The Sound of Thunder (26 page)

They sat together upon the rumpled bed and talked.

At first there was a shyness between them because of what they had done together-but soon it passed-and they sat up far into the night.

Rare it is for a man to have a friend as well as a lover in one woman-but with Candy this was possible. And to her he released all those things that had been bottled and fomenting within him.

He told her of Michael, and the strange bond between them.

He told her of Dirk, and hinted at his misgivings for the boy.

He spoke of the war and of what he would do when it finished.

He told her of Lion Kop and his wattle.

But one thing he could not tell her. He could not speak of Ruth or the man who was her husband.

During the next few days Sean and Saul reported to the headquarters of the Regional Commander and were assigned neither billets nor duties. Now that they had arrived no one seemed very interested in them. They were told to report daily, and turned loose again. They returned to Candy’s Hotel and spent most of the days playing billiards or cards and most of the evenings eating and drinking and talking.

A week of this and Sean was getting bored. He began to feel like a stud stallion. Even a solid diet of heavenly manna begins to pall after a while-so when Candy asked him to escort her to a reception and dinner with which Lord Kitchener was celebrating his promotion to Supreme Command of the Army in South Africa, Sean accepted with relief.

“You look like some sort of god,” Candy told him as he entered her suite through the concealed doorway which connected it with his own bedroom in the Victoria rooms. When she had shown him this discreet little panel and demonstrated how at a touch it slid silently aside, Sean had thrust down the temptation of asking how many others had used it. It was senseless to resent the nameless host who had passed through the panel to teach Candy all those little tricks with which she now delighted him.

“You don’t look too bad yourself.” She was dressed in blue silk, the colour of her eyes, and she wore diamonds at her throat.

“How gallant you are! ” She came to him and stroked the silk lapels of his newly tailored evening jacket. “I wish you’d wear your medals.

“I haven’t any medals.”

“Oh Sean! You must have! With all those bullet holes in you, you must have medals. ” “I’m sorry, Candy.” Sean grinned. At times she was so far from being the glittering sophisticated woman of the world.

Although she was a year older than he was, time had not destroyed that fragile quality of skin and hair that most women lose so quickly.

There was no thickening of her body, no coarsening of her features.

“Never mind-even without medals, you’ll be the handsomest man there tonight.

As the carriage rolled down Commissioner Street towards the Grand National Hotel, Sean lay back against the yielding support of soft polished leather. His cigar was drawing evenly with an inch of firm grey ash, the single brandy he had drunk before leaving glowed beneath the starched front of his dress-shirt, a faint aura of bay rum clung and hovered around him-and Candy’s hand lay lightly upon his leg.

All these things induced in him a mood of deep contentment.

He laughed easily at Candy’s chatter and let the smoke of his cigar trickle through his lips-tasting it with an almost childlike pleasure. When the car rage stopped before the entrance to the hotel and rocked gently on its superb springing, he climbed down and stood by the big rear-wheel to guard Candy’s skirt as she descended.

Then, with her fingers on his forearm, he guided her up the front steps and through the glass doors into the lobby Of the hotel. The splendour of the place did not equal Candy’s own establishment. But it was impressive enough-and so was the reception line that awaited them.

While they took their places among those waiting to meet the Commander-in-Chief, Sean spoke quietly to an aide-de-camp.

“My Lord, may I present Mr. Courtney and Mrs. Rautenbach. ” Lord Kitchener had a formidable presence. His hand was cold and hard and he stood as tall as Sean. The eyes that stared for an instant into Sean’s held a disquieting rigidity of purpose.

Then he turned to Candy and his expression softened momentarily as he bowed over her hand.

“Very kind of you to come, madam.”

Then they were past and into the gaudy of uniforms and velvet and silk. The whole was dominated by dress scarlet of the Guards and Fusiliers, but there was also the gold-fragged blue of the Hussars, the green of the Foresters, kilts of half a dozen Highland regiments, so that Sean’s black dress suit was conspicuously conservative. Among the glitter of orders and decorations shone the jewel lery and white skins of the women.

