A Sparrow Falls c-9

by Wilbur Smith

  Each time he had laughed self-consciously and held up a hand to prevent her teasing. All right, I know what you're going to say, but I was discussing it with young Mark. He would chuckle again. That boy talks a lot of good sense. Then one evening after Mark had been with them just over a month, they had sat in companionable silence for a while when Sean said suddenly, Young Mark, doesn't he remind you of Michael? I hadn't noticed, no, I don't think so. Oh, I don't mean in looks. It's just something about the way he thinks. Ruth felt the old crushing regret welling up within her like a cold dark tide. She had never given Sean a son. It was the only true regret, the only shadow on all their sunlit years together. Her shoulders sagged now, as though under the burden of her regret, and she looked at herself in the mirror, seeing the guilt of her inadequacy in her own eyes.

  Sean had not noticed, had gone on blithely, Well, I can hardly wait until February. It's going to break Hamilton's heart to hand over that big silver mug. Mark's changed the whole spirit of the team, They know they can win now, with him shooting number one. She had listened quietly, hating herself for not being able to give him what he had wanted so badly, and she glanced down at the little carved statue of the God Thor on her dressing-table. It had stood there all these years since Sean had given it to her, a talisman of fertility. Storm had been conceived in the height of a raging electrical thunderstorm, and had been named for it. He had joked that it needed thunder and had given her the little godlet. A fat lot of help you were, she thought bitterly, and looked up at her own body under the silk in the mirror. So good to look at, and so damned useless! She did not usually curse, it was a measure of her distress. Lovely as it was, her body would not bear another child. All it was good for now was to give him pleasure. She stood up abruptly, her nightly ritual incomplete, and she crossed to where he sat and removed the cigar from his lips, crushing it out deliberately in the big glass ashtray.

  Surprised, he looked up at her, about to ask a question, but the words never reached his lips. Her eyelids were half hooded, they drooped languorously, and her lips pouted slightly to reveal the white small teeth, and there were spots of hectic colour on her high beautifully moulded cheek-bones.

  Sean knew this expression and the mood it heralded. He felt his heart lurch and then begin to pound like an animal in the cage of his ribs. Usually their loving was a thing of depth and mutual compassion, a thing grown strong and good over the years, a complete blending of two persons, symbolic of their lives together, but once in a rare while, Ruth would droop her eyelids and pout that way with the colour in her cheeks, and what followed was so wild and wanton and uncontrolled that it reminded him of some devastating natural phenomenon.

  She pushed one slim pale hand into his gown, and long nails raked lightly across his stomach so that his skin was instantly tingling and alive, and she leaned forward and with the other hand twined her fingers into his beard and twisted his face up to her and kissed him-in full on the lips, thrusting a sharp pink tongue deep into his mouth, Sean let out a growl, and seized her, trying to draw her down into his lap and at the same time pulling open the bodice of her nightdress so that her small pointed breasts fell free, but she was quick and strong, twisting out of his grip, the ivory and pink sheen of her skin glowing through the transparent silk of her gown and her bared breasts joggling delightfully as she flew on long shapely legs into the bedroom, her laughter mocking and goading and inviting.

  The following morning, Ruth cut an armful of crimson and white carnations and carried them into the library where young Mark Anders was at work. He stood up immediately and as she replied to his greetin& she studied his face. She had not truly realized how handsome he was, and she saw now that it was a face that would age well.

  There was a good bone structure and a proud strong nose.

  He was one of those lucky ones who would improve with the addition of a few wrinkles and lines around the eyes, and a little silver in the hair. That was a long way off, however, now it was the eyes that demanded attention.

  Yes, she thought, looking into his eyes. Sean is right.

