Текст книги "The Burning Shore"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 37 страниц)

After the dust and heat of the desert crossing, the local Pilsner, product of a master brewer from Munich, tasted like resurrection in Valhalla.

Set them up again, harman, Garry ordered, revelling in the masculine camaraderie, in the after-glow of the achievement of having brought his command safely down from the mountains. His men bellied up to the long teak bar with a will, and when they raised their tankards and grinned at him, their masks of packed dust cracked and powdered into their beer.

Mijnheer! Anna had performed her perfunctory ablutions and appeared in the doorway of the saloon. She stood with her thickly muscled arms akimbo, and her face, already inflamed by sun and wind, was slowly becoming truly fiery with outrage. Mijnheer, you are wasting time! Garry rounded on his men swiftly. Come on, you fellows, there is work to do. Let's get on with it. By this time none of them had any doubts as to who was in ultimate command of the expedition, and they gulped their beers and trooped out into the sunlight, shamefacedly wiping the froth from their lips and unable to meet Anna's eye as they sidled past her.

While his men refuelled, filled the water tanks, repacked the loads that had come loose on the journey, and carried out maintenance and running repairs on the vehicles, Garry went off to make inquiries at the police station.

The police sergeant had been warned of Garry's arrival. I'm very sorry, Colonel, we weren't expecting you for three or four days. If only I had known, He was eager to be of assistance. Nobody knows much about that country up there, as he glanced from the window of the charge office towards the north, the sergeant shivered involuntarily, but I have a man who can act as a guide for you. He took down his key-ring from the hook on the wall behind the desk and led Garry through to the cells.

Hey, you swart dander, you black thunder! he growled as he unlocked one of the cells, and Garry blinked as his chosen guide shuffled out sullenly and glowered about him.

He was a villainous-looking Bondelswart Hottentot with a single malevolent eye; the other was covered by a leather eye-patch, and he smelled like a wild goat.

He knows that land out there, he should do, the sergeant grinned.

That's where he poached the rhinoceros horn and ivory that is going to send him to the clanger for five years, isn't that right, Kali PietV Kali Piet opened his leather jerkin and searched his chest hair reflectively.

If he works well for you, and you are pleased with him, he might get off with only two or three years breaking stones, the sergeant explained, and Kali Piet found something amongst his body hair and cracked it between his

fingernails.

And if I am not pleased with him? Garry asked uncertainly. Kali was the Swahili word for bad or wicked, and it inspired no great confidence.

Oh, the sergeant said airily, then don't bother to bring him back. just bury him where nobody will find him. Kali Piet's attitude changed miraculously.

Good master, he whined in Afrikaans, I know every tree, every rock, every grain of sand. I will be your dog. Anna was waiting for Garry, already seated in the rear seat of the T model.

What took you so long? she demanded. My baby has been out there in the wilderness alone for sixteen days now! Corporal, Garry handed Kali Piet into the care and keeping of the senior NCO. If he tries to escape, Garry tried unconvincingly to look jeeringly sadistic, shoot him! As the last whitewashed red-tiled buildings fell away behind them, Garry's driver belched softly and retasted the beer with a dreamy smile.

Enjoy it, Garry warned him, it will be a long trek to the next tankard.

The track ran along the edge of the beach, while at their left hand the green surf tipped with ostrich feathers of spume pounded the smooth yellow sands, and before them stretched that dismal featureless littoral, shrouded in a haze of sea fret.

The track was used by kelp gatherers who collected the cast-up seaweed for fertilizer, but as they followed it northwards, so it became progressively less defined until it petered out altogether.

What is ahead? Garry demanded of Kali Piet, who had been led forward from the rear vehicle.

Nothing, said Kali Piet, and never had Garry sensed in a common-place word such menace.

We will make our own road from here on, Garry told them with a confidence he did not feel, and the next forty miles took four days to cover.

There were ancient water courses, dry for a hundred years perhaps, but with steep sides and their bottoms strewn with boulders like cannon balls. There were treacherous flats on which the vehicles sank unexpectedly to their axles in soft sand and had to be manhandled through. There was broken ground where one of the lorries toppled over on its side and another broke a rear axle and had to be abandoned, together with a pile of luggage which they had discovered was superfluous, tents and camp chairs, tables and an enamel bath, boxes of trade goods to bribe savage chieftains, cases of tea and tinned butter and all the other equipment which had seemed essential when they were shopping in Windhoek.

