Poison Pen

"My goodness. I wonder how she had the gall to show up here."

"Who, Mrs. Smythe?" Samuel de Kock asked, turning to see the direction in which his companion was launching the piercing daggers of her eyes.

The woman took a step away from where she, and her husband, Major Sydney Smythe, and Samuel and his wife, Melissa, were standing. The small group was tasting the first pouring of the Lady M Cabernet Sauvignon offering of the Marymount Wines vineyard on the Kaep Hangtip peninsula east of Cape Town, South Africa.

Major Smythe put a restraining hand on her arm and muttered, "Not here, dear. Leave it."

The woman Georgia Smythe had been staring at, Susan Toliver, maiden sister of Pastor Henry Toliver, had just been getting out of a car in the car park next to the winery garden where the first pouring ceremony of the Lady M vintage was being held. The Toliver woman stopped one foot in and one foot out of the car, her eyes going to Mrs. Smythe, but more directly to an envelope protruding from Mrs. Smythe's handbag—a lavender-colored envelope. The color drained out of Ms. Toliver's face, she turned and snapped something to her brother, climbed back into the car, and, after the minister scurried around to the driver's seat, the car backed out of the car park and disappeared down the hill.

"My word, I wonder—" Melissa de Kock, a startling beautiful, blonde women, a slight smile on her face, started to say, but was interrupted by Mrs. Smythe again.

"The nerve of that woman."

"Come, Georgia, she's gone now," Major Smythe cajoled her. "And you know that no one here believes that gossip anyway."

"Ah, there is the deputy premier and his wife," Melissa said to her husband, Samuel, himself a golden boy, but a good five years Melissa's junior and much more casual and easygoing then Melissa's obvious marshalling of command. The winery was Samuel's in name, having inherited it from his parents, who had made it the premier wine estate, save one, in South Africa. But everyone in the region around Overberg knew who wielded the sword in managing and building the business.

Melissa used her sugary-sweet voice. "We must do the welcoming duties and get wineglasses in their hands and photographs with them." She smiled apologetically at the Smythes, while pulling another couple in to talk with them, the disengagement so smooth that whatever had set Georgia Smythe off was defused and she began chattering with the new couple. If she noticed that there was a lavender-colored envelope peeking out of the purse of the female half of the newly appearing couple, she said nothing.

The photo op with the province's deputy premier, the prints of which would go directly to the society pages of the Cape Town Daily Sun, taken care of, Melissa and Samuel peeled off in different directions. Melissa made the rounds of the black African servants, a mix of Khoikoi and Zulu young men, to direct them, rather pointedly, in more active service of glasses of the new vintage wine, and of sweets and savories on trays. Those who didn't want to try the new vintage, who wanted a previously proven white wine instead, were being served Master S, the winery's standard Chardonnay.

For his part, Samuel headed toward a small group of vintners from other wineries to sound them out on how jealous they were that the Lady M Cabernet Sauvignon had turned out so well. But before he could get to them, the overseer of the vineyards, the Dutchman, Jan Townenaar, a bit too coarse and scruffy for this gathering—and overpoweringly intimidating in his height and muscular bulk—came from out of the vineyard fields surrounding the garden and caught Samuel's eye. It was obvious that Townenaar was hard at work. He certainly wasn't dressed to be at the wine tasting. It was also clear that he had no part in the publicity or sales of the product—or gave much regard for those who did.

Showing a bit of irritation, Samuel pulled over to him and said, "Yes, Jan. What is it you want? As you can see, we are busy presenting the new Cab Sauv."

"I think there is something you need to see in the loft of the wine barrel shed, Mr. S," Townenaar said. "Unless, of course, you'd like to take care of it right here."

He towered over Samuel. He'd been overseer here since Samuel's parents had been running the operation and, although in his early fifties, he was still an imposing figure—gray haired, with rugged facile features, a perpetual deep tan from a life working in the fields, a barrel chest, and massive biceps. He was well over six feet tall, at least five inches taller than the well-formed, if diminutive, stature of Samuel. But he worked for Samuel, and, in front of the important guests present today, Samuel had every intention of showing that he did. Townenaar didn't fight him, but he obviously had a mind of his own—and something he needed to share with his employer.

