by Wilbur Smith
‘You sound like my wife.’
‘She is very beautiful.’
‘Yes,’ Sean nodded and glanced at the photograph, then back to Centaine. ‘You have lost everything,’ he said.
‘The château, my home – and my father.’ She tried to be calm, not let the terrible hurt show.
‘You have other family, of course.’
‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘My uncle lives in Lyon, and I have two aunts in Paris.’
‘I will arrange for you to travel to Lyon.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’ He looked piqued at her abrupt refusal.
‘I don’t want to go to Lyon, or Paris. I am going to Africa.’
‘Africa?’ Now he was taken aback. ‘Africa? Good Lord, why Africa?’
‘Because I promised Michel – we promised each other we would go to Africa.’
‘But, my dear—’ He dropped his eyes, and studied the ash of his cigar. She saw the pain that the mention of Michael’s name inflicted, she shared it with him for a moment, and then said, ‘You were going to say, “But Michel is dead.”’
He nodded. ‘Yes’. His voice was almost a whisper.
‘I promised Michel something else, General. I told him that his son would be born in the sunshine of Africa.’
Slowly Sean lifted his head and stared at her.
‘Michael’s son?’
‘His son.’
‘You are bearing Michael’s child?’
‘Yes.’
All the stupid mundane questions rushed to his lips.
‘Are you sure?’
‘How can you be certain?’
‘How do I know it’s Michael’s child?’
And he bit them back. He had to have time to think – to adjust to this incredible twist of fate.
‘Excuse me.’ He stood up and limped back into the operations room.
‘Are we in contact with the third battalion yet?’ he demanded of the group of officers.
‘We had them for a minute, then lost them again. They are ready to counter-attack, sir, but they need artillery support.’
‘Get on to those damned shell wallahs again, and keep trying to get through to Caithness.’ He turned to another of his staff. ‘Roger, what is happening to the First?’
‘No change, sir. They have broken two enemy attacks, but they are taking a beating from the German guns. Colonel Stevens thinks they can hold.’
‘Good man!’ Sean grunted. It was like trying to close the leaks in a dyke, holding back the ocean with handfuls of clay, but somehow they were doing it, and every hour they held on was blunting the cutting edge of the German attack.
‘The guns are the key, if we can get them up soon enough. How is the traffic on the main road?’
‘Clearing and moving faster, it seems, sir.’
If they could move the 25-pounders into the gap before morning, then they could make the enemy pay dearly for their gains. They would have them in a salient, they could hit them from three sides, pound them with artillery.
Sean felt his spirits droop again. This was a war of guns, it all came back in the end to the bloody attrition of the guns. At the front of his mind Sean made the calculations, assessed the risks and the costs and gave the orders, but behind that he was making other calculations. He was thinking of the girl and her claims upon him.
Firstly he had to control his natural reaction to what she had told him, for Sean was a son of Victoria, and he expected all people, but especially his own family, to live by the code that had been set in the previous century. Of course, young men were expected to sow their wild oats – by God, Sean himself had sown them by the barrow-load – and he grinned shamefacedly at the memory. But decent young men left decent young girls alone, until after they were married.
‘I’m shocked,’ he realized, and smiled again. The officers at the operations table saw the smile and looked puzzled and uneasy. ‘What is the old devil up to now?’ They exchanged nervous glances.
‘Have you got hold of Colonel Caithness yet?’ Sean covered the smile with a ferocious scowl, and they applied themselves diligently to their tasks once more.
‘I’m shocked,’ Sean told himself again, still amused at himself but this time keeping his face impassive. ‘And yet Michael himself was your own love-baby, the fruit of one of your escapades. Your first-born—’ The pain of Michael’s death assailed him again, but he drove it back.
‘Now, the girl.’ He began to think it out. ‘Is she really pregnant, or is this some elaborate form of blackmail?’ It did not take him more than a few seconds to decide.
