The Sound of Thunder (37 page)

“Lie down, Sean,” Jan Paulus told him gently. “You’ll bleed again.

“You!” Sean shouted at him. “You killed him.

“Ja. ” Leroux nodded his red beard into his chest. “I killed them, but you also, all of us. Ja, we killed them. ” And he reached up and took Sean’s arm and drew him down into the blankets. “Now, lie still or we’ll bury you also.”

“But why, Paul. Why?” Sean asked softly.

“Does it matter why? They are dead. ” “And now what happens?”

Sean covered his eyes from the sun.

“We go on living. That is all, we just go on.”

“But what was it about? Why did we fight?”

“I don’t know. Once I knew clearly, but now I have lost the reason,” Leroux answered.

They were silent for a long time and then they began to talk again. Groping together for the things that must take the place of that which had filled these last three years.

Twice that afternoon the column halted briefly while they buried men who had died of their wounds. And each of these deaths, one a burgher and the other a trooper, gave poignancy and direction to the talk in the scotch cart

In the evening they met a patrol that was scouting ahead of the big columns returning from the vaal River. A young lieutenant came to the scotch cart and saluted Sean.

“I have a message for you from General Acheson, sir.

“Yes? ” “This fellow Leroux got away from us at the Padda.

Zietsmann, the other Boer leader, was killed, but Leroux got away.

“This is General Leroux,” Sean told him.

“Good God! ” He stared at Leroux. “You caught him. I say well done, sir. Jolly well done. ” In the past two years Jan Paulus had become a legend to the British, so that the lieutenant examined him now with frank curiosity.

“What is your message?” Sean snapped.

“Sorry, sir. ” The youngster dragged his eyes away from Jan Paulus. “All the Boer leaders are meeting at Vereeniging. We are to give them safe conduct into the garrison. General Acheson wanted you to try to contact Leroux with the offer, but, that won’t be difficult now. Jolly good show, sir.

“Thank you, Lieutenant. Please tell General Acheson that we’ll be in Vereeniging tomorrow.”

They watched the Patrol ride away and disappear over a fold in the land.

“So!” growled Leroux. “It’s surrender then.”

No,” Sean contradicted him. “It’s peace!”

The primary school at Vereeniging had been converted into an officers’ hospital. Sean lay on his field cot and regarded the picture of President Kruger on the wall opposite him. In this way he was putting off the moment when he must continue with the letter he was writing. So far he had written the address, the date and the salutation: “My dear Ruth. ” It was ten days since the column had returned from the veld.

It was also ten days since the surgeons had cut him open and tied together those parts of his alimentary canal that the bullet had disrupted. He wrote: I am at this moment well on the way to recovering from a small wound received two weeks ago near the Vaal River, so please take no notice of my current address. “He started a new paragraph. ” God knows I wish the circumstances in which I write were less painful to both of us. You will by now have received an official notification of Saul’s death, so there is nothing I can add but to say that he died in circumstances of great personal gallantry. While about to lead a bayonet charge he was shot and killed instantly.

I know you will want to be alone in your grief. It will be some weeks before the doctors allow me to travel. By the time I reach Pietermaritzburg I hope you will be sufficiently recovered to allow me to call on you in the hope that I may be able to give you some comfort.

I trust that small Storm continues to increase in weight and beauty. I look forward to seeing her again.

A long while he pondered the ending, and finally decided on

“Your true friend.” He signed it, folded it into its envelope and laid it on the locker beside his bed for posting.

Then he lay back on his pillows and surrendered himself to the ache of loss and the dull pain in his belly.

After a while his physical pain dominated, and he glanced surreptitiously around the ward to ensure there were no nurses about.

Then he lifted the sheet, pulled up his nightshirt and began picking at the bandage until he had exposed the edge of the wound with the black horsehair stitches standing stiffly out of it like the knots in a strand of barbed wire. An expression of comical disgust curled his lips. Sean hated sickness, but especially he hated it in his own flesh.

The disgust gave way slowly to helpless anger and he glared at the wound.

“Leave it stand, old Sean. Looking won’t make it better.”

Sean had been so intent on the evil gash in his stomach that he had not heard the speaker approach. Despite the cane and the limp that dragged his right leg, Leroux moved silently for a big man. He stood now beside the bed and smiled shyly down at Sean.

