A Sparrow Falls c-9

by Wilbur Smith

  A hand touched his shoulder arousing him, and he straightened up from the reading table, bewildered at his sudden return to the present. We are closing now, it's after nine o'clock, said the young assistant librarian softly. I'm afraid you will have to leave now. Then she peered more closely at him. Are you all right? Have you been crying? No. Quickly Mark groped for his handkerchief. It's just the strain of reading. His landlady shouted down the stairs to him as he let himself into the hall. I've got a letter for you. The letter looked as thick as a complete works of William Shakespeare, but when he opened it there were only twenty-two pages, beginning: My dear Mark, Of course I remember you so clearly, and I have thought about you often, wondering what ever had become of you,-so your welcome letter came as a marvelous surprise Mark felt a guilty twinge at the unrestrained joy that her letter voiced.

  I realize that we know so little about each other. You did not even know my name! ! Well, it is Marion Littlejohn silly name, isn't it? I wish I could change it (that's not a hint, silly! ) and I was born in Ladyburg (I'm not going to tell you when! A lady never reveals her age! ) My father was a farmer, but he sold his farm five years ago, and now he works as a forem in at the sugar mill.

  The entire family history, Marion's schooling, the names and estates of all her numerous relatives, Marion's hopes, dreams, aspirations, I'd love to travel, wouldn't you? Paris, London', were laid out in daunting detail, much of it in parentheses and liberally punctuated with exclamation and question marks.

  Isn't it strange that our names are so similar, Mark and Marion? It does sound rather grand, doesn't it?

  Mark had stirrings now of alarm, it seemed he had called the whirlwind when he had merely whistled for a breeze, and yet there was an infectious gaiety and warmth that came through to him strongly, and he regretted that the girl's features were so hazy in his mind. He realized that he might easily pass her in the street without recognizing her.

  He replied that night, taking special care with his penmanship. He could not yet blatantly come to the true purpose of his letters, but hinted vaguely that he was considering writing a book, but that it would require much research in the Ladyburg archives, and that as yet he did not have either the time nor the capital to make the journey, and he concluded by wondering if she did not have a photograph of herself that he might have.

  Her reply must have been written and posted the same day as his letter was received. My dearest Mark -'He had been promoted from Dear Mark.

  There was a photograph accompanying the twenty-five pages of closely written text. It was stiffly posed, a young girl in party clothes with a fixed nervous smile on her face, staring into the camera as though it were the muzzle of a loaded howitzer. The focus was slightly misty, but it was good enough to remind him what she looked like, and Mark felt a huge swell of relief.

  She was a little plump, but she had a sweet heart-shaped face with a wide friendly mouth and well-spaced intelligent eyes, an alert and lively look about her; and he knew already that she was educated and reasonably well read and desperately eager to please.

  On the back of the photograph he had received further promotion: To darling Mark, With much love, Marion.

  Under her name were three neat crosses. The letter was bursting with unbounded admiration for his success as a Cadillac salesman, and with awe for his aspirations to be a writer.

  She was anxious to be of help in his researches, he had only to let her know what information he needed. She herself had access to all the Governmental and Municipal archives ('and I won't charge you a search fee this time! ), her elder sister worked in the editorial office of the Ladyburg Lantern, and there was an excellent library in the Town Hall building where Marion was well known and where she loved to browse, please would he let her help?

  One other thing, did he have a photograph of himself, she would love to have a reminder of him.

  For half a crown Mark had a photograph taken of himself at a beachfront open-air studio, dressed in his new suit, and with a straw boater canted at a rakish angle over one eye and a daredevil grin on his face.

  My darling Mark, How handsome you are! ! I have shown all my friends and they are all quite envious.

  She had some of the information he requested, and more would follow.

  From Adams Booksellers in Smith Street, Mark purchased a bulky leather-bound notebook, three enormous sheets of cardboard, and a large-scale survey map of Natal and Zululand. These he pinned up on the walls of his room, where he could study them while lying in bed.

