by Wilbur Smith
‘As many as necessary,’ he had replied, and though she thought that she hated war and death and suffering, it excited her in a way she could not control. Afterwards he had laughed easily and said, ‘You are a kinky little bitch, did you know that?’ She had hated him for understanding and she had been desperately ashamed, and so angry that she had gone for his eyes with her nails. He had held her down effortlessly, and still chuckling he had whispered in her ear until she lost control again.
Now when she looked up at him riding beside her, she felt the lingering fear of him and the goose-flesh on her arms and the hard ball of excitement in the pit of her stomach.
They rode up to the top of the hills, and he reined the stallion down. It danced in a tight little circle, picking up its hooves delicately and tried to nuzzle her filly, but Roland pulled its head away and pointed at the horizons that fell away into blue distances in every direction.
‘Everything you can see from here. Every blade of grass, every grain of earth, all of it belongs to the Ballantynes. We fought for it, we won it – it’s ours and anyone who wants to take it away from us will have to kill me first.’ The idea of anyone or anything doing that was ludicrous. He was a young god, one of the immortals.
He dismounted and led the horses to one of the tall msasa trees. He tied them, and then reached up and lifted her down from the saddle. He walked her to the edge of the precipice, and held her against him, her back to his chest, so that she could look out and see it all.
‘There it is!’ he said. ‘Just look at it.’
It was beautiful, rich golden grasslands and graceful trees, waters that flowed in the small clear streams or shone like mirrors where the dam walls held them back, the tranquil herds of big red cattle, as red as the rich earth beneath their hooves, and arched above it all the high cloud-dappled blue of the African sky.
‘It needs a woman to love it as I love it,’ he said. ‘A woman to breed fine sons to cherish it, to hold it as I will hold it.’
She knew what he was going to say then, and now that it was about to happen, she felt numbed and confused. She felt herself beginning to tremble against him.
‘I want you to be that woman,’ Roland Ballantyne said, and she began to weep uncontrollably.
The NCOs of Ballantyne’s Scouts clubbed together to give their colonel and his new lady an engagement party.
They held it in the sergeants’ mess at the Thabas Indunas barracks. The officers and the wives of the regiment were all invited so that when Roland and Janine drove up in the Mercedes, there was a packed crowd waiting on the front veranda to meet them. Led by Sergeant-Major Gondele, they launched into a rollicking but untuneful rendition of ‘For they are jolly good fellows’.
‘Damn good thing you don’t fight like you sing,’ Roland told them. ‘Your backsides would have more holes than a sieve by now.’
He treated them with a rough paternal severity and affection, the total easy assurance of the dominant male, and they worshipped him openly. Janine understood that. She would have been surprised if it were otherwise. What did surprise her was the brotherhood of the Scouts. The way that officers and men, black and white, were held together by an almost tangible bond of trust and accord.
She sensed that it was something stronger than even the strongest family ties, and later when she spoke to Roland about it, he replied simply, ‘When your life depends on another man, you come to love him.’
They treated Janine with enormous respect, almost awe. They called her ‘Donna’ if they were Matabele and ‘Ma’am’ if they were white, and she responded immediately to them.
Sergeant-Major Gondele personally fetched her a gin that would have stunned an elephant, and looked hurt when she asked for a little more tonic. He introduced her to his wife. She was a pretty plump daughter of a senior Matabele tribal chief, ‘which makes her a sort of princess’, Roly explained. She had five sons, the exact number that Janine and Roly had decided upon, and she spoke excellent English, so she and Janine were immediately in deep and earnest conversation, from which Janine was at last distracted by a voice at her elbow.
‘Doctor Carpenter, may I apologize for being late.’ It was said in the perfectly modulated tones and classless accents of a BBC announcer or a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Janine turned to face an elegant figure in the uniform of a wing commander of the Rhodesian Air Force.
‘Douglas Hunt-Jeffreys,’ he said, and offered her a narrow, almost femininely smooth hand. ‘I was desolated by the prospect of not meeting the lovely lady of the gallant colonel.’ He had the cultured vacuous features of a dilettante, and the uniform, no matter that it was perfectly tailored, looked out of place on his narrow shoulders. ‘The whole regiment has been in a complete tizzy since we heard the monumental tidings.’
