Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur. Страница 30

Bully for you, Mater! He jumped down and joined her, and they pranced in a circle, until they were weak with laughter and exertion. Then they leaned against the Daimler and clung to each other for support.

Old O'wa taught me that, Centaine gasped. He could imitate every animal of the veld. When they drove on she let Shasa take the wheel, for the crossing of the plain was one of the easier stretches of the journey and he drove well. She lay back in the corner of her seat and after a while Shasa broke the silence.

When we are alone you are so different. He searched for the words. You are such jolly good fun. I wish we could just be like this forever. Anything you do too long becomes a bore, she told him gently. The trick is to do it all, not just one thing. This is good fun but tomorrow we will be at the mine and there will be another type of excitement for us to experience and after that there will be something else. We'll do it all, and we will wring from each moment the last drop it has to offer. Twenty-man-Jones had gone ahead to the mine while Centaine stayed on for three days in Windhoek to go over the paperwork with Abraham Abrahams. So he had alerted the servants at the rest houses as he passed through.

When they reached the last stage that evening, the bath water was so hot that even Centaine who enjoyed her bath at the correct temperature for boiling lobster was forced to add cold before she could bear it. The champagne was that marvelous 1928 Krug pale and chilled to the temperature she preferred, just low enough to frost the bottle, and though there was ice, she would not allow the barbaric habit of standing the bottle in a bucket of it.

Cold feet, hot head, bad combination for both men and wine, her father had taught her. As always she drank only a single glass from the bottle and afterwards there was the cold collation that TWentyman-jones had provided for her and stored in the paraffin refrigerator, fare suitable for this heat and which he knew she enjoyed - rock lobster from the green Benguela Current with rich white flesh curled in their spiny red tails and salad vegetables grown in the cooler highlands of Windhoek, lettuce crackling crisp, tomatoes crimson ripe and pungent onions purple tinted, then, as the final treat, wild truffles gleaned from the surrounding desert by the tame Bushmen who tended the milk herd. She ate them raw and the salty fungus taste was the taste of Kalahari.

They left again in the pitch darkness before dawn, and at sunrise they stopped and brewed coffee on a fire of camel-thorn branches; the grainy red wood burned with an intense blue flame and gave to the coffee a peculiar and delicious aroma. They ate the picnic breakfast that the rest-house cook had provided and washed it down with the smoky coffee and watched the sunrise smearing the sky and desert with bronze and gilding it with gold leaf. As they went on, so the sun rose higher and drained the land of colour, washing it with its silver-white bleach.

Stop here! Centaine ordered suddenly, and when they climbed up onto the roof of the Daimler and stared ahead, Shasa was puzzled.

What is it, Mater? Don't you see it, cheri? She pointed, 'There! Above the horizon. It floated in the sky, indistinct and ethereal.

It's standing in the sky, Shasa exclaimed, discerning it at last.

The mountain that floats in the sky, Centaine murmured. Each time she saw it like this the wonder of it was still as fresh and enchanting as the first time. The place of All Life. She gave the hills their Bushman name.

As they drove on so the shape of the hills hardened, becoming a sheer rock palisade below which were spread the open mopani forests. In places the cliffs were split and riven with gulleys and gorges. In others they were solid and tall and daubed with bright lichens, sulphur yellow and green and orange.

The H'ani Mine was nestled beneath one of these sheer expanses of rock, and the buildings seemed insignificant and incongruous in this place.

Centaine's brief to Twenty-man-Jones had been to make them as unobtrusive as possible, without, of course, affecting the productivity of the workings, but there was a limit to just how far he had been able to follow her instructions. The fenced compounds of the black workers and the weathering grounds for the blue diamondiferous earth were extensive, while the steel tower and elevator of the washing gear stuck up high as the derrick of an oil rig.

However, the worst depredation had been caused by the appetite of the steam boiler, hungry as some infernal Baal for cordwood. The forest along the foot of the hills had been cut down to satisfy it, and the second growth had formed a scraggly unsightly thicket in place of the tall grey-barked timber.

Twenty-man-Jones was waiting for them as they climbed out of the dusty Daimler in front of the thatched administration building.

Good trip, Mrs Courtney? he asked, lugubrious with pleasure. 'You'll want a rest and clean up, I expect. You know better than that, Dr Twenty-man-Jones. Let's get down to work. Centaine led the way down the wide verandah to her own office. Sit beside me, she ordered Shasa as she took her seat at the stinkwood desk.

They began with the recovery reports, then went on to the cost schedules; and as Shasa struggled to keep up with the quick calling and discussion of figures, he wondered how his mother could change so swiftly from the girl companion who had hopped around in imitation of a springbok only the previous day.

Shasa, what did we establish was the cost per carat if we average twenty-three carats per load? She fired the question at Shasa suddenly, and when he muffed it she frowned. This isn't the time for dreams. And she turned her shoulder to him to emphasize the rebuke. 'Very well, Dr TWentyman-Jones, we have avoided the unpleasant long enough. Let us consider what economies we have to institute to meet the quota cut and still keep the H'ani Mine working and turning a profit. It was dusk before Centaine broke off and stood up. We'll pick it up from there tomorrow. She stretched like a cat and then led them out onto the wide verandah.

Shasa will be working for you as we agreed. I think he should begin on the haulage. I was about to suggest it, Ma'am. What time do you want me? Shasa asked.

The shift comes on at five am but I expect Master Shasa will want to come on later? Twenty-man-Jones glanced at Centaine. It was, of course, a challenge and a test, and she remained silent, waiting for Shasa to make the decision on his own account. She saw him struggling with himself. He was at that stage of growth when sleep is a drug and rising in the morning a brutal penance.

I'll be at the main haulage at four-thirty, sir, he said, and Centaine relaxed and took his arm.

Then it had best be an early night. She turned the Daimler into the avenue of small iron-roofed cottages which housed the white shift bosses and artisans and their families. The orders of society were strictly observed on the H'ani Mine. It was a microcosm of the young nation. The black labourers lived in the fenced and guarded compounds where whitewashed buildings resembled rows of stables. There were separate, more elaborate quarters for the black boss-boys, who were allowed to have their families living with them. The white artisans and shift bosses were housed in the avenues laid out at the foot of the hills, while the management lived up the slopes, each building larger and the lawns around it more extensive the higher it was sited.

As they turned at the end of the avenues there was a girl sitting on the stoep of the last cottage and she stuck her tongue out at Shasa as the Daimler passed. It was almost a year since Shasa had last seen her and nature had wrought wondrous changes in her during that time. Her feet were still bare and dirty to the ankles, and her curls were still wind-tousled and sun-streaked, but the faded cotton of her blouse was now so tight that it constricted her blossoming breasts. They were forced upwards and bulged out over the top in a deep cleavage and Shasa wriggled in the seat as he realized that the twin red-brown coin-shaped marks on the blouse, though they looked like stains, were in fact showing through the thin cloth from beneath.