by Wilbur Smith
‘This time the credit must go to M. Heinz and his fifty-seven children. But one day I shall make for you one of my tournedos au Prince. It is my special.’
‘Speciality,’ Bruce corrected her automatically.
The murmur of voices within the laager was punctuated occasionally by a burst of laughter. There was a feeling of relaxation. The canvas roof and the wall of vehicles gave security to them all. Men lay in dark huddles of sleep or talked quietly in small groups.
Bruce scraped the metal plate and filled his mouth with the last of the food.
‘Now I must check the defences again.’
‘Oh, Bonaparte. It is always duty.’ Shermaine sighed with resignation.
‘I will not be long.’
‘And I’ll wait here for you.’
Bruce picked up his rifle and helmet, and was half-way out of the Ford when out in the jungle the drum started.
‘Bruce!’ whispered Shermaine and clutched his arm. The voices round them froze into a fearful silence, and the drum beat in the night. It had a depth and resonance that you could feel; the warm sluggish air quivered with it. Not fixed in space but filling it, beating monotonously, insistently, like the pulse of all creation.
‘Bruce!’ whispered Shermaine again; she was trembling and the fingers on his arm dug into his flesh with the strength of terror. It steadied his own leap of fear.
‘Baby, baby,’ he soothed her, taking her to his chest and holding her there. ‘It’s only the sound of two pieces of wood being knocked together by a naked savage. They can’t touch us here, you know that.’
‘Oh, Bruce, it’s horrible – it’s like bells, funeral bells.’
‘That’s silly talk.’ Bruce held her at arm’s length. ‘Come with me. Help me calm down these others, they’ll be terrified. You’ll have to help me.’
And he pulled her gently across the seat out of the Ford, and with one arm round her waist walked her into the centre of the laager.
What will counteract the stupefying influence of the drum, the hypnotic beat of it, he asked himself. Noise, our own noise.
‘Joseph, M’pophu—’ he shouted cheerfully picking out the two best singers amongst his men. ‘I regret the drumming is of a low standard, but the Baluba are monkeys with no understanding of music. Let us show them how a Bambala can sing.’
They stirred; he could feel the tension diminish.
‘Come, Joseph—’ He filled his lungs and shouted the opening chorus of one of the planting songs, purposely off-key, singing so badly that it must sting them.
Someone laughed, then Joseph’s voice hesitantly starting the chorus, gathering strength. M’pophu coming in with the bass to give a solid foundation to the vibrant, sweet-ringing tenor. Half-beat to the drum, hands clapped in the dark; around him Bruce could feel the rhythmic swinging of bodies begin.
Shermaine was no longer trembling; he squeezed her waist and felt her body cling to him.
Now we need light, thought Bruce. A night lamp for my children who fear the darkness and the drum.
With Shermaine beside him he crossed the laager.
‘Sergeant Jacque.’
‘Captain?’
‘You can start sweeping with the searchlights.’
‘Oui, Captain.’ The answer was less subdued. There were two spare batteries for each light, Bruce knew. Eight hours’ life in each, so they would last tonight and tomorrow night.
From each side of the laager the beams leapt out, solid white shafts through the darkness; they played along the edge of the jungle and reflected back, lighting the interior of the laager sufficiently to make out the features of each man. Bruce looked at their faces. They’re all right now, he decided, the ghosts have gone away.
‘Bravo, Bonaparte,’ said Shermaine, and Bruce became aware of the grins on the faces of his men as they saw him embracing her. He was about to drop his arm, then stopped himself. The hell with it, he decided, give them something else to think about. He led her back to the Ford.
‘Tired?’ he asked.
‘A little,’ she nodded.
‘I’ll fold down the seat for you. A blanket over the windows will give you privacy.’
‘You’ll stay close?’ she asked quickly.
‘I’ll be right outside.’ He unbuckled the webbing belt that carried his pistol. ‘You’d better wear this from now on.’
