Wilbur Smith - Assegai

‘For a swim in your magical pool.’

‘Well, why didn’t you say so?’ she asked, and threw back the blanket.

The waters were cool and slippery as silk over their bodies. Afterwards they sat naked in the early sunlight to dry off. When the warmth had soaked into them and charged their blood, they made love yet again. Afterwards she said solemnly, ‘I thought nothing could be better than yesterday, but today is.’

‘I want to give you something that will always remind you of how happy we were on this day.’ Leon stood up and dived from the ledge.

She watched him growing smaller and less distinct as he swam down, until finally he had faded into the depths. He was down for so long that she grew anxious until, with a lift of relief, she saw him coming up. He broke through the surface and, with a shake of his head, flicked his wet hair out of his eyes. He swam to the bank below her and clambered up on to the ledge. Then he held up a necklace of ivory beads strung on a leather thong.

‘It’s beautiful!’ She clapped her hands.

‘Two thousand years ago, when she passed this way, the Queen of Sheba offered it to the gods of the pool. Now I give it to you.’ He looped the necklace around her throat and tied it at the nape of her neck.

She looked at the beads as they lay between her breasts, and stroked them as though they were living things. ‘Did the Queen of Sheba really pass this way?’ she asked.

‘Almost certainly not.’ He laughed at her. ‘But it makes a good story.’

‘They’re so lovely, so smooth and delicate.’ She turned one between her fingers. ‘Oh, I wish I had a mirror.’

He led her to the end of the ledge and stood beside her with his arm around her waist. ‘Look down,’ he told her. Silently and seriously they regarded their naked images in the mirror-like surface of the water. At last Leon asked softly, ‘Who is that girl in the water? Her name isn’t Eva von Wellberg, is it?’ He watched her expression crumble and her eyes mist with incipient tears. ‘I’m so sorry. I promised not to make you sad.’

‘No!’ She shook her head. ‘You did the right thing. We’ve had our little dream together, but now it’s time to face reality.’ She turned away from the reflections in the pool and looked up at him. ‘You’re right, Leon. I’m not Eva von Wellberg – von Wellberg was my mother’s maiden name. My name is Eva Barry.’ She took his hand. ‘Come and sit with me and I’ll tell you all you want to know about Eva Barry.’ She led him back to the ledge and they sat cross-legged, facing each other.

‘I must warn you that it’s a mundane and grubby little tale, not much for me to be proud of, and very little in it for your comfort, but I shall try to make it as painless as possible for both of us.’ She drew a deep breath, then went on: ‘Twenty-two years ago I was born in a little village in Northumberland. My father was an Englishman, but my mother was German. I learned the language at her knee. By the time I was twelve my German was almost as good as my English. That was the year my mother died of a terrible new disease, which the doctors called infantile paralysis or poliomyelitis. The sickness paralysed her lungs and she suffocated. Within days of her death my father was struck by the same disease and his legs withered away. He spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair.’

At first she spoke deliberately but then the words spilled out of her in short, breathless rushes. Once she began to weep. He took her in his arms and hugged her. She pressed her face to his chest, and her tears were hot on his skin.

He stroked her hair. ‘I didn’t mean to cause you distress. You don’t have to tell me. Hush now. It’s all right, Eva, my darling.’

‘I do have to tell you, Badger. I have to tell you everything, but please hold me tight while I do it.’

He picked her up and carried her to a place in the shade away from the waterfall so that it would not drown her voice. He sat with her in his lap as though she was a hurting little girl. ‘If you must, then tell me,’ he invited her.

‘Daddy’s name was Peter, but I called him Curly because he had not a hair on his head.’ She smiled through the tears. ‘He was the most beautiful man in the world, despite his bad legs and his bald head. I loved him so very much, and wouldn’t allow anybody else to look after him. I did everything for him. I was a clever child and he wanted me to go to the university in Edinburgh to develop my natural gifts, but I wouldn’t leave him. Despite his ruined body he had an extraordinary mind. He was an engineering genius. Sitting in his wheelchair, he dreamed up revolutionary mechanical principles. He formed a small company and hired two mechanics to help him build the models of his designs. But he hardly had enough money to feed us after he had paid his workmen’s wages and for the materials. Without money, the patents were worthless. With money, they might have been converted into something of real value.’

She broke off and sniffed back her tears, then wiped her wet nose on his chest. It was such a childlike gesture that he was deeply touched. He kissed the top of her head, and she cuddled against him. ‘You don’t have to go on,’ he said.

‘Yes, I do. If I am ever to mean anything to you, you have a right to know all these things. I don’t want ever to hide anything from you.’ She took a deep breath. ‘One day a man came with great secrecy to Curly’s workshop. He said he was a lawyer, and that he represented a client who was enormously rich, a financier, who owned factories that built steam engines and rolling stock, motorcars and aeroplanes. The client had seen Curly’s registered designs in the patents office in London. He had recognized their potential value. He proposed an equal partnership. Curly would provide his intellectual properties and this man the finances. Curly signed an agreement with him. The financier was German so the contract was in German. Although his wife had been German, Curly understood no more than a few simple words of the contract. He was a gentle, gullible genius, not a businessman. I was a child of fifteen, and Curly never mentioned the contract to me before he signed it. He should have done so because I would have been able to read it to him. I handled all our expenses, and I had become good with money. Perhaps he realized that if I had known of the contract I would certainly have tried to dissuade him, and Curly hated arguments. He always chose the easier option, and in this case it was simply not to tell me about it.’ She broke off and sighed, then visibly braced herself to continue.

‘The name of Curly’s new partner was Graf Otto von Meerbach. Only he wasn’t a partner, he was the owner of the company. In a very short time Curly learned that by signing the contract he had sold the company and all the patents it owned to Meerbach Motor Works for a pitifully small sum. One of Curly’s patents led directly to the creation of the Meerbach rotary engine, another to a revolutionary differential system for Meerbach heavy vehicles. Curly tried to find a lawyer to help him regain what rightfully belonged to him, but the Meerbach contract was iron-clad and no lawyer would touch the case.

‘The money from the sale of the company did not last us long. Although I scrimped and saved, Curly’s medical expenses ate it up. Doctors and medicines . . . I never knew they cost so much. Then there was the rent, gas and warm clothes for Curly. The circulation in his legs was bad and he felt the cold terribly but coal was so expensive. In winter he was always ill. For a few months he had a job in the mill, but he was off sick from work so often that they dismissed him. He could get no other work. Bills, bills and more bills.

‘Two days after my sixteenth birthday Curly had one of his attacks. I ran to fetch the doctor. We already owed him more than twenty pounds but Dr Symmonds never refused to come when Curly needed him. When he and I got back to the room in which we lived, we found that Curly had killed himself with his old shotgun. Many times before I had tried to sell that gun to buy food, but he would never part with it. Only as I stood beside his headless corpse did I realize why he had been so stubborn about keeping it. That marvellous brain of his was splattered all over the wall behind his wheelchair. Later, when the undertaker had taken him away, I had to mop up the stain.’