The Burning Shore (41 page)

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.