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ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Born
in 1936 at Germiston in the Transvaal, Raised in the semi-rural outskirts of They
settled in the Eshowe/Ntumeni area of Life
in a new country, in spite of having a common language, was not easy and while
struggling with a variety of business ventures, William started recording his
memoirs of his life in One
Jane
watched the two birds on the driveway with interest. One was a Bar Shouldered
and the other a Crested dove. They were only two or three paces from her as they
pecked at the scattered seed under the huge teak tree. Dappled shadows made
their colouration change, from bold iridescence one minute to soft grey-brown
the next as they busily passed backwards and forwards out of shade into sunlight
and back again, filling their crops with the scattered grain. The metallic bronze of the Bar Shouldered was broken with black lines
across his back and wings, his slate grey head and chest and light grey face
contrasted dramatically with the metallic iridescence. The other was a much softer grey and pinkish with splashes of green and
ruby-red shine on his wings, a handsome fellow with his thorn-like crest and red
eyes and feet. Although he was bigger, he was being bullied as the other tried
in vain to chase him off. And possibly, because the rickety platform of a nest,
on which two white eggs were precariously balanced, was head-high in a nearby
tangle of vines, which climbed up into the canopy of a rainforest remnant, he
appeared to be more cautious and gave ground to his good looking cousin. But
never was he driven off more than a couple of metres, nor did he take to the
air. Suddenly as if with regained confidence, food gathering forgotten, with
his chest thrust forward and crest held high like a guardsman, he purposefully
marched from the driveway across the lawn to where his mate was drinking from
the birdbath. She was smaller, but identically marked. Jane noted their
greetings, mutual preening and then her excited feeding of freshly regurgitated
seed from his crop. He displayed by bobbing his head and spreading wide his tail
as though emulating a peacock. It was obviously all part of the courtship
procedure, as the female then allowed him to hop onto her back and with excited
fluttering consummate their pairing. It was impossible not to relate their behaviour to and compare it with,
human behaviour and Jane smiled as she thought of her own flirtations. The
transfer of food from his crop to hers was like a passionate and prolonged kiss
and the mutual preening and close contact reminded her so much of Robbie’s
gentle caress of her face and neck that she shivered at the memory of it. Well, it usually was that way. His fingers on her skin were soothing and
infinitely relaxing, especially at the back of her neck and around her ears. But
last night had been different. They had felt as though he was passing low
voltage electric shocks into her. She hadn’t been at all soothed and the
experience hadn’t been in the slightest relaxing. She had been on fire and
severely discomforted. Her squirming nervousness and panting breath seemed to
excite him and had made him heavy handed until at last his finger light caresses
turned to painful graspings and the spell was broken. She had jumped up from the
verandah couch and ran inside the house. His kisses which had been so gentle and soft to start with, moist with
flicking contact of tongues had become hard and demanding; so much so that her
lips were still bruised and slightly swollen. She hadn’t been able to relax
for a moment as his hands roamed her body, trying to make skin contact. And she
had spent all her time concentrating on how to restrict his hands to the private
parts that she felt comfortable with; and instead of rough grasping, to
caresses, under which soothing influence she could relax. Even now she was disturbed and the colour rose to her face thinking of
it, and again she shivered with delicious anticipation, but dreaded the outcome
if she was not strong enough to put a final stop to this liaison. She was not
free to accept his attentions. Nor was he free to give them. Not yet anyway. Robbie’s house was large and square. It had been built by a glamorous
Italian, who claimed to be of noble blood - many Italians did; and this one had
had as much good taste as she obviously had money. It was magnificent, with
walls at least half a metre thick, an ornate ventilation and light-dome on the
roof and wide verandahs on all four sides of the house on both levels. Every
room in the house, except of course the bathrooms and the huge central hall, had
access to the verandahs. It was a house for the tropics set high on a hill
overlooking the ocean, and even when the temperatures went into the forties,
which they often did, it was a cool retreat from the blazing brassy heat. Robbie’s father had bought the property when the three boys were in
their early teens, when the family’s growing prosperity allowed for such
extravagances. It was a definite lift up as far as they were concerned. The old
family compound had been in the dockland area and their early playgrounds were
the narrow streets. Their environment and of necessity their friends from lower
income families, toughened them and made them street wise and, although they
would not have changed their new situation for quids, they often reminisced with
nostalgia. Many of those tough kids were now company employees, several in
management positions. Several of his They were shippers. Two generations earlier in colonial times his
grandfather and great uncle as young men had built a barge of sorts and sedately
transported goods up and down the river. Any form of river transport was in
demand and they quickly expanded their business by buying two ocean going
freighters. By the time they retired and handed over the running of the business
to their sons, the small start-up fleet had grown into a giant with ships of all
sizes and shapes. The next generation expanded the business further by
diversifying into shipbuilding and repairs, with an emphasis on Government
contracts for the navy. Robbie, his brothers and their many cousins as third
generation shipping magnates, were now piloting the company into ever more
complicated and risky waters. Talented as they were, and having had many years to get used to the
status of ‘Very Wealthy’, they
still behaved as though they were from the wrong side of the tracks and were
treated as such by the social set of their sea-side harbour city. Of the three siblings Robert was the eldest, but only by a year, and
confusingly was named after his father and grandfather. Then his poor mother had
produced twins. With so many family members in close proximity she had had
plenty of help, but she always made heavy weather of mothering. She irritated
the whole extended family with her continual complaints, even the boys, who
escaped her attentions at every opportunity and who welcomed the chance to get
away from her by cheerfully going to school earlier every morning than need be.
