Sunset at Sheba (11 page)

Winter gestured wearily, conscious of a growing difference in the attitude of all of them. ‘What is it in your background, Romanis,’ he asked, ‘that makes a Jew so distasteful to you? How different would it have been if he’d been a Gentile?’

Romanis waved a hand vaguely, still irritated. ‘Well, good God -’ he said.

‘
“Hath not a Jew eyes?”
‘ Winter quoted. ‘
“Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?”
‘

Romanis stared at him. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ he growled.

‘I don’t suppose you do,’ Winter said. ‘It’s
The Merchant of Venice.’

Romanis turned on him triumphantly. ‘Well, wasn’t he
another
bloody Jew?’ he demanded.

Winter laughed, and Romanis flew into a rage.

‘Look here,’ he said, ‘who’re you for?’

‘Me,’ Winter shrugged, ‘I’m for me.’

The words, spoken sarcastically, nudged at him again, reminding him how he had once vowed years before that he would spend only a short time up here in the hinterland, and then return to the Cape. But somehow, Offy had come along then and the newspaper job with the
Examiner
had got lost under all the private work he’d done for Offy’s organisation and the return journey had never materialised. He had promised himself on more than one occasion, lying in some dusty hotel room, weary with Offy’s work, that he’d do just one more job and then leave, settle down, get away from the crowd. But he never had. He’d gone on doing what he’d been told to do because curiously he liked Offy and pitied him, and he hadn’t had the will to make the break; because it had become easier just to go on whenever Offy begged him not to let him down, living in an unholy loneliness in the middle of a life crowded with people.

Kitto had moved away now, to superintend the salvaging of the Napier, driving his men to work harder, then in disgust, he swung into the saddle of the horse again and trotted over to where Winter was sitting.

‘I’m going to round that lot up,’ he said, indicating the stragglers. ‘They look like Sanger’s Circus, strewn about like that. I think I can leave this job to that useless clown, Romanis.’

He threw his weight back and loosened the reins and the tired horse broke into a canter, then he whacked it across the rump with his crop and it swung into an unwilling gallop and headed off to the north. Winter could hear him shouting angrily as he reached the isolated groups, and immediately the column began to reform into some semblance of a unified body. The lorry with their supplies drew closer, followed by the few Kaffir guides huddled together in a bunch on their ponies, wretched after the rain.

As Kitto returned, his face was dark and bitter. ‘I’m going to scout out on the flanks now,’ he said to Romanis. ‘I might pick up their tracks again. Le Roux can take the other flank. It’s my bet the shrewd little bastard’s turned north to throw us off. We’ve got to get between them and Plummerton again and sweep west. Then they’ll
have
to move before us.’

‘Right into German South-West,’ Winter pointed out sarcastically. ‘And if they get that far they’ll be interned and our job will be over. Hallelujah!’

Kitto turned bland blank eyes towards him. ‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’ he demanded. ‘At least they’ll be out of the way. We’d be doing the country a service. It would answer all our problems.’

He swung round and wheeled his horse away. Winter could see the splashes from the puddles on the drying earth as he slammed the animal into a hard gallop. Then the Napier was freed abruptly and as it lurched forward its crew climbed on board and started shouting at him to join them.

They came up to the river at midday, a deep strip of water beyond a patch of scrub and bastard camel thorn, flooded after the rain and running over rocks as black and shiny as anvils that were set in ripples below steep banks, overhung with red-berried bushes and studded with small flowers like shrunken daffodils.

Polly stood by the cart, holding the reins, watching the blind-eyed police horse picking its way through the broken ground along the bank towards her, through flocks of gay little blue, crimson and emerald birds which kept starting up from the water’s edge. Sammy seemed thoughtful as he halted alongside the cart, and for a while he ignored her, staring back the way he had come, then he pushed his hat back and swung round towards her.

‘Better cross here,’ he suggested. ‘It’s steep, but it’s the best spot. I’ve scouted a mile each way. We’ll have to off-load and work her down gentle.’

He swung from the saddle, and between them, they began to unpack the cart, stacking their belongings among the rocks alongside the river - the bedding and the blankets, then the pots and cooking utensils, and their few hard stores, Polly’s trunk and the water barrel. Then Sammy began to lash a rope to the rear axle of the cart and, leading the other end around a thorn tree just above the stream, fastened it to the saddle ring of the Argentino.

