He realized now that he had been lost and alone, without family or home, and Fergus MacDonald had been the only shelter in the cold. Fergus the older comrade of shared dangers, whom he had trusted without question. Fergus the father figure — and he had followed again, grateful for the guidance, not questioning the destination.
There had, of course, been Helena as well and the hold she had over him, the tightest grip any human could have over another. He had been, and still was, totally obsessed with her. She had awakened his long suppressed and tightly controlled sexuality. Now it was but a breath away from bursting the wall he had built to dam it; when it burst, it might be a force he could not control, and that thought terrified him almost as much as the other.
He tried now to separate the woman from her womanhood, tried to see the person beyond this devastating web she wove around his senses, and he succeeded in as much that he realized that she was not a person he could admire, not the mother he would choose for his children. Also, she was the wife of an old comrade who trusted him completely.
Now he felt he was ready to make the decision to leave, and to carry that resolve through firmly.
He would leave Fordsburg immediately, leave Fergus MacDonald and his dark, cataclysmic schemes. He felt his spirits lighten instantly at the prospect. He would not miss him, nor that drab monastic pay office with its daily penance of boredom and drudgery. He felt the bright young spirit of anticipation flame again.
He would leave Fordsburg on the next train— and Helena. Immediately the flame flickered and his spirit plunged. There was a physical pain in his groin at the prospect, and he felt the cracks open in the dam wall of his passions.
It was dark when he left his bicycle in the garden shed, and he heard voices raised jovially in the house and bursts of laughter. Lights blazed beyond the curtained kitchen windows and when he stepped into the room there were four men at the table. Helena crossed quickly and hugged him impulsively, laughing, with high spots of colour in her cheeks, before taking his hand and leading him to the table.
‘Welcome, comrade.’ Harry Fisher looked up at Mark with those disturbing eyes and the shock of dark wiry hair hanging on to his forehead. ‘You are in time to join the celebration.’
‘Grab the lad a glass, Helena,’ laughed Fergus, and she dropped his hand and hurried to the cupboard to fetch a glass and fill it with black stout from the bottle.
Harry Fisher raised his own glass to Fergus. ‘Comrades, I give you the new member of the Central Committee – Fergus MacDonald.’
‘Isn’t it wonderful, Mark?’ Helena squeezed Mark’s hand.
‘He’s a good man,’ growled Harry Fisher. ‘The appointment isn’t too soon. We need men with Comrade MacDonald’s guts.’ The others nodded agreement over their stout glasses, the two of them were both members of the local committee of the party; Mark knew them well from the meetings.
‘Come, lad.’ Fergus made room for him at the table and he squeezed in beside him, drawing all their attention.
‘And you, young Mark,’ Harry Fisher laid a powerful hairy hand on his shoulder, ‘we are going to issue your party card—’
‘How about that, lad!’ Fergus winked and nudged Mark in the ribs. ‘Usually it takes two years or more, we don’t let the rabble into the party, but you’ve got friends on the Central Committee now.’
Mark was about to speak, to refuse the honour he was being accorded. Nobody had asked him, they had taken it that as he was Fergus’ protégé, he was for them. Mark was about to deny it, to tell them the decision he had made that day – when that sense of danger warned him. He had seen the guns, if he was not a friend then he was an enemy with a fatal secret. A secret that they could not risk. He had no doubts at all about these men, now. If he was an enemy, then they would see that he never passed that secret on to another man. But the moment for refusal had passed.
‘Comrade MacDonald, I have a mission for you. It is urgent – and vital. Can you leave your work for two weeks?’
‘I’ve got a sick mother,’ Fergus chuckled. ‘When do you want me to go, and what do you want me to do?’
‘I want you to leave, say Wednesday, that will give me time to give you your orders and for you to make your arrangements.’ Harry Fisher took a swallow of stout and the froth stayed on his upper lip. ‘I’m sending you to visit all the local committees—Capetown, Bloemfontein, Port Elizabeth – so that each of them can be co-ordinated.’
