War Cry. Wilbur Smith

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      Saffron crept in, knowing she was not supposed to be there and not wanting to disturb anyone.

      She saw three people grouped around the table that stood in the middle of the room. A woman was standing at the far end with her back towards her. Saffron recognized her as Mrs Thompson, the doctor’s wife. Daddy was next to her, also with his back towards the door. Between them Saffron could just see the snowy-white top of Doctor Thompson’s head on the other side of the table. He seemed to be looking down at something in front of him. There was someone next to him and as she crabbed her neck to see better Saffron realized that it was the runner, Dr Birchinall, still in his shorts and a white cricket jumper, but with a white bandage wrapped around his injured thigh.

      Only then did Saffron see her mother’s legs and shoeless feet on the table, lying between her father and Birchinall.

      Mummy’s feet were jerking up and down, as if she were shaking or kicking them, but the way they were moving was really strange, not like anything anyone would normally do.

      Saffron crept around the side of the room, until she was almost opposite the end of the table. She hadn’t looked up at all, not wanting to catch anyone’s eye. But finally she turned and looked down the table.

      Mummy was lying on her back with her arms to her side. The Thompsons were up by her head with their arms pressing down on her shoulders. Daddy had his arms on Mummy’s legs. And the reason they were all pushing down was that she was throwing herself from side to side, her body shaking and her limbs twitching.

      Saffron didn’t understand what was happening or why her mother was moving the way she was, or why her eyes were open but she didn’t seem to be seeing anything. The beautiful face that had always looked at her with such love in its eyes was twisted into something ugly and unrecognizable. Mummy’s dress had ridden up and there was a wet, dark stain between her legs and on the surface of the table. And then she groaned and it was a ghastly sound that was nothing like her mother’s normal voice but more the howl of a wounded animal and Saffron could not control herself a second longer. She screamed out, ‘Mummy!’ dropped the bag and dashed towards the table.

      ‘Who let that girl in here?’ Doctor Thompson shouted. ‘Get her out at once!’

      Saffron saw her father let go of Mummy’s thrashing legs. He stepped towards her with such an angry desperate look on his face that she burst out crying and this time when he picked her up there was no happiness, not even any affection, just his angry face and his hands holding her so tightly that it hurt.

      ‘Mummy!’ Saffron screamed again and then a third time, ‘Mummy! I’ve got to see Mummy!’

      But it was no use. Her father was carrying her out of the room and across the bar and no matter how hard she punched or kicked him or how loudly she shouted, ‘Let me go! Let me go!’ he would not loosen his grip on her.

      He pushed his way through the crowd on the veranda, and walked down the steps to where Manyoro was waiting.

      Then, and only then, did Leon Courtney drop his daughter to the ground, though he still held her arms so that she could not get away. He glared at Manyoro with fury in his eyes and there was not the slightest trace of brotherly affection in his voice as he snarled, ‘I thought I told you to look after her.’

      Manyoro said nothing. He just took Saffron’s hand, a little more gently than her father had done, but still holding her just as tightly. Leon Courtney waited for a moment to see that his daughter was finally secured. Then he turned on his heels and ran back up the clubhouse steps.

      As Saffron watched him go she felt abandoned, desolate and completely unable to understand what was happening. Her whole world that had seemed so secure and so happy just a few minutes earlier was falling apart around her. Her mother was desperately ill. Her father hated her. Nothing was as it should be and none of it made any sense.

      Just then she felt the first drops of rain fall on her and spatter across the red earth all around her. There was a sudden explosive crack of thunder and only a couple of seconds later a dazzling flash of lightning. The wind whipped at her dress and within an instant her tears were washed from her face by torrential rain, and the sound of her crying was drowned by the roaring of the storm.

      How is she?’ Leon shouted for the hundredth time, trying to make himself heard over the straining of the engine and the pounding of the rain, and received much the same answer from the back of the car as he had on every previous occasion. He was leaning back in the driver’s seat, his head half-turned to the back of the Rolls-Royce.

      ‘She’s very weak, Mr Courtney. But she’s still here.’ Dr Hugo Birchinall was behind him, sitting on the back seat with Eva cradled in his arms. ‘She’s a fighter, sir, you should be very proud of her. But Mr Courtney, may I give you a word of advice … as a doctor?’

      ‘Go ahead.’

      ‘Your wife is very ill indeed. There’s no guarantee she’ll make it. But she certainly won’t make it if we crash. So please, focus all your attention on your driving. It’ll help take your mind off things.’

      Leon said nothing, but he turned his eyes back to the road ahead. Birchinall was right. It was an act of sheer desperation even to try to make the drive to Nairobi in this kind of weather. The distance wasn’t an issue. The Rolls’s six-cylinder, eighty-horsepower engine would make short work of the seventy-five miles between Gilgil and the Kenyan capital if the journey ran along flat, straight roads. But the truth was very different.

      Like most of western Kenya, Gilgil lay within the confines of the Great Rift Valley, the stupendous tear in the earth’s surface that ran in a great arc southwards for almost four thousand miles, from the Red Sea coast of Ethiopia through the heart of East Africa to the Indian Ocean in Mozambique.

      Nairobi, however, lay outside the Rift and the only way to reach it by car was a dirt road, surfaced with gravel that ran up the towering escarpment, as much as three thousand feet of virtually sheer rock at its highest points, that formed one side of the valley. The road clung to the side of this gargantuan natural wall, snaking and twisting, seeking every possible scrap of purchase as it rose and rose towards the summit.

      There were no barriers of any kind at its side, nor even any markings to indicate where the road ended and the plummeting drop into the void began. Occasional trees clung to the scraps of rocky soil by the side of the road and a few enterprising, or possibly just foolhardy tradesmen had set up shacks, selling food and drinks on the very few patches of flat land, just a few yards wide, that lay between the road and the edge of the cliff.

      On a clear, sunny day with a dry road beneath the wheels, the view from the road, looking out across the apparently limitless expanse of the Great Rift Valley, was a sight so heart-stopping in its magnificence that it justified the nervousness that even the most cool-headed driver or passenger felt when braving the escarpment road. And the fearful could console themselves that this petrifying stretch of their journey was less than ten miles in length. But when rain fell as hard as this it might as well have been ten thousand miles, for no sensible person even attempted to negotiate what swiftly became an impossibly treacherous cross between a muddy track and a rushing stream. The water didn’t just fall onto the road from the sky. It cascaded in torrents from the heights up above. So it was by no means uncommon for sections of the road’s surface to be washed away in really bad storms and any hostess who invited guests for a weekend anywhere within the valley did so on the mutual understanding that, if the weather turned bad, they might be there for a week.

      But Eva Courtney could not wait a week, or even a day. Her only hope was to get to a СКАЧАТЬ