‘I can’t be that wrong in my estimate of her. She truly believes she is pregnant.’ There were areas of the female anatomy and the feminine mind that were completely alien terrain to Sean. He had learned, however, that when a girl believed she was pregnant, she sure as all hell was. How she knew escaped him, but he was prepared to accept it. ‘All right, she’s pregnant, but is it Michael’s child, and not some other young—’
Again his rejection of the idea was swift. ‘She’s a child of a decent family, carefully guarded by her father and that dragon of hers. How she and Michael managed it beats me—’ He almost grinned again as he recalled how often and how adroitly he had managed it in his youth, against equally fearsome odds. ‘The ingenuity of young love.’ He shook his head. ‘All right, I accept it. It’s Michael’s child. Michael’s son!’
And only then did he allow the joy to rise in him. ‘Michael’s son! Something of Michael still lives on.’ Then he cautioned himself quickly. ‘Steady on now, don’t let’s go overboard. She wants to come out to Africa, but what the hell are we going to do with her? I can’t take her in at Emoyeni.’ For a moment the image appeared in his mind of the beautiful home on the hill, ‘The place of the wind’ in Zulu, which he had built for his wife. The longing to be back there with her came powerfully upon him. He had to fight it off and apply himself to the immediate problems again.
‘Three of them – three pretty girls, all of them proud and strong-willed, living in the same house.’ Instinctively he knew that this little French girl and his own beloved but lovingly indulged daughter would fight like two wild cats in a sack. He shook his head. ‘By God, that would be the perfect recipe for disaster, and I wouldn’t be there to turn them over my knee. I’ve got to come up with something better than that. What in the name of all that is holy do we do with this pregnant little filly?’
‘Sir! Sir!’ one of his officers called, and offered Sean the head-set of the field telephone. ‘I’ve got through to Colonel Caithness at last.’
Sean snatched the set from him. ‘Douglas!’ He barked into it. The line was bad, the background hissed and rushed like the sea, so Douglas Caithness’s voice seemed to come from across an ocean.
‘Hello, sir, the guns have just come up—’
‘Thank God,’ Sean growled.
‘I have deployed them—’ Caithness gave the map reference. ‘They are hammering away already and the Huns seem to have run out of steam. I am going to raid them at dawn.’
‘Douglas, be careful, there are no reserves behind you, I won’t be able to support you before noon.’
‘All right, I understand, but we can’t let them regroup unopposed.’
‘Of course not,’ Sean agreed. ‘Keep me informed. In the meantime I’m moving up four more batteries, and elements of the Second Battalion, but they won’t reach you before noon.’
‘Thank you, sir, we can use them.’
‘Go to it, man.’ Sean handed the instrument back, and while he watched the coloured pins rearranged on the map, the solution to his personal problem came to him.
‘Garry—’ He thought of his twin brother, and felt the familiar twinge of guilt and compassion. Garrick Courtney, the brother whom Sean had crippled.
It had happened so many years ago and yet every instant of that dreadful day was still so clear in Sean’s mind that it might have taken place that very morning. The two of them, teenage scamps, arguing
over the shotgun that they had stolen out of their father’s gunroom and loaded with buckshot, as they trotted through the golden grass of the Zululand hills.
‘I saw the inkonka first,’ Garry protested. They were going out to hunt an old bushbuck ram whose lair they had discovered the previous day.
‘I thought of the shotgun,’ Sean told him, tightening his grip on the weapon, ‘so I do the shooting.’ And, of course, Sean prevailed. It was always that way.
It was Garry who took Tinker, their mongrel hunting dog, and circled out along the edge of thick bush to drive the antelope back where Sean waited with the shotgun.
Sean heard again Garry’s faint shouts at the bottom of the hill, and Tinker’s frantic barks as he picked up the scent of the wary bushbuck. Then the rush in the grass, and the long yellow stems bursting open as the inkonka came out, heading straight up to where Sean lay on the crest of the hill.
He looked immense in the sunlight, for in alarm his shaggy mane was erected and his dark head with the heavy spiral horns was raised high on the thick powerful neck. He stood three foot high at the shoulder and weighed almost two hundred pounds, and his chest and flanks were barred and spotted with delicate patterns, pale as chalk on the dark rufous ground. He was a magnificent creature, quick and formidable, those horns were sharp as pikes and could rip the belly out of a man or slice through his femoral artery – and he came straight at Sean.
