Michael Ridpath - See No Evil

August 23

I called him! He really is back in South Africa already. He has wall-to-wall meetings with Zyl News people, but there’s a hole in his schedule tomorrow around one-thirty. I’m meeting him for lunch at his hotel. This is stupid, but I really can’t wait. I feel like a schoolgirl on her first date. No, her second date.

Talked to Todd last night. He’s looking forward to coming home. It’s only ten days away now. He sounds quite taken with this Francesca girl.

August 24

Boy, what a great day! We shouldn’t have done that, but I’m so glad we did. I want to tell the whole world how happy I am, if only for a few hours. But I can’t do that so I’ll just write it down here.

It’s obvious who I’m talking about from the last couple of days’ entries, isn’t it? It’s Benton. It’s so good to be with him. Physically, he’s young and strong and he has a great body. I like my men big, and he’s bigger than Neels. Oops — I didn’t mean that quite as it looks on the page. He’s tall and he has broad shoulders and he’s... Yeah. Well. Maybe I did mean that.

But he’s intelligent and he’s well educated and well read and yes he is black and yes there is something illicit about that which I find exciting and yes in this country black is the forbidden fruit and yes there is something exhilarating about showing these Nazis that a blonde white woman can want to have sex with a black man, can enjoy it, that it’s natural, healthy and right. It just feels right. I know it’s so wrong but it feels right.

We were oh, so restrained at lunch. I didn’t touch him apart from a quick kiss on the cheek when we met. People turned and stared, I mean Benton is a very tall man and he dresses very well, and I recognized one of Neels’s business acquaintances. Although we didn’t tell Neels we were meeting, we will tell him we had lunch afterwards. It will be natural, innocent.

Then we blew it. We only had an hour and a half for lunch before Benton had to go to his next meeting and time was nearly up when he grinned and said he needed to make a call. He was back a minute later to say that something had come up on another deal he was working on and he would have to go up to his room and sort it out. It would mean he would miss his next meeting at Zyl News. We left the restaurant, he went upstairs to his room, I spent five heart-thumping minutes in the bathroom, it seemed such a long time, and then I took the elevator up and joined him.

It was fantastic!

I told Benton about Operation Drommedaris. I made him promise not to discuss it with anyone, no one at Bloomfield Weiss and certainly not Neels. I had to tell someone about it, and he’s the one person I know who I trust and couldn’t possibly have links to the Laagerbond. I didn’t tell him about the man Moolman, but he could see I was scared.

It sounds like my suspicions are well founded. The people at Bloomfield Weiss and Zyl News have been trying to figure out how they can raise their bid for the Herald. They are all desperate. Zyl News is bust if they don’t do a deal, but if they overpay it’s bust too. Then last week Neels announced to Benton and his boss that he had a possible new source of funds. He was very cagey about where these funds came from and Benton is suspicious. Even though the origin appears to be South African, Neels assured them that there would be no exchange-control issues. Money is money and Bloomfield Weiss aren’t about to ask difficult questions.

Benton says that Beatrice Pienaar goes everywhere with Neels. She’s in South Africa right now. But this time, in Benton’s arms, I don’t mind so much. In fact, it makes me feel less guilty.

I told him I have to see him again soon. He’s flying up to Jo’burg tomorrow to do some more due diligence on the Zyl News papers there, and he says he can stay on for the weekend. Neels is flying back to Philadelphia tonight, so it might work. We’ll have to be much more careful. I said I would find somewhere discreet for us to go, somewhere outside the city. I’m not sure where, but I will think of something.

I still feel scared about all that Laagerbond stuff, but I’m scared and excited at the same time.

God, I can’t wait till the weekend!

August 25

We had a board meeting of the Guguletu Project today. Libby and I went for a walk in the Kirstenbosch Gardens afterwards. I love that place: it’s halfway up the eastern side of Table Mountain and you get a view of the huge sprawl of townships on Cape Flats, including Guguletu. All the plants in the gardens are native to South Africa. It’s where I got most of the ideas for the fynbos beds at Hondehoek.

I told Libby about Benton; I couldn’t help it. She was encouraging almost to the point of jealousy. I really don’t give her marriage to Dennis much more time. She was also amazed by how young he is. It’s true that he is ten years younger than me, but he doesn’t seem that way to me. God knows what he sees in me. Libby said something bitchy about the boss’s wife. Maybe there is something in that. Maybe I’m his forbidden fruit.

We discussed the problem of where to take him. I told her I’d like to show Benton the bush, the real Africa. I had thought about Mala Mala, but that place is so popular now. Then she suggested a game farm that an old friend of hers from school owns. It’s very private, very discreet, and there are plenty of lions. I love watching lions. It’s called Kupugani, which means “raise yourself” in Zulu. It’s named for that big campaign in the sixties to give away the surplus milk produced by white dairy farmers to starving Africans. It was quite subversive in its time. Phyllis, the owner, is a widow and shares Libby’s liberal views. Libby’s quite sure that Phyllis wouldn’t mind a mixed-race couple, in fact Libby thought she would get a kick out of it.

The idea appeals. Libby said she’d call her friend. I’ll need to come up with a good excuse. Or will I? Neels jets around the world at will with his girlfriend without asking my permission. Why should I ask his? I’ll just say I need to go away for a couple of days.

I think that Moolman has gotten the message that I have stopped asking questions about the Laagerbond. I haven’t seen any sign of him for almost two weeks now since I caught him hanging around outside Caroline’s school. But you never know, I’m still scared. I decided to write a letter to Mom in case something happens to me. I know it will freak her out, but at least I can trust my own family to do the right thing.

Calder kept a careful watch in his rear-view mirror all the way from Yeoville back to Sandton. The traffic was heavy and he was no expert at counter-surveillance so he couldn’t be certain whether there was anyone on his tail. As he approached the northern suburb, he took a diversion through a white residential neighbourhood, driving around two or three blocks and then back on the main street to Sandton. Nothing followed him.

The wealth of Sandton amazed him anew after the dilapidation of Yeoville. The whites had abandoned the centre of Johannesburg to create their own fortress of privilege, comforting to the well off, threatening to the dispossessed. They were behaving just like rich white people did all over the world. Libby had a point, Calder thought.

He parked the car in a well-secured underground bunker and took a lift up to the hotel forecourt and walked inside. Someone was waiting for him in an armchair facing the entrance.

Cornelius.

Calder checked the rest of the lobby. Empty apart from the hotel staff. He looked behind him. Two middle-aged women with cases were climbing into a cab.

‘I’m alone,’ said Cornelius, getting to his feet.

‘What are you doing here?’