The Angels Weep (71 page)

‘It needs a woman to love it as I love it,’ he
said. ‘A woman to breed fine sons to cherish it, to hold it
as I will hold it.’

She knew what he was going to say then, and now that it was
about to happen, she felt numbed and confused. She felt herself
beginning to tremble against him.

‘I want you to be that woman,’ Roland Ballantyne
said, and she began to weep uncontrollably.

T
he NCOs of
Ballantyne’s Scouts clubbed together to give their colonel
and his new lady an engagement party.

They held it in the sergeants’ mess at the Thabas
Indunas barracks. The officers and the wives of the regiment were
all invited so that when Roland and Janine drove up in the
Mercedes, there was a packed crowd waiting on the front veranda
to meet them. Led by Sergeant-Major Gondele, they launched into a
rollicking but untuneful rendition of ‘For they are jolly
good fellows’.

‘Damn good thing you don’t fight like you
sing,’ Roland told them. ‘Your backsides would have
more holes than a sieve by now.’

He treated them with a rough paternal severity and affection,
the total easy assurance of the dominant male, and they
worshipped him openly. Janine understood that. She would have
been surprised if it were otherwise. What did surprise her was
the brotherhood of the Scouts. The way that officers and men,
black and white, were held together by an almost tangible bond of
trust and accord.

She sensed that it was something stronger than even the
strongest family ties, and later when she spoke to Roland about
it, he replied simply, ‘When your life depends on another
man, you come to love him.’

They treated Janine with enormous respect, almost awe. They
called her ‘Donna’ if they were Matabele and
‘Ma’am’ if they were white, and she responded
immediately to them.

Sergeant-Major Gondele personally fetched her a gin that would
have stunned an elephant, and looked hurt when she asked for a
little more tonic. He introduced her to his wife. She was a
pretty plump daughter of a senior Matabele tribal chief,
‘which makes her a sort of princess’, Roly explained.
She had five sons, the exact number that Janine and Roly had
decided upon, and she spoke excellent English, so she and Janine
were immediately in deep and earnest conversation, from which
Janine was at last distracted by a voice at her elbow.

‘Doctor Carpenter, may I apologize for being
late.’ It was said in the perfectly modulated tones and
classless accents of a BBC announcer or a graduate of the Royal
Academy of Dramatic Art. Janine turned to face an elegant figure
in the uniform of a wing commander of the Rhodesian Air
Force.

‘Douglas Hunt-Jeffreys,’ he said, and offered her
a narrow, almost femininely smooth hand. ‘I was desolated
by the prospect of not meeting the lovely lady of the gallant
colonel.’ He had the cultured vacuous features of a
dilettante, and the uniform, no matter that it was perfectly
tailored, looked out of place on his narrow shoulders. ‘The
whole regiment has been in a complete tizzy since we heard the
monumental tidings.’

She knew instinctively that despite his appearance and his
choice of words, he was not a gay. It was the way he held her
hand, and the subtle glance that dropped down her body like a
silken robe, and then came back to her face. She found her
interest titillated, he was like a razor-blade wrapped in velvet.
If she needed confirmation of his hetero-sexuality, it was the
way in which Roland reappeared almost immediately at her side
when he realized to whom she was speaking.

‘Dougie, my old fruit,’ Roland’s smile had a
white sharkish quality.

‘
Bon soir, mon brave
.’ The wing commander
took the ivory cigarette-holder from between his teeth. ‘I
must say I didn’t expect you to show such exquisite taste.
Doctor Carpenter is utterly ravishing. I do approve, dear boy. I
truly do.’

‘Dougie has to approve everything we do,’ Roland
explained. ‘He’s our liaison with Combined
Ops.’

‘Doctor Carpenter and I have just discovered that we
were almost neighbours, we are members of the same hunt, and she
was at school with my little sister. I cannot understand how we
haven’t met before.’

Janine realized then, almost with disbelief, that Roland
Ballantyne was jealous of her and this man. He took her arm, just
above the elbow and with a light pressure steered her away.

‘You will excuse us, Douglas. I want Bugsy to meet some
of the lads—’

‘Bugsy, forsooth!’ Douglas Hunt-Jeffreys shook his
head in pained disbelief. ‘These colonials are all of them
barbarians.’ And he wandered away to find another gin and
tonic.

