The anger was with him again whenever he filled in another section of the map, or when he lay in bed each night, smoking a last cigarette and studying the blue and red patchwork of Courtney holdings. He smiled grimly when he thought what Fergus MacDonald would say about such wealth in the hands of a single father and son, and then he wrote in the leather-bound notebook any new information that he had accumulated during the day.
He would switch out the light then and lie long awake, and often, when at last he slept, he dreamed of Chaka’s Gate, of the great cliffs guarding the river and the tumbled wilderness beyond the gates, that concealed a lonely grave. A grave unmarked, overgrown now with the lush restless vegetation of Africa – or, perhaps, long ago dug open by hyena or the other scavengers.
One day, when Mark spent his customary evening’s study in the library reading-room, he turned first to the recent issues of the Ladyburg Lantern, searching through those editions covering the week following his flight from Ladyburg, and he almost missed the few lines on an inside page.
Yesterday, the funeral service was held of Mr Jacob Henry Rossouw at the Methodist Church in Pine Street. Mr Rossouw fell to his death in the gorge of the Baboon Stroom below the new railway bridge while hunting with a party of his friends.
Mr Rossouw was a bachelor employed by the Zululand Sugar Co. Ltd. The funeral service was attended by the Chairman of the Company, Mr Dirk Courtney, who made a short but moving tribute at the graveside, once again illustrating his deep concern for even the humblest of the employees of his many prosperous enterprises. ‘Greatness shows itself in small ways.’
The date coincided neatly with his escape from the valley. The man might have been one of his hunters, perhaps the one who had caught his damaged ankle as he hung from the goods truck. If he was, then the connection with Dirk Courtney was direct. Slowly Mark was twisting a rope together, but he needed a head for the noose.
Yet, in one direction, Mark felt easier. There seemed to exist a deep rift between father and son, between General Sean Courtney and Dirk. None of their companies overlapped, none of their directorships interlocked, and each pyramid of companies stood alone and separated. This separation seemed to extend beyond finance or business, and Mark had found no evidence of any contact between the two men at the social level, in fact active hostility between them was indicated by the sudden change in the Ladyburg Lantern’s attitude to the father, once the son took control of its editorial policy.
Yet he was not entirely convinced. Fergus MacDonald had repeatedly warned him of the perfidious cunning of the bosses, of all wealthy men. ‘They will go to any lengths to hide their guilt, Mark, no trick is too low or despicable to cover the stains of honest workers’ blood on their hands.’
Perhaps Mark’s first concern must be to establish beyond doubt that he was hunting only one man. Then, of course, the next move must be to go back to Ladyburg, to try and provoke another attack – but this time he would be ready for it and have some idea from which direction it would come. His mind went back to the way in which he and Fergus MacDonald had used Cuthbert, the dummy, to draw fire and force the enemy to reveal himself, and he grinned ruefully at the thought that this time he must do Cuthbert’s job himself. He felt for the first time a fear he had not known in France before a shoot, for he must go out against something more formidable and ruthless than he had ever believed possible before, and the time was fast approaching.
He was distracted then by another massive epistle from Ladyburg, one that gave him honest cause for delaying direct action.
My dearest darling,
What great news I have for you!! If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, then he (or she!) must go to the mountain. My sister and her husband are going to Durban for four days’ holiday, and they have asked me to join them. We will arrive on the fourteenth – and will be staying at the Marine Hotel on the Marine Parade — won’t we be posh!
Mark surprised himself by the strength of his pleasure and anticipation. He had not realized the affection that he had slowly accumulated at such long remove for this willing and friendly creature. He was surprised again when he met her, both of them dressed with obvious pains and attention to detail, both in an agony of shyness and restraint under the surveillance of Marion’s sister.
They sat on the hotel veranda and stiffly sipped tea, making small talk with the sister while surreptitiously examining each other over the rim of their cups.
