Wilbur Smith - Shout At The Devil

by Shout At The Devil(Lit)

  Both sides of the street were lined with cheering crowds, mainly natives, but with here and there a Portuguese or an Indian trader come out of his shop to find the cause of the disturbance.

  "Fini!" chanted the crowd, clapping their hands in unison.

  "Bwana Mkuba! Great Lord! Slayer of elephant. Killer of lions!"

  "I didn't realize that Flynn was so well regarded." Sebastian was impressed.

  "Most of them have never heard of him," Rosa disillusioned him. "He sent Mohammed in last night to gather a claque of about a hundred or so. Pays them one escudo each to come and cheer, they make so much noise that the entire population turns out to see what is going on. They fall for it every time."

  "What on earth does he go to so much trouble for?"

  "Because he enjoys it. just look at himV

  Lying in his maschille, graciously acknowledging the applause, Flynn was very obviously loving every minute of it.

  The head of the procession reached the only hotel in Beira and halted. Madame da Souza, the portly, well moustached widow who was the proprietress of the hotel, rushed down to welcome Flynn with a smacking kiss and usher him ceremoniously through the shabby portals. Flynn was the kind of customer she had always dreamed about.

  When Rosa and Sebastian at last fought their way through the crowd into the hotel, Flynn was already seated at the bar counter and half way through a tall glass of Laurentia beer. The man sitting on the stool beside his was the Governor of Mozambique's aide-de-camp, who had come to deliver His Excellency's invitation for Flynn O'Flynn to dine at Government House that evening. His Excellency Jose De Clare Don Felezardo da Silva Marques had received from Governor Schee, in Dares Salaam, an agitated report, in the form of an official protest and an extradition demand. It was settlement day in the partnership of "Flynn O'Flynn and Others'. of the success of the partnership's operations during the last few months and His Excellency was delighted to see Flynn.

  In fact, so pleased was His Excellency with the progress of the partnership's affairs, that he exercised his authority and waive the formalities required by law to precede a to marriage under Portuguese jurisdiction. This saved a week, and the afternoon after their arrival in Beira, Rosa and Sebastian stood befo " the altar in the stucco and thatch cathedral, while Sebastian tried with little success to remember enough of his schoolroom Latin to understand just what he was getting himself into.

  The wedding veil, which had belonged to Rosa's mother, was yellowed by many years of storage under tropical conditions, but it served well enough to keep off the flies which were always bad during the hot season in Beira.

  Towards the end of the long ceremony, Flynn was so overcome by the heat, the gin he had taken at lunch, and an unusually fine flood of Irish feeling, that he began snuffling loudly. While he mopped at his eyes and nose with a grubby handkerchief, the Governor's aide-de-camp patted his shoulder soothingly and murmured encouragement.

  The priest declared them husband and wife, and the congregation launched into a faltering rendition of the Te Deum. His voice quivering with emotion and alcohol, Flynn kept repeating, "My little girl, my poor little girl." Rosa lifted her veil and turned to Sebastian who immediately forgot his misgivings as to the form of the ceremony, and enfolded her enthusiastically in his arms.

  Still maintaining his chorus of "My little girl," Flynn was led away by the aide-de-camp to the hotel where the proprietress had prepared the wedding feast. In deference to Flynn O'Flynn's mood this started on a sombre note but as the champagne, which Madame da Souza had specially bottled the previous evening, started to do its work, so the tempo changed. Among his other actions, Flynn gave Sebastian a wedding present of ten pounds and poured a full glass of beer over the aide-de-camp's head.

  When, later that evening, Rosa and Sebastian slipped away to the bridal suite above the bar, Flynn was giving lusty tongue in the chorus of "They are jolly good fellows', Madame da Souza was seated on his lap, and overflowing it in all directions. Every time Flynn pinched her posterior, great gusts of laughter made her shake like a stranded jellyfish.

