by Wilbur Smith
Mark stared at her. Her legs were smooth and'sleek in silken stockings, the feet neatly clad in small pumps. Why are you staring, Mark? You are -'Mark's voice turned husky, and caught. He cleared his throat. You are very pretty tonight. Thank you, sir. She laughed, a low throaty chuckle, and she did a slow pirouette, flaring the blue filmy skirt above the silken legs. I'm glad you like it. Then she stopped beside him and took his arm. Her touch was a delicious shock, like diving into a mountain pool. Sit down, Mark. She led him to the chair at the head of the table. Let me get you a nice beer. She went to the ice box, and while she pulled the cap on the bottle and poured, she ran on gaily. I found a goose at the butcher's, do you like roast goose? Saliva poured from under Mark's tongue. I love it. With roast potato and pumpkin pie. For that I would sell my soul. Helena laughed delightedly, it wasn't one of Mark's usual shy and reserved replies. There was a sense of excitement surrounding him like an aura this evening, echoing her own excitement.
She brought the two glasses, and propped one hip on the table. What shall we drink to? To freedom, he said without hesitation, and a good tomorrow. I like that, she said, and clinked his glass, leaning over him so that the bodice of her dress was at the level of his eyes. But why only tomorrow, why can't the good times start right now this minute? Mark laughed. All right, here's to a good tonight and a good tomorrow. Mark! Helena pursed her lips in mock disapproval, and immediately he blushed and laughed in confusion. Oh no, I didn't mean, that sounded dreadful. I didn't I bet you say that to all the girls. Helena stood up quickly. She did not want to embarrass him and break the mood, so she crossed to the stove. It's ready, she announced, if you want to eat now. She sat opposite him, anticipating his appetite, buttering
the thick slices of bread with yellow farm butter and keeping his glass fully charged.
Aren't you eating? I'm not hungry. It's good, you don't know what you are missing. Better than your other girls cooked for you? she demanded playfully, and Mark dropped his eyes to his plate and busily loaded his fork. There weren't any girls. Oh, Mark, you don't expect me to believe that! A handsome young fellow like you, and those French girls. I bet you drove them mad. We were too busy, and besides, -he stopped. Besides what! she insisted, and he looked up at her, silent for a moment, and then he began to talk. It was suddenly so easy to talk to her, and he was buoyed up with his new jubilant mood and relaxed with the food and drink in his belly. He talked to her as he had never talked to another human being& and she answered him with the frankness of another man. Oh, Mark, that's nonsense. Not every woman is sick, it's only the street girls. Yes, I know. I didn't believe every girl, but well, they are the only ones that a man can, he broke off. And the others get babies, he went on lamely.
She laughed and clapped her hands with delight. Oh, my darling Mark. It's not that easy, you know. I have been married for nine years and I've never had a baby. Well, Mark hesitated. Well, you are different. I didn't mean you, when I said those things. I meant other girls. I'm not sure if that's meant to be a compliment or an insult, she teased again. She had known he was a virgin, of course. There was that transparent shining innocence that glowed from him, his unpractised and appealing awkwardness in the presence of women, that peculiar shyness that would pass so soon but which now heightened her excitement, rousing her in some perverse way. She knew now why some men paid huge sums of money to despoil innocence; she touched his bared forearm now, delighting in the smooth hardness of young muscle, unable to keep her hands off him.
Oh, it was a compliment, Mark answered her hurriedly. Do you like me, Mark? Oh, yes. I like you more than I've ever liked any other girlYou see, Mark, she leaned closer to him, her voice sinking to a throaty whisper. I'm not sick, and I'm not going to have a baby, ever. She lifted her hand and touched his cheek. You are a beautiful man, Mark. I liked you from the first moment I saw you coming up the walk like a stray puppy. She stood up slowly and crossed to the kitchen door, deliberately she turned the key and flipped up the light switch. The small room was dark, but for the shaft of light from the hallway. Come, Mark. She took his hand and drew him to his feet. We are going to bed now. At the door to Mark's bedroom she reached up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek lightly, and then without another word she let his hand drop and glided away from him.