"I don't think . . . ," Samuel started to say, but then he looked across the garden, past the gathered groups of guests, and saw Melissa entering the main house behind the servant Koson, a strapping Zulu young man of particularly striking good looks and cut body. "OK, yes, I'll meet you up there in ten or fifteen minutes," he said.

Without waiting for Townenaar's response, Samuel went looking for his vintner, Christian Devour, and his wife, Sheila, the winery's publicity manager, to tell them they'd have to hold down the fort at the garden party for a while. He had made sure that, in appearances, Jan Townenaar was subordinate to him, but both he and Jan knew that when Jan said he needed to go to him someplace, Samuel would go.

And he doubted that Melissa would be back for at least the next twenty minutes. She probably thought that he was totally blind, but his eyesight was good enough—nearly of X-ray quality—to be looking through the walls of the second floor of the main house, where the master bedroom was located—knowing that Melissa and Koson would be there now, on the four-poster master bed, with Melissa writhing under big-cocked Koson as he frenziedly fucked her missionary style, her dress pushed up to her waist and her panties dangling on one of her ankles.

Melissa's devotion to him—Samuel—although total and worshipful in the public eye, was, he knew, grounded on the winery and the prestige it gave her. She fought to get him all of the best of everything—showing much more ambition than he did—but it was because whatever he had represented what she had and controlled.

When he reached the loft of the wine barrel shed, he found that Townenaar didn't want to talk. Samuel hadn't thought for a moment that was what he wanted. Townenaar wanted to assert his mastery and control over Samuel, taking him away from the wine-pouring party on purpose just to show he could—to show who had control between the two of them. Samuel had known this before he'd come up here. The winery might be in Samuel's name and nominally under his control, but he was at least third in line on who really controlled.

The loft had a window overlooking the garden, where the party was going on. It also gave Samuel a vantage point over the windows into the master bedroom in the main house and told him he was right about Melissa and Koson. They were on the bed, Koson covering and mounted on Melissa, his plump, berry-brown buttocks undulating with his rhythmic thrusts inside her. Koson, like Jan, was asserting his control over Melissa, taking her away from the party because she had spoken sharply to him and the other native servants before all those white people.

For the same reason Jan Townenaar had taken Samuel away from the party. As Samuel leaned over a table set against the window in the loft overlooking the garden, his trousers and briefs puddled on the floor around his ankles, Townenaar crouched over his back, holding Samuel's hips between his hands, holding the younger man steady, as Townenaar fucked him in the ass from behind.

Tearing his eyes away from his wife and the black servant and not wanting to look down into the garden either where he should be, Samuel looked up the hill, up the line of the rows of grapevines neatly spread on wires held up by wooden posts. The vines stretched all the way to the summit of the hill. They weren't all his, though. They weren't all part of Marymount Wines. His winery was the best in reputation in South Africa, save one. At the summit of the hill, the smaller, but repeatedly better awarded winery, BeauView Winery, teased and beckoned to him.

Once BeauView was part of the De Kock family holdings—back when the Khoikoi and Zulus here were no better than slaves and back when this was just a farming area, before it was discovered that it was good for grapevines. When Apartheid collapsed and the natives working the farm no longer had to do so for slave wages, the dominant native family here, the Curries, were given what was then considered inferior farming land at the summit of the hill in exchange for continuing to work the De Kock farms.

But the land up there had proved to be better land for growing wine grapes than the land down here, and now it was the Zulu native Daniel Currie who had the better winery. Samuel de Kock coveted Currie's winery. But he coveted far more than that.

All that Melissa de Kock knew, though, was that her husband coveted the winery as the top of the hill—and thus she did too.

* * * *

"Where are you off to, Sam?" Melissa was cutting roses in the garden the next day when Samuel came out of the house and climbed into his BMW convertible.

"Up the hill to talk to Daniel again. One more stab at getting him to sell." He did want Daniel to sell the BeauView Winery to him, but that wasn't why he was going up there. He'd been keyed up since the previous day. The garden party had been broken up with the news that the pastor's sister, Susan Toliver, took an overdose of sleeping pills after she'd abruptly left the party. This had set off a buzz, but it was more of a guarded, never directly stated discussion of why that might have been than how she was doing. And the ones who seemed to be in the know were all women—and most had had those lavender-colored stationery envelopes peeking out of their purses.

