The Sound of Thunder (14 page)

“Sean! It’s me. Look at me!”

And slowly Sean relaxed, his eyes steadied.

“It’s you? It’s really you?” he whispered. “Don’t let them … don’t let them take my leg. Not like they did to Garry.

“Be still, or I’ll break your stupid head, ” growled Jan Paulus.

Like Ins face, his hands were beefy and red, big hands with fingers like calloused sausages, but now they worked as gently as those of a mother on her child. At last, holding the ankle, he looked at Sean.

“Hold fast, now. I must straighten it.”

Sean tried to grin, but his face was grey beneath the coating of battle filth, and sweat squeezed from his skin like a rash of tiny blisters.

“Don’t talk so much, you bloody Dutchman. Do it!”

Bone grated on broken bone deep in the torn flesh and Sean gasped.

Every muscle in Ins body convulsed and then relaxed again as he fainted.

“Ja, ” granted Jan Paulus. “That’s better,” and for the first time the set of his features betrayed his compassion. He finished with the bandages, and for a few seconds continued to squat beside Sean’s unconscious body. Then he whispered so low that the two bearers could not catch the words.

“Sleep well, my brother. May God spare you your leg.”

And he stood, all trace of pity and sorrow locked away behind the red-stone of his face.

“Take him away,” he ordered, and waited while they lifted the stretcher and staggered away with it.

He went to his pony, and his feet dragged a little through the grass. From the saddle he looked once more towards the south but the two bearers had disappeared with their burden among the mimosa trees.

He touched spurs to his pony’s flanks and followed the long procession of wagons, prisoners and guns back towards the Tugela. The only sound was the jingle of harness and the melancholy rumble of wheels.

Garrick Courtney watched the champagne spilling into the crystal bowl of his glass. The bubbles swirled in golden patterns, catching the lantern light. The mess corporal lifted the bottle, dexterously caught a drop of wine on his napkin and moved behind Garry to fill the glass of Brigadier Lyttelton, who sat beside him.

“No.” Lyttelton placed a hand over his empty glass to prevent him doing so.

“Come, come, Lyttelton. ” Sir Redvers Buller leaned forward and looked down the table. “That’s an excellent wine.”

“Thank you, sir, but champagne is for victory-perhaps we should have a case sent across the river. ” Buller flushed slowly and looked down at his own glass. Once more an ugly silence descended on the mess. In an effort to break it Garry spoke up.

“I do think the withdrawal today was made in extremely good order.

” “Oh, I agree most heartily. ” From across the table Lord Dundonald’s icy sarcasm added to the gaiety. “But in all fairness, Colonel, we were travelling very light on our return.

This oblique reference to the guns sent every eye to Buller’s face-Dundonald was showing a reckless disregard of that notorious temper. But as a peer of the realm he could take the chance. With a courteous insolence he met Buller’s glare, and held it until the pale bulging eyes faded and dropped.

“Gentlemen.” Buller spoke heavily. “We have had a most trying day, and for all of us there is still work to do. ” He glanced at his ADC. “Clery, will you be kind enough to propose the Queen?

Alone, Garry limped from the huge marquee mess tent. The smaller tents, lit internally, were a vast field of luminous cones, and above them the night was black satin sown with silver stars.

The wine that Garry had drunk during dinner hummed in his head so that he did not notice the dejected silence that smothered the encampment as he picked his way through it.

As Garry entered his headquarters a man stood up from the camp chair beside his desk. In the light of the lantern his features were gaunt, and weariness showed in every line of his body.

“Good evening, sir.”

“You’ve come to make your report?”

“I have, sir. For what it’s worth.

“Tell me, Curtis-how many casualties?” There was an eagerness behind the question which Tim found ghoulish. Speculatively he examined Garry’s face before replying.

“We suffered heavily, out of a strength of twenty we had four dead two Missing and five wounded. “Have you made out a list?

“Not yet.”

“Well, tell me. Who were they?” “Killed were Booth, Amery.

No longer could Garry hold his impatience, he blurted out suddenly: “What about that sergeant?”

“You mean Courtney?”

“Yes. Yes.” And now with his impatience was mingled a dread that made his stomach feel hollow.

“Wounded, sir.

And Garry felt a lift of relief so intense that he must close his eyes and suck in his breath to ride it up.

