by Wilbur Smith
Watching them argue and laugh together, it all fell into place – the occasions when after a nightmare she had gone to Anna’s room for comfort and found her bed empty, the puzzling presence of one of Anna’s petticoats under her father’s bed when she was sweeping out his bedroom. Only last week Anna had come out of the cellar after helping the comte clean out the improvised animal stalls with straw sticking both to the back of her skirts and to the bun of greying hair on the top of her head.
The discovery seemed somehow to increase Centaine’s desolation and her feeling of emptiness. She felt truly alone now, isolated and without purpose, empty and aching.
‘I’m going out.’ She sprang up from the kitchen table.
‘Oh no.’ Anna barred her way. ‘We have got to get some food into this house, since your father has given away all we possess, and, m’demoiselle, you are going to help me!’
Centaine had to escape from them, to be alone, to come to terms with this terrible new desolation of her spirit. Nimbly she ducked under Anna’s outstretched arm and flung open the kitchen door.
On the threshold stood the most beautiful person she had ever seen in all her life.
He was dressed in glossy boots and immaculate riding breeches of a lighter tan colour than his khaki uniform jacket. His narrow waist was belted in lustrous leather and burnished brass, his Sam Browne crossed his chest and emphasized his wide shoulders. On his left breast were the RFC wings and a row of coloured ribbons, on his epaulettes sparkled the badges of his rank, and his cap had been carefully crushed in the manner affected by veteran fighter pilots and set at a jaunty angle over his impossibly blue eyes.
Centaine fell back a pace and stared up at him, for he towered over her like a young god, and she became aware of a sensation that was entirely new to her. Her stomach seemed to turn to jelly, hot jelly, heavy as molten lead that spread downwards through her lower body until it seemed that her legs could no longer support the weight of it. At the same time she had great difficulty breathing.
‘Mademoiselle de Thiry.’ This vision of martial splendour spoke and touched the peak of his cap in salute. The voice was familiar, and she recognized the eyes, those cerulean blue eyes, and the man’s left arm was supported by a narrow leather strap –
‘Michel—’ her voice was unsteady and she corrected herself. ‘Captain Courtney,’ and then she changed languages, ‘Mijnheer Courtney?’
The young god smiled at her, and it did not seem possible that this was the same man, tousled, bloodied and muddied, swaddled in ill-fitting charred rags, trembling and shaking and pathetic, that she had helped load in a stupor of pain and weakness and inebriation into the side-car of the motor-cycle the previous afternoon.
When he smiled at her, Centaine felt the world lurch beneath her feet. When it steadied, she realized that it had altered its orbit and was on a new track amongst the stars. Nothing would ever be the same again.
‘Entrez, monsieur.’ She fell back, and as he stepped over the threshold, the comte rose from the table and hurried to meet him.
‘How goes it with you, captain?’ He took Michael’s hand. ‘Your wounds?’
‘They are much better.’
‘A little cognac would help them,’ the comte suggested and looked at his daughter slyly. Michael’s stomach quailed at the suggestion and he shook his head vehemently.
‘No,’ said Centaine firmly, and turned to Anna. ‘We must see to the captain’s dressing.’
Protesting only mildly, Michael was led to the stool in front of the stove and Anna unbuckled his belt, while Centaine stood behind him and eased his jacket off his shoulders.
Anna unwrapped the dressings and grunted with approval.
‘Hot water, child,’ she ordered.
Carefully they washed and dried his burns, and then smeared them with fresh ointment and rebandaged them with clean linen strips.
‘They are healing beautifully,’ Anna nodded, while Centaine helped him into his shirt.
She had not realized how smooth a man’s skin could be, there down his flanks and across his back. His dark hair curled on to the nape of his neck, and he was so thin that each knuckle of his spine stood out as cleanly as beads on a rosary, with two ridges of lean muscle running down each side of it.
She came round to button the front of his shirt.
‘You are very gentle,’ he said softly, and she dared not look into his eyes, lest she betray herself in front of Anna.