She knew instinctively that despite his appearance and his choice of words, he was not a gay. It was the way he held her hand, and the subtle glance that dropped down her body like a silken robe, and then came back to her face. She found her interest titillated, he was like a razor-blade wrapped in velvet. If she needed confirmation of his hetero-sexuality, it was the way in which Roland reappeared almost immediately at her side when he realized to whom she was speaking.
‘Dougie, my old fruit,’ Roland’s smile had a white sharkish quality.
‘Bon soir, mon brave.’ The wing commander took the ivory cigarette-holder from between his teeth. ‘I must say I didn’t expect you to show such exquisite taste. Doctor Carpenter is utterly ravishing. I do approve, dear boy. I truly do.’
‘Dougie has to approve everything we do,’ Roland explained. ‘He’s our liaison with Combined Ops.’
‘Doctor Carpenter and I have just discovered that we were almost neighbours, we are members of the same hunt, and she was at school with my little sister. I cannot understand how we haven’t met before.’
Janine realized then, almost with disbelief, that Roland Ballantyne was jealous of her and this man. He took her arm, just above the elbow and with a light pressure steered her away.
‘You will excuse us, Douglas. I want Bugsy to meet some of the lads—’
‘Bugsy, forsooth!’ Douglas Hunt-Jeffreys shook his head in pained disbelief. ‘These colonials are all of them barbarians.’ And he wandered away to find another gin and tonic.
‘You don’t like him?’ Janine could not resist stirring Roland’s jealousy a little.
‘He’s good at his job,’ Roland said shortly.
‘I thought he was rather cute.’
‘Perfidious Albion,’ he replied.
‘What does that mean?’
‘He is a pom.’
‘So am I,’ she said with a slight edge beneath her smile. ‘And if you go back just a little, you are a pommy also, Roland Ballantyne.’
‘The difference is you and I are good poms. Douglas Hunt-Jeffreys is a prick.’
‘One of those. Oh goody!’ And he laughed with her.
‘If there is one thing of which I approve whole-heartedly, it’s a blatant self-confessed nymphomaniac,’ he said.
‘Then we are going to get on very well together, you and I.’ She hugged his arm in a gesture of reconciliation, and he led her to a group of young men at the end of the bar. With their cropped heads and fresh faces they looked like undergraduates, only their eyes held that flat pebbly look, she remembered Hemingway had called them ‘machine-gunners’ eyes’.
‘Nigel Taylor, Nandele Zama, Peter Sinclair,’ Roland introduced them. ‘These lads almost missed the party. They only got back from the bush two hours ago. This morning they had a good contact near the Gwaai, twenty-six kills.’
Janine hesitated over her choice of words, and then said faintly, ‘That’s nice,’ rather than ‘Congratulations’, both of which seemed grossly inappropriate for the passing of twenty-six human lives. It seemed to suffice, however.
‘Will you be riding the colonel this evening, Donna?’ the young Matabele sergeant asked eagerly, and Janine looked hurriedly to
Roland for clarification. Even in such a close family environment it seemed a rather personal enquiry.
‘Mess tradition,’ Roland grinned at her discomfort. ‘At midnight Sergeant-Major and I race down to the main gates and back. Princess Gondele will be his jockey, and I am afraid you will be rather expected to do the honours for me.’
‘You are not as fat as Princess,’ the young Matabele ran an appraising eye over Janine, ‘I’m going to bet ten dollars on you, Donna.’
‘Oh goodness. I do hope we don’t let you down.’
By midnight the excitement was frenetic, of the peculiar quality that grips men who live their daily lives in mortal danger and who know that this stolen hour of joyous existence may be their last. They thrust bunches of banknotes into the hands of the adjutant who was official holder of bets, and crowded around their fancies to bolster them with raucous encouragement.