‘You don’t like him?’ Janine could not
resist stirring Roland’s jealousy a little.

‘He’s good at his job,’ Roland said
shortly.

‘I thought he was rather cute.’

‘Perfidious Albion,’ he replied.

‘What does that mean?’

‘He is a pom.’

‘So am I,’ she said with a slight edge beneath her
smile. ‘And if you go back just a little, you are a pommy
also, Roland Ballantyne.’

‘The difference is you and I are good poms. Douglas
Hunt-Jeffreys is a prick.’

‘One of those. Oh goody!’ And he laughed with
her.

‘If there is one thing of which I approve
whole-heartedly, it’s a blatant self-confessed
nymphomaniac,’ he said.

‘Then we are going to get on very well together, you and
I.’ She hugged his arm in a gesture of reconciliation, and
he led her to a group of young men at the end of the bar. With
their cropped heads and fresh faces they looked like
undergraduates, only their eyes held that flat pebbly look, she
remembered Hemingway had called them
‘machine-gunners’ eyes’.

‘Nigel Taylor, Nandele Zama, Peter Sinclair,’
Roland introduced them. ‘These lads almost missed the
party. They only got back from the bush two hours ago. This
morning they had a good contact near the Gwaai, twenty-six
kills.’

Janine hesitated over her choice of words, and then said
faintly, ‘That’s nice,’ rather than
‘Congratulations’, both of which seemed grossly
inappropriate for the passing of twenty-six human lives. It
seemed to suffice, however.

‘Will you be riding the colonel this evening,
Donna?’ the young Matabele sergeant asked eagerly, and
Janine looked hurriedly to Roland for clarification. Even in such
a close family environment it seemed a rather personal
enquiry.

‘Mess tradition,’ Roland grinned at her
discomfort. ‘At midnight Sergeant-Major and I race down to
the main gates and back. Princess Gondele will be his jockey, and
I am afraid you will be rather expected to do the honours for
me.’

‘You are not as fat as Princess,’ the young
Matabele ran an appraising eye over Janine, ‘I’m
going to bet ten dollars on you, Donna.’

‘Oh goodness. I do hope we don’t let you
down.’

By midnight the excitement was frenetic, of the peculiar
quality that grips men who live their daily lives in mortal
danger and who know that this stolen hour of joyous existence may
be their last. They thrust bunches of banknotes into the hands of
the adjutant who was official holder of bets, and crowded around
their fancies to bolster them with raucous encouragement.

Princess and Janine were in stockinged feet with their skirts
rucked up and tucked into their panties like little girls at the
seaside, standing on a chair on each side of the main doors to
the mess. Outside, the tarmac road down to the main gates was lit
by the headlights of army vehicles parked along the verge, and
lined with the overflow from the mess bar, all of them full of
gin and rowdy enthusiasm.

On the bar Sergeant-Major Gondele and Roland were stripped
down to breeches and jungle boots. Esau Gondele was a black
giant, his shaven head like a cannonball, and his shoulders lumpy
with muscle. Beside him even Roland looked like a boy, his chest
untouched by the sun was very smooth and white.

‘You trip me this time, S’arn-Major, and
I’ll tear your head off,’ he warned, and Esau patted
his shoulder soothingly.

‘Sorry, boss. You ain’t ever going to get close
enough to trip.’

The adjutant took the last bets, and then mounted to the
bar-top rather unsteadily with a service pistol in one hand and a
glass in the other.

‘Shut up, all of you. At the gun the two competitors
will each consume a quart bottle of beer. When the bottle is
empty they will be free to take up one of these beautiful young
ladies.’

There was a storm of wolf-whistles and clapping.

‘Do shut up, chaps!’ The adjutant swaying
precariously on the bar-top tried to look stern.

‘We all know the rules.’

‘Get on with it.’

The adjutant made a gesture of resignation, pointed the pistol
at the ceiling, and pulled the trigger. There was a crash of shot
and one of the roof lights went out. The adjutant’s bald
head was showered with fragments of the shattered bulb.

‘I say, I forgot to change to blanks,’ he murmured
distractedly, but nobody took any further interest in him.

