… In July 1990, on a cool and lovely day, they rode through the vineyards to the Vrede Huis ruins and enjoyed the sunset as they discussed the summer house they planned to build in the clearing.
Anne must have caught a cold, or so de Villiers thought at first. Flu followed, with a bad cough and breathlessness.
The doctor came but Anne did not respond to antibiotics. De Villiers drove her to the hospital with fullblown pneumonia, and an X ray showed that her lungs were infected by pneumocystis. There being nothing else wrong with her health, the doctors began to suspect the AIDS virus and, two days later, informed de Villiers that Anne was HIV positive. The doctors agreed that the source was likely to have been the blood transfusion she had received after the road accident four years before.
De Villiers was devastated. He felt personally to blame. Anne appeared to take the news calmly. “God will look after me,” she murmured. “Will you be able to visit me, my love?”
He vowed to stay with her. He telephoned hospitals and specialists in Europe and the United States. He wanted only the very best treatment for Anne and the most up-to-date drugs. They had no insurance to cover treatment for an incurable disease, and as full-time, unpaid foreman at La Pergole, he had earned no money for three years. Jan Fontaine had left many bad debts and although they had coped by eating into his invested capital and then by selling off parts of the estate, de Villiers knew he could not hope to pay for the top-class treatment he was determined Anne should receive. For the present they remained in South Africa and he visited her daily. He became an avid reader of medical journals on all AIDS-related topics, searching for mentions of hopeful-sounding breakthroughs.
In the long hours spent by her bedside he marveled at the unshakable confidence and serenity Anne obtained through her religious beliefs. He too, for the first time in his life, began to think and talk about God; sometimes even to believe. He prayed for her deliverance, for a miracle cure or at least a remission.
There was plenty of time to reflect on his own life. Slowly, painfully, he allowed himself to think back through its dark pages, to ask for forgiveness and purge himself, one by one, of the killings.
The day came when, for the first time, he willed back the long-dormant memories, so long and forcefully shut away, of the color and the horror of the night in Vancouver when his family died.
The little blond Anna, his youngest sister: they had never found her body. Try as he might he could not bring back the details of her features. He saw only the face of his sleeping Anne and, confused subconsciously by all his medical reading, the dreadful marks of Karposi’s sarcoma ravaging her skin.
On August 22 he received a call at La Pergole from the Tadnams office in Earls Court. The client in Dubai required contact.
De Villiers telephoned and, to his surprise, was answered by Bakhait.
He told Anne, as he said goodbye, that he would return just as soon as he could. He would not go but for the fact that it was his best chance of paying for her treatment in Washington or Los Angeles, in a place where he could have a bed beside hers, and where they might even have a cure before very long…