Текст книги "The Dark of the Sun"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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diamond dredgers that worked the gravel from the bed of the Lufira

swamps. The boats were based on Port Reprieve and clearly they would

have returned there at the beginning of the emergency; they must still

be there with three or four months" recovery of diamonds on board.

Something like half a million sterling in uncut stones. That was the

reason why the Katangese Government placed such priority on this

expedition, the reason why such a powerful force was being used, the

reason why no approaches had been made to the U.N. authorities to

conduct the rescue.

Bruce smiled sardonically as he remembered the human itarian arguments

that had been given to him by the Minister of the Interior.

"It is our duty, Captain Curry. We cannot leave these people to the

notsotender mercy of the tribesmen. It is out duty as civilized human

beings." There were others cut off in remote mission stations and

government outposts throughout southern Kasai and Katanga; nothing had

been heard of them for months, but their welfare was secondary to that

of the settlement at Port.

Reprieve.

Bruce lifted the bottle to his lips again, steering with one hand and

squinting ahead through the windscreen as he drank. All right, we'll

fetch them in and afterwards an ammunition box will be loaded on to a

chartered aircraft, and later still there will be another deposit to a

numbered account in Zurich. Why should I worry? They're paying me for

it.

"I don't think we should mention the diamonds to my boys." Ruffy spoke

sadly. "I don't think it would be a good idea at all." Bruce slowed the

truck as they ran into the industrial area beyond the railway line. He

watched the buildings as they passed, until he recognized the one he

wanted and swung off the road to stop in front of the gate. He blew a

blast on the hooter and a gendarme came out and inspected his pass

minutely. Satisfied, he shouted out to someone beyond the gate and it

swung open. Bruce drove the truck through into the yard and switched off

the engine.

There were half a dozen other trucks parked in the yard, all emblazoned

with the Katangese shield and surrounded by gendarmes in uniforms patchy

with sweat. A white lieutenant leaned from the cab of one of the trucks

and shouted.

"Ciao, Bruce!"

"How things, Sergio?" Bruce answered him.

"Crazy! Crazy!" Bruce smiled. For the Italian everything was crazy.

Bruce remembered that in July, during the fighting at the road bridge,

he had bent him over the bonnet of a Land Rover and with a bayonet dug a

piece of schrapnel out of his hairy buttocks – that had also been crazy.

"See you around," Bruce dismissed him and led Mike and Ruffy across the

yard, to the warehouse. There was a sign on the large double doors Dp&

Ordinance – Aim& du Katanga and beyond them at a desk in a glass cubicle

sat a major with a pair of Gandhi-type steel-rimmed spectacles perched

on a face like that of a jovial black toad. He looked up at Bruce.

"Non," he said with finality. "Non, non." Bruce produced his requisition

form and laid it before him. The major brushed it aside

contemptuously.

"We have not got these items, we are destitute. I cannot do it.

No! I cannot do it. There are priorities. There are circumstances to

consider. No, I am sorry." He snatched a sheaf of papers from the side

of his desk and turned his whole attention to them, ignoring Bruce.

"This requisition is signed by Monsieur le President," Bruce pointed out

mildly, and the major laid down his papers and came round from behind

the desk. He stood close to Bruce with the top of his head on a level

with Bruce's chin.

"Had it been signed by the Almighty himself, it would be of no use. I am

sorry, I am truly sorry." Bruce lifted his eyes and for a second allowed

them to wander over the mountains of stores which packed the interior of

the warehouse. From where he stood he could identify

at least twenty items that he needed. The major noticed the gesture and

his French became so excited that Bruce could only make out the repeated

use of the word

"Non'. He glanced significantly at Ruffy and the sergeant major stepped

forward and placed an arm soothingly about the major's shoulders; then

very gently he led him, still protesting, out into the yard and across

to the truck. He opened the door of the cab and the major saw the case

of whisky.

A few minutes later, after Ruffy had prised open the lid with his

bayonet and allowed the major to inspect the seals on the caps, they

returned to the office with Ruffy carrying the case.

"Captain," said the major as he picked up the requisition from the desk.

"I see now that I was mistaken. This is indeed signed by

Monsieur le President. It is my duty to afford you the most urgent

priority." Bruce murmured his thanks and the major beamed at him. "I

will give you men to help you."

"You are too kind. It would disrupt your routine. I have my own men."

Excellent," agreed the major and waved a podgy hand around the

warehouse. "Take what you need." Again Bruce glanced at his wristwatch.

