by Wilbur Smith
‘This will set in,’ Anna groused darkly, staring out at the streaming rain and shaking the rain off herself like a water buffalo emerging from the swamp. ‘We will be stuck here.’
‘Come, Anna, let’s clean the birds.’
They found comfortable perches on the straw bales, Centaine and Michael with their shoulders almost touching, and while they plucked the pigeons they chatted.
‘Tell me about Africa,’ Centaine demanded. ‘Is it really so dark?’
‘It’s the sunniest land in the world – too much sun, even,’ Michael told her.
‘I love the sun,’ Centaine shook her head. ‘I hate the cold and the wet. There could never be too much sun for me.’
He told her about the deserts where it never rained. ‘Not as much in a year as it does here in a single day.’
‘I thought there were only black savages in Africa.’
‘No,’ he laughed. ‘There are plenty of white savages too – and black gentlemen,’ and he told her about the tiny yellow pygmies of the Ituri forests, tall as a man’s waist, and the giant Watusi who considered any man under two metres tall to be a pygmy, and those noble warriors of Zulu who called themselves children of heaven.
‘You talk as though you love them,’ she accused.
‘The Zulu?’ he asked, and then nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose I do. Some of them, anyway. Mbejane—’
‘Mbejane?’ She did not pronounce the name right.
‘A Zulu – he has been with my Uncle Sean since they were lads together.’ He used the Zulu word ‘Umfaan’ and had to translate for her.
‘Tell me about the animals.’ Centaine did not want him to stop talking. She could listen to his voice and his stories for ever. ‘Tell me about the lions and the tigers.’
‘No tigers,’ he smiled at her, ‘but plenty of lions.’ And even Anna’s hands, busy with plucking the birds, stilled as she listened while Michael described a camp on the hunting veld where he and his Uncle Sean had been besieged by a pride of lions, and had had to stand by the horses’ heads all night, protecting and soothing them, while the great pale cats prowled back and forth at the edge of the firelight, roaring and grunting, trying to drive the horses into the darkness where they would have been easy prey.
‘Tell us about the elephants.’ And he told her about those sagacious beasts. He described how they moved with that slow somnambulistic gait, huge ears flapping to cool their blood, picking up dirt to dash it over their heads for a dust bath.
He told them about the intricate social structures of the elephant herds, how the old bulls avoided the uproar of breeding herds. ‘Just like your father,’ said Anna. And how the barren old queens took upon themselves the duties of nanny and midwife: how the great grey beasts formed relationships with each other, almost like human friendships, that lasted their lifetimes; and about their strange preoccupation with death, how if they killed a hunter who had plagued and wounded them they would often cover his body with green leaves, almost as though they were trying to make atonement. He explained how when one of the members of the herd was stricken, the others would try to succour it, holding it on its feet with their trunks, supporting it from each side with their bulks, and when it fell at last – if it was a cow, the herd bull would mount her, as though trying to frustrate death with the act of generation.
This last tale roused Anna from her listening trance and reminded her of her role of chaperone; she glanced sharply at Centaine.
‘It has stopped raining,’ she announced primly, and she began to gather up the naked carcasses of the pigeons.
Centaine still watched Michael with huge shining dark eyes.
‘One day I will go to Africa,’ she said softly, and he returned her gaze steadily and nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘One day.’
It was as though they had exchanged a vow. It was a thing between them, firm and understood. In that moment she became his woman and he her man.
‘Come,’ Anna insisted at the door of the barn. ‘Come on, before it rains again,’ and it took a vast effort from both of them to rise and follow her out into the wet and dripping world.
They dragged on leaden feet up the lane towards the château, side by side, not touching but so acutely aware of each other that they might as well have been locked in each other’s arms.
