The Sound of Thunder (39 page)

“Come here to Mummy, ” laughed Ruth and Storm completed a dozen unsteady paces before abandoning this form of locomotion as impractical. Dropping to her hands and knees she finished the course at a canter.

“You cheated!” Ruth accused, and jumped up to catch her under the arms and swing her high. Storm squealed ecstatically,

“More!” she commanded. “More!”

Sean wanted to laugh with them. He wanted to run down to them and gather them both in his arms. For suddenly he knew that here was the whole meaning of life, his excuse for existing.

A woman and a child. His woman, and his child.

Ruth looked up and saw him. She froze with the child held to her chest. Her face was without expression as she watched him come down the steps into the amphitheatre.

“Hello.” He stopped in front of her, twisting his hat awkwardly between his hands.

“Hello, Sean,” she whispered, then the corners of her mouth lifted in a shy, uncertain smile and she flushed. “You took so long. I thought you weren’t coming.”

A great grin split Sean’s face and he stepped forward, but at that moment Storm, who had been staring at him with solemn curiosity, began a series of convulsive leaps accompanied by yells of: “Man! Man!” Her feet were anchored against Ruths stomach, which gave power to her thrusts. She leaned out towards Sean determined to reach him, and Ruth was taken by surprise.

“Sean had to drop his hat and catch Storm before she fell.

“More! More!” yelled Storm, continuing to bounce in Sean’s arms.

One of the few things Sean knew about babies was that they have a soft pulsing spot on the top of their heads which is very vulnerable, so he clung to his daughter in terror that he drop her and in equal terror that he crush her. Until Ruth stopped laughing, relieved him of his burden and said,

“Come up to the house. You’re just in time for tea.

They crossed the lawn slowly, each of them holding one of Storm’s hands, so that the child need no longer concentrate on balancing and could devote her whole attention to the fascinating manner in which her feet kept alternately appearing and disappearing under her.

“Sean. There is one thing I have to know before anything else.”

Ruth was looking down at her child, not at him. “Did you She paused.

“Saul, Could you have prevented what happened to him. I mean, you didn’t Her voice trailed off.

“No, I didn’t,” he said harshly.

“Swear it to me, Sean. As you hope for salvation, swear it to me,” she pleaded,

“I swear it to you. I swear on . He sought for an oath, not on his own life, for that was not strong enough. “I swear on the life of our daughter, ” And she sighed with relief. “That was why I did not write to you , I had to know first. ” He wanted to tell her then that he was taking her away with him, he wanted to tell her about Lion Kop and the huge empty house that waited for her to make it into a home. But he knew it was not the moment, not immediately after they had spoken of Saul. He would wait.

He waited while he was introduced to the Goldbergs and was left with them when Ruth took the child into the house to deliver her into the care of the nurse. She returned and he made small conversation during tea and tried not to let them see it in his eyes when he looked at Ruth.

He waited until they were alone together on the lawn and then he blurted it out: “Ruth, you and Storm are coming home with me.”

She stooped over a rosebush and picked a butter, yellow blossom, then with a slight frown on her face she broke each of the tiny red thorns off the stem before she looked at him.

Am I? She asked innocently, but he should have been warned by the chips of diamond brightness in her eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “We can be married within the next few days. it will take that long to arrange a special licence and for you to pack.

Then I’ll take you to Lion Kop, I haven’t told you about …”

“Damn you,” she said softly. “Damn your conceit. Damn your arrogance. ” And he gawked at her.

“You stroll in with your whip in your hand, crack it once and expect me to bark and jump through the hoop. ” She was working herself into a fury now. “I don’t know what dealings you’ve had with women before, but I for one am not a camp, follower, or do I intend being treated like one. Did it ever occur to you for one single second that I might not be prepared to accept this favour you intend bestowing on me? How long did it take you to forget that I have been a widow for three short months? What supreme lack of perception made you believe I would run from one man’s grave and throw myself into your condescending arms? ” “But, Ruth, I love you.” He tried to stop her outburst, but she shouted at him.

“Then prove it, damn you. Prove it by being gentle. Prove it by treating me like a woman and not a chattel, by understanding.

