The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 122
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"Look here, Sam," Craig began awkwardly. "I don't know what you're going to do now. You could join the police, like I am doing.
Perhaps we could work it that we were together again." Perhaps, "Sam agreed expressionlessly.
"Or I could talk to Bawu about getting you a job at King's Lynn."
"Clerk in the pay office?" Sam asked.
"Yea! I know." Craig scratched his ear. "Still, it's something."
"I'll think about it, "Sam murmured.
"Hell, I feel bad, but you didn't have to come with me, you know.
You could have stayed in the department." "Not after what they did to you." Sam shook his head. "Thanks, Sam." They sat silently for a while, then Sam climbed down and lugged his bag out of the back of the Land-Rover.
"I'll come out and see you as soon as I'm fixed up. We'll work something out," Craig promised. "Keep in touch, Sam." "Sure." Sam held out his hand, and they shook briefly. "Hamba gashle, go in peace," Sam said.
"Shala gashle. Stay in peace."
Craig started the Land-Rover and swung back the way they had come.
As he drove up the avenue of spathodea, he glanced in the rear-view mirror. Sam was standing in the centre of the road with his bag on one shoulder, watching him go. There was a hollow feeling of bereavement in Craig's chest. The two of them had been together for so long.
"I'll work something out," he repeated determinedly. raig slowed at the top of the rise as he always did here, anticipating his first glimpse of the homestead, but when it came it was with that little shock of disappointment. Bawu had stripped the thatch off the room and replaced it with dull grey corrugated asbestos sheet. It had to be done, of course, an RPG-7 rocket fired into the thatch from outside the perimeter and the whole building would have gone up like the fifth of November. Still Craig resented the change, just as he did the loss of the beautiful jacaranda trees. They had been planted by Bawu's grandfather, old Zouga Ballantyne who built King's Lynn back in the early 1890s. In spring their gentle rain of blue petals had carpeted the lawns, but they had been cut down to open a field of defensive fire around the house, and in their place now stood the ten-foot security fence of diamond mesh and barbed wire.
Craig drove down into the shallow dip below the main homestead towards the complex of offices, storerooms and tractor workshops which were the heart of the vast sprawling ranch. Before he was halfway down, a lanky figure appeared in the high doorway of the workshop, and stood with arms akimbo watching him approach.
"Hello, Grandpa." Craig climbed out of the Land-Rover, and the old man frowned to cover his pleasure.
"How many times have I got to tell you, "Don't call me that!" You want people to think I'm old? "Jonathan Ballantyne was burned and dessicated by the sun to the consistency Of biltong, the dark strips of dried venison that were such a Rhodesian delicacy.
It seemed that if you were to cut him, dust and not blood would pour from the wound, but his eyes were still a brilliant twinkling green and his hair was a dense white shock that fell to his collar at the back of his neck. It was one of his many conceits. He shampooed it every day, and brushed it with a pair of silver-backed brushes that stood on the table beside his bed.
"Sorry, Bawu." Craig reverted to his Matabele name, the Gadfly, and seized the old man's hand. It was mere bone covered by cool dry skin, but the grip was startlingly strong.
"So you got yourself fired again," Jonathan accused. Although his teeth were artificial, they were a neat fit, filling out the wizened cheeks, and he kept them so sparkling white as to match his hair and silvery moustache. Another of his conceits.
"I resigned, "Craig denied. "You got fired." "It was close," Craig admitted. "But I beat them to it. I resigned." Craig was not really surprised that Jonathan already knew of his latest misfortune. Nobody knew how old Jonathan Ballantyne was for certain, the outside estimate was a hundred years, though eighty-plus was Craig's guess, but still nothing got by him.
"You can give me a lift up to the house. "Jonathan swung up easily onto the high passenger seat, and with relish began pointing out the additions to the defence of the homestead.
"I have put in twenty more Claymores on the front lawn."
Jonathan's Claymore mines were ten kilos of plastic explosive packed inside a drum of scrap-iron suspended on a pipe tripod. He could fire them electrically from his bedroom.
Jonathan was a chronic insomniac, and Craig had a bizarre mental picture of the old man spending every night sitting bolt upright in his nightshirt with his finger on the button praying for a terrorist to come within range. The war had added twenty years to his life.
Jonathan hadn't had such a good time since the first battle of the Somme, where he had won his MC one lovely autumn morning by grenading three German machine-gun nests in quick succession. Secretly Craig believed that the first thing any ZIPRA* guerrilla recruit was taught when he began his basic training Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army. was to give King's Lynn and the crazy old man who lived there the widest possible berth.
As they drove up through the gates in the security fence and were surrounded by a mixed pack of fearsome Rottweilers and Dobermann pinschers, Jonathan explained the latest refinements to his battle plan.
"If they come from behind the kopje, I'll let them get into the minefield, then take them in enfilade,-" He was still explaining and gesticulating as they climbed the steps to the wide veranda and he finished the briefing by adding darkly and mysteriously, I have just invented a secret weapon, I'm going to test it tomorrow morning. You can watch." "I'd enjoy that, Bawu," Craig thanked him doubtfully. The last tests that Jonathan had conducted had blown all the windows out of the kitchens and flesh-wounded the Matabele cook.
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