The Sound of Thunder (48 page)

In all the doll was buried four times and Ada’s garden looked as though a swarm of locusts had descended upon it.

Christmas Day started early for Sean. He and Michael supervised the slaughter of ten large oxen for the Zulu labour force, then distributed pay and gifts. “for each man a khaki shirt and short pants, and for each of their wives a double handful of coloured beads. There was much singing and laughter. Mbejane, risen from his sickbed for the occasion, made a speech of high dramatic content. Unable to prance on his freshly healed legs, yet he shook his spears, postured and roared his questions at them.

“Has he beaten you?”

“Ai-bho! ” They hurled the negative back at him.

“Has he fed you?”

“Yhe-bho!” explosive accent.

“Is there gold in your pockets?”

Yhe-bho!

“Is he our father?”

“He is our father!”

All to be construed not too literally, Sean grinned. Then he stepped forward to accept the large earthen pot of millet beer that Mbejane’s senior wife presented to him. It was a matter of honour that this be emptied without removing it from the lips, a feat which Sean and then Michael both accomplished. Then they climbed up into the waiting buggy, Mbejane took the reins and with Dirk on the seat beside him drove them down to Ladyburg.

After the first flurry of greeting and good wishes, Ruth led Sean into the back yard followed by everyone else. There stood a large object covered by a unmulin which Win ceremoniously removed and Sean gaped at what Ruth had given him.

Its paintwork burnished to a high gloss, metal parts and polished leather upholstery sparkling in the sun-stood a motor vehicle. U Stamped in the huge metal wheel hubs, and below the mascot on the radiator were the words

“Rolls-Royce. ” Sean had seen these fiendishly beautiful machines in Johannesburg, and now he was overcome by the feeling of unease they had given him then.

“My dear Ruth, I haven’t the words to thank you. ” He kissed her heartily to delay the moment when he must approach the monster.

“Do you really like it?”

“Like it? It’s the most magnificent thing I have ever seen.”

Over her shoulder Sean noticed with relief that Michael had taken over. As the only engineer present, he was seated behind the wheel and speaking authoritatively to the crowd about him.

“Get in! ” Ruth ordered

“Let me look at it first. ” With Ruth on his arm, Sean circled the Rolls, never approaching closer than half a dozen paces. The great headlights glared at him malevolently and Sean averted his eyes. His unease was slowly becoming genuine fear as he realized that he was expected not only to ride in the thing, but to direct its course and speed.

Unable to delay any longer, he approached and patted the bonnet.

“Hey there!” he told it grimly. With an unbroken anima you must establish mastery from the first contact.

“Get in! ” Michael was still in charge and Sean obeyed, placing Ruth in the middle of the front seat and himself nearest the door. On Ruth’s lap Storm bounded and squealed with excitement. The delay while Michael consulted the handbook at length did nothing for Sean’s confidence.

“Ruth, don’t you think it wise to leave Storm behind-just this first time?”

“Oh, she isn’t any trouble.” Ruth regarded him quizzically, then smiled. “It’s really quite safe, darling. ” Despite her assurance, Sean stiffened in terror when the motor finally roared into life; and he held that pose, staring fixedly ahead, during the whole of their triumphal progress through the streets of Ladyburg. Citizens and servants boiled from the houses along their route and lined the road to cheer in wonder and delight.

At last they were back in Protea Street and when Michael stopped outside the cottage Sean escaped from the vehicle like a man waking from a nightmare. He firmly vetoed the suggestion that the family motor to church, on the grounds that it was irreverent and in bad taste. The Reverend Smiley was flattered that Sean remained awake throughout his sermon, and judged by Sean’s worried expression that at last he was in fear for his soul.

After church Michael went out to Theuniskraal to eat Christmas dinner with his parents, but returned early in the afternoon to begin Sean’s instruction. The entire population of Ladyburg turned to watch Sean and Michael circling the block at a walking pace. By early evening Michael decided that Sean was ready for a solo circuit and accordingly he disembarked.

Alone at the wheel, sweating nervously, Sean looked at the sea of expectant faces around him and saw Mbejane grinning hugely in the background.

“Mbejane! ” he bellowed.

-Nkosi! I I

“Come with me,” and Mbejane’s grin dissolved. He backed away a little. It was unnatural that a vehicle should move of its own accord-and Mbejane wanted no part of it.