Here assembled were the prize blooms of the huge tree that was the British Empire. A tree grown strong above the rest of the forest. Two centuries of victory in war had nurtured it, two hundred million persons were its roots that sucked in the treasures of half the world and sent them up along the shipping lanes to that grey city astride the Thames that was its heart. And there this rich sap was digested and transmuted into men. These were the men whose lazy speech and careful nonchalance reflected the smugness and arrogance which made them hated and feared by even the trunk of the great tree that gave them flower. While the lesser trees crowded closer and sent their own roots out to divert a little of its sustenance to themselves, the first disease had already eaten into the wood beneath the bark of the giant.

America, India, Afghanistan, and South Africa had started the dry rot that one day would bring it crashing down with a force that would shatter its bulk into so many pieces as to prove it not teak but soft pine.

Watching them now, Sean felt himself apart from them, closer in spirit and purpose to those shaggy men whose Mausers still shouted desperate defiance at them from the vast brown veld.

These thoughts threatened to spoil his mood and he thrust them down, exchanged his empty glass for another filled with bubbling yellow wine and attempted to join the banter of the young officers who surrounded Candy. He succeeded only in conceiving a burning desire to punch one of them between his downy moustaches. He was savouring the idea with increasing relish when a touch on his arm turned him.

“Hello Courtney. Seem to find you everywhere there is either a fight or a free drink. ” Startled, Sean turned to look into the austere face and incongruously twinkling eyes of Major General John Acheson.

“Hello, General. I notice you frequent the same areas. ” Sean grinned at him.

“Bloody awful champagne. Old K. must be economizing.”

Then he ran his eyes over Sean’s immaculate evening dress. “A bit difficult to tell whether you have received the awards for which I recommended you. ” Sean shook his head. “Still a sergeant. I didn’t want to embarrass the General Staff by appearing in my chevrons. ” “AH!” Acheson’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Must be some hold up. I’ll look into it.”

“I assure you I’m quite happy this way.”

Acheson nodded and changed the subject. “You haven’t met my wife?” This was patronage on the grand scale. Sean was not to know that Acheson considered him his personal good luck charm. His own rapid promotion dated from their first meeting.

Sean blinked in surprise before answering.

“I haven’t yet had the honour Come along then.”

Sean excused himself from Candy, who dismissed him with a tap of her fan and Acheson steered him through the press towards a group at the end of the room. A dozen paces from it Sean stopped abruptly.

” Something wrong? ” Acheson asked.

“No. Nothing. ” Sean started forward again, but now his eyes were fastened with fascination on one of the men who was a part of the group towards which they were headed.

A slim figure in the dark blue dress uniform of the Natal Mounted Rifles. Sandy brown hair brushed straight back from his high forehead, nose too big for the mouth and the chin beneath it, slightly round-shouldered but with the highest reward for bravery showing purple and bronze beside the striped ribbon of the Distinguished Service Order on his chest, while on his shoulders the silver crowns and lace proclaimed him a colonel.

Slowly, with a new awakening of his guilt, Sean let his eyes move down to this man’s legs. With incomprehension he saw them perfectly matched, booted in polished black leather. Only when the man moved slightly, shifting his weight, Sean saw the leaden ness in one of them and understood.

“My dear-I would like to present Mr. Courtney. I think you have heard me speak of him. He was with me at Colenso, and on the train a few weeks ago.

“Indeed. Mr. Courtney, this is a great pleasure.” She was plump and friendly but Sean was hardly able to murmur the correct response so conscious was he of the other eyes upon his face.

“And this is Major Peterson of my staff.”

Sean nodded.

“Colonel Courtney you will probably know-seeing that you bear the same name, and not to mention the fact that he is your Commanding Officer.”

For the first time in nineteen years Sean looked into the face of the man he had crippled.

“Hello, Garry,” he said and held out his hand. He stood with it out and waited.

Garry Courtney’s lips moved. He hunched his shoulders and his head SWUng slightly from side to side.

“Take it, Garry. Please take my hand. Sean tried silently to urge him. Realizing the forbidding set of his own countenance, Sean forced his lips into a smile. It was an uncertain thing that smile, it.

trembled a little at the corners of his mouth.

In response Garry’s own lips relaxed and for a moment Sean saw the terrible longing in his brother’s eyes.

