Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur (электронная книга TXT) 📗
They are in the sky, and I am down here in the dirt, a cripple, grovelling in the dirt. You chose the dirt. Blaine looked around the filthy shack scornfully. And you are doing the whining and grovelling Get the hell out of here, sir! Shasa told him.
You'd better Before I lose my temper. A pleasure, I assure you. Blaine stood up. I misjudged you. I came to offer you a job, an important war job, but I can see that you are not man enough for it. He crossed to the door of the cottage and paused. I was going to issue an invitation as well, an invitation to a party on Friday night.
Tara is going to announce her engagement to marry Hubert Langley. I thought it might amuse you, but forget it. He went out with his long determined stride and after a few seconds Shasa followed him out onto the stoep and watched him climb the cliff path. Blaine never looked back once, and when he disappeared over the top, Shasa felt suddenly abandoned and bereft.
He had not until that moment realized how large Blaine Malcomess bulked in his life. How much he had relied on Blaine's good counsel and experience, both on and off the polo field.
I wanted to be like him so much, he said aloud. And now I never will be. He touched the black patch over his eye.
Why me? He gave the eternal cry of the loser. Why me? And he sank down onto the top step and stared out over the calm green waters to the entrance of the bay.
Slowly the full impact of Blaine's words sank home. He thought about the job he had offered, an important war job then he thought about Tara and Hubert Langley. Tara, he saw her grey eyes and smoking red hair, and self-pity washed over him in a cold dark wave.
Listlessly he stood up and went into the shack. He opened the cupboard above the sink. There was a single bottle of Haig left. 'What happened to the others? he asked himself.
Mice? He cracked the cap on the bottle, and looked for a glass.
They were all dirty, piled in the sink. He lifted the bottle to his lips, and the fumes made his eye smart. He lowered the bottle before he drank and stared at it. His stomach heaved and he was filled with a sudden revulsion, both physical and emotional.
He tipped the bottle over the sink, and watched the golden liquid chug and spurt into the drainhole. When it was gone, once it was too late, his need for it returned strongly and he was seized by dismay. His throat felt parched and sore and the hand that held the empty bottle began to shake. The desire for oblivion ached in every joint of his bones, and his eye burned so that he had to blink it clear.
He hurled the bottle against the wall of the shack and ran out into the sunshine, down the steps to the beach. He stripped off the eye-patch and his rugby shorts and dived into the cold green water and struck out in a hard overarm crawl. By the time he reached the entrance to the cove, every muscle ached and his breathing scorched his lungs.
He turned and without slackening the tempo of his stroke headed back to the beach. As soon as his feet touched bottom he turned again, and swam out to the headland, back and forth he ploughed, hour after hour, until he was so exhausted that he could not tift an arm clear of the surface and he was forced to struggle back the last hundred yards in a painful side-stroke.
He crawled up the beach, fell face down on the wet sand and lay like a dead man. it was the middle of the afternoon before he had recovered the energy to push himself upright and limp up to the shack.
He stood in the doorway and looked around at the mess he had created. Then he took the broom from behind the door and went to work.
It was late afternoon before he had finished. The only thing he could do nothing about was the dirty bed linen. He bundled the soiled blankets with his dirty clothes for the dhobi waRah at Weltevreden to launder. Then he drew a kettle of fresh water from the rainwater tank beside the back door and heated it over the stove.
He shaved carefully, dressed in the cleanest shirt and slacks he could find and adjusted the patch over his eye. He locked the shack and hid the key; then, carrying the bundle of dirty laundry he climbed the pathway to the top. His Jaguar was dusty and streaked with sea salt. The battery was flat and he had to run it down the hill and start it on the fly.
Centaine was in her study, seated at her desk, poring over a pile of documents. She sprang to her feet when he came in and would have rushed to him, but with an obvious effort she restrained herself.
Hello, cheri, you look so well. I was worried about you it's been so long. Five weeks. The patch over his eye still horrified her.
Every time she saw it she remembered Isabella Malcomess last words to her: An eye for an eye, Centaine Courtney. Heed my words an eye for an eye. As soon as she had herself under control again she went calmly to meet him and lifted her face for his kiss.
I'm glad you are home again, cheri. Blaine Malcomess has offered me a job, a war job. I'm thinking of taking it. I am sure it is important, Centaine nodded. I am happy for you. I can hold the fort here until you are ready to return., I am sure you can, Mater, he grinned wryly. After all you have been doing pretty well for the last twenty-two years, holding the fort. The long line of goods trucks drawn by a double coupling of steam locomotives climbed the last slope of the pass. On the steep gradient, the locomotives were sending bright silver columns of steam spurting from their valves, and the Hex river mountains echoed to the roar of their straining boilers.
With a final effort they crested the head of the pass and burst out onto the high plateau of the open karoo; gathering speed dramatically they thundered away across the flatlands and the line of closed trucks snaked after them.
Forty miles beyond the head of the pass the train slowed and then trundled to a halt in the shunting yards of the intermediate railway junction of Touws river.
The relief crews were waiting in the stationmaster's office and they greeted the incoming crews with a little light banter and then climbed aboard to take their places on the footplates. The leading locomotive was uncoupled and shunred onto a side spur. It was no longer needed, the rest of the run, a thousand miles northwards to the goldfields of the Witwatersrand, was across comparatively flat land. The second locomotive would return down the mountain pass to link up with the next goods train and assist it up the steep gradients.
The incoming crews, carrying their lunch pails and overcoats, set off down the lane towards the row of railway cottages, relieved to be home in time for a hot bath and dinner. only one of the drivers lingered on the platform and watched the goods train pull out of the siding, gathering speed swiftly as it headed northwards.
He counted the trucks as they passed him, verifying his previous count. Numbers twelve and thirteen were closed trucks, painted silver to distinguish them and to deflect the heat of the sun's rays. On the side of each was blazoned a crimson cross, and in letters six feet tall that ran the full length of each truck, the warning: EXPLOSiVES. They had each been loaded at the Somerset West factory of African Explosives and Chemical Industries with twenty tons of gelignite consigned to the gold mines of the Anglo American Group.
As the guard's van passed him the driver sauntered into the stationmaster's office. The stationmaster was still at the far end of the platform, his pillbox cap on his head and his furled flags of red and green under his arm. The driver lifted the telephone off its bracket on the wall and spun the handle.
Central, he said into the voice-piece, speaking in Afrikaans, 'give me Matjiesfontein eleven sixteen. He waited while the operator made the connection. You are through. Go ahead. But the driver waited for the click of the operator going off the line before he said, 'Van Niekerk here. This is White Sword. The reply, though he had been expecting it, made the hair on the back of his neck prickle.
