The Brand (3 page)

On the morning of the
2
^nd
day of the New Year, they
performed sexual acrobatics on the carpeted floor of the
presidential suite’s bedroom, and then they had a bath together in
the Jacuzzi, during which his talented escort fulfilled Hudson
Vermuelen’s prurient fantasies by exploring his body in ways that
could only be administered by a trained courtesan. After a hearty
breakfast prepared in the hotel’s kitchen by the French head chef,
the two temporary lovers took a walk out on the beach, enjoying the
sunshine and the cool breeze from the sea. At 10AM they returned to
the presidential suite, in time for the start of the cricket. When
he switched on the big flat-screen TV, his wife’s face filled the
screen. She was informing them that rain had delayed the start of
the third and final cricket test-match between India and South
Africa.

Hudson picked up a bottle of Jameson’s Irish
whisky and filled a glass half-full. He cast a glance at his escort
and she shook her head. He sat down on the couch next to her. He
stroked her with his right hand as he raised the glass with his
left to take a sip of the deliciously smooth Jameson. He smiled
wryly and nodded at the TV. ‘You know I’m married to her?’

Had Hudson known that it is imperative for
any self-respecting top-class escort to know everything about the
cream of top society, he wouldn’t have asked the question. But he
didn’t, so he did. And she nodded her head and replied, ‘She’s
beautiful.’

He checked her eyes and saw that she was
being honest. ‘And heartless,’ he said.

‘If I was a man and had a wife like that I’d
be happy.’

‘But you aren’t a man,’ said Hudson, taking a
measured sip of his drink. ‘So you don’t understand that men have
needs that beauty alone cannot satisfy.’

‘I do. And I’ll tell you for free that’s why
every society needs women like me. I understand that not all women
can be expected to do what I do. Sex is an art, which is why every
society needs women like me. You keep your sleeping beauty at home,
and come to us to give you what you lack at home, and thus the
order of things is maintained – as it’s always been throughout the
centuries. And we all live happily ever after,’ she added with an
amused smile.

He squeezed her knee. ‘Don’t be smug. Don’t
you know that my dad died at the hands of one of your kind?’

‘He was old, and his heart was weak. You are
not.’

It was a refreshing thought, and Hudson was
glad to have her with him, because she saw things differently from
the rest of the world. Absent-mindedly, he stroked her hair with
his right hand. ‘I’ve wanted to have kids ever since we’ve been
married,’ he said, talking to the face of Joelyn on the TV screen.
‘But she doesn’t want to. Says she’s too focused on her career to
be a mother. I have actually had visions of me playing with my
daughter…I don’t know why, but I’ve always wanted to have my own
little girl, made from my own sperm.’

‘How old’s she?’

Hudson turned to face her with a blank
expression.

‘Your wife,’ she explained.

‘Twenty-six,’ he muttered without
enthusiasm.

‘Give her time,’ said his female companion.
‘Someday she’ll realize that family’s important.’

Hudson wanted to respond, but at that precise
moment pictures of the studio with Joelyn and two male cricket
analysts disappeared and pictures of the Newlands cricket stadium
came on TV. It had stopped raining and the match was about to
begin. As Graeme Smith and Alviro Petersen, South Africa’s opening
batsmen, stepped out onto the crease to bat, Hudson rued not having
heeded his father’s advice to sign a prenuptial agreement with
Joelyn Smit.

Jansen Vermuelen had devoted herself to the
sport of tennis from the age of twelve. After finishing high
school, instead of going to college she had decided to turn
professional. And at nineteen se had won the US Open. Jansen was an
attractive blue-eyed blonde. How an extraordinarily ugly man like
Joe Vermuelen could produce such a remarkable specimen of beauty
was beyond reason. Many of his family members believed that his
last wife, with whom he was assumed to have created Jansen, had
cheated on him with a secret lover. Jansen was the apple of her
father’s eye. He had built for her an indoor clay tennis court and
upgraded the one outside to ITF standards at the Sandhurst family
home. This was where Jansen had trained for most of her life. When
she was fourteen, her father had hired a live-in trainer for his
beloved daughter. The man’s name was Gareth Speckman, a one-time
ATP championship aspirant who had however eventually given up after
many years of trying but failing to win a major tournament and
instead focused his attention on developing young talent.

