Suddenly he began to laugh, a helpless, hopeless shaking of his shoulders, and he laughed until tears ran down his cheeks and his belly ached.
‘Pungushe, I’ll get even for this,’ he promised weakly, through his laughter.
It rained after midnight, a quick hard downpour, just enough to soak Mark and to bow the grass with clinging drops.
Then a small chill wind came nagging like an old wife, and the wet grass soaked his boots until they squelched and chafed with each step, and his cigarettes had disintegrated into a yellow porridge of mangled tobacco and limp rice paper, and the roll of skin and the saddle and the bags cut into his shoulders, and he did not laugh again that night.
In the pre-dawn, the cliffs of Chaka’s Gate were purple and milky smooth, flaming suddenly with the sun’s ardent kiss in vivid rose and bronze, but Mark plodded on under his burden, tired beyond any appreciation of beauty, beyond feeling or even caring, until he came out of the forest on the bank of the Bubezi River and stopped in mid-stride.
He sniffed in total disbelief, and was immediately assailed by the demands of his body, the quick flood of saliva from under his tongue and the cramping of his empty belly. It was the most beautiful odour he had ever smelled, bacon frying and eggs in the pan, slowly gelling and firming in the sizzling fat. He knew it was only a figment of his exhaustion, for he had eaten his last bacon six weeks before.
Then his ears played tricks also, he heard the ring of an axe-blade on wood and the faint melody of Zulu voices, and he lifted his head and stared ahead through the forest into his old camp below the wild figs.
There was a cone of pristine white canvas, an officer’s bell tent, recently pitched beside his own rudely thatched lean-to shelter. The camp fire had been built up, Hlubi, the old Zulu cook, was busy with his pans over it, while, beyond the flames, in a collapsible canvas camp chair, sitting comfortably, was the burly figure of General Courtney, watching his breakfast cook with a critical eye.
He looked up and saw Mark, bedraggled and dirty as an urchin at the edge of the camp, and his grin was wide and boyish.
‘Hlubi,’ he said in Zulu. ‘Another four eggs and a pound of bacon.’
Sean Courtney’s vast energy and enthusiasm were the beacon flames that made the next week one of the memorable interludes in Mark’s life. He would always remember him as he was in those days, belly-laughing at Mark’s tale of woe and frustration with Pungushe, and then still chuckling, calling to his servants and repeating the story to them, with his own comments and embellishments, until they rocked and reeled with mirth and old fat Hlubi overturned a pan of eggs, his great paunch bouncing like a ball and his cannon-ball of a head, with its hoar-frosting of pure white wool, rolling uncontrollably from side to side.
Mark, half-starved on a diet of bully and beans, gorged himself on the miraculous food that flowed from Hlubi’s spade-sized, pink palmed hands. He was amazed at the style in which Sean Courtney braved the hardships of the African bush, from his full sized hip-bath to the portable kerosene-burning ice-box that delivered endless streams of frothing cold beer against the stunning heat of midday.
‘Why travel in steerage, when you can go first class?’ Sean asked, and winked at Mark as he spread a large-scale map of northern Zululand on the camp table. ‘Now, what have you got to tell me?’
Their discussions lasted late into each night, with a Petromax hissing in the tree overhead and the jackals yipping and piping along the river, and in the days they rode the ground. Sean Courtney up on Spartan, so clearly enjoying every moment of it, with the vitality of a man half his age, keeping going without a check even in the numbing heat of noon, inspecting the site that Mark had chosen for the main camp, arguing as to where the Bubezi bridge should be built, following the road through the forest where Mark had blazed the trees, exulting at the sight of a big black nyala ram with his heavy mane and ghostly stripes, as it raced away panic-stricken by the approach of man, sitting in his hip-bath under the fig trees, up to his waist in creaming white suds, with a cigar in his mouth and a long glass of beer in his hand, bellowing for Hlubi to top up with boiling water from the big kettle when his bath cooled. Big and scarred and hairy — and Mark realized then what a wide space this man had filled in his life.