‘What are you going to do?’ Polly asked.

‘Use it as a brake,’ he explained. ‘I can hang on to this. She’ll go down easy then. We’ll maybe have to haul you up the other side too.’

He put his hands under her arms and lifted her up on to the cart again. For a moment he kept his hands on her waist and she looked down at him and smiled. There was no makeup on her face - and her skin was brown, her hair bleached at the ends by the sun.

‘Sammy?’

‘Yep?’

‘I’m sorry I complained so much when we started. Honest, I am.’

He released her and pushed his hat back on his head, avoiding her eyes. ‘That’s all right, Poll,’ he said. ‘I expect you’d got good cause to.’

‘No, I hadn’t. You’ve done all the work up to now. I’ve done nothing much except get in the way. But it’s just the change, that’s all. Just the change, Sammy. Not knowing what’s going on. Not having everything handy - water and that - having to do everything for myself. I’m a bit of a townie, I suppose, especially compared with you, but I’m getting used to it now.’

He nodded and began to turn away.

‘Sammy,’ she called.

‘Yep?’

She paused before she spoke, as though she were faintly embarrassed by what she was going to ask him. ‘Sammy,’ she said, ‘you ever thought you’d like to take me out on one of them shoots of yours some time? I’d drive the cart and cook for you. You could perhaps even teach me how to use the rifle. Maybe I could be a help.’

He smiled. ‘Suppose I could,’ he said, pleased at her offer. ‘It’s not hard. Just got to learn how to do it, that’s all. There’s a different way for everything. Bush, for instance. It telescopes things. Gun barrel looks a mile long. Open flats and across water brings ‘em closer. You’ve got to halve the distance then and aim low.’

He talked slowly, with a soft hunter’s sibilance, like the footfall of a stalking animal.

‘Messy job for a woman, mind,’ he pointed out. ‘Ten to twelve wildebeest a day’s nothing. Strips of meat drying on trees and the grass covered with blood, and flies everywhere.’

‘I’ll learn. Will you teach me?’

He grinned. ‘You’re learning already. At least you don’t talk all the time any more. You’re doing all right.’

He moved away from the cart and began to examine the rope, while Polly sat above him, pleased at the compliment.

‘Hold her back, Poll,’ he said at last as he straightened up. ‘Shove the brake on hard and sit back on the reins.’

She nodded.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s try it. Giddup, hoss!
Voertsek!’

The Argentino leaned on the rope and the cart began its slow descent of the donga, creaking slowly forward, the iron frames that carried the canvas rattling in their sockets as the wheels bumped over the rocky ground.

‘We’re doing fine,’ Polly shrieked, dragging at the reins until the leather cut at her fingers. ‘We’re nearly down.’

Just when they thought they were safe, one of the wheels dropped off a rock and the cart lurched unexpectedly, so that the little grey mare lost her footing immediately and began to slip, her hooves digging at the muddy surface of the bank.

‘Look out!’ Sammy’s voice brought Polly’s head round. ‘The tree’s bustin’!’

The white thorn, its roots in thin rain-softened soil, was beginning to lean towards the river. Polly glanced round, her eyes scared, as she heard the sound of wood cracking; then Sammy kicked his mount forward until its feet scrabbled in the dirt, kicking up great lumps of clayey mud as it leaned on the rope.

‘It’s going,’ Polly shrieked.

She felt the Argentino being dragged backwards, its hind feet fighting to get a grip, then Sammy whipped off his hat and banged it down hard against the horse’s flanks, and the Argentino’s eye rolled wildly as the flecks of foam from its mouth spattered its chest. As the tree gave way, the cart rolled the last five or six feet with a crash, and the water shot up in a sheet of spray that caught the sunshine in a thousand diamond-points of light. Then the Argentino was slithering backwards, its legs tangled up with the broken thorn tree, and Sammy leapt from the saddle just as it rolled on its side in the water. Immediately, caught by the excitement, the bony mare started to kick in fright, her hooves ringing against the shafts, and Polly jumped down into the water and waded to the animal’s head.

