Rage - Smith Wilbur (читать книги онлайн без сокращений .TXT) 📗

Tara ran lightly up the companionway to her stateroom. She had protested only mildly when Shasa had insisted that she cancel he original bookings in tourist and travel first class. 'My dear, there or, bound to be people we know on board. What would they think o my wife travelling steerage?" 'Not steerage, Shasa - tourist." 'Everything below "A" deck is steerage,' he had replied, and nov she was glad of his snobbery for the stateroom was a private place where she could have Ben all to herself. It would have excited curl.

osity if she had been seen with a coloured child on the public deck As Shasa had pointed out, there were watching eyes on board and the reports would have flown back to Shasa like homing pigeons.

However, Miriam Afrika had good-naturedly agreed to wear a servant's livery and to act out the subterfuge of being Tara's maid during the voyage. Her husband had reluctantly let her go with Tara to England, despite the disruption to his own household. Tara had compensated him generously and Miriam had come aboard with the child registered as her own.

Tara hardly left her stateroom during the entire voyage, declining the captain's offer to join his table and shunning the cocktail parties and fancy-dress dance. She never tired of being with Moses' son, her love was a hunger that could never be appeased and even when, exhausted by her attentions, Benjamin fell asleep in his cot, Tara hovered over him constantly. 'I love you,' she whispered to him, 'best in the world after your Daddy,' and she did not think of the other children, not even Michael. She ordered all their meals to be sent up to her suite, and ate with Benjamin, almost jealously taking over his care from Miriam. Only late at night with the greatest reluctance did she let her carry the child away to the tourist cabin on the deck below.

x The days sped by swiftly and, at last, holding Benjamin's hand she stepped off the gangplank to the'boat train in Southampton docks for the ride up to London.

Again at Shasa's insistence, she had taken the suite at the Dorchester overlooking the park that the family always used, with a single room at the back for Miriam and the baby for which she requested a separate bill and paid in cash out of her own pocket so that Shasa would have no record of it on her bank statement.

There was a message from Moses waiting for her at the porter's desk when she registered. She recognized the handwriting. She opened the envelope the moment she entered the suite, and felt the cold slide of disappointment. He wrote very formally: Dear Tara, I am sorry I was not able to meet you. However, it is necessary for me to attend important talks in Amsterdam with our friends. I will contact you immediately on my return.

Yours sincerely, Moses Gama.

She was thrown into black despair by the tone of the letter and the dashing of her expectations. Without Miriam and the child she would have despaired. However, they passed the waiting days in the parks and zoos, and in long walks along the river bank and through London's fascinating alleys and convoluted streets. She shopped for Benjamin at Marks & Spencer and C & A, avoiding Harrods and Self ridges, for those were Shasa's haunts.

Tara registered at the university for the course in African archaeology. She did not trust Shasa not to check that she had done so.

In accordance with Shasa's other expectations she even dressed in her most demure twin set and pearls and took a cab up to Trafalgar Square to make a courtesy call on the high commissioner at South Africa House. She could not avoid his invitation to lunch and had to show a bright face during a meal whose menu and wine-list and fellow guests could have been taken straight from a similar gathering at Weltevreden.

She listened to the editor of the Daily Telegraph, who sat beside her, but kept glancing out of the windows at Nelson's tall column, and longed to be free as the cloud of pigeons that circled it. Her duty done, she escaped at last, only just in time to get back to the Dorchester and give Ben his bath.

She had bought him a plastic tugboat at Hamley's toy shop which was a great success, and Ben sat in the bath and chuckled with delight as the tugboat circled him.

Tara was laughing and drying her hands when Miriam came through from the lounge to the bathroom. 'There is somebody to see you, Tara." 'Who is it?" Tara demanded without rising from where she knelt beside the bath.

'He wouldn't give his name? Miriam kept a straight face. 'I will finish bathing Ben." Tara hesitated, she did not want to waste a minute away from her son. 'Oh all right,' she agreed, and with the towel in her hand she went through to the lounge, and stopped abruptly in the doorway.

The shock was so intense that her face drained of blood and she swayed giddily and had to snatch at the door jamb to steady herself.

'Moses,' she whispered, staring at him.

He wore a long tan-coloured trenchcoat, and the epauletted shoulders were spattered with rain drops. The coat seemed to accentuate his height and the breadth of his shoulders. She had forgotten the grandeur of his presence. He did not smile, but regarded her with that steady heart-checking stare of his.

'Moses,' she said again, and took a faltering step towards him.

'Oh God, you'll never know how slowly the years have passed since last I saw you." 'Tara." His voice thrilled every fibre of her being. 'My wife,' and he held out his arms to her.

She flew to him and he enfolded her and held her close. She pressed her face to his chest and clung to him, inhaling the rich masculine smell of his body, as warm and exciting as the herby smell of the African noonday. For many seconds neither of them moved or spoke except for the involuntary tremors that shook Tara's body and the little moaning sound she made in her throat.

Then gently he held her off and took her face between his hands and lifted it to look into her eyes.

'I have thought about you every day,' he said, and suddenly she was weeping. The tears streamed down her cheeks, and into the corners of her mouth, so that when he kissed her, their metallic salt mingled with the slick taste of his saliva.

Miriam brought Benjamin out to them, clean and dry and dressed in his new blue pyjamas. He regarded his father solemnly.

'I greet you, my son,' Moses whispered. 'May you grow as strong and beautiful as the land of your birth,' and Tara thought that her heart might stop with the pride and sheer joy of seeing them together for the first time.

Though the colour of their skins differed, Benjamin was caramel and chocolate cream while Moses was amber and African bronze, Tara could see the resemblance in the shape of their heads and the set of jaw and brow. They had the same wide-spaced eyes, the same noses and lips, and to her they were the two most beautiful beings in her existence.

Tara kept the suite at the Dorchester, for she knew that Shasa would contact her there and that any invitations from South Africa House or correspondence from the university would be addressed to her at the hotel. But she moved into Moses' flat off the Bayswater Road.

The flat belonged to the Ethiopian emperor, and was kept for the use of his diplomatic staff. However, Haile Selassie had placed it at Moses Gama's disposal for as 10ng as he needed it. It was a large rambling apartment, with dark rooms and a strange mixture of furnishings, well-worn Western sofas and easy chairs, with handwoven woollen Ethiopian rugs and wall hangings. The ornaments were African artefacts, carved ebony statuettes, crossed two-handed broadswords, bronze Somali shields and Coptic Christian crosses and icons, in native silver studded with semi-precious stones.

They slept on the floor, in the African manner, on thin hard mattresses filled with coir. Moses even used a small wooden head stool as a pillow, though Tara could not accustom herself to it. Benjamin slept with Miriam in the bedroom at the end of the passage.