Mark felt a guilty lift of relief at the words, there would be no confrontation with Fergus now. He could merely slip away while he was gone on his mission. Then he glanced up and was startled by the gaze that Helena had fastened upon him. She stared at him with the fixed hungry expression of a leopard watching its prey from cover in the last instant before its spring.
Now when their eyes met, she smiled again that secret knowing smile, and the tip of her pink tongue dabbed at her slightly parted lips.
Mark’s heart pounded to the point of physical pain and he dropped his eyes hurriedly to his glass. He was to be alone with Helena, and the prospect filled him with dread and a surging passionate heat.
Mark carried Fergus’ cheap and badly battered suitcase down to the station, and as they took the short cut across open veld, the thick frost crunched like sugar under their feet, and sparkled in myriad diamond points of light in the first rays of the sun.
At the station they waited with four other members of the party for the southbound mail, and when at last it came, puffing hoarsely, shooting steam high into the frosty air, it was thirty-five minutes late.
‘Thirty-five minutes late is almost early for the railways,’ Fergus laughed, and shook hands with each of them in turn, slapping their shoulders before scrambling up the steel ladder into the coach. Mark passed his suitcase up through the open window.
‘Look after Helena, lad, and yourself.’
Mark stood and watched the train run out southwards, shrinking dramatically in size until the sound of it was a mere whisper fading to nothingness. Then he turned and started up the hill towards the mine just as the hooters began their mournful wailing howl that echoed off the yellow mesas of the dumps, summoning the disorderly columns of men to their appointed labours. Mark walked with them, one in a thousand, distinguished from the others neither in appearance nor achievement. Once again he felt a sense of seething discontent, a vague but growing knowledge that this was not all that was life, not all that he was capable of doing with his youth and energy; and he looked curiously at the men who hurried with him towards the iron gates at the mine hooter’s imperious summons.
All of them wore that closed withdrawn look, behind which Mark was convinced lurked the same misgivings as now assaulted him. Surely they also felt the futility of the dull daily repetition – the young ones at least must feel it. The older and greyer must regret it; deep down they must mourn for the long sunny days, now past, spent toiling in endless drudgery for another man’s coin. They must mourn the fact that when they went, they would leave no footprints, no ripple on the surface, no monument, except perhaps a few sons to repeat the meaningless cycle, all of them interchangeable, all of them dispensable.
He paused at the gates, standing aside while the stream of humanity flowed past him, and slowly the sense of excitement built up in him, the certainty that there was something, some special and worthwhile task for him to perform. Some special place that waited for him, and he knew he must go on and find it.
He hurried forward, suddenly grateful to Fergus MacDonald for placing this pressure on him, for forcing him to face himself, for breaking the easy drifting course he had taken since his flight from Ladyburg.
‘You are late, Anders.’ The supervisor looked up from his ledgers severely, and each of his juniors repeated the gesture, a long row of them with the same narrow disapproving expressions.
‘What have you got to say?’
‘I merely called in to clean out my desk,’ said Mark smiling, the excitement still on him. ‘And to throw in my
time.’
The disapproving expressions changed slowly to shock.
It was dusk when Mark opened the back gate of the cottage and went up the short walk to the kitchen. He had walked all day at random, driven on restlessly by a new torrent of energy and exciting thoughts; he had not realized how hungry he was until he saw the lights in the window and smelled the faint aroma of cooking.
The kitchen was deserted, but Helena called through from the front.
‘Mark, is that you?’ Before he could answer, she appeared in the kitchen door, and leaned one hip against the jamb. ‘I thought you weren’t coming home tonight.’
She wore the blue dress, and Mark knew now that it was her best, reserved for special occasions, and she wore cosmetics — something that Mark had never seen her do before. There were spots of rouge on her cheeks and her lips were painted, giving new lustre to her usually sallow skin. The short dark hair was new washed, shiny in the lamplight, and brushed back, caught over one ear with a tortoise-shell clasp.
Mark stared at her. Her legs-were smooth and sleek in silken stockings, the feet neatly clad in small pumps.