The abbreviated and lightened convoy struggled northwards.

In the noonday heat the water boiled in the radiators, and they drove with plumes of white steam spurting from the safety valves, and they were forced to halt every half hour to allow the engines to cool. in other places there were fields of black stone, sharp as obsidian knives, which slashed through the thin casing of their tyres. In one day Garry counted fifteen halts to change wheels, and at night the stink of rubber solution hung over the bivouac as exhausted men sat up until midnight repairing the ruined inner tubes by the light of hurricane lanterns.

On the fifth day they camped with the seared bare peak of the Brandberg, the Burned Mountain, rising out of the purple evening mist ahead of them, and in the morning Kali Piet was gone.

He had taken a rifle and fifty rounds of ammunition, a blanket and five water-bottles, and as a final touch, the gold hunter watch and the coin case with twenty gold sovereigns in it that Garry had placed carefully beside his blanket roll the previous evening.

Furiously, threatening to shoot him on sight, Garry led a punitive expedition after him in the T model. However, Kali Piet had chosen his moment, and less than a mile beyond the camp he had entered an area of broken hills and sheer valleys where no vehicle could follow him.

Let him go, Anna ordered. We are safer without him, and it's twenty days since my darling, she broke off. We must go forward, Miinheer, nothing must stand in our way. Nothing. Each day now the going became more difficult, and their progress slower, more frustrating.

At last, facing another barrier of rock that rose out of the sea like the crest on the back of a dinosaur and ran inland, jagged and glittering in the sunlight, Garry felt suddenly physically exhausted.

This is madness, he muttered to himself as he stood on the cab of one of the trucks, shading his eyes against the flat blinding glare and trying to spy out a way through this high impenetrable wall. The men have had enough. They were standing in dispirited little groups beside the dusty, battered trucks. It's almost a month, and nobody could have survived out here that long, even if they had been able to get ashore. The stump of Garry's missing leg ached and every muscle in his back was bruised, every vertebra in his spine felt crushed by the vicious jolting over rough ground. We'll have to turn back! He clambered down off the cab, moving stiffly as an old man, and limped forward to where Anna stood beside the Ford at the head of the column.

Mevrou, he began, and she turned to him and laid a big red hand on his arm.

Mijnheer – Her voice was low, and when she smiled at him Garry's protests stilled, and he thought for the first time that except for the redness of her face and the forbidding frown lines, she was a handsome woman. The line of her jaw was powerful and determined, her teeth were white and even, and there was a gentleness in her eyes that he had never noticed before.

'Mijnheer, I have been standing here thinking that there are few men who would have brought us this far. Without you we would have failed. She squeezed his arm. Of course I knew that you were wise, that you had written many books, but now I know also that you are strong and determined, and that you are a man who allows nothing to stand in your way. She squeezed his arm again. Her hand was warm and strong. Garry found that he was enjoying her touch. He straightened his shoulders, and tipped his slouch hat forward at a debonair angle. His back was not quite so painful. Anna smiled again.

I will take a party over the rocks on foot, we must search the sea front, every foot of it, while you lead the convoy inland and find another way around. They had to slog four miles inland before they found a narrow precarious route over the rocks and could turn back towards the ocean.

When Garry saw Anna's distant figure striding manfully through the heavy beach sands far ahead, with her party straggling along behind her, he felt an unexpected relief, and realized how painfully he had missed her for even those few brief hours.

That evening as the two of them sat side by side, with their backs against the side of the T model Ford, eating bully beef and hard biscuit and washing it down with strong coffee heavily sweetened with condensed milk, Garry told her shyly: My wife's name was Anna also. She died a long time ago. Yes, Anna agreed, chewing steadily. I know."How do you know?

Garry was startled.

Michel told Centaine. The variation of Michael's name still disconcerted Garry.

I always forget that you know so much about Michael. He took a spoonful of bully, and stared out into the darkness. As usual, the men had bivouaced a short distance away to give them privacy, and their fire of driftwood cast a yellow nimbus and their voices were a murmur in the night.