His chest hair was thick and crisp and springy as she brushed it almost unintentionally with her fingertips, and the nipples of his flat hard chest were dusky-pink and tiny, yet they hardened and thrust out under her gaze, a phenomenon which both amazed and enchanted her. She had never dreamed that happened to men also.
‘Come, Centaine,’ Anna chided her, and she started as she realized that she had been staring at his body.
‘I came to thank you,’ Michael said. ‘I didn’t mean to make work for you.’
‘It is no trouble.’ Centaine still dared not look into his eyes.
‘Without your help I might have burned to death.’
‘No!’ Centaine said with unnecessary emphasis. The idea of death and this marvellous creature was totally unacceptable to her.
Now she looked at his face again at last, and it seemed that the summer sky showed through chinks in his skull – so blue were his eyes.
‘Centaine, there is much work to do.’ Anna’s tone was sharper still.
‘Let me help you,’ Michael cut in eagerly. ‘I have been grounded – I am not allowed to fly.’ Anna looked dubious, but the comte shrugged.
‘Another pair of hands, we could use.’
‘A small repayment,’ Michael insisted.
‘Your fine uniform.’ Anna was looking for excuses, and she glanced down at his glossy boots.
‘We have rubber boots and overalls,’ Centaine cut in swiftly, and Anna threw up her hands in capitulation.
Centaine thought that even the blue serge de Nim, or denim as it was colloquially known, and black rubber boots looked elegant on Michael’s tall lean body as he descended to help the comte muck out the animal stalls in the cellars.
Centaine and Anna spent the rest of the morning in the vegetable gardens, preparing the soil for the spring sowing.
Every time Centaine went down to the cellars on the flimsiest of excuses, she paused beside wherever Michael was working under the comte’s direction, and the two of them made halting and self-conscious conversation until Anna came down the staircase.
‘Where is that child now! Centaine! What on earth are you doing?’ As if she did not know.
All four of them ate lunch in the kitchen – omelettes flavoured with onions and truffles, cheese and brown bread, and a bottle of red wine over which Centaine relented, but not enough to hand over the cellar keys to her father. She fetched it herself.
The wine softened the mood, even Anna took a glass of it and allowed Centaine to do the same, and the talk became easy and unrestrained, punctuated with bursts of laughter.
‘Now, captain—’ the comte turned to Michael at last with a calculating glitter in his single eye ‘ – you and your family, what do you do in Africa?’
‘Farmers,’ Michael replied.
‘Tenant farmers?’ the comte probed cautiously.
‘No, no—’ Michael laughed. ‘We farm our own lands.’
‘Landowners?’ The comte’s tone changed, for, as all the world knew, land was the only true form of wealth. ‘What size are your family estates?’
‘Well—’ Michael looked embarrassed ‘ – quite large. You see, it is mostly held in a family company – my father and my uncle—’
‘Your uncle, the general?’ the comte prompted.
‘Yes, my Uncle Sean—’
‘A hundred hectares?’ the comte insisted.
‘A little more.’ Michael squirmed on the bench and fiddled with his bread roll.
‘Two hundred?’ The comte looked so expectant that Michael
could not evade him longer.
‘Altogether, if you take the plantations and the cattle ranches, and some land we own in the north, it’s about forty thousand hectares.’
‘Forty thousand?’ The comte stared at him, and then repeated the question in English so there could be no musunderstanding. ‘Forty thousand?’
Michael nodded uncomfortably. It was only recently that he had begun to feel a little self-conscious about the extent of his family’s worldly possessions.
‘Forty thousand hectares!’ The comte breathed reverently, and then, ‘And, of course, you have many brothers?’
Michael shook his head. ‘No, unfortunately I am an only son.’
‘Ha!’ said the comte with transparent relief. ‘Do not feel too badly about that!’ And patted his arm in a paternal gesture.
The comte shot a glance at his daughter, and for the first time recognized the expression on her face as she looked at the airman.