  Later the pleasure of Rosa and Sebastian's wedding-bed was disturbed by the fact that, in the bar-room directly below them, Flynn O'Flynn was shooting the bottles off the shelves with a double-barrelled elephant rifle. Every direct hit was greeted by thunderous applause from the other guests. Madame da Souza, still palpitating with laughter, sat in a corner of the bar-room dutifully making such entries in her notebook as, "One bottle of Grandio London Dry Gin

  14.50 escudos; one bottle Grandio French Cognac Five Star

  14.50 escudos; one bottle Grandio Scotch whisky 30.00 escudos; I magnum Grandio French Champagne 75.90 escudos."

  "Grandio" was the brand-name of the house, and signified that the liquor each bottle contained had been brewed and bottled on the premises under the personal supervision of Madame da Souza.

  Once the newly-wed couple realized that the uproar from the room below was sufficient to mask the protests of their rickety brass bedstead, they no longer grudged Flynn his amusements.

  For everyone involved it was a night of great pleasure, a night to be looked back upon with nostalgia and wistful smiles.

  Even at Flynn's prodigious rate of expenditure, his share of the profits from Sebastian's tax expedition lasted another two weeks.

  During this period Rosa and Sebastian spent a little of their time wandering hand in hand through the streets and bazaars of Beira, or sitting, still hand in hand, on the beach and watching the sea. Their happiness radiated from them so strongly that it affected anyone who came within fifty feet of them. A worried stranger hurrying towards them along the narrow little street with his face creased in a frown would come under the spell; his pace would slacken, his step losing its urgency, the frown would smooth away to be replaced by an indulgent grin as he passed them. But mostly they remained closeted in the bridal suite above the bar entering it in the early afternoon and not reappearing until nearly noon the following day.

  Neither Rosa nor Sebastian had imagined such happiness could exist.

  At the expiry of the two weeks Flynn was waiting for them in the bar-room as they came down to lunch. He hurried out to join them as they passed the door. "Greetings!

  Greetings!" He threw an arm around each of their shoulders.

  "And how are you this morning?" He listened without attention as Sebastian replied at length on how well he felt, how well Rosa was, and how well both of them had slept.

  "Sure! Sure!" Flynn interrupted his rhapsodizing. "Listen, Bassie, my boy, you remember that 10 pounds I gave you?"

  "Yes. "Sebastian was immediately wary.

  "Let me have it back, will you?"

  "I've spent it, Flynn."

  "You've what? "bellowed Flynn.

  "I've spent it."

  "Good God Almighty! All of it? You've squandered ten pounds in as many days?" Flynn was horrified by his son-inlaw's extravagance and Sebastian, who had honestly believed the money was his to do with as he wished, was very apologetic.

  They left for Lalapanzi that afternoon. Madame da Souza had accepted Flynn's note of hand for the balance outstanding on her bill.

  At the head of the column Flynn, broke to the wide, and nursing a burning hangover, was in evil temper. The line of bearers behind him, bedraggled and bilious from two weeks spent in the flesh-pots, were in similar straits. At the rear of the doleful little caravan, Rosa and Sebastian chirruped and cooed together an island of sunshine in the sea of gloom.

  The months passed quickly at Lalapanzi during the monsoon of 1913. Gradually, as its girth increased, Rosa's belly became the centre of Lalapanzi. The pivot upon which the whole community turned. The debates in the servants'

  quarters, led by Nanny, the accepted authority, dealt almost exclusively with the contents thereof. All of them were hot for a man-child, although secretly Nanny cherished a treacherous hope that it might be another Little Long Hair.

  Even Flynn, during the long months of enforced i
nactivity while the driving monsoon rains turned the land into a quagmire and the rivers into seething brown torrents, felt his grand-paternal instincts stirred. Unlike Nanny, he had no doubts as to the unborn child's sex, and he decided to name it Patrick Flynn O'Flynn Oldsmith.

  He conveyed his decision to Sebastian while the two of them were hunting for the pot in the kopjes above the homestead.

