Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur. Страница 97

No, merde! she almost shrieked at herself. You don't get out of it that easily. She opened the pistol and spilled the brass-cased cartridges onto the carpet, threw the weapon onto the blotter and strode from the room.

The coloured maids heard the heels of her riding-boots cracking on the marbel treads of the circular staircase and lined up at the door to her suite, smiling happily and bobbing their curtseys.

Lily, you lazy child, haven't you run my bath yet? Centaine demanded, and the two maids rolled their eyes at each other. Then scampered to the bathroom in a convincing pantomime of obedience and duty while the pretty little second maid followed Centaine to her dressing-room picking up the clothing that she deliberately dropped on the floor as she went.

Gladys, you go and make sure Lily runs it deep and hot, she ordered, and the two of them were standing expectantly beside the huge marble tub as Centaine came through in a yellow silk robe and tested the water with one finger.

Lily, do you want to make soup out of me? she demanded, and Lily grinned happily. The water was exactly the right temperature and Centaine's question was acknowledgement of that, a private joke between them. Lily had the bath crystals ready and sprinkled a careful measure on the steaming water.

Here, give it to me, Centaine ordered, and emptied half the jar into the bath. No more half measures. Centaine watched the bubbles foam up over the rim of the tub and slide onto the marble floor with a perverse satisfaction, and the two maids dissolved into giggles at this craziness and fled from the room as Centaine threw off the robe and, gasping with the exquisite agony of the heat, settled chin deep in the foaming water. As she lay there, the image of the pearl-handled pistol reformed in her mind but she drove it forcefully away.

One thing you have never been, Centaine Courtney, is a coward, she told herself; and when she returned to her dressing-room she selected a dress of gay summer colours and she was smiling as she came down the stairs.

Davenport and Cyril Slaine were waiting for her.

This is going to take a long time, gentlemen. Let us begin. Every single item in the huge mansion had to be numbered and described, the value estimated, the more important pieces photographed and everything entered laboriously in the draft catalogue. All this had to be completed before Davenport went back to England on the mail boat in ten days time. He would return in three months to conduct the actual sale.

When the time came for Davenport to leave, Centaine surprised them all when she announced her intention of accompanying him around the mountain to the mail ship dock, a duty which would normally have fallen to Cyril.

The sailing of the mail ship was one of the exciting events of the Cape Town social calendar, and the liner swarmed with passengers and the dozens of guests who had come to wish them bon voyage.

At the first class entry port Centaine checked the passenger list and found the entry under M': Malcomess, Mrs 1. Cabin A 16

f Miss T. Cabin A 17

Malcomess, Miss M. Cabin A 17

Blaine's family was sailing as planned. By agreement she had not seen him since the last day of the polo tournament, and surreptitiously she searched for him now through the smoking saloons and lounges of the liner's first class section.

She could not find him and realized that he was probably in Isabella's suite. The idea of their intimate seclusion galled her and she wanted desperately to go up to Cabin A 16 on the boat deck on the pretext of saying farewell to Isabella, but really to prevent Blaine being alone with her for another minute. Instead she sat in the main lounge and watched Mr Davenport demolishing pink gins, while she smiled and nodded at her acquaintances and exchanged banalities with those friends who paraded through the liner's public cabins determined to see and be seen.

She noted with grim satisfaction the warmth and respect of the greetings and attentions showered upon her. It was clear that the wild extravagance of the polo tournament had served its purpose and allayed suspicions of her financial straits. As yet no rumours had been set free to ravage her position and reputation.

That would change soon, she realized, and the thought made her angry in advance. She deliberately snubbed one of the Cape's most determined aspiring hostesses, publicly refusing her obsequious invitation and noting sardonically how the small cruelty increased the woman's respect. But all the time that she was playing these complicated social games, Centaine was gazing over their heads, looking for Blaine.

The liner's siren blared the final warning and the ship's officers, resplendent in white tropical rig, passed amongst them with the polite instruction: This vessel is sailing in fifteen minutes. Will all those who are not passengers kindly go ashore immediately. Centaine shook hands with Mr Davenport and joined the procession down the steep gangway to the dockside. There she fingered in the jovial press of visitors, staring up the liner's tall side and trying to pick out Isabella or her daughters from the passengers who lined the rail of the boat deck.

Gaily coloured paper streamers fluttered in the southeaster as they were thrown down from the high decks and seized by eager hands on the quayside, joining the vessel to land with a myriad frail umbilical cords, and suddenly Centaine recognized Blaine's eldest daughter. At this distance Tara was looking very grown-up and pretty in a dark dress and with her hair fashionably bobbed. Beside her, her sister had stuck her head through the railings and was furiously waving a pink handkerchief at someone on the dock below.

Centaine shaded her eyes and made out the figure in the wheelchair behind the two girls. Isabella was sitting with her face in shadow, and to Centaine she seemed suddenly to be the final harbinger of tragedy, an inimical force sent to plague her and deny her happiness.

O God, how I wish that she were easy to hate, she whispered, and her eyes followed the direction in which the two children were waving and she began to edge her way through the crowd.

Then she saw him. He had climbed up onto the carriage of one of the giant loading cranes. He was dressed in a creamcoloured tropical suit with his green and blue regimental tie and a wide-brimmed white Panama had which he had taken from his head and was waving at his daughters high above him. The southeaster had tumbled his dark hair onto his forehead, and his teeth were very big and white against the dark mahogany of his tanned face.

Centaine withdrew into the crowd, from where she could watch him secretly.

He is the one thing I will not lose. The thought gave her comfort. I will always have him, after Weltevreden and the H'ani have been taken away. And then suddenly a hideous doubt assailed her. Is that truly so? She tried to close her mind to it, but the doubt slipped through. Does he love me, or does he love what I am? Will he still love me when I am just an ordinary woman, without wealth, without position, with nothing but another man's child? And the doubt filled her head with darkness and sickened her physically, so that when Blaine lifted his fingers to his lips and blew a kiss up

towards the slim, pale, blanket-draped figure in the wheel

chair her jealousy struck again with gale force, and she stared at Blaine's face, torturing herself with his expression of affection and concern for his wife, feeling herself totally excluded and superfluous.

Slowly the gap between the liner and the quay opened.

The ship's band on the promenade deck struck up. God be with you till we meet again'; the bright paper streamers parted one by one and floated down, twisting and turning, falling like her ill-fated dreams and hopes to lie sodden and disintegrating in the murky waters of the harbour. The ship's sirens boomed farewell, and the steam tugs bustled in to take charge and work her out through the narrow entrance of the breakwater. Under her own steam the huge white vessel gathered speed; a bow wave curled at her forefoot and she turned majestically into the north-west to clear Robben Island.