Now his surprise gave way to an anger every bit as intense as hers, and in his turn he shouted at her.

“You weren’t so bloody fussy on the night of the storm, or afterwards! ” As though he had struck her, she stepped back a pace and the mutilated rosebud dropped from her hand.

“You swine,” she whispered. “Get out, and don’t come back.

“Your servant, ma’am.” He clapped his hat on to his head, swung round and strode away across the lawn. When he reached the gravel drive his steps slowed and he stopped and wrestled with his anger and his pride.

Then slowly he turned. The lawn was an empty sweep of smooth green. She was gone.

Ruth ran up the wide marble staircase, but by the time she reached her bedroom window he was half, way down the drive.

From the height of the second floor his figure was foreshortened so apeared mass’ve, and his dark suit stood out clearly against the pale gravel of the drive. He reached the gates and stopped, she leaned forward eagerly across the sill of the window so he could see her more easily when he turned to look back. She saw him deliberately light a long black cheroot, flick away the match, adjust the hat on his head, square his shoulders, and walk away.

n disbelief she stared at the twin columns of the gate, and the dark green hawthorn hedge behind which he had disappeared.

Then slowly she left the window and crossed to the bed and sat down.

“Why didn’t he understand?” she asked softly.

She knew she would cry later, in the night when the real loneliness began.

Sean returned to Ladyburg in the middle of a misty Natal winter’s day. As the train huffed over the rim of the escarpment, he stood on the balcony of his coach and looked out at the vast green stain upon the hills of Lion Kop. The sight of it moved him, but his elation was toned with dark colours.

This is the middle of the way. This year I will be forty, one years old. Out of all that striving and folly something must have emerged. Let me total my assets.

In cash I have a little over two thousand pounds (compliments Of the War Claims Adjustment Board). In land I have fifteen thousand acres, with an option to purchase as many more. I have ten thousand acres of standing wattle which, in another year, will be ready for cutting. My loans against this are heavy but not oppressive, so I am a wealthy man.

In things of the flesh I have a number of grey hairs, a fine collection of scars and a broken nose. But I can still lift and carry a two, hundred, pound sack of mealies under each arm, I can eat half a young sheep at a sitting; without field, glasses I can count the number of head in a herd of springbok at a distance of two miles, and Candy who knows about these things made no complaint about my stamina. I am not yet old.

Apart from these things I have a son who belongs to me (and a son and a daughter who do not). Although I have lost the best of them, I have friends, perhaps more friends than enemies.

But as important as any of these is the purpose and direction I have at last achieved. I know what I want. My course is plotted and the wind stands fair.

These are my assets. These are mine to use and enjoy.

What are my liabilities? Borrowed money, the hatred of a brother and a son, and Ruth.

Ruth is gone! Ruth is gone! clattered the crossties under the coach. Ruth is gone! Ruth is gone! They mocked him.

Sean scowled and forcibly changed the words in his mind.

“The wind is fair! The wind is fair!”

Over the months that followed Sean used his whole energy in the development of Lion Kop. He planned the cutting of his standing bark and decided to reap one, third of it a year before maturity, and another third in each of the subsequent two years.

To replace it he used his two thousand pounds not to pay off his loans, but to plant the rest of his land to wattle. When this was done he had to keep busy. He bought himself a theodolite and a book of instruction in elementary survey, and mapped his lands, laid out his block of trees, pegged new roads for access to his plantations when the cutting began Once again he had nothing to do, so he went to see Dennis Petersen and spent a long day arguing the purchase of Mahobo’s Kloof Ranch on which he had bought an option. He had no cash, and Jackson at Natal Wattle baulked at the suggestion of further loans. When Dennis refused to consider extended terms of payment, Sean called on Ronny Pye at the Ladyburg Banking & Trust. It was a forlorn chance and Sean was genuinely surprised when Ronny gave him a cup of coffee and a cigar, then listened politely to his proposition.

“You’re putting it all on one horse, Sean,” Ronny warned him.

“Theres only one horse in this race. it can’t lose.”

