A Sparrow Falls c-9

by Wilbur Smith

  The margin contained magnificent line-drawings of wild animals, and under the heavy typed announcement was set out the objects of the Society, and an eloquent plea for support and membership. I had my lawyers draft the articles and draw up the wording. We'll run it in every newspaper in the country.

  The Society's address is the Head Office of Courtney Holdings and I have taken on a full-time clerk to handle all the paper work. I've also got a young journalist to edit the Society's newspaper. He's full of ideas and caught up in the whole thing. With luck, we'll get huge public support behind us. It's going to cost more than three thousand pounds. Mark was torn between delight, and concern for the size to which his simple idea had grown. Yes, Sean laughed. It's going to cost more than three thousand pounds, which reminds me. I sent Dirk Courtney a receipt for his money, and a life membership of the Society! The joke carried them over the awkwardness of the last moments before departure.

  Sean's bearers disappeared among the trees, carrying head loads of equipment to where the motor lorry had been left on the nearest road twenty miles beyond the cliffs of Chaka's Gate, and Sean lingered regretfully. I'm sad to go, he admitted. It's been a good time, but I feel stronger now, ready to face whatever the bastards have got to throw at me. He looked about him, taking farewell of river and mountain and wilderness. There is magic here. He nodded. Look after it well, son, and he held out his hand. .

  It was Mark's last opportunity to ask the question which he had tried to ask a dozen times already, but each time Sean had turned it aside, or simply ignored it. But now he had to have an answer, and he took Sean's big gnarled bony fist in a grip that would not be denied. You haven't told me how Storm is, sir. How is she? Is she well? How is her painting? he blurted.

  It seemed even then that Sean would not be drawn. He stiffened angrily, made as if to pull his hand away, and then the anger faded before it reached his eyes. For a moment there showed in the deep-set eyes a dark unfathomable grief, and his grip tightened on Mark's hand like a steeltrap. Storm was married a month ago. But I have not seen her since you left Lion Kop, he said, and he dropped Mark's hand. Without another word, he turned and walked away.

  For the first time he went slowly and heavily, swaying against the drag of his bad leg, shuffling like an old man a very tired old man.

  Mark wanted to run after him, but his own heart was breaking and his legs would not carry him.

  He stood forlornly and watched Sean Courtney limp away into the trees.

  The Natal Number Two came in along the line, his pony's hooves kicking up little spurts of white markinglime like a machine gun traversing, and he caught the ball two feet before it dribbled out of play.

  He leaned low out- of the saddle and took it backhanded under his pony's neck, a full-blooded stroke that finished with the mallet high above his head, and the ball rose in a floating arc, a white blur against the stark blue of summer sky.

  From the club house veranda, and the deck-chairs beneath the coloured umbrellas, applause splattered above the drum of hooves, and then rose into a swelling hum as they saw that Derek Hunt had anticipated.

  He was coming down in a hard canter with Saladin not yet asked to extend. Saladin was a big pony, with a mean and ugly head that he cocked to watch the flight of the white ball, his over-large nostrils flaring so the shiny red us membrane flashed like a flag. The eye that muco watched the ball rolled in the gaunt skull, giving the horse a wild and half -crazed air. He was of that raggedy roan and grey that no amount of currying would ever brighten into a gloss, and his hooves looked like those of a cart-horse.

  He had to lift them high in the ungainly action that was quickly carrying him ahead of the hard-running Argentinian pony at his shoulder.

  Derek sat him as though he were an armchair, idly penduluming his stick from his wrist, his pith helmet hard down over his ears and strapped up tightly under the chin. His belly bulged out over the belt of his breeches, his arms were long and thick as those of a chimpanzee, covered in a thick fuzz of ginger hair. The skin was heavily freckled and had a raw red look between the freckles, as though it had been scalded with boiling water. His face was the same raw painful looking red, tinged by the purplish glaze of the very heavy drinker, and he was sweating.

  The sweat glistened like early dew on his face and dripped from his chin. His short-sleeved cotton singlet looked as though he had been caught in a tropical downpour. It clung to the thick bearlike shoulders, and was stretched so tightly over his bulging paunch and so transparent with wetness, that you could see the deep dark pit of his belly button from the sidelines.

