Rage - Smith Wilbur. Страница 45

Molly considered for a minute. 'I think I know the right couple.

They are both school-teachers and they have four of their own, all girls. They'll do it for me - but, Tara, how are you going to hide it?

It will begin to show soon, you were huge with Isabella. Shasa might not notice, he's so busy looking into his cheque book, but your mother-in-law is an absolute tartar: You couldn't get anything by her." 'I've already made plans to cover that. I have convinced Shasa that I have conceived a burning interest in archaeology to replace my political activities and I've got a job on the dig at Sundi Caves with the American archaeologist, Professor Marion Hurst, you know." 'Yes, I've read two of her books." 'I've told Shasa that I will only be away for two months, but once I'm out of his sight I'll just keep postponing my return. Centaine will look after the children, 'I've arranged that also, she loves doing it and, the Lord knows, the kids will benefit from it. She's a much better disciplinarian than I am. They'll be perfectly behaved angels by the time my beloved mother-in-law is finished with them." 'You'll miss them,' Molly stated, and Tara nodded.

'Yes, of course, I shall miss them, but it's only another six months to go." 'Where will you have the child?" Molly persisted.

'I don't know. I can't go to a recognized hospital or nursing home.

Oh God, could you imagine the fuss if I produced a little brown bundle on their clean whites-only sheets, in their lovely clean whitesonly maternity hospital. Anyway, there is plenty of time to arrange all that later. The first thing is to get away to Sundi, away from Centaine Courtney-Malcomess' malevolent eye." 'Why Sundi, Tara, what made you choose Sundi?" 'Because I will be near to Moses." 'Is it that important?" Molly stared at her mercilessly. 'Do you feel like that about him? It wasn't just a little experiment, just a little kinky fun to find out what it is really like with one of them?" Tara shook her head.

'Are you sure, Tara? I mean I've had the same urge occasionally. I suppose it's natural to be curious, but I've never been caught at it." 'Molly, I love him. If he asked me, I would lay down my life for him without a qualm." 'My poor sweet Tara." Tears started in Molly's eyes, and she reached out with both arms. They hugged desperately and Molly whispered, 'He is far beyond your reach, my darling. You can never, never have him." 'If I can have a little piece of him, for even a little while. That will be enough for me." Moses Gama parked the crimson and blue butchery van in one of the visitors' bays and switched off the engine. In front of him stretched lawns on which a single small sprinkler was trying to atone for all the frosts and drought of the highveld winter, but the Kikuyu grass was scared and lifeless. Beyond the lawn was the long doublestoried block of the Baragwanath nurses' home.

A small group of black nurses came up the pathway from the main hospital. They were in crisp white uniform, neat and efficientlooking, but when they drew level with the van and saw Moses at the wheel, they dissolved into giggles, hiding their mouths with their hands in the instinctive gesture of subservience to the male.

'Young woman, I wish to speak to you." Moses leaned out of the window of the van. 'Yes, you!" The chosen nurse was almost overcome with shyness. Her friends teased her as she approached Moses and paused timidly five paces from him.

'Do you know Sister Victoria Dinizulu?" 'Eh he!" the nurse affirmed.

'Where is she?" 'She is coming now. She is on the day shift with me." The nurse looked around for escape, and instead picked out Victoria in the middle of the second group of white-clad figures coming up the path.

'There she is. Victoria! Come quickly!" the girl cried, and then fled, taking the steps up into the nurses' home two at a time. Victoria recognized him, and with a word to her friends, left them and cut across the dry brown lawns, coming directly to him. Moses climbed out of the van, and she looked up at him.

'I'm sorry. There was a terrible bus accident, we were working in theatre until the last case was attended to. I have kept you waiting." Moses nodded. 'It's not important. We have plenty of time still." 'It will take me only a few minutes to change into street clothes,' she smiled up at him. Her teeth were perfect, so white that they seemed almost translucent and her skin had the lustre of health and youth. 'I am so pleased to see you again - but I do have a very big bone to pick with you." They were speaking English, and although hers was accented, she seemed confident in the language with a choice of words which matched his own fluency.

'Good,' he smiled gravely. 'We will have your bone for dinner which will save me money." She laughed, a fine throaty chuckle. 'Don't go aw/ty, I will be back." She turned and went into the nurses' home, and he watched her with pleasure as she climbed the steps. Her waist was so narrow that it accentuated the swell of her buttocks under the white uniform.

Although her bosom was small, she was full-bottomed and broadhipped; she would carry a child with ease. That kind of body was the model of Nguni beauty, and Moses was strongly reminded of the photographs he had seen of the Venus de Milo. Her carriage was erect, her neck long and straight, and although her hips swayed as though she danced to a distant music, her head and shoulders never moved. It was obvious that as a child she had taken her turn with the other young girls at carrying the brimming clay pots up from the water-hole, balancing the pot on her head without spilling a drop.

That was how the Zulu girls acquired that marvellously regal posture.

With her round madonna face and huge dark eyes, she was one of the handsomest women he had ever seen, and while he waited, leaning against the bonnet of the van, he pondered how each race had its ideal of feminine beauty, and how widely they differed. That led him on to think of Tara Courtney, with her huge round breasts and narrow boyish hips, her long chestnut hair and soft insipid white skin. Moses grimaced, faintly repelled by the image, and yet both women were crucial to his ambitions, and his sensual response to them - attraction or revulsion - was completely irrelevant. All that m. attered was their utility.

Victoria came back down the steps ten minutes later. She was wearing a vivid crimson dress. Bright colours suited her, they set off that glossy dark skin. She slid into the passenger's seat of the van beside him, and glanced at the cheap gold-plated watch on her wrist.

'Eleven minutes sixteen seconds. You cannot really complain,' she announced, and he smiled and started the engine.

'Now let us pick your thighbone of a dinosaur,' he suggested.

'Tyrannosaurus Rex,' she corrected him. 'The most ferocious of the dinosaurs. But, no, we'll keep that for dinner as you suggested." Her banter amused him. It was unusual for an unmarried black girl to be so forthcoming and self-assured. Then he remembered her training and her life here at one of the world's largest and busiest hospitals. This wasn't a little country girl, empty-headed and giggling, and as if to make the point, Victoria fell into an easy discussion of General Dwight Eisenhower's prospects for election to the White House, and how that would affect the American civil rights struggle - and ultimately their own struggle here in Africa.

While they talked, the sun began to set and the city, with all its fine buildings and parks, fell behind them, until abruptly they entered the half world of Soweto township where half a million black people lived. The dusk was thick with the smell of wood-smoke from the cooking fires, and it turned the sunset a diabolical red, the colour of blood and oranges. The narrow unmade sidewalks were crowded with black commuters, each of them carrying a parcel or a shopping bag, all hurrying in the same direction, back to their homes after a long day that had begun before the sun with a tortuous .journey by bus or train to their places of work in the outer world, and that now ended in darkness with the reverse journey which fatigue made even longer and more tedious.