The Sound of Thunder (16 page)

“Your matches are on the desk. ” Ada came to his assistance.

“Oh! Thank you. ” He got the pipe drawing, and continued,

“You see, your son was attached to an irregular unit-there was no record of next-of-kin, and when he came to us from Colenso six weeks ago he was, shall we say, in no condition to inform us of your address. ” “Can we see Pa now?” Dirk could no longer contain himself, for the past five minutes he had wriggled and fidgeted on the couch beside Ada.

“You’ll see your father in a few minutes, young man.” And the surgeon turned back to Ada. “As it so happens, Mrs. Courtney, you have been spared a great deal of anxiety. At first there were grave doubts that we would be able to save your son’s life, let alone his right leg. Four weeks it hung in the balance, so to speak. But now”-and he beamed at Ada with justifiable pride’ He well?” Quickly, anxiously she asked.

“What a formidable constitution your son has, all muscle and determination.” He nodded, still stiff ling “Yes, he’s well on the road to recovery. There may be a slight limp in the right leg-but when you weigh that against what might have been . he spread his hands eloquently. “Now the sister will take you through to him.”

“When can he come home?” Ada asked from the doorway.

Soon-another month, perhaps.

A deep veranda, cool with shade and the breeze that came in across the hospital lawns. A hundred high metal beds along the wall, a hundred men in grey flannel nightshirts propped against white pillows.

Some of them slept, a few were reading, others talked quietly or played chess and cards on boards set between the beds. But one lay withdrawn, staring at, but not seeing, the pair of fiscal shrikes which squabbled raucously over a frog on the lawn.

The beard was gone, removed while he was too weak to protest on the orders of the ward sister who considered it unhygienic, and the result was a definite improvement that even Sean secretly admitted.

Shielded for so long, the skin on the lower half of his face was smooth and white like that of a boy; fifteen years had been shaved away with that coarse black matt. Now emphasis was placed on the heavy brows which, in turn, directed attention to his eyes, dark blue, like cloud shadow on mountain lakes. Darker blue at this moment as he considered the contents of the letter he held in his right hand.

The letter was three weeks old, and already the cheap paper was splitting along the creases from constant refolding. It was a long letter, much of it devoted to detailed description of the clumsy sparring along the Tugela laver in which Butler’s army was now engaged.

There was one reference to the headaches from which the writer periodically suffered as a result of his wound which was now externally healed, and many more to the deep gratitude that Saul felt for him.

These embarrassed Sean to such an extent that when re-reading the letter he scowled and skipped each one as he came to it.

But there was one paragraph to which Sean returned each time, and read slowly, whispering it to himself so that he could savour each word: I remember telling you about Ruth, my wife. As you know, she escaped from Pretoria and is in Pietermaritzburg staying with relatives of hers. Yesterday I had a letter from her that contained the most wonderful tidings. We have been married four years this coming June, and now at last as a result of our brief meeting when she arrived in Natal-I am to become a father! Ruth tells me she has determined on a daughter (though I am certain it will be a son!) and she has selected a name. It is a most unusual name, to be charitable-I can see that it will require a great deal of diplomacy on my part to make her change her mind. (Among her many virtues is an obstinacy reminiscent of the rock of ages.) She wants to name the poor waif -Storm’@-Storm Friedman-and the prospect appauls me!

Although our faiths differ, I have written to Ruth asking her agree to your election as

“Sandek”-which is the equivalent of godfather. I can foresee no objection from Ruth (especially in view of the debt which we both owe you) and it needs now only your consent.

Will you give it?

At the same time I have explained to Ruth your present situation and address (co Greys Hospital!) and asked her to visit you there so that she can thank you personally. I warn you in advance that she knows as much about you as I do-I am not one to hide my enthusiasms!

Lying with the letter clutched in his hand, Sean stared out across the lawns into the sunlight. Beneath the bedclothes, swelling up like a pregnant belly, was the wicker basket that cradled his leg. “Storm!”

he whispered, remembered the lightning, playing blue and blinding white upon her body.

“Why doesn’t she come?” Three weeks he had waited for her. “She knows that I am here, why doesn’t she come to me?”