Robbie’s father too took refuge in his work; and the company prospered. After thirteen years of nagging, he had capitulated and bought
up-market. Within a year he was a widower. The more malicious in the family said
that with nothing more to whinge about, life had not been worth living. So she
did a Cleopatra, but instead of an Asp clasped to the breast, it was an Eastern
Brown snake, which she had disturbed in the spacious garden. Ironic really. She
had fought her husband for so long to acquire a garden. When she got the best
that money could buy, it indirectly contributed to her death. Snakes were not
all that common in the dockland area, whereas up here in leafy suburbia they
were not all that rare. It was bad luck. Nobody could have chosen a more deadly
and aggressive snake to disturb and even Cleopatra would have been better served
with The house was magnificent. It was a family home and every room showed
that it was well used and comfortable. But that didn’t detract from its
elegance and the family didn’t feel at all coy about entertaining VIPs from
all walks of life, such as industrialists and politicians, even the Governor of
the State. All visitors had to relax, fling their jackets aside and loosen their
neckties. No ceremony was permitted and anybody displaying airs and graces was
usually very quickly - some even said rudely - put in their place. There was
talk once of the royals being received at the house, but the bureaucrats in
charge decided not to risk it. They thought that Robert would have had the Queen
barefoot on the croquet lawn before the first round of cucumber sandies had been
served, with all further entertainment deteriorating from that frenetic and
rowdy start. A lot of money usually changed hands on the croquet pitch and a lot
of accusations of foul play and bad sportsmanship accompanied every game. Entering the house gave one the momentary impression of walking a pace
or two down a dark passage towards the light, one’s eyes having to adjust from
the harsh tropical brightness to the dim interior. Even on the hottest day the
entrance hall was degrees cooler than the outside. The entrance was a fair sized
room with no external windows and floored with Italian white marble tiles. The
grain was so indistinct that it was not usually noticed and the room was
furnished with heavy black oak furniture - tables, dressers and display
cabinets. A few uncomfortable chairs for ornamental purposes rather than comfort
were positioned in this room, which was not meant to be anything other than the
entrance to the home and a rather imposing throughway. Heavy gilt framed mirrors
and pictures led one’s eyes upwards to the high ceiling, which was ornately
decorated with plaster moulds of lilies and blushing cupids, which if you took a
moment to study were all engaged in somewhat promiscuous activities and had good
cause to blush. Intellectuals remarked on the Renaissance qualities of the art.
In fact it was much more modern than that - Robert junior’s work in fact,
showing his irreverent side, his sense of the ridiculous and love of erotica. This was the Black and White room. The walls and ceiling were white and
so too predominantly was the floor. The furniture was black. Other distracting
colours were not immediately noticed. A very large bottle of scotch of the
appropriate brand with six glasses stood on a silver tray on the ornamental
sideboard. To complete Robert’s sense of the ridiculous, two larger than life
size ceramic Dalmatians sat guarding the entrance through to the inner hall.
Their creator had managed to give them wicked leering expressions and their
sexual equipment had been exaggerated to such an extent, pink-tipped and
apparently ready for use, that first time visitors to the home were either
shocked to the core, or seriously amused. Robbie called them his icebreakers. He was responsible for the entire décor.