Marion had lost weight, Mark saw immediately, but would never know that the girl had almost starved herself to do so in anticipation of this moment; and she was pretty - much prettier than he remembered or than her photo. graph suggested. More important was her transparent wholesomeness and warmth. Mark had been a lonely boy for most of his life, but more particularly so in these last weeks, living in his small dingy room with only the cockroaches and his plans for company.
Now he reacted to her like a traveller coming in out of the snow-storm responds to the tavern fire.
The sister took her duties as chaperone seriously at first, but she was only five or six years older than Mark, and perceptive enough to be aware of the younger people’s attraction for each other and to recognize the essential decency of the boy. She was also young enough and herself so recently married as to have sympathy for them.
‘I would like to take Marion for a drive – we wouldn’t be gone very long.’ Marion turned eyes as soulful and pleading as those of a dying gazelle on her sister.
‘Oh please, Lyn.’
The Cadillac was a demonstration model, and Mark had personally supervised while two of the Zulu employees at Natal Motors had burnished its paintwork to a dazzle.
He drove down as far as the mouth of the Umgeni River, with Marion sitting close and proud and pretty beside him.
Mark felt as good as he ever had in his life; dressed in fashionable style, with gold in his pocket, a big shining automobile under him and a pretty adoring girl beside him.
Adoring was the only word to describe Marion’s attitude towards him. She could hardly drag her eyes from his face for a moment, and she glowed every time he glanced across at her.
She had never imagined herself beside such a handsome, sophisticated beau. Not even her most romantic daydreams had ever included a shining Cadillac, and a decorated war hero.
When he parked off the road and they picked a path through the densely overgrown dunes down to the river mouth, she clung to his arm like a drowning sailor.
The river was in spate from some upland rainstorm; half a mile wide and muddy brown as coffee, it surged and swirled down to meet the green thrust of the sea in a leaping ridge of white water. Carried down on the brown water were the debris of the flood, and the carcasses of drowned beasts.
A dozen big black sharks were there to scavenge, pushing high up the river, their dark triangular fins knifing and circling.
Mark and Marion- sat side by side on a dune overlooking the estuary.
‘Oh,’ sighed Marion, as though her heart would break, ‘we’ve only got four days together.’
‘Four days is a long time,’ Mark laughed at her, ‘I don’t know what we are going to do with it all.’
They spent nearly every hour of it together. Dicky Lancome was most understanding with his star salesman. ‘Just show your face here for a few minutes every morning, to keep the boss happy, then you can slip off. I’ll hold the fort for you.’
‘What about the demonstration model?’ Mark asked boldly.
‘I’ll tell him you are making a sale to a rich sugar farmer. Take it, old chap, but for God’s sake, don’t wrap it round a tree.’
‘I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you, Dicky, really I don’t.’
‘Don’t worry, old boy, we’ll think of a way.’
‘I won’t ask again, it’s just that this girl is really special.’
‘I understand.’ Dicky patted his shoulder in a paternal fashion. ‘Most important thing in life—a likely bit of crumpet. My heart goes out to you, old so
n. I’ll be cheering you on in spirit every inch of the way.’
‘It’s not like that, Dicky,’ Mark denied, blushing fiercely.
‘Of course not, it never is. But enjoy it anyway,’ and Dicky winked lasciviously.
Mark and Marion — she was right, it did sound rather grand— spent their days wandering hand in hand through the city. She was delighted by its bustle and energy, enchanted by its sophistication, by its culture, its museums and tropical gardens, by its playground beachfront with myriad fairy lights, the open-air concerts in the gardens of the old fort, by the big departmental stores in West Street, Stuttafords and Ansteys, their windows packed with expensive imported merchandise, by the docks with great merchant ships lining the wharf and the steam cranes huffing and creaking above them.
They watched the Indian fishermen running their surfboats out from the glistening white beach, through the marching lines of green surf to lay their long nets in a wide semi-circle out into deep water. Then Marion hitched up her skirts and Mark rolled his trousers to the knee to help the half-naked fishermen draw in the long lines, until at last a shimmering silver mound of fish lay on the boat, still quivering and twitching and leaping in the sunlight.