  By dint of diligent application and practice, Sebastian's marksmanship had improved beyond all reasonable expectation. He had just demonstrated it. They were jurnpshooting in thick cat-bush among the broken rock and twisted ravines of the kopjes. Constant rain had softened the ground and enabled them to move silently down-wind along one of the ravines. Flynn was fifty yards out on Sebastian's right, moving heavily but deceptively fast through the sodden grass and undergrowth.

  The kudu were lying in dense cover below the lip of the ravine. Two young bulls, bluish-gold in colour, striped with thin chalk lines across the body, pendulent dewlaps heavily fringed with yellow hair, two and a half twists in each of the corkscrew horns big as polo ponies but heavier. They broke left across the ravine when Flynn jumped them from their hide, and the intervening bush denied him a shot.

  "Breaking your way, Bassie," Flynn shouted and Sebastian took two swift paces around the bush in front of him, shook the clinging raindrops from his lashes, and slipped the safety-catch. He heard the tap of big horn against a branch, and the first bull came out of the ravine at full run across his front. Yet it seemed to float, unreal, intangible, through the blue-grey rain mist. It blended ghostlike into the background of dark rain-soaked vegetation, and the clumps of bush and the tree trunks between them made it an almost impossible shot. In the instant that the bull flashed across a gap between two clumps of buffalo thorn, Sebastian's bullet broke its neck a hand's width in front of the shoulder.

  At the sound of the shot, the second bull swerved in dead run, gathered its forelegs beneath its chest and went up in a high, driving leap over the thorn bush that stood in its path. Sebastian traversed his rifle smoothly without taking the butt from his shoulder, his right hand flicked the bolt open and closed, and he fired as a continuation of the movement.

  The heavy bullet caught the kudu in mid-air and threw it sideways. Kicking and thrashing, it struck the ground and rolled down the bank of the ravine.

  Whooping like a Red Indian, Mohammed galloped past Sebastian, brandishing a long knife, racing to reach the second bull and cut its throat, "before it died so that the dictates of the Koran might be observed.

  Flynn ambled across to Sebastian. "Nice shooting, Bassie All boy. Salted and dried and pickled, there's meat there for a month."

  And Sebastian grinned in modest recognition of the compliment. Together they walked across to watch Mohammed and his gang begin paunching and quartering the big animals.

  With the skill of a master tactician, Flynn chose this moment to inform Sebastian of the name he had selected for his grandson. He was not prepared for the fierce opposition he encountered from Sebastian. It seemed that Sebastian had expected to name the child Francis Sebastian Oldsmith. Flynn laughed easily, and then in his most reasonable and persuasive brogue he started pointing out to Sebastian just how cruel it would be to saddle the child with a name like that.

  It was a lance in the pride of the Oldsmiths, and Sebastian rose to the defence. By the time they returned to Lalapanzi, the discussion needed about six hot words to reach the stage of single combat.

  Rosa heard them coming. Flynn's bellow carried across the lawns. "I'll not have my grandson called a pew ling milksop name like that!"

  "Francis is the name of kings and warriors and gentlemen!" cried Sebastian.

  "My aching buttocks, it is!"

  Rosa came out on to the wide veranda and stood there with her arms folded over the beautiful bulge that housed the cause of the controversy.

  They saw her and started an undignified race across the lawns, each trying to reach her first to enlist her support for their respective causes.

  She listened to the pleadings, a small and secret smile upon her lips, and then said with finality, "Her name will be Maria Rosa Oldsmith."

  Some time later Flynn and Sebastian were together on the veranda Ten days before the last rains of the season had come roaring in from the Indian Ocean and broken upon the unyielding shield of the continent. Now the land was drying out; the rivers regaining their sanity and returning, chastened, to the confines of their banks. New grass lifted from the red earth to welcome the return of the sun. For this brief period the whole land was alive and green; even the gnarled and crabbed thorn trees wore a pale fuzz of tender leaves. Behind each pair of guinea-fowl that clinked and scratched on the bottom lawns of Lalapanzi, there paraded a file of dappled chicks. Early that morning a herd of eland had moved along the skyline across the Varney, and beside each cow had trotted a calf Everywhere was new life, or the expectation of new life.

