by Wilbur Smith
Beneath her unhappiness was a restlessness, a formless, undirected longing for something she did not understand. It was a new thing; only in these last few years had she become aware of it. Before that she had gloried in the companionship of her father, never having experienced and, therefore, never missing the society of others. She had taken it as the natural order of things that much of her time must be spent completely alone with only the wife of old Mohammed to replace her natural mother – the young Portuguese girl who had died in the struggle to give life to Rosa.
She knew the land as a slum child knows the city. It was her land and she loved it.
Now all of it was changing, she was uncertain, without bearings in this sea of new emotion. Lonely, irritable – and afraid.
A timid knocking on the back door of the bungalow roused her, and she felt a leap of hope within her. Her anger at Flynn had long ago abated – now he had made the first overture she would welcome him to the bungalow without sacrifice of pride.
Quickly she bathed her face in the china wash-basin beside her bed, and patted her hair into order before the mirror, before going through to answer the knock.
Old Mohammed stood outside, shuffling his feet and grinning ingratiatingly. He stood in almost as great an awe of Rosa’s temper as that of Flynn himself. It was with relief, therefore, that he saw her smile.
‘Mohammed, you old rascal,’ and he bobbed his head with pleasure.
‘You are well, Little Long Hair?’
‘I am well, Mohammed – and I can see you are also.’
The Lord Fini asks that you send blankets and quinine.’
‘Why?’ Rosa frowned quickly. ‘Is the fever on him?’
‘Not on him, but on Manali, his friend.’
‘Is he bad?’
‘He is very bad.’
The rich hostility that her first glimpse of Sebastian had invoked in Rosa, wavered a little. She felt the woman in her irresistibly drawn towards anything wounded or sick, even such an uncouth and filthy specimen as she had seen Sebastian to be.
‘I will come,’ she decided aloud, while silently qualifying her surrender by deciding that under no circumstances would she let him in the house. Sick or healthy, he would stay out there in the rondavel.
Armed with a pitcher of boiled drinking water, and a bottle of quinine tablets, closely attended by Mohammed carrying an armful of cheap trade blankets, she crossed to the rondavel and entered.
She entered it at an unpropitious moment. For Flynn had spent the last ten minutes exhuming the bottle he had so carefully buried some months before beneath the earthen floor of the rondavel. Being a man of foresight, he had caches of gin scattered in unlikely places around the camp, and now, in delicious anticipation, he was carefully wiping damp earth from the neck of the bottle with the tail of his shirt. So engrossed with this labour he was not aware of Rosa’s presence until the bottle was snatched from his hands, and thrown through the open side window to pop and tinkle as it burst.
‘Now what did you do that for?’ Flynn was hurt as deeply as a mother deprived of her infant.
‘For the good of your soul.’ Icily Rosa turned from him to the inert figure on the bed, and her nose wrinkled as she caught the whiff of unwashed body and fever. ‘Where did you find this one?’ she asked without expecting an answer.
– 20 –
Five grains of quinine washed down Sebastian’s throat with scalding tea, heated stones were packed around his body, and half a dozen blankets swaddled him to begin the sweat.
The malarial parasite has a duty-six-hour life cycle, and now at the crisis, Rosa was attempting to raise his body temperature sufficiently to interrupt the cycle and break the fever. Heat radiated from the bed, filling the single room of the rondavel as though it were a kitchen. Only Sebastian’s head showed from the pile of blankets, and his face was flushed a dusky brick colour. Although sweat spurted from every pore of his skin and ran back in heavy drops to soak his hair and his pillow, yet his teeth rattled together and he shivered so that the camp-bed shook.
Rosa sat beside his bed and watched him. Occasionally she leaned forward with a cloth in her hand and wiped the perspiration from his eyes and upper lip. Her expression had softened and become almost broody. One of Sebastian’s curls had plastered itself wetly across his forehead, and, with her finger-tips Rosa combed it back. She repeated the gesture, and then did it again, stroking her fingers through his damp hair, instinctively gentling and soothing him.