Sergeant-Major Gondele and Roland both had their heads thrown
back, the base of the black bottles pointed at the roof, and
their throats pulsed regularly as the frothing beer gushed down
them. Gondele finished a second before Roland, leaped from the
counter, emitted a great beer belch, and swept a squealing
Princess up onto his shoulders. He was out of the doors before
Janine could wrap her bare legs around Roland’s neck.

Roland scorned the veranda stairs, and vaulted over the far
railing. It was a four-foot drop to the lawn below, and Janine, a
veteran of the hunt, only stayed on his shoulders by a fierce
grip in his hair and a miracle of balance, but they had cut two
yards off the big Matabele’s lead. They stayed close behind
him down the long curving drive, jungle boots pounding on the
black tarmac with Roland grunting at each stride, and Janine
bouncing and swaying on his shoulders. The spectators howled and
leaned on the horns of the parked trucks so the noise was
pandemonium.

They reached the main gates, and the black sentry recognized
Roland and gave him a flourishing salute.

‘At ease!’ Roland told him as he turned in
Gondele’s wake.

‘If you get a chance, pull Princess off,’ he
panted to Janine.

‘That’s cheating,’ she protested
breathlessly.

‘This is war, baby.’

Gondele was breathing like a bull, lumbering up the hill with
the headlights glistening on his burnished muscles, and still two
paces behind him Roland ran with quick light steps. Janine could
feel the strength flowing out of his body like electricity, but
it was not that alone that started whittling the inches off
Gondele’s lead. It was that same rage to win that she had
seen grip him on the courts at Queen’s Lynn.

Then suddenly they were running side by side, straining their
hearts and bodies beyond mere physical strength. It was at the
end a contest of wills, a trial of who could bear the agony
longest.

Janine looked across at Princess, and saw in her set
expression that she expected Janine to foul her, both knew it was
within the rules and she had heard Roland order Janine to do
so.

‘Don’t worry,’ Janine called to her, and got
a flashing smile as a reward.

Shoulder to shoulder the two men came around the bend of the
driveway; the lawn stretched to meet them, and beneath her Janine
felt Roland make some almost mystical call on reserves that
should not have existed. It was to her unthinkable that anyone
could make such effort to win a childish contest – a normal
man could not have done it, a totally sane man would not have
done it. There was a wildness, a madness in Roland Ballantyne
that frightened and at the same time elated her.

In the glare of the headlights and the roar of the crowd,
Roland Ballantyne simply burned off the bigger stronger man and
left him floundering half a dozen yards behind him as he leaped
up the stairs, crashed through the mess doors and dropped Janine
onto the bar-top.

His face was swollen and ugly red as he thrust it inches from
hers. ‘I told you to do something,’ he snarled
hoarsely. ‘Don’t you ever disobey me again,
ever!’ And in that moment she was truly afraid of him.

Then he went to Esau Gondele and the two of them threw their
arms around each other and sobbed with laughter and exhaustion
and staggered in a circle trying to lift each other off their
feet. The adjutant thrust a roll of bank-notes into
Roland’s hand. ‘Your winnings, sir,’ he said,
and Roland slapped it onto the bar counter. ‘Come on, lads,
help me drink it up,’ he wheezed, still fighting for
breath.

Esau Gondele took one sip of his beer and then poured the rest
over Roland’s head.

‘Sorry, Nkosi,’ he roared. ‘But I’ve
always wanted to do that.’

‘This is, my dear, just a typical homely evening with
Ballantyne’s Scouts.’ Janine looked around to find
Douglas Hunt-Jeffreys beside her, with the ivory cigarette-holder
between his teeth. ‘Some time when the varsity rugger club
atmosphere palls, and your intended is away in the bush, you
might find a little civilized company makes a pleasant
change.’

‘The only thing about you that interests me is what
makes you think I might be interested.’

‘It takes one to recognize one, darling.’

‘You are impertinent. I could tell Roland.’

‘You could,’ he agreed. ‘But then I always
like to live dangerously. Goodnight, Doctor Carpenter, I hope we
meet again.’

They left the mess after two in the morning. Despite the
alcohol he had taken, Roland drove as he always did, very fast
and well. When they reached her apartment, he carried her up the
stairs, despite her muted protests. ‘You will wake
everybody in the building!’

‘If they sleep so lightly – just wait until I get
you upstairs. They will be sending you lawyers’ letters, or
get-well cards.’