The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 116

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Zouga retrieved his journals. and dusted them superficially with his silk scarf. There were dozens of them, the record of his life, meticulously handwritten and illustrated with ink drawings and coloured maps.

"It would have truly broken my heart to have lost these," he murmured, piling them carefully on the library table and stroking one of the red morocco covers. The silver was lying on the dining-room floor, some of it battered, but most of it intact. It has no value to a Matabele.

They wandered through the rambling homestead, through the rooms that Zouga had added haphazardly to the original structure, and they found small treasures amongst the litter. a silver comb he had given her on their first "Christmas together, the diamond and enamel dress studs which had been her birthday present to him. She handed them back to him and went up on tiptoe to offer her face to his kiss.

There was still crockery and glassware on the kitchen shelves, though all the pots and knives had been stolen and the doors to the pantry and storeroom had been broken off their hinges.

"It won't take much to fix,"Zouga told her. "I can't believe how lucky we've been." Louise went out into the kitchen and found four of her red Rhode Island hens scratching in the dust. She called Jan cheroot from the stable and begged a few hand fills of grain from the horses" feed-bags. When she clucked at the hens, they came in a flutter of wings to be fed.

The glass In the windows of the main bedroom was smashed, and wild birds had come through to roost in the rafters. The bedspread was stained with their excrement, but when Louise stripped it off, the linen and mattress beneath it were clean and dry.

Zouga put an arm around her waist, squeezed it and looked down at her, in the way she knew so well.

"You are a wicked man, Major Ballantyne," she breathed huskily.

"But there are no curtains on the windows." "Fortunately there are still shutters." He went to close them, while Louise folded back the sheet and then unfastened the top button of her blouse. Zouga returned in time to assist her with the others. , An hour later when they came out again onto the front stoep, they found Jan Cheroot had dusted off the chairs and table, and unpacked the picnic basket they had brought from Bulawayo. They, drank fine Constantia wine and ate cold Cornish pasties, while Jan Cheroot waited upon them and regaled them with anecdotes and reminiscences of the exploits of Ballantyne's Scouts.

"There were none like us,"he declared modestly. "Ballantyne's Scouts! The Matabele learned to know us well." "Oh, don't let's talk about war, "Louise pleaded.

But Zouga asked with good-natured sarcasm, "What happened to all your heroes? The war still goes on, and we need men like you." "Master Ralph changed," said Jan Cheroot, darkly. "He changed just like that."

He snapped his fingers. "From the day we caught Bazo at the Valley of the Goats, he wasn't interested any more. He never rode with the Scouts again, and within a week he had gone back to the railhead to finish building his railway. They say he will drive the first train into Bulawayo before Christmas, that's what they say." "Enough!" Louise declared. "It's our first day at King's Lynn in almost a year. I will not have another word of war. Pour some wine, Jan Cheroot, and take a little sip for yourself." Then she turned to Zouga "Darling, can't we leave Bulawayo and come back here?" Zouga shook his head regretfully.

"I'm sorry, my love. I could not risk your precious life. The Matabele are still in rebellion, and this is so isolated-" From the back of the house came the sudden shriek and cackle of alarmed poultry.

Zouga broke off and jumped to his feet. As he reached for his rifle propped against the wall, he said softly but urgently, "Jan Cheroot, go around the back of the stables. I'll come from the other side. "Then to Louise, "Wait here, but be ready to run for the horses if you hear a shot." And the two men slipped silently away down the veranda.

Zouga reached the corner of the wall below the main bedroom, just as there was another storm of squawks and cackles, and the beating of wings. He ducked around the corner, and sprinted down the thick whitewashed walls that protected the kitchen yard, and flattened himself beside the gate. Above the cacophony of terrified chickens and the flapping of wings, he heard a voice say, "Hold that one! Do not let it go!". The voice was Matabele, and almost immediately a halfnaked figure ducked through the doorway beside Zouga, carrying a chicken in each hand.

One thing only prevented Zouga firing. The pendulous bare breasts that flapped against the Matabele's ribs as she ran. Zouga smashed the butt of his rifle between the woman's shoulders, knocking her to the earth, and he leaped over her body into the kitchen yard.

Beside the kitchen door stood Jan Cheroot. He held his rifle in one hand and in the other the skinny, naked, struggling body of a small black boy.

"Shall I knock his head in? "Jan Cheroot asked.

"You are no longer a member of Ballantyne's Scouts," Zouga told him. "Just keep a hold on him, but don't hurt him. "And he turned back to examine his own prisoner.

She was an elderly Matabele woman, almost on the point of starvation. She must once have been a big heavily fleshed woman, for her skin hung loosely upon her in folds and wrinkles. Once those breasts must have been the size of water melons, and almost bursting with fat, but now they were empty pouches that dangled almost to her navel. Zouga caught her wrist and hauled her to her feet. He marched her back into the kitchen yard, and he could clearly feel the bones of her arm through the wasted flesh.

Jan Cheroot was still holding the boy, and now Zouga studied him briefly. He also was skeletally thin, each rib and each knob of his spine poked through the skin, and his head seemed too big for his body, and his eyes too big for his head.

"Little bugger is starving," said Zouga

"That's one way of getting rid of them," Jan Cheroot agreed, and at that moment Louise stepped into the kitchen doorway with the rifle still in her hand, and her expression changed the instant she saw the black woman.

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