  He has the same strength and goodness that Michael had. She watched him surreptitiously as she worked at her flower arrangement, deliberately picking the words as she began to chat to him, and when she had completed the flower bowl, she stood back to admire her work and spoke without looking at him. Why don't you join us for lunch on the terrace, Mark? and the use of his name was deliberate, both of them very conscious of it as it was spoken. Unless you'd prefer to continue eating here. Sean glanced up from his newspaper as Mark came out on to the terrace, but his expression did not change as Ruth waved Mark to the seat opposite him and he immediately plunged back into the paper and angrily read out the editorial to them, mocking the writer by his tone and emphasis before crumpling the news sheet and dropping it beside his chair. That man's a raving bloody idiot, they should lock him up.

  Well sir, Mark began delicately.

  Ruth sighed a silent breath of relief for she had not consulted Sean on the new luncheon arrangements, but the two of them were instantly in deep discussion, and when the main course was served, Sean growled, Take care of the chicken, Mark, and I'll handle the duck, so that the two of them were carving and arguing at the same time, like members of the same family, and she covered her smile with her table napkin as Sean ungraciously conceded a debating point to his junior. I'm not saying you are right, of course, but if you are, then how do you account for the fact that And he was attacking again from a different direction, and Ruth turned to listen as Mark adroitly defended himself again; as she listened, she began to appreciate a little more why Sean had chosen him.

  It was over the coffee that Mark learned at last what had become of Storm Courtney.

  Sean suddenly turned to Ruth. Was there a letter from Storm this morning? When she shook her head he went on, That damned uppity little missy must learn a few manners, there hasn't been a letter in nearly two weeks.

  just where are they supposed to be now? Rome, said Ruth. Rome! grunted Sean. With a bunch of Latin lovers pinching her backside. Sean! Ruth reprimanded him primly. Beg your pardon. He looked a little abashed, and then grinned wickedly. But she's probably putting it in the correct position for pinching right at this moment, if I know her. That night when Mark sat down to write to Marion Littlejohn, he realized how the mere mention of Storm Courtney's name had altered his whole attitude to the girl he was supposed to marry. Under the enormous workload which Sean Courtney had dropped casually on his shoulders, Mark's letter to Marion was no longer a daily ritual, and at times there were weeks between them.

  On the other hand, her letters to him never faltered in regularity and warmth, but he found that it was not really the pressure of work that made him keep deferring their next meeting. He sat now chewing the end of his pen until the wood splintered, seeking words and inspiration, finding it difficult to write down flowery expressions of undying love on every page; each empty page was as daunting as a Saharan crossin& yet it had to be filled. We will be travelling to Johannesburg next weekend to compete in the annual shooting match for the Africa Cup, he wrote, and then pondered how to get a little more mileage out of that intelligence. It should be good for at least a page.

  Marion Littlejohn belonged to a life that he had left behind him when he passed through the gates of Ernoyeni.

  He faced this fact at last, but was none the less dismayed by the sense of guilt the knowledge brought him, and he tried to deny it and continue with the letter but images kept intruding themselves, and the main of these was a picture of Storm Courtney, gay and sleek, glitteringly beautiful and as unobtainable as the stars.

  The Africa Cup stood almost as high as a man's chest on a base of polished ebony. The Ernoyem houseboys had polished it for three days before they had achieved the lustre that General Courtney found acceptable, and now the cup formed the centre-piece of the buffet table, elevated on a pyramid of yellow roses.

  The buffet was set in the antechamber to the main
ballroom, and both rooms overflowed with the hundreds of guests that Sean Courtney had invited to celebrate his triumph. He had even invited Colonel Hamilton of the Cape Town Highlanders to bring his senior officers by Union Castle liner, travelling first class, as the General's guests to attend the ball.

  Hamilton had refused by means of a polite thank-you note, four lines long; without counting the address and the closing salutation. The cup had been in the Cape Town Castle since it had been presented by Queen Victoria in the first year of the Boer War, and Hamilton's mortification added not a little to Sean Courtney's expansive mood.

  For Mark it had been the busiest period he had known since coming to Emoyeni. Ruth Courtney had come to place more and more trust in Mark, and under her supervision he had done much of the work of preparing the invitations and handling the logistics of food and liquor.

