War Cry. Wilbur Smith

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      Going to Roedean meant that Saffron would have to leave home for the first time. Leon knew that the experience was bound to be hard for her, so he was keen to make it as exciting as possible, to distract her from any thought of homesickness for as long as possible. To that end, he did not take her on a steamship to Durban, the nearest port to Johannesburg, but instead booked tickets on the final legs of the brand new Imperial Airways service from England to South Africa. And he did not take her to Johannesburg. Instead, shortly after Christmas 1932, he and Saffron flew all the way to Cape Town.

      ‘I thought it was time you met the South African branch of the family,’ Leon told her, ‘starting with your cousin Centaine.’

      ‘That’s an odd name,’ Saffron replied.

      ‘It’s French, and it means a hundred. So “Une centaine d’années” means “a century”.’

      ‘Well that’s even odder. Who calls a girl “Century”?’

      ‘Someone whose daughter is born in the first hour of the first day of the first month of the first year of a century might, if they were French. Centaine’s maiden name was de Thiry and she met my cousin Michael in France when he was stationed there with the Royal Flying Corps during the war. Michael was a fighter pilot.’

      ‘Did they fall in love?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘How romantic!’ Saffron’s imagination instantly conjured up an image of a dashing pilot and a beautiful French girl swooning at one another, though she still knew too little about love to have much of an idea what would happen after that.

      ‘I’ve decided that Centaine is a lovely name,’ she said, with characteristic decisiveness. But then something struck her. ‘You said Michael was a fighter pilot, and you haven’t said we’re meeting him in South Africa. So …’

      ‘He died, yes. The damn Germans shot him down.’

      ‘So how did she end up in South Africa?’

      ‘Well, Michael and Centaine got married,’ Leon began. In truth, he had always had his doubts as to whether the knot had ever been tied, but the family had accepted Centaine as one of their own and any doubts had been discreetly swept under the carpet. ‘When he died Centaine was pregnant with his baby, and she had no family left in France so it was decided to send her down to South Africa because she and the child, when it came, would be safer there.’

      ‘Wasn’t there any war in South Africa, then?’

      ‘Nothing to write home about. South West Africa had been a German colony, so plenty of people there were on the Kaiser’s side. So were some of the Boers, because they hated the British. The Germans actually planned to help the Boers rise up and conquer South Africa but … well, that never happened.’

      Mostly because your mother and I stopped it happening, Leon thought, but did not say. Instead he went on, ‘Anyway, there was far, far less fighting of any kind in South Africa than there was in France, so it should have been much safer for Centaine to be here, except for one thing …’

      ‘Ooh, what?’ asked Saffron, who was becoming more curious about Centaine by the minute.

      ‘The ship Cousin Centaine was on was torpedoed by a German submarine. Somehow she survived and was washed ashore on the coast of South West Africa.’

      ‘What a lucky escape!’

      ‘Yes, but her troubles weren’t over, because, as you should know if you’ve been paying attention in geography lessons, the coast there is part of the Namib Desert, which is one of the oldest and driest deserts on earth. That’s why they call it the Skeleton Coast. There’s no water there, no food, nothing. Not for a white man, anyway.’

      ‘So why didn’t she die?’

      ‘She was rescued by a San tribesman and his wife. The San have an extraordinary ability to survive in the desert and they kept Centaine alive until her baby son was born. Anyway, while she was travelling with them, she found a diamond, just lying on the ground.’

      ‘A diamond!’ Saffron exclaimed. ‘Who’d left it there in the middle of a desert?’

      ‘No one left it there,’ Leon laughed. ‘It was an uncut diamond. It was there naturally. So Centaine claimed the land and all its mineral rights and it turned out that there were a lot more diamonds where that first one had come from. So she became the owner of a diamond mine.’

      Saffron’s eyes were as wide as huge sapphire saucers. ‘Goodness! Cousin Centaine must be the richest woman in the world!’ she exclaimed.

      ‘Well, she has been very rich, that’s true. But these are hard times for everyone and there’s not much of a market for diamonds these days, or anything else, come to that. I think she’s been lucky to keep hold of the mine at all, to be honest, but now I gather she’s putting her home outside Cape Town on the market. All its contents too, apparently: pictures, furniture, family silver, the lot. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to see her. Thought I might be able to help.’

      Saffron thought that this was a rather sad subject, so she decided to change it. ‘Can you tell me about Centaine’s son? What’s his name? How old is he?’

      ‘He’s called Shasa and I suppose he must be fifteen by now. I think you were born about eighteen months apart.’

      ‘What’s he like?’ she asked, really meaning to say, ‘Is he handsome?’ but not daring to be that obvious.

      ‘I honestly don’t know,’ her father replied. ‘I’ve met Centaine a couple of times, but not her lad. But I’m sure you two will have plenty to talk about.’

      When they landed at Winfield Aerodrome, just to the east of Cape Town, the first thing Leon and Saffron saw was an enormous yellow Daimler parked on the field, barely twenty yards from where the Atalanta had come to a halt.

      ‘Look at that car!’ Saffron said to her father, pointing in the Daimler’s direction. ‘It’s even bigger and yellower than Lady Idina’s Hispano–Suiza!’

      Before Leon could reply the driver’s door swung open. A car like this was usually driven by a uniformed chauffeur, but what emerged instead was a woman so striking that Saffron stopped dead in her tracks and simply gazed at her in wonder.

      ‘Is … is that Cousin Centaine?’ she gasped.

      ‘It is indeed,’ Leon replied.

      With just one look, Saffron was lost in admiration for Centaine. She was as beautiful as a queen in one of Saffron’s old books of illustrated fairy tales, as slender as a wand, with impeccably bobbed black hair and eyes so mesmerizingly dark that they seemed almost black too. But it wasn’t just her beauty that made Centaine regal. It was the way she carried herself and the fierce determination in the line of her jaw.

      Saffron had spent almost half her life without a female role model, but now, looking at Centaine, she was gripped by an emotion that she did not quite recognize at first, though she knew somehow that she had felt it before. And then she realized that this was just like seeing her equally beautiful, stylish mother when she was a very little girl: that same sense of awe in the presence of feminine beauty and grace and the СКАЧАТЬ