It was still twenty minutes before the curfew ended at 06.00 hours.

Until then he must fret away the time watching Wally Hendry finishing

his breakfast. This was a spectacle without much appeal, for Hendry was

a methodical but untidy eater.

"Why don't you keep your mouth closed?" snapped Bruce irritably, unable

to stand it any longer.

"Do I ask you your business?" Hendry looked up from his plate.

His jowls were covered with a ginger stubble of beard, and his eyes were

inflamed and puffy from the previous evening's debauchery. Bruce looked

away from him and checked his watch again.

The suicidal temptation to ignore the curfew and set off immediately for

the railway station was very strong. It required an effort to resist it.

The least he could expect if he followed that course was an arrest by

one of the patrols and a delay of twelve hours while he cleared himself,

the worst thing would be a shooting incident.

He poured himself another cup of coffee and sipped it slowly.

Impatience has always been one of my weaknesses, he reflected; nearly

every mistake I have ever made stems from that cause. But I have

improved a little over the years. – at twenty I wanted to live my whole

life in a week. Now I'll settle for a year.

He finished his coffee and checked the time again. Five minutes

before six, he could risk it now. It would take almost that long to get

out to the truck.

"If you are ready, gentlemen." He pushed back his chair and picked up

his pack, slung it over his shoulder and led the way out.

Ruffy was waiting for them, sitting on a pile of stones in one of the

corrugated iron goods sheds. His men squatted round a dozen small fires

on the concrete floor cooking breakfast.

"Where's the train?"

"That's a good question, boss," Ruffy congratulated him, and Bruce

groaned.

"It should have been here long ago," Bruce protested, and Ruffy

shrugged.

"Should have been is a lot different from is."

"Goddamnit! We've still got to load up. We'll be lucky if we get away

before noon," snapped Bruce. "I'll go up to the station master." I

"You'd better take him a present, boss. We've still got a case left."

"No, hell!"

Bruce growled. "Come with me, Mike." With Mike beside him they crossed

the tracks to the main platform and clambered up on to it. At the far

end a group of railway officials stood chatting and Bruce fell upon them

furiously.

Two hours later Bruce stood beside the coloured engine driver on the

footplate and they puffed slowly down towards the goods yard.

The driver was a roly-poly little man with a skin too dark for mere

sunburn and a set of teeth with bright red plastic gums.

"Monsieur, you do not wish to proceed to Port Reprieve?" he asked

anxiously.

"Yes."

"There is no way of telling the condition of the permanent way. No

traffic has used it these last four months."

"I know. You'll have to proceed with caution."

"There is a United Nations barrier across the lines near the old

aerodrome, protested the man.

"We have a pass." Bruce smiled to soothe him; his bad temper was abating

now that he had his transport. "Stop next to the first shed."

With a hiss of steam brakes the train pulled up beside the concrete

platform and Bruce jumped down.

"All right, Ruffy," he shouted. "Let's get cracking." Bruce had placed

the three steel-sided open trucks in the van, for they were the easiest

to defend. From behind the breast-high sides the Bren guns could sweep

ahead and on both flanks. Then followed the two passenger coaches, to be

used as store rooms and officer's quarters; also for accommodation of

the refugees on the return journey.

A Finally, the locomotive in the rear, where it would be least

vulnerable and would not spew smoke and soot back over the train.

The stores were loaded into four of the compartments, the windows

shuttered and the doors locked. Then Bruce set about laying out his

defences. In a low circle of sandbags on the roof of the leading coach

he sited one of the Brens and made his own post. From here he could look

down over the open trucks, back at the locomotive, and also command an

excellent view of the surrounding country.

The other Brens he placed in the leading truck and put Hendry in command

there. He had obtained from the major at Ordinance three of the new

walkie-talkie sets; one he gave to the engine driver, another to Hendry

up front, and the third he retained in his emplacement; and his system

of communication was satisfactory.

It was almost twelve o'clock before these preparations were complete and

Bruce turned to Ruffy who sat on the sandbags beside him.

"All set?"

"All set, boss."

"How many missing?" Bruce had learned from experience never to expect

his entire command to be in any one place at any one time.

"Eight, boss."

"That's three more than yesterday; leaves us only fifty-two men. Do you

think they've taken off into the bush also?" Five of his men had

deserted with their weapons on the day of the ceasefire.

Obviously they had gone out into the bush to join one of the bands of

shufta that were already playing havoc along the main roads: ambushing

all unprotected traffic, beating up lucky travellers and murdering those

less fortunate, raping when they had the opportunity, and generally

enjoying themselves.