  At each jar, as Saladin's hooves struck the hard-baked earth, Derek Hunt's great backside in the tight-fitting white breeches quivered like a jelly in the saddle.

  Two Argentinian ponies were cutting across field to cover, their handsomeriders olive-skinned and dashing as cavalry officers, ridingwithhuge verge and excited Spanish cries, and Derek grinned under his bristling ginger mustache, as the ball started its long plummeting curve back to earth. Christ, drawled one of the members on the club house steps. The ugliest horse in Christendom. And he raised his pink gin to salute Saladin. And the ugliest four-goal handicapper in the entire world on his back, agreed the masher beside him. Poor bloody dagoes should turn to stone just looking at them. Saladin and the Argentinian Number One arrived at the drop of the ball at exactly the same moment. The Argentinian rose in the saddle to trap the fall, his white teeth sparkling under the trim black pencil-line of his mustache, the smooth darkly tanned muscles of his arm bulging as he prepared to go on to the forehand drive, his sleekly beautiful pony wheeling into line for the shot, nimble and quick as a ferret.

  Then an extraordinary thing happened. Derek Hunt sat fat-gutted and heavy in the saddle and nobody could see the touch of rein and heel that made Saladin switch his quarters. The Argentinian pony cannoned off him as though she had hit a granite kopje, and the rider went over her head, going in an instant from balanced perfection to sprawling windmilling confusion, falling heavily in a cloud of red dust, and rolling to his knees to scream hysterical protest to the umpire and the skies.

  Derek leaned slightly and there was the tap of mallet against bamboo root, a gentle almost self-err acing little tap, and the ball dropped meekly ahead of Saladin's slugging, hammering head.

  It bounced once, twice, and then came up obediently for the next light tap that kept it hopping down the field. The Argentinian Number Four swept in from the right, with all the smooth-running grace of a charging lioness, and the roar of the crowd carried across the open field, spurring him on to make the challenge. He shouted a wild Spanish oath, his eyes flashing with excitement.

  Smoothly, Derek changed the mallet from his right hand to his left, and tapped the bouncing white ball on to his off-side, forcing the Argentinian to increase the angle of his interception.

  The instant he was drawn, Derek cropped hard, lofting the ball in an easy lob high over the Argentinianis head.

  He said, Ha! but not loudly, and touched Saladin with his heels. The big ugly roan stretched out his neck and extended, with Derek moving now to help him push.

  They ran past the Argentinian as though he had indeed turned to stone, they left him floundering in their wake and picked up the ball beyond him. Tap! Tap! And tap again, he ran it down through the exact centre of the stubby goal-posts and then turned and trotted back to the pony lines.

  Chuckling so that his belly bounced, Derek swung one leg forward over Saladin's neck and slid down to the ground, letting him go free to the grooms. I'll take Satan for the next chukka, he shouted in that beery throaty voice.

  Storm Courtney saw him coming, and knew what was going to happen. She tried to rise, but she was slow and clumsy, the child in her womb anchored her like a stone. One for the poor, what! shouted Derek, and caught her with one long, ginger-fuzzed, boiled red arm.

  The sweat on his face was icy cold and smeared down her own cheek, and he smelled of sour beer and horse. He kissed her with an
open mouth, in front of Irene Leuchars and the four other girls, and their husbands, and all the grinning grooms, and the members on the veranda.

  She thought desperately that she was going to be ill. The acid vomit rose into her throat, and she thought she was going to throw up in front of them all. IDerek, my condition! she whispered desperately, but he held her under his one arm as he took the bottle of beer that one of the white-jacketed club servants brought on a silver tray, and, scorning the glass, he drank straight from the bottle.

  She struggled to be free, but he held her easily with immense and careless strength, and he belched, a ripping explosion of gas. One for the poor, he shouted again, and they all laughed, like courtiers at the king's jest. Good old Derek. Law unto himself, old Derek.

