' And Sean laughed in the wild rush of wind, drunk with excitement, and they went up over the crest at a hundred miles an hour.
Sean parked the Harley Davidson on the Kraaifontein road and they scrambled down the bank and squatted in the dry culvert beneath the road. By the light of an electric torch they shared the booty.
‘You said there would be five grand,' Rufus whined accusingly. ‘Man, there isn't more than a hundred.'
‘Old man Weston must have paid his slaves.' Sean chuckled carelessly as he split the small bundle of bank notes, and pushed the larger pile towards Rufus. ‘You need it more than me, kid.'
The jewel box contained cuff-links and studs, a diamond tie-pin that Sean judged to be fully five carats in weight, Masonic medallions, Mark Weston's miniature decorations on a bar – he had won an MC at El Alamein and a string of campaign medals – a Pathek Philippe dress watch in gold and a handful of other personal items.
Rufus ran over them with an experienced eye. ‘The watch is engraved, all the other stuff is too hot to move, too dangerous, man. We'll have to dump it.'
They opened the coin albums. Five of them were filled with sovereigns. ‘OK,' Rufus grunted. ‘I can move that small stuff, but not these. They are red hot, burn your fingers.' With scorn he discarded the albums of heavy coins, the five-pound and five-guinea issues of Victoria and Elizabeth, Charles and the Georges.
After he dropped Rufus off at the illicit shebeen in the coloured District Six where Rufus had parked his own
motorcycle, Sean rode out alone along the high winding road that skirts the sheer massif of Chapman's Peak. He parked the Harley on the edge of the cliff. The green Atlantic crashed against the rock five hundred feet below where he stood. One at a time Sean hurled the heavy gold coins out over the edge. He flicked them underhanded, so that they caught the dawn's uncertain light, and then were lost in the shadows of the cliff face as they fell, so he could not see them strike the surface of the water far below. When the last coin was gone, he tossed the empty albums after them and they fluttered as they caught the wind. Then he flung the gold wristwatch and the diamond pin out into the void. He kept the medals for last. It gave him a vindictive satisfaction to have screwed Mark Weston's wife and daughter, and then to throw his medals into the sea.
When he mounted the Harley Davidson and turned it back down the steep winding road, he pushed the goggles up on to his forehead and let the wind beat into his face and rake his eyes so that the tears streamed back across his cheeks. He rode hard, putting the glistening machine over as he went into the turns so that the footrest struck a shower of sparks from the road surface.
‘Not much profit for a night's work,' he told himself, and the wind tore the words from his lips. ‘But the thrills, oh, the thrills!'
W
hen all his best efforts to interest Sean and Michael in the planetary system of the Courtney companies had resulted in either lukewarm and deviously feigned enthusiasm or in outright uninterest, Shasa had gone through a series of emotions, beginning with puzzlement.
He tried hard to see how anyone, particularly a young
man of superior intellect, and even more particularly a son of his, could find the whole complex interlinking of wealth and opportunity, of challenge and reward, less than fascinating. At first he thought that he was to blame, that he had not explained it sufficiently, that he had somehow taken their response for granted and had through his own omissions, failed to quicken their attention.
To Shasa it was the very stuff of life itself. His first waking thought each morning, and his last before sleep each night, was for the welfare and sustenance of the company. So he tried again, more patiently, more exhaustively. It was like trying to explain colour to a blind man, and from puzzlement Shasa found himself becoming angry.
‘Damn it, Mater,' he exploded, when he and Centaine were alone at her favourite place on the hillside above the Atlantic. ‘They just don't seem to care.'
‘What about Garry?' Centaine asked quietly.
‘Oh, Garry!' Shasa chuckled disparagingly. ‘Every time I turn around I trip over him. He is like a puppy.'
‘I see you have given him his own office on the third floor,' Centaine observed mildly.
‘The old broom cupboard,' Shasa said. ‘It was a joke really, but the little blighter took it seriously. I didn't have the heart—'
‘He takes most things seriously, does young Garrick,' Centaine observed. ‘He's the only who does. He's quite a deep one.'
‘Oh, come on, Mater! Garry?'
‘He and I had a long chat the other day. You should do the same, it might surprise you. Did you know that he's in the top three in his year?'
‘Yes, of course, I knew – but I mean, it's only his first year of business administration. One doesn't take that too seriously.'
‘Doesn't one?' Centaine asked innocently, and Shasa was unusually silent for the next few minutes.
The following Friday Shasa looked into the cubbyhole at the end of the passage which served as Garry's office when he was temporarily employed by Courtney Mining during his college vacations. Garry leapt dutifully to his feet when he recognized his father and he pushed his spectacles up on the bridge of his nose.
‘Hello, champ, what are you up to?' Shasa asked, glancing down at the forms that covered the desk.
‘It's a control,' Garry was caught in a cross-fire – awe at his father's sudden interest in what he was doing and desperation to retain his attention and to obtain his approval.
‘Did you know that we spent over a hundred pounds on stationery last month alone?' He was so anxious to impress his father that he stuttered again, something he only did when he was overexcited.
‘Take a deep breath, champ.' Shasa eased into the tiny room. There was just room for the two of them. ‘Speak slowly, and tell me about it.'
One of Garry's official duties was to order and issue the office stationery. The shelves behind his desk were filled with sheaves of typing paper and boxes of envelopes.
‘According to my estimates we should be able to cut that below eighty pounds. We could save twenty pounds a month.'
‘Show me.' Shasa perched on the corner of the desk and applied, his mind to the problem. He treated it with as much respect as if they were discussing the development of a hew gold-mine.
‘You are quite right,' Shasa approved his figures. ‘You have full authority to put your new control system into practice.' Shasa stood up. ‘Well done,' he said, and Garry glowed with gratification. Shasa turned to the door so the lad wouldn't see his expression of amusement, and then he paused and looked back.
‘Oh, by the way, I'm flying up to Walvis Bay tomorrow.
I'm meeting the architects and the engineers on site to discuss the extensions to the canning factory. Would you like to come along?'
Unable to trust his voice lest he stutter again, Garry nodded emphatically.

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