Even at its minimum adjustment the belt was too large for her and the pistol hung down almost to her knee.
‘The Maid of Orleans.’ Bruce revenged himself. She pulled a face at him and crawled into the back of the station wagon.
A long while later she called softly above the singing and the throb of the drum.
‘Bruce.’
‘Yes?’
‘I wanted to make sure you were there. Good night.’
‘Good night, Shermaine.’
Bruce lay on a single blanket and sweated. The singing had long ago ceased but the drum went on and on, never faltering, throb-throb-throbbing out of the jungle. The searchlights swept regularly back and forth, at times lighting the laager clearly and at others leaving it in shadow. Bruce could hear around him the soft sounds of sleep, the sawing of breath, a muted cough, a gabbled sentence, the stirring of dreamers.
But Bruce could not sleep. He lay on his back with one hand under his head, smoking, staring up at the canvas. The events of the preceding four days ran through his mind: snatches of conversation, André dying. Boussier standing with his wife, the bursting of grenades, blood sticky on his hands, the smell of death, the violence and the horror.
He moved restlessly, flicked away his cigarette and covered his eyes with his hands as though to shut out the memories. But they went on flickering through his mind like the images of a gigantic movie projector, confused now, losing all meaning but retaining the horror.
He remembered the fly upon his arm, grinning at him, rubbing its legs together, gloating, repulsive. He rolled his head from side to side on the blanket.
I’m going mad, he thought, I must stop this.
He sat up quickly hugging his knees to his chest and the memories faded. But now he was sad, and alone. So terribly alone, so lost, so without purpose.
He sat alone on the blanket and he felt himself shrinking, becoming small and frightened.
I’m going to cry, he thought, I can feel it there heavy in my throat. And like a hurt child crawling into its mother’s lap, Bruce Curry groped his way over the tailboard of the station wagon to Shermaine.
‘Shermaine!’ he whispered, blindly, searching for her.
‘Bruce, what is it?’ She sat up quickly. She had not been sleeping either.
‘Where are you?’ There was panic in Bruce’s voice.
‘Here I am – what’s the matter?’
And he found her; clumsily he caught her to him.
‘Hold me, Shermaine, please hold me.’
‘Darling.’ She was anxious. ‘What is it? Tell me, my darling.’
‘Just hold me, Shermaine. Don’t talk.’ He clung to her, pressing his face into her neck. ‘I need you so much – oh, God! How I need you!’
‘Bruce.’ She understood, and her fingers were at the nape of his neck, stroking, soothing.
‘My Bruce,’ she said and held him. Instinctively her body began to rock, gentling him as though he were her child.
Slowly his body relaxed, and he sighed against her – a gusty broken sound.
‘My Bruce, my Bruce.’ She lifted the thin cotton vest that was all she wore and, instinctively in the ageless ritual of comfort, she gave him her breasts. Holding his mouth to them with both her arms clasped around his neck, her head bowed protectively over his, her hair falling forward and covering them both.
With the hard length of his body against hers, with the soft tugging at her bosom, and in the knowledge that she was giving strength to the man she loved, she realized she had never known happiness before this moment. Then his body was no longer quiescent; she felt her own mood change, a new
urgency.
‘Oh yes, Bruce, yes!’ Speaking up into his mouth, his hungry hunting mouth and he above her, no longer child, but full man again.
‘So beautiful, so warm.’ His voice was strangely husky, she shuddered with the intensity of her own need.
‘Quickly, Bruce, oh, Bruce.’ His cruel loving hands, seeking, finding.
‘Oh, Bruce – quickly,’ and she reached up for him with her hips.
‘I’ll hurt you.’
‘No – yes, I want the pain.’ She felt the resistance to him within her and cried out impatiently against it.
‘Go through!’ and then, ‘Ah! It burns.’
‘I’ll stop.’
‘No, No!’
‘Darling. It’s too much.’
‘Yes – I can’t – oh, Bruce. My heart – you’ve touched my heart.’
