The Sound of Thunder (51 page)

Archy introduced Dirk to one of his friends, Hazel, a plump and friendly girl who worked at the Ladyburg Hotel as a barmaid and dispensed her favours in the same cheerful manner that she did her liquor-but Dirk quickly became her favourite, and he learned some pretty little tricks from her.

Shrewdly, Archibald Longworthy examined the situation and decided that nothing but profit could come from friendship with Sean Courtney’s heir. Besides which the boy was a lot of fun.

He could tumble a tart and swig gin with the best of them-also he had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of sovereigns.

In exchange Dirk hero-worshipped Archy, diverting much of his feelings from his father to his first real friend. Ignoring the grey wrists and neck which bespoke Archy’s disaffection for soap and water, the pale wispy hair through which pink scalp showed, ignoring also the black tooth in the front of his mouth Dirk invested him with the glamour and excitement of an old time pirate.

When Dirk found himself to be suffering from a painless but evil-smelling condition, it was Archy who assured him it was only “whites” and went with him to a doctor in Pieten-naritzburg. On the train coming home they planned their revenge with much laughter, comradely banter-and rising anticipation.

Hazel was surprised to see them in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, she sat up quickly as they came into her room overlooking the back yard of the hotel.

“Dirkie, you shouldn’t come here in the daytime-your Pa will find out. It was warm in the shabby little room, and the smell of cheap went and a half-filled chamber-pot blended harshly with the odour of female perspiration. Hazel’s thin chemise clung damply to her body and outlined the heavy hang of her breasts and the deep lateral fb1d around the level of her navel.

There were dark smudges below her eyes and a curl was sweat plastered down her cheek where the pillow had left little creases in the skin. The two of them stood in the doorway and grinned at her, from many experiences Hazel recognized the wolfish eagerness those grins masked.

“What do you want?” Suddenly she was afraid and instinctively she covered the deep cleft of her bosom with one hand.

“Dirkie here wants to have a little chat with you. ” Carefully Archy closed the door and turned the key in the lock, then he ambled towards the bed. Manual labor had sheathed his arms in hard, knotty muscle and the hands that hung at his sides were disproportionately large and coated with coarse, blond hair.

“You keep away from me, Archy Longworthy. ” Hazel swung her legs off the bed, the chemise pulled up to expose fat white thighs. “I don’t want no trouble, you just leave me alone. ” “You give Dirkie here a clap. Now Diride here is my friend and he don’t like what you give him. ” “I didn’t” It couldn’t have been me. I’m clean-I tell you.”

She stood up, still holding the front of her chemise closed and backed away before him. “You keep away from me.” Then as Archy jumped forward,

“No-don’t! I’ll . “And she opened her mouth to scream, but Archy’s hand closed over it like a great hairy spider. She struggled desperately, clawing at the hand over her face.

“Come on, Dirk. ” Archy chuckled, as he held her easily with one arm around her waist. Uncertainly Dirk hesitated at the door, no longer grinning.

“Come on, man. I’ll hold her.” With a sudden swing of his arm Archy hurled the girl face down on the bed, then jumped across to keep her mouth smothered in the pillow. “Come on, Dirk, use this!” With his free hand Archy unbuckled the wide belt he wore. The leather was studded with blunt metal spikes.

“Double it over!”

“Hell’s teeth, Arch-you reckon we should?” Dirk still hesitated, the belt hanging limply from his hands.

“You scared, or something?” And Dirk’s mouth hardened at the gibe. He stepped forward and swung the belt in a full overarm stroke across the wriggling body. Hazel froze at the sting of it and she gasped explosively into the pillow.

“That’s the stuff-hold on a second!” Archy hooked his thumb into the thin fabric of her chemise and ripped it down from the shoulder-blades to the hem. Her fat woman’s buttocks bulged through, dimpled and white. “Now, give it hell!”

Again Dirk lifted the heavy doubled leather, he stood poised like that while a sensation of giddy power buoyed him upwards to the level of the gods, then he swung his body down into the next stroke.

“He’s unopposed,” Ronny Pye murmured, and beside him Garrick Courtney stirred uneasily.

“Have you heard him speak?” Ronny persisted.

“No.

“He wants to throw in Natal with that bunch of Dutchmen up in the Free State and Transvaal.

