by Wilbur Smith
the trade that took you five years to learn, they will split it up and now there will be three unskilled men to do your job, with only a year's training to learn that fragment, and they will pay them a tenth of the wage you draw.
A storming roar of No! and Fergus flung it back at them. Yes! he shouted. Yes! Yes! And yes again. That is what the bosses are going to do. But that's not all, they are going to use blacks in your jobs, black men are going to take those jobs away from you, black men who will work for a wage that you cannot live on. They screamed now, frantic with anger, a terrible anger which had no object on which to focus. What about your kids, are you going to feed them on mealies, are your wives going to wear limbo? That's what will happen, when the blacks take your jobs! No! they roared. No! VWorkers of the world, Fergus shouted at them, workers of the world unite, and keep our country white! The bellow of applause, the rhythmic stamp of feet on the wooden floor lasted for ten minutes, while Fergus strutted back and forth across the stage, clasping his hands above his head like a prize-fighter. When at last the cheering faltered, he flung back his head and bellowed the opening line of The Red Flag.
The entire hall came crashing to its feet, and stood at attention to sing the revolutionary song: Then raise the scarlet standard high, Within its shade we'll live or die.
Tho cowards flinch and traitors sneer, We'll keep the red flag flying here, Mark walked home with the MacDonalds in the frosty night, their breathing smoking like ostrich plumes in the lights of the street lamps. Helena walked between the men, a small dainty figure in her black overcoat with rabbit-fur collar and a knitted cap pulled down over her head.
She had slipped a hand into the crook of the elbows of each of them, a seemingly natural impartial gesture, but there was a disturbing pressure of fingers on the hard muscle of Mark's upper arm, and her hip touched his as she skipped occasionally to catch the longer stride of the men. Listen, Fergus, what you were saying there in the hall doesn't make sense, you know, Mark broke the silence, as they turned into the home street. You can't have it both ways, workers unite and keep it white. Fergus chuckled appreciatively. You're a bright lad, comrade Mark. But, I'm serious, Fergus, it's not the way Harry FisherOf course not, lad. Tonight I was shovelling up swill for the hogs. We need them fighting mad, we have things to tear down, bloody work to do. He stopped and turned to face Mark over the woman's head. We need cannon fodder, lad, and plenty of it. So it won't be like that? Mark asked. No, lad. It will be a beautiful brave new world. All men equal, all men happy, no bosses, a workers state.
Mark tried to control his pricking nagging doubts.
u keep talking of fighting, Fergus. Do you mean that, literally? I mean, will it be a shooting war? A shooting war, comrade, a bloody shooting war. just like the revolution in Russia, where comrade Lenin has shown us the way. We have to burn away the dross, we have to soak this earth with the blood of the rulers and the bosses, we have to flood it with the blood of their minions the petit bourgeois officer's class of the police and military. What will Mark almost said we but it would not come to his lips. He could not make that commitment. What will you fight with? Fergus chuckled again, and winked slyly. Mum's the word, lad, but it's time you knew a little more. He nodded.
Yes, tomorrow night, he decided.
On Saturday there was a bazaar being held in the Trades Hall, a Women's Union fund-raising drive for building the new church. Where the crazed mob had screamed murder and bloody revolution the previous night, now there were long trestle tables set out and the women hovered over their displays of baked and fancily iced cakes, trays of tarts, preserved fruit in jars and jams.
Mark bought a packet of tarts for a penny and he and Fergus munched them as they wandered idly down the hall, stopping at the piles of second-hand clothing while Fergus tried a maroon cardigan, and, after careful deliberation, purchased it for half a crown. They reached the top of the hall, and stood beneath the raised stage.
Fergus surveyed the room casually and then took Mark's arm and led him up the steps. They crossed the stage quietly, and went in through a door in the wings, into a maze of small union offices and storerooms, all deserted now on a Saturday afternoon.
Fergus used a key from his watch-chain to unlock a low iron door, and they stooped through it. Fergus relocked behind him, and they went down a narrow flight of steps that descended steeply. There was a smell of damp and earth, and Mark realized that they were descending to the cellars.