On the other hand, I don't know anything about Centaine. Tell me more about her, please, Mevrou. This was a subject that never palled for either of them. She's a good girl, Anna always began with this statement, but spirited and headstrong. Did I ever tell you about the time-? Garry sat close to her with his head cocked towards her attentively, but this evening he wasn't really listening.

The light of the camp fire played on Anna's homely lined face, and he watched it with a feeling of comfort and familiarity. Women usually made Garry feel inadequate and afraid, and the more beautiful or sophisticated they were, the greater his fear of them. He had long ago come to terms with the fact that he was impotent, he had found that out on his honeymoon, and the mocking laughter of his bride still rang in his ears over thirty years later. He had never given another woman the opportunity to laugh at him again, his son had not truly been his son, his twin brother had done that work for him, and at well over fifty years of age Garry was still a virgin.

Occasionally, as now, when he thought about it, that fact made him feel mildly guilty.

With an effort he put the thought aside and tried to recapture the feeling of content and calm, but now he was aware of the smell of the body of the woman beside him. There had been no water to spare for bathing since they had left Swakopmund, and her odour was strong.

She smelled of earth and sweat and other secret feminine musks, and Garry leaned a little closer to her to savour it. The few other women he had known smelled of cologne and rosewater, insipid and artificial, but this one smelled like an animal, a strong warm, healthy animal.

He watched her with fascination, and still talking in her low thick voice she lifted her hand and pushed back a few strands of grey hair from her temple. There was a thick dark bush of curls in her armpit, still damp with the day's heat and staring at it Garry's arousal was sudden and savage as a heavy blow in his groin. It grew out of him like the branch of a tree, rigid and aching with sensations that he had never dreamed of, thick with yearning and loneliness, tense with a wanting that came from the very depths of his soul.

He stared at her, unable to move or speak, and when he did not reply to one of her questions, Anna glanced up from the fire and saw his face. Gently, almost tenderly, she reached out and touched his cheek.

I think, Mijnheer, it is time for my bed. I wish you good sleep and pleasant dreams. She stood up and moved heavily behind the tarpaulin that screened her sleeping place.

Garry lay on his own blankets, his hands clenched at his sides, and listened to the rustle of her clothing from behind the tarpaulin screen, and his body hurt like a fresh bruise. From behind the screen came a long-drawn-out rumble that startled him; for a moment he could not place it. Then he realized that Anna was snoring. It was the most reassuring sound he had ever heard, for it was impossible to be afraid of a woman who snored; he wanted to shout his joy into the desert night.

I'm in love, he exulted. For the first time in over thirty years, I'm in love. However, in the dawn all the transient courage he had gathered in the night had evaporated, only his love was still intact. Anna's eyes were swollen and red with sleep, her grey-streaked hair was powdered with crystals of sand that the night wind had blown over her, but Garry watched her with adoration until she ordered him brusquely, Eat quickly, we must go forward at first light. I have a feeling that today will be good. Eat up, Mijnheer! What a woman! Garry told himself admiringly. If only I could inspire a little of such devotion, such loyalty! Anna's premonition seemed at first to be well founded, for there were no more rocky barriers in their path, instead an open undulating plain ran right down to where the beach began, and the surface was firm gravel studded with knee-high salt bush. They could motor over it as though it were an open highway, forced only to swerve and weave in column to avoid the lumpy scrub, keeping just above the coppery beach so that they could spot any wreckage, or the signs left by a castaway on the soft sand.

Garry sat beside Anna on the back seat of the Ford and when they bumped over uneven ground, they were thrown together. Garry murmured an apology but left his good leg pressed against her thigh, and she made no effort to withdraw from his touch.

Suddenly, in the middle of an afternoon that trembled with heat, the watery curtains of mirage opened ahead of them for a few moments and they saw the beginning of the dunelands rise sheer out of the plain. The little convoy stopped before them, and everybody climbed out and stared up at them with awe and disbelief.

Mountains, Garry said softly, a mountain range of sand. Nobody ever warned us of this. There must be a way through!