“Yes, I know.”

“Do you agree with him?”

Garry was silent, he seemed to be engrossed with the antics of the small herd of foals in the paddock in front of them as they chased each other on legs that seemed to have too many joints, clumsy in their fluffy baby coats.

“I’m sending twenty yearlings up to the show sales in Pietermaritzburg—should average about four, five hundred a head because they’re all first-class animals. Be able to let you have a sizeable payment on the bond. ” “Don’t worry about that now, Garry. I didn’t come out here looking for money. ” Ronny offered his cigar-case, and when Garry refused he selected one himself and began preparing it carefully. “Do you agree with this idea of a Union?”

“No.

“Why not?” Ronny did not look up from his cigar, he did not want to show his eagerness prematurely.

“I fought them-Leroux, Niemand, Botha, Smuts. I fought them-and we won. Now they’re sitting up there in Pretoria calmly plotting to take over the whole country-not just the Free State and Transvaal, but Natal and the Cape as well. Any Englishman who helps them is a traitor to his King and his country.

He should be put against the wall and shot.

“Quite a few people round here think that way-quite a few.

And yet no one is opposing Sean Courtney-he’s just going to walk into the Assembly. ” Garry turned and began limping slowly along the paddock fence towards the stables, and Ronny fell in beside him.

“Seems to me and the others we need a good man to put against him-someone with a lot of prestige. Good war record, man who has written a book and knows what’s going on-knows how to use words. If we could find someone like that, then we’d be happy to put up the expense money. ” He struck a match and waited for the sulphur to clear before he lit his cigar and spoke through the smoke. “Only three months to election time-we got to get organized right away. He’s holding a meeting at the schoolhouse next week-” Sean’s political campaign, which had been ambling along mildly without causing much interest, suddenly took on new dramatic quality.

His first meeting in Ladyburg was attended by most of the local population-all of them so starved for entertainment that they were prepared to listen to Sean reel off the little speech that they had already read reported verbatim in most of the Natal newspapers. With hardy optimism they hoped that question time Might be more rewarding-and some of them had prepared queties on such momentous matters as the price of hunting licenses, the public library system, and the control of foot and mouth disease. At the very least it was an opportunity to meet friends from the outlying areas.

But, apart from Sean’s employees, friends and neighbours, others arrived at the schoolhouse and filled the first two rows of desks. All of them were young men Sean had never seen before, and he eyed them with heavy disapproval while they laughed and joked loudly during the preliminaries.

“Where did this bunch come from?” he demanded of the Chairman.

“They came in on the afternoon train-all in one party.”

“Seems as though they’re looking for trouble.” Grimly Sean sensed in them the slightly feverish excitement of men steeling themselves to violence. “Most of them have been on the bottle.

“Now, Sean.” Ruth leaned across and laid her hand on his knee.

“You must promise not to get worked up. Don’t antagonize them.”

Sean opened his mouth to reply, then left it like that as Garry Courtney came in through the crowd around the doorway and moved across to sit with Ronny Pye in the back row.

“Close your mouth, darling,” Ruth murmured and Sean obeyed, then smiled and waved a greeting to his brother. Garry replied with a nod, and immediately fell into deep discussion with Ronnie Pye.

Amid coughing and feet shuffling the Chairman rose to introduce Sean to men who had been his schoolmates, who had drunk his brandy and hunted with him. He went on to tell them how Sean had won the Anglo-Boer war virtually single-handed, how he had brought prosperity to the district with his factory and his wattle. Then he ended with a few remarks that had Sean squirming in his seat and trying to get two fingers into his collar.

“So, ladies and gentlemen of our fair district-I give you a man of vision and foresight, a man with a heart as big as his fists-your candidate and mine, Colonel Sean Courtney!”

Sean stood up smiling, to be rocked by a blast of. jeers and catcalls from the front rows. The smile faded and his fists curled into great bony hammers on the table in front of him. He scowled down on them, beginning to sweat with anger. A light tug on the tail of his coat steadied him and his fists opened a little. He began to speak, bellowing above the shouts of

“Sit down!” ” “Speak up!” “Give him a chance! ” “Stand down!” and the thunder of booted feet stamping in unison on the wooden floor.

