Shout at the Devil - Smith Wilbur - Страница 25
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The whole had about it an air of feminine order and neatness. Only a woman, and a determined one at that, could have devoted so much time and pain to building up such a speck of prettiness in the midst of brown rock and harsh thorn veld.
She stood on the veranda in the shade like a valkyrie, tall and sun-browned and angry. The full length dress of faded blue was crisp with new ironing, and the neat mends in the fabric invisible except at close range. Gathered close about her waist, her skirt ballooned out over her woman's hips and fell to her ankles, slyly concealing the long straight legs beneath. Folded across her stomach, her arms were an amber brown frame for the proud double bulge of her bosom, and the thick braid of black hair that hung to her waist twitched like the tail of an angry lioness. A face too young for the marks of hardship and loneliness that were chiselled into it was harder now by the expression of distaste it wore as she watched Flynn and Sebastian arriving.
They lolled in their maschilles, unshaven, dressed in filthy rags, hair matted with sweat and dust; Flynn full of palm wine, and Sebastian full of fever although it was impossible to distinguish the symptoms of their separate disorders.
"May I ask where you've been these last two months, Flynn Patrick O'Flynn?" Although she tried to speak like a man, yet her voice had a lift and a ring to it.
"You may not ask, daughter!" Flynn shouted back defiantly.
"You're drunk again!"
"And if I am?" roared Flynn. "You're as bad as that mother of yours (may her soul rest in peace), always going on and on. Never a civil word of welcome for your old Daddy, who's been away trying to earn an honest crust."
The girl's eyes switched to the maschille that carried Sebastian, and narrowed in mounting outrage. "Sweet merciful heavens, and what's this you've brought home with you now?"
Sebastian grinned inanely, and tried valiantly to sit up as Flynn introduced him. "That is Sebastian Oldsmith. My very dear friend, Sebastian Oldsmith."
"He's also drunk!"
"Listen, Rosa. You show some respect." Flynn struggled to climb from his maschille.
"He's drunk," Rosa repeated grimly. "Drunk as a pig. You can take him straight back and leave him where you found him. He's not coming in this house." She turned away, pausing only a moment at the front door to add, "That goes for you also, Flynn O'Flynn. I'll be waiting with the shotgun.
You just put one foot on the veranda before you're sober and I'll blow it clean off."
"Rosa wait he isn't drunk, please," wailed Flynn, but the fly-screen door had slammed closed behind her.
Flynn teetered uncertainly at the foot of the veranda stairs; for a moment it looked as though he might be foolhardy enough to put his daughter's threat to the test, but he was not that drunk.
"Women," he mourned. "The good Lord protect us," and he led his little caravan around the back of the bungalow to the farthest of the rondavel huts. This room was sparsely furnished in anticipation of Flynn's regular periods of exile from the main building.
Rosa O'Flynn closed the front door behind her and leaned back against it wearily. Slowly her chin sagged down to her chest, and she closed her eyes to imprison the itchy tears beneath the lids, but one of them squeezed through and quivered like a fat, glistening grape on her lashes, before falling to splash on the stone floor.
"Oh, Daddy, Daddy," she whispered. It was an expression of those months of aching loneliness. The long, slow slide of days when she had searched desperately for work to fill her hands and her mind. The nights when, locked alone in her room with a loaded shotgun beside the bed, she had lain and listened to the sounds of the African bush beyond the window, afraid then of everything, even the four devoted African servants sleeping soundly with their families in their little compound behind the bungalow.
Waiting, waiting for Flynn to return. Lifting her head in the noonday and standing listening, hoping to hear the singing of his bearers as they came down the valley. And each hour the fear and the resentment building up within her. Fear that he might not come, and resentment that he left her for so long.
Now he had come. He had come drunk and filthy, with some oafish ruffian as a companion, and all her loneliness and fear had vented itself in that shrewish outburst. She straightened and pushed herself away from the door. Listlessly she walked through the shady cool rooms of the bungalow, spread with a rich profusion of animal skins and rough native-made furniture, until she reached her own room and sank down on the bed.
Beneath her unhappiness was a restlessness, a formless, undirected longing for something she did not understand. It was a new thing; only in these last few years had she become aware of it. Before that she had gloried in the companionship of her father, never having experienced and, therefore, never missing the society of others. She had taken it as the natural order of things that much of her time must be spent completely alone with only the wife of old Mohammed to replace her natural mother the young Portuguese girl who had died in the struggle to give life to Rosa.
She knew the land as a slum child knows the city. It was her land and she loved it.
Now all of it was changing, she was uncertain, without bearings in this sea of new emotion. Lonely, irritable and afraid.
A timid knocking on the back door of the bungalow roused her, and she felt aleap of hope within her. Her anger at Flynn had long ago abated now he had made the first overture she would welcome him to the bungalow without sacrifice of pride.
Quickly she bathed her face in the china wash-basin beside her bed, and patted her hair into order before the mirror, before going through to answer the knock.
Old Mohammed stood outside, shuffling his feet and grinning ingratiatingly. He stood in almost as great an awe of Rosa's temper as that of Flynn himself. It was with relief, therefore, that he saw her smile.
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