The Sound of Thunder (3 page)

-and why are you wearing your best clothes, Dad?”

They rode three abreast in the darkness, Dirk between them and Mbejane trailing behind with the packhorses. The land rose and fell beneath them like the swells of an endless sea and the way in which the grass moved with the night wind heightened the illusion of waves.

Islands in the sea were the dark bulks of the kopJes they passed, and the yelp of a jackal was the voice of a seabird.

“Aren’t we holding too far east?” The girl broke the silence and her voice blended with the soft sound of the wind.

“Intentionally,” Sean answered. “I want to cross the tail of the Drakensberg well clear of the Boer concentrations around Ladysmith and the line of rail, ” and he looked over Dirk’s head at her. She rode with her face lifted to the sky.

-You know the stars?” he asked.

“A little.”

“So do I. I know them all.” Dirk accepted the challenge and swivelled towards the south. “That’s the Cross with the pointers, and that’s Orion with his sword on his belt, and that’s the Milky Way.”

“Tell me some others,” the girl invited.

“The others are just ordinary ones-they don’t count. They haven’t even got names.

“Oh, but they have and most of them have got a story.

“There was a pause. Dirk was now in an invidious position.

either he had to admit ignorance, and Dirk’s pride was too large to swallow with ease, or else he would forgo what promised to be a choice series of stories. Large as was his pride, his appetite for stories was even larger.

“Tell me some,” he conceded.

“You see that little clump there underneath the big bright one?

They are called the Seven Sisters. Well, once upon a time-” Within minutes Dirk was completely absorbed. These were even better than MbeJane’s stories-probably because they were new, while Dirk could recite from memory MbeJane’s entire repertoire. He fell upon any weakness in the plot like a prosecuting attorney.

“But why didn’t they just shoot the old witch?”

“They didn’t have guns in those days.

“They coulda used a bow and arrow. ” “You can’t kill a witch with a bow and arrow. The arrow just goes-psst-straight through her without hurting her. ” “Hangs teeth! ” That was really impressive, but before accepting it Dirk found it necessary to corroborate with expert opinion. He checked with Mbejane, translating the problem to the Zulu.

When Mbejane supported the girl Dirk was convinced for Mbejane was a celebrated authority on the supernatural.

That night Dirk did not fall asleep in the saddle and when they camped before dawn the girl’s voice was hoarse with overwork, but her conquest of Dirk was complete and that of Sean was well advanced.

All night while he listened to her voice and the husky bursts of laughter that punctuated it Sean had felt the seed that was planted at their first meeting sinking its roots down into his lower belly and loins, spreading its tendrils up through his chest.

He wanted this woman so violently that in her presence his wits failed him. Many times during the night he had attempted to join the discussions, but each time Dirk had brushed his efforts aside with contempt and turned avidly back to the girl. By morning he had made the disturbing discovery that he was jealous of his own son-jealous of the attention Dirk was getting, and for which he hungered so strongly.

While they drank coffee after the morning meal lying on their blankets beneath a grove of syringa trees, Sean remarked: “You haven’t told us your name yet.” And of course it was Dirk that answered.

“She told me. Your name’s Ruth-isn’t it?”

-That’s right, Dirk.”

With an effort Sean clamped down on the senseless anger that boiled up through him, but when he spoke his voice carried traces of it.

“We’ve heard enough from you for one night, my boy. Now get your head down, close your eyes and your mouth and keep,

“I’m not sleepy, Dad.”

“Do what I tell you. ” Sean jumped up and strode out of the camp.

He climbed the small kopJe above them. By now it was full daylight and he searched the veld to the horizon on all sides.

There was no trace of habitation or human. He climbed down again and fussed with the hobbles of the horses before returning to the grove of syringas.

Despite his protestations Dirk was curled like a sleeping puppy and, near the fire from a large bundle of blankets issued the unmistakable snoring of Mbejane. Ruth lay a little apart from them, a blanket thrown over her legs, her eyes closed and the front of her shirt rising and falling in a manner that gave Sean two good reasons for not sleeping. He lay propped on one elbow and fed Ins eyes and his imagination on her.

