The Sound of Thunder (41 page)

The Village Management Board met in secret conclave, infected by the general excitement and armed with strict instructions from their wives, they voted unanimously for a civic reception of Ruth Friedman at the station and a formal Ball that night. Dennis Petersen, who had Sean’s consent to a barbecue on the night of Ruth’s arrival, was placated with the promise that he would be allowed to make a short speech of welcome at the station.

Sean called upon Ronny Pye and was again surprised when Ronny agreed cheerfully to a further loan of one thousand pounds. Ronny signed the cheque with the satisfied air of a spider putting the final thread into his web, and Sean left immediately for Pietermaritzburg to visit a jeweller. He returned home five hundred pounds poorer, with a packet in his breast pocket that contained a huge square, cut diamond set in a band of platinum. Dirk was at the station to meet him. Sean took one look at him and ordered him to the village barber.

The night before Ruth’s arrival Sean and Mbejane fell upon Dirk in a surprise attack and dragged him protesting to the bathroom. Sean was astounded by the large quantities of foreign matter that he removed from Dirk’s ears, and by the way in which Dirk’s suntan dissolved so readily under an application of soap.

The following morning as her railway coach ground to a jerky halt in front of the station building, Ruth looked down on a mass of strangers surrounding the roped, off area in front of her. Only one family was not represented in the crowd, which included the young ladies and gentlemen of Ladyburg High School in their church clothes.

She stood uncertainly on the balcony of the coach and heard the hum of appreciative comment and speculation. Ruth had relieved the plain black mourning with a wide ribbon of pink around the crown of her hat, pink gloves and gauzy pink veil, which shrouded her firm in a misty and mystmions fashion. It was very effective.

Convinced that there was some misunderstanding, Ruth was about to withdraw into the coach, when she noticed a deputation approaching along the roped, off passageway. It was headed by Sean and she recognized the thunderous scowl he wore as his expression of acute embarrassment. She felt an inexplicable urge to burst out laughing, but managed to keep it to a smile as Sean climbed up on to the balcony and took her hand.

“Ruth, I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t plan all this, things got a little out of control, ” he whispered hurriedly, then he muttered an introduction to Dennis Petersen, who had ponderously mounted the steps behind him. Now Dennis turned to face the crowd and spread his arms in the gesture that Moses might have employed on his return from the mountain.

“Ladies and gentlemen, citizens of Ladyburg, friends, ” he began, and from the way he said it Sean knew he was good for another half, hour. He glanced sideways at Ruth and saw that she was smiling.

It came as a surprise to him when he realized she was enjoying herself Sean relaxed a little.

“It gives me great pleasure to welcome to our fair town this lovely lady, friend of one of our foremost … ” Ruth’s fingers found their way surreptitiously into Sean’s hand, and Sean relaxed a little more. He saw the wide brim of Ada’s hat standing out in the crowd and he smiled at her. She replied with a nod of approval towards Ruth.

By some curious twist of oratory, Dennis was now talking about the new water filtration plant and its benefit to the community.

“, But, my friends, this is only the first of a series of projects planned by your Board. ” He paused significantly.

“Hear, hear,” Sean interjected loudly and clapped his hands.

The applause was taken up by the crowd, and Sean stepped past Dennis to the rail of the balcony.

“On behalf of Mrs. Friedman and myself, I thank you for your friendship and your hospitality.” Then, leaving Dennis on the balcony making helpless little movements with his hands and silently opening and closing his mouth, Sean spirited Ruth away, ran her through a rapid fire series of introductions and handshakes, gathered Ada and Dirk and got them all into the car rage

While Sean and Mbenjane fussed with the luggage, Ruth an!

Ada settled their skirts and adjusted their hats before meeting each other’s eyes again.

“Although Sean warned me, I didn’t expect you to be quite so lovely,” Ada said. Flushing with pleasure and relief, Ruth leaned impulsively across to touch her arm.

“I’ve been longing to meet you, Mrs. Courtney.

“If you promise to call me Ada, then I’ll call you Ruth.”

Sean scrambled into the carriage, flustered and perspiring.

