Sunset at Sheba (6 page)

Polly stared at the flat-fronted shabby buildings in dismay. ‘I didn’t know it was like this,’ she said. ‘A girl couldn’t pick up much here.’

She was caught by a sudden resentment, and went on in a beaten disconsolate tone. ‘Why we’ve got to get out of Plummerton just because
they
want us out, I dunno,’ she said bitterly, feeling rootless and adrift suddenly as she thought of the sparse comfort of the rooms behind Buiderkant Street she had left behind and the few belongings she had given up because she couldn’t pack them. There hadn’t been much, just a roomy bedchamber with red curtains and cheap gaudy wallpaper fly-spotted round the light, a chest of drawers, some without knobs, a greenish looking-glass and a brass-knobbed iron bedstead with a turkey twill cover - and an American-cloth armchair set by the window where you could watch the traffic and the people. But outside there was a white-painted fence which made it look like home and a couple of white-washed drainpipes overflowing with Indian cress, set on either side of the gate under the dusty pepper trees.

Not much, she thought again, but there must have been
something
about it to attract people because they always came - and not always because she had the sort of figure that whetted their appetites. Sometimes they came - Winter among them, she thought bitterly, as she considered how he had ranged himself against her now - merely to sit and drink with her, satisfied simply to be with a woman who was kind and thought about their comfort without making demands on them.

As she sank into her own private reverie, Sammy said nothing, and the cart rattled slowly past the crates of machinery, the sacks of flour stacked outside the office of the forwarding agents bearing the inevitable name of Plummer, a musty place with an odour that was a strange compound of tea and green coffee, of ropes and saddles and sides of leather, the saltiness of bacon and the sharp metallic tang of hardware, all larded with the strong chemical odour of sheep-dip.

‘We’re getting out because they’ve got all the money, Poll,’ Sammy said slowly at last. ‘This is
all
theirs - every last bit of it. They’ve got the power and the say-so. People like you and me have to do as we’re told.’ He became silent again, not resentful in spite of his words, as though in his world the weakest had always gone to the wall without complaining.

They were moving up the main street now, past a waiting tram, whose horses dozed in the sun, its coloured driver silent and huddled in one of the seats. The sun was past its zenith but fiercer than ever, so that the sky paled and the dust hung motionless in the air, and the heat drew all the vitality out of the land, squeezing out the marrow from the bones of the earth and leaving behind only the vast empty husk of the African afternoon.

Polly stared about her and at the men lounging along the front of the hotel.

‘Sammy,’ she said, a doubtful worried note in her voice, ‘I don’t like the look of this place. I want to go to Kimberley.’

He turned to her, his face blank, his flat light eyes unemotional. ‘There’s no train for a while,’ he said.

She smiled at him, wheedling, her mercurial Irish good humour returning.
‘You
could take me, Sammy.’

‘Me?’ He stared at her, his eyes wide at last in the shadow of his hat.

‘Why not?’

He scowled, resisting her blandishments. ‘Because I’m not going to Kimberley -- that’s why not.’

Polly put on an act of scorn for his benefit. ‘Lor’, aren’t you slow?’ she said. ‘What’s to
stop
you?’

Sammy avoided her eyes, knowing her ability to coax blood from a stone. ‘I promised,’ he said evenly. ‘I promised Plummer’s man I’d keep away from towns for a bit.’

‘Never knew you worry about promises before,’ Polly said quickly, seeing a chink in his defences that she could exploit. ‘You’ve broken plenty to me in your time. Standing a girl up like she was an umbrella in dry weather. You particularly anxious to go to Namaqualand or something?’

‘You know I’m not.’

‘Well, who’s to know you
didn’t.’

He flicked the mare’s back with the whip. ‘We’ve got no supplies,’ he said.

‘You’ve got the gun.’ She indicated the ancient Martini Henry in the back of the cart. ‘I never knew you be stuck. You said yourself you’d manage.’

He eyed her without speaking, and she went on hurriedly. ‘I’ve got all my clothes with me,’ she persisted. ‘There’s a blanket in the cart. We can get another. We can stop here and get anything we want. It’s only four days’ journey.’

Sammy grinned.
‘And
a bit more,’ he said. ‘And there’s no hotels in the Wilderness.’

‘We don’t need hotels.’

‘
I
don’t.’

‘Neither do I then!’