These four years past he had not seen a white woman, four years without the sound of a woman’s voice or the comfort of her body. In the beginning it had worried him-the restlessness, the undirected fits of depression, and sudden bursts of temper.

But gradually in the long days of hunting and riding, in the endless struggle with drought and storm, with beasts and the elements, he had brought his body under control. Women had faded into unreality, vague phantoms that plagued him only in the night so he twisted and sweated and cried out in his sleep until nature gave him release and the phantoms dispersed for a while to gather strength for their next visitation.

But this was no phantom that lay beside him now. By stretching out a hand he could stroke the faint down on her cheek and feel the blood-warm silk of her skin.

She opened her eyes, they were milky grey with sleep, slowly focusing until they levelled with his and returned his scrutiny.

Because of what she read there, she lifted her left hand from the blanket and held it out towards him. Her riding gloves were off. For the first time he noticed the slender gold ring that ench-cled her third finger.

“I see, ” he muttered dully, and then in protest: “But you are too young-you’re too young to be married. ” “I’m twenty-one years old, ” she told him softly.

“Your husband-where is he?” Perhaps the bastard was dead, his one last hope.

“I am going to him now. When war seemed inevitable he went to Natal, to Durban, to find a job and a home for us there.

I was to follow him-but the war came earlier than we expected.

I was stranded.”

“I see.” I am taking you to another man, he thought with bitterness, and put it in different words. ” So he is sitting in Durban waiting for you to make your own way through the lines. ” “He is with the army of Natal. A week ago he got a message through to me.

He wanted me to stay on in Johannesburg and wait until the British capture the city. He says that with so great a force they will be in Johannesburg within three months.

“Why didn’t you wait, then?”

She shrugged. “Patience is not one of my virtues, ” and then the devilment was in her eyes again. “Besides, I thought it would be fun to run away-it was so terribly dull in Johannesburg. ” “Do you love him?” he demanded suddenly. The question startled her and the smile died on her lips.

“He’s my husband.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“It was a question you had no right to ask.” She was angry now.

“You have to tell me.

“Do you love your wife?” she snapped at him.

“I did. She’s been dead five years. ” And her anger flickered out as swiftly as it had blazed.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Forget it. Forget I ever asked. ” “Yes, that’s best. We are getting into an awful tangle.” Her hand with the ring upon it was still held out towards him, lying between them on the soft carpet of fallen leaves. He reached out and lifted it. It was a small hand.

“Mr. Courtney,” “Sean,” it’s best if we must,” “think we better sleep now. ” And she withdrew the hand and rolled away from him.

The wind woke them in the middle of the afternoon, it roared in from the east, flattening the grass on the hills and thrashing the branches above their heads.

Sean looked up at the sky with the wind fluttering his shirt and ruffling his beard. He leaned forward against it, towering over Ruth so that suddenly she realized how big he was. He looked like a god of the storm, with long powerful legs braced apart and the muscles of his chest and arms standing out proudly beneath the white silk of his shirt.

“Clouds building up,” Sean shouted above the rush of the wind.

“No moon tonight.”

She stood up quickly and a sudden violent gust threw her off balance. She staggered against him and his arms closed about her. For a moment she was pressed to his chest, could feel the lean, rubbery resilience of his body and smell the man smell of it. it was a shock for both of them, this unexpectedly intimate contact and when she broke away her eyes were wide and grey with fear of the thing she had felt stir within her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “That was an accident.” And the wind caught her hair and streamed it across her face in a dancing, snapping black tangle.

“We’ll up saddle and ride with the daylight that is left, ” Sean decided. “We won’t be able to move tonight.”

The clouds rolled in on the wind, spreading upon themselves, changing shape and dropping closer to the earth. Clouds the colour of smoke and bruises, heavy with the rain they carried.

The night came early, but still the wind roared and buffeted them in the gloom.

“It will drop in an hour or so, then we’ll get the rain. We’ll try and find shelter while there’s still light enough to see. ” On the reverse slope of a kopJe they found an overhang of rock and offloaded the packs beneath it. While Sean pegged the horses out on their head ropes to prevent them walking away before the storm, Mbejane cut grass and piled it into a mattress on the rock floor beneath the overhang.