He burst into Jansen’s room now early in
the morning, yelling, ‘Get up, Sunshine! If you think winning the
US Open’ll win you favors, you guessed wrong. That Open final was
last year. It’s gone! History! We need you to win all of the
Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon,
and
the
2011
US Open in
order to convince people that you’re a real champ, not just some
fly-by-night who got lucky. Did I forget to mention that the
Australian Open is a week from now?’

Jansen groaned and pulled the duvet over her
head. ‘Go away, Gary!’

‘Get up, sunshine. Your nine hours of beauty
sleep are over.’ His voice became sterner. ‘There’s work to be
done.’

Jansen threw away the blankets and slowly
rolled out of bed. As she walked to the bathroom she growled, ‘God!
I hate you! I really hate you!’

‘And that’s why they pay me the big bucks,’
Speckman retorted with a laugh. ‘Because I make them
champions.’

Jansen slammed the bathroom door shut with a
bang.

‘Five minutes, Sunshine!’ yelled Speckman.
‘No more. I want you at the court in exactly five minutes
flat!’

Sitting on the toilet, Jansen buried her face
in her hands and not for the first time wished that she had chosen
a totally different career path. She did what she had to do in the
bathroom and then went outside for her morning exercises. Later,
over breakfast, she checked her BlackBerry Torch for new tweets.
Ever since she had won the US Open, Jansen Vermuelen had 215,000
followers on Twitter. She sent a tweet now to her followers to
inform them that she had just finished her morning training for the
day and was having breakfast filled with energy-building foods.

Her brother arrived at the Vermuelens’
Sandhurst mansion while Gary and Jansen were at the breakfast
table. In private, the two siblings discussed their father’s will.
Ugly Joe had left his wholly-owned holding company that controlled
the merchant bank, the tobacco-manufacturing unit, the Stellenbosch
winery, and the Vaal River gold mine to both his son and daughter;
they would share the holding company and therefore each of the
various business units half-half. Ugly Joe’s 63% holding in the
Vermuelen supermarket chain and its food-processing subsidiary
would also be shared equally between the two siblings. He had left
the Sandhurst mansion to Jansen, and bequeathed the Durban and Cape
Town properties to Hudson. There were also luxury cars,
thoroughbred horses, a farm near Pretoria, a stake in a major
construction firm, as well as jewelry to be shared between brother
and sister.

‘I don’t want the house,’ Jansen declared to
her brother. ‘You take it.’

Hudson looked at her in surprise. It was a
magnificent piece of property, opulent and extravagant in design.
Jansen had to be insane to reject it. But then again, Jansen was
still a kid. ‘Dad wanted you to have it. Keep it.’

‘I don’t want it,’ Jansen said resolutely.
‘I’m moving to New York, so I don’t need it.’

‘You’re moving to New York?’ That certainly
was news to him. ‘When did you decide you were moving to New
York?’

‘There’s nothing here for me anymore,’ Jansen
said truthfully. ‘Dad’s gone. And this house,’ she looked around
the big room as if to indicate the sheer size of the mansion. ‘It’s
too big for me. And it’s empty without Dad.’

Hudson looked into her sky-blue eyes. ‘I’m
here for you. I will always be here for you.’ They were sincere
words, for Hudson truly adored his father’s only other child, but
the words were lost on Jansen, because during her formative years
Hudson had been off to boarding school, then to college and barely
ever at home, so they never quite bonded. ‘And you mother—.’

She interrupted him harshly. ‘I haven’t
spoken to my mother in five years. She won’t miss me.’ Then she
lowered her voice and spoke in a softer tone. ‘I will keep in touch
with you. I promise.’

She came to him suddenly and enveloped him in
a strong hug. He held her and felt overcome by a sense of loss he
couldn’t shake off. ‘Please don’t sell the house, Hudson. It’s got
too many memories…’ Her voice trailed off and he thought she was
crying, but when she let go of him, her face was dry. In all his
life, Hudson had never seen his young sister cry.

‘I can’t sell it without your consent,’ he
told her. ‘You’re the legal owner now.’

She smiled. ‘Then it’s okay.’

‘What’ll do with it? It can’t just lie idle.
It’ll fall apart.’

