Polios screamed, a sound of such extreme agony that it hushed the roar of the spectators that crowded the edge of the ring. Polios released his own hold and tried to push Nefer away from him, but Nefer rolled easily with the throw, never releasing his grip on the mangled kneecap, tearing it further open. Suddenly, rendered helpless as an infant, Polios sobbed and choked on the pain of it. . .
- Wilbur Smith, Warlock, page 376
Wilbur Smith's is a world where men are men. His 28th and latest novel, a tale of lust and derring-do in ancient Egypt, runs to some 500 pages, few of which are not sprayed (and copiously) with one body fluid or another. So it comes as something of a shock to the interviewer who has girded her loins in preparation for a bruising encounter with a Hemingwayesque figure, complete with beard and possibly even cigar, to discover, sitting patiently in the Shelbourne bar, an exquisitely dressed individual with impeccable manners and trendy glasses. He could be an accountant. Oddly enough, he is an accountant.
"Yes, I started my working life as one," says Smith, who speaks with a strong southern African accent and smiles a lot. "At school the only thing I won prizes for was essay and English literature. I was a great reader. I love the written word, I love the English language, I love the nuances and play with words, and so it seemed to me the only thing I was really qualified to do was write.
"I thought it had to be journalism, because it never occurred to me that I could write books. So I went to my father and said: `Dad, I'm going to be a journalist.' And he was amazed at this bizarre behaviour from a son of his. He said: `Don't be a bloody fool, man - you'll starve to death. Go and get a real job.' So I did the next best thing: a B Comm and chartered accountancy."
He stuck at it just long enough to write his first book. But he didn't have to search very hard for his subject matter. Growing up in what is now Zambia, Smith's early life reads like a chapter from one of his books.
"You'd see snakes, you'd see elephant, lions, leopards. Malaria was everywhere, but you took your quinine tablets. And there were all sorts of creepy-crawlies and bities, but you learned to live with them. Before you'd sit on the toilet seat you'd make damned sure that there wasn't anything waiting under it to give you a nice surprise. We had a river as the southern boundary of our ranch, and we had a lot of raiders coming in, killing cattle - a lion would take a full-grown ox, no trouble at all. Just one jerk and they've got him under water."
It was a world where you shot first and asked questions afterwards. At the age of 12, young Wilbur shot his first lion. "My father left me in charge of the ranch - he went off for a week on business, so when the lion came in and killed one of his prime breeding bulls, it was my job to take down the old nine-three and go out and teach them that that sort of behaviour was not to be tolerated."
There were three of them and one of him, but Smith won. No wonder his father was appalled at the idea of his son exchanging a gun for a pen. But then a great deal has changed in Africa in Smith's lifetime, not least the attitude to shooting big game.
"When I was a boy, there was game everywhere. They used to smash down the fences, eat the pasture, carry diseases - foot-and-mouth, for instance, was endemic through the whole area. All of our cattle had scars on their tongues from it. There were so many lions they were classed as vermin, and it was open season on lion and buffalo any time you liked. If you were a resident of Northern Rhodesia, you paid £5 a year for a game licence, and that gave you unlimited buffalo and unlimited lion.
"You could also shoot other animals - 10 eland, for instance - but no one checked up if you wanted to shoot more. So this led to a certain amount of abuse, which I became aware of. I mean, when you're a boy of 12 with a rifle in your hand it's great, and you don't think about anything. But when I got to 18 or 19 I started to think: `No, this is not good.' And I gave up hunting for 15 years or so."
Now he has his own game ranch. "I bought up a number of sheep farms, removed the sheep and then reintroduced the animals that were there 300 years ago. You can buy them from game reserves where they've got too many. We've got elephant, leopard, jackals, 14 varieties of antelope and gazelle. I started off with 68 springbok and now I've got nearly 2,000."
He is the stuff from which heroes and great pharaohs are moulded, she thought, in a surfeit of romantic ardour. I wish I had not angered him so. It was unkind, and before this day is ended I shall make him laugh again. . .
- Wilbur Smith, Warlock, page 128
Despite - or, who knows, perhaps because of - the often brutal machismo displayed in his books, Smith's life has not been lacking in the romance department. Two early marriages ended in divorce, his third wife died from a brain tumour in December 1999, and now, at the age of 68, he is married for the fourth time, to 30year-old Mokhiniso, a lawyer from Tajikistan. He met her in a book shop in London.
"As always, I was looking for something to read and checking how my books were selling." To which the answer usually is: very nicely, thank you. By his reckoning, sales of his works add up to anywhere between 80 million and 100 million, depending on whether you include book clubs, condensed versions, audiobooks and the like. So is that how he sells all those books? By skulking around the fiction section and pouncing on unsuspecting customers, latest tome in hand? He chuckles. "That's right - flogging it to pretty young girls."
Reader, she married him. But did she read his book? Another chuckle. "Well, look, her English is improving every day, but at that stage she wasn't up to reading one of my books. She said to me: `You don't write English. What's that strange language in your books?' But she's starting to read them now. She makes lots of notes in the margin, and we have question time in the evenings.
"It's very good for me because it makes me think about the English language, which I might otherwise take for granted. She'll ask me the derivation of something and I have to go and look it up, because her questions are usually fairly penetrating."
The title page of Warlock may have given her pause, with its dedication: "For my new love Mokhiniso, spirits of Genghis Khan and Omar Khayyam reincarnated in a moon as lucent as a perfect pearl."
Her husband shrugs, unabashed. "As my readers know, I always dedicate my books to the woman I love. It's carrying on a tradition, and as she's now my wife, she deserves at least that recognition. I'm a sentimentalist as well, you know. I write some tough fiction, but my books have quite soppy parts in them."
Soppy or not, his readers lap them up. But though his son never starved to death, Smith's father was right: that accountancy training came in handy. "I've never had to to take what I earn and hand it to some financial adviser to disappear in a cloud of dust, as so often happens," he says happily. He does his own books, then, so to speak? "I certainly keep close control on everything." And he's in the black, is he? (His annual earnings have been estimated at more than £6 million.) He smiles grimly. "Just keeping my nose above the water."
Warlock by Wilbur Smith is published by Macmillan, £18.99 in UK