‘Why are you staring, Mark?’
‘You are—’ Mark’s voice turned husky, and caught. He cleared his throat. ‘You are very pretty tonight.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ She laughed, a low throaty chuckle, and she did a slow pirouette, flaring the blue filmy skirt above the silken legs. ‘I’m glad you like it.’ Then she stopped beside him and took his arm. Her touch was a delicious shock, like diving into a mountain pool.
‘Sit down, Mark.’ She led him to the chair at the head of the table. ‘Let me get you a nice beer.’ She went to the ice box, and while she pulled the cap on the bottle and poured, she ran on gaily. ‘I found a goose at the butcher’s – do you like roast goose?’
Saliva poured from under Mark’s tongue. ‘I love it.’
‘With roast potato and pumpkin pie.’
‘For that I would sell my soul.’
Helena laughed delightedly, it wasn’t one of Mark’s usual shy and reserved replies. There was a sense of excitement surrounding him like an aura this evening, echoing her own excitement.
She brought the two glasses, and propped one hip on the table.
‘What shall we drink to?’
‘To freedom,’ he said without hesitation, ‘and a good tomorrow.’
‘I like that,’ she said, and clinked his glass, leaning over him so that the bodice of her dress was at the level of his eyes. ‘But why only tomorrow – why can’t the good times start right now this minute?’
Mark laughed. ‘All right, here’s to a good tonight and a good tomorrow.’
‘Mark!’ Helena pursed her lips in mock disapproval, and immediately he blushed and laughed in confusion.
‘Oh no, I didn’t mean – that sounded dreadful. I didn’t—’
‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’ Helena stood up quickly. She did not want to embarrass him and break the mood, so she crossed to the stove.
‘It’s ready,’ she announced, ‘if you want to eat now.’
She sat opposite him, anticipating his appetite, buttering the thick slices of bread with yellow farm butter and keeping his glass fully charged.
‘Aren’t you eating?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘It’s good — you don’t know what you are missing.’
‘Better than your other girls cooked for you?’ she demanded playfully, and Mark dropped his eyes to his plate and busily loaded his fork.
‘There weren’t any girls.’
‘Oh, Mark, you don’t expect me to believe that! A handsome young fellow like you, and those French girls. I bet you drove them mad.’
‘We were too busy, and besides—’ he stopped.
‘Besides what?’ she insisted, and he looked up at her, silent for a moment, and then he began to talk. It was suddenly so easy to talk to her, and he was buoyed up with his new jubilant mood and relaxed with the food and drink in his belly. He talked to her as he had never talked to another human being, and she answered him with the frankness of another man.
‘Oh, Mark, that’s nonsense. Not every woman is sick, it’s only the street girls.’
‘Yes, I know. I didn’t believe every girl, but well, they are the only ones that a man can—’ he broke off. ‘And the others get babies,’ he went on lamely.
She laughed and clapped her hands with delight. ‘Oh, my darling Mark. It’s not that easy, you know. I have been married for nine years and I’ve never had a baby.’
‘Well,’ Mark hesitated. ‘Well, you are different. I didn’t mean you, when I said those things. I meant other girls.’
‘I’m not sure if that’s meant to be a compliment or an insult,’ she teased again. She had known he was a virgin, of course. There was that transparent shining innocence that glowed from him, his unpractised and appealing awkwardness in the presence of women, that peculiar shyness that would pass so soon but which now heightened her excitement, rousing her in some perverse way. She knew now why some men paid huge sums of money to despoil innocence; she touched his bared forearm now, delighting in the smooth hardness of young muscle, unable to keep her hands off him.
‘Oh, it was a compliment,’ Mark answered her hurriedly.
‘Do you like me, Mark?’
‘Oh, yes. I like you more than I’ve ever liked any other girl.’
‘You see, Mark,’ she leaned closer to him, her voice sinking to a throaty whisper. ‘I’m not sick, and I’m not going to have a baby – ever.’ She lifted her hand and touched his cheek. ‘You are a beautiful man, Mark. I liked you from the first moment I saw you coming up the walk like a stray puppy.’