Fergus tapped on the door at the bottom of the stairs, and after a moment a single eye regarded them balefully through a peep hole. All right, comrade. Fergus MacDonald, a committee member. There was the rattle of chains and the door opened. A disgruntled, roughly dressed man stood aside for them. He was unshaven and sullen, and against the wall of the tiny room was a table and chair, still spread with the remains of a meal and the crumpled daily newspaper.
The man grunted, and Fergus led Mark across the room and through another door into the cellars.
The floor was earthen and the arched columns were in raw unplastered brick. There was the stench of dust and rats, stale dank air in confined space. A single bulb lit the centre starkly, but left the alcoves behind the arches in shadow. Here, lad, this is what we are going to use There were wooden cases stacked neatly to the height of a man's head in the alcoves, and the stacks were draped with heavy tarpaulin, obviously stolen from the railway yards for they were stencilled SAR and H.
Fergus lifted the edge of one tarpaulin, and grinned that thin humourless smile. Still in the grease, lad. The wooden cases were branded with the distinctive arrow-head and W. D. of the British War Department, and below that the inscription: 6 pieces.
Lee-Enfield Mark 1! (CNVD).
Mark was stunned. Good God, Fergus, there are hundreds of them. That's it, lad, and this is only one arsenal, There are others all along the Rand. He lifted another tarpaulin, walking on down the length of the cellar. The ammunition cases, with the quickrelease catches on the detachable lids that were painted 1000 rounds . 303. We have enough to do the job. Fergus squeezed Mark's arm, and led him on.
There were racks of rifles now, ready for instant use, blued steel glistening with gun oil in the electric light.
Fergus picked out a single rifle and handed it to Mark. This one has got your name on it. Mark took the weapon, and the feel of it in his hands was terribly familiar. It's the only one we've got, but the moment I saw it, I thought of you. When the time comes, you'll be using it. the P. 14 sniper's rifle had that special balance that felt just right in his hands but made Mark sick in the stomach.
He handed it back to Fergus without a word, but the older man winked at him before racking it again carefully.
Like a showman, Fergus had kept the best for last. With a flourish he whipped the canvas off the heavy weapon, with its thick, corrugated water-jacketed barrel, that squatted on its steel tripod. The Maxim machine gun, in its various forms, had the dubious distinction of having killed more human beings than any other single weapon that man destructive genius had been able to devise.
This was one of that deadly family, the Vickers-Maxim
. 303 Mark IV. B, and there were boxes stacked beside it.
Each containing a belt Of 250 rounds. The gun could throw those at 2440 feet per second and at a Cycle rate Of 750
rounds a minute. How about that, comrade? You asked what we are going to fight with, how will that do for a beginning?
In the silence Mark could hear faintly, but distinctly, the sound of children's laughter from the hall above them.
Mark sat alone upon the highest crest of the low kopjes that stretched into the west, black ironstone ridges breaking out of the flat dry earth like the crested back of a crocodile surfacing from still lake water.
The memory of the hidden arsenal had stayed with him through the night, keeping him from sleep, so that now his eyes felt gritty and his skin stretched tight and dry across the bones of his cheeks.
Lack of sleep had left him with th
at remote feeling, a lightness of thought, detached from reality, so now he sat in the bright sunlight blinking like a day-flying owl, and looking like a stranger into his own mind.
He felt a rising sense of dismay as he realized how idly he had drifted along the path that had brought him here to the very brink of the abyss. It had taken the feel of the P. I 4 in his hands, and the laughter of children to bring him up at the end of a rope.
All his training, all his deepest beliefs were centred on the sanctity of law, on the order and responsibilities of society. He had fought for that, had spent all of his adult life fighting for that belief. Now suddenly he had drifted, out of apathy, to the camp of the enemy; already he was numbered with the legions of the lawless, already they were arming him to begin the work of destruction. There was no question now that it was merely empty rhetoric shouted at gatherings of drunken labourers, he had seen the guns. It would be cruel and without mercy. He knew Harry Fisher, had recognized the forces that drove him. He knew Fergus MacDonald, the man had killed before and often; he would not flick an eyelid when he killed again.