Sean fired the choke barrel, and he was so close that the charge of buckshot struck in a solid blast, and tore through the animal’s barrel chest into lung and heart. The bushbuck screamed and went down, kicking and bleating, its sharp black hooves clashing on the rocky ground as it slid back down the hill.
‘I got him!’ howled Sean, leaping from his hiding place. ‘I got him first shot. Garry! I got him!’
From below Garry and the dog came pelting through the coarse golden grass. It was a race as to which of them could get to the dying animal first. Sean carried the shotgun, the second barrel still loaded, and the hammer at full cock, and as he ran a loose stone rolled under his foot and he fell. The gun flew from his grip. He hit the ground with his shoulder and the second barrel fired with a stunning thump of sound.
When Sean scrambled up again, Garry was sitting beside the dead bushbuck, whimpering. His leg had taken the full charge of buckshot at almost point blank range. It had hit him below the knee, and the flesh was wet red ribbons, the bone white chips and slivers and the blood a bright fountain in the sunlight.
‘Poor Garry,’ Sean thought, ‘now a lonely one-legged old cripple.’ The woman whom Sean had put with child, and whom Garry had married before she gave birth to Michael, had finally been driven insane by her own hatred and bitterness and died in the flames she herself had set. Now Michael, too, was gone, and Garry had nothing – nothing except his books and his scribblings.
‘I’ll send him this bright pert girl and her unborn infant.’ The solution came to Sean with a flood of relief. ‘At last I can make some retribution for all I have done to him. I will send him my own grandchild, the grandchild I should so dearly love to claim as my own, I’ll send to him in part payment.’
He turned from the map and limped quickly back to where the girl waited.
She rose to meet him and stood quietly, her hands clasped demurely in front of her, and Sean saw the worry and fear of rejection in her dark eyes, and the way her lower lip trembled as she waited for his judgement.
He closed the door behind him, and he went to her and took her small neat hands in his great hairy paws and he stooped over her and kissed her gently. His beard scratched her soft cheek, but she sobbed with relief and flung both arms around him.
‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ he said. ‘You took me by surprise. I just had to get used to the idea.’ Sean hugged her – but very gently, for the mystery of pregnancy was one of the very few things that daunted and awed Sean Courtney. Then he settled her back in the chair.
‘Can I go to Africa?’ She was smiling, though the tears still trembled in the corners of her eyes.
‘Yes, of course, that’s your home now, for as far as I am concerned, you are Michael’s wife. Africa is where you belong.’
‘I’m so happy,’ she told him softly, but it was more than mere happiness. It was a vast sense of security and protection, this man’s aura of power and strength was now held over her like a shield.
‘You are Michael’s wife,’ he had said. He had acknowledged that which she herself believed, somehow his endorsement made it a fact.
‘This is what I am going to do. The German U-boats have been playing such havoc. A sailing for you on one of the Red Cross hospital ships that leave directly from the French Channel ports will be the safest way of getting you home.’
‘Anna—’ Centaine cut in quickly.
‘Yes, of course, she must go with you. I’ll fix that also. You will both volunteer for nursing duties, and I’m afraid you’ll be expected to work your passage.’
Centaine nodded eagerly.
‘Michael’s father, my brother, Garrick Courtney—’ Sean started.
‘Yes, yes! Michel told me all about him. He is a great hero – he won the cross of the English Queen Victoria for his courage in a battle against the Zulus,’ Centaine cut in excitedly, ‘and he is a scholar who writes books of history.’
Sean blinked at the description of poor Garry, but of course it was factually correct and he nodded.
‘He is also a kind and gentle person, a widower who has just lost his only son—’ An almost telepathic understanding passed between them; although Centaine knew the truth, from now on Michael would always be referred to as Garrick Courtney’s son. ‘Michael was his whole life, and you and I know how he must feel at the loss, for we share it.’