She stood up slowly and crossed to the kitchen door; deliberately she turned the key and flipped up the light switch. The small room was dark, but for the shaft of light from the hallway.
‘Come, Mark.’ She took his hand and drew him to his feet. ‘We are going to bed now.”
At the door to Mark’s bedroom she reached up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek lightly, and then without another word she let his hand drop and glided away from him.
Uncertainly Mark watched her go, wanting to call to her to stay, wanting to run after her – and yet relieved that she had gone, that the headlong rush into the unknown had abruptly halted. She reached the door of her own bedroom and went through without looking back.
Tom by conflicting emotions, he turned away and went through into his own room. He undressed slowly, disappointment now stronger than relief, and while he folded his clothing, he listened to her quiet movements in the room beyond the thin wall.
He climbed at last into the narrow iron bed, and lay rigid until he had heard the light switch click next door; then he sighed and picked up the book from his bedside table; he had not yet read it through, but now the dull political text might divert his emotions enough to allow him to sleep.
The latch of his door snapped softly. He had not heard her in the passage, and she stepped into the room. She wore the gown of slippery peach-coloured satin and she had recombed her hair and retouched her cheeks and lips.
Carefully, she closed the door and crossed the room with slow swaying hips under the moving satin.
Neither of them spoke as she stopped by the side of his bed.
‘Have you read it, Mark?’ she asked softly.
‘Not all of it.’ He placed the book aside.
‘Well, this isn’t the time to finish it,’ she said, and deliberately opened the gown, slipped it from her shoulders and dropped it over the back of the chair.
She was naked, and Mark gasped. She was so smooth. He had not expected that somehow, and he stared at her as she stood close beside him. Her skin had an olive creaminess, like old porcelain, a sheen that caught the light and glowed. Mark felt his whole body rocked by the exquisite tension of arousal, and he tried feebly to thrust it aside. He tried to think of Fergus, of the trust that had been placed in him.
‘Look
after Helena, lad, and yourself.’
Her breasts were big for the slimness of her body, already they hung heavily, almost overripe, drooping smooth and round with startlingly large nipples, rosy brown and big as ripe grapes. They swung weightily as she moved closer to him, and he saw that there were sparse dark hairs curling from the puckered aureole around the nipples.
There was hair also curling out in little wisps from under her arms, dark glossy hair – and a huge wild bush of it below the smooth creamy slightly bulging belly.
The hair excited him, so dark and crisp against the pale skin, and he stared at it, transfixed. All thoughts of honour and trust faded, he felt the dam wall inside him creak and strain.
She reached out and touched his bare shoulder, and it convulsed his body like a whip-lash.
‘Touch me, Mark,’ she whispered, and he reached out slowly, hesitantly, like a man in a trance, and touched with one finger the smooth ivory warmth of her hip, still staring fixedly at her.
‘Yes, Mark. That’s right.’ She took his wrist and slowly drew his hand upwards, so that the tips of his fingers traced featherlike over her flank and the outline of her ribs.
‘Here, Mark,’ she said, ‘and here.’ The big dark nipples contracted at the touch of his fingers, changing shape, thrusting out and hardening, swelling and darkening. Mark could not believe it was happening, that woman’s flesh could react as swiftly and dramatically as a man’s.
He felt the dam break, and the flood came pouring through the breach. Too long contained, too powerful and weighty to resist, it poured through his mind and body, sweeping all restraint before it.
With a choking cry, he seized her around the waist with both arms, and drew her fiercely to him, pressing his face into the smooth soft warmth of her naked belly.
‘Oh, Mark!’ she cried, and her voice was hoarse and shaking with lust and triumph, as she twisted her fingers into the soft brown hair and stooped over his head.
The days blurred and telescoped together, and the universe shut down to a tiny cottage in a sordid street. Only their bodies marked the passage of time, sleeping and waking to love until exhaustion overtook them and they slept again to wake hungry, ravenous for both food and loving.