  He dropped the empty bottle. Keep it until I get back, wifey! he laughed, and took one of her swollen breasts in his huge raw-knuckled, red-boiled hand and squeezed it painfully. She felt cold and trembly and weak with humiliation and hatred.

  She had missed a month many times before, so Storm did not begin to worry until the second blank came up on her pocket diary. She had been about to tell Mark then, but that had been the time they had parted. Still, she had expected it all to resolve itself, but as the weeks passed, the enormity of it all began to reach her in her gold and ivory castle. This sort of thing happened to other girls, common working girls, ordinary girls, it did not happen to Storm Courtney. There were special rules for young ladies like Storm.

  When it was certain, beyond all doubt, the first person she thought of was Mark Anders. As the panic caught at her heart with fiery little barbs, she wanted to rush to him and throw her arms about his neck. Then that stubborn and completely uncontrollable pride of the Courtneys smothered the impulse. He must come to her. She had decided, he must come on her terms, and she could not bring herself to change the rules she had laid down. Though still, even in her distress, her chest felt tight and her legs shaky and weak, whenever she thought of Mark.

  She had wept, silently in the night, when she had first left Mark, and now she wept again. She longed for him even more now with his child growing in the secret depths of her body. But that perverse and distorted pride would not release its bulldog hold on her, would not allow her even to let him know of her predicament. Don't challenge me, Mark Anders, she had warned him, and he had done it. She hated him, and loved him for that.

  But now she could not bend.

  The next person she thought of was her mother. She and Ruth Courtney had always been close, she had always been able to rely on her mother's loyalty and shrewdly practical hard sense. Then she was stopped dead by the knowledge that if Ruth were told, then her father would know within hours. Ruth Courtney kept nothing from Sean, or he from her.

  Storm's soul quailed at the thought of what would happen once her father knew that she carried a bastard.

  The immense indulgent love he had for her, would make his anger and retribution more terrible.

  She knew also Mark would be destroyed by it. Her father was too strong, too persistent and single-minded for her to believe she would be able to keep Mark's name from him.

  He would squeeze it out of her.

  She knew of her father's affection for Mark Anders, it had been apparent for anyone to see, but that affection would not have been sufficient to save either of them.

  Sean Courtney's attitude to his daughter was bound by iron laws of conduct, the old-fashioned view of the father that left no latitude for manoeuvre. Mark Anders had contravened those iron laws and Sean would destroy him, despite the fact he had come to love him, and in doing so, he would destroy a part of himself. He would reject and drive out his own daughter, even though it left him ruined and broken with grief.

  So, for her father's sake and for Mark Anders sake, she could not go for comfort and help to her mother.

  She went instead to Irene Leuchars, who listened to Storm's hesitant explanations with rising glee and anticipation. But you silly darling, didn't you take precautions? Storm shook her head glumly, not quite certain what Irene meant by precautions, but certain only that she hadn't taken them. Who was it, darling? was the next question, and Storm shook her head again, this time fiercely. Oh dear, Irene rolled her eyes. That many candidates for the daddy? You are a dark horse, Storm darling. Can't one, well, can't one actually do something?

  Storm asked miserably. You mean an abortion, darling? Irene asked brutally, and smiled a sly spiteful smile when Storm nodded.

  He was a tall pale man, very grey and stooped, with a reedy voice and hands so white as to be almost transparent.

  Storm could see the blue veins and the fragile ivory bones through the skin. She tried not to think of those pale transparent hands as they pried and probed, but they were cold and cruelly painful.

  Afterwards, he had washed those pale hands at the kitchen sink of his small grey apartment with such exaggerated care that Storm had felt her pain and embarrassment enhanced by a sense of affront. The cleansing seemed to be a personal insult. I imagine you indulge in a great deal of physical activity horse-riding, tennis? he asked primly, and when Storm nodded he made a little sucking and glucking sound of disapproval. The female body was not designed for such endeavour. You are very narrow, and your musculature is highly developed. Furthermore, you are at least ten weeks pregnant. At last he had finished washing, and now he began to dry his hands on a threadbare, but clinically white towel. Can you help me? Storm demanded irritably, and he shook his pale grey head slowly from side to side. If you had come a little earlier, and he spread the white transparent hands in a helpless gesture.