His father had thrown out most of his mother’s tasteless junk, as soon as it
was tactful to do so; only to be replaced by what Robbie considered to be
expensive junk. He in turn had wasted no time after his father’s death a few
years ago in stamping his own personality on the house and garden. No door separated the Black and White room from the interior hall. One
passed through a wide, deep arch, under the stairs into the light and airy
central room. Every room in the house led off this one. It was more than two
storeys high as its glass dome was the light source above the roofline. This
dome also housed and hid an air extraction fan, which helped maintain the
comfortable temperature, whatever the weather outside. Sparsely furnished, because it was the main thoroughfare through the
house, but richly decorated, its grand stairway was really all that was needed
to please the eye. It started its climb half way along the west wall, ascended
all the way along the north wall and curved onto the second floor landing on the
east side. The banister was a wide deeply polished warm local timber which
seemed to glow, supported by delicately intricate columns of wrought-iron, and
it continued along the landing, forming a balustrade, which followed the same
geometric curves of the ascending staircase along the east, south and west
walls. The walls were decorated with very bright paintings, all originals and
all the products of local artists and of Robbie himself. If the entrance hall was furnished to promote the feeling of coolness
and a sense of risqué, this room reflected vitality, light and airiness. Both
were very elegant. Robbie had made his personal contribution to the collection
of art works. Several of his charcoal sketches drawn as cartoons decorated the
Black and White room and, irreverent as they were, they usually caused a few
smiles, especially as the characters were predominantly of family and friends
and easily recognised. Two of his most colourful oils hung in the main hall, one
an abstract and the other in the style of the impressionists. The twins were David and William, born in that order and separated in
age by a few minutes. They were nearly impossible to tell apart. But as similar
as they were to each other in looks, it was something of a surprise to see how
different were their personalities and interests. Because the three boys were so close in age they appeared to be triplets
for most of their young lives and the two younger ones gave little respect to
their elder brother. All three learnt very early that to get what they wanted
usually meant they had to battle for it and from the beginning their fights were
monumental. Competition was a feature in every aspect of their lives. Robert senior
seemed to think it important as to who could run the fastest; or who could swim
the fastest; who could hit the golf ball furthermost; or who could get the
highest grades at school and later, with the onset of puberty, who could attract
and score with the greatest number and the prettiest of their many admirers. It
probably honed their skills and, certainly when they were members of the same
team such as rugby or rowing and later when managing the family company, they
pulled together for the common good, usually with brilliant end results. But
nobody on their teams enjoyed the ride. It was always bumpy in places. There appeared to be tension between them; some said latent hostility.
Sibling rivalry is nothing new and their father did nothing to lessen it. Never
a day passed without Robert provoking some competition, while at the same time,
stressing the necessity of family unity and he never to his dying day saw the
contradiction of this. One would have thought that the pressure to excel would have resulted in
an explosion, or even in an abdication by the weakest of the trio from their
ultra competitive life-style. But it never did lead to an obvious break-up,
probably because there was no obvious weakling. One thing that was painfully
clear though, brothers that they may have been, there was no brotherly love
between them. They stood shoulder to shoulder in a team situation. But had they
been gladiators they would have relished the thought of delivering the killing
blow against either one of the others. Closer examination by trained people
would have detected that the younger twin was always the instigator and might
have ascribed this to some form of insecurity. Robbie being the eldest had a slight physical advantage in the very
early years, even though the twins overtook him in height as teenagers. He also
had the advantage of an artistic bent and that was something that the twins did
not bother with and they certainly never thought their elder brother’s gift an
advantage. There was no music in their family, but Robbie, apparently without any
undue effort, learned to play the piano and the violin. The dockland scenes in
watercolours and oils, which adorned the company boardroom and entrance foyer,
were all done by him. A complete record of every company ship - even the ones
before his time, which he had not seen but had had to rely on written
descriptions, graced the maritime museum, as well as all the uncles’ and
cousins’ homes and had even earned high praise from the local artistic
community. None doubted that, if need be, he could earn his living as a painter
or musician. This talent and hobby did not interfere with his other activities,
although there was the memorable occasion when during an explosive game of
cowboys and Indians, or cops and robbers, involving his brothers, all his
cousins, and most of the other kids on the block, his easel was upset. The
half-completed picture was dumped in the mud and his paints scattered. The
entire gang was put to flight and one cousin had been taken to hospital for
multiple stitches in the gash on his head, where one of Robert’s many telling
punches had lingering effect. Few people bothered him after that and nobody ever
dreamed of describing him as a sissy. Although several of his cousins qualified as accountants, as did Robbie,
the twins seemed interested in more practical things. They both had academic
ability and eventually qualified as marine engineers. But from an early age they
showed that they were handy with their hands. No toy remained intact for long,
not bikes, nor later motor bikes. All had had to be taken apart to see what the
innards were like, before being re-assembled. David, the elder twin, deviated slightly from William’s interest, in
that he became passionate about planning and building; while William liked
nothing better than to make sure that high performance engines operated as
efficiently as he was capable in making them. So one was a developer and
builder, nautically speaking and the other the operational and maintenance guru. Competition with one another in their professional lives was reduced to
a minimum because of this difference of interests. But in just about everything
else they did, it was fierce. David’s passion and volcanic enthusiasm was a
constant source of irritation to William. He was much more deliberate and saved
his displays of emotion for when they were needed to achieve a result. One twin
was an extrovert and the other an introvert. William did not see the need to
wear a smile unless something had amused him, or the need to speak unless
something had to be said. Socially he was something of a dead loss, small talk
and the social froth of chitchat and bright-eyed jollity boring him to
distraction. So, to all who came casually into contact with him, he appeared distant
and disinterested. Much closer contact revealed that he was as passionate as his
brothers, with a dangerously volatile temper and devious characteristics. Click on the cart below to purchase this book:
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