“Nkosi, there is much pain still in my legs.

Among the crowd were many of the Zulu labourers from Lion Kop, who had come down from the hills when news of the miracle reached them.

Now one of these laughed in such a manner as to cast doubt on Mbejane’s courage. Mbejane drew himself to his full height and withered the man with his eyes, then he stalked proudly to the Rolls, sat on the seat beside Sean and folded his arms across his chest.

Sean drew a deep breath and gripped the steering-wheel with both hands, his eyes narrowed and he scowled ahead down the road.

“Clutch in!” he muttered to himself. “In gear! Brake off!

Throttle down! Clutch out! ” The Rolls leapt forward so violently that both he and Mbejane were nearly thrown over the back of the seat. Fifty yards farther on the machine expired from lack of fuel, a stroke of good fortune because it was unlikely that Sean would have been able to remember the procedure for stopping it.

Grey of face and unsteady of limb, Mbejane allgbted from the Rolls for the last time. He never rode in it again-and secretly Sean envied him his freedom. He was greatly relieved to hear that it would be weeks before more fuel could be sent up from Cape Town.

Three weeks before Sean’s wedding Ada Courtney went into her orchard one morning early to pick fruit for breakfast. She found Mary there, dressed in her white nightgown, and hanging by her neck from the big avocado tree. Ada cut her down and sent one of the servants to call Doctor Fraser.

Between them they carried the dead girl to her cubicle and laid her on her bed. While Doc Fraser made a hasty examination Ada stood staring down at the face that death had made more pitiful.

“What depths of loneliness drove her to this? ” she whispered, and Doc Fraser pulled the sheet over the corpse and looked across at Ada.

“That wasn’t the reasonin fact, it might have been better if she were a little more lonely. ” He pulled out his tobacco pouch and began to load his pipe. “Who was her boy friend, Aunt Ada? ” “She had none.” “She must have.

“Why do you say that?”

“Aunt Ada, this girl was four months pregnant.”

It was a small funeral, just the Courtney family and Ada’s girls.

Mary was an orphan and she had no other friends.

Two weeks before the wedding, Sean and Michael finished the season’s cut of bark and switched the Zulus to planting out the blocks destroyed by the fire. “together they drew up a draft Profit and Loss Account. Combining their rudimentary knowledge of accounting and arguing far into the night, they finally agreed that from fifteen hundred acres of wattle they had cut fourteen hundred and twenty tons of bark, to gross a little over twenty-eight thousand pounds sterling.

But here all agreement ended. Michael insisted that the stocks of material and expenditure on planting of new trees be carried forward, giving a net profit for the year of nine thousand pounds.

Sean wanted to write all expenditure off against income and show a profit of one thousand, so they deadlocked and finally sent all the books to a qualified accountant in Pietermaritzburg.

This gentleman sided with Michael.

They then considered the prospects for the coming season and were a little awed when they realized that there would be four thousand acres of wattle to reap and an expected gross of eighty thousand pounds sterling-always providing there were no more fires. That evening, without Sean’s knowledge, Michael wrote two letters. One to a manufacturer of heavy machinery in Birmingham, whose name and address Michael had furtively copied from one of the huge boilers in the Natal Wattle Estate Company’s plant. The other to the firm of Foyle’s booksellers in Choring Cross Road, London, requesting the immediate dispatch of all and any literature on the processing of wattle bark.

Michael Courtney had caught from Sean the habit of dreaming extravagantly. He had also acquired the trick of setting out to make those dreams become reality.

Three days before the wedding Ada and her young ladies set out for Pietermaritzburg by train and Sean, Michael and Dirk followed in the Rolls.

The three of them arrived dusty and bad-tempered outside the White Horse Hotel. It had been a nerve-racking journey. Sean had enlivened it by shouting incessant warnings, instruction and blasphemy at Michael, the driver.

“Slow down, for God’s sake, slow down! Do you want to kill us all!”

Look out! Watch that cow!”

“Don’t drive so close to the verge!

Dirk had done his share by demanding halts for urination, hanging over the sides, climbing tirelessly between the front and back seats and urging Michael to exceed the speed-limit set by Sean. Finally, in anger, Sean had Michael stop the car and administered corporal punishment with the birch of a melkbos tree cut from beside the road.