Uncertainly Mark watched her go, wanting to call to her to stay, wanting to ran after her, and yet relieved that she had gone, that the headlong rush into the unknown had abruptly halted. She reached the door of her own bedroom and went through without looking back.
Torn by conflicting emotions, he turned away and went through into his own room. He undressed slowly, disappointment now stronger than relief, and while he folded his clothing, he listened to her quiet movements in the room beyond the thin wall.
He climbed at last into the narrow iron bed, and lay rigid until he had heard the light switch click next door; then he sighed and picked up the book from his bedside table; he had not yet read it through, but now the dull political text might divert his emotions enough to allow him to sleep.
The latch of his door snapped softly. He had not heard her in the passage, and she stepped into the room. She wore the gown of slippery peach-coloured satin and she had recombed her hair and retouched her cheeks and lips.
Carefully, she closed the door and crossed the room with slow swaying hips under the moving satin.
Neither of them spoke as she stopped by the side of his bed.
Have you read it, Mark? she asked softly.
Not all of it. He placed the book aside. Well, this isn't the time to finish it, she said, and deliberately opened the gown, slipped it from her shoulders and dropped it over the back of the chair.
She was naked, and Mark gasped. She was so smooth.
He had not expected that somehow, and he stared at her as she stood close beside him. Her skin had an olive creaminess, like old porcelain, a sheen that caught the light and glowed. Mark felt his whole body rocked by the exquisite tension of arousal, and he tried feebly to thrust it aside. He tried to think of Fergus, of the trust that had been placed in him. Look after Helena, lad, and yourself Her breasts were big for the slimness of her body, already they hung heavily, almost overripe, drooping smooth and round with startlingly large nipples, rosy brown and big as ripe grapes. They swung weightily as she moved closer to him, and he saw that there were sparse dark hairs curling from the puckered aureole around the nipples.
There was hair also curling out in little wisps from under her arms, dark glossy hair, and a huge wild bush of it below the smooth creamy slightly bulging belly.
The hair excited him, so dark and crisp against the pale skin, and he stared at it, transfixed. All thoughts of honour and trust faded, he felt the dam wall inside him creak and strain.
She reached out and touched his bare shoulder, and it convulsed his body like a whip-lash. Touch me, Mark, she whispered, and he reached out slowly, hesitantly, like a man in a trance, and touched with one finger the smooth ivory warmth of her hip, still staring fixedly at her. Yes, Mark. That's right. She took his wrist and slowly drew his hand upwards, so that the tips of his fingers traced featherlike over her flank and the outline of her ribs. Here, Mark, she said, and here. The big dark nipples contracted at the touch of his fingers, changing shape, thrusting out and hardening, swelling and darkening. Mark could not believe it was happening, that woman's flesh could react as swiftly and dramatically as a man's.
He felt the dam break, and the flood came pouring through the breach. Too long contained, too powerful and weighty to resist, it poured through his mind and body, sweeping all restraint before it.
With a choking cry, he seized her around the waist with both arms, and drew her fiercely to him, pressing his face into the smooth soft warmth of her naked belly. Oh, Mark! she cried, and her voice was hoarse and shaking with lust and triumph, as she twisted her fingers into the soft brown hair and stooped over his head.
The days blurred and telescoped together, and the universe shut down to a tin
y cottage in a sordid street. Only their bodies marked the passage of time sleeping and waking to love until exhaustion overtook them and they slept again to wake hungry, ravenous for both food and loving.
At first he was like a bull, charging with a mindless energy and strength. It frightened her, for she had not expected such strength from that slim and graceful body.
She rode with his strength, little by little controlling and directing it, changing its course, and then she began gently to teach.