As the day drew closer when he must leave again, Sean’s mood changed, and in the evenings he brooded over the list of animals that Mark had compiled.
‘Fifty zebra,’ he read Mark’s estimate, and poured the last few inches of whisky from the pinch-bottle into his glass. ‘On the Sabi River in ’95 a single herd crossed in front of my wagons. It took forty minutes at the gallop to go by, and the leaders were over the horizon when the tail passed us. There were thirty thousand animals in that one herd.’
‘No elephant?’ he asked, looking up from the list, and when Mark shook his head, he went on softly, ‘We thought it would last for ever. In ’99 when I rode into Pretoria from the north, I had ten tons of ivory on board. Ten tons, twenty thousand pounds of ivory.’
‘No lions there?’ and again Mark shook his head.
‘I don’t think so, General. I’ve seen no sign of them, nor heard them in the night, but when I was a boy I shot one near here. I was with my grandfather.’
‘Yes,’ Sean nodded. ‘When you were a boy – but, what about your son, Mark? Will he ever see a lion in the wild?’
Mark did not answer, and Sean grunted.
‘No lions on the Bubezi River, God! What have we done to this land?’ He stared into the fire. ‘I wonder if it was mere chance that you and I met, Mark. You have opened my eyes and conscience. It was I, and men like me, that did this—’
He shook that great shaggy head and groped in the side-pocket of his baggy hunting-jacket, and produced a leather-bound pocket-size book, a thick little volume, well-thumbed and shiny with the grease of grubby hands.
Mark did not recognize it for a moment, but when he did, he was startled.
‘I did not know you read the Book,’ he exclaimed, and Sean glanced up at him from under beetling brows.
‘I read it,’ he said gruffly. ‘The older I get, the more I read it. There is a lot of solace here.’
‘But, sir,’ Mark persisted, ‘you never go to church.’
This time Sean frowned as though he resented the prying questions. ‘I live my religion,’ he said. ‘I don’t go singing about it on Sunday, and drop it for the rest of the week, like some I know.’ His tone was final, forbidding further discussion, and he turned his attention to the battered volume.
He had marked his place with a pressed wild flower, and the Bible fell open at the right page.
‘I found it last night,’ he told Mark, as he propped the steel-rimmed spectacles on his nose. ‘It seemed like an omen, and I marked it to read to you. Matthew x.’ He cleared his throat and read slowly:
‘Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?
And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.’
When he had finished, he tucked the Bible away in his pocket, and they were both silent, thinking about it and watching the shapes in the ashes of the fire.
‘Then perhaps he will help us to save the sparrow from its fall, here at Chaka’s Gate,’ said Sean, and he leaned forward to take a burning twig from the fire. He lit a fresh cigar with it and puffed deeply, savouring the taste of wood smoke and tobacco before speaking again.
‘It is just unfortunate that it all comes at a time like this. It will be the end of the next year before we can make an official move to have the proclamation ratified and budget for full development here.’
Mark was instantly alert, and his voice sharp as he demanded, ‘Next year?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘But why so long?’
‘The grim reality of politics, son,’ Sean growled. ‘We have just received a shattering blow, and all else must wait while we play the game of power.’
‘What has happened?’ Mark asked with real concern now. ‘I haven’t read a n
ewspaper in two months.’
‘I wish I were that lucky.’ Sean smiled without humour. ‘There was a by-election in a little place up in the Transvaal. It’s a seat that has always been ours, a good safe seat, in the hands of a respected backbencher of great loyalty and little intellect. He had a heart attack in the dining-room of the House, expiring between the soup and the fish. We went to our safe little constituency to elect a new member,’ here Sean paused, and his expression went bleak, ‘and we got the trouncing of our lives. A fifteen per cent swing to the Hertzog Party. They fought us on our handling of the strike last year – and it was a disaster.’
‘I didn’t know. I’m sorry.’
‘If that swing, fifteen per cent, carries for the whole country, then we will be in opposition after the next election. Everything else is of no significance. General Smuts has decided to go to the country next year in March, and we will be fighting for our existence. Until then, we cannot introduce this type of legislation, or ask for funds.’