‘Quite right too,’ he thought comfortably. ‘Forty thousand hectares, and an only son!’ His daughter was a Frenchwoman, and knew the value of a sou and a franc, sacré bleu, she knew it better than he did himself. He smiled lovingly across the table at her. A child in many ways, but a shrewd young Frenchwoman in others. Since the comte’s factor had fled to Paris, leaving the accounts and books of the estate in chaos, it had been Centaine who had taken over the purse-strings. The comte had never bothered much with money anyway, for him land would always remain the only true wealth, but his daughter was the clever one. She even counted the bottles in the cellar and the hams on the smoke-rack. He took a mouthful of red wine and mused happily to himself. There would be so few eligible young men left after this slaughter, this charnel-house … and forty thousand hectares!
‘Chérie,’ he said. ‘If the captain were to take the shotgun and get us a few fat pigeon, and you were to fill a basket with truffles – you might still find some – what a dinner we could have this evening!’ Centaine clapped her hands with delight, but Anna glared at him in red-faced indignation across the table.
‘Anna will go with you as chaperone,’ he said hastily. ‘We don’t want any unseeming scandal, now, do we?’ Might as well sow a seed, he thought, if it wasn’t already ripely germinating. Forty thousand hectares, merde!
The pig was named Kaiser Wilhelm, or Klein Willie, for short. He was a piebald boar, so gross that as he waddled into the oak forest, he reminded Michael of a bull hippopotamus. His pointed ears drooped forward over his eyes and his tail curled like a roll of barbed wire up over his back, exposing ample evidence of his gender, contained in a bright pink sac that looked as though it had been boiled in oil.
‘Vas-Y, Willie! Cherche!’ cried Centaine and Anna in unison; at the same time it required both of them on the leash to restrain the enormous beast. ‘Cherche! Seek up!’ And the boar snuffled eagerly at the damp, chocolate-brown earth under the oak trees, dragging the two women behind him. Michael followed them, a spade over his good shoulder, laughing delightedly at the novelty of the hunt, and trotting to keep up with it.
Deeper into the forest they came across a narrow stream, running strongly with discoloured water from the recent rains, and they followed the bank, with snorts and cries of encouragement. Suddenly the pig let out a gleeful squeal and began rooting in the soft earth with his flat wet snout.
‘He’s found one!’ Centaine shrieked with excitement and she and Anna hauled unavailingly on the leash.
‘Michel!’ she panted over her shoulder. ‘When we get him away, you must be very quick with the spade. Are you ready?’
‘Ready!’
From the pocket of her skirt Centaine pulled a wizened nub of a truffle that was mildewed with age. She pared off a sliver with a clasp knife, and held it as close to the boar’s snout as she could reach. For a few moments the pig ignored her, and then it got the fresher scent of the cut truffle and grunted gluttonously, tried to take her hand in his streaming jaws. Centaine jerked away and backed off with the boar following her.
‘Quickly, Michel!’ she cried, and he went at the earth with the spade. In half a dozen strokes he had exposed the buried fungus and Anna dropped to her kness and freed it from the earth with her bare hands. She lifted it out, crusty with chocolate soil, a dark knobbly lump almost the size of her fist.
‘Look, what a beauty!’
At last Centaine allowed the pig to take the sliver of fungus from her fingers, and when he had gulped it, she let him return to the empty hole and snuffle around in the loose earth to satisfy himself that the truffle had disappeared, then ‘Cherche!’ she shouted at him, and the hunt was on again. Within an hour the small basket was filled with the unappetizing-looking lumpy fungi, and Anna called a halt.
‘More than this will merely spoil. Now for some pigeons. Let’s see if our captain from Africa can shoot!’
They hurried after the boar, laughing and panting back through the open fields to the château, where Centaine locked the truffles in the pantry and Anna returned the boar to his stall in the cellars and then lifted the shotgun down from its rack on the kitchen wall. She handed the weapon to Michael and watched as he opened the breech and checked the barrels, then snapped them closed and put the gun to his shoulder and tried the balance. Despite the burns that hampered his swing a little, Anna could tell a good workman by the way he handled his tools, and her expression softened with approval.
For Michael’s part he was surprised and then delighted to discover that the weapon was a venerable Holland and Holland – only the English gunsmiths could fashion a barrel that would throw a perfectly even pattern of shot no matter how fast the gun was traversed.