  "Now, stop worrying!" said Flynn, as his impatient pacing brought him level with Sebastian's chair.

  "I'm not worrying," Sebastian said mildly. "Everything will be all right."

  "How do you know that? "challenged Flynn.

  "Well..

  "You know the child could be stillborn, or something."

  Flynn shook his finger in Sebastian's face. "It could have six fingers on each hand how about that? I heard about one that was born with -."

  While Flynn related a long list of horrors, Sebastian's expression of proud and eager anticipation crumbled slowly.

  He rose from his chair and fell into step beside Flynn. "Have you got any gin left?" he asked hoarsely, glancing at the shuttered windows of Rosa's bedroom. Flynn produced the bottle from the inside pocket of his jacket.

  An hour later, Sebastian was hunched forward in his chair, clutching a half-full tumbler of gin with both hands.

  He stared into it miserably. "I don't know what I'd do if it was born with..." He could not go on. He shuddered and lifted the tumbler to his lips. At that instant a long, petulant wail issued from the closed bedroom. Sebastian leapt as though he had been bayoneted from behind, and spilled the gin down his shirt. His next leap was in the direction of the bedroom, a direction Flynn had also chosen. They collided heavily and then set off together at a gallop along the veranda. They reached the locked door and hammered upon it for admission. But Nanny, who had evicted them in the first instance, still adamantly refused to lift the locking bar or to give them any information as to the progress of the birthing. Her decision was endorsed by Rosa.

  "Don't you dare let them in until everything is ready,"

  she whispered huskily, and roused herself from the stupor of exhaustion, to help Nanny with washing and wrapping the infant.

  When at last everything was ready, she lay propped on the pillows with her child held against her chest, and nodded to Nanny. "Open the door, she said.

  The delay had confirmed Flynn's worst suspicions. The door flew open, and he and Sebastian fell into the room, wild with anxiety.

  "Oh, thank God, Rosa. You're still alive!" Sebastian reached the bed and fell on his knees beside it.

  "You check his feet," instructed Flynn. "I'll do his hands and head," and before Rosa could prevent him, he had lifted the infant out of her arms.

  "His fingers are all right. Two arms, one head," Flynn muttered above Rosa's protests and the infant's muffled squawls of indignation.

  "This end is fine. just fine!" Sebastian spoke in rising relief and delight. "He's beautiful, Flynn!" And he lifted the shawl that swaddled the child's body. His expression cracked and his voice choked. "Oh, my God!"

  "What's wrong?" Flynn asked sharply.

  "You were right, Flynn. he's deformed."

  "What? Where?"

  "There!" Sebastian pointed. "He hasn't got a whatchim-ca all-it," and they both stared in horror.

  simultaneously It was many long seconds before they realized that the tiny cleft was no deformity but very much as nature had intended it.
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br />   "It's a girl!" said Flynn in dismay.

  "A girl!" echoed Sebastian, and quickly pulled down the shawl to preserve his daughter's modesty.

  "It's a girl, Rosa smiled, wan and happy.

  "It's a girl," cackled Nanny in triumph.

  Maria Rosa Oldsmith had arrived without fuss and with the minimum of inconvenience to her mother, so that Rosa was on her feet again within twenty-four hours. All her other activities were conducted with the same consideration and dispatch. She cried once every four hours; a single angry howl which was cut off the instant the breast was thrust into her mouth. Her bowel movements were equally regular and of the correct volume and consistency, and the rest of her days and nights were devoted almost entirely to sleeping.

  She was beautiful; without the parboiled, purple look of most new-barns; without the squashed-in pug features or the vague, squinty eyes.