Rage - Smith Wilbur - Страница 61
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'Don't be afraid,' he called softly. 'It's me." And her reply was low but quivering with joy. 'Oh God, I thought you'd never come." She was in a frenzy for him. Her other pregnancies had always left her feeling nauseous and bloated, and the thought of sexual contact during that time had been repugnant. But now, even though she was over three months pregnant, her wanting was a kind of madness.
Moses seemed to sense her need, but did not try to match it. He lay naked upon his back on the stretcher, and he was like a pinnacle of black granite. Tara hurled herself upon him to impale herselfi She was sobbing and uttering little cries and yelps. At once both clumsy and adroit, her body, not yet swollen by the child within her, thrashed and churned above him as he lay quiescent and unmoving, and she went off beyond physical endurance, beyond the limits of flesh, insatiable and desperate for him, until exhaustion at last overcame her and she rolled off him and lay panting weakly, her chestnut hair darkened by her own sweat and plastered to her forehead and neck, and there was a thin pink co19uring of blood on the front of her thighs, so wild had been her passion.
Moses drew the sheet over her and held her until she had stopped shaking and her breathing had quietened, and then he said, 'It will begin soon - the date has been agreed." Tara was so transported that for a while she did not understand, and she shook her head stupidly.
'June the twenty-sixth,' Moses said. 'Across the land, in every city, all at the same time. Tomorrow I will be going to Port Elizabeth in the eastern Cape to command the campaign there." That was hundreds of miles from Johannesburg, and she had come to be near him. With the melancholy of after-love upon her, Tara felt cheated and abused. She wanted to protest but with an effort checked herself.
'How long will you be away?" 'Weeks." 'Oh Moses!" she began, and then warned by his quick frown, she relapsed into silence.
'The American woman - the Godolphin woman. Have you contacted her? Without publicity the value of our efforts will be halved." 'Yes." Tara paused. She had been on the point of telling him that it was all arranged, that Kitty Godolphin would meet him any time he wanted, but she stopped herself. Instead of handing her over to Moses and standing aside, here was her chance to stay close to him.
'Yes, I have spoken to her. We met at her hotel, she is eager to meet you but she is out of town at the moment, in Swaziland." 'That is no good,' Moses muttered. 'I had hoped to see her before I left." 'I could bring her down to Port Elizabeth,' Tara cut in eagerly.
'She will be back in a day or two and I will bring her to you." 'Can you get away from here?" he asked dubiously.
'Yes, of course. I will bring the television people down to you in my own car." Moses grunted uncertainly, and was silent while he thought about it, and then he nodded.
'Very well. I will explain how you will be able to contact me when you get there. I will be in the township of New Brighton, just outside the city." 'Can I be with you, Moses? Can I stay with you?" 'You know that is impossible." He was irritated by her persistence.
'No whites are allowed in the township without a pass." 'The television team will not be able to help you much if we are kept out of the township,' Tara said quickly. 'We should be close to you to be of any use to the struggle." Cunningly she had linked herself to Kitty Godolphin, and she held her breath as he thought about it.
'Perhaps,' he nodded, and she exhaled softly. He had accepted it.
'Yes. There might be a way. There is a mission hospital run by German nuns in the township. They are friends. You could stay there. I will arrange it." She tried not to let him see her triumph. She would be with him, that was all that was important. It was madness, but though her body was bruised and sore, already she wanted him again.
It was not physical lust, it was more than that. It was the only way she could possess him, even for a few fleeting minutes. When she had him locked in her body, he belonged to her alone.
Tara was puzzled by Kitty Godolphin's attitude towards her. She was accustomed to people, both men and women, responding immediately to her own warm personality and good looks. Kitty was different, from the very beginning there had been a cold-eyed reserve and an innate hostility in her. Very swiftly Tara had seen beyond the angelic, little-girl image that Kitty so carefully projected, but even after she had recognized the tough and ruthless person beneath, she could find no logical reason for the woman's attitude. After all Tara was offering her an important assignment, and Kitty was examining the gift as though it were a live scorpion.
'I don't understand,' she protested, her voice and eyes snapping.
'You told me we could do the interview here in Johannesburg. Now you want me to traipse off into the deep sticks somewhere." 'Moses Gama has to be there. Something important is about to take place--' 'What is so important.9' Kitty demanded, fists on her lean denimclad hips. 'What we agreed was important also." Most people, from leading politicians and international stars of sport and entertainment down to the lowest nonentity, were ready to risk slipping a spinal disc in their eagerness to appear for even the briefest moment on the little square screen. It was Kitty Godolphin's right, a semi-divine right, to decide who would be accorded that opportunity and who would be denied it. Moses Gama's cavalier behaviour was insulting. He had been chosen, and instead of displaying the gratitude which was Kitty Godolphin's due, he was setting conditions.
'Just what is so important that he cannot make the effort of common courtesy.9' she repeated.
'I'm sorry, Miss Godolphin, I can't tell you that." 'Well then, I'm sorry also, Mrs'Courtney, but you tell Moses Gama from me that he can go straight to hell without passing GO and without collecting his two hundred dollars." 'You aren't serious!" Tara hadn't expected that.
'I have never been more serious in my life." Kitty rolled her wrist to look at her Rolex. 'Now, if you will excuse me, I have more important matters to attend to." 'All right,' Tara gave in at once. 'I will risk it. I'll tell you what is going to happen--' Tara paused while she considered the consequences, and then asked, 'You will keep it to yourselL what I am about to tell you.9' 'Darling, if there is a good story in it, they wouldn't get it out of me with thumbscrew and hot irons - that is, not until I splash it across the screen myself." Tara told her in a rush of words, getting it out quickly before she could change her mind. 'It will be a chance to film him at work, to see him with his people, to watch him defying the forces of oppression and bigotry." She saw Kitty hesitating and knew that she had to think quickly.
'However, I should warn you, there may be danger. The confrontation could turn to violence and even bloodshed,' she said, and she had got it exactly right.
'Hank!" Kitty Godolphin shouted through to the lounge of her suite where the camera crew were strewn over the furniture like the survivors of a bomb blast, listening at full volume of the radio to the new rock 'n' roll sensation warning them to keep off his blue suede shoes.
'Hank!" Kitty raised her voice above Presley's. 'Get the cameras packed. We are going to a place called Port Elizabeth. If we can find where the hell it is." They drove through the night in Tara's Packard, and the suspension sagged under the weight of bodies and camera equipment.
In his travels around the country Hank had discovered that cannabis grew as a weed around most of the villages in the reserves of Zululand and the Transkei. In an environment that the plant found agreeable, it reached the size of a small tree. Only a few of the older generation of black tribesmen smoked the dried leaves, and although it was proscribed as a noxious plant and listed as a dangerous drug, its use was so localized and restricted to the more primitive blacks in the remote areas - for no white person or educated African would lower himself to smoke it - that the authorities made little effort to prevent its cultivation and sale. Hank had found an endless supply of what he declared to be 'pure gold' for the payment of pennies.
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