Then the planes came out of the dusk, low and swift, the thunder of their engines rising to a crescendo as they passed overhead. In the lead was the green Sopwith. From this angle they could not see Andrew’s head, but they could see daylight through the rents in the fabric of his wings, through the lines of bullet holes which the Spandaus had torn. The five aircraft that followed Andrew had all been shot up as well. There were tears and neatly punched holes in their wings and fuselages.
‘It’s been a hard day,’ Michael murmured, with his head thrown back.
Another Sopwith trailed the others, its engine popping and missing, vapour trailing back in a stream behind it, one wing skewed out of line where the struts had been shot through. Centaine, watching them, shuddered, and crept closer to Michael.
‘Some of them died out there today,’ she whispered, and he did not have to reply.
‘Tomorrow you will be with them again.’
‘Not tomorrow.’
‘Then the next day – or the next.’
Once more it was not necessary to reply.
‘Michel, oh Michel!’ There was physical agony in her voice. ‘I must see you alone. We might never – we might never have another chance. From now on we must live each precious minute of our lives as though it is the last.’
The shock of her words was like a blow to his body. He could not speak, and her own voice dropped.
‘The barn,’ she whispered.
‘When?’ He found his voice, and it croaked in his own ears.
‘Tonight, before midnight – I will come as soon as I am able to. It will be cold.’ She looked directly into his face – social conventions had been burned away in the furnace of war. ‘You must bring a blanket.’
She whirled then and ran to catch up with Anna, leaving Michael staring after her in a daze of disbelief and uncertain ecstasy.
Michael washed at the pump outside the kitchen and changed back into his uniform. When he entered the kitchen again, the pigeon pie was rich and redolent of fresh truffles under its crumbly brown crust, and Centaine was filling and refilling her father’s glass without a protest from him. She did the same for Anna, but with a lighter more cunning hand, so that Anna did not seem to notice, though her face became redder and her laughter more raucous.
Centaine placed Michael in charge of the His Master’s Voice gramophone, her most prized possession, and made it his duty to keep it fully wound up and change each of the wax discs as they ended. From the huge brass trumpet of the machine blared the recording of Toscanini conducting the La Scala orchestra in Verdi’s Aida, filling the kitchen with glorious sound. When Centaine brought his plate laden with pigeon pie to where he sat opposite the comte, she touched the nape of Michael’s neck – those dark silky curls – and she purred in his ear as she leaned over him, ‘I love Aïda, don’t you, Captain?’
When the comte questioned him closely on the production of his family estates, Michael found it difficult to concentrate on his replies.
‘We were growing a great deal of black wattle, but my father and uncle are convinced that after the war the motor-car will completely supersede the horse, and therefore there will be a drastic reduction in the need for leather harness, and consequently the demand for wattle tanning—’
‘What a great shame that the horse should have to give way to those noisy, stinking contraptions of the devil,’ the comte sighed, ‘but they are right, of course. The petrol engine is the future.’
‘We are replanting with pines and Australian blue gums. Pit props for the gold mines and raw material for paper.’
‘Quite right.’
‘Then, of course, we have the sugar plantations and the c
attle ranches. My uncle believes that soon there will be ships fitted with cold rooms that will carry our beef to the world—’
The more the comte listened, the more pleased he became.
‘Drink up, my boy,’ he urged Michael, as an earnest of his approval. ‘You have had hardly a drop. Is it not to your taste?’
‘Excellent, truly, however, le foie – my liver.’ Michael clasped himself under the ribs and the comte made sounds of sympathy and concern. As a Frenchman he understood that most of the ills and woes of the world could be attributed to the malfunctions of that organ.
‘Not serious. But please don’t let my little indisposition prevent you.’ Michael made a self-deprecating gesture, and obediently the comte recharged his own glass.
Having served the men, the two women brought their own plates to the table to join them. Centaine sat beside her father, and spoke little. Her head turned between the two men as though in dutiful attention, until Michael felt a light pressure on his ankle and with a leap of his nerves realized that she had reached out with her foot beneath the table. He shifted guiltily under the comte’s scrutiny, not daring to look across at Centaine. Instead, he made that nervous gesture of blowing on his fingertips as though he had burned them on the stove, and he blinked his eyes rapidly.
