“It’s nearly dark,” he said.
“Turn right on to the Msapa junction road, there is one post there.” Bruce drove out along the dirt road through the town until they came to the last house before the causeway.
“Here,” said the girl and Bruce stopped the car. There were two men there, both armed with sporting rifles. Bruce spoke to them. They had seen no sign of Baluba, but they were both very nervous. Bruce made a decision.
“I want you to go back to the hotel. The Baluba will have seen the train arrive; they won’t attack in force, we’ll be safe tonight.
But they may try and cut a few throats if we leave you out here.” The
two half-breeds gathered together their belongings and set off towards the centre of town, obviously with lighter hearts.
“Where are the others?” Bruce asked the girl.
“The next post is at the pumping station down by the river, there are three men there.” Bruce followed her directions. Once or twice as
he drove he glanced surreptitiously at her. She sat in her corner of the seat with her legs drawn up sideways under her. She sat very still, Bruce noticed. I like a woman who doesn’t fidget; it’s soothing. Then she smiled; this one isn’t soothing. She is as disturbing as hell!
She turned suddenly and caught him looking again, but this time she smiled.
“You are English, aren’t you, Captain?”
“No, I am a Rhodesian,” Bruce answered.
“It’s the same,” said the girl. “You speak French so very badly that you had to be English.” Bruce laughed. “Perhaps your English is better than my French,” he challenged her.
“it couldn’t be much worse,” she answered him in his own language.
“You are different when you laugh, not so grim, not so heroic. Take the next road to your right.” Bruce turned the Ford down towards the harbour.
“You are very frank,” he said. “Also your English is excellent.”
“Do you smoke?” she asked, and when he nodded she lit two cigarettes and passed one to him.
“You are also very young to smoke, and very young to be married.”
She stopped smiling and swung her legs off the seat.
“Here is the pumping station,” she said.
“I beg your pardon. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s of no importance.”
“It was an impertinence,” Bruce demurred.
“It doesn’t matter.” Bruce stopped the car and opened his door.
He walked out on to the wooden jetty towards the pump house, and the boards rang dully under his boots. There was a mist coming up out of the reeds round the harbour and the frogs were piping in fifty different keys. He spoke to the men in the single room of the pump station.
“You can get back to the hotel by dark if you hurry.”
“Oui, monsieur,” they agreed. Bruce watched them set off up the road before they went to the car. He spun the starter motor and above the noise of it the girl asked: “What is your given name, Captain Curry?”
“Bruce.”
She repeated it, pronouncing it’Bruise’, and then asked: “Why are you a soldier?”
“For many reasons.” His tone was flippant.
“You do not look like a soldier, for all your badges and your
guns, for all the grimness and the frequent giving of orders.”
“Perhaps
I am not a very good soldier.” He smiled at her.
“You are very efficient and very grim except when you laugh. But
I am glad you do not look like one,” she said.
“Where is the next post?”
“On the railway line. There are two men there. Turn to your right again at the top, Bruce.”
“You are also very efficient, Shermaine.” They were silent having used each other’s names.
Bruce could feel it again, between them, a good feeling, warm like new bread. But what of her husband, he thought, I wonder where he is, and what he is like. Why isn’t he here with her?
“He is dead,” she said quietly. “He died four months ago of malaria.” With the shock of it, Shermaine answering his unspoken question and also the answer itself, Bruce could say nothing for the moment, then: “I’m sorry.”
“There is the post,” she said, “in the cottage with the thatched roof.” Bruce stopped the car and switched off the engine. In the silence she spoke again.
“He was a good man, so very gentle. I only knew him for a few months but he was a good man.” She looked very small sitting beside him in the gathering dark with the sadness on her, and Bruce felt a great wave of tenderness wash over him. He wanted to put his arm round her
and hold her, to shield her from the sadness. He searched for the words, but before he found them, she roused herself and spoke in a matter-of-fact tone.
“We must hurry, it’s dark already.” At the hotel the lounge was filled with Boussier’s employees; Haig had mounted a Bren in one of the upstairs windows to cover the main street and posted two men in the kitchens to cover the back. The civilians were in little groups, talking quietly, and their expressions of complete doglike trust as
they looked at Bruce disconcerted him.
“Everything under control, Mike?” he asked brusquely.
“Yes, Bruce. We should be able to hold this building against a sneak attack. De Surrier and Hendry, down at the station yard, shouldn’t have any trouble either.”
“Have these people,” Bruce pointed at the civilians, “loaded their luggage?”
“Yes, it’s all aboard. I
have told Ruffy to issue them with food from our stores.”
“Good.” Bruce felt relief-, no further complications so far.
“Where is old man Boussier?”
“He is across at his office.”
“I’m going to have a chat with him.” Unbidden, Shermaine fell in beside
Bruce as he walked out into the street, but he liked having her there.
Boussier looked up as Bruce and Shermaine walked into his office.
The merciless glare of the petromax lamp accentuated the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, and showed up the streaks of pink scalp beneath his neatly combed hair.
“Martin, you are not still working!” exclaimed Shermaine, and he smiled at her, the calm smile of his years.
“Not really, my dear, just tidying up a few things. Please be seated, Captain.” He came round and cleared a pile of heavy leather-bound ledgers off the chair and packed them into a wooden case on the floor, went back to his own chair, opened a drawer in the desk, brought out a box of cheroots and offered one to Bruce.
“I cannot tell you how relieved I am that you are here, Captain.
These last few months have been very trying. The doubt. The anxiety.”
He struck a match and held it out to Bruce who leaned forward across the desk and lit his cheroot. “But now it is all at an end; I feel as though a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders.” Then his voice sharpened. “But you were not too soon. I have heard within the
last hour that this General Moses and his column have left Senwati and are on the road south, only two hundred kilometres north of here. They will arrive tomorrow at their present rate of advance.” “Where did you hear this?” Bruce demanded.
“From one of my men, and do not ask me how he knows.
There is a system of communication in this country which even after all these years I do not understand. Perhaps it is the drums, I
heard them this evening, I do not know.
However, their information is usually reliable.”
“I had not placed them so close,” muttered Bruce. “Had I known this I might have risked
travelling tonight, at least as far as the bridge.”
“I think your decision to stay over the night was correct.