“Visitors for you. ” The sister paused beside him and straightened the bedclothes.

“Who? ” He struggled up on to his good elbow, with the other arm still in its sling across his chest.

“A lady.” And he felt it surge through him. “And a small boy. ” The cold backwash of disappointment, as he realized it was not her.

Then immediately guilt, Ada and Dirk, how could he hope it was someone else?

Without the beard Dirk did not recognize him until he was ten paces away. Then he charged, his cap flew from his head and his dark hair, despite the bonds of brilliantine, sprang up into curls as he ran. He was squeaking incoherently as he reached the bed, clambered up on to Sean’s chest to lock both arms around his neck.

It was some time before Sean could prise him loose and look at him.

“Well, boy,” he said, and then again, “well, my boy.” Unable to trust himself not to lay Ins love for the child bare for all to see-there were a hundred men watching and grinning, Sean sought diversion by turning to Ada.

She waited quietly, as she had spent half her life waiting, but when he looked at her the tenderness showed in her smile.

“Sean.” She stooped to kiss him. “What hap penned to your beard?

You look so young.”

They stayed for an hour, most of which was taken up by a monologue from Dirk. In the intervals while he regained his breath Ada and Sean were able to exchange all their accumulated news. Finally, Ada stood up from the chair beside Sean’s bed’ The train leaves in half an hour, and Dirk has school tomorrow. We’ll come up from Ladyburg each week-end until you are ready to return home. ” Getting Dirk out of the hospital was like evicting an unruly drunk from a bar. Alone Ada could not manage it and she enlisted a male hospital orderly to the cause.

Kicking and struggling in tantrum, Dirk was carried down the veranda with his screams ringing back to Sean long after he had disappeared from view.

“I want my Dad. I want to stay with my Dad.

“Benjamin Goldberg was the executor of his brother’s estate.

estate consisted of a forty-per-cent shareholding in Goldberg Bros. Ltd.” a company which listed among its assets a brewery, four small hotels and a very large one situated on the Marine Parade at Durban, sixteen butcher shops, and a factory devoted to the manufacture of polo ny pork sausages, bacon and smoked ham. The lag products caused Benjamin some embarrassment, but their manufacture was too profitable to be discontinued. Benjamin was also the Chairman of the Board of Goldberg Bros.” and a sixty-per-cent shareholder. The presence of an army of twenty-five thousand hungry and thirsty men in Natal had increased the consumption of beer and bacon in a manner that caused Benjamin further embarrassment, for he was a peaceable man. The huge profits forced upon him by the hostilities both troubled and delighted him.

These same two emotions were evoked by the presence in his household of his niece. Benjamin had four sons and not a single daughter, his brother Aaron had left one daughter for whom Benjamin would gladly have traded all four of his own sons. Not that the boys weren’t doing very well, all of them settled into the business very nicely. One of them running the Port Natal Hotel, the eldest managing the brewery and the two others in the meat section. But-and here Benjamin sighed-but Ruth!

There was a girl for a man’s old age. He looked at her across the polished stinkwood breakfast table with its encrustation of -H silver and exquisite bone china, and he sighed again.

“Now, Uncle Ben, don’t start again. Please. ” Ruth buttered her toast firmly.

“So all I’m saying is that we need him here. Is that so bad?

“Saul is a lawyer.”

“Nu? Is that so bad. He’s a lawyer, but we need a lawyer with us. The fees I pay out to those other schmo ks ” “He doesn’t want to come into the Company.”

“All right. We know he doesn’t want charity. We know he doesn’t want your money working for him. We know all about his pride-but now he’s got responsibilities. Already he should be thinking about you-and the baby-not so much about what he wants.

At the mention of the baby, Ruth frowned slightly. Benjamin noticed it, there were few things he did not notice. Young people! If only you could tell them. He sighed again.

“All right. We’ll leave it until Saul comes back on leave, ” he agreed heavily.

Ruth, who had never mentioned her uncle’s offers of employment to Saul had a momentary vision of living in Pietermaritzburg-close enough to be drowned in the tidal waves of affection that emanated from her Uncle Benjamin, caught like a tiny insect in the suffocating web of family ties and duties. She flashed at him in horror.