Centaine’s foot withdrew as secretly as it had advanced, and Michael waited two or three minutes before reaching out his own. Then he found her foot and took it between both of his; from the corner of his eye he saw her start and a flush of dark blood spread up her throat to her cheeks and ears. He turned to stare at her, so enchanted that he could not pull his eyes away from her face, until the comte raised his voice.
‘How many?’ the comte repeated with mild asperity, and guiltily Michael jerked his foot back.
‘I am sorry. I did not hear—’
‘The captain is not well,’ Centaine cut in quickly and a little breathlessly. ‘His burns are not healed, and he has worked too hard today.’
‘We should not keep him unnecessarily,’ Anna agreed with alacrity, ‘if he has finished his dinner.’
‘Yes. Yes.’ Centaine stood up. ‘We must let him go home to rest.’
The comte looked truly distressed to be deprived of a drinking companion, until Centaine reassured him. ‘Don’t disturb yourself, Papa, you sit here and finish up your wine.’
Anna accompanied the couple out into the darkness of the kitchen yard and stood close by, eagle-eyed and arms akimbo, while they said their shy goodbyes. She had taken just enough of the claret to dull the razor-edge of her instincts, or she might have wondered why Centaine was so eager to see Michael on to his motor-cycle.
‘May I call upon you again, Mademoiselle de Thiry?’
‘If you wish, Captain.’
Anna’s heart, softened by wine, went out to them. It took an effort to harden her resolve.
‘Goodbye, Mijnheer,’ she said firmly. ‘This child will catch a chill. Come inside now, Centaine.’
The comte had found it imperative to wash down the claret with a fine de champagne or two. It cut the acidity of the wine, he explained seriously to Centaine. It was, therefore, necessary for the two women to help him to bed. He made this rather perilous ascent singing the march from Aïda with more gusto than talent. When he reached his bed, he went down like a felled oak, flat upon his back. Centaine took each of his legs in turn, straddled it and pulled off the boot with her knees.
‘Bless you, my little one, your Papa loves you.’
Between them they sat him up and dropped his nightshirt over his head, then let him collapse back on to the bolster. His decency preserved by the nightshirt, they removed his breeches and rolled him into the bed.
‘May angels guard your sleep, my pretty,’ the comte mumbled, as they spread an eiderdown over him and Anna blew out the candle.
Under cover of darkness, Anna reached out and caressed the tousled wiry brush of the comte’s head. She was rewarded by a reverberating snore and followed Centaine from the room, softly closing the door behind her.
Centaine lay and listened to the old house groan and creak around her in the night.
Wisely, she had resisted the temptation to climb fully clothed beneath her bedclothes, for Anna made one of her unannounced visits just as Centaine was about to extinguish her candle. She sat on the edge of the bed, garrulous with wine, but not so befuddled that she would not have known if Centaine had not been in her night-clothes. By yawning and sighing Centaine tried telepathi-cally to make her feel sleepy, but when that didn’t work, and she heard the distant chimes of the church clock at Mort Homme strike ten o’clock, she herself feigned sleep. It was agony to lie still and regulate her breathing, for she burned and itched with excitement.
At last Anna realized that she was talking to herself, and she moved around the tiny chamber, picking up and folding Centaine’s discarded clothing, and finally stooping over her to kiss her cheek and then pinch out the wick of the lamp.
As soon as she was alone, Centaine sat up and hugged herself in a ferment of anticipation and trepidation. Although it was very clear in her mind what the final outcome of this meeting with Michael must be, the precise mechanics were at this stage still tantalizingly obscure. A process of logic had suggested to her that the broad concept could not differ too widely from what she had witnessed countless times in field and barnyard.