  They had drawn up a list of names, she and Irene, and each of the men on the list had two things in common.

  They were in love, or had professed to be in love with Storm, and they were all men of fortune.

  There were six names on the list, and Storm had written cards to two of them and received vague replies, polite good wishes, and no definite suggestion for a meeting.

  The third man on the list she had contrived to meet at the Umgeni Country Club. She could still wear tennis clothes, and the pregnancy had given her skin a new bloom and lustre, her breasts a fuller ripeness.

  She had chatted lightly, flirtatiously, with him, confident and poised, giving him encouragement he had never received from her before. She had not noticed the sly, gloating look in his eyes, until he leaned close to her and asked confidentially, Should you be playing tennis, now? She had only been able to keep herself from breaking down until she reached the Cadillac parked in the lot behind the courts. She was weeping when she drove out through the gates, and she had to park in the dunes above the ocean.

  After the first storm of humiliation had passed, she could think clearly.

  It had been Irene Leuchars, of course. She must have been blind and stupid not to realize it sooner. Everybody, every single person, would know by now, Irene would have seen to that.

  Loneliness and desolation overwhelmed her.

  Derek Hunt had not been on the list of six, not because he was not rich, not because he had never shown interest in Storm.

  Derek Hunt had shown interest in most pretty girls. He had even married two of them, and both of them had divorced him in separate blazes of notoriety, not before they had, between them, presented him with seven offspring.

  Derek Hunt's reputation was every bit as vast and flamboyant as his fortune. Look old girl, he had told Storm reasonably. You and I have both got a problem. I want you, have always wanted you. Can't sleep at night, strewth! and his ginger whiskers twitched lasciviously. And you need me. The word's out about you, old girl, Mark of the beast, condemnation of society, and all that rot, I'm afraid.

  Your loss, my gain. I've never given a stuff for the condemnation of society. I've got seven little bastards already.

  Another one won't make any difference. What about it, then? One for the poor, what? They had driven up to Swaziland, and Derek had been able to get a special licence, lying about her age.


  There had been nobody she knew at the ceremony, only five of Derek's cronies, and she had not told her father, nor her mother, nor Mark Anders.

  She heard him coming home, like a Le Mans Grand Prix winner, a long cortege of motor cars roaring up the driveway, then the squeal of brakes, the cannonade of slamming doors, the loud comradely shouts and the snatches of wild song.

  Derek's voice, louder and hoarser than the rest. Caramba, me heartiest Whipped your pants off on the field, going to drink you blind now. This way, the pride of the Argentine - the stamping and shouting, as they trooped up the front staircase.

  Storm lay flat on her back and stared at the plaster cupids on the ceiling. She wanted to run, this senseless panicky urge to get up and run. But there was no place to run to.

  She had spoken to her mother three times since the wedding, and each time had been agony for both of them. If only you had told us. Daddy might have been able to understand, to forgive, Oh darling, if you only knew the plans he used to make for your wedding. He was so proud of you, and then not to be at your wedding. Not even invited, Give him time, please, Storm. I am trying for you.

  Believe me darling, I think it might have been better, if it was anybody in the world but Derek Hunt. You know what Daddy thinks of him. There was nowhere to run, and she lay quietly, dreading, until at last the heavy unsteady boots came clumping up the staircase, and the door was thrown open.

  He had not changed, and he still wore riding-boots. The backside of his breeches was brown with dubbin from the saddle, and the crotch drooped almost to his knees, like a baby's soiled napkin; the sweat had dried in salty white circles on the cotton singlet. Wake up, old girl. Time for every good man and true to perform his duty. He let his clothing lie where it fell.

  His bulging belly was fish white, and fuzzed with ginger curls. The heavy shoulders were pitted and scarred purple with the old cicatrices of myriad carbuncles and small boils, and he was massively virile, thick and hard and callous as the branch of a pine tree. One for the poor, what? he chuckled hoarsely, as he came to the bed.