Mark groaned aloud, aghast at what he had let happen to himself. He who knew what war really was, he who had worn the king's uniform, and won his medal for courage.
He felt the oily warmth of shame in his throat, a gagging sensation, and, to arm himself against future weakness of this same kind, he tried to find the reasons why he had been drawn in.
He realized now that he had been lost and alone, without family or home, and Fergus MacDonald had been the only shelter in the cold. Fergus the older comrade of shared dangers, whom he had trusted without question. Fergus the father figure, and he had followed again, grateful for the guidance, not questioning the destination.
There had, of course, been Helena as well and the hold she had over him, the tightest grip any human could have over another. He had been, and still was, totally obsessed with her. She had awakened his long suppressed and tightly controlled sexuality. Now it was but a breath away from bursting the wall he had built to dam it; when it burst, it might be a force he could not control, and that thought terrified him almost as much as the other.
He tried now to separate the woman from her womanhood, tried to see the person beyond this devastating web she wove around his senses, and he succeeded in as much that he realized that she was not a person he could admire, not the mother he would choose for his children. Also, she was the wife of an old comrade who trusted him completely.
Now he felt he was ready to make the decision to leave, and to carry that resolve through firmly.
He would leave Fordsburg immediately, leave Fergus MacDonald and his dark, cataclysmic schemes. He felt his spirits lighten instantly at the prospect. He would not miss him, nor that drab monastic pay office with its daily penance o boredom and drudgery. He felt the bright young spirit of anticipation flame again.
He would leave Fordsburg on the next train, and Helena. Immediately the flame flickered and his spirit plunged. There was a physical pain in his groin at the prospect, and he felt the cracks open in the dam wall of his passions.
It was dark when he left his bicycle in the garden shed, and he heard voices raised jovially in the house and bursts of laughter. Lights blazed beyond the curtained kitchen windows and when he stepped into the room there were four men at the table. Helena crossed quickly and hugged him impulsively, laughing, with high spots of colour in her cheeks, before taking his hand and leading him to the table. Welcome, comrade. Harry Fisher looked up at Mark with those disturbing eyes and the shock of dark wiry hair hanging on to his forehead. You are in time to join the celebration. Grab the lad a glass, Helena, laughed Fergus, and she dropped his hand and hurried to the cupboard to fetch a glass and fill it with black stout from the bottle.
Harry Fisher raised his own glass to Fergus. Comrades, I give you the new member of the Central Committee Fergus MacDonald. Isn't it wonderful, Mark? Helena squeezed Mark's hand. He's a good man, growled Harry Fisher. The appointment isn't too soon. We need men with Comrade MacDonald's guts. The others nodded agreement over their stout glasses, the two of them were both members of the local committee of the party; Mark knew them well from the meetings. Come, lad. Fergus made room for him at the table and he squeezed in beside him, drawing all their attention. And you, young Mark, Harry Fisher laid a powerful hairy hand on his shoulder, we are going to issue your party card How about that, lad! Fergus winked and nudged Mark in the ribs. Usually it takes two years or more, we don't let the rabble into the party, but you've got friends on the Central Committee now. Mark was about to speak, to refuse the honour he was being accorded. Nobody had asked him, they had taken it that as he was Fergus protege, he was for them. Mark was about to deny it, to tell them the decision he had made that day, when that sense of danger warned him. He had seen the guns, if he was not a friend then he was an enemy with a fatal secret. A secret that they could not risk. He had no doubts at all about these men, now. If he was an enemy, then they would see that he never passed that secret on to another man. But the moment for refusal had passed. Comrade MacDonald, I have a mission for you. It is urgent, and vital. Can you leave your work for two weeks? I've got a sick mother, Fergus chuckled. When do you want me to go, and what do you want me to do? I want you to leave, say Wednesday, that will give me time to give you your orders and for you to make your arrangements. Harry Fisher took a swallow of stout and the froth stayed on his upper lip I'm sending you to visit all the local committees, Capetown, Bloemfontein, Port Elizabeth, so that each of them can be coordinated. Mark felt a guilty lift of relief at the words, there would be no confrontation with Fergus now. He could merely slip away while he was gone on his mission. Then he glanced up and was startled by the gaze that Helena had fastened upon him. She stared at him with the fixed hungry expression of a leopard watching its prey from cover in the last instant before its spring.