Long afterwards, Mark would think back on those five incredible days and realize his great good fortune. So many young men must find their own way into the uncharted realms of physical love-making, without guide, accompanied usually by a partner making her own hesitant first journey into the unknown. Did you know that there is a tribe in South America, Mark, that have a rule that every married woman must take one young warrior of the tribe and teach him to do what we are doing? she asked, as she knelt beside him in one of the intervals of quiet between the storms. What a shame, he smiled lazily. I thought we were the first two ever to think of it. He reached out for the pack of Needlepoint cigarettes on the bedside table and lit two of them.
Helena drew upon hers and her expression was fond and proud. He had changed so swiftly and radically in the last few days, and she was responsible for that. This new assurance, this budding strength of purpose. The shyness and reticence were fading. He spoke now in a way that he had never spoken before, calmly and with authority.
Swiftly he was becoming a full man, and she had had a hand in it.
Mark believed that each new delight was the ultimate one, but she proved him wrong a dozen times. There were things that, had he heard them spoken of might have appalled andrevolted him, but when they happened the way Helena made them happen, they left only wonder and a sense of awe. She taught him a vast new respect for his own body, as it came at last fully alive, and he became aware of new broad reaches and depths of his own mind.
For five days neither of them left the cottage; then on the sixth day there was a letter brought by a uniformed postman on a bicycle and Mark, who accepted it, recognized immediately Fergus MacDonald's cramped and laboured. hand. Guilt hit him like a fist in the stomach;
the dream shattered like fragile crystal.
Helena sat at the newspaper-covered table in the kitchen with the now soiled peach gown open to the waist and read the letter aloud, mocking the writer with the inflection of her voice as he reported a string of petty achievements, applause at party meetings where a dozen comrades had gathered in a back room, messages of loyalty and dedication to bring back to the Central Committee, commitment to the cause and promises of action when the time to strike was ripe.
Helena mocked him, rolling her eyes and chuckling when he asked after Mark, was he well and happy, was Helena looking after him properly.
She drew deeply on the stub of the cigarette and then dropped it into the dregs of the coffee cup at her elbow, where it was extinguished with a sharp hiss. This simple action caused in Mark an unnatural reaction of revulsion.
Suddenly he saw her clearly, the sallow skin wrinkled finely in the corners of her eyes as her youth cracked away like old oilpaint; the plum-coloured underlining of the eye sockets, the petulant quirk of her lips and the waspish sting to her voice.
Abruptly, he was aware of the squalid room, with the greasy smell of stale food and unwashed dishes, of the grubby and stained gown and the pendulous droop of the big ivory-coloured breasts beneath the gown.
He stood up and left the room.
Mark, where are you going? she called after him. I'm going out for a while. He scrubbed himself in the stained enamel bath, running the water as hot as he could bear it so that his body glowed bright pink as he towelled himself down.
At the railway booking office he stood for nearly half an hour, reading the long lists of closely printed timetables pasted to the wall.
Rhodesia. He had heard they needed men on the new copper mines. There was still a wilderness up there, far horizons and the great wild game, lakes and mountains and room to move.
He moved to the window of the booking-office and the clerk looked out at him expectantly. One second-class single to Durban, he said, surprising himself. He was going back to Natal, to Ladyburg. There was unfinished business there, and answers to search for.
An unknown enemy to find and confront.
As he paid for the ticket with the old man's sovereigns, he had a vivid mental picture of the old man on the stoep of Andersland, with his great spiky whiskers and the old terai hat pulled low over his pale calm eyes. Mark knew then that this had been only a respite, a hiatus, in which he had found time to heal and gather courage for the task ahead.
He went back to collect his belongings. There was not much to pack, and he was in a consuming hurry now.
he swept his few spare shorts and clean socks into the cardboard suitcase, he was suddenly aware of Helena's presence, and he turned quickly. She had bathed and dressed and she stood in the doorway watching him, her expression too calm for the loneliness in her voice.
You are going. It was a statement, not a question. Yes, he answered simply, turning to snap the catches on the case. I'm coming with you. No. I'm going alone. But, Mark, what about me?