Her clenched fists drumming on his back. And in to press against the taut, reluctantly yielding springiness, away, then back, away, and back to touch the core of all existence, leave it, and come long gliding back to it, nuzzle it, feel it tilt, then come away, then back once more. Welling slowly upwards scalding, no longer to be contained, with pain almost – and gone, and gone, and gone.
‘I’m falling. Oh, Bruce! Bruce! Bruce!’
Into the gulf together – gone, all gone. Nothing left, no time, no space, no bottom to the gulf.
Nothing and everything. Complete.
Out in the jungle the drum kept beating.
Afterwards, long afterwards, she slept with her head on his arm and her face against his chest. And he unsleeping listened to her sleep. The sound of it was soft, so gentle breathing soft that you could not hear it unless you listened very carefully – or unless you loved her, he thought.
Yes. I think I love this woman – but I must be certain. In fairness to her and to myself I must be entirely certain, for I cannot live through another time like the last, and because I love her I don’t want her to take the terrible wounding of a bad marriage. Better, much better to leave it now, unless it has the strength to endure.
Bruce rolled his head slowly until his face was in her hair, and the girl nuzzled his chest in her sleep.
But it is so hard to tell, he thought. It is so hard to tell at the beginning. It is so easy to confuse pity or loneliness with love, but I cannot afford to do that now. So I must try to think clearly about my marriage to Joan. It will be difficult, but I must try.
Was it like this with Joan in the beginning? It was so long ago, seven years, that I do not know, he answered truthfully. All I have left from those days are the pictures of places and the small heaps of words that have struck where the wind and the pain could not blow them away.
A beach with the sea mist coming in across it, a whole tree of driftwood half buried in the sand and bleached white with the salt, a basket of strawberries bought along the road, so that when I kissed her I could taste the sweet tartness of the fruit on her lips.
I remember a tune that we sang together, ‘The mission bells told me that I mustn’t stay, South of the border, down Mexico way.’ I have forgotten most of the words.
And I remember vaguely how her body was, and the shape of her breasts before the children were born.
But that is all I have left from the good times.
The other memories are clear, stinging, whiplash clear. Each ugly word, and the tone in which it was said. The sound of sobbing in the night, the way it dragged itself on for three long grey years after it was mortally wounded, and both of us using all our strength to keep it moving because of the children.
The children! Oh, God, I mustn’t think about them now. It hurts too much. Without the children to complicate it, I must think about her for the last time; I must end this woman Joan. So now finally and for all to end this woman who made me cry. I do not hate her for the man with whom she went away. She deserved another try for happiness. But I hate her for my children and for making shabby the love that I could have given Shermaine as a new thing. Also, I pity her for her inability to find the happiness for which she hunts so fiercely. I pity her for her coldness of body and of mind, I pity her for her prettiness that is now almost gone (it goes round her eyes first, cracking like oil paint) and I pity her for her consuming selfishness which will lose her the love of her children.
My children – not hers! My children!
That is all, that is an end to Joan, and now I have Shermaine who is none of the things that Joan was. I also deserve another try.
‘Shermaine,’ he whispered and turned her head slightly to kiss her. ‘Shermaine, wake up.’
She stirred and murmured against him.
‘Wake up.’ He took the lobe of her ear between his teeth and bit it gently. Her eyes opened.
‘Bon matin, madame.’ He smiled at her.
‘Bonjour, monsieur,’ she answered and closed her eyes to press her face once more against his chest.
‘Wake up. I have something to tell you.’
‘I am awake, but tell me first if I am still dreaming. I have a certainty that this cannot be reality.’
‘You are not dreaming.’
She sighed softly, and held him closer.
‘Now tell me the other thing.’
‘I love you,’ he said.
‘No. Now I am dreaming.’
‘In truth,’ he said.
‘No, do not wake me. I could not bear to wake now.’
‘And you?’ he asked.
‘You know it—’ she answered. ‘I do not have to tell you.’