They ate strawberry-flavoured icecream out of crisp yellow cones, and they rode in an open rickshaw down the Marine Parade, drawn by a leaping howling Zulu dressed in an incredible costume of feathers and beads and horns.
One night they joined Dicky Lancome and a languid siren to whom he was paying court, and the four of them ate grilled crayfish and danced to a jazz band at the Oyster Box Hotel at Umhlanga Rocks, and came roaring home in a Cadillac, tiddly and happy and singing, with Dicky driving like Nuvorelli, rocketing the big car over the dusty rutted road, and Mark and Marion cuddling blissfully in the back seat.
In the lobby of the hotel, under the watchful eye of the night clerk who was poised to intercept Mark if he tried for the elevator, they whispered goodnight to each other.
‘I have never been so happy in all my life,’ she told him simply, and stood on tip-toe to kiss him full on the lips.
Dicky Lancome had disappeared with both Cadillac and lady-friend, probably to some dark and secluded parking place along the sea front, and as Mark walked home alone through the deserted midnight streets, he thought about Marion’s words and found himself agreeing. He could not remember being so happy either, but then, he grinned ruefully, it hadn’t been a life crowded with wild happiness up to then. To a pauper, a shilling is a fortune.
It was their last day together, and the knowledge weighted their pleasure with poignancy. Mark left the Cadillac at the end of a narrow track in the sugar cane fields and they climbed down to the long white curve of snowy sand beach, guarded at each end by rocky headlands.
The sea was so clear that from the tall dunes they could see deep down to the reefs and sculptured sand banks below the surface. Farther out, the water shaded to a deep indigo blue, that met at last a far horizon piled with a mountainous range of cumulus clouds, purple, blue and silver in the brilliant sunlight.
They walked down barefooted through the crunching sand, carrying the picnic basket that Marion’s hotel had prepared for them and a threadbare grey blanket from Mark’s bed, and it seemed that they were the only two persons in the world.
They changed into swimming costumes, modestly separating to each side of a dense dark green milk-wood bush, and then they ran laughing into the warm clear water at the edge of the beach.
The thin black cotton of Marion’s costume clung wetly to her body, so that it seemed that she were naked, although clothed from mid thigh to neck, and when she pulled the red rubber bathing cap from her head and shook out the thick tresses of her hair, Mark found himself physically roused by her for the first time.
Somehow the pleasure he had taken in her up until then had been that of friendship, and companionship. Her patent adoration had filled some void in his soul, and he had felt protective, almost brotherly towards her.
She sensed instantly, with some feminine instinct, the change in him. The laughter died on her lips, and her eyes went grave and there were shades in them of fear or apprehension – but she turned to face him, lifting her face to him, seeming to steel herself with a conscious act of courage.
They lay side by side on the grey blanket, in the heavy shade of the milk bush, and the midday was heavy and languorous with heat and the murmur of insects.
The wet bathing-suits were cool against their hot skins, and when Mark gently peeled hers away, her skin was damp beneath his fingers, and he was surprised to find her body so different from Helena’s. Her skin was clear milky white, tipped with palest pink, lightly sugared with white beach sand, and the hair of her body was fine as silk, light golden brown and soft as smoke. Her body was soft also, with the gentle yielding spring of woman’s flesh, unlike the lean hard muscle of Helena’s, and it had a different feel to it, a plasticity that intrigued and excited him.
Only when she gasped, and bit her lip and then turned her face and hid it against his neck, did Mark realize suddenly, through the mists of his own arousal, that all the skills Helena had taught him were not moving Marion, as they were him. Her body was rigid, and her face pale and tensed.
‘Marion, are you all right?’
‘It’s all right, Mark.’
‘You don’t like this?’
‘It’s the first time it’s ever happened—’
‘We can stop—’
‘No.’
‘We don’t have to—’
‘No, Mark, go on. It’s what you want.’
‘But you don’t want it.’