  Now she had him dancing with all of the ugly girls who would otherwise have sat disconsolately along the wall, and at the end of each dance, the General summoned him with an imperious wave of his cigar above the heads of his guests to the buffet table where he had taken up a permanent stance close to the cup. Councillor, I want you to meet my new assistant Mark this is Councillor Evans. That's right, Pussy, this is the young fellow who clinched it for us. And while Mark stood, colouring with embarrassment, the General repeated for the fifth or sixth time that evening a shot by shot account of the final day's competition when the two leading regiments had tied in the team events, and the judges had asked for an individual re-shoot to break the deadlock. A cross wind gusting up to twenty or thirty miles an hour, and the first shoot at two hundred yards Mark marvelled at the intense pleasure this trinket gave the General. A man whose fortune was almost beyond calculation, whose land could be measured by the hundred square miles, who owned priceless paintings and antique books, jewellery and precious stones, houses and horses and yachts, but none of them at this moment as prized as this glittering trifle. Well, I was marking myself, the General had taken enough of his own good whisky to begin acting out his story, and he made the gesture of crouching down in the bunker and looking up at the targets, and I don't mind telling you that it was the worst hour of my life.

  Mark smiled in agreement. The Highlander marksman had matched him shot for shot. Each of them signalled as a bulls-eye by the flags of the markers. They both shot possibles at two hundred yards, and then again at five hundred yards, it was only at the thousand-yard targets that young Mark's uncanny ability to judge the crosswind, By this time, Sean's audience was cow-eyed with boredom, and there were still ten rounds of deliberate and another ten of rapid fire to hear about. Mark sensed panic signals across the ballroom and he looked up.

  Ruth Courtney was beside the main doors of the ballroom and with her was the Zulu butler. A man with warrior blood in his veins and the usual bearing of a chief, now he was grey with some emotion close to fear and his expression was pitiable as he spoke rapidly to his mistress.

  Ruth touched his arm in a gesture of comfort and dismissal, and then turned to wait for Mark.

  As he hurried to her across the empty dance floor he could not help but notice again how much mother resembled daughter. Ruth Courtney still had the figure of an athletic young woman, kept slim and firm and graceful by hard riding and long walking, and only when he was close to her were the small lines and tiny blemishes in her smooth ivory skin apparent. Her hair was dressed high on her head, scorning the fashionable shorter cut, and her gown had a simple elegance that showed off the lines of her body and the small shapely breasts. One of her guests reached her before Mark did, and she was relaxed and smiling while Mark hovered close at hand until she excused herself and Mark hurried to her. Mark. Her worry showed only in her eyes as she looked up at him towering above her, but her smile was light and steady. There is going to be trouble. We have an unwelcome visitor. What do you want me to do? He is in the entrance hall now. Please, take him through to the General's study, and stay with him until I can warn my husband and send him to you. Will you do that? Of course. She smiled her thanks, and then as Mark turned away she stopped him with a touch. Mark, try to stay with them. I don't want them to be alone together. I'm not sure what might happen. Then her reserve cracked. In God's name why did he have to come here, and tonight when, She stopped herself then, and the smile firmed on her lips, steady and composed, but they both knew that she had been going to say, Tonight when Sean has been drinking. Mark now knew the General well enough to share her concern. When Sean Courtney was drinking, he was capable of anything, from genial and expansive bonhomie to dark, violent and undirected rage. I'll do what I can, he agreed, and then, Tell me, who is it?

  Ruth bit her lower lip, the strain and worry clear on her face for a moment before she checked herself, and her expression was neutral when she replied. It's his son, Dirk, Dirk Courtney. Mark's own shock showed so clearly that she frowned at him.

  What's wrong Mark? Do you know him?

  Mark recovered quickly. No. I have heard of him, but I don't know him. There is bad blood, Mark. Very bad. Be careful She left him and drifted quietly away across the floor, nodding to a dowager, stopping to exchange a word and a smile, and then drifting on to where Sean Courtney still held court in the buffet room.

  Mark paused in the long gallery, and looked at himself in one of the tall gilt-framed mirrors. his face looked pale and strained, and when he smoothed his hair, his fingers were trembling slightly.