Now when their eyes met, she smiled again that secret knowing smile, and the tip of her pink tongue dabbed at her slightly parted lips.
Mark's heart pounded to the point of physical pain and he dropped his eyes hurriedly to his glass. He was to be alone with Helena, and the prospect filled him with dread and a surging passionate heat.
Mark carried Fergus cheap and badly battered suitcase down to the station, and as they took the short cut across open veld, the thick frost crunched like sugar under their feet, and sparkled in myriad diamond points of light in the first rays of the sun.
At the station they waited with four other members of the party for the southbound mail, and when at last it came, puffing hoarsely, shooting steam high into the frosty air, it was thirty-five minutes late. Thirty-five minutes late is almost early for the railways, Fergus laughed, and shook hands with each of them in turn, slapping their shoulders before scrambling up the steel ladder into the coach. Mark passed his suitcase up through the open window. Look after Helena, lad, and yourself. Mark stood and watched the train run out southwards, shrinking dramatically in size until the sound of it was a mere whisper fading to nothingness. Then he turned and started up the hill towards the mine just as the hooters began their mournful wailing howl that echoed off the yellow mesas of the dumps, summoning the disorderly columns of men to their appointed labours. Mark walked with them, one in a thousand, distinguished from the others neither in appearance nor achievement. Once again he felt a sense of seething discontent, a vague but growing knowledge that this was not all that was life, not all that he was capable of doing with his youth and energy; and he looked curiously at the men who hurried with him towards the iron gates at the mine hooter's imperious summons.
All of them wore that closed withdrawn look, behind which Mark was convinced lurked the same misgivings as now assaulted him. Surely they also felt the futility of the dull daily repetition, the young ones at least must feel it.
The older and greyer must regret it; deep down they must mourn for the long sunny days, now past, spent toiling in endless drudgery for another man's coin. They must mour
n the fact that when they went, they would leave no footprints, no ripple on the surface, no monument, except perhaps a few sons to repeat the meaningless cycle, all of them interchangeable, all of them dispensable.
He paused at the gates, standing aside while the stream of humanity flowed past him, and slowly the sense of excitement built up in him, the certainty that there was something, some special and worthwhile task for him to perform. Some special place that waited for him, and he knew he must go on and find it.
He hurried forward, suddenly grateful to Fergus MacDonald for placing this pressure on him, for forcing him to face himself, for breaking the easy drifting course he had taken since his flight from Ladyburg. You are late, Anders. The supervisor looked up from his ledgers severely, and each of his juniors repeated the gesture, a long row of them with the same narrow disapproving expressions. What have you got to say? I merely called in to clean out my desk, said Mark smiling, the excitement still on him. And to throw in my time.
The disapproving expressions changed slowly to shock.
It was dusk when Mark opened the back gate of the cottage and went up the short walk to the kitchen. He had walked all day at random, driven on restlessly by a new torrent of energy and exciting thoughts; he had not realized how hungry he was until he saw the lights in the window and smelled the faint aroma of cooking.
The kitchen was deserted, but Helena called through from the front. Mark, is that you? Before he could answer, she appeared in the kitchen door, and leaned one hip against the jamb. I thought you weren't coming home tonight. She wore the blue dress, and Mark knew now that it was her best, reserved for special occasions, and she wore cosmetics, something that Mark had never seen her do before. There were spots of rouge on her cheeks and her lips were painted, giving new lustre to her usually sallow skin. The short dark hair was newly washed, shiny in the lamplight, and brushed back, caught over one ear with a tortoise-shell clasp.