Saffron screwed up her face, realized that she was in the wrong and said, ‘I’m sorry, Shasa. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘As for you, Shasa,’ Leon went on, ‘let this be a lesson. It’s both rude and extremely unwise to be ungentlemanly to a lady, particularly a Courtney lady, because believe me, my boy, they fight back. Honestly, if there is any young man on earth who ought to know what women are capable of, it’s you. Just think of your mother, for heaven’s sake, and all she’s achieved. Do you doubt her abilities, just because she’s a woman?’
‘No, sir.’
‘And are you sorry for doubting Saffron?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. That’s settled then, and no harm done. Now, Saffron, you’ve had a very long day. I think you should go and have that bath and perhaps, if you ask Cousin Centaine nicely, she’ll have some supper brought to your room. A bit of food and an early night is what you need, my girl.’
‘An excellent idea,’ said Centaine. ‘And I think you should do the same thing, Shasa. Bath, supper and bed … and then we can all have a fresh start in the morning.’
Shasa and Saffron walked upstairs together. When they got to the landing they paused before they went off to their rooms.
‘I wouldn’t have backed down, you know, when I went down the throat,’ Saffron said. ‘Even if you hadn’t got out of the way.’
‘I know,’ said Shasa. ‘And I wouldn’t have got out of the way, either, if it had been anyone else coming towards me.’
‘I know,’ she said.
With that they each satisfied their pride and went off to their baths with their honour and dignity intact, knowing that now they would be friends for life.
Saffron was sad to leave the haven of Weltevreden. As a motherless only child, she had loved having a relative her age to play with, and an older female role model to look up to. But after the blissful bucolic luxury of Centaine’s Cape Town estate, the size and noise and bustle of Johannesburg were an overwhelming assault to her. The city was five times as big as Nairobi, with more than a quarter of a million inhabitants, and they all seemed to move with a speed and urgency she had never experienced before, as if every single one of them had something urgent they simply had to achieve, right this very second.
‘That’s the Johannesburg Stock Exchange,’ Leon told her as they passed an ornate building, fronted by great marble columns, that covered an entire city block on Hollard Street. ‘The companies that control half the world’s gold and diamonds are traded there.’
‘It looks like a palace,’ Saffron said.
‘Well it is, in a way. It’s the palace of Mammon, the demon of money.’
Over lunch, Leon gave Saffron a quick explanation of how company shares and stock exchanges worked and was surprised by the speed with which she picked up the ideas he was presenting to her. So far, he felt, the day had gone well. He’d been perfectly happy purchasing Saffron’s tuck box, on which her name was even now being painted in elegant black capital letters. And having led countless groups of travellers and hunters across the wilds of British East Africa during his pre-War days as a safari guide he was completely at home debating the best possible trunks to buy to carry all Saffron’s increasingly vast amounts of baggage.
After leaving the restaurant where they had lunched, they arrived at the school outfitters. Suddenly talk turned to dresses, blouses, pinafores and other items of youthful female attire and Leon’s expertise gave way to bafflement. When the shop’s manageress, who’d had no need even to glance at the list to know what it contained, got on to the subject of gym knickers a look passed across her father’s face that Saffron had never in all her life seen before.
Oh my goodness, he’s blushing! she thought to herself, desperately trying to keep a straight face. He’s so embarrassed he doesn’t even know where to look.
‘Perhaps it would be best if Father took a seat and let Miss Courtney and I proceed by ourselves,’ the manageress said. ‘I take it, sir, that I have your permission to select the items that Miss will need for her time at Roedean?’
‘Yes, yes, absolutely, whatever she needs, excellent plan,’ Leon had blustered. Saffron couldn’t swear to it, but she was almost certain the manageress, who had seemed rather fearsome when they had first been introduced, actually winked at her as they walked away to deal with those mysterious aspects of female existence that were best kept hidden from the uncomprehending eyes of men.
Saffron had felt as though she was being initiated into some mysterious but exciting new world as the manageress, whose name was now revealed to be Miss Halfpenny, took an appraising look at her chest, said, ‘Someone should have bought you a brassiere by now, young lady.’ She sighed, ‘But that’s a mother’s job …’
‘I don’t have a mother,’ Saffron said. ‘She died when I was seven.’
‘I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid I feared as much. When a girl walks in with her father …’ She left the sentence unfinished, but then gave a brisk sigh and said, ‘Never mind, best just get on with it, hadn’t we? Lots of children don’t have a mother, or a father, or even both, what with the war and the Spanish Flu and who knows what. But they find a way to manage and I’m sure you will too. Just let me help you and I’m sure we’ll sort you out with everything you need.’
Saffron had been hearing this kind of stiff-upper-lip encouragement for years, but she sensed a genuine kindness in Miss Halfpenny’s voice. As she rummaged in glass-fronted drawers for bras and knickers and stockings, occasionally holding up an item in front of Saffron’s coltish, long-limbed frame, checking it for size and either discarding it on one pile or placing it on another, much larger heap of things to be tried on, Miss Halfpenny chatted away about what Saffron could expect at Roedean, and what the teachers and girls were like.
‘Your father couldn’t have picked a better place. Roedean girls, in my experience, are bright, independent, thoroughly modern young ladies. Plenty of them go on to university, too. And they are all trained to be able to earn their own living.’
‘Daddy said I needed to know about more than cookery and needlework and flower arranging.’
Miss Halfpenny gave an approving nod. ‘Well said, that man. And I’m sure he’s thinking about your mother and what she would have wanted for you and he’s trying his very best to make her happy.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Saffron. But from the moment Miss Halfpenny said those words, her attitude to her new school changed. She resolved that she would do everything to make her mother happy, too, with the result that having turned up at Roedean in mid-January for the first day of the new academic year she plunged into school life with all the energy she possessed. Her naturally athletic physique and fiercely competitive nature made her a demon on the hockey pitch and netball court and her rapidly growing height saw her cast for many a male role in the school’s dramatic productions. It took her a term or two to learn how to adapt to boarding school life, which requires pupils to be able to get along with people with whom they share not only classrooms but also dormitories, bathrooms and every meal of the day. Saffron soon made friends, however, for her classmates knew that while her temper could be stormy she was neither malicious, nor deceitful: she said precisely what she thought, for better or for worse, and once decided on a course of action stuck to it, come hell or high water. If her ancestors were looking down from on high they must have smiled, for no Courtney had ever done anything else.
Soon after his return from South Africa, Leon had to go into Nairobi to carry out various administrative