Melissa had seemed a little rattled afterward, after everyone had gone home, but she refused to tell him why. He knew that Melissa and Susan Toliver had had a little tiff about something a week before, but he didn't think that Melissa gave the old maid much of a thought.

Samuel didn't feel he could lie about where he was going. There were too many chances that workers in the vineyards would see where his car went and Melissa would somehow hear of it. Besides, it would be difficult for her not to know that he nosed the car uphill at the gateposts rather than down, and the only thing above Marymount on the hill was BeauView. He admitted that was where he was going; he just wouldn't be truthful about why he was going up there.

"He doesn't seem to be tempted by money," Melissa said, her voice distant like she was lost in thought.

"He's getting old and arthritic. And he has no heirs," Samuel said. "He'll give in sometime. I've asked him to sell to me but to stay on and manage it as long as he wants."

"I don't think that's wise," Melissa said. "He scares me. He's a Zulu of the old sort. I don't feel safe around him."

Yes, I know, Samuel thought. You prefer the young, virile Zulus—ones with big cocks. She was referring to the earlier days of native uprisings against Apartheid, of course. He'd told her that Daniel's family had been protective of his in those years, but she either hadn't believed him or didn't want to. She saw Daniel Currie as a threat. Samuel knew a reason why she should, but he was equally sure that she had no inkling of what the reasoning might be.

"He and his family are part of the history here," Samuel said. "I won't be the one who runs him off."

"But you wouldn't mind if someone else did, would you?" Melissa fairly hissed. "You never care if someone else does your dirty work."

At that, he slammed the door of the car, brutally turned the key in the ignition, and made Melissa step back to avoid being pelted with gravel thrown off by spinning tires.

He was still angry and driving faster than he should on the curves up to the top of the hill through the vineyards—his and Currie's, divided by a chain-link fence, Currie's vines looking a whole lot better to him than his own.

When he pulled the convertible to a stop, it was next to where Currie, well-muscled, but gnarled, once an extremely handsome man and still with a commanding presence, was standing next to a water pump in the yard beside his rambling shack and sluicing himself off. He was naked except for low-slung cargo shorts that had been doused with water and clung to his still-muscular legs. His manhood also was low-slung and was easily traced in the soaked basket of his shorts.

"You would be wasting your time, son," he turned and said, as Samuel brought the BMW to a stop next to him.

"I won't stop asking you to sell, Daniel," Samuel said. "But that's not what I came for. I can't stay away."

"Then you best come into the house," Daniel said. "And walk away from me. These days I feel like there are eyes everywhere."

Samuel knew exactly what the older black man meant. He felt it too. It had broken to the surface the previous day with Susan Toliver's attempt on her own life. He'd heard enough of the buzz on that to have figured that rumors were going around about Susan and the headmistress of the girls' school. They didn't surprise or even disturb him, but they seemed in keeping with a series of malicious subjects of gossip going around the community. It's not like there had been no reason for gossip before, but it suddenly seemed to have turned insidious—and somehow organized and pointed. Daniel was hinting that he and Samuel weren't immune to it. And if their true relationship came out, it would be explosive.

As they entered the shack, Samuel bugged the older man again about having his large oil tank leaning against the side of the wooden house.

"That tank is going to blow your house up one of these days, Daniel. You need to get it moved away from the house."

"If it blew, it could help me decide to finally get around to renovating the place," Daniel answered.

"Daniel," Samuel said, sternly.

"Yes, I know. I'll get to it this winter when the vines don't need attention."

"You need more help working the vineyard too, Daniel."

"That takes money I don't have, Samuel. The bank won't expand my loan."

Samuel was very much aware why the bank hadn't extended Daniel's loan. It had been Melissa's idea to trade on their friendship with the bankers, coupled with cases of gift wine, to put Daniel into a financial bind and further squeeze him to sell his winery. Melissa had an endless supply of such ideas.

Daniel led the way back to a bedroom through the dimly lit ramshackle rooms that seemed to have been added on to the structure without plan or reason—and certainly with no bow to building codes or safety. Daniel took a towel off the back of a straight chair, dropped his wet shorts without the least sign of embarrassment, and toweled himself off. He was magnificently hung and already in half erection.