” It’s been a long time, Garry. Much too long. ” Sean prodded forward with his open right hand. “Take it. Oh God, please make, him take it.

Then Garry straightened. As he did so the toe of his right boot scraped softly, awkwardly on the marble floor. The naked ‘longing in his eyes was glazed over, the corners of his mouth lifted upwards in something close to a sneer.

“Sergeant,” his voice was too loud, too high. “Sergeant, you are incorrectly dressed!” Then he turned, pivoting on the dead leg, and limped slowly away through the throng.

Sean stood with his hand still out and the smile frozen on his mouth.

You shouldn’t have done that to us. We both wanted-I know you wanted it as much as I, Sean let his hand fall empty to his side and balled it into a fist.

“You know him?” Acheson asked softly.

“My brother.”

“I see,” Acheson murmured. He saw many things-and one of them was the reason why Sean Courtney was still a sergeant.

Major Peterson coughed and lit a cigar. Mrs. Acheson touched the General’s arm. “My dear, Daphne Langford arrived yesterday. There she is with John-we must have them to dinner.

“Of course, my dear. I will ask them this evening. ” They turned their attention on each other, giving Sean the respite he needed to recover from his snubbing.

“Your glass is empty and so is mine, Courtney. I suggest we go on to something more substantial than K’s cooking champagne.

Brandy, fiery Cape brandy, very different from that soapy liquor they make in France. A dangerous spirit to take in his present mood. And only one mood was possible for Sean after what Garry had done to him-cold, murderous rage.

His face was impassive, politely he responded to Mrs. Acheson’s charm, once he smiled at Candy across the room, but always he sent brandy after brandy down to feed the rage that seethed in his belly; his eyes followed the figure in dark blue as it limped from group to group.

The aide-de-camp who arranged the dinner seating could never have known that Sean was a mere sergeant. As Mrs. Rautenbach’s guest he believed him to be an influential civilian and placed him high at the long table, between Candy and Mrs. Acheson, with Majar Peterson below him and a brigadier and two colonels opposite. One of the colonels was Garrick Courtney.

Beneath the almost uninterrupted stare which Sean fastened on him, Garry became nervously garrulous. Never once meeting Sean’s eyes, he aimed his remarks higher up the table, and that bronze cross suspended on the ribbon of shot purple silk that bumped against his chest each time he leaned forward gave a weight to his opinions that was evident in the attention they received from the officers of general rank.

The food was excellent. Rock lobster that had run the gauntlet EJJ@_ of Boer blockade from the Cape, plump young pheasant, venison, four assorted sauces-even the quality of the champagne had improved.

But Sean ate little, instead he gave permanent employment to the wine steward who hovered behind his chair.

“And so,” said Garrick as he selected a cigar from the cedar wood box that was offered him,

“I cannot see hostilities continuing another three months at the outside.

“I agree with you, sir,” Major Peterson nodded. “We’ll be back in London for the season.

“Poppycock! ” Sean made his first contribution to the discussion.

It was a word he had learned only recently-but he Red it.

Besides, there were ladies present.

Peterson’s face charmeleoned to a creditable match with the scarlet of his dress coat, Acheson started to smile then changed his mind, Candy wriggled in anticipation for she had reached the edge of boredom, and a chilly stillness fell over that area of the table.

“I beg your pardon?” Garry looked at him for the first time.

“Poppycock,” Sean repeated, and the wine steward stepped forward to cascade champagne into the crystal bowl of his glass, an operation which he had repeated at least a dozen times during the course of the evening-but this time it commanded the attention of the entire company.

“You don’t agree with me?” Garry challenged.

“No. “Why not?”

“Because there are still eighteen thousand Boers in the field, because they are still an organized army, because not once have they had a decisive defeat inflicted on them-but mainly because of the character of these eighteen thousand that are left. ” “You don’t-” Garry’s voice was petulant, but Acheson interrupted smoothly. “Excuse me, Colonel Courtney.” Then he turned to Sean. “I believe you know these people-” he hesitated and then went on, “you are even related through marriage. ” “My brother-in-law leads the Wynberg, commando,”