"No, boss. I don't think so, those three are good boys.

They'll be down in the cite indigne having themselves some fun; guess

they just forgot the time." Ruffy shook his head. "Take us about half an

hour to find them; all we do is go down and visit all the knock-shops.

You want to try?"

"No, we haven't time to mess around if we are going to make Msapa

junction before dark. We'll pick them up again when we get back." Was

there ever an army since the Boer War that treated desertion so lightly,

Bruce wondered.

He turned to the radio set beside him and depressed the transmit button.

"Driver."

"Oui, monsieur."

"Proceed – very slowly until we approach the United Nations barrier.

Stop well this side of it."

"Oui, monsieur." They rolled out of the goods yard, clicking over the

points; leaving the industrial quarter on their right with the

Katangese guard posts on the Avenue du Cmieti&e intersection; out

through the suburbs until ahead of them Bruce saw the U.N. positions and

he felt the first stirring of anxiety. The pass he carried in the breast

pocket of his jacket was signed by General Rhee Singh, but before in

this war the orders of an Indian general had not been passed by a

Sudanese captain to an Irish sergeant. The reception that awaited them

could be exciting.

"I hope they know about us." Mike Haig lit his cigarette with a show of

nonchalance, but he peered over it anxiously at the piles of fresh earth

on each side of the tracks that marked the position of emplacements.

"These boys have got bazookas, and they're Irish Arabs," muttered

Ruffy. "I reckon it's the maddest kind of Arabs there is – Irish. How

would you like a bazooka bomb up your throat, boss?"

"No, thanks, Ruffy," Bruce declined, and pressed the button of the

radio.

"Hendry!" In the leading truck Wally Hendry picked up his set and,

holding it against his chest, looked back at Bruce.

"Curry?"

"Tell your gunners to stand away from the Brens, and the rest of them to

lay down their rifles."

"Right Bruce watched him relaying the order, pushing them back, moving

among the gendarmes who

crowded the forward trucks. Bruce could sense the air of tension that

had fallen over the whole train, watched as his gendarmes reluctantly

laid down their weapons and stood empty handed staring sullenly ahead at

the U.N. barrier.

"Drived" Bruce spoke again into the radio. "Slow down.

Stop fifty metres this side of the barrier. But if there is any shooting

open the throttle and take us straight through."

"Oui, monsieur." Ahead of them there was no sign of a reception

committee, only the hostile barrier of poles and petrol drums across the

line.

Bruce stood upon the roof and lifted his arms above his head in a

gesture of neutrality. It was a mistake; the movement changed the

passive mood of the gendarmes in the trucks below him. One of them

lifted his arms also, but his fists were clenched.

"U. N. – merde!" he shouted, and immediately the cry was taken up.

"U. N. – merde! U.N. – merde!" They chanted the war cry – laughing at

first, but then no longer laughing, their voices rising sharply.

"Shut up, damn you," Bruce roared and swung his open hand against the

head of the gendarme beside him, but the man hardly noticed it.

His eyes were glazing with the infectious hysteria to which the African

is so susceptible; he had snatched up his rifle and was holding it

across his chest; already his body was beginning to jerk convulsively

as he chanted.

Bruce hooked his fingers under the rim of the man's steel helmet and

yanked it forward over his eyes so the back of his neck was exposed; he

chopped him with a judo blow and the gendarme slumped forward over the

sandbags, his rifle slipping from his hands.

Bruce looked up desperately; in the trucks. below him the hysteria was

spreading.

"Stop them – Hendry, de Surrier! Stop them for God's sake." But his

voice was lost in the chanting.

A gendarme snatched up his rifle from where it lay at his feet; Bruce

saw him elbow his way towards the side of the truck to begin firing; he

was working the slide to lever a round into the breech.

"Mwembe!" Bruce shouted the gendarme's name, but his voice could not

penetrate the uproar.

In two seconds the whole situation would dissolve into a pandemonium of

tracer and bazooka fire.

Poised on the forward edge of the roof, Bruce checked for an instant to

judge the distance, and then he jumped.

He landed squarely on the gendarme's shoulders, his weight throwing the

man forward so his face hit the steel edge of the truck, and they went

down together on to the floor.

The gendarme's finger was resting on the trigger and the rifle fired as

it spun from his hands. A complete hush followed the roar of the rifle

and in it Bruce scrambled to his feet, drawing his pistol from the

canvas holster on his hip.