‘I want what you want, Mark. Go on. It’s for you.’
‘No—’
‘Go on, Mark, please go on.’ And now she looked at him and he saw her expression was pitiful, her eyes swimming with bright tears and her lips quivering.
‘Oh, Marion, I’m sorry.’ He recoiled from her, horrified by the misery he saw reflected in her expression, but immediately she followed him throwing both arms around his neck, lying half on top of him.
‘No, Mark – don’t be sorry. I want you to be happy.’
‘It won’t make me happy – if you don’t want to.’
‘Oh, Mark, don’t say that. Please don’t say that – all I want in the world is to make you happy.’
She was brave and enduring, holding him tightly over her, both arms locked around his neck, her body rigid but spread compliantly, and for Mark the ordeal was almost as painful; he suffered for her as he felt the tremble of locked nerves and the small sounds of pain and tension that she tried to keep deep in her throat.
Mercifully for both of them, it was swiftly ended, but still she clung to him.
‘Was it good for you, Mark my darling?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he assured her vehemently. ‘It was wonderful.’
‘I want so much to be good for you in every way, my darling. Always and in every way, I want to be good for you.’
‘It was the best thing in my life,’ he told her, and she stared into his eyes for a moment, searching for assurance, and finding it because she wanted it so terribly.
‘I’m so glad, darling,’ she whispered, and drew his head down on to her damp warm bosom, so soft and pink and comforting. Holding him like that, she began to rock him gently, the way a mother rocks her child. ‘I’m so glad, Mark, and it will be better and better. I’ll learn, you see if I don’t, and I’ll try so hard for you, darling, always.’
Driving home slowly in the dusk, she sat proudly next to him on the wide leather seat, and there was a new air about her, an air of confidence and achievement, as though she had grown from child to matron in the space of a few short hours.
Mark felt a rush of deep affection for her. He felt that he wanted to protect her, to keep that goodness and sweetness from souring, to protect her from unhappiness and wanton damage. For a fleeting moment he felt regret that she had not been able to feed that raging madness of his body, and regret also that
he had not been able to lead her through the storm to the same peace. Perhaps that would come, perhaps they would find the way together – and if they didn’t, well it wasn’t that important. The important thing was the sense of duty he felt towards this woman; she had given him everything of which she was capable, and it was his duty now to give back in equal measure — to protect and cherish her.
‘Marion, will you marry me?’ he asked quietly, and she began to cry softly, nodding her head vehemently through the tears, unable to speak.
Marion’s sister, Lynette, was married to a young lawyer from Ladyburg and the four of them sat up late that night discussing the betrothal.
‘Pa won’t give permission for you to marry before you are twenty-one, you know how Peter and I had to wait.’
Peter Botes, a serious young man, nodded wisely and placed his finger tips together carefully. He had thin sandy hair, and was as pompous as a judge in scarlet.
‘It won’t do any harm to wait a few years—’
‘Years?’ wailed Marion.
‘You’re only nineteen,’ Peter reminded her. ‘And Mark will need to build up some capital before he takes on the responsibility of a family.’
‘I can go on working,’ Marion came in hotly.
‘They all say that.’ Peter waggled his head sagely. ‘And then two months later there’s a baby on the way.’
‘Peter!’ His wife rebuked him primly, but he went on calmly.
‘And now, Mark, what about your prospects? Marion’s father will want to know.’
Mark hadn’t expected to present an account of his affairs, and on the spur of the moment he could not be certain if his total worth was forty-two pounds twelve shillings – or seven and sixpence.
He saw them off on the Ladyburg train the next morning, with a long lingering embrace and a promise to write every day, while Marion swore she would work at filling her bottom drawer, and at altering her father’s prejudice against early marriage. Walking back from the railway, Mark remembered, for no apparent reason, a spring morning in France coming back out of the line to go into reserve, and his shoulders went back and his step quickened and became springy and elastic once more. He was out of the line, and he had survived – that was as far as he could think at that moment.