Garry shook his head dubiously. They must be five hundred feet high."Come, Anna said firmly. We will go to the top."Good Lord! Garry exclaimed. The sand is so soft it's so high, it might be dangerous-'Let's go! The others will wait here. They toiled upwards with Anna leading, following the sloping razorback spine of one of the sand ridges. Far below them the cluster of vehicles was toylike, the waiting men tiny as ants. Beneath their feet the orange-coloured sand squeaked as their feet sank in to the ankles.

When they stepped too close to the edge of the razorback, the lip collapsed and an avalanche of sand went hissing down the slip-face.

This is dangerous! Garry murmured. If you went over the edge, you'd be smothered. Anna hoisted her thick calico skirts and tucked them into her bloomers, then she plodded on upwards, and Garry stared after her, his mouth dry and his heart banging against his ribs, driven with exertion and shock at the sight of her bared legs. They were massive and as solid as tree trunks, but the skin at the backs of her knees was creamy and velvety, dimpled like that of a little girl, the most exciting thing he had ever seen.

Incredibly, Garry felt his body react again, as though a giant's hand had seize is crotch, and his fatigue fell away. Sliding and stumbling in the soft footing, he scrambled upwards after her, and Anna's haunches, wide as those of a brood mare under the thick skirts, swayed and rolled at the level of his staring eyes.

He came out on the crest of the dune before he realized it, and Anna put out a hand to steady him.

My God, he whispered, it's a world of sand, an entire universe of sand. They stood upon the foothills of the great dunes and even Anna's faith wilted.

Nobody, nothing could get through them. Anna was still holding his arm, and now she shook him.

She is out there. I can almost hear her voice calling to me. We cannot fail her, we must get through to her. She can't last much longer. To attempt to go in on foot would be certain death. A man wouldn't last a day in there. We must find a way round. Anna shook herself like a huge St Bernard dog, throwing off her doubts and momentary weakness.

Come. She led him back from the crest. We must find the way round. The convoy with the Ford leading turned inland, skirting the edge of the high dunes while the day wasted away and the sun fell down the sky and bled to death upon their soaring crests. That night as they camped below them, the dunes were black and remote, implacable and hostile against the moonlit silver of the sky.

There is no way round. Garry stared into the fire, unable to meet Anna's eyes. They go on for ever. In the morning we will go back towards the coast, she told him placidly, and rose to go to her sleeping place, leaving him aching with his want of her.

The next day they retraced their tracks, riding in their own tyre-prints, and it was evening again before they had returned to the point where the dunes met the ocean.

There is no way, Garry repeated hopelessly, for the surf ran right up under the sand mountains and even Anna sagged miserably, staring silently into the flames of their camp fire.

If we wait here, she whispered huskily, perhaps Centaine is making her way down towards us. Surely she knows that her only hope is to head southwards. If we cannot go to her, we must wait for her to come to us. We are running out of water, Garry told her, quietly. We can't How long can we last? Three days, no more. Four days, Anna implored, and there was such a desolation in her voice and her expression that Garry acted without thought. He reached for her with both arms. He felt a kind of delicious terror as she came to meet him, and they clung to each other, she in despair and he in a fearful frenzy of lust. For a few moments Garry worried that the men at the other fire would see them, then he no longer cared.

Come. She raised him to his feet and led him behind the canvas screen. His hands were shaking so that he could not unfasten the buttons of his shirt. Anna chuckled fondly. Here, she undressed him, my silly baby. The desert wind was cool on his back and flanks, but he was burning internally with fires of long-suppressed passion. He was no longer ashamed of his hairy belly that bulged out in a little pot, nor of his thighs that were thin as those of a stork and too long for the rest of his body.

He scrambled on top of her with frantic haste, desperate to bury himself in her, to lose himself in that great white softness, to hide there from the world that had been so cruel to him for so long.

Then suddenly it happened again, and he felt the heat and strength drain from his groin, he felt himself wilt and shrivel just as he had on that other dreadful night over thirty years before. And he lay on the white mattress of her belly, cradled between her thick, powerful thighs, and he wished to die of shame and futility. He waited for her taunting laughter and her scorn. He knew it would destroy him utterly this time. He could not escape, for her powerful arms were wrapped around him and her thighs held his hips in a fleshy vice.