‘You ever tried it?’

She gave him an encouraging jab with her elbow. ‘Go on, Sammy,’ she encouraged, smiling. ‘There’s plenty of game. You were going to buy flour and coffee and such here in the Sidings anyway before you crossed the line. Well, now you can buy twice as much. You’ve got the spondulics.’

He paused, studying her silently. ‘Another hoss is the first thing,’ he said and she smiled secretly to herself, knowing already that she’d persuaded him and that he was only putting on a show of resistance to prove his manhood to himself. ‘It’s easier to stalk game with a hoss, and an old nag like this isn’t much good for riding. And another gun I’d need - a shotgun.’

‘You’ve got the money. Frank Winter gave it you.’

‘Not to go to Kimberley, he didn’t.’

‘Sammy Schuter’ - she brought up her heavy artillery - ‘if it was
me,
I wouldn’t let ‘em sit on me. I’d go where I wanted. I’d have a shy at it, I would.’

He looked at her soberly. ‘It’s a long way, Polly,’ he said slowly. ‘You don’t know. It’d take several days. Longer than you think. We’d have to sweep out wide a bit to find the game. They don’t run close to the railway these days.’

‘What’s it matter? I’m not afraid.’ She smiled up at him again, warm-hearted, bright-eyed, irresistible. ‘Let’s give it a whirl! Go on, Sammy. You’ve talked me into it.’

‘It’ll be rough.’

‘I’m not scared of that, not me. It’s not as though I’ve been used to eating off gold plate. It won’t hurt us. Or are you worried you’ll lose your way or something?’

Sammy grinned and looked at her with those opaque eyes of his, knowing she knew his pride in his skill as well as he did himself.

‘Poll,’ he said, ‘I know the country up here like I know my own face. I’ve spent weeks round the salt pans out in the Kalahari. Good country for game. I know it all - from the Orange River up to Khama’s country. I’ve killed for the markets in Windhoek and Keetmanshoop and Port Nolluth. There’s not an inch I haven’t crossed again and again.’

‘Well then - ?’ She stared at him, daring him, and he began to fold the leather of the reins in his hand.

For a long time he sat shaping and reshaping it, his face thoughtful, then at last he flipped the reins along the grey mare’s back.

‘Let’s go and buy them victuals,’ he said with a grin.

The night grey sky was changing to green and orange and the last violent red in the west where the sun had set. A few clouds striped with black the bowl of the heavens as it slowly began to take on the luminous light of night.

Plummerton Sidings was silent and still and dead but for the few yellow lights in the windows of the shabby houses. Over by the railway sidings on the soft breeze whispering from the Kalahari came the lowing of oxen from where the wagoners waited for the morning, rising over the gentle hiss of steam from a locomotive, and the clank of wagons being shifted from the points.

From the direction of the soldiers’ billets the sound of crunching boots was followed by the roar of a motorcar engine being revved, harsh like the tearing of calico, drowning the witless chatter of the frogs and crickets, then falling rapidly to a sewing-machine murmur behind all the other sounds of the town.

Winter shifted uneasily in the chair he had placed on the stoep of the hotel and reached for his glass. At the other side of the square there was a low store with the single yellow glare of a gas jet beyond its glass door. For a while, a few Kaffirs had sat on the stoep in the lowering sunshine, chattering noisily in the still warm air, then even they had vanished and the place lay in silence.

In front of him the veld stretched out in a great sweep of earth, impressive in the prodigality of its space, while overhead the tall African stars, steady and unwinking, picked out the scattered gum trees beyond the town, and the few sparse peppers along the square. The fan of a dwarf palm nearby rusted into thin whiskers, its spikes reflected in the glassy water of a horse trough where grass grew round a dripping tap.

Winter sipped slowly at the brandy in his hand and stretched his legs. Behind him in the hotel he could hear an argument going on, over the soft batting of moths against the lighted screen door.

‘The bloody Boers ought to be all shot,’ someone was saying loudly. ‘Starting a civil war. Setting about us when they’ve been beat once.’

The argument was drowned abruptly as someone started playing a concertina, and a husky male voice, rich with drink, began to sing -

‘There was Brown upside down,
Mopping up the whisky off the floor -
Booze, booze, the firemen cried
As they came knocking at the door -
‘

Winter put down his glass and lit a cigarette. In front of him the horse tethered to the hitching post out in the dusty road shook its head suddenly with a jingle of its bit, then dropped back into a silent somnolence. Suddenly the night seemed stiflingly hot and airless.