She had received confirmation of this one drowsy summer afternoon, when a mild commotion in one of the disused stables had attracted her attention. She had climbed into the loft and through a chink watched Elsa, the kitchenmaid, and Jacques the undergroom with amazement, until gradually it had dawned upon her that they were playing rooster and hen, stallion and mare. She had thought about it for days afterwards, and then eavesdropped with more attention upon the gossip of the female servants. Finally, she had taken her courage in both hands and gone to Anna with her questions.
All these researches had left her confused and puzzled by the contradictions. According to Anna, the procedure was extremely painful, accompanied by profuse bleeding and dire danger of pregnancy and disease. This conflicted with the unrestrained glee with which the other female servants discussed the subject, and with the giggles and muffled cries of delight that she had heard coming from Elsa as she lay beneath Jacques on the straw of the stable floor.
Centaine knew that she had a high threshold of pain; even the good doctor Le Brun had remarked upon it after he had reset her broken forearm without benefit of chloroform. ‘Not a cheep out of her,’ he had marvelled. No, Centaine knew she could bear pain as well as any of the peasant girls on the estate, and apart from her monthly courses she had bled before. Often, when she was certain that she was unobserved, she would take the cumbersome side-saddle from Nuage’s back, tuck up her skirts and ride him astride. The previous spring, riding bareback, she had put the stallion to the stone wall that bordered North Field, jumping him from the low side and dropping down seven feet to the deep side of the wall. As they landed, she had come down hard on Nuage’s withers, and a pain like a knife blade had shot up through her body. She had bled so that Nuage’s white shoulders were stained pink and she was so ashamed that despite the pain she had washed him off in the pond at the end of the field before limping home, leading Nuage behind her.
No, neither pain nor blood frightened her. Her trepidation had another source. She was deadly afraid that Michael might find her disappointing – Anna had also warned her of that.
‘Afterwards men always lose interest in a woman, les cochons.’
‘If Michael loses interest in me, I think I will die,’ she thought, and for a moment she hesitated. ‘I will not go – I will not take that chance.
‘Oh, but how can I not go?’ she whispered aloud, and felt her chest swelling with the strength of her love and her wanting. ‘I must. I simply must.’
In an agony of impatience she listened to the sounds of Anna preparing for bed in the chamber next door. Even after there was silence, she waited on, hear
d the church clock strike the quarter and then the half-hour before she slipped from under the eiderdown.
She found her petticoats and cami-knickers where Anna had folded them away, and then paused with one foot in the leg of the knickers.
‘What for?’ she asked herself and smothered a giggle with her hand as she kicked them off again.
She buttoned on the thick woollen riding skirts and jacket, then spread a dark shawl over her head and shoulders. Carrying her boots in her hand, she slipped into the passage and listened outside Anna’s door.
Anna’s snores were low and regular and Centaine crept down into the kitchen. Sitting on the stool before the fire she buckled on her boots and then lit the bull’s-eye lantern with a taper from the stove. She unlocked the kitchen door and let herself out. The moon was in its last quarter, sailing sharp-prowed through wisps of flying cloud.
Centaine kept to the grassy verge, so that the gravel would not crunch under her boots, and she did not open the shutter of the lantern, but hurried down the lane by the moon’s faint silvery light. In the north, up on the ridges, there was a sudden brilliance, a dawn of orange light, that subsided slowly, and then came the rumble of the explosion muted by the wind.
‘A mine!’ Centaine paused for a moment, wondering how many had died in that monstrous upheaval of earth and fire. The thought spurred her resolve. There was so much death and hatred, and so little love. She had to grasp at every last grain of it.
She saw the barn ahead of her at last, and started to run. There was no light showing within, no sign of the motor-cycle.
‘He has not come.’ The thought left her desperate with desire. She wanted to scream his name. She tripped at the threshold of the barn, and almost fell.
‘Michel!’ She could restrain herself no longer, she heard the panic in her own voice as she called again, ‘Michel!’ and opened the shutter of the lantern.