Mevrou, he blurted. I am sorry, I'm no good, I've never been any good. She chuckled again, and it was a fond and compassionate sound.

There's my baby, she whispered huskily in his ear. Let me help you a little. And he felt her hand go down, pressing between their naked bellies.

Where's my puppy? she said, and he felt her fingers fold about him and he panicked. He began to struggle to be free, but she held him easily and he could not escape her fingers. They were rough as sandpaper from hard manual work, but cunning and insistent, tugging and plucking at him, and her voice was purring and happy.

There's a big boy, then. What a big boy. He couldn't struggle any more, but every nerve and muscle in his body was tensed to the point of pain, and her fingers kneaded and coaxed and her voice became deeper, almost drowsy, without urgency, calming him so he felt his body unclenching.

Ah! she gloated. What's happening to our big puppy, then?

Suddenly there was a stiffening resistance to her touch, and she chuckled again, and he felt the great thighs that held him fall slowly apart. Gently, gently, she cautioned him, for he was beginning to struggle again, bucking against her. Like that! Yes, there, that's it. She was guiding him, trying to control him, but he was desperate with haste.

Suddenly there was a hot gust of her body smell in his nostrils, rich and strong, the marvelous aroma of her own arousal, and he felt the new surge of strength into the core of his being. He was a hero, an eagle, the very hammer of the gods. He was strong as a bull, long as a sword, hard as granite.

Oh yes! she gasped. There, like that! and resistance to him was not to be brooked, he drove forward and broke through and went sliding into the depths of her and the exquisite heat which was far beyond any place he had been in his entire existence. With increasing urgency and violence, she rose and fell beneath him as though he were a ship in an ocean gale and she made little crooning sounds, and urged him on in a ragged throaty voice, until the sky crashed down upon him and he was crushed between it and the earth.

He came back slowly from far away, and she was holding him and caressing him and talking to him like a child again. There, my baby. It's all right. It's all right now. And he knew that it was so. It was all right now. He had never felt so safe and secure. He had never known such deep pervading peace. He pressed his face between her breasts, and smothered himself in her abundant motherly flesh and wanted to rest there forever.

She stroked the sparse silky hairs back from off his ears, looking down on him fondly, and the bald pink patch at the crown of his scalp gleamed in the firelight and made her breasts ache with the need to comfort him. All her pent-up love and concern for the missing girl found new directions, for she was born to give succour and loyalty and duty to others. She began to rock him, cradling him and crooning to him.

Then, in the dawn, Garry found that there had been another miracle. For when he crept out of the camp and went down to the head of the beach, he found the way was open for them. Under the influence of a waxing moon, the ocean was building up to full spring tides, and the waters had drawn back, leaving a wide strip of hard smooth wet sand below the dunes.

Garry rushed back to the bivouac and hauled his senior NCO out of his blankets.

Get your men looking alive, Corporal! he shouted. I want the Ford refuelled, loaded with rations including water-cans for four people for three days, and I want it ready to leave in fifteen minutes, is that clear? Well then, get on with it, man, don't stand there gaping at me! He turned and ran back to meet Anna as she emerged from behind the tarpaulin. Mevrou, the tide! We can get through."I knew you would find a way, Mijnheer! Weill go in with the For, you and I and two men. We will drive hard until the tide turns, then push the Ford up above the high-water mark, and when it's out again we'll press on. Can you be ready to leave in ten minutes?

We have to take full advantage of the tide. He wheeled away from her. Come on, Corporal, get these men moving! And as he turned away, the Corporal rolled his eyes and grumbled just loudly enough for the others to hear him. What's come over our old sparrow, damned if all of a sudden he isn't acting like a turkey cock! They had two hours of hard driving, pushing the Ford to her top speed of forty miles an hour when the sand was firm and hard. When it turned soft, the three passengers, including Anna, leaped over the side and kept her rolling, throwing their full combined weight behind her, and then, as the sand firmed again, they scrambled on board, and hooting with excitement, sped northwards again.

At last the tide came surging back at them, and Garry picked out a gap in the dunes into which they backed the Ford, manhandling her through the dry, floury sand until she was well above the high-water mark.