Sean was still alive I Thank God Thank Godfor that

“Where is he now?”

“They’ve got him down at the railhead hospital. He’s being sent out with the first batch of badly wounded.”

“Badly?” Garry’s relief changed quickly to concern, and he demanded harshly,

“How badly? How badly?”

“That’s all they told me. I went down to the hospital but they wouldn’t allow me to see him.

Garry sank into his chair and instinctively reached for the drawer before he checked himself.

“Very well, Curtis. You may go.”

“The rest of my report, sir?”

“Tomorrow. Leave it till tomorrow.

With the liquor glowing hotly in his belly, Garry set off through the night towards the hospital. It did not matter now that he had planned and hoped that Sean would die. He no longer reasoned, but hurried through the sprawling camp, driven by his desperate need.

Unrecognized but strong within him was the hope that he might again draw comfort and strength from that fountain as he had done so long ago. He started to run, stiffly, so the toe of his boot scuffed in the dust with each pace.

Desperately he searched through the hospital. He hurried along the rows of stretchers examining the faces of the wounded; he saw pain and mutilation and slow creeping death soaking like spilt red ink through the white bandages. He heard the moan and murmur and delirious laughter, he smelt the taint of agony induced sweat blended with the heavy sweetness of corruption and disinfectant-and he hardly noticed them. One face, one face only, he wanted. And he did not find it.

“Courtney. ” The medical orderly examined his list, tilting it to catch the lamplight. “Ah! Yes. Here it is-let’s nnnsee. Yes!

He’s gone already-left on the first train an hour ago … I can’t say, sir, probably to Pietermaritzburg. They’ve established a big new hospital there. I can’t tell you that either, I’m afraid, but they’ve got him listed here as dangerous … that’s better am critical anyway.

Wearing his loneliness like a cloak, Garry stumbled back to his quarters.

“Good evening, sir. ” His servant was waiting for him. Garry always made them wait up. A new man this, they changed so fast. Never could keep a batman more than a month.

Garrick pushed past him, and half fell against the camp bed.

“Steady on, sir. Let’s get you on to the bed, sir. ” The man’s voice was insidiously servile, the voice men used towards drunks. The touch of his hands infuriated Garry.

“Leave me.” He lashed out with a clenched fist across the man’s face, throwing him back. “Leave me. Get out and leave me!”

The servant rubbed his bruised cheek uncertainly, backing away.

“Get out!” Garry hissed at him.

“But, sir-” “Get out, damn you. Get out!”

The man went out and closed the tent flap softly behind him.

Garry stumbled across to it and laced it closed. Then he stood back. Alone. They can’t see me now. They can’t laugh now.

They can’t. Oh God, Sean!

He turned from the flap. The dummy leg caught on the rough floor and he fell. One of the straps parted and the leg twisted under him.

On his hands and knees he crawled towards the commode across the tent, and the leg jerked and twisted grotesquely behind him.

Kneeling beside the commode he lifted the china basin from its recess and reached into the space below it and he found the bottle.

His fingers were too clumsy for the cork, he pulled it with his teeth and spat it on to the floor. Then he held the bottle to his lips and his throat jerked rhythmically as he swallowed.

A little of the brandy spilled on to his tunic and stained the ribbon of the Victoria Cross.

He lowered the bottle and rested, panting from the sting of the liquor. Then he drank again more slowly. The trembling of his hands stilled. His breathing smoothed out. He reached up and took the tumbler from the top of the commode, filled it, then placed the bottle beside him on the floor and wriggled into a more comfortable position against the commode.

In front of him his artificial leg twisted on its broken straps at an unnatural angle below the knee. He contemplated it, sipping the brandy slowly and feeling it numb the taste-buds of his tongue.

The leg was the centre of his existence. Insensate, unmoving, still as the eye of a great storm upon which the whole turmoil of his life revolved. The leg-always the leg. Always and only the leg.

Now under the lulling spell of the liquor he had drunk, from the stillness at the centre where the leg lay, he looked outward at the gigantic shadows of the ast, and found them preserved and perfect, not distorted or blurred by time, whole and cornI, plete in each detail.

While they paraded through his mind, the night telescoped “in upon itself so that time had no significance. The hours endured for a few minutes and were gone while the level in the bottle fell and he sat against the commode sipping at the tumbler and watching while the night wasted away. In the dawn the final act was played out before him.