There was still no sign of Sammy Schuter’s dusty cart and Winter began to wonder if the boy had been lying when he had promised to head to Upington and the west. He had seemed willing enough to go but there had been the same sort of contempt for politicians in his face that Kitto always showed, a derisive condescension that was probably powerful enough to make him susceptible to any offer Fabricius might conceivably have made to him.

He could still remember the shrewd, youthful face, watching him with strange steely eyes as he had made his own offer, and he remembered that the sly humour behind it had brought into his mind all the doubtful things he had ever done for Offy in the name of business, all the crafty deals he had worked out in that shabby office over the newspaper, all the bribings with shares of intractable opponents, the small positions of trust that had been discreetly put forward, the pensions, the directorships, even the blackmail when nothing else had worked - the dead dogs he’d dug up, trying to ignore the fact that it wasn’t entirely honest by persuading himself that it was necessary, and that circumstances demanded a loosening of the bounds of moral obligation.

He shrugged, smiling at his own unexpected flash of conscience, and it was while he was still stretching and yawning, stiff with sitting and bored with waiting, that he heard the throb of an engine and saw the yellow glow of a motorcar’s lamps as it swung into the square. It moved slowly down the eastern side of the dusty patch of ground, away from the faint light of the stars, then it came round in a big sweep that sent the dust flying, and stopped sharply in front of the hotel, sliding on the loose surface and quivering as the driver raced the engine. Winter recognised the long square snout and studded bonnet of Kitto’s Rolls-Royce scout car, and a few Africans, attracted by the noise and the lights, gathered immediately from nowhere and stood in the glow that came from the bar, grinning with a child-like appreciation.

The door slammed and Kitto jumped out of the car, stamping on to the stoep where Winter sat. He had changed the smart uniform he had worn to meet Plummer and wore drill trousers now and boots and a wide-awake hat decorated with blue goggles, his Sam Browne and revolver strapped over a navy jersey, his body literally draped with the straps of his compass, binoculars, map case and other equipment.

Romanis was with him, also in some sort of uniform, but still wearing his leather coat and cap.

‘Look slippy,’ Kitto said quickly, indicating the car. ‘Jump in!’

Romanis grabbed his arm, but Winter backed away, still holding his glass. ‘Steady on,’ he said. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Out there,’ Kitto said, indicating the broad sweep of land beyond the railway track. ‘Look slippy, they’ve dodged us. They’ve got clean away.’

Winter got his back against the veranda, refusing to be hurried. ‘All right, all right,’ he soothed. ‘But for God’s sake just tell me what’s happening.’

‘They’ve been here already,’ Romanis said. ‘We found they bought stores. At a place near the station. They’re on the way to Kimberley.’

‘Kimberley! How do you know?’

‘Something they let drop in the store.’ Kitto flicked impatiently at his boot with his crop. ‘You were right. The bastard’s not to be trusted.’ His thin cheeks were sucked in with irritation. ‘He’s got a damn’ good start too,’ he concluded.

‘How good?’

‘Ten-twelve hours.’ Kitto grinned suddenly, his sharp fierce face lighting up. ‘But we’ll pick ‘em up all right,’ he said. ‘These vehicles of mine move amazin’ quick.’

‘It’s a good job they do,’ Romanis said. ‘There are a lot of Fabricius’ friends in Kimberley.’

‘And a lot of Offy’s enemies,’ Winter added.

Kitto turned with a faint ring of triumph in his voice. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said confidently. ‘I’ll get south of ‘em in no time and set ‘em on their road again.’

Winter stretched and yawned. ‘Offy’ll like your loyalty,’ he said.

‘It’s not a question of loyalty to Offy.’ Kitto was on his dignity at once, opaque in intellect and unyielding in his honesty. His face, yellowish in the light that came from the screen door, was frosty in his humourless disapproval of Winter.

‘We’d better get this straight here and now,’ he suggested. ‘To me, this is a military operation and nothing more. Politics don’t come into it. You can act as Offy’s jackal if you like, Winter.
I
don’t.’

‘I wish I’d got your principles, Kitto,’ Winter smiled. ‘
"What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?"
‘