"All right he panted, menacing the men around him.

"Come on, give me a chance to use this!" He picked out one of his

sergeants and held his eyes. "You! I'm waiting for you – start

shooting!" At the sight of the revolver the man relaxed slowly and the

madness faded from his face. He dropped his eyes and shuffled awkwardly.

Bruce glanced up at Ruffy and Haig on the roof, and raised his voice.

"Watch them. Shoot the first one who starts it again."

"Okay, boss." Ruffy thrust forward the automatic rifle in his hands.

"Who's it going to be?" he asked cheerfully, looking down at them. But

the mood had changed. Their V

Awl attitudes of defrance gave way to sheepish embarrassment and a small

buzz of conversation filled the silence.

"Mike," Bruce yelled, urgent again. "Call the driver, he's trying to

take us through!" The noise of their passage had risen, the driver

accelerating at the sound of the shot, and now they were racing down

towards the U.N. barrier.

Mike Haig grabbed the set, shouted an order into it, and immediately the

brakes swooshed and the train jolted to a halt not a hundred yards short

of the barrier.

Slowly Bruce clambered back on to the roof of the coach.

"Close?" asked Mike.

"My God!" Bruce shook his head, and lit a cigarette with slightly

unsteady hands. "Another fifty yards-!" Then he turned and stared coldly

down at his gendarmes.

"Canaille! Next time you try to commit suicide don't take me with you."

The gendarme he had knocked down was now sitting up, fingering the ugly

black swelling above his eye. "My friend," Bruce turned on him, "later I

will have something for your further discomfort!" Then to the other man

in the emplacement beside him who was massaging his neck, "And for you

also! Take their names, Sergeant Major."

"Sir!" growled

Ruffy.

"Mike." Bruce's voice changed, soft again. "I'm going ahead to

toss the blarney with our friends behind the bazookas. When I give you

the signal bring the train through."

"You don't want me to come with you?" asked Mike.

"No, stay here." Bruce picked up his rifle, stung it over his shoulder,

dropped down the ladder on to the path beside the tracks, and walked

forward with the gravel crunching beneath his boots.

An auspicious beginning to the expedition, he decided grimly, tragedy

averted by the wink of an eye before they had even passed the outskirts

of the city.

At least the Mickies hadn't added a few bazooka bombs to the

altercation. Bruce peered ahead, and could make out the shape of helmets

behind the earthworks.

Without the breeze of the train's passage it was hot again, and

Bruce felt himself starting to sweat.

"Stay where you are, Mister." A deep brogue from the emplacement nearest

the tracks; Bruce stopped, standing on the wooden crossties in the sun.

Now he could see the faces of the men beneath the helmets:

unfriendly, not smiling.

"What was the shooting for?" the voice questioned.

"We had an accident."

"Don't have any more or we might have one also."

"I'd not be wanting that, Paddy." Bruce smiled thinly, and the

Irishman's voice had an edge to it as he went on.

"What's your mission?"

"I have a pass, do you want to see it?"

Bruce took the folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket.

"What's your mission?" repeated the Irishman.

"Proceed to Port Reprieve and relieve the town." & "We know about

you." The Irishman nodded. "Let me see the pass." Bruce left the tracks,

climbed the earth wall and handed the pink slip to the

Irishman. He wore the three pips of a captain, and he glanced briefly at

the pass before speaking to the man beside him.

"Very well, Sergeant, you can be clearing the barrier now."

"I'll call the train through?" Bruce asked, and the captain nodded

again.

"But make sure there are no more accidents – we don't like hired

killers."

"Sure and begorrah now, Paddy, it's not your war you're a-fighting

either," snapped Bruce and abruptly turned his back on the man, jumped

down on to the tracks and waved to Mike Haig on the roof of

the coach.

The Irish sergeant and his party had cleared the tracks and while the

train rumbled slowly down to him Bruce struggled to control his

irritation. – the Irish captain's taunt had reached him.

Hired killer, and of course that was what he was. Could a man sink any

lower?

As the coach drew level with where he stood, Bruce caught the hand rail

and swung himself aboard, waved an ironical farewell to the Irish

captain and climbed up on to the roof.

"No trouble?" asked Mike.

"A bit of lip, delivered in music-hall brogue," Bruce answered)

"but nothing serious." He picked up the radio set.

"Driver."

"Monsieur?"

"Do not forget my instructions."

"I will not exceed forty kilometres the hour, and I shall at all times

be prepared for an emergency stop."

