Michael Ridpath - See No Evil

August 14

Neels didn’t get back here until nine last night. He looked exhausted. He poured himself a large brandy and sat by the fire. I joined him.

“I saw George Field yesterday,” I began.

“Oh, yes?” Neels replied without interest.

“He says that there have been spies on the Mail .”

“I know. We’ve had several conversations about it over the years. He sacked a journalist back in May.”

“Has he mentioned Beatrice Pienaar?”

“No he hasn’t.” Neels’s eyes flashed angrily. “Why should he?”

“He told me she seemed suspicious.”

“Well, she isn’t. Anyway, she’s working in Philadelphia, not here. And she was introduced by Daniel Havenga. He’s a friend of mine.”

“Who’s probably a member of the Broederbond.”

“Every Afrikaner of any importance is a member of the Broederbond. There are thousands of them.”

“Including you?”

“No!” Neels said. “I’ve told you. I’m not a member.”

“Have they ever asked you?”

“No. I’m sure they would have done if they thought I would say yes. But apart from anything else, the Mail has written dozens of articles over the years exposing their activities.”

“Is the Broederbond anything to do with the Laagerbond?” I asked.

Neels frowned. “I thought I told you not to concern yourself with that subject.”

I felt a surge of anger that I did my best to control. The fact that he had called me scum that night still hurt. The fact that we were sitting calmly discussing his mistress as if she were any other employee hurt more. But I had something important I wanted him to know. “You’re right. It’s forgotten.” He glanced at me sharply. I tried to smile. “Who you see is your business,” I said. “I don’t want to know anything about it.”

“Good,” he said. “We should be careful who we speak to, what we do. All of us. This country is getting more and more dangerous. I need to have a word with Zan, tell her she must stop going to whatever meetings she goes to while she’s staying with us. And you should be careful too.”

“Neels, listen to yourself,” I said. “Think of all the brave men and women you have supported over the years. People who have been to jail for what they believe in. How can you of all people have a problem with Zan going to an End Conscription meeting? Or with me, well, me...”

I had started a sentence I didn’t know how to finish. Neels noticed. “You what, Martha?” he said. “What have you done that I might have a problem with?”

“Nothing.” I thought of Libby Wiseman, of the police photographers at Thando’s funeral. And of Moolman. Especially of Moolman. “I told you, who you deal with is your affair.”

He wasn’t convinced. “Listen,” he said. “We’re in the endgame here, and it’s being played for high stakes. These days, you’re no longer immune, you know, none of us is. You could end up in jail or worse. Remember the promise you made to me just after we were married?”

That did it. Until then I was willing to pretend that Beatrice didn’t exist, that she didn’t matter, just for an evening. I slammed down my glass. “We both made promises when we got married, Neels. I’ll keep mine if you keep yours!” I stormed up to bed.

Neels came up much later. But we didn’t speak.

Eventually, Neels fell asleep. But as I lay in bed awake my thoughts drifted from Neels to him. In fact, I can’t get him out of my mind. I wonder when I will see him again. I can’t wait to hear from him.

Later...

We’ve just had a visitor. Penelope. And what a visit! It would have been funny if it wasn’t so sad.

She arrived at about three o’clock in the afternoon, with a driver, thank God. I was in the garden pruning the roses with Finneas. We like to do that together, compare strategies. When they bloom the rose garden looks gorgeous, and I think much of that is down to our pruning. The bok-makieries were whooping loudly to each other in the stinkwood tree.

Anyway, I saw a Jaguar roll up the drive and Penelope got out, tottered up to the front door in her ridiculous white heels and rang the bell. I walked up behind her and said hello. She almost jumped out of her skin. She was wearing tight bright yellow pants and a white frilly blouse. I haven’t seen her for five years at least. She’s gotten a lot heavier and she sags and her hair is dyed an orange color; it really didn’t go with the pants. I’ve seen photographs of her when she married Neels and she was stunning: a terrific figure and flashing eyes under long lashes. Even a few years ago you could see some vestiges of that beauty. But not now. Now she’s old, fat, and bitter.

“Hello, Penelope,” I said with what I hoped was a polite smile.

“I’ve come to pick up my daughter.”

“I didn’t know she was expecting you?”

“She’s not. But I’ve come to take her back.”

“What do you mean?”

Penelope drew herself up to her full height. She’s not nearly as tall as me, but she was standing on the front doorstep and she was wearing heels, so she looked down on me. “I mean that you have taken my daughter, and I am taking her back. You’ve been keeping her here and forbidding her to come and see me. Well, I won’t have it.”

Her accent has always irritated me, the way she affects an upper-class British twang. I noticed a slight slur in her words for the first time, and there was a whiff of alcohol in the air. I wasn’t surprised.

“She’s twenty-four,” I said. “She can come and go as she pleases. You can’t take her and I can’t keep her.”

“You’ve stolen her from me, haven’t you? Just like you stole my husband and you stole my family newspapers.”

For a wicked moment I felt like admitting that I had stolen her husband, and I was sorry, and she could have him back now. She and Neels would have a whale of a time together.

“Speaking of the newspapers, I hear they’re up for sale. Is that right?”

“I believe so,” I said.

“Well, I hope Neels realizes that they are my family’s papers. If he sells them he should at least have the decency to give me what he gets for them.”

“I’ll pass that on,” I said. When Penelope gets going on the subject of the newspapers she can be very tiresome. I understand her anger to some extent. Soon after she and Neels got married, her father staked him to buy the ailing newspaper group that owned the Johannesburg Post and the Durban Age . A couple of years later he provided him with the funds to buy the Cape Daily Mail. It was a gift. As Neels tells it, he and Penelope’s father got on very well and the old man was quite happy to give the money to him, not invest it, nor insist that the shares were in Penelope’s name as well as Neels’s. He died in 1967, leaving Penelope a fortune in mining shares, by the way. Then, when she and Neels divorced in 1970, she argued that she deserved at least a 50 percent share in the newspapers. It all got ugly, and Neels spared me the details, but I know he kept ownership of Zyl News. It rankled, it obviously still rankles. She has no need of the money. I think what upsets her is the papers are a continuing reminder of her father’s love for Neels. Maybe once they’re sold she’ll calm down.

“Well, where is she?”

“I’ll see if I can find her.” I left Penelope on the doorstep — it may have been rude but there was no way I was going to let her into the house — and walked around to the back. Zan was powering up and down our swimming pool. It’s really too small for her, she spends most of her energy doing tumble turns, but she craves the exercise, and she swims every day no matter how cold it is. I told her her mother was out front. She grimaced.