“Let’s get the hell out of here! That week was to be remembered for many years. The usual Christmas festivities paled into insignificance beside it.

Matrons competed fiercely to provide food, mountains of it, prepared from their closely guarded recipe books. In between cooking they conducted old feuds, began new ones and worried about their daughters.

The young bucks competed on the gymkhana and polo field, then again on the dance floor. Dirk Courtney won the junior tent, pegging event. Then against a visiting team from Pietermaritzburg College he captained the school rugby Win to an inglorious 30, 0 defeat.

The young ladies competed with equal ferocity, covering it with giggles and blushes. The success of their efforts was measured in the outbreak of betrothals and scandals during the week.

The older men smiled indulgently, until, fortified with bottled spirit, they discarded their dignity and capered and panted around the dance floor. There were three bouts of fisticuffs but these were between old enemies and none of them were really worth watching.

Only one family held aloof from the festivities. There were many of the young ladies who missed Michael Courtney.

During one of the infrequent lulls of the week, Sean managed to separate Ruth from Ada, and take her out to the homestead at Lion Kop.

She moved silently through the empty rooms, appraising each with narrowed thoughtful eyes while Sean hovered anxiously behind her, certain that her silence was disapproval.

In fact, Ruth was in ecstasy; a shell, a magnificent shell of a house, with no trace of another woman in it, waiting for her to bring it to life. She could imagine exactly the curtains she wanted, her Persian carpets sent down by Uncle Isaac from Pretoria and now in storage, would look just right once she had the yellow, wood floors polished to a gloss. The kitchen, of course, would have to be completely rebuilt, with a new double Ago stove. The bedroom …

Unable to contain himself, Sean blurted out: “Well, do you like it?”

She turned slowly to him, the mists of thought clearing from her eyes “Oh, Sean! It’s the most beautiful house in all the world.”

In this emotional moment, Sean put forward the proposition he had planned for that evening.

“Ruth, will you marry me?”

And Ruth, who had planned to hesitate and ask for a little time to consider, replied instantly: “Oh, yes please!”

she was truly impressed with the ring.

The finale to the week was Sean Courtney’s bush, buck shoot.

Sean and Dirk arrived at Protea Cottage with the dawn. They were dressed in rough hunting clothes and the leather gun, cases lay on the floor of the mule, wagon under Sean’s feet. It took nearly fifteen minutes for Sean to transfer Ruth, Ada and her girls from the cottage to the carriage. In the same way a man might drive a flock of chickens towards the door of a henhouse.

He would get them all moving slowly in front of him, down the path towards the carriage, clucking and fussing. Almost there when suddenly one of them would shriek softly and double back towards the cottage for a forgotten parasol or work, basket and the general movement would break down again.

The third time this happened Sean felt something snap inside his head. He bellowed. A vast hush fell over the ladies and two of them looked as though they might cry.

“Now don’t get worked up, dear.” Ada tried to soothe him

“I am not getting worked up, dear.” Sean’s voice quivered with the effort of matitit. “But if everybody is not in the carriage by the count of ten, then I might easily get that way.

They were all seated by the count of five and he drove out to the stock pens

Carriages and mule, wagons carrying the entire population of the Ladyburg district were waiting in a disorderly tangle in the field beside the stock pen Sean trotted past in a babble of greeting and comment. One at a time the waiting carriages wheeled into line behind him and the long convoy wound out towards Mahobo’s Kloof Farm. The big shoot had begun.

In the middle of the line someone was playing a concertina and the singing started. It spread to each carriage in turn and blended with the sound of wheels and hooves and laughter.

Gradually Sean’s irritation smoothed out. Ada’s girls were singing Boland Se Nooinentje in the back seat. Dirk had jumped down from the carriage and with half a dozen of the youngsters from the village ran ahead of the horses. Ruth’s hand touched Sean’s leg uncertainly and as he turned and grinned at her he saw the relief in her answering smile.

“What a beautiful day, Sean.”

“Sorry I nearly spoiled it, ” he answered.