He opened his eyes, and Rosa snatched her hand away guiltily. His eyes were misty grey, unfocused as a newborn puppy’s, and Rosa felt something squirm in her stomach.
‘Please don’t stop.’ His voice was slurred with the fever, but even so Rosa was surprised at the timbre and inflection. It was the first time she had heard him speak and it was not the voice of a ruffian. Hesitating a moment, she glanced at the door of the hut to make sure they were alone before. she reached forward to touch his face.
‘You are kind – good and kind.’
‘Sshh!’ she admonished him.
‘Thank you.’
‘Sshh! Close your eyes.’
His eyes flickered down and he sighed, a gusty, broken sound.
The crisis came like a big wind and shook him as though he were a tree in its path. His body temperature rocketed, and he tossed and writhed in the camp-bed, trying to throw off the weight of blankets upon him, so that Rosa called for Mohammed’s wife to help her restrain him. His perspiration soaked through the thin mattress and dripped to form a puddle on the earth floor beneath the bed, and he cried out in the fantasy of his fever.
Then, miraculously, the crisis was past, and he slumped into relaxation. He lay still and exhausted so that only the shallow flutter of his breathing showed there was life in him. Rosa. could feel his skin cooling under her hand, and she saw the yellowish tinge with which the fever had Coloured it.
‘The first time it is always bad.’ Mohammed’s wife released her grip on the blanket-wrapped legs.
‘Yes,’ said Rosa. ‘Now bring the basin. We must wash him and change his blankets, Nanny.’
She had worked many times with men who were sick or badly hurt; the servants and the bearers and the gun-boys, and, of course, with her father. But now, as Nanny peeled back the blankets and Rosa swabbed Sebastian’s unconscious body with the moist cloth, she felt an inexplicable tension within her – a sense of dread mingled with tight excitement. She could feel new blood warming her cheeks, and she leaned forward, so that Nanny could not see her face as she worked.
The skin of his chest and upper arms was creamy-smooth as polished alabaster, where the sun had not stained it. Beneath her fingers it had an elastic hardness, a rubbery sensuality and warmth that disturbed her. When she realized suddenly that she was no longer wiping with the flannel but using it to caress the shape of hard muscle beneath the pale skin, she checked herself and made her actions brusque and businesslike.
They dried his upper body, and Nanny reached to jerk the blankets down below Sebastian’s waist.
‘Wait!’ It came out of Rosa as a cry, and Nanny paused with her hand on the bedclothes and her head held at an angle, quizzical, birdlike. Her wizened old features crinkled in sly amusement.
‘Wait,’ Rosa repeated in confusion. ‘First help me get the night-shirt on him,’ and she matched up one of Flynn’s freshly ironed but threadbare old night-shirts from the chair beside the bed.
‘It cannot bite you, Little Long Hair,’ the old woman teased her gently. ‘It has no teeth.’
‘You just stop that kind of talk,’ snapped Rosa with unnecessary violence. ‘Help me sit him up.’
Between them they lifted Sebastian and slipped the night-shirt down over his head, before lowering him to the pillow again.
‘And now?’ Nanny asked innocently. For answer, Rosa handed her the flannel, and turned to stare fixedly out of the rondavel window. Behind her she heard the rustle of blankets and then Nanny’s voice.
‘
Hau! Hau!’ The age-old expression of deep admiration, followed by a cackle of delighted laughter, as Nanny saw the back of Rosa’s neck turning bright pink with embarrassment.
Nanny had smuggled Flynn’s cut-throat razor out of the bungalow, and was supervising critically as Rosa smoked it gingerly over Sebastian’s soapy cheeks. There was no sound medical reason why a malaria patient should be shaved immediately after emerging from the crisis, but Rosa had advanced the theory that it would make him feel more comfortable and Nanny had agreed enthusiastically. Both of them were enjoying themselves with all the sober delight of two small girls playing with a doll.
Despite Nanny’s cautionary clucks and sharp hisses of indrawn breath, Rosa succeeded in removing the hair that covered Sebastian’s face like the black pelt of an otter without inflicting any serious wounds. There was a nick on the chin and another below the left nostril, but neither of these bled more than a drop or two.