  On one sheet he laid out the family trees of the Courtneys, the Pyes and the Petersens, all three names associated with the purchase of Andersland on the documents he had seen in Ladyburg Deeds Office.

  On one other sheet he built up a pyramid of companies and holdings controlled by the Ladyburg Farmers Bank, and on another he pyramided in the same way the companies and properties of General Sean Courtney's holding company, Natal Timber and Estates Ltd.

  On the map he carefully shaded in the actual land holdings of the two groups, red for General Courtney and blue for those controlled by his son, Dirk Courtney Esquire.

  It gave him new resolution and determination to continue his search when he carefully shaded with blue the long irregular shape of Andersland, with its convoluted boundary that followed the south bank of the river; and when he had done so and wiped the crayon from his fingers, he was left with the bitter lees of anger in his mouth, a reaffirmation of his conviction that the old man would never have let it go, they would have had to kill him first.

  The anger was with him again whenever he filled in another section of the map, or when he lay in bed each night, smoking a last cigarette and studying the blue and red patchwork of Courtney holdings. He smiled grimly when he thought what Fergus MacDonald would say about such wealth in the hands of a single father and son, and then he wrote in the leather-bound notebook any new information that he had accumulated during the day.

  He would switch out the light then and lie long awake, and often, when at last he slept, he dreamed of Chaka's Gate, of the great cliffs guarding the river and the tumbled wilderness beyond the gates, that concealed a lonely grave.

  A grave unmarked, overgrown now with the lush restless vegetation of Africa, or, perhaps, long ago dug open by hyena or the other scavengers.

  One day, when Mark spent his customary evening's study in the library reading-room, he turned first to the recent issues of the Ladyburg Lantern, searching through those editions covering the week following his flight from Ladyburg, and he almost missed the few lines on an inside page.

  Yesterday, the funeral service was held of Mr Jacob Henry Rossouw at the Methodist Church in Pine Street.

  Mr Rossouw fell to his death in the gorge of the Baboon Stroom below the new railway bridge while hunting with a party of his friends.

  Mr Rossouw was a bachelor employed by the Zululand Sugar Co. Ltd. The funeral service was attended by the Chairman of the Company, Mr Dirk Courtney, who made a short but moving tribute at the graveside, once again illustrating his deep concern for even the humblest of the employees of his many prosperous enterprises. Greatrless shows itself in small ways. The date coincided neatly with his escape from the valley. The man might have been one of his hunters, perhaps the one who had caught his damaged ankle as he hung from the goods truck. If he was, then the connection with Dirk Courtney was direct. Slowly Mark was twisting a rope together, but he needed a head for the noose.

  Yet, in one direction, Mark felt easier. There seemed to exist a deep rift between father and son, between General Sean Courtney and Dirk. None of their companies overlapped, none of their directorships interlocked, and each pyramid of companies stood alone and separated. This separation seemed to extend beyond finance or business, and Mark had found no evidence of any contact between the two men at the social level, in fact active hostility between them was indicated by the sudden change in the Ladyburg Lantern's attitude to the father, once the son took control of its editorial policy.r />
  Yet he was not entirely convinced. Fergus MacDonald had repeatedly warned him of the perfidious cunning of the bosses, of all wealthy men. They will go to any lengths to hide their guilt, Mark, no trick is too low or despicable to cover the stains of honest workers blood on their hands. Perhaps Mark's first concern must be to establish beyond doubt that he was hunting only one man. Then, of course, the next move must be to go back to Ladyburg, to try and provoke another attack, but this time he would be ready for it and have some idea from which direction it would come. His mind went back to the way in which he and Fergus MacDonald had used Cuthbert, the dummy, to draw fire and force the enemy to reveal himself, and he grinned ruefully at the thought that this time he must do Cuthbert's job himself. He felt for the first time a fear he had not known in France before a shoot, for he must go out against something more formidable and ruthless than he had ever believed possible before, and the time was fast approaching.

  He was distracted then by another massive epistle from Ladyburg, one that gave him honest cause for delaying direct action.