“You even mention it to Saul and I’ll never speak to you again.

Her cheeks flushed wondrously and fire burned in her eyes.

Even the heavy braid of dark hair seemed to come alive like the tail of an angry lioness, clicking as she moved her head.

Oi Yoi Yoi! Benjamin hid his delight behind hooded lids. What a temper! what a woman! She could keep a man young for ever.

Ruth jumped up from the table. For the first time he noticed that she wore riding habit.

“Where are you going? Ruth, you’re not riding again today.

“Yes I am

“The baby!

“Uncle Ben, why did you never learn to mind your own business?”

And she marched out of the room. Her waist was not yet thickened with pregnancy and she moved with a grace that played a wild discord on the old man’s heart strings.

“You should not let her treat you that way, Benjamin. ” Mildly, the way she did everything, his wife spoke from across the table.

“There’s something troubling that girl.” Carefully Benjamin wiped egg from his moustache, laid the napkin on the table, consulted the gold fob watch he drew from his waistcoat, and stood up. “Something big. You mark my words.”

It was Friday, strange how Friday had become the pivot on which the whole week turned. Ruth urged the chestnut stallion, and he lengthened his stride under her, surging forward with such power that she had to check him a little and bring him down into an easy canter.

She was early and waited ten impatient minutes in the Oaklined lane behind Greys Hospital before, like a conspirator, the little nurse slipped out through the hedge.

“Have you got it? ” Ruth demanded. The girl nodded, around quickly and took an envelope out of her grey nursing cloak. Ruth exchanged it for a gold sovereign. Clutching the d coin the nurse started back for the hedge.

“Wait. ” Ruth stopped her. This was her only physical contact and she was reluctant to break it so soon. “How is he?

“It’s all there, ma’am. ” “I know-but tell me how he looks. What he does and says,” Ruth insisted.

“Oh, he’s looking fine now. He’s been up and about on his sticks all week, with that big black savage helping him, The first day he fell and you should have heard him swear. Lordy! ” They both laughed together.

“He’s a real card, that one. He and sister had another tiff yesterday when she wanted to wash him. He called her a shameless strumpet. She gave him what for all right. But you could see she was ever so pleased and she went around telling everybody about it.

She bur bled on and Ruth listened enchanted, until: “Then yesterday, you know what he did when I was changing his dressing?” She blushed coyly. “He gave me a pinch behind!”

Ruth felt a hot flood of anger wash over her. Suddenly she realized that the girl was pretty in an insipid fashion.

“And he said.

“Thank you!” Ruth had to restrain the hand that held her riding crop. “I have to go now. ” Usually the long skirts of her habit hampered her in mounting, but this time she found herself in the saddle without effort.

“Next week, ma’am?”

“Yes,” and she hit the stallion across the shoulder. He lunged forward so violently that she had to clutch at the pommel of the saddle. She rode him as she had never ridden a horse before, driving him with whip and spur until dark patches of sweat showed on his flanks and froth spattered back along his shoulders, so that by the time she reached a secluded spot on the bank of the Umgeni River far out of town her jealousy had abated and she felt ashamed of herself. She loosened the stallion’s girdle and petted him a little before leaving him tethered to one of the weeping willows, and picking her way down the bank to her favourite log on the water’s edge.

There she settled herself and opened the envelope. If only Sean could have known that his temperature chart, progress report, house-doctor’s recommendations, and the sucrose content of his urine were being so avidly studied, he would probably had added a ruptured spleen to his other ills.

At last Ruth folded the pages into their envelope and tucked it away in the jacket of her habit. He must look so different without his beard. She stared into the pool below her and it seemed as though his face formed in the green water and looked back at her. She touched the

surface with the toe of her riding boot so that the ripples spread and shattered the image.

She was left with only the feeling of loneliness.

“I must not go to him,” she whispered, steeling the resolve which had kept her from him these past weeks since she had known he was there. So close-so terribly near.

Determinedly she looked down again into the pool and tried to conjure up the face of her husband. all she saw was a yellow fish gliding quietly across the sandy bottom with the pattern of its scales showing like the teeth of a file along its sides. She dropped a pebble into the water and the fish darted away.