For a moment the drift was full of the clattering of wood and iron as the horses struggled, then when the muddy water began to settle into place again, the wagon was standing lopsidedly among the rocks, the Argentino still attached to it, trembling violently with the wreckage of the thorn tree between its legs, its one eye rolling wildly.

‘Well, we’re down!’ Sammy splashed towards Polly through the water, grinning. ‘We’re down and no bones broken.’

The grey was quiet now, quivering in the shafts, reacting to the soothing noises Polly made.

‘All we’ve got to do now,’ Sammy said, ‘is get up the other side.’

He led the police horse across the stream and attached it again by the rope to the front of the cart, then Polly called out, pointing to the off rear wheel.

‘You aren’t going to shift that far,’ she said.

The fall into the river had split the ancient axle and the wheel now lay over at a crazy angle, up to the hub in scummy, stirred-up water.

Sammy stared at it, his face unemotional.

‘Take us a long time to repair that,’ he announced, turning to Polly. ‘Looks like we got to leave her here.’

He bent and, scooping up a handful of water, threw it over his head and rubbed it in his hair. Then he released the grey mare from the cart and gave both horses water from his hat.

‘We’ve got to leave something behind,’ he said, looking apologetically at Polly. ‘It’s going to be no featherbed ride from now on.’

Polly shrugged, sturdily indifferent. ‘I can manage,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t before.’

They began to carry their belongings across the stream, wading knee-deep in the muddy water and dumping them in an untidy pile at the other side, making trip after trip through the muddy water, Polly with her skirt caught up round her waist.

When they had almost finished, Sammy paused and looked at the coffee pot he was holding in his hand. ‘Might as well eat,’ he said.

He filled the pot from higher up the stream where the water was still clear and kicked the top off a small ant heap. Watched by Polly, he dragged out his knife and started to scoop a hole in the side, uncovering the galleries of teeming ants and their eggs. Stuffing dry grass into the hole, he lit it and the flames swept through the passages, roasting the ants and coming up in solid heat through the hole at the top where the coffee pot rested.

‘Might as well start with something inside us,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll take the Argentino and look for a route home.’

An hour and a half later they were ready to move on. The wagon still stood in the stream, lopsided and forlorn-looking, with all around on both banks the belongings they had not been able to load on to the horses.

Waiting alone among the bushes, surrounded by assorted packages, abandoned pots and pans and scattered cardboard cartridge boxes, Polly stared at the open trunk and the few clothes she was leaving behind, regarding them with a lazy good-natured regret. Clothes had always been important to her but she found, to her surprise, that she could face leaving them behind with far more composure than she had thought herself capable of.

She picked up the concertina and stared at it, fingering the notes, trying a few snatches of melody, her face nostalgic as her mind went back to all the things the tunes meant to her. There was nothing of much value in the possessions she was abandoning but for a moment she had a superstitious desire to hang on to the concertina. It was symbolic of her life in Plummerton and, since it was the only life she had ever known, the loss of the instrument gave her an uneasy sense of self-sacrifice.

Then she realised that the unhappiness of the past had always outweighed the fragmentary joy and she found she was suddenly glad to be putting it all behind her. Since she had forsaken it, it had seemed to grow more and more meaningless with every mile she had travelled, and the present had grown more and more real.

In the few days she had spent in the Wilderness, labouring across the saddle-back folds of ground and struggling through the deep dry dongas, she had seen a wider world than she had ever known existed. She had seen pure clear mornings when all the veld was still and the air was cold and stimulating, rinsed with the same heavy dew that soaked their clothes. She had seen vast cloudy herds of game -duiker, steenbok, hartebeeste and springbok, Indian files of wildebeeste and dramatically-striped zebra. She had seen heron, stork and flamingo round the salt marshes, a secretary bird dancing a queer long-legged dance round its victim, strings of guinea fowl like grey drops of quicksilver in the grass, widow birds trailing their long tail-feathers across the dusty earth, and red and gold finches that rose in clouds from the spruits as the pink flush of dawn flooded the tawny grassland with ruthless daylight.

She had felt the immensity of the veld right to her bones, and the clean clear sense, of elbow-room that came from the wide expanses of gently rolling land and the sight of the blue and purple hills, the absence of other people, and the wide bowl of the sky above her, cruel in its harsh brightness but surprisingly satisfying once you got used to it.