“Paul!” Guiltily Sean covered himself.

,Ja, Sean. How goes it?” ……. “Not too bad. And you?”

Leroux shrugged. “They tell me I will need this for a long time to come.” He tapped the ferrule of the cane on the floor.

, May I sit down?”

“Of course.” Sean moved to give him the edge of the bed and Leroux lowered himself with his bad leg stretched stiffly in front of him. His clothing was newly washed and the cuffs of his jacket darned; patches on the elbows, and a long tear in the knee of his breeches had been cobbled together with crude, masculine stitches.

His beard had been trimmed and squared. There were iodine stained bandages covering the open sores on his wrists, but a red mane of hair hung to the collar of his jacket and the bones of his forehead and cheeks made harsh angles beneath skin that was desiccated and browned by the sun.

“So!” said Sean.

“So!” Leroux answered him and looked down at his hands.

Both he and Sean were silent then, awkward and inarticulate, for neither of them dealt easily in words.

“Will You smoke, Paul?” Sean reached for the cheroots on his locker.

“Thank you.” They made a show of selecting and lighting, then silence overwhelmed them again and Leroux scowled at the tip of his cheroot.

“This is good tobacco,” he growled.

“Yes,” agreed Sean and regarded his own cheroot with equal ferocity. Leroux coughed and rolled his cane between the fingers of his other hand,

“Toe maar, I just thought I’d come and see you.” he said.

“I’m glad of it.”

“So, you’re all right then, hey?”

“Yes. I’m all right,” Sean agreed.

“Good. ” Leroux nodded sagely. “Well, then!” He stood up slowly. “I had better be going. We are meeting again in an hour.

Jannie Smuts has come up from the Cape. ” “I heard so.” Even the hospital was penetrated by ruMOurS of what was happening in the big marquee tent pitched on the parade, ground near the station. Under the chairmanship of old President Steyn the Boer leaders were talking out their future.

De Wet was there, and Niemand and Leroux. Botha was there and Hertzog and Strauss and others whose names had echoed across the world these last two years. And now the last of them, Jannic Smuts, had arrived. He had left his commando besieging the little town of O’Kiep in the Northern Cape and travelled up the British-held railway. Now they were all assembled. If they had gained nothing else in these last desperate years, they had at least won recognition as the leaders of the Boer people. This tiny band of war-sick men was treating with the representatives of the greatest military power on earth.

-ja, I have heard so,” Sean repeated, and impulsively he thrust out his hand. “Good luck, Paul.”

Leroux seized his hand and held it hard, his mouth moved with the pressure of his emotions

“Sean, we must talk. We have to talk!” he blurted.

“Sit down,” Sean told him and Leroux freed his hand and sank on to the bed once again.

“What must I do, Sean?” he asked. “It’s you who must advise me.

Not these … not these others from over the sea.”

” You have seen Kitchener and Mimer. ” It was not a question, for Sean knew of the meeting. “What do they ask of you?”

“They ask everything. ” Leroux spoke bitterly. “They ask for surrender without terms. ” “Will you agree to that?”

For a minute Leroux was silent, and then he lifted his head and looked full into Sean’s face.

“So far we have fought to live,” he said and what Sean saw in those eyes he would never forget. “But now we will fight to die. ” “And by this, what will you achieve?” Sean asked softly.

“Death is the lesser evil.” “We can not live as slaves.

“Leroux’s voice rose sharply. “This is my land,” he cried.

“No,” Sean told him harshly. “It is also my land, and the land of my son,” and then his voice softened. “And the blood of my son is your blood.”

“But these others-this Kitchener, this devil Mimer.”

“They are a people apart,” Sean said’ But you fought with them!”

Leroux accused.

“I have done many foolish things,” agreed Sean. “But, from them I have learned. ” “What are you saying?” demanded Leroux, and Sean could see the sparkle of hope in his eyes. I must say this carefully, thought Sean, I must be very careful. He drew a long breath before he spoke.

“As it stands this moment your people are scattered but alive, If you fight on, the British will stay until you have found the innihilation you seek. If you stop now, then soon they will leave. ” “Will you leave?” demanded Leroux savagely.