“Oh, nonsense!” She moved closer to him and suddenly he was happy. all the preparation was worth it. Beside him Ruth laughed softly.

“What’s the joke?” Sean reached out and took her hand.

“No joke. I just felt like laughing,” she answered. “Look how green everything is , ” She said it to distract him, to make him look away so that she could study his face. The subterfuge worked.

“The land seems so young now.” His eyes, as he looked at it, took on that gentleness she knew so well. By now she knew many of his moods and she was learning how to induce or redirect each of them. He was such a simple man, yet in that simplicity lay his strength. He is like a mountain, she thought.

You know how it will be with the sun on it in the early morning.

You know that when the wind is in the south there will be mist covering the crest, and in the evening the shadows will fall in certain patterns across the slopes and the gorges will look dark and blue. Yet also you know the shape of the mountain is uDchanged, that it will never change.

“I love you, my mountain,” she whispered, and anticipated the startled expression before it flashed across his face.

“I love you, my man,” she amended.

“Oh! I love you too.”

And now he is vaguely embarrassed. Oh, God, I could eat him! If I were to reach over and kiss him now in front of everybody … !

Secretly she savoured the idea.

“What devilment are you planning?” he demanded gruffly.

He wasn’t supposed to read her so accurately. Taken off balance she stared at him. Suddenly the mountain had shown that it understood exactly the way she felt when she looked at it.

“Nothing, ” she denied in confusion. “I wasn’t… ” Before she realized fully what he was about, he had turned half, way in his seat towards her and lifted her bodily into his lap.

“Sean, no! ” she gasped and then her protests were muffled.

She heard the laughter of Ada’s girls, the hoots of encouragement and applause from the other carriages, and she kicked and struggled, pushing with one hand against his chest and trying to keep her hat on with the other.

By the time he replaced her on the seat beside him, her hair had come down behind, her hat was off and her cheeks and ears were flaming red. She had been very thoroughly kissed.

“Nice shot, Sean!”

“Author! Author!”

“Arrest that man!” the cries and the laughter added to her confusion.

“You’re terrible! ” Ruth used her hat as a screen behind which she tried to control her blushes. “In front of all those people, too!

” “That should keep you out of mischief for a while, me lass!

And suddenly she wasn’t so sure of the shape of her mountain.

The cavalcade turned off along the rough track from the main road, splashed through the drift, climbed the far bank and spread out among the trees. Servants, who had been waiting since the previous evening, ran to their masters’ horses as they halted.

Each vehicle disgorged a noisy blast of children and dogs, and then a more dignified trickle of adults. The women moved without hesitation towards the two huge marquees that had been erected among the trees, while the men unloaded the gun, cases and began assembling their weapons.

Still sitting on the front seat of the wagon, Sean opened the leather case at his feet and while his hands automatically titteet the barrels into the breech piece of his shotgun he allowed him self to review his preparations with a certain amount of satisfaction.

He had selected this site not only for the cool grove of syringA trees which provided shade above and a soft carpet of fallen leaves below, nor for the proximity of the tinkling stream where all the animals could be watered, but also because it was situated within fifteen minutes’ walk of the first beat.

Days before a gang of Zulus working under Mbejane had cleared out all the undergrowth beneath the trees, had erected the marquee tents and the trestle tables, dug the cooking pits and even built two grass, walled pit latrines discreetly out of view of the main camp Huge log fires were burning in the cooking pits now, but by noon they would have burned down to glowing coal beds. The trestle tables about which the women had already begun working were laden with food. There was a great deal of activity going on in that direction at the moment, most of it talking.

From the other wagons men were starting to drift towards him, buckling on their cartridge belts, hefting shotguns, chatting together nonchalantly in an attempt to disguise their excitement.

Under instruction from Sean, Dirk had assembled a rabble of those males who were too young to handle shotguns but too old to stay with the women. These were making no effort to hide their excitement.

Armed with sikelav (the Zulu fighting sticks) they were showing every indication of getting out of hand. Already one small boy was weeping loudly and massaging the welt he had received from a playful sikela.

” All right, shut up, all of you,” Sean shouted. “Dirk will.