Mark felt cold despair spread out to numb his very fingertips. ‘What happens here?’ he asked. ‘In the meantime must we stop what I am doing? Do we just leave it? Another year of poaching and hunting, another year without protection or development?’
Sean shook his head. ‘I’ve had my people studying the existing proclamation. We have powers there that we can enforce, but no money to do it.’
‘You can’t do anything without money,’ said Mark miserably.
‘Ah, so at last a little respect for the power of money.’ Sean shot him a thin smile across the fire, and then went on seriously. ‘I’ve decided to finance the development and running of the proclaimed area until I get a budget allocation for it. I’ll foot the bill from my own pocket. Perhaps I’ll get reimbursed from the budget later, but if I don’t,’ he shrugged, ‘I reckon I owe that much at least. I’ve had a pretty good run.’
‘It won’t need much,’ Mark rushed in eagerly but Sean quieted him irritably.
‘You’ll get the same salary as before, and we’ll make a start on the main camp. I’m going to give four men to do the work,’ he went on, speaking quietly. ‘We’ll have to make do without a bridge across the river, and only a wagon track for our first road, but it’ll be a start — and let’s just hope like hell we win our election.’
On the last day at breakfast, Sean laid a folder in front of Mark.
‘I talked Caldwell, the man who did the drawings for Jock of the Bushveld, into designing the layout,’ he smiled, as Mark opened the folder. ‘I wanted you to get the best for your three thousand pounds.’
In the folder was a mock-up of the full-page Press announcement which would launch the ‘Friends of African Wildlife’.
The margin contained magnificent line-drawings of wild animals, and under the heavy typed announcement were set out the objects of the Society, and an eloquent plea for support and membership.
‘I had my lawyers draft the articles and draw up the wording. We’ll run it in every newspaper in the country. The Society’s address is the Head Office of Courtney Holdings and I have taken on a full-time clerk to handle all the paper work. I’ve also got a young journalist to edit the Society’s newspaper. He’s full of ideas and caught up in the whole thing. With luck, we’ll get huge public support behind us.’
‘It’s going to cost more than three thousand pounds.’ Mark was tom between delight, and concern for the size to which his simple idea had grown.
‘Yes,’ Sean laughed. ‘It’s going to cost more than three thousand pounds, which reminds me. I sent Dirk Courtney a receipt for his money – and a life membership of the Society!’ The joke carried them over the awkwardness of the last moments before departure.
Sean’s bearers disappeared among the trees, carrying headloads of equipment to where the motor lorry had been left on the nearest road twenty miles beyond the cliffs of Chaka’s Gate, and Sean lingered regretfully.
‘I’m sad to go,’ he admitted. ‘It’s been a good time, but I feel stronger now – ready to face whatever the bastards have got to throw at me.’ He looked about him, taking farewell of river and mountain and wilderness. ‘There is magic here.’ He nodded. ‘Look after it well, son,’ and he held out his hand.
It was Mark’s last opportunity to ask the question which he had tried to ask a dozen times already, but each time Sean had turned it aside, or simply ignored it. But now he had to have an answer, and he took Sean’s big gnarled bony fist in a grip that would not be denied.
‘You haven’t told me how Storm is, sir. How is she? Is she well? How is her painting?’ he blurted.
It seemed even then that Sean would not be drawn. He stiffened angrily, made as if to pull his hand away, and then the anger faded before it reached his eyes. For a moment there showed in the deep-set eyes a dark unfathomable grief, and his grip tightened on Mark’s hand like a steel trap.
‘Storm was married a month ago. But I have not seen her since you left Lion Kop,’ he said, and he dropped Mark’s hand. Without another word, he turned and walked away. For the first time he went slowly and heavily, swaying against the drag of his bad leg, shuffling like an old man – a very tired old man.
Mark wanted to run after him, but his own heart was breaking and his legs would not carry him.
He stood forlomly and watched Sean Courtney limp away into the trees.
The Natal Number Two came in along the line, his pony’s hooves kicking up little spurts of white marking-lime like a machine-gun traversing, and he caught the ball two feet before it dribbled out of play.
