Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur - Страница 42
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"For God's sake." Craig was desperate. "I've got to have fencing. I can't run stock without it. When will you receive a consignment?"
"That rests with some little clerk in the Department of Commerce in Harare," the manager shrugged, and Craig turned sadly back to the Land-Rover, when suddenly an idea came to him.
"May I use your telephone? "he asked the manager.
He dialled the private number that Peter Fungabera had given him, and after he had identified himself, a secretary put him straight through.
"Peter, we've got a big problem."
"How can I help you?" Craig told him, and Peter murmured to himself as he made notes. "How much do you need?"
"At least twelve hundred bales."
"Is there anything else?"
"Not at the moment oh yes, sorry to bother you, Peter, but I've been trying to find Sally-Anne. She doesn't answer the telephone or reply to telegrams."
"Phone me back in ten minutes," Peter Fungabera ordered, and when Craig did so, he told him, "Sally-Anne is out of the country. Apparently she flew up to Kenya in the Cessna. She is at a place called Kitchwa Tembu on the Masai Mara."
"Do you know when she will be back?"
"No, but as soon as she re-enters the country again I'll let you know." Craig was impressed at the reach of Peter Fungabera's arm, that he could follow a person's movements even outside Zimbabwe. Obviously, Sally' Anne was on some list for special attention, and the thought struck him that he himself was probably on that very same list.
Of course, he knew why Sally-Anne was at Kitchwa Tembu. Two years previo&ly Craig had visited that marvelous safari camp on the Mara plains at the invitation of the owners, Geoff and Jone Kent. This was the season when the vast herds of buffalo around the camp would start dropping their calves and the battles between the protective cows and the lurking packs of predators intent on devouring the newborn calves provided one of the great spectacles of the African veld. Sally-Anne would be there with her Nikon.
On his way back to King's Lynn, he stopped at the post office and sent her a telegram through Abercrombie and Kent's office in Nairobi: "Bring me back some tips for Zambezi Waters. Stop. Is the hunt still on. Query. Best Craig." Three days later a convoy of trucks ground up the hills of King's Lynn and a platoon of Third Brigade troopers offloaded twelve hundred bales of barbed wire into the roofless tractor sheds.
"Is there an invoice to pay?" Craig asked the sergeant in charge of the detail. "Or any papers to sign?"
"I do not know," he answered. "I know only I was ordered to bring these things and I have done so." Craig watched the empty trucks roar away down the hill, and there was an indigestible lump in his stomach. He suspected that there would never be an invoice. He knew also that this was Africa, and he did not like to contemplate the consequences of alienating Peter Fungabera.
For five days he worked with his Matabele fencing gangs, bared to the waist, with heavy leather gloves protecting his hands; he flung his weight on the wire strainers and sang the work chants with his men but all that time the lump of conscience was heavy in his belly, and he could not suffer it longer.
There was still no telephone on the estate, so he drove into Bulawayo. He reached Peter at the Houses of Parliament.
"My dear Craig, you really are making a fuss about nothing. The quartermaster general has not yet invoiced the wire to me. But if it makes you feel better, then send me a cheque and I will see that the business is settled immediately. Oh, Craig, make the cheque payable "Cash", will you?" ver the next few weeks, Craig discovered in himself the capacity to live on much less sleep than he had ever believed possible. He was up each morning at four-thirty and chivvied his Matabele gangs from their huts. They emerged sleepily, still blanket wrapped and shivering at the chill, coughing from the wood-smoke of the watch-fire, and grumbling without any real malice.
At noon, Craig found the shade of an acacia, and slept through the siesta as they all did. Then, refreshed, he worked through the afternoon until the ringing tone of the gong of railway-line suspended from the branch of a jacaranda tree below the homestead sounded the hour and the cry of "Shayile! It has struck!" was flung from gang to gang and they trooped back up the hills.
Then Craig washed off the sweat and dust in the concrete reservoir behind the cottage, ate a hasty meal and by the time darkness fell, he was sitting at the cheap deal table in the cottage in the hissing white light of the gas lantern with a sheet of paper in front of him and a ballpoint pen in his hand, transported into the other world of his imagination. Some nights he wrote through until long after midnight, and then at four-thirty was out in the dewy not-yet dawn again, feeling alert and vigorous.
The sun darkened his skin and bleached the cowlick of hair over his eyes, the had physical work toned up his muscles and tougheneciphis stump so he could walk the fences all day without discomfort. There was so little time to spare, that his cooking was perfunctory and the bottle of whisky remained in his bag with the seal unbroken so that he grew lean and hawk-faced.
Then one evening as he parked the Land-Rover under the jacaranda trees and started up towards the cottage, he was forced to stop. The aroma of roasting beef and potatoes was like running into a brick wall.
The saliva spurted from under his tongue and he started forward again, suddenly ravenous.
In the tiny makeshift kitchen a gaunt figure stood over the wood fire. His hair was soft and white as cotton wool, and he looked up accusingly as Craig stood in the doorway.
"Why did you not send for me?" he demanded in Sindebele. "Nobody else cooks on Kingi Lingi."
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