They built a fire of driftwood, brewed coffee, and ate a picnic meal, and then settled down to wait for the next low tide to open the beach for them. The three men stretched out in the shade of the vehicle, but Anna left them and began picking her way along the high-water mark, pausing every once in a while to shade her eyes against the glare of sea and sand and peer restlessly into the north again.

Propped on one elbow, Garry watched her with such overwhelming affection and gratitude, that he found difficulty in breathing.

In the autumn of my life she has given me the youth that I never knew. She has brought me the love that passed me by, he thought, and when she reached the corner of the next sandy bay and disappeared behind the guardian dune, he could not bear to let her out of his sight.

He sprang up and hurried after her. As he reached the corner, he saw her a quarter of a mile ahead. She was stooped over something at the head of the beach, but now she straightened and saw him, and waved both hands over her head, shouting at him. The boom of the surf drowned out her voice, but her excitement and agitation was so obvious that he began to run.

Mijnheer, she ran to meet him, I have found, She could not finish, but seized his arm and dragged him after her.

Look! She fell on her knees next to the object. It was almost completely buried in the beach sand, and already the incoming tide was washing and swirling around it.

It's part of a boad Garry dropped beside her, and together they attacked the sand with their bare hands, frantic to expose the fragment of white-painted woodwork.

Clinker-built, Garry grunted. Looks like part of an Admiralty-type lifeboat. The next wave rushed up the beach and wetted them to the waist, but as it drew back it washed away the sand that they had loosened and exposed the name that was painted in black letters on the shattered hull.

Protea C– The rest o it was missing, the timers were raw and splintered where they had broken up in the hammering surf.

The Protea Castle, whispered Anna, and wiped the sand away from the lettering with her sodden skirts.

Proof! She turned her face to Garry, and tears were running freely down her red cheeks. Proof Mijnheer, it's proof that my darling has reached the shore and is safe. Even Garry, who was as eager as a bridegroom to please her, who wanted desperately to believe that he would have a grandson to replace Michael, even he gawked at her.

It's proof that she is alive, you do believe that now, don't you, Mijnheer? Mevrou, Garry fluttered his hands in an agony of embarrassment, there is an excellent chance, I do agree."She is alive.

I know it. How can you doubt it? Unless you believe– Her red face folded into a ferocious scowl, and Garry capitulated nervously.

I do, oh yes! I certainly believe it! No question she's alive, absolutely no question. Having carried the field, Anna faced the incoming tide, F and turned the full force of her displeasure upon the ocean. How long must we wait here, Mijnheer? Well, Mevrou, the tide flows for six hours and then ebbs for six, he explained apologetically. It will be another three hours before we can go on.

Every minute we waste now could make all the difference, she told him fiercely.

Well, I'm frightfully sorry, Mevrou. Humbly Garry took full responsibility for the rhythm of the universe upon himself, and Anna's expression softened. She glanced around her to make certain they were unobserved and then slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow.

Well, at least we know she is still alive. We will go forward again the very minute we are able. In the meantime, Mijnheer, we have three hours. She looked at him speculatively, and Garry's knees began to shake so that she could barely support him.

Neither of them spoke again while she led him back off the beach into a secluded gulley between two tall dunes.

As the tide turned and began its ebb, they drove the Ford down on to the sand. The rear wheels threw fish-tails of glistening seawater and wet sand high into the air behind them as they sped northwards.

Twice within five miles they found flotsam cast up on the beach, a canvas life-jacket and a broken oar. They had obviously been exposed to the elements for a considerable time, and although neither of these were marked with identifying numbers or lettering, they confirmed Anna's faith. She sat in the back seat of the Ford with a scarf knotted under her chin, holding her solar topee on her head, and every few minutes Garry darted a loving glance at her like an amorous fox terrier paying court to a bulldog.

It was the slack of low tide, and the Ford was travelling thirty miles per hour when it went into the quicksand. There was little warning. The beach appeared as hard and smooth as it had been for the last mile. There was only a slight change in its contour. It was dished and the surface trembled like a jelly as seawater welled up beneath the sand, but they had been moving too fast to notice the warning signs, and they went in at speed.