Princess and Janine were in stockinged feet with their skirts rucked up and tucked into their panties like little girls at the seaside, standing on a chair on each side of the main doors to the mess. Outside, the tarmac road down to the main gates was lit by the headlights of army vehicles parked along the verge, and lined with the overflow from the mess bar, all of them full of gin and rowdy enthusiasm.
On the bar Sergeant-Major Gondele and Roland were stripped down to breeches and jungle boots. Esau Gondele was a black giant, his shaven head like a cannonball, and his shoulders lumpy with muscle. Beside him even Roland looked like a boy, his chest untouched by the sun was very smooth and white.
‘You trip me this time, S’arn-Major, and I’ll tear your head off,’ he warned, and Esau patted his shoulder soothingly.
‘Sorry, boss. You ain’t ever going to get close enough to trip.’
The adjutant took the last bets, and then mounted to the bar-top rather unsteadily with a service pistol in one hand and a glass in the other.
‘Shut up, all of you. At the gun the two competitors will each consume a quart bottle of beer. When the bottle is empty they will be free to take up one of these beautiful young ladies.’
There was a storm of wolf-whistles and clapping.
‘Do shut up, chaps!’ The adjutant swaying precariously on the bar-top tried to look stern.
‘We all know the rules.’
‘Get on with it.’
The adjutant made a gesture of resignation, pointed the pistol at the ceiling, and pulled the trigger. There was a crash of shot and one of the roof lights went out. The adjutant’s bald head was showered with fragments of the shattered bulb.
‘I say, I forgot to change to blanks,’ he murmured distractedly, but nobody took any further interest in him.
Sergeant-Major Gondele and Roland both had their heads thrown back, the base of the black bottles pointed at the roof, and their throats pulsed regularly as the frothing beer gushed down them. Gondele finished a second before Roland, leaped from the counter, emitted a great beer belch, and swept a squealing Princess up onto his shoulders. He was out of the doors before Janine could wrap her bare legs around Roland’s neck.
Roland scorned the veranda stairs, and vaulted over the far railing. It was a four-foot drop to the lawn below, and Janine, a veteran of the hunt, only stayed on his shoulders by a fierce grip in his hair and a miracle of balance, but they had cut two yards off the big Matabele’s lead. They stayed close behind him down the long curving drive, jungle boots pounding on the black tarmac with Roland grunting at each stride, and Janine bouncing and swaying on his shoulders. The spectators howled and leaned on the horns of the parked trucks so the noise was pandemonium.
They reached the main gates, and the black sentry recognized Roland and gave him a flourishing salute.
‘At ease!’ Roland told him as he turned in Gondele’s wake.
‘If you get a chance, pull Princess off,’ he panted to Janine.
‘That’s cheating,’ she protested breathlessly.
‘This is war, baby.’
Gondele was breathing like a bull, lumbering up the hill with the headlights glistening on his burnished muscles, and still two paces behind him Roland ran with quick light steps. Janine could feel the strength flowing out of his body like electricity, but it was not that alone that started whittling the inches off Gondele’s lead. It was that same rage to win that she had seen grip him on the courts at Queen’s Lynn.
Then suddenly they were running side by side, straining their hearts and bodies beyond mere physical strength. It was at the end a contest of wills, a trial of who could bear the agony longest.
Janine looked across at Princess, and saw in her set expression that she expected Janine to foul her, both knew it was within the rules and she had heard Roland order Janine to do so.
‘Don’t worry,’ Janine called to her, and got a flashing smile as a reward.
Shoulder to shoulder the two men came around the bend of the driveway; the lawn stretched to meet them, and beneath her Janine felt Roland make some almost mystical call on reserves that should not have existed. It was to her unthinkable that anyone could make such effort to win a childish contest – a normal man could not have done it, a totally sane man would not have done it. There was a wildness, a madness in Roland Ballantyne that frightened and at the same time elated her.
In the glare of the headlights and the roar of the crowd, Roland Ballantyne simply burned off the bigger stronger man and left him floundering half a dozen yards behind him as he leaped up the stairs, crashed through the mess doors and dropped Janine onto the bar-top.
