Dictator Read Free

girl will be the death of me. And you could have done something to help, my darling, instead of sitting there stuffing your face while your daughter was being so rude.’
    Dick Stratten didn’t respond. He had long since learned that there were times when nothing a husband said could possibly be right. It was best just to let his wife have her say and get things out of her system.
    Out on the lawn, Zalika stopped in mid-stride and spun to face her parents, still sitting at their lunch. ‘Look!’ she cried, flinging one hand back up at the sky. ‘Can’t you see? It’s Andy! He’s back from Buweku! He’s brought Moses home!’
    Stratten frowned as he peered out towards the horizon, following the line of his daughter’s arm.
    ‘My God, the girl’s right,’ he said. ‘I must be going blind in my old age.’
    Now he rose too, stepping up to the wooden rail that ran round the edge of the veranda, the evident strength and fitness of his body giving the lie to his claims of decrepitude.
    ‘Oh, you’re not so bad … not for such a very old man,’ said Jacqui, teasingly.
    They’d met when Dick was thirty and she a girl of eighteen, just a year older than Zalika. His family and friends, all stalwarts of white Malemban society, had been appalled: she was too young and, even more importantly, too common for the heir to the Stratten estates. Dick didn’t care what anyone else thought. His view of the world was shaped far more by the law of the jungle than the niceties of social convention. As far as he was concerned, Jacqui Klerk was the most desirable female he had ever clapped eyes on and he was damn well going to have her as his mate. Twenty-six years later, they were still together and that youthful animal passion had deepened into a lifelong partnership.
    ‘Don’t be too hard on the girl,’ Stratten said.
    ‘Oh I know,’ his wife sighed. ‘It’s just, well, I worry that she’s going to turn into a wallflower if she doesn’t make a bit more of an effort. All one can see now, looking at her, is a mass of drab mousey hair and that great big Stratten nose.’
    ‘It’s a very splendid nose,’ said Stratten with exaggerated pride.
    ‘On a man like you, darling, yes it is. But not on a young girl. I know Zalika means “wondrously beautiful” in Arabic, but we have to accept our daughter will never be that. She could be a great deal less plain, though, if only she accepted even one of my suggestions.’
    ‘I don’t think she’s plain at all.’
    ‘Of course not, you’re her father.’
    ‘Anyway, I’m sure it’s just a phase. She’s trying to work out who she really is. It’s natural for her to rebel a little bit, all children do it.’
    ‘Andrew didn’t.’
    Stratten gave her a quizzical, not to say sceptical look. ‘Maybe you just didn’t see it. In any case, you are famously the most beautiful and best-dressed woman in the whole of southern Africa’ – Jacqui Stratten glowed in the warm light of her husband’s compliment – ‘so she’s rebelling against you by pretending to take no interest at all in how she looks. The second she finds a boy she really likes that will all change, just you wait.’
    Jacqui mused on the problem as she watched Zalika take a few more paces across the grass. As the plane drew closer she started waving her arms above her head. The girl’s frantic gestures were answered by a waggle of the plane’s wings. She squealed with delight then ran away again across the grass, calling out as she went, ‘I’ll go and meet them at the strip!’
    Zalika disappeared out of sight of the veranda. Not long afterwards came the sound of an engine starting up and the arid scrunch of tyres on dusty gravel.
    Jacqui’s thoughts turned to the boys her daughter was rushing to meet. Her son Andy – how handsome he was becoming, she mused proudly – and his lifelong friend Moses Mabeki, the son of the family’s estate manager. Moses was Andy’s equal in looks, with a finely