He leaned low out of the saddle and took it backhanded under his pony’s neck, a full-blooded stroke that finished with the mallet high above his head, and the ball rose in a floating arc, a white blur against the stark blue of summer sky.
From the club house veranda; and the deck-chairs beneath the coloured umbrellas, applause splattered above the drum of hooves, and then rose into a swelling hum as they saw that Derek Hunt had anticipated.
He was coming down in a hard canter with Saladin not yet asked to extend. Saladin was a big pony, with a mean and ugly head that he cocked to watch the flight of the white ball, his over-large nostrils flaring so the shiny red mucous membrane flashed like a flag. The eye that watched the ball rolled in the gaunt skull, giving the horse a wild and half-crazed air. He was of that raggedy roan and grey that no amount of currying would ever brighten into a gloss, and his hooves like those of a cart-horse. He had to lift them high in the ungainly action that was quickly carrying him ahead of the hard-running Argentinian pony at his shoulder.
Derek sat him as though he were an armchair, idly penduluming his stick from his wrist, his pith helmet hard down over his ears and strapped up tightly under the chin. His belly bulged out over the belt of his breeches, his arms were long and thick as those of a chimpanzee, covered in a thick fuzz of ginger hair. The skin was heavily freckled and had a raw red look between the freckles, as though it had been scalded with boiling water. His face was the same raw painful looking red, tinged by the purplish glaze of the very heavy drinker, and he was sweating.
The sweat glistened like early dew on his face and dripped from his chin. His short-sleeved cotton singlet looked as though he had been caught in a tropical downpour. It clung to the thick bearlike shoulders, and was stretched so tightly over his bulging paunch and so transparent with wetness, that you could see the deep dark pit of his belly button from the sidelines.
At each jar, as Saladin’s hooves struck the hard-baked earth, Derek Hunt’s great backside in the tight-fitting white breeches quivered like a jelly in the saddle.
Two Argentinian ponies were cutting across field to cover, their handsome riders olive-skinned and dashing as cavalry officers, riding with huge verge and excited Spanish cries, and Derek grinned under his bristling ginger moustache, as the ball started its long plummeting curve back to earth.
‘Christ,’ drawled one of the members on the club house steps. ‘The ugliest horse in Christendom.’ And he r
aised his pink gin to salute Saladin.
‘And the ugliest four-goal handicapper in the entire world on his back,’ agreed the masher beside him. ‘Poor bloody dagoes should turn to stone just looking at them.’
Saladin and the Argentinian Number One arrived at the drop of the ball at exactly the same moment. The Argentinian rose in the saddle to trap the fall, his white teeth sparkling under the trim black pencil-line of his moustache, the smooth darkly tanned muscles of his arm bulging as he prepared to go on to the forehand drive, his sleekly beautiful pony wheeling into line for the shot, nimble and quick as a ferret.
Then an extraordinary thing happened. Derek Hunt sat fat-gutted and heavy in the saddle and nobody could see the touch of rein and heel that made Saladin switch his quarters. The Argentinian pony cannoned off him as though she had hit a granite kopje, and the rider went over her head, going in an instant from balanced perfection to sprawling windmilling confusion, falling heavily in a cloud of red dust, and rolling to his knees to scream hysterical protest to the umpire and the skies.
Derek leaned slightly and there was the tap of mallet against bamboo root, a gentle almost self-effacing little tap, and the ball dropped meekly ahead of Saladin’s slugging, hammering head.
It bounced once, twice, and then came up obediently for the next light tap that kept it hopping down the field. The Argentinian Number Four swept in from the right, with all the smooth-running grace of a charging lioness – and the roar of the crowd carried across the open field, spurring him on to make the challenge. He shouted a wild Spanish oath, his eyes flashing with excitement.
Smoothly, Derek changed the mallet from his right hand to his left, and tapped the bouncing white ball on to his off-side, forcing the Argentinian to increase the angle of his interception.
The instant he was drawn, Derek cropped hard, lofting the ball in an easy lob high over the Argentinian’s head.