Rosa rinsed the razor and then narrowed her eyes thoughtfully as she surveyed her handiwork, and that thing squirmed in her stomach again. ‘I think,’ she muttered, ‘we should move him into the main bungalow. It will be more comfortable.’
‘I will call the servants to carry him,’ said Nanny.
– 21 –
Flynn O’Flynn was a busy man during the period of Sebastian’s convalescence. His band of followers had been seriously depleted during the recent exchange with Herman Fleischer. on the Rufiji, so to replace his losses, he press-ganged all the maschille-bearers who had carried them home from Luti’s village. These he put through a preliminary course of training and at the end of four days selected a dozen of the most promising, to become gun-boys. The remainder he despatched homeward despite their protests; they would dearly have loved to stay for the glamour and reward that they were certain would be heaped upon their more fortunate fellows.
Thereafter the chosen few were entered upon the second part of their training. Securely locked in one of the rondavels behind the bungalow, Flynn kept the tools of his trade. It was an impressive arsenal.
Rack upon rack of cheap Martini Henry .450 rifles, a score of W. D. Lee-Metfords that had survived the Anglo-Boer war, a lesser number of German Mausers salvaged from his encounters with Askari across the Rovuma, and a very few of the expensive hand-made doubles by Gibbs and Messrs Greener of London. Not a single weapon had a serial number on it. Above these, neatly stacked on the wooden shelves, were bulk packages of cartridges, wrapped and soldered in lead foil – enough of them to fight a small battle.
The room reeked with the slick, mineral smell of gun oil.
Flynn issued his recruits with Mausers, and set about instructing them in the art of handling a rifle. Again he weeded out those who showed no aptitude and he was left finally with eight men who could hit an elephant at fifty paces. This group passed into the third and last period of training.
Many years previously, Mohammed had been recruited into the German Askari. He had even won a medal during the Salito rebellion of 1904, and from there had risen to the rank of sergeant and overseer of the officers’ mess. During a visit by the army auditor to Mbeya, where Mohammed was at that time stationed, there had been discovered a stock discrepancy of some twenty dozen bottles of schnapps, and a hole in the mess funds amounting to a little over a thousand Reichsmarks. This was a hanging matter, and Mohammed had resigned without ceremony from the Imperial Army and reached the Portuguese border by a series of forced marches. In Portuguese territory he had met Flynn, and solicited and received employment from him. However, he was still an authority on German army drill procedure and retained a command of the language.
The recruits were handed over to him, for it was part of Flynn’s plans that they be able to masquerade as a squad of German Askari. For days thereafter the camp at Lalapanzi reverberated to Mohammed’s Teutonic cries, as he goose-stepped about the lawns at the head of his band of nearly naked troopers, with his fez set squarely on the grey wool of his head.
This left Flynn free to make further preparations. Seated on the stoep of the bungalow, he pored sweatily over his correspondence for many days. First there was a letter to:
His Excellency, The Governor,
German Administration of East Africa,
Dar Es Salaam.
Sir,
I enclose my account for damages, as follows, herewith:
1 Dhow (Market value) £1,500.—.—.
10 Rifles £200.—.—.
Various stores and provisions etcetera (too numerous to list) £100.—.—.
Injury, suffering and hardships (estimated) £200.—.—.
TOTAL £2,000.—.—.
This claim arises from the sinking of the above-said dhow off the mouth of the Rufiji, 10th July, 1912, which was an act of piracy by your gunboat, the Blücher.
I would appreciate payment in gold, on or before 25th September, 1912, otherwise I will take the necessary steps to collect same personally.
Yours sincerely,
Flynn Patrick O’Flynn, Esq.,
(Citizen of The United States of America).
After much heavy thought, Flynn had decided not to include a claim for the ivory as he was not too certain of its legality. Best not to mention it.
He had considered signing himself ‘United States Ambassador to Africa’, but had discarded the idea on the grounds that Governor Schee knew damned well that he was no such thing. However, there was no harm in reminding him of Flynn’s nationality – it might make the old rogue hesitate before hanging Flynn out of hand if ever he got his hooks into him.