His face was swollen and ugly red as he thrust it inches from hers. ‘I told you to do something,’ he snarled hoarsely. ‘Don’t you ever disobey me again, ever!’ And in that moment she was truly afraid of him.
Then he went to Esau Gondele and the two of them threw their arms around each other and sobbed with laughter and exhaustion and staggered in a circle trying to lift each other off their feet. The adjutant thrust a roll of bank-notes into Roland’s hand. ‘Your winnings, sir,’ he said, and Roland slapped it onto the bar counter. ‘Come on, lads, help me drink it up,’ he wheezed, still fighting for breath.
Esau Gondele took one sip of his beer and then poured the rest over Roland’s head.
‘Sorry, Nkosi,’ he roared. ‘But I’ve always wanted to do that.’
‘This is, my dear, just a typical homely evening with Ballantyne’s Scouts.’ Janine looked around to find Douglas Hunt-Jeffreys beside her, with the ivory cigarette-holder between his teeth. ‘Some time when the varsity rugger club atmosphere palls, and your intended is away in the bush, you might find a little civilized company makes a pleasant change.’
‘The only thing about you that interests me is what makes you think I might be interested.’
‘It takes one to recognize one, darling.’
‘You are impertinent. I could tell Roland.’
‘You could,’ he agreed. ‘But then I always like to live dangerously. Goodnight, Doctor Carpenter, I hope we meet again.’
They left the mess after two in the morning. Despite the alcohol he had taken, Roland drove as he always did, very fast and well. When they reached her apartment, he carried her up the stairs, despite her muted protests. ‘You will wake everybody in the building!’
‘If they sleep so lightly – just wait until I get you upstairs. They will be sending you lawyers’ letters, or get-well cards.’
After he had made love to her, he fell instantly asleep. She lay next to him and watched his face in the orange and red flashes of the neon sign on the roof of the service station across the street. In relaxation he was even more beautiful than awake, but she found herself thinking suddenly of Craig Mellow, of his funniness and his gentleness.
‘They are so different,’ she thought. ‘And yet I love them both now, each in a different way.’
It troubled her so that she fell asleep only as the dawn swamped the neon flashes on the bedroom curtains.
Roland seemed to waken her immediately. ‘Breakfast, wench,’ he ordere
d. ‘I’ve got a meeting at nine o’clock at Combined Ops.’
They sat on her balcony, amongst her miniature forest of pot plants, and ate scrambled eggs and wild mushrooms.
‘I know it’s usually the bride’s prerogative, Bugsy, but can we set a date for around the end of next month?’
‘So soon? Can you tell me why?’
‘Not all of it – but after that we will be going into quarantine, and I might be out of circulation for a while.’
‘Quarantine?’ She laid down her fork.
‘When we start planning and training for a special operation we go into total isolation. There have been too many security leaks lately. Too often our boys have walked into a sucker punch. We have got a big one coming up, and the whole group will be quarantined in a special camp; nobody, not even myself, will be allowed outside contact, not even with parents or wives, until after the operation.’
‘Where is this camp?’
‘I cannot tell you, but if we spend the honeymoon at Victoria Falls as you wanted, it will suit me just fine. You can fly back here afterwards and I can go straight into quarantine.’
‘Oh, darling, it’s so soon. There will be so many arrangements to make. I don’t know if Mummy and Daddy can get out here by then.’
‘Telephone them.’
‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘But I hate the thought of you having to leave so soon afterwards.’
‘I know. It won’t always be that way.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Time to go. I’ll be a little late this evening, I want to talk to Sonny. I hear he’s living in that boat of his again.’
She tried to cover her shock.
‘Sonny? Craig, why do you want to see him?’
When Roland told her why, she could think of nothing to say. She went on staring at him in appalled silence.
Janine telephoned him at the police armoury as soon as she reached the museum.
‘Craig, I have to see you.’
‘Wonderful, I’ll make the dinner.’
‘No, no – immediately. You must get away.’
He laughed. ‘I’ve only had this job a few months. Even for me it will be a record.’