  My dearest darling, What great news I have for you! ! If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, then he Jar she! ) must go to the mountain. My sister and her husband are going to Durban for four days holiday, and they have asked me to join them. We will arrive on the fourteenth, and will be staying at the Marine Hotel on the Marine Parade won't we be posh!

  Mark surprised himself by the strength of his pleasure and anticipation. He had not realized the affection that he had slowly accumulated at such long remove for this willing and friendly creature. He was surprised again when he met her, both of them dressed with obvious pains and attention to detail, both in an agony of shyness and restraint under the surveillance of Marion's sister.

  They sat on the hotel veranda and stiffly sipped tea, making small talk with the sister while surreptitiously examining each other over the rim of their cups.

  Marion had lost weight, Mark saw immediately, but would never know that the girl had almost starved herself to do so in anticipation of this moment; and she was pretty, much prettier than he remembered or than her photograph suggested. More important was her transparent wholesomeness and warmth. Mark had been a lonely boy for most of his life, but more particularly so in these last weeks, living in his small dingy room with only the cockroaches and his plans for company.

  Now he reacted to her like a traveller coming in out of the snow-storm responds to the tavern fire.

  The sister took her duties as chaperone seriously at first, but she was only five or six years older than Mark, and perceptive enough to be aware of the younger people's attraction for each other and to recognize the essential decency of the boy. She was also young enough and herself so recently married as to have sympathy for them. I would like to take Marion for a drive, we wouldn't be gone very long. Marion turned eyes as soulful and pleading as those of a dying gazelle on her sister. Oh please, Lyn. The Cadillac was a demonstration model, and Mark had personally supervised while two of the Zulu employees at Natal Motors had burnished its paintwork to a dazzle. .

  He drove down as far as the mouth of the Umgeni River, with Marion sitting close and proud and pretty beside him.

  Mark felt as good as he ever had in his life; dressed in fashionable style, with gold in his pocket, a big shining automobile under him and a pretty adoring girl beside him.

  Adoring was the only word to describe Marion's attitude towards him. She could hardly drag her eyes from his face for a moment, and she glowed every time he glanced across at her.

  She had never imagined herself beside such a handsome, sophisticated beau. Not even hex most romantic daydreams had ever included a shining Cadillac, and a decorated war hero.

  When he parked off the road and they picked a path through the densely overgrown dunes down to the river mouth, she clung to his arm like a drowning sailor.

  The river was in spate from some upland rainstorm; half a mile wide and muddy brown as coffee, it surged and swirled down to meet the green thrust of the sea in a leaping ridge of white water. Carried down on the brown water were the debris of the flood, and the carcasses of drowned beasts.

  A dozen big black sharks were there to scavenge, pushing high up the river, their dark triangular fins knifing and circling.

  Mark and Marion sat side by side on a dune overlooking the estuary. Oh, sighed Marion, as though her heart would break, we've only got four days together. Four days is a long time, Mark laughed at her, I don't know what we are going to do with it all They spent nearly every hour of it together. Dicky Lancome was most understandingwith his star salesman. Just show your face here for a few minutes every morning, to keep the boss happy, then you can slip off. I'll hold the fort for you. What about the demonstration model? Mark asked boldly.

  I'll tell him you are making a sale to a rich sugar farmer.

  Take it, old chap, but for God's sake, don't wrap it round a tree. I don't know how i'll ever repay you, Dicky, really I don't. Don't worry, old boy, we'll think of a way. I won't ask again, it's just that this girl is really special. I understand. Dicky patted his shoulder in a paternal fashion. Most important thing in life, a likely bit of crumpet. My heart goes out to you, old son. I'll be cheering you on in spirit every inch of the way. It's not like that, Dicky, Mark denied, blushing fiercely. Of course not, it never is. But enjoy it anyway, and Dicky winked lasciviously.