On arrival Dirk was met by Ada, and led away snivelling.

Michael took the Rolls and disappeared in the direction of the Natal Wattle Company’s plant, where he was to spend most of the following three days snooping and asking questions, and Sean went to find Jan Paulus Leroux, who had come down from Pretoria in response to Sean’s wedding invitation. By the day of the wedding Michael Courtney had compiled a small volume of notes on wattle processing, and Jan Paulus had given Sean a minute account of the aims and objects of the South African Party. But in response to his urging Sean had promised only to “‘think about it.”

The wedding ceremony had given everybody much cause for thought.

Although Sean had no qualms about marrying in a synagogue, yet he steadfastly refused to undergo the painful little operation which would enable him to do so. His halfhearted suggestion that Ruth should convert to Christianity was met with a curt rejection. Finally, a compromise was agreed, and Ben Goldberg persuaded the local Magistrate to perform a civil ceremony in the dining-room of The Golds.

Ben Goldberg gave the bride away and Ma Goldberg wept a little.

Ruth was magnificent in Ada’s creation of green satin and seed pearls.

Storm wore an exact miniature of Ruth’s dress and sparked off a minor brawl with the other flower girls during the ceremony. Michael as Best Man conducted himself with aplomb.

He quelled the riot among the flower girls, produced the wedding ring on cue and prompted the groom when he muffed his lines.

The reception on the lawns was attended by a large crowd of the Goldbergs” friends and business associates and by half the population of Ladyburg, including Ronny Pye, Dennis Petersen and their families.

Garrick and Anna Courtney were not there, nor had they acknowledged the invitation.

Brilliant sunshine blessed the day and the lawns were smooth and green as expensive carpets. There were long trestle tables laden with the fruits of Ma Goldberg’s kitchen and the products of Ben Goldberg’s brewery.

Storm Friedman went from group to group of guests, boosting up her skirts to display the pink ribbons in her pantaloons, until Ruth caught her at it.

Having found his first taste of champagne very much to his liking, Dirk went on to drink six glasses of it behind the rose bushes. He was then copiously ill. Fortunately Michael found him before Sean did, and spirited him away to one of the guest roomns and left him there to languish.

With Ruth on his arm, Sean inspected the display of wedding gifts and was impressed. He then circulated among the crowds on the lawn until he reached Jan Paulus and fell into an earnest political discussion. Ruth left them to it and went to change into her going-away clothes.

The prettiest and most blonde of Ada’s young ladies caught the bouquet. Immediately thereafter she caught Michael’s eye and blushed to match the crimson carnations in her hand.

Amid a hum of appreciative comment and a snowstorm of confetti Ruth returned and, a queen ascending the throne, took her seat in the Rolls. Beside her Sean, in dust coat and goggles, steeled himself, muttered his usual incantations and gave the Rolls its head. Like a wild horse the machine seemed to rear on its hind wheels and then tear down the driveway scattering gravel and guests. Ruth clutching desperately at her hatful of ostrich feathers and Sean shouting at the Rolls to

“Whoa! There, girl, —they headed out along the road that led through the Valley of a Thousand Hills to Durban and the sea, and disappeared in a tall column of dust.

Three months later, having picked up Storm from Ma Goldberg en passant, they reappeared at lion Kop homestead. Sean had put on weight and both of them had that smugly complacent look found only in the faces of couples returning from a successful honeymoon.

On the front stoep and in the outbuildings of Uon Kop were the crates and packing-cases which contained wedding gifts, Ruth’s furniture and carpets, and the additional furniture and curtains they had purchased in Durban. Ruth, ably assisted by Ada, threw herself joyously into the task of unpacking and moving in. Meanwhile Sean began a tour of inspection of the estate to determine how much of it had suffered in his absence, and he felt vaguely cheated when he found that Michael had managed very well without him. The plantations were trim and cleared of undergrowth, the vast black scar through their centre was nearly obliterated with freshly planted rows of saplings, the labour force was half as productive again under the new incentive payment scheme which Michael, in consultation with the Accountant, had introduced. Sean gave Michael a lecture on “not getting too bloody clever” and “learning to walk before you ran” which he ended with a few words of praise.