Huddled in their oilskins they ate biltong and cold mealie bread and afterwards Mbejane withdrew discreetly to the far end of the shelter and disappeared under his blankets. He had that animal knack of being able to sleep instantly and completely even under the most adverse conditions.

“All right, boy. Get into your blankets.

I

“Can’t I just … II Dirk began his nightly protest.

“No, YOU can’t.” “I’ll sing for you,” Ruth offered.

“What for?” Dirk was puzzled.

“A sleepy-time song-haven’t you ever had a lullaby?”

“No.” But Dirk was intrigued. “What you going to sing?”

“Into your blankets first. ” Sitting beside Sean in the darkness, very conscious of his bulk and the touch of his shoulder against hers, the muted roar of the wind as her accompaniment-Ruth sang.

First the old Dutch folksongs,

“Nooi, Nooi-and

“Jannie met die Hoepel been,” then other old favourites like

“Frere Jacques. ” Her voice meant something to each of them.

Mbejane woke to the sound of it and it made him remember the wind on the hills of Zululand and the singing of the young girls in the fields at harvest-time. It made him glad he was going home.

To Dirk it was the voice of the mother he had hardly known.

A safe sound-and soon he slept.

“Don’t stop,” whispered Sean.

So she sang for him alone. A love-song from two thousand years ago, filled with all the suffering of her people, but with joy in it also. The wind died away while she sang and her voice died away with it into the vast silence of the night.

The storm broke. The first thunder crashed and the lightning forked jagged-blue through the clouds. Dirk whimpered a little but slept on.

In the stark, blue light Sean saw that Ruth’s cheeks were wet with tears and when the darkness closed around them again she started to tremble against him. He reached out for her and she clung to him, small and warm against his chest, and he could taste the salt of her tears on his lips.

“Sean, we mustn’t.”

But he lifted her and held her across his chest as he walked out into the night. The lightning blazed again and lit the land with startling brilliance so he could see the horses huddling heads down, and the crisp outline of the kopJe above them.

The first raindrops splashed against his shoulders and into his face. The rain was warm and he walked on carrying Ruth. Then the air was filled with rain, an encompassing pearly mist of it in the next flash of lightning, and the night was filled with the odour of rain on dry earth-a clean warm smell.

In a still morning, washed so clean by the rain that they could see the mountains, blue and sharp on the southern horizon, they stood together on the crest of the kopJe.

“That’s the tail of the Drakensberg, we’ve cleared it by twenty miles. There’s very little chance of a Boer patrol this far out.

We can ride by day now. Soon we’ll be able to work in again and meet the railway beyond the battle lines. ” Because of the beauty of the morning, of the land that dripped away into the great, grassy bowl that was Natal, and of the woman that stood beside him, Sean was gay.

Because of the promise of an end to the journey and the promise of a new one with this woman as his companion, he was content.

When he spoke she turned slowly to look at him, her chin lifting in acknowledgement of his superior height. For the first time Sean realized that his own mood was not reflected in her eyes.

“You are very lovely,” he said, and still she remained silent, but now he could recognize the shadows in her eyes as sorrow or something even stronger.

“Ruth, you’ll come with me?”

“No. ” She shook her head slowly, regretfully. The fat black python of hair rolled across her shoulder and hung down against the honey chamois leather of her jacket.

“You must.

“I cannot. ” “But, last night.”

“Last night was madness … the storm.

“It was right. You know that.”

“No. It was the storm.” She looked away from him towards the sky. “And now the storm is ended. ” “It was more than that. You know it. It was from the first moment of our meeting. ” “It was a madness based upon deceit. Something that I will have to cover with lies-the way we had to cover it with darkness at the time. ” “Ruth. My God, don’t talk about it like that.”

“Very well, I won’t. I won’t talk about it again, ever.”

“We can’t leave it now. You know we can’t. ” And in answer she held up her left hand so that the gold upon it caught the sun.