"Good!" Bruce switched off the set and sat down on the sandbags between

Ruffy and Mike.

Well, he thought, here we go at last. Six hours run to Msapa

Junction. That should be easy. And then – God knows, God alone knows.

The tracks curved, and Bruce looked back to see the last white-washed

buildings of Elisabethville disappear among the trees.

They were out into the open savannah forest.

Behind them the black smoke from the loco rolled sideways into the

trees; beneath them the crossties clattered in strict rhythm, and ahead

the line ran arrow straight for miles, dwindling with perspective until

it merged into the olive-green mass of the forest.

Bruce lifted his eyes. Half the sky was clear and tropical blue, but in

the north it was bruised with cloud, and beneath the cloud grey rain

drifted down to meet the earth.

The sunlight through the rain spun a rainbow, and the cloud shadow moved

across the land as slowly and as darkly as a herd of grazing buffalo.

He loosened the chin strap of his helmet and laid his rifle on the roof

beside him.

"You'd like a beer, boss?"

"Have you any?"

"Sure." Ruffy called to one of the gendarmes and the man climbed down

into the coach and came back with half a dozen bottles. Ruffy opened two

with his teeth. Each time half the contents frothed out and splattered

back along the wooden side of the coach.

"This beer's as wild as an angry woman," he grunted as he passed a bottle

to Bruce.

"It's wet anyway." Bruce tasted it, warm and gassy and too sweet.

"Here": how! said Ruffy.

Bruce looked down into the open trucks at the gendarmes who were

settling in for the journey. Apart from the gunners at the Brens, they

were lying or squatting in attitudes of complete relaxation and most of

them had stripped down to their underwear. One skinny little fellow was

already asleep on his back with his helmet as ! pillow and the tropical

sun beating into his face.

Bruce finished his beer and threw the bottle overboard.

Ruff opened another and placed it in his hand without comment.

"Why we going so slowly, boss?"

"I told the driver to keep the speed down – give us a chance to stop if

the tracks have been torn up."

"Yeah. Them Balubas might have done that – they're mad Arabs all of

them." The warm beer drunk in the sun was having a soothing effect on

bruce. He felt at peace, now, withdrawn from the need to make decisions,

to participate in the life around him.

"Listen to that train-talk," said Ruffy, and Bruce focused his hearing,

on the clicketv-chock of the crossties.

"Yes, I know. You can make it say anything you want it to," agreed

Bruce.

"And it can sing," Ruffy went on. "It's got real music in it, like

this." He inflated the great barrel of his chest, lifted his head and

let it come.

His voice was deep but with a resonance that caught the attention

of the men in the open trucks below them. Those who had been sprawled in

the amorphous shapes of sleep stirred and sat up. Another voice joined

in humming the tune, hesitantly at first, then more confidently; then

others took it up, the words were unimportant, it was the rhythm that

they could not resist. They had sung together many times before and like

a well-trained choir each voice found its place, the star performers

leading, changing the pace, improvising, quickening until the original

tune lost its identity and became one of the tribal chants. Bruce

recognize it as a planting song. It was one of his

favourites and he sat drinking his lukewarm beer and letting the

singing wash round him, build up into the chorus like storm waves, then

fall back into a tenor solo before rising once more.

And the train ran on-through the sunlight towards the rain clouds in the

north.

Presently Andre came out of the coach below him and picked his way

forward through the men in the trucks until he reached Hendry. The two

of them stood together, Andre's face turned up towards the taller man

and deadly earnest as he talked.

"Doll boy" Hendry had called him, and it was an accurate description of

the effeminately pretty face with the big toffee eyes; the steel helmet

he wore seemed too large for his shoulders to carry.

I wonder how old he is; Bruce watched him laugh suddenly, his face still

turned upwards to Hendry; not much over twenty and I have never seen

anything less like a hired killer.

"How the hell did anyone like de Surrier get mixed up in this?" His

voice echoed the thought, and beside him Mike answered.

"He was working in Elisabethville when it started, and he couldn't

return to Belgium. I don't know the reason but I guess it was something

personal. When it started his firm closed down. I suppose this was the

only employment he could find."

"That Irishman, the one at the barrier, he called me a hired killer."

Thinking of Andre's position in the scheme of things had turned Bruce's

thoughts back to his own status.

"I hadn't thought about it that way before, but I suppose he's right.

That is what we are." Mike Haig was silent for a moment, but when he

spoke there was a stark quality in his voice.