Himself on a horse in the darkness riding in cold soft rain towards Theuniskraal. One window showing a yellow oblong of

A

lantern light, the rest dark in the greater dark mass of the homestead.

The unaccountable premonition of coming horror closing cold and soft as the rain around him, the silence spoiled only by the crunch of his horse’s hooves in the gravel of the drive. The thunW of his peg leg as he climbed the front steps and the chill of the brass doorknob in his hand as he turned it and pushed it in upon the silence.

His own voice slurred with drink and dread. “Hello. Where’s everybody? Anna! Anna! I’m back! ” The blue flare of his match and the smell of burnt sulphur and paraffin as he lit the lamp, then the urgent echoing thump of his peg leg along the passage.

“Anna, Anna, where are you?

Anna, his bride, lay upon the bed in the darkened room, naked, turning quickly away from the light, but he had seen the dead-white face with swollen and bruised lips.

The lamp from the table threw bloated shadows on the wall as he stooped over and gently drew down the petticoats to cover the whiteness of her lower body, then turned her face to him.

“My darling, oh Anna, my darling. what’s happened?” Through the torn blouse her breasts were engorged and darkly nippled with pregnancy. “Are you hurt? Who? Tell me who did it? ” But she covered her face and broken lips with her hands.

“My darling, my poor darling. Who was it-one of the servants ?

“No.

“Please tell me, Anna. What happened?

Suddenly her arms were about his neck and her lips close against his ear. “You know, Garry! You know who did it.

“No, I swear I don’t. Please tell me. ” Her voice tight and hoarse with hatred, uttering that word, that one unbelievable horrible word. “Sean!”

“Sean!” he said aloud in his desolation. “Sean. Oh God!”

and then savagely,

“I hate him. I hate him! Let him die-please God, let him die.

He closed his eyes, losing his grip upon reality, and felt the first dizzy swing of vertigo as the liquor took firm hold upon him.

Too late now to open his eyes and focus them upon the bed across the tent, the giddiness had begun-now he would not be able to hold it down. The warm, acid-sweet taste of brandy welled up into his throat and mouth and nose.

When his servant found him it was the middle of the morning.

Garry lay fully dressed but asleep upon the bed with his sparse hair ruffled, his uniform stained and grubby, and the leg lying derelict in the centre of the floor.

The servant closed the door softly and studied his master, his nostrils flaring at the sour smell of stale brandy and vomit.

“Had yourself one hell of a bust-up. Hey-Hop, Skip and Jump? ” he murmured without sympathy. Then he picked up the bottle and examined the inch of liquor remaining in it. “Your bloody good health, cock,” he saluted Garry and drained the bottle, patted his lips delicately and spoke again. “Right! Let’s get your sty cleaned up.

“Leave me alone,” Garry groaned.

“It’s eleven o’clock, sir.

“Leave me. Get out and leave me.

“Drink this coffee, sir.

“I don’t want it. Leave me.

“I’ve got your bath filled, sir, and a clean uniform laid out for

YGU

“What time is it?” Garry sat up unsteadily’ Eleven o’clock,” the man repeated patiently.

“My leg?” Garry felt naked without it.

“One of the harness makers is stitching the straps, sir. It’ll be ready by the time you’ve bathed.

Even in a position of rest Garry’s hands, laid upon the desk in front of him trembled slightly, and the runs of his eyelids prickled.

The skin of his face was stretched like that of a drum over the slow pain that throbbed within his skull.

At last he sighed and picked Lieutenant Curtis’s report from the top of the thin sheaf of papers that waited for his attention.

Garry skimmed through it dully, few of the names upon it meant anything to him. He saw Sean’s name headed the list of wounded, and below him was the little Jewish lawyer. At last satisfied that mained nothing to the discredit of Colonel Garrick Courtney, he initialled it and laid it aside.

He picked up the next document. A letter addressed to him as Officer Commanding the Natal Corps of Guides, from a Colonel John Acheson of the Scots-Fusiliers. TWo pages of neat, pointed handwriting. He was about to discard it and leave it to his Orderly’s attention when the name in the body of the text caught his eye. He leaned forward attentively and read quickly from the beginning.