Satisfied that the only response to his demands would be a significant increase in Governor Schee’s blood pressure, Flynn proceeded with his preparations to make good his threat of collecting the debt personally.
Flynn used this word lightly – he had long ago selected a representative debt collector in the form of Sebastian Oldsmith. It now remained to have him suitably outfitted for the occasion, and, armed with a tape-measure from Rosa’s work-basket, Flynn visited Sebastian’s sick bed. These days, visiting Sebastian was much like trying to arrange an interview with the Pope. Sebastian was securely under the maternal protection of Rosa O’Flynn.
Flynn knocked discreetly on the door of the guest bedroom, paused for a count of five, and entered.
‘What do you want?’ Rosa greeted him affectionately. She was sitting on the foot of Sebastian’s bed.
‘Hello, hello,’ said Flynn, and then again lamely, ‘Hello.’
‘I suppose you’re looking for a drinking companion,’ accused Rosa.
‘Good Lord, no!’ Flynn was genuinely horrified by the accusation. What with Rosa’s depredations his stock of gin was running perilously low, and he had no intention of sharing it with anyone. ‘I just called in to see how he was doing.’ Flynn transferred his attention to Sebastian. ‘How you feeling, old Bassie boy?’
‘Much better, thank you.’ In fact, Sebastian was looking very chirpy indeed. Freshly shaved, dressed in one of Flynn’s best night-shirts, he lay like a Roman emperor on dean sheets. On the low table beside his bed stood a vase of frangipani blooms, and there were other floral tributes standing about the room – all of them cut and carefully arranged by Rosa. O’Flynn.
He was steadily putting on weight again as Rosa and Nanny stuffed food into him and colour was starting to drive the yellowish fever stains from his skin. Flynn felt a prickle of irritation at the way Sebastian was being pampered like a stud stallion, while Flynn himself was barely tolerated in his own home.
The metaphor which had come naturally into Flynn’s mind now sparked a further train of thought, and a sharper prickle of irritation. Stud stallion! Flynn looked at Rosa with attention, and noticed that the dress she wore was the white one with gauzy sleeves, that had belonged to her mother – a garment that Rosa usually kept securely locked away, a garment she had worn perhaps twice before in her life. Furthermore, her feet, which were usually bare about the house, were now neatly clad in store-bought patent leather, an
d, by Jesus, she was wearing a sprig of bougainvillaea tucked into the shiny black slick of her hair. The tip of her long braid, which was usually tied carelessly with a thong of leather, flaunted a silk ribbon.
Now, Flynn O’Flynn was not a sentimental man but suddenly he recognized in his daughter a strange new glow, and a demure air that had never been there before, and within himself he became aware of an unusual sensation, so unfamiliar that he did not recognize it as paternal jealousy. He did, however, recognize that the sooner he sent Sebastian on his way, the safer it would be.
‘Well, that’s fine, Bassie,’ he boomed genially. ‘That’s just fine. Now, I’m sending bearers down to Beira to pick up supplies, and I just thought they might as well get some clothes for you while they were there.’
‘Well, thank you very much, Flynn.’ Sebastian was touched by the kindness of his friend.
‘Might as well do it properly.’ Flynn produced his tape-measure with a flourish. ‘We’ll send your measurements down to old Parbhoo and he can tailor-make some stuff for you.’
‘I say, that is jolly decent of you.’
And completely out of character, thought Rosa. O’Flynn as she watched her father carefully noting the length of Sebastian’s legs and arms, and the girth of his neck, chest and waist.
‘The boots and the hat will be a problem,’ Flynn mused aloud when he had finished. ‘But I’ll find something.’
‘And what do you mean by that, Flynn O’Flynn?’ Rosa demanded suspiciously.
‘Nothing, just nothing at all.’ Hurriedly Flynn gathered his notes and his tape, and fled from further interrogation.
Some time later, Mohammed and the bearers returned from the shopping expedition to Beira, and he and Flynn immediately closeted themselves in secret conclave in the arsenal.
‘Did you get it?’ demanded Flynn eagerly.