I'm sorry, Helena. I'm truly sorry. But don't you see, I love you, her voice rose in a low wall of despair. I love you, Mark darling, you can't go.
She spread her arms to block the doorway.
Please, Helena. We both knew it was madness. We both knew there was nothing for us. Don't make it ugly now, please let me go. No. She covered her ears with both hands. No, don't talk like that. I love you. I love you.
Gently he tried to move her from the doorway.
I have to go. My train, Suddenly she flew at him, vicious as a wounded leopard.
He was unprepared, and her nails raked long bloody lines across his face, narrowly missing his eyes. You bastard, you selfish bastard, she shrieked. You're like all of them, and she struck again, but he caught her wrists. You're all the same, you take, you take He turned her, wildly struggling, and tipped her back on to the bed. Abruptly the fight went out of her and she pressed her face into the pillow. Her sobs followed Mark as he ran down the passage, and out of the open front door.
It was more than three hundred miles to the port of Durban on the coast, and slowly the train huffed up the great barrier of the Drakensberg Mountains, worming its way through the passes until at last it plunged joyously over the escarpment and ran lightly down into the deep grassy bowl of the eastern littoral, dropping less steeply as it neared the sea and emerged at last into the lush semitropical hot-house of the sea-board with its snowy white beaches and the warm blue waters of the Mozambique current.
Mark had much time to think on the journey down, and he wasted most of it in vain regrets. Helena's cries and accusations echoed through his mind while the cold grey stone of guilt lay heavily in the pit of his stomach, whenever he thought of Fergus MacDonald.
Then, as they passed through the town of Pietermaritzburg and began the last leg of the journey, Mark put aside guilt and regret, and began to think ahead.
His first intention had been to return directly to Ladyburg, but now he realized that this was folly. There was an enemy t here, a murderous enemy, a hidden enemy striking from cover, a rich enemy, a powerful enemy, who could command a bunch of armed men who were ready to kill.
Mark thought then of those bloody attacks that he and Fergus had made in France. Always the first move had been to identify and mark the enemy, locate where he was lying, find his stance and assess him. How good was he, was his technique rigid, or was he quick and changeable? Was he sloppy, so that the hunters could take risks, or were risks suicidal? We got to try and guess the way the bastard's thinking, lad - was Fergus first concern, before they planned the shoot. I've got to find who he is, Mark whispered aloud, and guess the way the bastard is thinking. One thing at least was clear, a hundred pounds was too high a price i
n blood money for such an insignificant person as Mark Anders; the only thing that could possibly make him significant in anyway was his relation to the old man and to Andersland. He had been seen at Andersland by both the Hindu babu and the white foreman. Then he had brazened into the town asking questions, perusing documents. Only then had they come after him. The land was the centre of the puzzle, and he had the names of all the men who had any interest in the sale.
Mark lifted his suitcase down from the luggage rack and, holding it on his lap, hunted for and found his notebook.
He read the names: DIRK COURTNEY, RONALD PYE, DENNIS PETERSEN, PIET GREYLING and his son CORNELFUS.
His first concern must be to find out all he could about those men, find out where each was lying, find his stance and assess him, decide which of them was the sniper.
While he did this, he must keep his own head well down below the parapet. He must keep clear of enemy country, and enemy country was Ladyburg.
His best base would be Durban city itself; it was big enough to absorb him without comment, and, as the capitol of Natal, he would have many sources of information there, libraries, government archives, newspaper offices.
He began making a list of all possible sources in the back of the notebook, and immediately found himself regretting bitterly that Ladyburg itself was closed to him. Records in the Lands Office and Company Registers for the district were not duplicated in the capital.
Suddenly he had a thought. Damn it, what was her name" Mark closed his eyes, and he saw again the bright, friendly and cheerful face of the little girl in the Companies office in Ladyburg. Mark, that's a strong romantic name, He could even hear her voice, but the train was sliding into the platform before her name came to him again.