  Mark and Marion, she was right, it did sound rather grand, spent their days wandering hand in hand through the city. She was delighted by its bustle and energy, enchanted by its sophistication, by its culture, its museums and tropical gardens, by its playground beachfront with myriad fairy lights, the open-air concerts in the gardens of the old fort, by the big departmental stores in West Street, Stuttafords and Ansteys, their windows packed with expensive imported merchandise, by the docks with great merchant ships lining the wharf and the steam cranes huffing and creaking above them, They watched the Indian fishermen running their surfboats out from the glistening white beach, through the marching lines of green surf to lay their long nets in a wide semi-circle out into deep water. Then Marion hitched up her skirts and Mark rolled his trousers to the knee to help the half-naked fishermen draw in the long lines, until at last a shimmering silver mound of fish lay on the boat, still quivering and twitching and leaping in the sunlight.

  They ate strawberry-flavoured ice-cream out of crisp yellow cones, and they rode in an open rickshaw down the Marine Parade, drawn by a leaping howling Zulu dressed in an incredible costume of feathers and beads and horns.

  One night they joined Dicky Lancome and a languid siren to whom he was paying court, and the four of them ate grilled crayfish and danced to a jazz band at the Oyster Box Hotel at Umhlanga Rocks, and came roaring home in a Cadillac, tiddly and happy and singing, with Dicky driving like Nuvorelli, rocketing the big car over the dusty rutted road, and Mark and Marion cuddling blissfully in the back seat.

  In the lobby of the hotel, under the watchful eye of the night clerk who was poised to intercept Mark if he tried for the elevator, they whispered goodnight to each other. I have never been so happy in all my life, she told him simply, and stood on tip-toe to kiss him full on the lips.

  Dicky Lancome had disappeared with both Cadillac and lady-friend, probably to some dark and secluded parking place along the sea front, and as Mark walked home alone through the deserted midnight streets, he thought about Marion's words and found himself agreeing. He could not remember being so happy either, but then, he grinned ruefully, it hadn't been a life crowded with wild happiness up to then. To a pauper, a shilling is a fortune.

  It was their last day together, and the knowledge weighted their pleasure with poignancy. Mark left the Cadillac at the end of a narrow track in the sugar cane fields and they climbed down to the long white curve of snowy sand beach, guarded at each end by rocky headlands.

  The sea was so clear that from the tall dunes they could see deep down to the reefs and sculptured sand banks below the surf
ace. Farther out, the water shaded to a deep indigo blue, that met at last a far horizon piled with a mountainous range of cumulus clouds, purple, blue and silver in the brilliant sunlight.

  They walked down barefooted through the crunching sand, carrying the picnic basket that Marion's hotel had prepared for them and a threadbare grey blanket from Mark's bed, and it seemed that they were the only two persons in the world.

  They changed into swimming costumes, modestly separating to each side of a dense dark green milk-wood bush, and then they ran laughing into the warm clear water at the edge of the beach.

  The thin black cotton of Marion's costume clung wetly to her body, so that it seemed that she were naked, although clothed from mid thigh to neck, and when she pulled the red rubber bathing cap from her head and shook out the thick tresses of her hair, Mark found himself physically roused by her for the first time.

  somehow the pleasure he had taken in her up until then had been that of friendship, and companionship. Her patent adoration had filled some void in his soul, and he had felt protective, almost brotherly towards her.

  She sensed instantly, with some feminine instinct, the change in him. The laughter died on her lips, and her eyes went grave and there were shades in them of fear or apprehension, but she turned to face him, lifting her face to him, seeming to steel herself with a conscious act of courage.

  They lay side by side on the grey blanket, in the heavy shade of the milk bush, and the midday was heavy and languorous with heat and the murmur of insects.

  The wet bathing-suits were cool against their hot skins, and when Mark gently peeled hers away, her skin was damp beneath his fingers, and he was surprised to find her body so different from Helena's. Her skin was clear milky white, tipped with palest pink, lightly sugared with white beach sand, and the hair of her body was fine as silk, light golden brown and soft as smoke. Her body was soft also, with the gentle yielding spring of woman's flesh, unlike the lean hard muscle of Helena's, and it had a different feel to it, a plasticity that intrigued and excited him.