Three times in the uproar he lost the run of his speech and had to turn to Ruth for prompting, scarlet in the face with anger and mortification, while waves of derisive laughter broke over him. He ended up reading out the last half from his notebook it made little difference that he stumbled and lost his place repeatedly for no one more than three feet away could hear a word.

He sat down and a sudden silence descended on the hall, an air Oft’L of expectancy that made Sean realize that this must have been carefully planned-and that the main entertainment was still to follow.

“Mr. Courtney. ” At the back of the hall Garry Courtney was on his feet, and every head was craned around towards him.

“May I ask you a few questions?”

Sean nodded slowly. So that is it! Garry planned this reception.

“My first question, then. Can you tell us what the name is for a man who sells his country to the enemies of his King?”

“Traitor!” howled the hecklers.

“Boer!” They stood up in a mass and roared at him. The pandemonium lasted perhaps five minutes.

“I’m taking you out of here,” Sean whispered to Ruth and reached for her arm, but she pulled away.

“No, I’m staying.”

“Come on, do as I tell you. This is going to get rough.”

“You’ll have to carry me out first,” she flared at him, angry and beautiful.

Sean was about to accept the challenge, when suddenly the uproar ceased abruptly. Again, all heads turned towards Garrick Courtney, where he stood ready with his next question. In the silence he grinned maliciously.

“One other thing, do you mind telling us the nationality and faith of your wife?”

Sean’s head jerked back. He felt the sickening physical jolt of it in his stomach, and he started to struggle to his feet. But Ruth was already standing, and she laid a hand on his shoulder to prevent him rising.

“I think I will answer that one, Garry.” She spoke clearly with just a trace of huskiness in her voice

“I am a Jewess.”

The silence persisted. Still with her hand on Sean’s shoulder, standing straight and proud beside him, she held Garry’s stare across the room. Garry broke first. Flushing up along his neck, he dropped his eyes and shifted clumsily on his bad leg. Among the men in the front rows the same guilty reaction followed her words. They glanced at each other and then away, moving awkwardly in shame. A man stood up, and started down the aisle towards the door. Halfway there he stopped and turned.

“Sorry, Missus. I didn’t know there’d be any of that,” and he went on towards the door. As he passed Ronny Pye he tossed a sovereign into his lap. Another man stood up, grinned uneasily at Ruth and hurried out. Then in twos and threes the others followed him. The last of them trooped out in a bunch, and Sean noted with relish that not all of them returned Ronny’s sovereigns.

At the end of the schoolroom Garry dithered, uncertain whether to leave or to stay and attempt to brazen his way out of a situation he had seriously misjudged.

Sean stood up slowly and encircled Ruth’s waist with one arm, he cleared his throat for it was choked with his pride of her.

“Not only that,” he called, “but she’s one of the best goddamned cooks in the district also. ” In the laughter and cheers that followed Garry stumbled and pushed his way out of the room.

The following day Garrick Courtney announced his intention of contesting the Ladyburg seat as an Independent, but not even the Loyalist newspapers gave him an outside chance of winning-until six weeks before polling-day.

On that evening, long after dark, Dirk hitched Sun Dancer at the rail outside the hotel. After he had loosened the girth and slipped the bit from her mouth, he left her to drink at the trough and went up onto the sidewalk. As he sauntered past the bar he peered in through the large window with its gold-and-red-lettered slogan,

“Got a thirst, drink a Goldberg Beer!”

Quickly he checked the clientele at the bar for informers.

There were none of his father’s foremen-they were always dangerous, nor were Messrs. Petersen or Pye or Erasmus present this evening. He recognized two of the factory mechanics, a couple of railway gangers, a bank clerk, a counter-hand from the Cooperative Society among the half-dozen strangers-and he decided that it was safe.

None of these ranked high enough in Ladyburg society to carry news to Sean Courtney of his son’s drinking habits.

Dirk walked to the end of the block, paused there for a few seconds, and then strolled casually back. But his eyes were restlessly checking the shadows for tale carriers. Tonight the main street was deserted, and as he came level with the swing doors of the bar he stepped sideways through them and into the warm yellow lamplight of the saloon. He loved this atmosphere-he loved the smell of sawdust, liquor, tobacco smoke and men. It was a place of men. A place of rough voices and laughter, of crude humour and companionship.