"Best you undress yourself," he said. "And I'm afraid it's been a rough day. I'm not sure—"

"I understand," Samuel said in a low voice. "I just couldn't stay away. I needed you. If you'll just lie back on the bed, I'll take care of it." As he spoke, he was stripping off his own T-shirt, shorts, and briefs; folding them; and putting them on the seat of the straight chair.

Daniel lay on his back on the bed, his hands gripping Samuel's waist, as Samuel impaled himself on the big, black cock and rode the older man—the man who had initiated Samuel in the first place one summer when Samuel came home from college and worked in his parents' vineyard and who had been Samuel's lover for some fifteen years—to a mutual ejaculation.

Yes, Samuel coveted BeauView Winery, and its seemingly more robust grapes and sweeter-tasting wine, but not at the expense of losing the man he loved far more than any other living soul any sooner than nature parted them.

When Samuel drove back down to his own, much larger and more stylish house, Melissa was sitting at her secretary in the living room when he entered, whistling. She was writing notes on lavender stationery.

"You seem pleased with yourself," she said as she looked up. "Has he budged on the winery?"

"Not a bit," Samuel said. "But some of his vines didn't look too good. I think we may have a better year than he does. And if we can take over some of his sales, we can bring him close to bankruptcy and willingness to sell. I'm glad I went up and took a look." It, of course, was all lies. Daniel's vines looked great. There was little likelihood that Daniel's clients would desert him, even though both Samuel and Melissa had been trying to peel them away from the old man. It would take something more and different than the quality of the wine to make them desert Daniel Currie—even the ones who grumbled about having to work with a black man. Old prejudices died hard in South Africa. But economic necessities were helping to force a change. Wines made from Daniel Currie's grapes sold faster than they could be bottled.

"I know how badly you want that winery," Melissa said. "I want you to have it. I think I can help."

"Oh, I doubt that," Samuel said, as he took a beer out of the refrigerator behind the bar and headed out to the covered patio overlooking the vineyard. "But he's getting older. I know it will all work out."

He's not getting older fast enough, Melissa thought, as she turned back to her desk. "And I don't doubt for a minute that there's something I can do," she murmured as she picked up her pen and moved another sheet of lavender stationery in place. In fact, she'd already been working on a plan.

* * * *

"Great photo," Samuel said. He and Melissa were spending a rare morning together on the patio by the pool next to the garden, he reading the Sunday Cape Town Daily Sun and her writing notes on her lavender paper on a laptop desk. The Daily Sun had done a good spread, complete with the photo of Samuel and Melissa with the Western Cape deputy premier. Samuel continued checking out the social pages to see if there were other mentions or photos of them. Melissa, with her beauty queen blondness and women's club activities, was a favorite photo target for the paper.

Their daily routines these days had them on separate tracks more often than not, and they both seemed to be content with that. Melissa was American, not South African. They'd met in the United States, in Georgia, where Samuel had been studying agricultural technology and Melissa, a beauty queen from humble, rural origins, had been studying landing a rich husband and striving for the ever-elusive Miss Georgia crown. Samuel had fit the bill. Finding a wife who would publicize the Marymount Winery had been one of Samuel's assignments when he was sent to the States. Melissa had fit that bill. That he was supposed to marry for money was forgiven by his parents when he returned with a smart-as-a-whip beauty queen.

They'd been hot and heavy and lovey-dovey to satisfy his parents until the two senior De Kocks had perished in a small plane crash. Now they were business partners, each aware that the other sought solace elsewhere—in a direction that was not socially acceptable to acknowledge. This did not prevent them from being solid business partners.

"Shit," Samuel exclaimed, rattling the page of the newspaper in his hand.

"What is it?" Melissa asked languidly, looking at the beefy Zulu servant, Koson, who was serving her a glass of fruit juice, rather than at her husband.

"Just the stock market," Samuel answered. But it wasn't just the stock market. Included in the gossip column he was reading was a teasing question of what some native black who owned a winery was growing on his hilltop in addition to grapes. The soil would be equally fertile for pot, the column suggested, and also who could tell the difference between equipment for making wine and illegal gin?