  Suddenly he realized that he was afraid; dread was like a heavy weight in his bowels, and his breathing was cramped and painful.

  He was afraid of the man he was going to meet, The man that he had stalked so long and painstakingly, and who he had come to know so well in his imagination.

  in his mind he had built up an awesome figure, a diabolic figure wielding great and malignant power, and now he was consumed by dread at the prospect of meeting him face to face.

  He went on down the gallery, his footsteps deadened by the thick pile of the carpet, his eyes not seeing the art treasures that adorned the panelled walls, for a sense of imminent danger blinded him to all else.

  At the head of the marble staircase, he paused and leaned out with one hand on the balustrade to look down into the entrance hall.

  A man stood alone in the centre of the black and white checkered marble floor. He wore a black overcoat, with a short cape hanging from the shoulders, a garment which enhanced his size.

  His hands were clasped behind his back, and he balanced on the balls of his feet with head and jaw thrust forward aggressively, an attitude so like that of his father that Mark blinked in disbelief. His bare head was a magnificent profusion of dark curls which were shot by the overhead candelabra with sparkling chestnut highlights.

  Mark started down the wide staircase and the man lifted his head and looked at him.

  Mark was struck instantly by the man's fine looks, and then immediately afterwards by his resemblance to the General. He had the same powerful jaw, and the shape of his head, the set of his eyes and the lines of his mouth were identical, yet the son was infinitely more handsome than the father.

  It was the noble head of a Michelangelo statue, the beauty of his David and the magnificent strength of his Moses, yet for all his beauty he was human, not the implacable monster of Mark's imagining, and the unreasonable fear released its grip on Mark's chest, and he could smile a small welcoming smile as he came down the steps.

  Dirk watched him without blinking or moving, and it was only when Mark reached the checkered marble floor that he realized how tall the man was. He towered three inches over Mark, and yet his body was so well proportioned that its height did not seem excessive. Mr Courtney? Mark asked, and the man inclined his head slightly without bothering to reply. The diamond that clasped the white silk cravat at his throat flashed sullenly. Who are you, boy? Dirk Courtney asked, and his voice had the depth and timbre to match his frame. I am the General's personal assistant. Mark did not let the disparaging form of address ruffle his polite smile
, though he knew that Dirk Courtney was his senior by less than ten years. Dirk Courtney ran an unhurried glance from his head to his shoes, taking in the cut of Mark's evening dress and every other detail in one casual sweep before dismissing him as unimportant. Where is my father? He turned to adjust his cravat in the nearest mirror. Does he know I've been waiting here for almost twenty minutes? The General is entertaining, but he will see you presently. In the meantime, will you care to wait in the General's study? if you will follow me. Dirk Courtney stood in the middle of the study floor and looked about him. The old boy is keeping grand style these days. He smiled with a flash of startlingly white teeth and then crossed to one of the studded leather armchairs by the stone fireplace. Get me a brandy and soda, boy. Mark swung open the dummy-fronted bookcase, selected a Courvoisier Cognac from the orderly ranks of bottles, poured some into a goblet, squirting soda on top of it, and carried it to Dirk Courtney.

  He sipped the drink and nodded, sprawling in the big leather chair with the insolent grace of a resting leopard, and then once again he surveyed the room. His gaze, checking at each of the paintings, at each of the items of value which decorated the room, was calculating and thoughtful, and he asked his next question carelessly, not really interested in the answer. What did you say your name was? Mark stepped sideways, so that his view of the man's face was uninterrupted, and he watched carefully as he replied. My name is Anders, Mark Anders. For a second the name had no effect, then it struck Dirk and a remarkable transformation passed over his features.

  Watching it happen, Mark's fear was regenerated in full strength.

  When he had been a lad, the old man had snared a marauding leopard in a heavy steel spring-tooth trap, and when they had walked up to the site the following morning, the leopard had charged them, coming up short against the heavy retaining chain within three feet of Mark and with its eyes almost on a level with his own. He had never forgotten the terrible blazing malevolence in those eyes.