“Very well.” Ronny nodded. “Here’s what I will do with you. I will advance you the full purchase price of Mahobo’s plus a further ten thousand pounds to develop it. In return , you will give me a first bond on Mahobo’s Kloof, and a second bond on Lion Kop after Natal Wattle Company’s loan.

” Sean took it. A week later Ronny Pye called on Jackson in Pietermaritzburg. After the preliminary sparring Ronny asked him: are you quite happy about those Notes you have out to Courtney?”

“The security is good. ” Jackson hesitated. “But he seems to be going a little wild.

“I might be willing to take them Over from you,” Ronny hinted delicately, and Jackson rubbed his nose thoughtfully to mask his relief.

Happily Sean flung his army of Zulus at the virgin grassland of Mahobo’s Kloof. He delighted in the long ranks of sweating, singing black men as they opened the rich, red earth and placed the fragile little saplings.

Dirk was Sean’s constant companion in these days , His attendance in the schoolhouse became more sporadic. Convinced that Dirk would never become a scholar, Sean tacitly condoned the gastric disturbances that prevented Dirk leaving for school in the mornings, but cleared miraculously a few minutes later and allowed him to follow Sean out into the plantations. Dirk aped Sean’s stance, his seat in the saddle, and his long reaching walk. He listened carefully to Sean’s words and repeated them later without omitting the oaths. In the late afternoons they hunted quail and pheasant and guinea, fowl along the slopes of the escarpment. On Sunday when Sean rode across to his neighbours for a bush buck shoot, or a poker session, or merely to drink brandy and talk, then Dirk went with him.

Despite Sean’s protest, Ada returned with her girls to the cottage on Protea Street. So the homestead of Lion Kop was a vast empty shell.

Sean and Dirk used only three of the fifteen rooms, and even these were sparsely furnished. No carpets on the floor, nor pictures on the walls. A few leather, thonged chairs, iron bedstead, plain deal tables, and a cupboard or two. Piled in odd corners were the books and fishing, rods; a pair of shotguns and a rifle on the rack beside the fireplace. The yellow, wood floor was unpolished with dust and bits of fluff beneath the chairs and beds, dark stains left by the litter of pointer puppies; and in Dirk’s bedroom, which Sean never visited, there was a welter , , ANN of old socks and soiled shirts, school exercise books and trophies of the hunt.

Sean had no interest in the house. It was a place to eat an sleep, it had a roof to keep the rain out, a fireplace for warmth, and lamplight so that he could indulge his new appetite for reading. With reading glasses purchased from a travelling salesman on his nose, Sean spent his evenings wading through books on politics and travel, economics and surveying, mathematics and medicine, while Dirk, ostensibly preparing his schoolwork, sat across the fireplace from him and watched him

avidly. Some nights when Sean was engaged in correspondence, he would forget that Dirk was there and the boy would sit up until after midnight.

Sean was now corresponding with both Jannie Niemand and Jan Paulus Leroux. These two had become a political team in the Transvaal, and were already bringing gentle pressure to bear on Sean. They wanted him to organize the equivalent of their South Africa Party, and to lead it in Natal. Sean hedged. Not yet, perhaps later he told them.

Once a month he received and answered a long letter from John Acheson. Acheson had returned to England and the gratitude of the nation. He was now Lord Caisterbrook and from his seat in the House of Lords he kept Sean informed of the temper and mood of the English people and the affairs of State.

Sometimes, more often than was healthy, Sean thought about Ruth.

Then he became angry and sad and desperately lonely.

Slowly it would build up within him until he could not sleep, then he would go down at night to a friendly widow who lived alone in one of the gangers’ cottages beside the new railway yards.

Yet he counted himself happy, until that day at the beginning of September 1903, when he received an embossed card. It said simply: Miss Storm Friedman requests the pleasure of the company of Colonel Sean Courtney, DSO, DCM, at a party to celebrate her third birthday.

4 pm, September 26th.

IRSVPI The Goldbergs, Chase Valley, Pietermaritzburg.

In the bottom right, hand corner was an inky finger, print about the size of a threepenny, piece.

On the 24th, Sean left by train for Pietermaritzburg. Dirk came back from the station with Ada to his old room in the cottage on Protea Street.

That night Mary lay awake and listened to him cry for his father.