‘Can’t you and Joelyn come and live here?
It’s such a wonderful place. We can’t just let it go.’

Hudson forced a smile to his lips. ‘We’ll
work something out.’ The smile disappeared from his face as quickly
as it had appeared and his eyes became serious. ‘As for the rest of
Dad’s business affairs, you’ll have to appoint a lawyer to help you
with all the papers you have to sign. I have mine at the ready. The
sooner we get things done, the better.’

Jansen elected to be represented by the man
who had been her father’s business legal adviser. Hudson didn’t see
anything wrong with that. They set a meeting for the next day, when
Vermuelen’s business affairs would change ownership and Hudson
would take control of his family’s business interests.

Joelyn’s best friend was Samantha Ashford.
Their friendship had developed while they were in high school
together, then blossomed when they were at Wits University
together, though Samantha had studied Accounting and then proceeded
to do her articles with Deloitte & Touché, where she had
qualified as a chartered accountant. She lived in a townhouse
complex in Morningside, an area that is generally regarded as part
of the Sandton district, and was currently dating the national
rugby team’s captain, thanks to Joelyn, who in her line of work met
with a lot of professional sportsmen, and had introduced the pair
together.

When Joelyn arrived at Samantha’s home and
delivered the news of her impending divorce from her husband with a
calm attitude, supercilious airs and a voice devoid of emotion,
Samantha was compelled to remark, ‘How can you be so calm, Joe?
It’s such a terrible thing to happen to you, honey. Oh God, I’m so
sorry, Joe!’

‘Pull yourself together, Sam. You know very
well that my marriage with Hudson’s always been tempestuous. It was
nice at times, but we fought a lot. Perhaps it’s for the
better.’

Miss Ashford, aware that her friend had a
volatile temper, said softly, ‘I’m no expert, Joe, but every
relationship hits a rough patch now and again. You guys should work
things out.’

‘Hudson’s convinced our marriage is dead and
buried.’

‘You want me to talk to him?’

‘I don’t see how that can help.’ Joelyn
noticed the pained look that crossed her friend’s eyes and softened
her voice. ‘I appreciate that you’re trying to help, and thanks for
caring, but it’s over between me and Hudson. He’s packed some of
his stuff and moved out of the apartment.’

‘Is he with someone else?’ Samantha asked
guardedly.

‘No, I don’t think so, although it’d be
comforting to know that I’ve been displaced by another woman. Let’s
face it, Hudson never loved me. He chained himself to me to escape
his father’s control. It’s a sad story, really. And I actually
loved the bastard…’ She choked on her words all of a sudden and her
eyes became watery, but she recovered quickly from that momentary
display of emotion. ‘Now be a honey, Sam, and pour me another glass
of brandy on the rocks. I am not going to cry over this; there’s
more important things to do.’

Sam knew that the pain of heartache favors no
one. Even the most hard-hearted amongst us know the feeling all too
well. Some people are just better at withstanding it, but it is a
nasty experience. It is said that whoever has never felt the cruel
pain of heartache has never been in love. To illustrate how
dangerous a condition heartache is to the mental faculties, one
needs only to take a look at the annual figures worldwide of people
who commit suicide due to lost love.

‘I’m here for you, Joe,’ said Sam. ‘Whenever
you need me, don’t hesitate to call.’

‘I know,’ Joelyn forced a smile. ‘You’re a
good friend.’

Sam placed four ice-cubes in a glass and
poured some brandy over them, half-filling the glass. Joelyn
grabbed the glass and drank the brandy greedily. It burned her
throat like acid and she winced. Suppressing a laugh, Sam said,
‘This denial stage where you feel that you’re unbreakable will
pass, and the pain will come charging at you like a raging bull.
But don’t worry, I’ll be here to hold you and cry with you,’ she
said sympathetically. ‘Do not be afraid.’

‘I don’t have time for kids’ play, Sam,’
Joelyn glared at her friend with eyes that were red from the
burning liquor. ‘There won’t be any crying. Just sweet revenge.’ A
smile crossed her lips. ‘Hudson Vermuelen has said he wants to
divorce me. I know everything about him; his deepest secrets, his
fears and his vices. I know that he loves money, and I’m going to
hit him where it hurts the most. I want to take every cent I can
get from him. The war has just begun.’