‘It is almost morning,’ he said. ‘There is only a little time.’
‘Then I will fill that little time with saying it—’ He held her and listened to her whispering it to him.
No, he thought, now I am certain. I could not be that wrong. This is my woman.
– 22 –
The drum stopped with the dawn. And after it the silence was very heavy, and it was no relief.
They had grown accustomed to that broken rhythm and now in some strange way they missed it.
As Bruce moved around the laager he could sense the uneasiness in his men. There was a feeling of dread anticipation on them all. They moved with restraint, as though they did not want to draw attention to themselves. The laughter with which they acknowledged his jokes was nervous, quickly cut off, as though they had laughed in a cathedral. And their eyes kept darting back towards the ring of jungle.
Bruce found himself wishing for an attack. His own nerves were rubbed sensitive by contact with the fear all around him.
If only they would come, he told himself. If only they would show themselves and we could see men not phantoms.
But the jungle was silent. It seemed to wait, it watched them. They could feel the gaze of hidden eyes. Its malignant presence pressed closer as the heat built up.
Bruce walked across the laager to the south side, trying to move casually. He smiled at Sergeant Jacque, squatted beside him and peered from under the truck across open ground at the remains of the bridge.
‘Trucks will be back soon,’ he said. ‘Won’t take long to repair that.’
Jacque did not answer. There was a worried frown on his high intelligent forehead and his face was shiny with perspiration.
‘It’s the waiting, Captain. It softens the stomach.’
‘They will be back soon,’ repeated Bruce. If this one is worried, and he is the best of them, then the others must be almost in a jelly of dread.
Bruce looked at the face of the man on the other side of Jacque. Its expression shrieked with fear.
If they attack now, God knows how it will turn out. An African can think himself to death, they just lie down and die. They are getting to that stage now; if an attack comes they will either go berserk or curl up and wail with fear. You can never tell.
Be honest with yourself – you’re not entirely happy either, are you? No, Bruce agreed, it’s the waiting does it.
It came from the edge of the clearing on the far side of the laager. A high-pitc
hed inhuman sound, angry, savage.
Bruce felt his heart trip and he spun round to face it. For a second the whole laager seemed to cringe from it.
It came again. Like a whip across aching nerves. Immediately it was lost in the roar of twenty rifles.
Bruce laughed. Threw his head back and let it come from the belly.
The gunfire stammered into silence and others were laughing also. The men who had fired grinned sheepishly and made a show of reloading.
It was not the first time that Bruce had been startled by the cry of a yellow hornbill. But now he recognized his laughter and the laughter of the men around him, a mild form of hysteria.
‘Did you want the feathers for your hat?’ someone shouted and the laughter swept round the laager.
The tension relaxed as the banter was tossed back and forth. Bruce stood up and brought his own laughter under control.
No harm done, he decided. For the price of fifty rounds of ammunition, a purchase of an hour’s escape from tension. A good bargain.
He walked across to Shermaine. She was smiling also.
‘How is the catering section?’ He grinned at her. ‘What miracle of the culinary art is there for lunch?’
‘Bully beef.’
‘And onions?’
‘No, just bully beef. The onions are finished.’
Bruce stopped smiling.
‘How much is left?’ he asked.
‘One case – enough to last till lunchtime tomorrow.’
It would take at least two days to complete the repairs to the bridge; another day’s travel after that.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘we should all have healthy appetites by the time we get home. You’ll have to try and spread it out. Half rations from now on.’
He was so engrossed in the study of this new complication that he did not notice the faint hum from outside the laager.
‘Captain,’ called Jacques. ‘Can you hear it?’
Bruce inclined his head and listened.
‘The trucks!’ His voice was loud with relief, and instantly there was an excited murmur round the laager.
The waiting was over.
They came growling out of the bush into the clearing. Heavily loaded, timber and sheet-iron protruding backwards from under the canopies, sitting low on their suspensions.