"Look at these hands!" Involuntarily Bruce glanced down.

at them, and for the first time noticed that they were narrow with long

moulded fingers, possessed of a functional beauty, the hands of an

artist.

"Look at them," Mike repeated, flexing them slightly; they were

fashioned for a purpose, they were made to hold a scalpel, they were

made to save life." Then he relaxed them and let them drop on to the

rifle across his lap, the long delicate fingers incongruous upon the

blue metal. "But look what they hold now!" Bruce stirred irritably.

He had not wanted to provoke another bout of Mike Haig's soul-searching.

Damn the old fool – why must he always start this, he knew as well as

anyone that in the mercenary army of Katanga there was a taboo upon the

past. It did not exist. "Ruffy," Bruce snapped, aren't you going to feed

your boys?"

"Right now, boss." Ruffy opened another beer and handed it to Bruce.

"Hold that – it will keep your mind off food while I rustle it up." He

lumbered off along the root of

the coach still singing.

"Three years ago, it seems like all eternity," Mike went on as though

Bruce had not interrupted. "Three years ago I was a surgeon and now

this.-The desolation had spread to his eyes, and Bruce felt his pity for

the man deep down where he kept it imprisoned with all his other

emotions.

"I was good. I was one of the best. Royal College.

Harley Street. Guy's." Mike laughed without humour, with bitterness.

"Can you imagine my being driven in my Rolls to address the College on

my advanced technique of cholecystectorny?"

"What happened?" The question was out before he could stop it, and Bruce

realized how near to the surface he had let his pity rise. "No, don't

tell me. It's your business. I don't want to know."

"But I'll tell you, Bruce, I want to. It helps somehow, talking about

it." At first, thought Bruce, I wanted to talk also, to try and wash the

pain away with words.

Mike was silent for a few seconds. Below them the singing rose

and fell, and the train ran on through the forest.

"It had taken me ten hard years to get there, but at last I had done it.

A fine practice; doing the work I loved with skill, earning

the rewards I deserved. A wife that any man would have been proud of, a

lovely home, many friends, too many friends perhaps; for success breeds

friends the way a dirty kitchen breeds cockroaches." Mike pulled out a

handkerchief and dried the back of his neck where the wind could not

reach.

"Those sort of friends mean parties," he went on. "Parties when you've

worked all day and you're tired; when you need the lift that you

can get so easily from a bottle. You don't know if you have the

weakness for the stuff until it's too late; until you have a bottle in

the drawer of your desk; until suddenly your practice isn't so good any

more." Mike twisted the handkerchief around his fingers as he ploughed

doggedly on. "Then you know it suddenly. You know it when your hands

dance in the morning and all you want for breakfast is that, when you

can't wait until lunchtime because you have to operate and that's the

only way you can keep your hands steady. But you know it finally and

utterly when the knife turns in your hand and the artery starts to spurt

and you watch it paralysed – you watch it hosing red over your gown and

forming pools on the theatre floor." Mike's voice dried up then and he

tapped a cigarette from his pack and lit it. His shoulders were hunched

forward and his eyes were full of shadows of his guilt.

Then he straightened up and his voice was stronger.

"You must have read about it. I was headlines for a few days, all the

papers But my name wasn" Haig in those days.

I got that name off a label on a bottle in a bar-room.

"Gladys stayed with me, of course, she was that type. We came out to

Africa. I had enough saved from the wreck for a down payment on a

tobacco farm in the Centenary block outside Salisbury. Two good seasons

and I was off the bottle.

Gladys was having our first baby, we had both wanted one so badly.

It was all coming right again." Mike stuffed the handkerchief back in

his pocket, and his voice lost its strength again, turned dry and husky.

"Then one day I took the truck into the village and on the way home I

stopped at the club. I had been there often before, but this time they

threw me out at closing time and when I got back to the farm

I had a case of Scotch on the seat beside me." Bruce wanted to stop

him; he knew what was coming and he didn't want to hear it.

"The first rains started that night and the rivers came down in

flood. The telephone lines were knocked out and we were cut off. In the

morning–" Mike stopped again and turned to Bruce.

"I suppose it was the shock of seeing me like that again, but in the

morning Gladys went into labour. It was her first, and she wasn't so

young any more. She was still in labour the

next day, but by then she was too weak to scream. I remember how

peaceful it was without her screaming and pleading with me to help.

You see she knew I had all the instruments I needed. She begged me to

help. I can remember that; her voice through the fog of whisky. I

think I hated her then. I think I remember hating her, it was all so

confused, so mixed up with the screaming and the liquor.