“of course,” she nodded.
“Good night, Shermaine.”
“Good night, Bruce,” No, Bruce decided as he spread his blankets beside the fire, I am not alone. Not any more.
What about breakfast, boss?”
“They can eat on the road. Give them a tin of bully each - we’ve wasted enough time on this trip.” The sky was paling and pinking above the forest. It was light enough to read the dial of his wristwatch. Twenty minutes to five.
“Get them moving, Ruffy. If we make Msapa Junction before dark we can drive through the night. Home for breakfast tomorrow.”
“Now you’re talking, boss.” Ruffy clapped his helmet on to his head and went off to rouse the men who lay in the road beside the trucks.
Shermaine was asleep. Bruce leaned into the window of the Ford and studied her face. A wisp of hair lay over her mouth, rising and falling with her breathing. It tickled her nose and in her sleep it twitched like a rabbit.
Bruce felt an almost unbearable pang of tenderness towards her.
With one finger he lifted the hair off her face.
Then he smiled at himself If you can feel like this before breakfast, then you’ve got it in a bad way, he told himself.
Do you know something, he retorted. I like the feeling.
“Hey, you lazy wench!” He pulled the lobe of her ear.
“Time to wake up.” It was almost half past five before the convoy got under way. It had taken that long to bully and cajole the sleep out of sixty men and get them into the lorries. This morning Bruce did not find the delay unbearable. He had managed to find time for four hours” sleep during the night. Four hours was not nearly enough to make up for the previous two days.
Now he felt light-headed, a certain unreal quality of gaiety overlaying his exhaustion, a carnival spirit. There was no longer the same urgency, for the road to Elisabethville was clear and not too long. Home for breakfast tomorrow!
“We’ll be at the bridge in a little under an hour.” He glanced
sideways at Shermaine.
“You’ve left a guard on it?”
“Ten men,” answered Bruce. “We’ll pick them up almost without stopping, and then the next stop, room 201, Grand Hotel Leopold II, Avenue du Kasai.” He grinned in anticipation.
“A bath so deep it will slop over on to the floor, so hot it will take five minutes to get into it. Clean clothes. A steak that thick, with
French salad and a bottle of Liebfraumilch.”
“For breakfast!” protested
Shermaine.
“For breakfast,” Bruce agreed happily. He was silent for a while, savouring the idea. The road ahead of him was tiger-striped with the shadows of the trees thrown by the low sun. The air that blew in through the missing windscreen was cool and clean-smelling. He felt good. The responsibility of command lay lightly on his shoulders this
morning; a pretty girl beside him, a golden morning, the horror of the last few days half-forgotten, - they might have been going on a picnic.
“What are you thinking?” he asked suddenly. She was very quiet beside him.
“I was wondering about the future,” she answered softly.
“There is no one I know in Elisabethville, and I do not wish to stay there.” “Will you return to Brussels?” he asked. The question was without significance, for Bruce Curry had very definite plans for the immediate future, and these included Shermaine.
“Yes, I think so. There is nowhere else.”
“You have relatives there?”
“An aunt.”
“Are you close?” Shermaine laughed, but there was
bitterness in the husky chuckle. “Oh, very close. She came to see me once at the orphanage. Once in all those years. She brought me a comic book of a religious nature and told me to clean my teeth and brush my hair a hundred strokes a day.” “There is no one else?” asked
Bruce.
“No.”
“Then why go back?” “What else is there to do?” she asked.
“Where else is there to go?”
“There’s a life to live, and the rest of the world to visit.”
“Is that what you are going to do?”
“That is exactly what I’m going to do, starting with a hot bath.” Bruce could feel it between them. They both knew it was there, but it was too soon to talk about it. I have only kissed her once, but that was enough.
So what will happen?
Marriage? His mind shied away from that word with startling violence, then came hesitantly back to examine it. Stalking it as though it were a dangerous beast, ready to take flight again as soon as it showed its teeth.
For some people it is a good thing. It can stiffen the spineless; ease the lonely; give direction to the wanderers; spur those without ambition - and, of course, there was the final unassailable argument in its favour. Children.
But there are some who can only sicken and shrivel in the colourless cell of matrimony. With no space to fly, your wings must weaken with disuse; turned inwards, your eyes become shortsighted; when all your communication with the rest of the world is through the glass windows of the cell, then your contact is limited.
And I already have children. I have a daughter and I have a son.
Bruce turned his eyes from the road and studied the girl beside him. There is no fault I can find. She is beautiful in the delicate, almost fragile way that is so much better and longer-lived than blond hair and big bosoms. She is unspoilt; hardship has long been her travelling companion and from it she has learned kindness and humility.
She is mature, knowing the ways of this world; knowing death and fear, the evilness of men and their goodness. I do not believe she has ever lived in the fairy-tale cocoon that most young girls spin about themselves.
And yet she has not forgotten how to laugh.
Perhaps, he thought, perhaps. But it is too soon to talk about it.
“You are very grim.” Shermaine broke the silence, but the laughter shivered just below the surface of her voice. “Again you are
Bonaparte. And when you are grim your nose is too big and cruel. It is a nose of great brutality and it does not fit the rest of your face.
I think that when they had finished you they had only one nose left in
stock. “It is too big,” they said, “but it is the only nose left, and when he smiles it will not look too bad.” So they took a chance and stuck it on anyway.”
“Were you never taught that it is bad manners to poke fun at a man’s weakness?” Bruce fingered his nose ruefully.
“Your nose is many things, but not weak. Never weak.” She laughed now and moved a little closer to him.
“You know you can attack me from behind your own perfect nose, and
I cannot retaliate.”
“Never trust a man who makes pretty speeches so easily, because he surely makes them to every girl he meets.” She slid an inch further across the seat until they were almost touching. “You waste your talents, mon capitaine. I am immune to your charm.”
“In just one minute I will stop this car and-“
“You cannot.” Shermaine jerked her head to indicate the two gendarmes in the seat behind them.
“What would they think, Bonaparte? It would be very bad for discipline.”
“Discipline or no discipline, in just one minute I will stop this car and spank You soundly before I kiss you.”
“One threat does not frighten me, but because of the other I will leave your poor nose.” She moved away a little and once more Bruce studied her face.
Beneath the frank scrutiny she fidgeted and started to blush.
“Do you mind! Were you never taught that it is bad manners to stare?” So now I am in love again, thought Bruce. This is only the third time, an average of once every ten years or so. It frightens me a little because there is always pain with it.
The exquisite pain of loving and the agony of losing.