Centaine’s eyes sparkled with unshed tears and she bit down on her lower lip as she nodded vehemently.
‘I will cable him. He will be at Cape Town to meet you when the ship docks. I will also give you a letter to take to him. You can be certain of his welcome and his protection, for both you and Michael’s child.’
‘Michel’s son,’ said Centaine firmly, and then hesistantly, ‘but I will see you also, General, sometimes?’
‘Often,’ Sean assured her, leaning forward to pat her hand gently. ‘Probably more often than you wish.’
After that it all happened very quickly; she would learn that with Sean Courtney, this was always the way.
She remained only five more days at the monastery, but in that time the German breakthrough at Mort Homme was contained by dour bloody fighting, and once the line was stabilized and reinforced, Sean Courtney had a few hours each day to spare for her.
They dined together every evening, and he answered her endless questions about Africa and its people and animals, about the Courtney family and its members, with good-natured patience. Mostly they spoke English, but when at a loss for a word, Centaine lapsed into Flemish again. Then at the end of the meal she would prepare his cigar and light it for him, pour his cognac and then perch beside him, talking still, until Anna came to fetch her or Sean was summoned to the operations room; then she would come to him and hold up her face for his kiss with such a childlike innocence, that Sean found himself dreading the approaching hour of her departure.
John Pearce brought their nursing uniforms to Centaine and Anna. The white veils and the white cross-straps of the apron were worn over a blue-grey dress and Centaine and Anna made the finer adjustments themselves, their needles giving a touch of French flair to the baggy shapeless outfits.
Then it was time to leave, and Sangane loaded their meagre baggage into the Rolls, and Sean Courtney came down the cloisters, gruff and stern with the pain of leave-taking.
‘Look after her,’ he ordered Anna, and Anna glowered at him in righteous indignation at this gratuitous advice.
‘I will be at the docks to meet you when you come home,’ Centaine promised him, and Sean scowled with embarrassment and pleasure when she went up on tiptoe to kiss
him in front of his staff. He watched the Rolls pull away with the girl waving at him through the back window, then roused himself and rounded on his staff.
‘Well, gentlemen, what are we all gawking at – we’re fighting a war here, not conducting a bloody Sunday-school picnic.’
And he stomped back down the cloisters, angry at himself for already feeling the girl’s absence so painfully.
The Protea Castle had been a mailship of the Union Castle Line. She was a fast three-funnel passenger liner which had operated on the Cape to Southampton run before being converted to a hospital ship and repainted pristine white with scarlet crosses on her sides and funnels.
She lay at the dock of the inner harbour of Calais, taking on her passengers for the southward voyage, and they were a far cry from the elegant affluent travellers who had filled her pre-war lists. Five railway coaches had been shunted on to the rail spur of the wharf, and from these the pathetic stream of humanity crossed to the liner and went up her fore and aft gangways.
These were the veritable sweepings of the battlefield. They had been rejected by the medical board as so incapacitated that they could not even be patched up sufficiently to feed the man-hungry Baal of the British Expeditionary Force.
There would be twelve hundred on board for the southbound voyage, and on the return northbound leg the Protea Castle would be repainted in the camouflage of an ordinary troopship and bring another load of young eager and healthy young men for a sojourn in the hell of the trenches of northern France.
Centaine stood beside the Rolls at the wharfside and stared with dismay at this ruined legion as they went aboard. There were the amputees, missing an arm or a leg, the lucky ones with the severance below knee or elbow. They swung across the wharf on their crutches, or with an empty sleeve of their tunic pinned up neatly.
Then there were the blind, led by their companions, and the spinal cases carted aboard on their stretchers, and the gas victims with the mucous membranes of their noses and throats burned away by the chlorine gas, and the shell-shocked who twitched and jerked and rolled their eyes uncontrollably, and the burn victims with monstrous pink shiny scar tissue that had contracted to trap their limbs into the bent position, or drawn down their ravaged heads on to their chests, so that they were as twisted and contorted as hunchbacks.