He nodded at Anna. ‘Excellent!’ And she handed him the canvas bag of cartridges.
‘I will show you a good place.’ Centaine took his hand to lead him and then saw Anna’s expression and dropped it hurriedly. ‘In the afternoon the pigeons come back to the woods,’ she explained.
They skirted the edge of the forest, Centaine leading and lifting her skirts over the mud puddles so that Michael had an occasional flash of her smooth white calves, and his pulse accelerated beyond the exertion of keeping up with her. On her short, stubby legs, Anna fell far behind and they ignored her calls to ‘Wait, wait for me.’
At the corner of the forest, in the angle of the T that the pilots used as the landmark for the return to the airfield, there was a sunken lane with high hedges on each side.
‘The pigeons come in from there,’ Centaine pointed across the open fields and vineyards, all of them overgrown and neglected. ‘We should wait here.’
The hedgerow afforded excellent cover, and when Anna came up they all three hid themselves and began to search the sky. Heavy low cloud had begun to roll in again from the north, threatening rain, and forming a perfect backdrop against which the tiny specks of a pigeon flock showed clearly to Michael’s trained eye.
‘There,’ he said, ‘coming straight in.’
‘I don’t see them.’ Centaine searched agitatedly. ‘Where – oh yes, now I see them.’
Although they were quick on the wing, they were flying straight and descending only gently towards the forest. For a marksman of Michael’s calibre, it was simple shooting. He waited until two birds overlapped each other, and took them both with his first shot. They crumpled in mid-air and as the rest of the flock flared up and scattered, he knocked down a third pigeon in a burst of feathers with his second barrel.
The two women raced out into the open field to bring in the birds.
‘Three with two shots.’ Centaine came back and stood close beside him, stroking the soft warm body of the dead pigeon and looking up at Michael.
‘It was a fluke,’ said Anna gruffly. ‘Nobody shoots two pigeons by intention – not if they are flying.’
The next flock was a larger one, and the birds were bunched. Michael took three of them with his first barrel and a fourth bird with his second, and Centaine turned triumphantly to Anna.
‘Another fluke,’ sh
e gloated. ‘What luck the captain is having today.’
Two more flocks came within range in the next half hour, and Centaine asked seriously, ‘Do you never miss, Mijnheer?’
‘Up there,’ Michael looked into the sky, ‘if you miss, you are dead. So far I have never missed.’
Centaine shivered. Death – that word again. Death was all around them, on the ridges over there where for the moment the sound of the guns was just a low rumble, death in the sky above them. She looked at Michael and thought, ‘I don’t want him to die – never! Never!’
Then she shook herself, driving away the gloom, and she smiled and said, ‘Teach me to shoot.’ The request was inspired. It allowed Michael to touch her, even under Anna’s jealous gaze. He stood her in front of him, and coached her into the classic stance, with her left foot leading.
‘This shoulder a little lower.’ They were both electrically aware of each contact. ‘Just turn your hips this way slightly.’ He placed his hands upon them and Michael’s voice sounded as though he were choking as she pushed back with her buttocks against him, an untutored but devastating pressure.
Centaine’s first shot drove her back against his chest, and he clasped her protectively while the pigeons headed untouched for the horizon.
‘You are looking at the muzzle of the gun, not the bird,’ Michael explained, still holding her. ‘Look at the bird, and the gun will follow on its own.’
At her next shot a fat pigeon tumbled out of the sky, amid shrieks of excitement from both women, but when Anna ran out to pick it up, the rain that had been holding off until that moment fell upon them in a silver curtain.
‘The barn!’ cried Centaine, and led them scampering down the lane. The rain slashed the tree-tops and exploded in miniature shell bursts on their skin so that they gasped at its icy sting. Centaine reached the barn first, and her blouse was sticking to her skin, so that Michael could see the exact shape of her breasts. Strands of her dark hair were plastered against her forehead, and she shook the drops off her skirts and laughed at him, making no attempt to avoid his gaze.
The barn fronted on to the lane. It was built of squared yellow stone blocks and the thatched roof was tattered and worn as an old carpet. It was half-filled with bales of straw that rose in tiers to the roof.