“No. ” “And you are British! The British will stay-you and those like you. ” Then Sean grinned at him. It was so sudden, so irresistible that grin, that it threw Leroux off balance.

“Do I look and talk like a rooinek, Paul?” he asked in the

“Taal.

“Which half of my son is burgher and which half British?”

Confused by this sneak attack Leroux stared at him for a long time before he dropped his eyes and fiddled with his cane.

“Come on, man,” Sean told him. “Make an end to this foolishness .

You and I have a lot of work to do.

“You and I?” Leroux asked suspiciously.

, yes. , , Leroux laughed, a sudden harsh bellow of laughter.

“You are a slim Kerel, ” he roared.

“I’ll have to think about what you have said.” He rose from the bed and seemed to stand taller now. The laughter filled out his gaunt features and wrinkled his nose.

“I’ll have to think very carefully about it.” He reached out his hand again and Sean took it. “I will come and talk with you again.”

He turned away abruptly and limped down the ward with his cane tapping loudly.

Jan Paulus kept his word. He visited Sean daily, an hour or so at a time, and they talked. Two days after the Boer surrender he brought another man with him.

Jan Paulus stood a good four inches over him, but though he was slimly built the visitor gave the impression of size.

“Sean, this is Jan Christian Niemand.”

“Perhaps I am lucky we did not meet before, Colonel Courtney, ” Niemand’s voice, high in timbre, was crisp and authoritative . He spoke the perfect English he had learned at Oxford University. “What do you think, Oubaas? ” He addressed Jan Paulus by the title which was obviously a private joke between them, and Jan Paulus chuckled.

“Very lucky. Otherwise you also might be using a stick.”

Sean examined Niemand with interest. Hard years of war had muscled his shoulders and he walked like a soldier, yet above the pointed blond beard was the face of a scholar. The skin had a youthful clarity which was almost maidenly, but the eyes were a penetrating blue, the merciless blue of a Toledo steel blade.

His mind had the same resilience, and before many minutes Sean was using all his wits to meet and answer questions that Niemand asked him.

It was clear that he was being subjected to some sort of test. At the end of an hour he decided he had passed.

“And now, what are your plans?”

I must go home,” Sean answered.

soon, soon, perhaps, a wife.”

“I wish you happiness “it is not yet settled,” Sean admitted. “I still have to ask her.

Jannie Niemand smiled. “Well, then, I wish you luck with your suit. And strength to build a new life.” Suddenly he was serious.

“We also must rebuild what has been destroyed.” He stood up from the bed and Jan Paulus stood with him.

“There will be need of good men in the years ahead.” Niemand held out his hand and Sean took it. “We will meet again.

Count on that.

As the train ran in past the great, white mine dumps Sean leaned from the window of the coach to look ahead at the familiar skyline of Johannesburg, he wondered how such an unlovely city still had the power to draw him back each time. It was as though he was connected to it by an elastic umbilical cord which allowed him a wide range. But when he reached its limit it pulled him back.

“TWo days,” he promised himself. “Two days I’ll stay here.

Just long enough to hand old Acheson my formal resignation and tell Candy Good, bye. Then I’ll head south to Ladyburg and and leave this town to stew in its own evil juices.

Near at hand a midday hooter howled from one of the mines, and immediately its cry was taken up and answered by the other mines. It sounded as though a pack of hungry wolves were hunting across the valley, the wolves of greed and gold. Those mines that had been forced to close during the hostilities were now back in production, and the black smoke from their stacks sullied the sky and drifted in a dirty mist across the crest of the ridge. The train slowed, and the unexpected clatter and lurch of the points broke the rhythm of its run. Then it was sliding in along the concrete platform of Johannesburg Station.

Sean lifted his luggage down from the rack above his head and passed it out of the open window to Mbejane. The exertion of lifting and carrying no longer caught in his guts; except for the irregular scar near his navel he was completely healed. When he strode down the platform towards the exit he held himself erect, no longer stooping to favour his stomach.

A horse drawn cab deposited them on the pavement outside Acheson’s headquarters, and Sean left Mbejane guarding the luggage while he pushed his way across the crowded lobby and climbed the staircase to the first floor,